The future of Pakistan, and how it balances the need for Muslim symbols with secularism, needed to run a modern state, would be important for the future of the world, according to historian and theologian Karen Armstrong.
"Nuclear-armed and reaping the grim harvest of extremism, resulting from the West's support for a religious war to drive the Soviet Union out of neighbouring Afghanistan, Pakistan has a big question to answer," says she.
"How do you become a secular Muslim state?" Last Thursday, Karen, whose writings have highlighted the tolerant and pluralistic nature of Islam, met President Pervez Musharraf, who hoped to change Pakistan into a state where "enlightened moderation" prevailed.
Musharraf has made little headway, according to critics, and his popularity has plummeted. "Pakistan is on the frontier of this present struggle," Karen told Reuters during a visit to Islamabad to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Aga Khan, the spiritual leader of Ismaili Muslims.
"I think it is not so much important for the future of Islam as important for the future of the world," said the 63-year-old Briton, whose book 'The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam' was released a year before al Qaeda's 2001 attacks on the United States.
"What happens here will be very decisive in how the so-called war against terrorism proceeds in other regions." Pakistan, the world's second largest Muslim nation, has been locked in a struggle between liberal progressives and religious conservatives ever since Independence.
"The kind of conversations I have about this topic remind me very much of conversations I had in Israel, another secular state born out of displacement and tragedy."
The separation of religion in the state represents a modern, major change in societies where religion is a way of life. When it happens too quickly, people feel threatened and if attacked through the media or by force, they become aggressive, said Karen, a former nun who describes herself as a "freelance monotheist".
"Most of these extreme movements are rooted in profound fear, a fear of annihilation," she said, stressing that the same dynamics play out in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. "In small-town America there are Christians who believe they are going to be wiped out by a so-called liberal establishment."
During the interview, she cited the example of Sayyid Qutb, whose writings from an Egyptian jail in the 1950s and 60s helped craft a strain of Sunni Muslims that spawned the global jihad of al Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri. People should study Qutb's texts rather than the Koran if they want to understand al Qaeda, she said. But they had to be read in the context of the torture Qutb suffered and his reaction to efforts to secularise Egypt, she said.
Attempts to introduce secularism, which took centuries in the West, has been done too quickly in the Middle East, according to her, resulting in religious movements that tend to become lethal if they occur in regions where violence is endemic. Despite his 'fundamentalism', Qutb probably wouldn't have approved of bin Laden, according to Karen, who views the al Qaeda leader as "a criminal" rather than a thinker or ideologue.
She says she didn't see militancy in Pakistan's tribal lands, or Hamas or Hizbollah movements, or even bin Laden's al Qaeda, as being motivated by religion.
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