Why Pope Leo’s Visit To Turkey Is Important – Analysis

Pope Leo XIV addresses bishops, priests, religious, pastoral workers, and laypeople at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit in Istanbul, Turkey, on Nov. 28, 2025. | Credit: Vatican Media

November 29, 2025 
Arab News
By Dr. Sinem Cengiz


Pope Leo XIV’s much-anticipated visit to Turkiye — his first official foreign trip as pontiff — has both diplomatic and religio-historic importance.

Paul VI became the first pope to visit Turkey in 1967, following the establishment of relations between the Holy See and Ankara seven years earlier. This is the fifth papal visit since that landmark trip.

Leo arrived in Turkiye on Thursday and will stay until Sunday, with a busy itinerary. Traditionally, papal visits to Turkiye have had two main stops: Ankara and Istanbul. In Ankara, meetings with officials are held, in which discussions mainly focus on regional and international humanitarian issues. While in Istanbul, meetings are held with religious figures and community members.

In this visit, Ankara was the pope’s first stop. There, he visited Anitkabir, the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkiye, and was then welcomed with an official ceremony at the Presidential Complex by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Leo’s visit serves several purposes. While Turkiye is a Muslim-majority country, it is also home to the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is considered the spiritual leader of the Eastern Orthodox Church. His headquarters are in Istanbul. The first purpose of the visit is to send a unification message regarding Catholic-Orthodox relations.



In addition, Turkiye is considered by the Vatican as a significant geopolitical actor that plays a key role in regional crises. Thus, the second purpose of the visit focuses on Turkiye-Vatican relations, which have seen improvement of late, particularly in the context of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Gaza war.

The Vatican has expressed appreciation for Turkiye’s efforts to mediate between Russia and Ukraine. Although the Holy See has also attempted to broker a ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow, those initiatives have so far failed. In addition, the war in Gaza has intensified diplomatic traffic between the Holy See and Ankara. Erdogan and the late Pope Francis held several phone calls on the Gaza war. The Holy See has particularly drawn international attention with its stance on the plight of the Palestinians, an issue also of deep sensitivity to Turkiye.

The last papal visit to Turkiye took place in 2014, continuing the tradition of popes visiting the country in the early years of their tenures. During his 2014 visit, Francis visited the Hagia Sophia, then a museum before it was converted to a mosque in 2020, and the Sultanahmet Mosque, known as the Blue Mosque, where his prayer was widely seen as a gesture of interfaith dialogue and a symbol of strengthening Catholic-Muslim relations. Leo’s itinerary includes only the Blue Mosque. In 2014, Francis was warmly welcomed by the Turkish public and a similar atmosphere surrounds this visit. Souvenirs and posters featuring a portrait of Leo alongside the Turkish flag have been prepared.

Overseas trips are considered an important part of the Holy See’s soft power, giving the pope the opportunity to meet leaders, engage with Christian communities and draw global media attention to regional issues. During his visit to Turkiye, Leo is expected to focus on continued efforts toward Catholic-Orthodox reconciliation, strengthen dialogue between Christians and Muslims, raise concerns over regional issues, and support local Christian communities.

There have been reports that the pope is likely to raise the possible reopening of a Greek Orthodox religious seminary in Turkiye, known as Heybeliada school, which was closed in 1971 following a Constitutional Court ruling that private higher education institutions must be affiliated with state universities. The seminary, founded in 1844, is a symbol of Orthodox heritage and it trained generations of Greek Orthodox patriarchs, including Bartholomew.

Turkiye has long faced pressure from the US and EU to reopen it. Optimism grew after US President Donald Trump discussed the issue with Erdogan at the White House in September. Erdogan reportedly told Trump at their meeting that “we are ready to do whatever is incumbent upon us regarding the Heybeliada school.”

However, the central purpose of Leo’s Turkiye trip is to mark the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council, which was held in 325 A.D. in today’s Iznik, in the northwestern Turkish province of Bursa. The pope will pray with Bartholomew toward the ruins of the Basilica of St. Neophytos and sign a joint declaration as a symbolic gesture of Christian unity. According to reports, 15,000 Christians are expected to attend the ceremony in Iznik.

Data from the Catholic Church states that about 33,000 Catholics currently live in Turkiye. The meeting between Leo and Bartholomew is considered an important step for the convergence of the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The pope is also scheduled to perform a prayer service to an estimated 4,000 people at the Volkswagen Arena in Istanbul. Leo has also met the head of Turkiye’s Presidency of Religious Affairs and the country’s chief rabbi.

Within this context, the pope’s first overseas visit being to Turkiye comes as no surprise. It is both a papal tradition and a deliberate choice. Turkiye is a mosaic of faiths, home to Muslims, Christians, Jews and other religious minorities. It also hosts religious archaeological sites, making the country particularly important in the eyes of other communities. The timing of the visit is also important, as it comes when greater reconciliation is needed. Leo hopes to foster stronger Turkiye-Vatican relations, while also encouraging a united moral stance toward crises from Gaza to Ukraine.

Dr. Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkiye’s relations with the Middle East. X: @SinemCngz


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Pope Leo calls for Christian unity at Turkish site where Nicaean Creed originated

On the second day of his visit to Turkey, Pope Leo XIV joined Orthodox patriarchs on Friday in a commemoration ceremony at the site of the origin of the Nicaean Creed, a central Christian statement of belief that was adopted 1,700 years ago.


Issued on: 28/11/2025 
By: FRANCE 24



Pope Leo XIV joined Eastern and Western patriarchs and priests Friday in commemorating an important anniversary in Christian history, gathering at the site in Turkey of an unprecedented A.D. 325 meeting of bishops to pray that Christians might once again be united.

Leo, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I and other Christian leaders met on the shores of Lake Iznik, the site of the Council of Nicaea that produced a creed, or statement of faith, that is still recited by millions of Christians today.

Standing over the ruins of the site, the men recited the creed, which Leo said was “of fundamental importance in the journey that Christians are making toward full communion.”

“In this way, we are all invited to overcome the scandal of the divisions that unfortunately still exist and to nurture the desire for unity for which the Lord Jesus prayed and gave his life,” he said.

Pope Leo meets Turkey's Erdogan and Orthodox leaders on first overseas trip

The 70-year-old pontiff spent Friday morning with Catholic leaders before going to Iznik to celebrate the 1,700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, a gathering of bishops who drew up a foundational statement of faith still central to Christianity today.

The prayer marked the highlight of Leo's visit to Turkey and the main reason for his trip, the first of his pontificate.

The Nicaea gathering took place at a time when the Eastern and Western churches were still united. They split in the Great Schism of 1054, a divide precipitated largely by disagreements over the primacy of the pope. But even today, Catholic, Orthodox and most historic Protestant groups accept the Nicaean Creed, making it a point of agreement and the most widely accepted creed in Christendom.

As a result, celebrating its origins at the site of its creation with the spiritual leaders of the Catholic and Orthodox churches and other Christian representatives marked a historic moment in the centuries-old quest to reunite all Christians.

“The Nicene Creed acts like a seed for the whole of our Christian existence. It is a symbol not of a bare minimum; it is a symbol of the whole,” said Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians.

At the start of the prayer service, he told the men they were gathering not just to remember the past.

© France 24
01:34

“We are here to bear living witness to the same faith expressed by the fathers of Nicaea. We return to this wellspring of the Christian faith in order to move forward,” he said.

Roman Emperor Constantine had convened the gathering of bishops from around the Roman Empire after he had consolidated control following years of civil war and political intrigues.

Constantine wouldn’t formally convert to Christianity until the end of his life, in 337. But by 325, he had already been showing tolerance and favor toward a Christian sect that had emerged from the last great spasm of Roman persecution.

The version of the creed that emerged from the council, and recited today by Catholics, begins: “I believe in one God, the Father almighty … ”

Catholic and Orthodox hymns

The service commemoration, which featured alternating Catholic and Orthodox hymns, took place at the lakeside archaeological excavations of the ancient Basilica of Saint Neophytos. The stone foundations of the basilica, which were recently uncovered by the lake's receding waters, are believed to be on the site of an earlier church that hosted the council 1,700 years ago.

