collected a wage but never showed up. The madrassas tapped into a powerful vein of discontent, offering their impoverished students an intoxicating promise: that the shimmering pleasures enjoyed by Pakistan’s dissolute elite also could be theirs – although not until the next life. ‘All the major institutions of our country have failed to solve its problems,’ Abdul Aziz told a journalist at the Red Mosque. ‘Military rulers failed. Democratically elected leaders failed. And the judicial system has failed too. Everyone failed, and because of that, there is a vacuum. Somebody’s got to fill it.’
