GOLRA, Pakistan, May 6 -- Hajji Karim and his extended family of 70 were camped in a dirt-floor stable 10 miles outside Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. It was as far as they could get from the Swat Valley, where thousands of people are fleeing from the ravages of the Taliban and the imminent prospect of war with government forces.
When Taliban fighters first entered Karim's village last month, he recounted, they said they had come to bring peace and Islamic law, or sharia, to Swat. But the next day, two of the fighters dragged a policeman out of his truck and tried to slit his throat. Horrified, a crowd rushed over, shouting and trying to shield the officer. The fighters let him go, but the incident confirmed the villagers' worst suspicions.
"We all said to each other, what sort of people have come here? And what kind of sharia is this? Cutting off people's heads has nothing to do with Islam," recounted Karim, 55, a bus driver. "The people were filled with great rage, and great fear."
And, thus, do ordinary, peace-loving peoples experience the primitive sacred in its full-blown, violent reality. In theory, the primitive sacred can infiltrate any religion in which the gospel's influence has little or no presence, even fundamentalist Christianity.
But the Scimitar is a more apt host, since the Cross of Christ is denied by it. Pity the poor people who are now face-to-face with the "hideous strength" of the primitive sacred.
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