In addition to Leo and Bartholomew, the participants of the commemorative service included priests, patriarchs and bishops from Orthodox Greek, Syrian, Coptic, Malankarese, Armenian, Protestant and Anglican churches.

In his remarks to the men, Leo said all Christians must strongly reject the use of religion to justify war, violence “or any form of fundamentalism or fanaticism.”

“Instead, the paths to follow are those of fraternal encounter, dialogue and cooperation,” he said.

Small protest

Christians are a minority in predominantly Sunni Muslim Turkey, and ahead of the prayer in Iznik, around 20 members of a small Turkish Islamic party staged a brief protest. They said the encounter posed a threat to Turkey’s sovereignty and national identity.

Under a heavy police presence, Mehmet Kaygusuz, a member of the New Welfare Party, read a statement denouncing what he said were efforts to establish a “Vatican-like Greek Orthodox state” in Turkey. The group dispersed peacefully shortly after.

Iznik resident Suleyman Bulut, 35, acknowledged his town’s deep historical and spiritual significance for Christians and said he had no issue with them coming to honor their heritage.

“Muslims (too) should go and visit places that belong to us in the rest of the world, in Europe,” he said.

But Hasan Maral, a 41-year-old shopkeeper said he felt uncomfortable with visit. “The pope coming here feels contradictory to my faith,” he said.

'Viva il Papa'

Leo began his first full day in Istanbul by encouraging Turkey’s tiny Catholic community to find strength in their small numbers. According to Vatican statistics, Catholics number around 33,000 in a nation of 85 million, most of whom are Sunni Muslims.

He received a raucous welcome at the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, where he was greeted with shouts of “Papa Leo” and “Viva il Papa” (Long Live the pope).

“The logic of littleness is the church’s true strength,” Leo told them in English. “The significant presence of migrants and refugees in this country presents the church with the challenge of welcoming and serving some of the most vulnerable.”

Leo later visited with a group of nuns, the Little Sisters of the Poor, who run a nursing home in Istanbul.

“He was so simple. We just felt he was at home. He felt very much at ease. Everybody got what they expected: a blessing, a kind word. It’s just enormous,” said Sister Margret of the Little Sisters of the Poor Nursing Home.

On Saturday, Leo continues with his ecumenical focus, meeting with Bartholomew and other Christian leaders. But he’ll also visit the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, commonly known as the Blue Mosque, and will celebrate a late afternoon Mass in Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena.

Leo heads to Lebanon on Sunday for the second and final leg of his trip.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)

Pope to visit Istanbul's Blue Mosque

Istanbul (AFP) – Pope Leo XIV will visit Istanbul's famed Blue Mosque early on Saturday on the third day of his trip to Turkey.

Issued on: 29/11/2025 - RFI

Pope Leo XIV is on a four-day visit to Turkey, the first overseas trip since he was elected as head of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics © Andreas SOLARO / AFP

It will be the first time the American pope, who was elected in May as leader of the world's 1.4 billion Catholics, visits a Muslim place of worship since taking over from his late predecessor Francis, who championed dialogue with Islam.

With such a highly symbolic gesture, Leo follows in the footsteps of Pope Benedict XVI, who visited the site in 2006, and Francis who did the same in 2014 accompanied by the Grand Mufti of Istanbul.

But unlike them, he will not be visiting the nearby Hagia Sophia, the legendary sixth-century basilica, which was built during the Byzantine Empire and converted into a mosque following the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

In a key reform by post-Ottoman Turkish authorities led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Hagia Sophia became a museum in 1935. And 50 years later, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

But in 2020, it was converted back into a mosque in a move that drew international condemnation, including from the late Pope Francis who said he was "very saddened" by the decision of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Critics have accused Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted AKP party of chipping away at the Muslim-majority country's secular pillars.

The Blue Mosque -- which gets its name from the vibrant blue Iznik tiles that line its interior -- is one of Istanbul's main tourist attractions.

With its six towering minarets, the mosque was built in the early 17th century during the reign of Sultan Ahmed I, on part of the former Hippodrome, a huge chariot-racing stadium that was a central feature of Constantinople when it was the Byzantine capital.

On Saturday afternoon, Leo will meet local church leaders and attend a brief service at the Patriarchal Church of St. George before joining Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I at his palace on the banks of the Golden Horn estuary.

There, the two spiritual leaders will sign a joint declaration, the content of which has not yet been made public.

Later that same day, Leo will hold a mass at the city's Volkswagen Arena, where some 4,000 worshippers are expected to join him.

The pontiff flew to Iznik on Friday for an ecumenical prayer service to mark 1,700 years since one of the early Church's most important gatherings.

On Sunday morning, after a prayer service at the Armenian cathedral and leading a divine liturgy, the Orthodox equivalent of a mass, at St George's, he will head to Lebanon for the second leg of his trip -- his first overseas tour since being elected to the position.

© 2025 AFP

A new group of Buddhist technologists is working to shape the future of AI

(RNS) — Launched publicly in August, their initiative is mapping how Buddhism and AI are already shaping each other and striving to infuse Buddhist principles into AI development.

Chris Scammell, right, co-founder of the Buddhism & AI Initiative, meets the Dalai Lama, left, at the 2025 Mind & Life Dialogue— “Minds, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethics”— in October 2025 in Dharamsala, India. (Photo courtesy of Chris Scammell)

Hayden Royster
November 4, 2025


(RNS) — When Chris Scammell arrived in London in 2022 to work at an artificial-intelligence safety startup, Conjecture, he moved into a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the heart of the city.

It was an apt home base for Scammell. His spiritual practice had evolved alongside his mounting fears about AI.

Back in 2021, Scammell worked at a hedge fund in Manhattan and lived with friends, two machine learning engineers who became prominent voices in AI research. That winter, under the alias Janus, the trio began drafting “Simulators,” an early critique of large language models that made waves in Silicon Valley and beyond. In the spring of 2022, the engineers joined the founding team of Conjecture, and Scammell was invited aboard.

Scammell was deeply concerned by AI’s breakneck development, he said, especially considering that “relative nobodies” like him and his friends had “a lot to contribute to AI safety in a short amount of time.” Still, he found some harmony between the technology and his Buddhist faith, which had blossomed after a college program in Bodh Gaya, India.

“With vast oversimplification, some Buddhist schools believe we as entities are instantiated from a larger pool of consciousness,” he said. “That, metaphorically, is what a large language model is.”

Now, after three years at Conjecture, most recently serving as chief operating officer, Scammell is pouring himself into a new venture: the Buddhism and AI Initiative. Launched publicly in August, the project aims to bring together Buddhist practitioners, technologists and researchers to shape the future of AI.


Buddhism and AI Initiative logo. (Courtesy image)
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In an announcement on web forums LessWrong and Effective Altruism Scammell described the initiative “as an attempt to get Buddhism as a stakeholder group ‘up to speed’ on AI.” He laid out domains of potential impact, including “AI governance and policy” and “awakening and alignment tech.”

In addition to Scammell, the organization’s core team includes Alex Sakarassian, a startup founder turned Buddhist chaplain; Ryan Stagg, a former digital strategist for the Dalai Lama’s Mind & Life Institute; Austin Pick, a longtime administrator at Naropa University, a Buddhist college in Boulder, Colorado; and Peter D. Hershock, an adjunct senior fellow at the East-West Center and author of the 2021 book “Buddhism and Intelligent Technology.”

Scammell first connected with Hershock through the Future of Life Institute, the nonprofit behind a recent open letter condemning the pursuit of artificial superintelligence, with signatories including Prince Harry and so-called AI godfather Geoffrey Hinton. The institute also provided initial funding for the Buddhism and AI Initiative.



