ety was accustomed to the practice of many religions.Today, one sixth of the world and 95 percent of the people of Pakistan are Muslim. Most Muslims in Pakistan take religion much more seriously than Americans or Europeans do. There are much fewer agnostics or freethinkers in Pakistan than there are in the West. For most Pakistanis, religion is not so much a matter of individual belief as it is a matter of revealed truth and a lifetime duty. A quarter of all Pakistanis pray five times a day. Many more pray at least once a day. The times a day when a crier, or an amplified taped recording of a crier, gives the azan, or prayer call, are just before dawn, after noon, an hour before sunset, about an hour after sunset, and about two and a half hours after sunset. Before entering a mosque (a Muslim temple) men take their sandals off at the entrance. (Women usually do not go to mosques.) Then they wash their hands and feet at an outdoor basin before and imam (priest) leads them on prayer. A rural imam is usually a poorly educated man who teaches children to read the Qur'an (religious book), delivers sermons on Fridays, deeps up the grounds of the mosque, and presides at weddings and funerals, like his father and grandfather did before him. Villagers commonly call their imam a "mullah," but in cities this is considered to be a disrespectful term to use. In an urban mosque, the imam who leads prayers is more likely to be a maulvi, someone who is educated in the scripture and doctrines of Islam, or a maulana, a maulvi who has studied at the highest lever. Imams, Maulvis, and maulvanas together are known as the ulems, or clergy, even though there is no organized faction of clerics in Islam, except among members of the Siha sect. Prayers are in Arabic (learned from memory) and usually last about 15 minutes. One of an imam's most common sayings during prayer is "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great"). Worshippers face west by southwest, which from Pakista...
