By Nick Allen and Nadeem Sarwar
 DPA
Islamabad : As Pakistanis grow accustomed to stick-wielding militant students prowling the streets of Islamabad with apparent impunity, residents live with the daily threat of serious unrest exploding on their doorstep.
City life in recent weeks has been marked by ever more brazen acts of harassment by zealots attached to the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, and its two madrassas from where two brother clerics have vowed to implement strict Islamic Sharia law "in every inch of Pakistan".
Tensions ebbed Thursday when the clerics set free two captive policemen "as a gesture of goodwill" after more than 30 of their students were released from custody. But many think this is just a lull between rounds of a larger fight.
"Islamabad was very calm city before the militant activities of Lal Masjid started but now people live in constant fear and uncertainty," said Shafat Hussain, a doctor who lives in the same central neighbourhood as the notorious mosque.
"The militancy of the Islamic students is intolerable but people are afraid that a police operation against them would lead to retaliation in the form of bomb blasts and suicide attacks," he said, after berating some students near the mosque for "defaming Islam" with their actions.
The students' edicts include warning owners of audio and video entertainment stores to stop selling "un-Islamic" goods, orders to women behind the wheel not to drive, and abductions of alleged prostitutes and even policemen as the students try to secure the release of some of their fellows from custody.
Many locals think the authorities should have taken firm action back in January, when hundreds of female madrassa students occupied a children's library in protest against the demolition of illegally built mosques. The action quickly grew into an anti-vice campaign.
"The government has failed to contain these fundamentalists who are threatening and harassing the public. It seems quite happy to see its authority being challenged," rights activist Farzana Bari said.
Nor is there any prospect of a swift resolution to the conflict. The clerics and their more than 10,000 male and female students show no sign of backing down in their quest for the imposition of Sharia, while the authorities know they are sitting on a powder keg.
Asked what the government planned to do about the mosque, President Pervez Musharraf told BBC this week that its students had been indoctrinated to defend it at all costs.
"How can we take any action? They have weapons and are also prepared to carry out suicide attacks," he said.
Some critics of the embattled president accuse him of manipulating and prolonging the confrontation to divert attention from political crises and to demonstrate to Western backers that he is still needed as a bulwark against extremism.
But if true, he risks losing credibility if the situation spins out of control.
"I am appalled by the fact that the government allowed the situation to come to a point where individuals and groups are allowed to take the law and order situation into their own hands, especially within the capital," a Western iplomat said.
"It seems that the fundamentalists are taking control of individual liberties," she added, saying she began to wear a scarf while driving as a precaution after the clerics warned via their mosque-based FM radio station that Western women should cover up.
"They wander around in obscene dresses, they are almost nude, they have made Islamabad a city of naturists," said madrassa religious school cleric Abdul Aziz Ghazi, referring to some Westerners.
But while wealthier residents condemn the fundamentalists, their hard line finds resonance among poorer, devout members of Islamabad's population of just under a million people.
"This country was created in the name of Islam but the government is trying to impose the way of life of the infidels. Ghazi is demanding the Islamic system in the country and we support him," said Zameer Khan, a street vendor selling bags.
"I do not like violence but when the government fails to eliminate vice from society then someone has to set about the task, and it is pious students of the Lal Masjid," said Naila Khan, a housewife who was shopping near the mosque.