Since the early days of the internet, Hershock has written about Buddhist philosophy and technology’s “colonization of consciousness,” as he calls it. In 2018, during a research trip to China, he encountered the country’s nascent AI systems and “was blown away,” he said. “I thought, what will the attention economy look like if it gets supercharged by AI?”

Now, Hershock believes we’re living in that world.

A guest speaker at the Dalai Lama’s recent summit on AI, consciousness and ethics, Hershock is especially concerned about alignment: the process of ensuring AI systems act in accordance with human interests and values.


Chris Scammell, left, and Peter Hershock in October 2025 in Dharamsala, India. (Photo courtesy of Chris Scammell)

“From a Buddhist perspective, aligning with human interests is the worst thing possible,” he said. “Look at Gaza, Ukraine, domestic violence, global hunger, climate disruption. … We’ve got some work to do first before we align our AI systems with us.”

In time, the Buddhism and AI Initiative intends to fund projects that infuse Buddhist wisdom into AI development and deployment. At this early stage, though, they are mapping the ways Buddhism and AI are already informing each other.

For instance, some Buddhist organizations are exploring how AI can aid meditation, education and translation. Seeking to translate all 230,000 pages of the Tibetan Buddhist Canon into English, the nonprofit 84000 is leaning into machine translation tools, which “can and do help achieve the best possible quality of the emerging translation,” said Thomas Doctor, 84000’s AI strategic consultant.

However, others point to limitations. Juewei Shi, director of the Humanistic Buddhism Centre at the Nan Tien Institute, a Buddhist graduate school in Australia, began her career developing AI for Singapore’s government before taking vows as a Fo Guang Shan Buddhist nun. She said she is impressed by the speed of AI translation and generation but finds its spiritual and historical accuracy lacking.


Juewei Shi. (Photo © Josh Brightman)

“It just takes everything in and then throws it back out in a form that is very poetic linguistically, very attractive and persuasive, but not necessarily true,” Shi said.

Much further on the tech end, companies working to ground advanced AI, even superintelligent AI — a hypothetical system that would advance past human intelligence — in Buddhist practice and principles is likely the most provocative domain the Buddhism and AI Initiative has tracked.

The buzziest example is Softmax, a startup co-founded by former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear that’s focused on “organic alignment” and AI agents discovering their “values” — even as those agents meet and aim to surpass human intelligence.

“Everything we know of reality is frame dependent,” Shear wrote in an April blog post, citing the Buddhist concept of śūnyatā, or the lack of inherent existence. “At Softmax, we strive to recognize the frame-dependence of the agents we build.”

Another organization in the space is the Center for the Study of Apparent Selves. Established with a goal of developing “models of intelligence that are ethically and aesthetically fulfilling,” the Nepal-based research institute includes experts in cognitive science, evolutionary biology, computer science, physiology and religion.




Thomas Doctor. (Courtesy photo)

In addition to consulting at 84000, Doctor is director and founder at CSAS. He sees overlap between the Buddhist goal of “awakening” and the pursuit of superintelligence. He noted the bodhisattva vow — “For the sake of all sentient life, I shall achieve awakening” — is inherently outward-focused. Similarly, Doctor and his CSAS colleagues propose that care should be considered the “driver of intelligence.” If AI were trained on its own bodhisattva vow, it would provide a “framework for thinking of superintelligence,” Doctor said. “It’s intrinsically an altruistic pursuit, and at the same time, it’s something you take very seriously.”
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Scammell, for his part, is unsure that building and enlightening ASI “is the way we’re going to build a better future,” he said. “I’m more motivated by strategies that help a lot of people understand the problem and contribute personally.”

And while he said he is heartened by how the initiative is bringing together Buddhists with wide-ranging projects and views, the hard work is yet to come. Buddhists are practiced at coming together, but many are less familiar with engaging “policy professionals in shaping a better future,” he said.

“For Buddhism to have a very meaningful impact on the field of AI, there’s going to be a lot of stepping out of comfort zones that’s needed,” Scammell said.

Meanwhile, Shi acknowledged “we don’t have a central body like the Vatican that speaks on behalf of all Buddhists,” and she doesn’t necessarily see the need for them to have one defining document on AI — at least not immediately.

“We in Buddhism really believe in the pause,” Shi said. “Sometimes, we have to stand in the eye of that tornado, watch what’s happening and not be swept into it.”

This article was produced as part of the RNS/Interfaith America Religion Journalism Fellowship.

 

The Nine Billion Names of God

Arthur C. Clarke

“This is a slightly unusual request,” said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint. “As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone’s been asked to supply a Tibetan monastery with an Automatic Sequence Computer. I don’t wish to be inquisitive, but I should hardly have thought that your — ah — establishment had much use for such a machine. Could you explain just what you intend to do with it?”

“Gladly,” replied the lama, readjusting his silk robes and carefully putting away the slide rule he had been using for currency conversions. “Your Mark V Computer can carry out any routine mathematical operation involving up to ten digits. However, for our work we are interested in letters, not numbers. As we wish you to modify the output circuits, the machine will be printing words, not columns of figures.”

“I don’t quite understand....”

“This is a project on which we have been working for the last three centuries — since the lamasery was founded, in fact. It is somewhat alien to your way of thought, so I hope you will listen with an open mind while I explain it.”

“Naturally.”

“It is really quite simple. We have been compiling a list which shall contain all the possible names of God.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“We have reason to believe,” continued the lama imperturbably, “that all such names can be written with not more than nine letters in an alphabet we have devised.”

“And you have been doing this for three centuries?”

“Yes: we expected it would take us about fifteen thousand years to complete the task.”

“Oh,” Dr. Wagner looked a little dazed. “Now I see why you wanted to hire one of our machines. But exactly what is the purpose of this project?”

The lama hesitated for a fraction of a second, and Wagner wondered if he had offended him. If so, there was no trace of annoyance in the reply.

“Call it ritual, if you like, but it’s a fundamental part of our belief. All the many names of the Supreme Being — God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on — they are only man-made labels. There is a philosophical problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among all the possible combinations of letters that can occur are what one may call the real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all.”

“I see. You’ve been starting at AAAAAAA... and working up to ZZZZZZZZ....”

“Exactly — though we use a special alphabet of our own. Modifying the electromatic typewriters to deal with this is, of course, trivial. A rather more interesting problem is that of devising suitable circuits to eliminate ridiculous combinations. For example, no letter must occur more than three times in succession.”

“Three? Surely you mean two.”

“Three is correct: I am afraid it would take too long to explain why, even if you understood our language.”

“I’m sure it would,” said Wagner hastily. “Go on.”

“Luckily, it will be a simple matter to adapt your Automatic Sequence Computer for this work, since once it has been programmed properly it will permute each letter in turn and print the result. What would have taken us fifteen thousand years it will be able to do in a hundred days.”

Dr. Wagner was scarcely conscious of the faint sounds from the Manhattan streets far below. He was in a different world, a world of natural, not man-made, mountains. High up in their remote aeries these monks had been patiently at work, generation after generation, compiling their lists of meaningless words. Was there any limit to the follies of mankind? Still, he must give no hint of his inner thoughts. The customer was always right....

“There’s no doubt,” replied the doctor, “that we can modify the Mark V to print lists of this nature. I’m much more worried about the problem of installation and maintenance. Getting out to Tibet, in these days, is not going to be easy.”

“We can arrange that. The components are small enough to travel by air — that is one reason why we chose your machine. If you can get them to India, we will provide transport from there.”

“And you want to hire two of our engineers?”

“Yes, for the three months that the project should occupy.”

“I’ve no doubt that Personnel can manage that.” Dr. Wagner scribbled a note on his desk pad. “There are just two other points —”

Before he could finish the sentence the lama had produced a small slip of paper.

“This is my certified credit balance at the Asiatic Bank.”

“Thank you. It appears to be — ah — adequate. The second matter is so trivial that I hesitate to mention it — but it’s surprising how often the obvious gets overlooked. What source of electrical energy have you?”

