The Indians love to hate him. The Europeans are frowning at him. The fundamentalists are issuing death threats against him. The professional politicians are throwing mud at him. And even the Americans, who only recently applauded him, are now grumbling.

The man in question, of course, is Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf. Paradoxically, the fact that almost everyone seems to be unhappy with him right now may well be a sign that he is doing something right.

What is it exactly that Musharraf is doing that so many do not like?

The Indians do not like him because he has turned out not to be the typical "military dictator" that Pakistan has produced from time to time.

His austere lifestyle, his refusal to build a cult of personality, and the fact that he has not thrown thousands of opponents in prison, mark him out from dictators like Auyb Khan and Zia-ul Haq. Musharraf has also distinguished himself from another former dictator, Yahya Khan, by refusing to be drawn into a dangerous showdown with India.

The Europeans criticize Musharraf because he is not imposing measures and approving lifestyles, all in the name of human rights, that a majority of Pakistanis would find offensive to their religious beliefs.

Pakistan’s professional politicians dislike the general because he has deprived them of their business. For decades, the business of politics in Pakistan has been a politics of business. Some 2,000 professional politicians owe the various Pakistani states banks something like $30 billion in overdue loans. In Pakistan, people have been entering politics to get their hand into the cookie jar, so to speak, and not to manage the affairs of society.

The Americans are frowning at Musharraf because he has not sent troops to close all the madrasas. He has also insisted that due process be respected in the case of alleged terrorists put on trial.

Because Musharraf holds one of the most dangerous and difficult jobs in the world right now, the attacks launched against him, including by some supposed friends, are both unfair and counterproductive. The world needs a stable Pakistan right now, both to root out the remainders of the Al-Qaeda terrorist gang and to defuse the situation in the subcontinent.

To be sure, predictions about Pakistan heading for "an Islamic explosion" have proved utterly out of place. The country has experienced several terrorist attacks in recent months. In March, a suicide bomber killed five people, including two Americans in an Islamabad church. In May, another suicide bomber killed 11 French naval engineers in Karachi. In June, a remote-control bomb killed 12 Pakistanis outside the US consulate in Karachi. In another incident this month, nine European tourists were injured in a grenade attack in the North West Frontier Province.

These incidents, while obviously tragic, do not amount to a major threat to Pakistan’s stability. And there is growing evidence that there is no significant constituency for the ideology of terror anywhere in Pakistan. Considering Musharraf’s performance since he seized power in a bloodless coup in October 1999, one might say: so far, so good.

Now, however, there are signs that the general-president may be putting himself on a slippery slope. He is proposing constitutional changes that appear to be ill-thought and half-baked. The root of the problem is Musharraf’s misunderstanding of what is called " the Turkish model".

Put most simply, the Turkish model is based on two key principles. The first is respect for a constitutional system that guarantees the Turkish Republic’s secular character. The second is an acknowledgment of the role of the armed forces as guardians and protectors of that constitution. Since the 1920s, the Turkish Army has intervened four times to "correct" the course of nation’s politics by changing the government of the day. But in every case, the generals took care to let politicians and/or technocrats run the government. They insisted that a clear demarcation line be maintained between the military and the civilian authorities. No one could be army chief and president or prime minister at the same time.

Musharraf, however, is proposing a system under which he will retain his position as president while remaining commander of the armed forces. He also wants to give the president executive powers that would render the position of the prime minister superfluous. In other words, what he is proposing is closer to the Arab model of military regimes rather than the Turkish model.

In any case, the question remains whether or not the Turkish model is applicable to Pakistan or, indeed, to any other Muslim country. The Algerians and the Tunisians have flirted with the Turkish model in different ways while the Sudanese have also been tempted by it at different times. Right now, the Turkish model is also being looked at by many Iraqis as they think of the post-Saddam Hussein era. Because most Muslim states lack credible political institutions, the army is often regarded as the only organ of state around which a national system could be formed.

The Turkish model, although it does have much to offer some Muslim nations, is rarely suitable for others. It is based on a strong sense of Turkish national, one might even say racial, identity. It has denied substantial minorities such as the Kurds and ethnic Arabs a chance for self-definition and self-expression within the system, thus provoking decades of tension and even war. Pakistan, on the other hand, consists of several nations with different histories, cultures and languages, united only by their common Islamic faith. To introduce the Turkish concept of secularism into Pakistan would amount to a denial of its founding principle. In other words, if Pakistan is not to be run as an Islamic system, it has no reason to be.

The Turkish Republic was founded as, and continues to be a highly centralized state. This is not possible in Pakistan that, as already noted, is a synthesis of different nations. This is why Pakistan has constantly tried, at times with some success, to develop a federal system.

Musharraf’s idea of creating a National Security Council based on the Turkish model is a good one. Such a council could act as a watchdog to prevent both the armed forces and the civilian government from exceeding their legal powers or using their positions for self-enrichment. But for the exercise to succeed, it is important that the army stay out of day-to-day politics. Musharraf wants it both ways.

And this may be his first major mistake.