The next great read is Nicholas Schmidle’s to Live or Perish Forever, the title taken from one of partition’s great proponents (and the man who coined ‘Pakstan’) Chaudhury Rahmat Ali’s description of the choices before Muslims pre-1947. You can be sure most Pakistanis are horrified to see Schmidle use it in a more current context. If Gul gives you information on militant groups and leaders, Schmidle’s is a real inside look at the fundamentalist idealogues who inspire jihadi militancy in Pakistan. His friendship with Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the cleric of the Lal Masjid, who was killed inside, and his description of the man and that movement is riveting. Equally so, descriptions of the militant Sunni Sipah-e-Sahiba group, and meetings with more mainstream leaders of the MMA and the Jamaat-e-Islami. His two year stint in Pakistan was cut short when Schmidle’s work got too ‘interesting’ for the Government, and he was deported.
Next for a book I confess I got to too late — journalist Murtaza Razvi’s description of Musharraf: The Years in Power, completed shortly after he resigned in August 2008. Straight journalism, fact over opinion, this is a great event-by-event record of Gen Pervez Musharraf’s coup and presidency. Pakistan has shown, that through the turmoil and exile, bans, and imprisonment its leaders face, its choice of leadership doesn’t change.
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12:49 AM
Moderate Islamist here
