THIS world now has more than its fair share of trials and tribulations, of “blood, blood, destruction, destruction” (to use Osama bin Laden’s famous phrase), and it is undeniable that for the past decade or so Pakistan has made its due contribution.

Our governments and army have valiantly supported groups such as the Taliban, ostracized by the rest of the world, Ziaul Haq’s expedient brand of Islamization has rotted the core of the nation and in no mean way furthered the breakdown of law and order.

We should have been able to learn much about the benefits of law and order from the rule of the British Raj, but as with all that was good and valid bequeathed to us, we chose to discard the valuable law and order legacy. In post-Raj Britain, had law and order not prevailed, the IRA would have caused far more havoc than they managed to do, and thousands more would have been murdered by the discriminate bombings scattered around the entire country.

The happenings of 7/7 were not the first disruptive acts of British Muslims of Pakistani descent. Britain’s first Muslim suicide bomber was Mohammed Bilal of the Jaish-i-Mohammed who on Christmas Day 2000 rammed his vehicle packed with explosives into an Indian military post in Kashmir. In April 2003, Asif Hanif and Omar Sharif walked into a jazz club in the high security vicinity of the US embassy in Tel Aviv, detonated their bombs, and killed three clubbers. Hanif was blown up, the other managed to flee but was found dead in the sea a week later.

Three young British Muslims, born of Pakistani parents, achieved far more in London the week before last with blood and gore aplenty, and gained their primrose path to paradise (so they assumed was the case).

Intelligence reports in Britain last year had informed the government that an estimated 10,000 youngsters were supporters of groups adhering to the policies of al Qaeda. The majority were so branded because of their attendance at a conference hosted by Hizb-ul-Tahrir, a “structured extremist organization,” as the British Home Office describes it. In addition, some 500 British citizens of mixed race have reportedly been trained in the Taliban camps in Afghanistan and the madressahs in Pakistan.

The worst fallout of 7/7 will, of course, be on the unfortunate Pakistani immigrants and their descendants, the larger majority of them being law-abiding citizens, getting on with their lives, earning, educating their children, and contributing substantially to the British economy. They will suffer on account of the totally irrational and wicked beliefs of a handful of young Muslims, brainwashed and deranged.

Pakistan will also suffer badly — yet again. Image-building is not an easy task, and as a result of such acts and connections, to amend the image now universally floated may be almost impossible within the foreseeable future. And the international press does not help — it reports what it sees and hears, it is not concerned with public relations. One highly damaging column written by an Iranian commentator, amir Taheri, a Muslim himself (presumably) was printed in The Times (London) on July 8. Taheri is a regular contributor on Middle Eastern Affairs. His views are open to debate, and the newspaper has invited its readers to send in e-mails via www.timesonline.co.uk/debate.

According to him, “The ideological soil in which al Qaeda and the many groups using its brand name grow was described by one of its original masterminds, the Pakistani Abul-Ala al-Maudoodi more than 40 years ago. It goes something like this: When God created mankind He made all their bodily needs and movements subject to inescapable biological rules but decided to leave their spiritual, social and political needs and movements largely subject to their will.

“Soon, however, it became clear that man cannot run his affairs in the way God wants. So God started sending prophets to warn man and try to goad him on to the right path. A total of 128,000 prophets were sent, including Moses and Jesus. They all failed. Finally, God sent Muhammad as the last of His prophets and the bearer of His ultimate message, Islam. With the advent of Islam all previous religions were ‘abrogated’ (mansukh), and their followers regarded as ‘infidel’ (kuffar). The aim of all good Muslims, therefore, is to convert humanity to Islam, which regulates man’s spiritual, economic, political and social moves to the last detail.

“I would only add — and so would al-Maudoodi — that conversion is not the only option. Subjugation as ‘dhimmis’ under the rule of the Islamic state is the other.

“But what if non-Muslims refuse to take the right path? Here answers diverge. Some believe that the answer is dialogue and argument until followers of the ‘abrogated faiths’ recognize their error and agree to be saved by converting to Islam. This is the view of most of the imams preaching in the mosques in the West. But others, including Osama bin Laden, a disciple of al-Maudoodi, believe that the western-dominated world is too mired in corruption to hear any argument, and must be shocked into conversion through spectacular ghazavat (raids) of the kind we saw in New York and Washington in 2001, in Madrid last year, and now in London.

“That yesterday’s attack was intended as a ghazava was confirmed in a statement by the Secret Organization Group of al Qaeda of Jihad Organization in Europe, an Islamist group that claimed responsibility for yesterday’s atrocity. It said “We have fulfilled our promise and carried out our blessed military raid (ghazava) in Britain after our mujahideen exerted strenuous efforts over a long period of time to ensure the success of the raid.” Those who carry out these missions are the ghazis, the highest of all Islamic distinctions just below that of the shahid or martyr. A ghazi who also becomes a shahid will be doubly meritorious.”

This is all very frightening. Maudoodi was founder and first amir of the Jamaat, and there must be with us now in Pakistan millions of adherents to his cause, including his descendants, the gentlemen of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, who are on their march in the NWFP. That OBL was a disciple is even more unsettling in the light of his heroic stature with many of our youths here in Pakistan and all over what is known as the Muslim world.

After he came to Pakistan in August 1947, Maudoodi concentrated on the establishment of a hard-core Islamic state and Islamized society, and he wrote profusely to explain the different aspects of the Islamic way of life and its socio-political aspects. He vociferously and violently criticized the various governments of Pakistan and their failure to transform the state. A great firebrand, he was arrested and jailed on several occasions, the last being in 1953 when he was sentenced to death by the martial law authorities on the charge of writing a seditious pamphlet on the Qadiani problem.

He cheerfully expressed his preference for death to seeking clemency. “If the time of my death has come, no one can keep me from it; and if it has not come, they cannot send me to the gallows even if they hang themselves upside down in trying to do so,” he informed his adherents. His sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and in 1956 he was released.

Thereafter, he stomped the world preaching his ungentle and radical brand of Islam. He died in the land of the Great White Satan (surely much to his chagrin), in Buffalo, New York, in 1979 at the age of 76 — he was born a British subject.

Says Taheri, disciple bin Laden believes that the West must be attacked and terrorized. Being too cowardly to retaliate, it will eventually “do what it must do”, which is to give in. The man who now calls the shots, Ayman al-Zawahiri, does not agree. His theory is that the Islamists should first win the war inside several vulnerable Muslim countries — Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. It seems we may be in for an even rougher ride than we have so far had.

President General Pervez Musharraf has asked us all to follow a course of ‘enlightened moderation’. To many a mind, an enlightened mind is per se moderate, and a moderate mind per se enlightened. Be that as it may, the men he has selected to run his North-West Frontier Province government have just democratically passed the Hasba Bill. All that the general’s federal government can do is to make a reference to the advisory jurisdiction of the Supreme Court for an opinion. We must hope that the gentlemen who sit on the Bench are both truly moderate and enlightened.