Shrines Under Attack
Shrines Under Attack As I write this article, ISIS claims responsibility for the terrorist attack on Lal Shahbaz Qaladar’ Sufi shrine. The attack claimed 83 lives. This was not the first attack on a Sufi shrine. Last year, an attack on Shah Noorani shrine resulted in 54 casualties. Many Pakistanis see a foreign ‘invisible’ hand orchestrating such attacks. The reality is more insidious: Sufi shrines all over Pakistan have been under attack –physically and ideologically—for well over three decades. The narrative against Sufi shrine culture reverberates from all nooks and corners of modern urban Pakistan. The case for puritanical Islam keeps getting deafening. Many well-educated people find it hard to justify terrorist attacks on shrines but they don’t mind verbal assaults on folk-Islam practices. In fact, I personally know several people who have waged a war against Sufism. Organizations like the Tableeghi Jamaat and Jamaat UD Dawa work incessantly to weed-out the remnan...