360guy.org

       In  711 a teenage Arab general, Mohammad bin Qasim, conquered most of the Pakistani coastline and Karachi bringing Islam to what is now Pakistan.  Competing Shia and Sunni proselytizers soon followed—-like the Catholic friars on the heels of the Conquistadores in America. Religion abhors a vacuum.  Whether you are a peasant in Pakistan or a pagan Indian in the American Southwest, you can always count on some religion to show up and pound your head into the sand until you cave and buy the dogma.

As in America, religious fundamentalism took hold.  In the States fringe religions—-Quakers, Unitarians, Rastafarians—eventually popped up.  One of these days—probably not in my lifetime— it will even be OK to say you are an atheist or agnostic and hold public office in the USA.  Imagine that.

In Pakistan the fringe was more limited.  Sufi mystics arrived from Central Asia and straddled the ideological line between Sunni and Shia, preaching a combo of both, as well as adopting local cultural traditions such as Buddhism and Hinduism.  They pitched their Islam catechism with a twist.

Does it matter?  Maybe only if whatever  flavor religious brainwashing intrudes on human values. I mean the dudes of jihad cannot be counted on to reintegrate into a tolerant culture, no more than the American Jesus fanatics will somehow become open minded about abortion.

So, do we let the Pakistani flood victims twist in the wind because their ranks are full of assholes who use murder in their quest  to turn the West into a monotheist bloc worshipping at only a mosque?