LAHORE – Zahid Hussain’s new book titled ‘The Scorpion’s Tail’ was launched on Friday at SAFMA, with guest speakers including Arif Nizami, Ejaz Haider and Khaled Ahmed. Wall Street Journal Correspondent Zahid Hussain, who gives a history of the Pakistani state’s relationship to Islam, Islamism, and Islamic radicalism, has written the book, which is about the rise of Islamic militants in Pakistan and how this rise has threatened the US.
He also shows that the ‘radical form of Islam which is the US’ prime concern’ did not take root until the 1980s, during the war between Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. In his book, Hussain walks the reader through Pakistan’s steady Islamization. Pakistan Today Editor Arif Nizami said that if the current establishment stopped supporting these ‘Islamic radicalists’, then the issue would automatically be resolved. However, the Pakistani establishment was supporting them and this was a major cause of their spread. “It is therefore up to the civil society to struggle against fundamentalism and to ensure that peace prevails,” said Nizami.
“Fundamentalism should be replaced with good governance so that the system can be resuscitated once more,” he added. He commended the book saying that it seemed to be a sequel of Hussain’s first book called ‘Frontline’. Khaled Ahmed said that the Laal Masjid incident (which is also mentioned in the book in one of its chapters) represented terrorist elements and the Laal Masjid’s administration supported Talibans. Ejaz Haider summed the argument saying that in order to help resolve the problem, the US must have talks with the Taliban and must withdraw from Afghanistan. “Dialogue is the only way out,” he said. Arif Nizami and Khaled Ahmed also concurred with this idea.