“A diesel generator providing fifty kilowatts at a hundred and ten volts. It was installed about five years ago and is quite reliable. It’s made life at the lamasery much more comfortable, but of course it was really installed to provide power for the motors driving the prayer wheels.”

“Of course,” echoed Dr. Wagner. “I should have thought of that.”

---

The view from the parapet was vertiginous, but in time one gets used to anything. After three months, George Hanley was not impressed by the two-thousand-foot swoop into the abyss or the remote checkerboard of fields in the valley below. He was leaning against the wind-smoothed stones and staring morosely at the distant mountains whose names he had never bothered to discover.

This, thought George, was the craziest thing that had ever happened to him. “Project Shangri-La,” some wit back at the labs had christened it. For weeks now the Mark V had been churning out acres of sheets covered with gibberish. Patiently, inexorably, the computer had been rearranging letters in all their possible combinations, exhausting each class before going on to the next. As the sheets had emerged from the electromatic typewriters, the monks had carefully cut them up and pasted them into enormous books.

In another week, heaven be praised, they would have finished. Just what obscure calculations had convinced the monks that they needn’t bother to go on to words of ten, twenty, or a hundred letters, George didn’t know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be some change of plan, and that the high lama (whom they’d naturally called Sam Jaffe, though he didn’t look a bit like him) would suddenly announce that the project would be extended to approximately A.D. 2060. They were quite capable of it.

George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out onto the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made him so popular with the monks — who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing in their favor: they might be crazy, but they weren’t bluenoses. Those frequent trips they took down to the village, for instance...

“Listen, George,” said Chuck urgently. “I’ve learned something that means trouble.”

“What’s wrong? Isn’t the machine behaving?” That was the worst contingency George could imagine. It might delay his return, and nothing could be more horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of a TV commercial would seem like manna from heaven. At least it would be some link with home.

“No — it’s nothing like that.” Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which was unusual because normally he was scared of the drop. “I’ve just found what all this is about.”

What d’ya mean? I thought we knew.”

“Sure — we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn’t know why. It’s the craziest thing—”

“Tell me something new,” growled George.

“— but old Sam’s just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather excited, or at least as near as he’ll ever get to it. When I told him that we were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I’d ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, ‘Sure’ — and he told me.”

“Go on: I’ll buy it.”

“Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names — and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them — God’s purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won’t be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.”

“Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?”

“There’s no need for that. When the list’s completed, God steps in and simply winds things up... bingo!”

“Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.”

Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.

“That’s just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I’d been stupid in class, and said, ’It’s nothing as trivial as that.’ ”

George thought this over a moment.

“That’s what I call taking the Wide View,” he said presently. “But what d’you suppose we should do about it? I don’t see that it makes the slightest difference to us. After all, we already knew that they were crazy.”

“Yes — but don’t you see what may happen? When the list’s complete and the Last Trump doesn’t blow — or whatever it is they expect — we may get the blame. It’s our machine they’ve been using. I don’t like the situation one little bit.”

“I see,” said George slowly. “You’ve got a point there. But this sort of thing’s happened before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him — even sold their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn’t turn nasty, as you’d expect. They just decided that he’d made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do.”

“Well, this isn’t Louisiana, in case you hadn’t noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I’ll be sorry for old Sam when his lifework backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else.”

“I’ve been wishing that for weeks. But there’s nothing we can do until the contract’s finished and the transport arrives to fly us out.

“Of course,” said Chuck thoughtfully, “we could always try a bit of sabotage.”

“Like hell we could! That would make things worse.”

“Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. O.K. — then all we need to do is to find something that needs replacing during one of the overhaul periods — something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We’ll fix it, of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register. They won’t be able to catch us then.”

“I don’t like it,” said George. “It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job. Besides, it ’would make them suspicious. No, I’ll sit tight and take what comes.”

---

"I still don’t like it,” he said, seven days later, as the tough little mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. “And don’t you think I’m running away because I’m afraid. I’m just sorry for those poor old guys up there, and I don’t want to be around when they find what suckers they’ve been. Wonder how Sam will take it?” “It’s funny,” replied Chuck, “but when I said good-by I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him — and that he didn’t care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After that — well, of course, for him there just isn’t any After That....”

George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset: here and there, lights gleamed like portholes in the side of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again?”

He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment. The high lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall.

“There she is!” called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. “Ain’t she beautiful!”

She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll round his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.

The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the road was very good, as roads went in that region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear, and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.

He began to sing, but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.

“Should be there in an hour,” he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought: “Wonder if the computer’s finished its run. It was due about now.”

Chuck didn’t reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see Chuck’s face, a white oval turned toward the sky.

“Look,” whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

PAKISTAN SECURITY STATE

Revisiting the hard approach

Muhammad Amir Rana 

November 9, 2025 

DAWN
The writer is a security analyst.

AFTER Zohran Mamdani’s victory as mayor of New York, academic Vali Nasr remarked on social media that the moment symbolised “the end of the era of the Global War on Terror”. Yet, for Pakistan, the supposed front-line state in that long global campaign, the war never truly ended but rather got worse. Ironically, nations once branded as epicentres of terrorism, Iraq, Syria, and even Afghanistan now appear relatively more stable. One must ask why Pakistan remains suspended in perpetual insecurity, despite once being the front-line state in the war against terrorism.

The state has found many excuses to explain terrorism within its borders, blaming Afgh­anistan, global jihadist networks, local militant groups and religious extremism. Yet it rarely reflects on the policies it crafted to remain relevant in the region’s strategic game. These policies were marred by miscalculations regarding the strengths and weaknesses of militant groups, and more critically, by persistent policy failures. Successive governments and security institutions have refused to admit these mistakes, hold anyone accountable, or meaningfully reform the frameworks that consistently failed to deliver.

The irony lies in the fact that Pakistan’s security apparatus continued to implement the very approaches that had proven ineffective. Instead of acknowledging their flaws, it became defensive and intolerant of criticism, silencing legitimate forums and institutions that could have questioned these policy failures and ensured even minimal transparency in decision-making.

Apparently, the state institutions have decided to address the problems of terrorism and extremism decisively. This renewed resolve is reflected both in Pakistan’s posture towards Afghanistan and in how the state has dealt with the extremist group TLP in Punjab. However, once again, these policies are being implemented with full impunity, and it remains unclear who’ll be held accountable if they fail to deliver the desired outcomes.

State institutions must not lose their composure in their display of muscle.

In recent times, civilian governments have borne the burden of the strategic blunders made by state institutions. But under the current hybrid system, there is little room left to shift the entire responsibility onto civilian shoulders. The civilian leadership today appears to be in complete synchronisation with the military establishment in its approach to security, the economy and politics.

The synchronisation has created relative political stability in the country, but it is unable to address the security challenges that Pakistan is facing. What happened in Doha and Istanbul during the dialogue between Afghanistan and Pakistan showed that Pakistan, which had facilitated the Doha dialogue between the Taliban and the US, was now itself in talks, enabled by Turkiye and Qatar, with the Taliban regime. And in these talks, the bone of contention remained the terrorist groups TTP and the Ittihadul Mujahideen led by Gul Bahadur, and terrorist activities inside Pakistan.

Both these terrorist groups were close aides of the Taliban in their fight against Nato forces, and clearly, Gul Bahadur had been Pakistan’s proxy to support the Taliban insurgency. The TTP, which was equally lethal in Afghanistan and Pakistan, was tolerated for several years in North Waziristan until Operation Zarb-i-Azb was launched. Once again, the group was engaged in talks.

It was a deliberate policy to bring the Taliban into power in the hope that they would strengthen the state’s strategic interests on the western borders. The price was so high that it bled Pakistan and caused disharmony inside it. The approach to supporting the Taliban had only one objective — to bring them to power; the state institutions did not have any plans once they came to power.

