Recently, I had the opportunity of attending Friday prayers in a mosque at the heart of Islamabad. The ideology the Imam of this particular mosque was promoting seemed to be something you would expect to be coming out from a Taliban handbook. His particular concentration was on a single country (as always) and was continuously predicting its downfall. In the end he also motivated the congregation to take active measures against the particular country.
My concern is: with all the efforts we are concentrating to vanquish extremism from our society, this particular example paints quite a bleak picture as this is not an example of any village in the far flung tribal areas but of a mosque in the federal capital. My greatest fear is for the children and teenagers who were present during this sermon, as what aftereffects this sermon would have had on their fragile minds.
YASIR HAMEED
Islamabad
