DYSPEPSIA GENERATION

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We’re accustomed to reading about suicide bombings carried out by Islamic “extremists” against infidel targets — churches, synagogues, marketplaces, and anywhere else where the unbelievers gather in large numbers. However, Muslims slaughter other Muslims en masse all the time, even (or especially) at mosques. And such attacks are always religiously justified by the perpetrators, using Islamic law and citing the Koran and hadith in support.

A recent case in point was Friday’s attack on a mosque in the city of Kohat in Pakistan. Kohat is in the northwestern part of Pakistan. The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is usually described as “restive” in the Western press, which means it is riddled with groups of violent zealots, some of whom have an affinity for or an alliance with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The attack occurred during Friday prayers (when else?) at the mosque, which is part of a complex that includes a police station. A suicide bomber and a number of armed mujahideen stormed and occupied the complex, killing twenty-three people (most of them police officers) before they themselves were killed.

I don’t know what the specific theological justification for the attack was, but I’m sure the martyrs for Allah had one. Perhaps the imam at the mosque preached ridda (blasphemy). Or maybe the police and the mosque attendees were guilty of kufr (unbelief, which is what the filthy kuffar are guilty of). Or maybe they were mushrikun, those who commit the sin of shirk (which is usually translated as “polytheism”, but has a somewhat more nuanced meaning: the association of Allah with other gods — Christians, for example, are mushrikun, due to their adherence to the doctrine of the Trinity). And there are dozens of other Arabic terms for sins that are grievous in the eyes of Allah and are punishable by death.

It wasn’t a Sunni-vs.-Shi’ite conflict, however, since the terrorist group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) that claimed responsibility for the attack is Sunni, like the Taliban and the vast majority of Muslims in Pakistan, including the worshippers at the mosque in Kohat.

So what was the issue for the shahideen who devastated the mosque and massacred all those cops?

My guess is that the issue was the secular nature of the central government in Pakistan, which is why the police were targeted. Full-bore Islamic zealots consider anything less than a full-sharia regime like the Taliban or the Islamic State to be an affront to Allah and deserving of death.

When a religion rewards violence, then violence will follow wherever that religion goes.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 21st, 2026 at 05:12 and is filed under Living with Islam: The world's most intolerant—and intolerable—religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.