The Haqqanis, considered close to the state, have turned against Pakistan — something that should have been a strategic shock, but was absorbed silently. Neither the state institutions nor the intelligentsia in Pakistan questioned why the Haqqanis wanted to reverse Fata’s status and convert the area once again into tribal territory, where they could operate freely, sustain their political economy, and continue spreading radicalism in Pakistan. The TTP and Gul Bahadur are merely the Haqqanis’ stooges in this plan

The irony lies in Pakistani officials signalling the possibility of regime change in Afghanistan if the Taliban do not comply with their expectations, an approach that violates diplomatic norms. Yet analysts are raising a valid question: if the state were to attempt regime change in Afghanistan, who would be its closest ally? Who else, if not the Haqqanis?

This is not just a dichotomy in the state’s approach; it reflects a mindset rooted in the concept of a ‘hard state’, where the application of hard power often clouds the distinction between friends and foes. The state appears to be focused solely on achieving its set objectives, regardless of the long-term consequences.

One hopes that whatever policy the state has crafted to deal with terrorism and extremism, it will deliver tangible results and allow Pakistan to finally declare victory over this decades-old scourge. However, state institutions must not lose their composure in their display of muscle. A ‘hard state’ should not mean a loss of reason; it must evolve long-term policies to address its challenges.

Anatol Lieven’s central argument in Pakistan: A Hard Country is that Pakistan is not a ‘failed state’; rather it has a weak state apparatus that governs a socially resilient society. The idea derived from his analysis is that a muscular state could strengthen itself through firmness and control. However, as seasoned former diplomat Ashraf Jehangir Qazi recently reminded us, quoting Swedish economist and sociologist Gunnar Myrdal, Pakistan today is “characterised by weak governance, a lack of effective law enforcement, and a general societal and political indiscipline” — a reflection of Pakistan’s current political condition. As he wrote in these pages: “Reliance on the use of force to resolve complex political challenges is not an indication of a strong or hard state.”

Published in Dawn, November 9th, 2025

CAN THE TLP BE BROUGHT UNDER CONTROL?

TLP’s story is not just about weaponisation of religion — it’s about class, power and a state caught between crackdown and appeasement.

LONG READ

Zia Ur Rehman 

November 9, 2025 

EOS/DAWN

When the late Khadim Hussain Rizvi began appearing at public rallies across the country in 2012, seated in his wheelchair atop the back of a truck, few could have anticipated the storm that was about to follow.

The cleric from Punjab’s Attock district had once served quietly as a government-appointed prayer leader in Lahore. Yet, by 2015, he had emerged as the fiery voice behind rallies demanding the release of Mumtaz Qadri, the police guard who had murdered Punjab governor Salman Taseer in 2011 over his views on Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.

Rizvi was, by all appearances, an unlikely revolutionary. Paralysed after a 2006 road accident, he spoke with a mix of crude Punjabi humour, caustic wit and eloquent Urdu, often quoting Allama Iqbal to give profound gravity to his fiery sermons.

Initially attracting only a small following from the Barelvi school of thought, Rizvi’s fusion of intense religious fervour and populist anger quickly resonated across Pakistan’s disillusioned and devout segments. His thunderous speeches transformed him from a fringe preacher into the architect of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a group capable of mobilising massive rallies and paralysing entire cities.

Five years after Rizvi died in 2020, the TLP has not only survived but also thrived under his son, Saad Rizvi. The movement has cemented its status as one of Pakistan’s most volatile and potent political forces, blurring the boundaries between religious extremism, political populism and state authority.

The Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) is once again facing a ban after being accused of being involved in terrorism. Five years after the death of its founder Khadim Hussain Rizvi, his party remains one of the country’s most disruptive political forces. But the TLP’s story is not just about weaponisation of religion — it’s about class, power and a state caught between crackdown and appeasement

This October, familiar scenes of unrest resurfaced following a protest call by the TLP. Major cities, including Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, came to a standstill as mobile services were suspended, schools closed and highways blocked with shipping containers. Clashes near Lahore turned deadly, reigniting memories of the group’s previous confrontations with the state. In response, the government once again imposed a ban on TLP under anti-terrorism laws.

Yet, as many analysts note, such prohibitions may restrict the group’s legal status but do little to diminish its ideological influence, particularly on the deeply sensitive issue of blasphemy in Pakistan.

To understand this enduring paradox, this piece traces the TLP’s trajectory: from its rise through blasphemy politics and the revival of Barelvi identity, and the state’s continuing struggle to contain the growing political power of faith on Pakistan’s streets.

THE BARELVI POLITICAL AWAKENING

For many, the TLP’s rise was not a disruption but a long-awaited moment of identity assertion. It is the awakening of Pakistan’s Barelvi community, a vast majority who have long felt both politically and religiously marginalised.

“The TLP is not just politics for us, it is the powerful reclamation of our Barelvi identity,” Aamir Mustafai, a teacher at a local madrassa [seminary] in Punjab’s Jhelum district, told me during the 2024 election campaign. “This is the continuation of a forgotten struggle, echoing the same battle for dignity and faith that Syed Ahmad Barelvi led against the Sikh Empire in Punjab generations ago.”

The Barelvi school of thought has historically had a strong influence among Pakistan’s rural populace, due to its deep association with Sufi orders and shrine networks. Politically, the Barelvi movement found its organised expression in the post-Independence era through the urban-based Jamiat-i-Ulema Pakistan (JUP).

Under the leadership of Allama Shah Ahmad Noorani, a Karachi cleric, the JUP rose to national prominence as he unified fragmented Barelvi clerics and revived the party in the late 1960s, leading it into the 1970 general elections. However, its political strength was centred in urban Sindh, especially Karachi and Hyderabad, where it won seven National Assembly seats, the peak of organised Barelvi representation. By the 1980s, however, the rise of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and deepening internal rifts pushed the JUP into political obscurity.

Analysts note that this decline was further compounded by Cold War-era geopolitics. After the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Pakistan’s Deobandi institutions emerged as the principal intellectual and logistical backbone of the Afghan ‘jihad’, benefitting from state patronage, US support and Gulf funding.

“In the decades that followed,” says Israr Madani, an Islamabad-based researcher studying Islamist movements, “the influence of Deobandi scholars, madrassas, religious parties and militant groups expanded across the region, especially after the rise of the Taliban, which drew heavily on Deobandi ideology and networks. In contrast, the Barelvis increasingly felt invisible and irrelevant in the political and religious landscape, despite being a demographic majority.”

In this vacuum, new urban-based actors emerged. Saleem Qadri, a Karachi cleric, founded the Sunni Tehreek (ST) in 1990, to militantly protect Barelvi mosques from encroachment by Deobandi and Ahl-i-Hadith (Salafi) groups. Its slogan, “Jawaniyaan lutayein gey, masjidein bachayein gey [We will sacrifice our lives to protect our mosques]”, reflected its militant defensive posture.

But following Noorani’s death in 2003, the JUP weakened further, and the ST’s influence waned after its leadership was killed in a suicide bombing in Karachi in 2006.

Barelvi clerics, grounded in Sufi traditions of devotion and restraint, largely avoided the jihadist and sectarian conflicts of the era. This distance, as Mustafai noted, “made us invisible and irrelevant.” The community eventually sought a more assertive voice, one it ultimately found in the TLP’s aggressive political activism.

Now, the centre of power of Barelvi politics had moved from the urban centres of Karachi to the rural and small-town populace of Punjab. Furthermore, the nature of leadership shifted from Noorani’s intellectual-clerical approach to Rizvi’s populist mobilisation, focused intensely on the issue of blasphemy.

Supporters of Mumtaz Qadri during a protest in Karachi on December 14, 2015: the TLP emerged directly from the campaign to defend the convicted Qadri and his execution in 2016 became a formative moment in Pakistan’s modern religious politics | AFP

THE POLITICS OF BLASPHEMY

“Gustakh-i-Rasool ki ek hi saza, sar tan se juda [The only punishment for blasphemy is beheading]” has become the defining chant of TLP rallies, encapsulating both the group’s ideological core and the mechanism through which it mobilises large crowds.

