Courtesy Daily Dawn: ……….This actually shouldn’t come as a surprise in a country where the state has for long been active in defining what or who a ‘Muslim’ is, and that too in a society brimming with various sects and sub-sects. This has left the sects judging one another, sometimes overtly and sometimes discreetly.
The state did not learn anything from the findings of the famous Justice Munir Report in which — after the 1954 anti-Ahmadi riots, instigated by the Jamat-i-Islami and Nizam-i-Islami Party — Justice Munir noted that according to his interviews with a number of ulema on the matter, he found that no two ulema agreed on a uniformed definition of a good Muslim.
Later on history recorded another rather amusing episode. During the movement against the Z A Bhutto government in 1977, led by an alliance of various religious parties (the PNA), the alliance leaders met at the Karachi Press Club to brief the press about their plan of action. Demanding the imposition of Shariah laws and the ouster of the ‘secular, socialist’ Bhutto regime, the alliance’s top three parties were representing the country’s main Sunni sub-sects.