One of the mistakes of some coverage of extremist movements in different parts of the world is the presumption that ideologies are simply generated and transmitted in a vacuum: those people are just crazy, and you can’t change them. In fact, with the consolidation of Nazi Power in Germany after 1933, and, more recently, with the events leading up to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 (see this), the specific medium through which extremists propagated their ideas — namely, the radio — mattered a great deal.
Radio also figures keenly today in some of the most unstable regions of Pakistan, an issue explored in depth in a story in this month’s issue of Himal Southasian, “Mullah Radio.” In some regions of Pakistan, including the Swat Valley and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), militant Islamists have been particularly effective in spreading their message via FM radio. One key figure is a guy named Maulana Fazlullah:
[Maulana] Fazlullah set up an illegal FM radio station, known as Fazlullah FM, broadcasting on 92 megahertz. The technology to do so was not only quite affordable, costing as little as PKR 15,000 (less than USD 200); it was also completely portable, thus allowing its owners to easily outpace the authorities’ attempts to shut them down. Despite the broadcast’s relatively small coverage area (it was at first unable even to reach the rim of the Swat Valley), Fazlullah’s nightly tirades against the Americans and then-President Pervez Musharraf quickly earned him a degree of fame among the locals, who dubbed him the ‘Radio Mullah’. (link)
The particular ins and outs of Radio Fazlullah are also worth attending to: Continue reading
