For those who think Pakistan is all hard-liners, all the time, three activities at an annual festival here may come as a surprise.
Thousands of Muslim worshipers paid tribute to the patron saint of this eastern Pakistani city this month by dancing, drumming and smoking pot.
It is not an image one ordinarily associates with Pakistan, a country whose tormented western border region dominates the news. But it is an important part of how Islam is practiced here, a tradition that goes back a thousand years to Islam’s roots in South Asia.
It may just be me, but I bristle when the secular press refers to non-insane practitioners of any religion as “moderates.”
I know they mean well, but it cedes the public definition of the “real” faith to the Wahabists and the like in Islam, and to, well, y’all, the Pope, and the Baptists in Christianity.