Radical Islam spreads in a riven Pakistan

The intruders covered their faces and broke down the front door. They ransacked the home, then kidnapped the three women and the baby who lived there.
No one was arrested, despite a standoff with police. And neighbors welcomed the dozens of kidnappers, mostly female Islamic students who took the hostages back to their school, because the women, dressed in black from head to toe, and a few male supporters were doing what the police never could: shutting down Aunty Shamim's brothel.
"We were trying to curb anything immoral," said student Hamna Abdullah, 20, from the Jamia Hafsa, the school run by the neighboring Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque. "We did not misbehave. We treated them very gently."
The women from the brothel were released two days later, on March 29, after the owner repented. Later she denied it was a brothel. Yet the kidnapping has raised fears that a new Islamic morality campaign has spread to Islamabad from the remote tribal areas where pro-Taliban militants hold sway. And it is only one example of the vice war being waged by the Red Mosque, which has turned into a serious problem for the Pakistani government, unsure of how to push back against Islamists, especially women wielding sticks or even guns.
The mosque underscores how Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, weakened by his controversial removal of the nation's Supreme Court chief last month, is caught between fundamentalists and the West, trying to control religious extremists as he pushes pro-American policies that have alienated much of Pakistan.
Courtesy: CT