The TLP emerged directly from the campaign to defend the convicted Qadri. Qadri’s execution in 2016, after the government’s resistance to immense pressure, became a formative moment in Pakistan’s modern religious politics. The vast, impassioned crowds at his funeral showed the dormant strength of Barelvi supporters across Punjab and Sindh, a constituency long considered apolitical or organisationally fragmented.

In the days following the funeral, senior Barelvi clerics convened in Islamabad to deliberate the future political direction of their community. Some advocated restraint, warning against politicising devotional sentiment. However, a majority endorsed Rizvi’s call to form a new movement capable of channelling Barelvi grievances into organised political influence. The result was the creation of the Tehreek Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah, later renamed as the TLP.

The group entered electoral politics in January 2017 at Karachi’s Nishtar Park and gained national attention that same year by contesting a Lahore by-election. This transition marked its evolution from a street protest movement into an organised political force, willing to confront the state through both ballots and large-scale blockades.

TLP’s rapid rise is rooted in its strategic — critics say weaponised — use of Pakistan’s stringent blasphemy laws. By portraying Qadri as a martyr and redefining religious devotion as political resistance, the party transformed traditional Barelvi piety into a defiant and uncompromising street movement, sharply diverging from the sect’s historically Sufi orientation.

The party first tested the state’s limits in 2017, when it staged a weeks-long sit-in near Islamabad over a minor amendment to the Khatm-i-Nabuwwat [Seal of the Prophets] oath in the Election Act. The protest brought Islamabad to a standstill and ended only after the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N)-led government conceded to the group’s demands, including the resignation of the law minister.

A year later, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) government faced similar pressure over the appointment of Princeton economist Atif R. Mian, an Ahmadi, forcing his removal. And when the Supreme Court in 2018 acquitted Asia Bibi, a Christian woman accused of blasphemy, TLP-led protests erupted across the nation, demanding the judges’ execution.

The party’s influence has since extended to foreign policy. In 2021, the TLP organised nationwide protests demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador over blasphemous caricatures published in France, underscoring its capacity to steer both domestic and diplomatic discourse.

CLASS, POPULISM AND STREET POWER

In Lahore, the TLP’s street-level appeal cannot be missed. Hundreds of rickshaws bearing portraits of Rizvi and the insignia of the Labbaik Rickshaw Union weave through the city, turning public transport into rolling political billboards. “We support the TLP because it’s a party led by people like us, not Sharifs, Bhuttos or Khans,” Jamil Butt, a rickshaw driver, told me a week before the 2024 elections.

Analysts argue that the TLP’s strength lies in its social composition, particularly in Punjab, where rapid urbanisation has transformed villages into sprawling peri-urban settlements. This shift has produced a frustrated, alienated lower-middle class that feels excluded from both elite politics and economic opportunity.

“Rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers, small traders and farmers saw in him [Khadim Hussain Rizvi] an authentic voice of their frustrations,” says Umair Rasheed, a US-based PhD scholar researching the TLP. “His aggressiveness, his language, the way he challenged the ruling elite, all of it allowed him to appear as ‘one of them’ — a man of the people rather than a distant politician.”

This dynamic, analysts note, is why even the PTI, despite its broad populist appeal, struggled to capture this segment of Punjab’s electorate. Some observers describe the TLP as “the PTI of the poor.”

Rasheed added that Rizvi also cleverly exploited class tensions within the Barelvi community. By empowering local mosque-level maulvis [clerics], he positioned himself against the established Barelvi clerical elite, including pirs [spiritual leaders] or sajjada nasheens [custodians of shrines], whom he frequently condemned in his sermons. This intra-sect critique further endeared him to lower-rank clerics and their followers, who long felt marginalised by hereditary religious hierarchies.

Adam Weinstein, an analyst at the Quincy Institute in Washington, DC, who witnessed the TLP’s violent 2017 protest observes, “Enforcing blasphemy is the rallying cry, but beneath it lies rage at a society that offers no way up, and enraged young men always turn on minorities and the state itself.” He argues that what appears to be a religious movement is, in many ways, “class-based fury wrapped in religious language.”

The TLP in Karachi, however, draws strength from an additional and influential source: the conservative Memon business community, giving it both financial muscle and urban legitimacy. Several prominent Memon traders have even contested elections on TLP tickets, fusing economic power with religious populism.

ELECTORAL PERFORMANCE AND POLITICAL DISRUPTION

The TLP built its electoral identity around slogans such as “Deen ko takht par lana hai [Bring religion to power]” and “Vote ki izzat Nizam-i-Mustafa mein hai [The sanctity of the vote lies in the Prophet’s system].” These messages positioned the party as a force seeking to fuse religious absolutism with state authority.

Unlike many traditional religious parties, the TLP showed an unusual ability to transform street agitation into electoral momentum, drawing in voters disillusioned with mainstream parties and eager for a political vehicle that promised dignity, certainty and confrontation.

Its urban expansion became most visible in Karachi. The 2022 by-election in Korangi, typically a battleground for MQM-Pakistan, demonstrated the TLP’s ability to unsettle entrenched political actors. Groups of TLP supporters appeared at MQM-P rallies, loudly chanting “Labbaik, Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah [O Prophet of God, We Are Ready]”, creating an atmosphere of fear among MQM workers wary of mob aggression. A widely circulated video from the campaign captured MQM-P leader Mustafa Kamal accusing the TLP of “using religion as a political weapon.” Clashes erupted between rival workers on the polling day.

During the campaign, several TLP supporters described their political migration from MQM after a paramilitary crackdown weakened it. Abid Qureshi, a TLP activist, says, “When MQM’s muhalla [neighbourhood] committees disappeared, the local mosque and milad committees became new centres of influence. That’s where TLP stepped in and filled the vacuum.”

Political analysts argue that the TLP’s rise reflects not only religious fervour but also patterns of political displacement in Pakistan’s two largest provinces. Yet the party’s sociology differs sharply between Punjab and urban Sindh. In Punjab, its growth largely came at the expense of the PML-N. A 2018 Gallup Pakistan survey found that 46 percent of TLP voters had backed the PML-N in 2013, indicating a significant transfer of conservative, lower-middle class support toward Rizvi’s movement.

The party’s electoral breakthrough came in the 2018 general elections, when it secured more than 2.2 million votes nationwide, around 4.2 percent of the total, becoming Pakistan’s fifth-largest party by vote count. Although the first-past-the-post system prevented it from winning National Assembly seats, the TLP gained a foothold in the Sindh Assembly, winning two general seats in Karachi, along with one reserved seat for women.

Its disruptive impact extended beyond Punjab. In Karachi’s Lyari, historically a PPP stronghold, the TLP outperformed PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, relegating him to third place and indirectly facilitating a PTI victory. This outcome symbolised how the TLP had begun altering urban political equations.

Despite widespread doubts over the credibility of the 2024 elections, analysts note that the TLP’s vote bank expanded further, reaching roughly 2.89 million, an increase of nearly 700,000 votes since 2018.

Members of TLP protest after authorities block a road with shipping containers in Lahore on October 10, 2025: the latest ban on TLP, recommended by the Punjab government amid fresh unrest, appears to signal a potentially tougher stance than seen previously | AFP


DEVASTATING SOCIAL TOLL

In August 2023, the Christian neighbourhood of Jaranwala in Punjab’s Faisalabad district descended into chaos after allegations of Quran desecration against two Christian brothers. Within hours, mobs armed with sticks and stones swept through the streets, burning churches, desecrating Bibles and ransacking Christian homes. Over 20 churches and nearly 100 houses were torched, forcing hundreds of families to flee.

Subsequent police investigations confirmed that the violence did not erupt spontaneously. Local clerics affiliated with the TLP had used mosque loudspeakers to summon crowds, urging them to “defend the sanctity of the Quran.” Punjab authorities later arrested over 100 people, several of them identified as TLP activists.

