Abstract
In “The Intra-Sunni Conflicts in Pakistan”, Zulqarnain Sewag notes that people from different religious, sectarian and cultural backgrounds have peacefully co-existed in the area called Pakistan today. Sufis were the forerunners of peace. However, as they weakened, their place was filled by religious extremists. Sewag notes that in the historical course of Islam, there have been two major divisions: the Sunnis and the Shias. However, with the emergence of Darul Uloom Deoband in 1867 and the Barelvi movement in 1904, the mild intra-Sunni differences escalated into intra-Sunni conflicts, especially after the Afghan Jihad of the 1980s, the 9/11 attacks, and incessant exportation of Wahhabi ideology and funding from the Middle East to the Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith (Salafi) groups. As a result, the Sunnis are at daggers drawn with each other, with the traditional Sufis or Barelvis usually on the receiving end. Sewag argues that if the intra-Sunni differences are not addressed, they might irreparably damage the pluralistic nature of Pakistani society.
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Sewag, Z. (2016). The Intra-Sunni Conflicts in Pakistan. In: Syed, J., Pio, E., Kamran, T., Zaidi, A. (eds) Faith-Based Violence and Deobandi Militancy in Pakistan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-94966-3_11
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