11/05/2013
My family and I came to Canada 24 years ago from Pakistan because we saw the rise of fundamentalism in the land of our birth. I grew up in a pluralistic, visionary country with people of other faiths, mostly Christians and Zoroastrians, and I studied in a Catholic school. We rarely came across blatant extremism, terrorism, or political Islam.
However, in 1977, Mohammed Zia-ul-Haq came into power after removing and hanging the democratically elected Prime Minister, Zulfiqar Bhutto. Zia, a follower of Abul Ala Mawdudi, founder of the Islamist party Jamaat-e Islamiyya, implemented his extreme version of Islam.