If Jinnah – a Western educated and, by all accounts, nonpracticing Muslim – could inspire India’s Muslims to create a state by appealing to their religious sentiment, Maulana Maududi reasoned there was scope for a body of practicing Islamists to take over that state.

The focus should be on Indian atrocities in Kashmir, not on our support for the Kashmiri resistance.

Pakistan, she observed, had a policy of “profiting from the disputes of others,” and she cited Pakistan’s desire to benefit from tension between the great powers and Pakistan’s early focus on the Palestine dispute as examples of this tendency. “Pakistan was occupied with her own grave internal problem, but she still found time to talk fervently of sending ’a liberation army to Palestine to help the Arabs free the Holy Land from the Jews.

Sharif gave instructions to his staff regarding snacks he wanted served to all of us – Sharif often asked for specific food items during meetings, as if it helped him concentrate his mind.

Many of Pakistan’s problems – from falling behind in secular education to the rise of Islamist extremism – can be traced to the country’s founding on the basis of religious nationalism.

All of that shows that somehow the schooling system has fed intolerance and bigotry.

The man in the street has not been the beneficiary of the U.S. aid

Three American presidents-Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson-have asked the question: What do we get from aiding Pakistan? Five-Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama-have wondered aloud whether Pakistan's leaders can be trusted to keep their word.

Throughout the Arab and Islamic world the feeling is that we are now in top gear for a war of civilizations, a clash of civilizations. Support for the United States is very low and there are no voices within the Muslim world, except for a very few.

The list of American grievances is long: Pakistan developed nuclear weapons while promising the United States that it would not; the United States helped arm and train Mujahideen against the Soviets during the 1980s, but Pakistan chose to keep these militants well armed and sufficiently funded even after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989; and, from the American perspective, Pakistan's crackdown on terrorist groups, particularly after 9/11, has been halfhearted at best.