Sunni fundamentalists used a suicide bombing to attack a Shiite funeral in the western Punjabi town of Dera Ismail Khan on Friday, killing 32 and wounding 145.
Here is video from Pakistani television:
Angry Shiite crowds went on a rampage against Sunnis in the city. The Pakistani authorities stepped in to impose a curfew.
The violent Taliban Movement of Pakistan of South Waziristan is a likely candidate for perpetrator. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas are sandwiched between the western Punjab (or the North-Western Frontier Province to the north) and the Afghan border. The people of D.I. Khan largely speak Siraiki, a dialect of Punjabi, and engage in the traditional religious practices of rural Punjabi Muslims. Some are Twelver Shiites, others Sunnis of various sorts, including Sufis who attend at saints’ shrines (strictly forbidden in the radical reformist doctrine of the Taliban). There is an element of ethnic conflict in such violence, since the Taliban are largely Pushtuns (in Pakistan called Pathans).
Shiites recently commemorated that 40th day after the martyrdom of Imam Husayn, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad. Shiite mourning practices in South Asia include flagellation, attendance as shrines, and the staging of street processions in which bamboo and tinsel representations of the tomb of Husayn in Karbala, Iraq, are carried through the streets. These practices, and Shiism itself, are viewed as idolatrous by Sunni fundamentalists of the Salafi, Wahhabi and Taliban stripes. The following video, from Ashura 2008, depicts Shiites commemorating the time-period when Husayn was martyred, in D. I. Khan:
End/ (Not Continued)
© 2024 All Rights Reserved