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By Abubakar Siddique
So much modern journalistic and scholarly money owed of the instability gripping Afghanistan and Pakistan have argued that violent Islamic extremism, together with aid for the Taliban and comparable teams, is both rooted in Pashtun heritage and tradition, or reveals prepared hosts between their groups on each side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Abubakar Siddique units out to illustrate that the failure, or perhaps unwillingness, of either Afghanistan and Pakistan to soak up the Pashtuns into their nation buildings and to include them into the commercial and political cloth is principal to those dynamics, and a serious failure of state- and state-building in either states.
In his publication he argues that spiritual extremism is the made from those severe disasters and that accountability for the location lies to some extent with the elites of either international locations. in part an eye-witness account and partially meticulously researched scholarship, The Pashtun query describes a humans whose future will form the way forward for Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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Extra info for The Pashtun Question: The Unresolved Key to the Future of Pakistan and Afghanistan
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Ii, v. 275 0£ the Quran. ei Sepsis.. op. cH. O. 6o/557, report of Reece, British consul in Isfahan, Jan. 11, 1894. HSee below, pp. 173, HO. ts The phrase is used in a related conte-xt by Al;tmad Kasravl (Zinda g4nl· yi Man (Tehran, 1323 Sh/1944], p. 15) . MKhS,p. 114. blished. It is thus appropriate to examine by what means a mujtahid attained power and in fluence, and also to investigate the nature of that influence. Piety and learning were the two chief characteristics by which to recognize one worthy of taqlid.
Was accompanied by a vigorous assertion of Shi'ism. But this assertion was initially more external than doctrinal, in volving the suppression of Sunnism. This fact, combined with the paucity of Shi'i ulama in Iran, reduced the role of the ulama in relation to that of the state. The absolute power of the ruler, hav ing a religious sanction of both Sufi and Shi'i origin, tended in any event to exclude any influence of the ulama on the administration of affairs. Shah lsmii'il, the first Safavid ruler (907/ 1501-930/ 1524) commanded obedience botl1 as qutb (or "pole," in Sufi terminol ogy) and as descendant of Miisii al-K�im, the seventh Imam, while his poetry shows that he regarded his rank as even more exalted.
It remains true, moreover, that the preoccupation of theologians in the Safavid period was the exposition of Shi'i doctrine and the suppression first of Sunnism and then also of Sufism. Little at tention was paid to relations with the state. If, as suggested,• the real moment of crisis for Shi'ism in Iran was the transition from a purely religious community to a national state, rather than that to an outwardly constitutional form of government, the implications of this transition were not realized or at least not treated doctrinal ly in the Safavid period.