Here some basic considerations are to be briefly enumerated. The terrorists have struck more than half a dozen times in recent weeks in northern Pakistan.

The security personnel are doing their job in maintaining law and order more or less satisfactorily.

But an ideological foe cannot be countered by police, paramilitary or military alone. It is not mindless violence Pakistan faces.

The ideology behind the terrorist has to be fought mainly with ideas, without ignoring physical resistance.

Terrorists believe in the Ideology of Islam, aiming to establish Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan first and later a universal one.

It is a mixture of Islam and politics of the time that produces Islamic zealots, blowing themselves up and others here and elsewhere.

They need to be countered with brains. People should investigate who created this monster and how does it grow and what its traits are.

To root it out is not sufficient to bring to bear on it superior firepower; that will merely prolong the agony.

The problem is to be tackled with new ideas that inoculate the unwary against accepting their assumptions.

Politically, it is a consequence of the US war against so-called Islamofascists. After 9/11 it quickly attacked and occupied Afghanistan. As is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan too has proved to be quagmire. They are still there six years on, trying to kill the resistance they keep generating.

An important aspect of terrorism in Pakistan is that it is a direct result of American and Nato actions in Afghanistan. It is a protest and resistance against the perceived western onslaught on Islam and Muslims -- apparently everywhere.

This is not the whole story: Pakistan is where Islamic rhetoric has been central to Pakistan's rationale and politics.

Instead of building democratic institutions, the Muslim League governments kept talking of ideological experiments, of building an Islamic Utopia and giving the world something new.

Some scholars conceived the idea of a uniquely Islamic State that had not been heard of before. Credit for it goes to Maulana Abul Ala Maudoodi, though it is shared by Hasan al banna and Lespold Weisse (Muhammad Asad).

This idea came to be accepted by most religious parties -- each representing a separate sect or sub-sect -- and each harmonizing it with its own sectarian orthodoxy.

Before Maudoodi, orthodox Islam was inseperable from its sectarian interpretations. Factually, orthodox Islam is the sect one believes in.

Sectarian differences are inherent in Muslim societies. They are subdued and kept down for a time by political distractions.

In cases where there were non-Muslims, as in historical India -- the colonial masters and Hindus -- Muslim politics comprised two schools: those who wanted harmony among all Indians and those who treat Islam as a composite whole, wanted to protect perceived Muslim's rights with minority sects not being different from the majority.

Question of sects was, however, unavoidable in Pakistan. Since the government and the opposition vied with each other in being better Muslims, Islam's relationship with the state became the vital question.

Earliest hyperbole of official publicists about a new or unique State was fleshed out by Jamaate Islami that also assumed there were no sects in Islam.

This writer once asked Maulana Mufti Mehmood in Lahore in early 1970s to which sect would an Islamic State belong?

His unhesitating answer was it would uphold Hanafi fiqah. He also said, 'we would protect the Shias, of course.'

That's it. Claims of protecting minorities coexist with majority sect's zealots' oppression of minorities off and on. Mixing of politics and Islam, without calculation, ensured democracy's death.

Democratic politics is all about how should layman manage things on this earth for their own benefit. That assumes equality of all men. But the Objectives Resolution sealed democracy's fate. It declared sovereignty belongs to Allah.

It does not explain when and how was that transferred to certain leaders of Muslim League and later to Pakistan's Generals.

There is no explanation of how God's sovereignty can be claimed, borrowed or stolen by certain men in Pakistan.

Is it for all the people? If so, all the people will have to be sovereigns, able to make and break governments and politics has to be about their welfare that people can see.

Did God mean to exclude or include non-Muslims or smaller sects? This whole notion inherently rejects democracy and lets freebooters usurp God's sovereignty.

Sixty years' experience shows that Allah's sovereignty has been exercised by certain groups like Muslim League or military without all Pakistanis freely authorizing them to receive sovereignty from the Almighty.

Does Islam permit military's supremacy? Shouldn't Allah's sovereignty now be restored to Allah and let's devise a politics to improve our freedoms and welfare for all Pakistanis -- without excluding minorities and smaller sects.

These are relevant considerations. The fact is that there are two elements: the ideology of an Islamic State and political system after the ideologues do triumph need to be seen separately.

Orthodox Ulema want to imitate the Madina state run by Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) who included Jews in his Ummat-i-Wahida, according to Meesaq-i-Madina -- and the four right-guided Caliphs.

Can we really imitate them? First four Caliphs in the Seventh Century, were pious par excellence and were simultaneously the religious heads, heads of state and chief executive, supreme judge, commander-in-chief and basic law giver.

A Caliph in Pakistan today would combine all these functions in his person. Political context will include, apart from external factors, who elects or selects him and how and who opposes him and why, including the particulars of how do people live.

Who would be the Caliph? The idea has been implemented in recent years in two places: Mulla Muhammad Umar set up a Sunni Hanafi fiqah-preaching Caliphate in Kabul and all Sunni Ulema everywhere agreed that it was a proper Islamic Caliphate and supporting him was an Islamic obligation for all Muslims.

Opposing him became apostasy. There was another example in Tehran after the overthrow of the Shah: the Vilayat-i-Faqeeh, the Shia version of an Islamic State or Caliphate.

The traits of the two are remarkably similar, if more or less rigidity is ignored, both equally uncompromising on essentials. Iranians' compromise with quasi-democratic methodology has kept it going for so long.

Thus Shias alongwith religious minorities dread Caliphate's the Sunni version and Sunnis in effect become second class citizens, alongwith other minorities, in the Shia version.

Several points emerge. So long as Islamic beliefs will define politics, Islamic fundamentalism or extremism will result.

A competition among the Mullahs ensues for being more Muslim than the other.

Sectarian divide deepens ipso facto because there is now no overriding political or civilisational situation in which the sectarian differences can be subordinated to a common goal.

Secondly, there was, and is, no solution to sectarian differences in Muslim societies. They have lasted all of 1400 years and more. Let's not run away from facts.

Confronted with actual Shia-Sunni situation, an ordinary Muslim is embarrassed and shows horror of sectarian violence.

It is said it is possible to de-emphasise them. The point is that in a purely Islamic context inter-sect matters demand serious introspection. All minorities want to know what their shares in power, jobs and economy is to be.

These are subjects that can unite as well as divide. Only in a secular and democratic context can religious or sectarian differences be overcome.

But in a pointedly religious context there is only exacerbation of differences. They can only go on becoming worse.

MB Naqvi is a leading Pakistani columnist.