The Jaranwala tragedy was not an isolated episode — it revealed the deepening fractures in Pakistan’s social and moral order. Over the past decade, the TLP’s aggressive brand of religious populism has fundamentally reshaped the country’s political and social discourse, causing an explosion of blasphemy accusations, a surge in mob lynching and renewed fear among religious minorities, particularly Ahmadis and Christians, according to police officials and rights activists.

They say that mob violence triggered by mere rumours of blasphemy has become “common, deadly and difficult to contain.” A police officer pointed to a recent Lahore incident, in which a woman wearing a dress decorated with calligraphy was nearly lynched by a mob on the mistaken assumption that the dress was sporting Arabic verses from the Quran. According to him, TLP activists, often backed by sympathetic lawyers, regularly pressure local police to register blasphemy cases without evidence, deepening local law-and-order crises.

A Dawn report on October 18, 2025 cited police officials who linked TLP workers to at least 25 attacks on churches and other religious sites in Punjab during the past three years. These mobs often vandalised property, set buildings ablaze and left several people dead and dozens injured.

Muhammad Amir Rana, an Islamabad-based security analyst, highlights the grave threat posed by the TLP’s Fidayeen Jathay, organised squads whose members reportedly take death oaths and pledge to sacrifice their lives at Saad Rizvi’s command, mirroring the suicide tactics of groups like the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

“The TLP’s Fidayeen operate openly among the population,” Rana says, “unlike the TTP’s more concealed camps in Afghanistan. And because the TLP is rooted in Punjab, the country’s political heartland, the emotional charge surrounding its mobilisation may be even more volatile.”

The pattern is disturbingly consistent. Last year, a local PPP member of the National Assembly (MNA), together with TLP leaders in Sindh’s Mirpurkhas district, garlanded police officers to praise them for killing a blasphemy suspect in a staged encounter.

In 2018, PML-N leader and then Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal narrowly survived an assassination attempt by a TLP sympathiser. There have also been reports of teachers killed by students over alleged “disrespectful remarks”, as well as mobs torching police stations for protecting blasphemy suspects.

GLOBAL REACH

During the 2024 general election campaign, posters of TLP candidates across Punjab featured not only Qadri, the executed assassin, but also Tanveer Ahmed, a British-Pakistani taxi driver from Bradford serving a life sentence in Scotland for murdering an Ahmadi shopkeeper in Glasgow in 2016. Ahmed’s framed portrait, surrounded by slogans praising his “sacrifice” underscored the transnational echo of TLP’s message.

In 2017, an audio recording attributed to Ahmed, who was in jail in Britain, widely shared on TLP social media, urged listeners to attend a rally in Karachi that drew tens of thousands. On stage, the party’s leader, Khadim Rizvi, hailed Ahmed as a hero who had “surprised all of Europe.”

The global resonance of this militant trend is now a concern for Western governments. In 2020, a Pakistani man who stabbed two people outside the former Paris offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine — which had published caricatures of the Prophet (PBUH) in 2006, 2011 and 2012 — told investigators he had been radicalised by watching Rizvi’s speeches online.

Last year, the British government’s Commission for Countering Extremism released a report warning about the emergence of a UK-based wing of the TLP, describing it as “an extremist Pakistan anti-blasphemy political party.” The commission’s findings were unequivocal: the ideological current that propelled TLP’s rise in Pakistan was being mirrored, in subtle but significant ways, among segments of the British Pakistani diaspora.

THE STATE’S DILEMMA

The Pakistani state’s relationship with the TLP has long been defined by a cycle of confrontation and accommodation, bans followed by negotiations, and crackdowns followed by concessions. This cycle reflects the state’s enduring struggle to balance public order with the fear of provoking a religious backlash. Every attempt to contain the group has been tempered by anxiety over the explosive power of blasphemy politics, which the TLP has mastered more effectively than any other contemporary movement.

Since the 2017 sit-in in Faizabad near Islamabad, and until last month, successive governments have oscillated between repression and reconciliation, consistently bowing to the group’s ability to paralyse major cities.

Some analysts argue that the TLP’s initial ascent was not entirely organic but may have been enabled by certain establishment factions that viewed it as a counterweight to the PML-N, whose leadership had, at the time, adopted a confrontational posture toward the military. Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz recently reiterated this claim while defending the provincial government’s renewed crackdown on the TLP.

However, many experts dispute the extent of such alleged state patronage, noting that, while some level of tacit support may have existed, the TLP swiftly developed an autonomous and potent street force. Its resonance within segments of the Barelvi community, particularly around issues of blasphemy and perceived socio-religious marginalisation, allowed the movement to evolve beyond any initial political engineering.

Repeated negotiations with the group, including the lifting of the previous ban in 2021, the release of detained leaders and the further tightening of blasphemy laws have sent a clear, detrimental message: mass religious mobilisation can successfully extract concessions from the state.

The latest ban, recommended by the Punjab government amid fresh unrest, appears to signal a potentially tougher stance, though the state’s sincerity remains debatable.

The October operation in Murdike, near Lahore, involving thousands of law enforcement personnel, had dispersed the TLP supporters planning to march towards Islamabad. Punjab police registered 75 cases, including terrorism and murder charges, against TLP leaders and workers. The undisclosed whereabouts of key figures, brothers Saad Rizvi and Anas Rizvi, have deepened speculation and internal anxiety.

Since then, most TLP candidates from Punjab who contested the 2024 elections have started distancing themselves from the party, stating that “violence and mob action cannot bring meaningful change by attacking the state.“

Before the ban, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi met senior Barelvi scholars in Karachi, including Mufti Muneebur Rehman, who had earlier mediated between the government and TLP, assuring them the crackdown targeted the TLP’s network, not the broader Barelvi community. The TLP claims over 300 of their mosques and seminaries have been sealed. Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz later confirmed their transfer to Mufti Muneebur Rehman.

However, analysts opine that the Punjab government’s attempt to counter the TLP through engagement with traditional, moderate Barelvi clerical elite, which Rizvi frequently targeted, may have a limited impact. As scholar Umair Rasheed remarks, the state is once again resorting to the flawed logic of “Good Barelvis, Bad Barelvis”, an echo of earlier strategies of distinguishing between “Good Taliban and Bad Taliban.”

FUTURE SCENARIO

The TLP’s future is acutely uncertain, hanging on the state’s political resolve, the judiciary’s response and the party’s enduring populist appeal. The current official strategy, an immediate ban followed by legal proceedings for dissolution, signals a more assertive posture.

As one Islamabad-based security official tells me, “The state has decided that it has had enough. Given rising regional tensions and the surge in terrorism across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, it cannot afford internal instability triggered by the TLP’s street agitations.”

Officials signal an intention to dissolve the TLP as a registered political party, though legally establishing its terrorist credentials remains challenging. Among more than 80 proscribed groups, the TLP stands out for its deep grassroots networks, rapid mobilisation capacity and emotive religious appeal, making it far harder to suppress through conventional law-enforcement measures.

The party’s trajectory will also depend on its leadership. The death of Khadim Hussain Rizvi was expected to fracture the party, but his son Saad Rizvi has maintained its coherence and its capacity to bring cities to a standstill.

If political stability is maintained and the TLP is unable to trigger new crises, its influence may gradually decline ahead of the next election cycle. Yet, the ideology it embodies, combining religious populism, vigilantism and emotionally charged rhetoric, has already permeated Pakistan’s socio-political mainstream.

According to Weinstein, “TLP is the classic Pakistani dilemma — an extremist movement born from within society, tolerated and, at times, weaponised, until it became a menace. But its followers are still your neighbours, and the blasphemy issue isn’t going anywhere.”

The writer is a journalist and researcher whose work has appeared in Dawn, The New York Times and other publications, and has worked for various policy institutes. He can be reached at zeea.rehman@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 9th, 2025

The writer is a journalist and researcher, who writes for The New York Times and Nikkei Asia, among other publications. He also assesses democratic and conflict development in Pakistan for various policy institutes. He tweets @zalmayzia

Joyful Day of the Dead commemorations rally US Latino communities despite immigration raid fears

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — These crucial religious, family and community celebrations for most Mexicans and many other Latin Americans have taken on special significance this year in U.S. Latino communities, as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement raids, including in Minnesota.

