"A good and pious Muslim"?

Washington Post:

A Libyan al-Qaeda commander who was killed last week in northwestern Pakistan had lived there for years and, despite a $200,000 U.S. bounty on his head, felt secure enough to meet officials and visit hospitals, according to officials and residents of this city.

As he organized suicide bombings and other attacks in neighboring Afghanistan, Abu Laith al-Libi found a comfortable refuge in Pakistan's border region, the sources said in interviews. He met openly with a Pakistani politician and a Libyan diplomat and called on foreign fighters recovering from their wounds.

The Pakistani government contends it has been doing everything possible to capture al-Qaeda figures within its borders. But Libi, who was killed in a missile attack last week, moved unchallenged around the heart of Peshawar, a city of about 1.2 million people, underscoring how freely he and other al-Qaeda leaders have been able to operate in Pakistan.

One day in 2006, Libi strode into the central prison in Peshawar, the administrative capital of North-West Frontier Province. As another Libyan fighter sat nearby behind bars -- in the custody of Pakistani authorities -- Libi, the politician and the Libyan diplomat argued over whether the man should be deported against his wishes to Libya or released to fight another day, according to Javed Ibrahim Paracha, the politician who helped arrange the meeting.

"I knew Abu Laith for quite some time," said Paracha, a former member of the Pakistan National Assembly who is running for a parliamentary seat again in elections this month.

Paracha called Laith "a good and pious Muslim" and said the Libyan had frequently visited hospitals in Peshawar and the nearby city of Bannu to check on foreign fighters who had been wounded fighting alongside the Taliban and other militant groups.

A Pakistani prison official, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed some details of Paracha's account of the gathering and said it occurred at least 18 months ago.

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Intelligence reports indicate that Libi had been on his way to a meeting with Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistani Taliban commander and tribal leader who has been blamed in the Dec. 27 assassination of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, according to an intelligence official in Europe who spoke on condition of anonymity.

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Paracha is a regional leader in the branch of the Pakistan Muslim League party that is headed by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Paracha is known to have close contacts with Taliban leaders and other militants.

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This evidence suggest that Sharif will be sympathetic to the Islamic supremacist religious bigots. Paracha is also someone who at a minimum has poor judgment about who is a good and pious Muslim. Libi was clearly not attuned to Islam as a religion of peace. But the story points out the problem with those who try to claim that al Qaeda is not Islamic, yet do nothing to purge it and its ideas from the religion and in the case of Paracha, embrace the evil.