Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. 2 Nawaz Sharif may hold moderate views, but human rights activists fear the imposition of Shari'a may unleash an army of zealots.
Minorities are worried too.
Last week, after the murder in Islamabad of a Sunni extremist leader and three companions, his followers retaliated by burning down a mosque and several homes belonging to Shi'ites. In some cases, previous attempts to impose fundamentalist law have taken bizarre forms. When a mullah named Maulana Sufi Mohammed decided to enforce strict Shari'a law in his mountain valley near the Afghan border, he prohibited driving on the left side of the road because the left hand is deemed unclean. Numerous car crashes failed to deter him. Inspired by the Taliban's medieval puritanism, mullahs in northwest Pakistan are destroying TVs and setting up roadblocks to stop cars and rip out music cassettes.