More Muslim Piety

You have to chuckle at these reverential Reuters accounts of the joys of Islam.


Pakistan villagers remember rebel cleric as pious

BASTI ABDULLAH, Pakistan, July 11 (Reuters) - Hundreds of people gathered in a village in Pakistan on Wednesday for the funeral of a firebrand cleric killed when security forces stormed his mosque complex after a week-long standoff with authorities.

Abdul Rashid Ghazi was killed along with more than 50 of his militant followers when commandos assaulted the radical Red Mosque complex in the heart of Islamabad on Tuesday.

In recent years Ghazi had rarely visited his home village,of Basti Abdullah, in Punjab province 650 km (400 miles) south of Islamabad. His relatives and villagers remembered him as pious.

"He was a religious man, a pious person," Haji Mohammad Khan, one of his uncles, told Reuters.

The village, in flat, cotton-growing country, was named after Ghazi's father, Mohammad Abdullah, after he arranged for a train station to be established there, villagers said.

Ghazi's father ran the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in the capital until he was gunned down there in 1998. The murder was never solved.

Ghazi and his brother Abdul Aziz took over the mosque, which already was known as a bastion of support for radical Islam.

The cleric brothers led an increasingly aggressive campaign to impose Taliban-style social values in Islamabad, while armed militants set themselves up in the mosque compound.

Khan said Ghazi has done nothing wrong.

"He did not commit any robbery. He was just trying to impose Islamic shariah in Pakistan. In my view, he was right."

Villager Mohammad Ayub echoed that.

"The attack on the mosque was brutal. No Muslim can condone it," he said.

Ghazi also supported a religious school, or madrasa, set up by his father in the village, Ayub said. That support was expected to stop.

"We're illiterate people. They enlightened our village with religious education. Ghazi's death has basically ruined our village," Ayub said.

Sure, nothing wrong with imposing Sharia law and enslaving people. Atfer all, the child molester they worship (PBUH) would want it that way.