A TWIN suicide attack last night killed 42 at Pakistan’s most popular Sufi shrine. A further 175 were injured.
The attack, according to this report, is believed to have been carried out by Islamist extremists who consider Sufism – a mystical strand of Islam – to be heretical.
Distraught survivors pictured after the mosque bombing
They have a history of attacking Shiites, non-Muslims and others they deem unacceptable. About a month ago, gunmen and suicide bombers attacked two mosques of the minority Ahmadi sect in Lahore, killing 93 people.
And in March last year terrorists bombed the shrine outside Peshawar of Rehman Baba, a 17th-century Sufi and Pushto poet. In June 2009 Mufti Sarfaraz Naeemi, a leading Sunni cleric from the Barelvi school inspired by Sufi preachers, was killed in a suicide-bombing in Lahore, after he had publicly denounced the Taliban’s terrorist ideology as repugnant to Islam.
Although the attack was a direct assault on the moderate, Sufi-influenced Islam most Pakistanis still practice, and which the Taliban and allied Islamist extremists despise, most of some two dozen Pakistanis interviewed after the bombing said that, even if Islamist extremists were behind the slaughter at the Data Darbar shrine in Lahore, the root cause of the violence was America’s war in Afghanistan, its missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal regions, and its alliance with Islamabad.
Explained Zahid Umar, 25, a frequent visitor to the Lahore shrine:
America is killing Muslims in Afghanistan and in our tribal areas, and militants are attacking Pakistan to express anger against the government for supporting America.
Even those who blamed others saw an American hand in the attacks in Pakistan. Arifa Moen, 32, a teacher in Multan, said Washington:
Is encouraging Indians and Jews to carry out attacks.
The targeted shrine was that of an 11th century Sufi saint, Ali bin Usman, commonly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh Hajveri, who traveled throughout the region spreading Islam with a message of peace and love. His shrine is the most revered and popular of Sufi shrines in the nation.
Thousands had gathered at the green-domed shrine when the bombs went off minutes apart. The blasts ripped concrete from the walls and left the white marble floor awash with blood.
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:01 pm
At first I thought this was an attack on merely woo-wooey good Muslims by fundie bad muzzies (Churchill: “How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.”)
Now I realise it was ‘teh Yankies and da Joooooos’. Us westerners need to stop bullying the oppressed Islamists of the world… poor souls…
(I feel a bit dirty at being sarky on this topic… but genuine outrage on an attack of nice-enough superstitionists by vile sub-Nazis would go unnoticed by most western liberals, after all it “is their way…”)
July 2nd, 2010 at 8:42 pm
As with all religionists, their hatred for the infidel is only surpassed by their hatred for those with a different interpretation of their faith!
July 2nd, 2010 at 9:10 pm
What weird depths of hatred and ignorance must men – I assume it is men – sink into to behave like this? These muslims must inhabit some kind of mental slum to even contemplate doing this with all the suffering it brings to the crippled and all the relatives of the dead and injured. What can they possibly imagine they are gaining?
July 2nd, 2010 at 10:05 pm
It is easy to be sarcastic, because the target is so easy. However, these people represent a genuine threat to us all, simply because of their inability to step beyond the behaviour and thought patterns of 7th century hill-country bandits. In spite of their ‘religion of peace’ claims, they have always been both intolerant of difference and aggressively easy to offend. If you think of them as the world’s largest street gang you will get a fair picture of what we are dealing with…loyalties that are alien to us, violence that is inexplicable to us in both cause and savagery, misogynist attitudes that are explicitly possessive and tribal, but providing ressurance for its members…and very effective and dangerous because of it. Some may be nicer gang members than others, but their allegiance is to the gang not the society. No-one would argue for tolerance towards gangs, because their beliefs are destructive of the social fabric…
July 3rd, 2010 at 3:07 am
Amazing how regardless of what happens they always succeed in blaming America or Jews. They are always lily white. These people would not recognize truth if it hit them in the face which is that they are mainly the architect of their own misery because of their antiquated and archaic beliefs. Winning an argument with them is like trying to win a pissing contest with a skunk. You are lost from the beginning. If there is some truth to reincarnation I hope these monsters come back as women in a moslem country ruled by the Talibans.
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:48 am
Muslims killing Muslims and blaming it on Jews; yep, anti-Semitism still going strong. I wonder how these people are being encouraged by those nasty Jews and Americans, remote mind-control maybe? Seems like arrested development through religion to me, if you’re able to believe that. I’m sure some Christians were like that, too, but I’m glad those that still cling to killing for religion are a very tiny minority, otherwise we would be in the same mess most Muslim-dominated countries are.
July 3rd, 2010 at 9:02 am
Funny how we haven’t seen the usual placard waving tossers shouting about muzzies killing muzzies – of course, it all the fault of the west. I’m certain the number of muslims slaughtering each other far exceeds the west.
July 3rd, 2010 at 7:04 pm
To paraphrase Hermann Goering, “Religion would be a joke if so many didn’t die from it”.