[CliffFletcher]

Good column in the Globe and Mail today on the rise of violent fundamentalism in Pakistan and elsewhere.

Islamic extremists don't just hate the West

There was more blood in Glasgow. On Thursday, Asad Shah, a well-liked Muslim shopkeeper, was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife after he posted an Easter message “to my beloved Christian nation” on his Facebook page. Mr. Shah and his family belonged to the Ahmadiyya Islamic sect, which is widely loathed by other Muslim groups. His killer is thought to be a Muslim extremist...

In Pakistan, Christians are a despised minority in an increasingly theocratic state. Attacks on Christian churches have killed hundreds. Fear is part of their daily lives. Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian member of the cabinet, was murdered in 2011 after he spoke out against Pakistan’s blasphemy law, which carries the death penalty for anyone who insults Islam. Punjab governor Salman Taseer, another high-profile politician, was gunned down by his own bodyguard after he defended a Christian peasant woman who was caught in a neighbourhood dispute and sentenced to death for blasphemy...

In Pakistan, religious extremism has spread like a virulent infection. “What do you do when the madness is not confined to radical mosques and madrasas, but is abroad among a population of nearly 200 million?” Salman Taseer’s son, Aatish, wrote in The New York Times. Mr. Taseer argues that this form of radical Islam is neither medieval nor traditional, but something utterly new: a reaction against “the modernity that my father, with his condemnation of blasphemy laws and his Western, liberal ideas, represented.”...

The number of people who kill is small. But the number of people who share their beliefs is larger than many of us would like to think...