Giovanna Dell'orto
November 3, 2025

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — More than 100 people followed Aztec dancers through an arch of paper flowers into El Colegio High School on Saturday morning to visit altars that students had created to commemorate Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead.

“It’s … a way of greeting our ancestors into our homes, back into our lives, even if they’re like not here physically, but spiritually,” said Daniela Rosales, a senior at the small, bilingual school in Minneapolis. “It’s a way of just having the community come all together and knowing that in some way they might feel safe.”

These crucial religious, family and community celebrations for most Mexicans and many other Latin Americans have taken on special significance this year in U.S. Latino communities, as the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement raids, including in Minnesota.

While some organizers worried that fears of deportation would cast a pall on public celebrations, participants turned out in droves in cities big and small, saying the rituals brought a much-needed sense of resilience and community pride.

“We decided we can’t cave,” said Justin Ek, one of the founders of the Day of the Dead festival in Mankato, a city in the Minnesota farmland. “Our cultural celebrations are what we need to fill our souls for what’s to come.”

The Indigenous Latino artist’s family started a small commemoration in the parking lot of their painting business in 2018. This year, some 12,000 people joined the daylong celebration that included live music and several dozen papier-mâché sculptures of Catrinas (elaborately dressed skeletons) and fantasy creatures called alebrijes. Most activities were funded by community donations.

Grieving, but with happiness: The spiritual side of Day of the Dead

Ek’s father came to the U.S. from Mexico as a preteen, and in the struggle to make a living and eventually build a family, many connections with his homeland and relatives there disappeared, Ek said.

Day of the Dead festivities became a way to grieve that and rekindle some ties, he added, in addition to commemorating more recent family deaths.

“It’s our way to honor what we lost,” Ek said.

The holiday’s balance of joyful remembrance and a renewed sense of presence distinguishes it from both the outright party atmosphere of Halloween and the somber memorials of the Christian holy days of All Saints on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2.

In fact, Day of the Dead evolved over centuries from Indigenous practices across the Americas, and only settled on these fall dates after Catholicism was introduced, said Cary Cordova, a University of Texas professor.

Different regions mark it with unique details, but the crucial element is paying homage to the dead with “ofrendas,” festive offerings of food, drinks, music and pastimes favorite by the dead. Their souls, many believe, return for a visit, guided by the candles and marigold flowers that mark the path to the ofrendas.

Whether in his Mexican childhood or today in Mankato, Luis Alberto Orozco said the key is to commemorate by “having fun as they would be” — with the departed’s favorite snacks and songs.

“It’s remembering people who passed on positively because they would want us to remember them happy … and making ourselves feel they’re with us,” Orozco said.

Joyful and prideful commemorations defy fears of immigration enforcement

As the emcee of this year’s celebration, Orozco reflected on tense conversations in recent months about whether the event in Mankato might draw immigration enforcement raids, especially as rumors spread on social media.

“We decided we were not going to be afraid. It was important for us to keep our faith,” he said. “Once I got to the event and saw all the people smile, all the fears went away.”

The recent crackdown on illegal immigration in Chicago has generated controversy and stirred fears across that city.

Lisa Noce, some of whose ancestors immigrated from Mexico to Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood where she grew up, worried people would stay away from a Day of the Dead installation she helped create by the National Museum of Mexican Art there. But a big crowd came.

“I’m very thankful that it turned out that way,” she said, adding that she also sets up a smaller ofrenda in her kitchen with candy, Barbie dolls, and smiling photos of deceased family members.

‘Ofrendas’ range from family shrines to political statements

For more than a century, Day of the Dead artistic representations have also moved from the family to the public sphere.

Starting in Mexico and later through the Chicano rights movement in the United States, ofrendas have also become a form of protest covering often marginalized victims, said Luis Fitch, a Minneapolis artist who has created Day of the Dead images for retail giant Target and the U.S. Postal Service.

In Los Angeles, site of some of the strongest enforcement actions, a group advocating for detained migrants planned for Sunday a prayer with Buddhist, Jewish and Protestant Christian rituals as well as altars commemorating those who died in detention, said the Rev. Jennifer Gutierrez, one of the organizers.

“There’s pretty high anxiety,” said Gutierrez, a United Methodist minister. “But also an atmosphere of coming together to help each other.”

Back at El Colegio High School, the half dozen altars with flickering candles, decorated candy skulls and a profusion of paper flowers commemorated local and global losses.

There were pictures of the children killed at a school Mass just 3 miles (5 kilometers) away, but also those who died crossing the U.S-Mexican border as well as victims of the terror attacks on 9/11, the war in Gaza and violence against Indigenous women.

“We try to keep our sources of spiritual strength always nourished,” said Susana De Leon, one of the traditional Aztec dancers who got the commemoration started at El Colegio.“When the community sees us dancing, they feel strengthened. They feel the love.”

Halloween and a declining Christian tradition coexist on All Saints' Day in Spain

MADRID (AP) — The sobriety of the Catholic tradition, by which on All Saints' Day graves are cleaned and flowers are brought to cemeteries to spend time with deceased loved ones, has given way in recent years to sweets, fake blood, and spider webs from one of the most iconic holidays in the United States.

Alicia Leon and Teresa Medrano
November 3, 2025

MADRID (AP) — Skeletons, ghosts, and monsters of all kinds took to the streets of many cities in Spain at nightfall to celebrate Halloween. The next morning, an older generation flocked to the country’s cemeteries to remember their dead.

The sobriety of the Catholic tradition, by which on All Saints’ Day graves are cleaned and flowers are brought to cemeteries to spend time with deceased loved ones, has given way in recent years to sweets, fake blood, and spider webs from one of the most iconic holidays in the United States.

As in many other parts of the world, instead of their own ancestral traditions, younger people have embraced the more commercial side of a celebration that originated from the pagan festival of Samhain, which honored the end of summer and the harvest. And it does not appear that they will follow in the footsteps of their elders.

The cultural change did not happen overnight, but is a consequence of the secularization of societies, explained José Bobadilla, a sociologist specialized in culture and religious diversity.

“Obviously, the process of a new, more Americanized culture has had an influence not only in Europe,” said Bobadilla, who noted that the current celebration, which is spreading throughout the world, “downplays the idea that it is a time to remember those who are no longer with us.”

The Almudena cemetery in Madrid, the largest in Spain with some five million people buried there, began receiving its first visitors early in the morning.

At the main entrance, several flower stalls waited with bouquets ready for those who left the arrangement of the graves to the last minute.

“We always come on (Nov) 1st,” said Alicia Sánchez, a 69-year-old retiree who lamented the loss of tradition due to a lack of interest among younger people.

“I don’t like Halloween because it’s not our holiday. But everyone has their traditions, and that should be respected,” she said.

Paz Sánchez visited her husband’s grave with his son, as they do on many other days. This time, however, they were surprised to see so few people despite it being the busiest day of the year.

“Maybe they don’t feel like getting up early to come to the cemetery,” said Sánchez, 87.

A few hours earlier, as in the last decade, Paracuellos de Jarama, a town about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) northeast of Madrid, dressed up for Halloween.

It started with just a few neighbors, but now dozens of houses are decorated with pumpkins and ghosts, there is a haunted passageway, and hundreds of people roam the streets trick-or-treating.

Miguel Izquierdo transformed his family home into a pirate ship with recycled wood for the hull and an old sheet as a sail. The lights, music, and 30 kilos (66 pounds) of candy, which ran out in less than two hours, made it one of the most popular.

After three years, they continue to participate “because of how much fun the children have,” said Izquierdo, 42, who runs an audiovisual production company. “We like it because it’s a party, because it’s a costume party, and because there’s candy.”

“I don’t dislike the party, but I think it’s not part of our traditions,” said Antonia Martín, 68, who celebrated Halloween – without costume – for the first time for her grandchildren.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.