cool, i cant argue with the nitty gritty of the situation in pak since i have only been back for 4 weeks in the last 15 years since i left, but since you made the effort to write a decent counter ill reply.
Firstly a new very diverse nation, Establishment thought it can be united under some common faith blanket and tried to "inject" a sense of common nationhood based on particular ideologies of religion.
e,g Maududi having such a big influence on urban middle class that in addition to getting more conservative, it started looking down upon/considering unislamic the brand of religion, it followed during its rural part(before moving to cities as a result of economic progress) e.g. going to shrines, not following Hijab (prevalent in rural areas) etc.
Secondly and importantly, One of major reason for rise of passive/active extremist organisations in Muslim world is a sentiment post/during colonization in Muslim World that decline is not because of lack of progress evolution it is because of not following the religion in true spirit(and renaissance will only be achieved by following religion in true(puritanical) spirit, this school of thought also peddled the hate against anything west).
so how is the secularisation implemented to combat this phenomenon in a way as to be effective, given the lack of education provided by the state and ethnicity based support of political parties who could never pull it off.
compare the apparatus of the state to "inject" this secularisation with the network of religious organisations ready to fight it. if bought into affect it would be quashed in weeks leaving the whole idea of liberalism or secularism as a joke.
for a grass level movement you need thinkers who have the security to voice opinions, for which you need to deal with education, corruption and security, secularisation before the pakistan is ready is a recipe for disaster, imo.
This also shows that the point that rural urban divide will be equivalent to conservative/liberal(with rural being conservative) is wrong, its not that simple.
i agree with you on that, in my experience you are right, as i found out some villagers from my pind are well fond of kronenberg, lol.
Attaturk prevented this from festering in Turkey by state sanction "injections".(not correct ideally according to liberalism principles but ironically helped in achieving the very thing in Turkish Society, vision is beyond popular sentiment), Considering that Turkey faced the worst decline(from Ottommon empire to....) it was very much prone to face this phenomena most alongwith hatred against west(its culture, Knowledge etc).
again, as i said to aashiqmizaaj, you cannot draw such wide parallels to other historical groups of people who just happened to be muslim. the turks were a global super power and force to be reckoned with as a religious imperial state, and when faced with rebuilding the nation, the forged a economically powerful, modern state without islam.
the common denominator is the turkish national identity which is not present in pakistanis, and the pride in identification with that national identity, for many like ataturk even before their religious identity. the turks understand there place in the world, before and after islam, yet in pak people believe mohamad bin qasim was the first pakistani and have heart felt reverence for foreign conquerors.
yes you can force a common identity on a people, but again pakistan simply does not have the educational infrastructure to replace religion with some other commonality, just look at pakistani prejudices, after nearly 70 years people are still arguing about ethnicity and languages.
There is a reason that top brains produced by country from Faiz to Eqbal Ahmad to PerveZ Hoodbhoy emphasized on the matter because the effect of religious conservatism/extremism is very widespread from a small level of Lahore Marathon, tourism resort in a country to intellectual stagnation and pressurising Jinnah.Therefore I think that notion that it will not change any thing, there are other issues etc is causing confusion and is probably more a part of problem than solution.
as i have mentioned before, the intellectual classes will always be drawn to liberalism, secularism, the key is in the developing those classes to the number where they exert political influence, and the evolution and its effects will follow.
) Its already been broken up once, on the verge of losing more territory, some destiny that...
