By Sabrina Tavernise
Praying in Pakistan has not been easy for Mesut Kacmaz, a Muslim teacher from Turkey.
He tried the mosque near his house, but it had Israeli and Danish
flags painted on the floor for people to step on. The mosque near where
he works warned him never to return wearing a tie. Pakistanis everywhere
assume he is not Muslim because he has no beard.
“Kill, fight, shoot,” Mr. Kacmaz said. “This is a misinterpretation of Islam.”
But
that view is common in Pakistan, a frontier land for the future of
Islam, where schools, nourished by Saudi and American money dating back
to the 1980s, have spread Islamic radicalism through the poorest parts
of society. With a literacy rate of just 50 percent and a public school
system near collapse, the country is particularly vulnerable.
