![]() ![]() The Dawat is the Barelvi equivalent of the Deobandi Tableeghi Jamat. Journalist and intellectual Khaled Ahmed once wrote a telling tongue-in-cheek article about the annual gathering of the Dawat-i-Islami in Multan. Though it is now clear that extremists from within the ‘Wahabi’and Deobandi strands of the faith have been going around blowing up Sufi shrines frequented by the majority (and the more moderate) Barelvi Muslims, the Barelvi leadership has mostly looked elsewhere, putting the blame on the ever-elusive ‘foreign hands.’ The aftermath of the 2010 Data Darbar attack in Lahore. ![]() The attack on one of Punjab’s most popular Sufi shrines was simply treated as just another terrorist attack. He said that had such an attack on the Darbar taken place 20 years ago, thousands of Lahorites would have poured out to protest.īut not anymore. When extremists (calling themselves ‘Punjabi Taliban’) attacked the famous Sufi shrine, Data Darbar, in Lahore in 2010, economist and political analyst, Asad Sayeed, made a rather insightful observation. Not only have the country’s other provinces – especially the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Sindh’s capital, Karachi – become central targets of horrid terrorist attacks by extremist organisations, the Punjab province in particular has been witnessing a steady growth of faith-based conservatism within its urban middle and lower middle-classes. Especially in the context of what Pakistan has been going through in the last many years. Such a thought and project could only have come about in Sindh. The main purpose of the institution was stated to promote interfaith and intercultural education to tackle religious extremism in the country. A cultural centre near the shrine of Sufi saint, Shah Abdul Lateef in Bhit Shah, Sindh.ĭuring the previous PPP-led government, plans were afoot to build the world’s first ever international Sufi university near Bhit Shah in Sindh (1). ![]()
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