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  #1  
Old Saturday, May 26, 2007
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Hafsa defiance: what is the regime waiting for?

By Dr Moonis Ahmar

“There were only six Taliban who enforced Shariah in Afghanistan and we are 10,000. Then how cannot we enforce Shariah at least in Islamabad?” ––Maulana Abdul Aziz, Incharge of Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa

TWO fanatic brothers, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa are at war with the state in the heart of Islamabad. They and their followers, about 10,000, are armed to the teeth, have enough ammunition and have many trained suicide bombers to meet the state power, if attacked. They have formed ‘Qazi courts’ consisting of ten Muftis and intend to enforce, at least in the capital, their brand of Shariah by force –– their original goal, of course, being to blackmail the state in the name of religion to continue to keep possession of the illegally grabbed mosque complex land.

The regime, committed to root out terrorism in the country, finds itself helpless, if not demoralised, to meet the unusual threat. Last week’s events showed an unusual rise in temperature in the war of nerves between the clerics’ brigade and the Islamabad administration, raising fears of a brutal showdown. A large contingent of the police force, about 7,000, was brought by the authorities from Punjab cities in what looked like a ‘shock and awe’ method to unnerve the militants. They took positions around the Lal Masjid, causing panic among the residents as the capital city was sealed off. The militants inside the mosque also took positions on the rooftops and outside the premises. A ‘jhad’ was declared by them on loudspeakers.

But the clerics had the last laugh as the local administration decided to put off the much-awaited assault on grounds that it would lead to desecration of the mosque and physical harm to female students inside it –– as it was revealed to it only after the police were called in. So, the regime, which has already seen its writ being badly shattered during the last five months, again failed to put its foot down to recover its lost face and bring the clerics’ revolt to an end. It was wrong in its calculations that a greater show of police force would make them see reason. It goes without saying that the clerics’ defiance bodes ill for the regime and the state and sets a dangerous precedent of resorting to blackmail of any kind by using religion.

The two seminaries, Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Faridia and the adjoining Lal Mosque are claimed to be owned by the Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Jamia Hafsa is believed to be the largest female seminary in the Muslim world, educating more than 6,500 students. Maulana Abdullah, father of the two brothers, was also a priest in the Lal Masjid and was one of Zia’s favourites because of his pro-Jihad leanings. The two brothers are also reported to have had links with Jaish-i-Mohammad and Harkatul Mujahiden, the banned militant outfits.

The current crisis began in February this year when the Hafsa students occupied the Islamabad’s children library to protest against demolition of the mosques by Capital Development Authority (CDA). Since then, the standoff between the two sides remains unresolved, notwithstanding the peace efforts by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain. However, on May 11 he expressed the fear that the ‘deal’ which he had brokered with the clerics might ‘fail’ because of delaying tactics by the CDA. According to the deal, seven demolished mosques would be rebuilt at where they had been before. Besides, the two clerics had agreed to vacate the library as soon as a woman librarian was appointed and after that no male or female student would carry sticks.

According to the PML chief, the brothers had agreed that only genuine madrassah students would stay inside the compound, moral policing in markets would stop, all observation posts would be removed, provocative speeches would be stopped and all banners displayed around the two institutions would be removed. Ironically, despite all these assurances, the situation remains unchanged and, meantime, the two brothers have hardened their defiance and stepped up their insistence on enforcing the Shariah in Islamabad.

The clerics have been sending their ‘moral police’ to different parts of Islamabad to enforce Shariah by attacking music shops and threatening citizens. On May 11, after Friday prayers, the Lal Masjid administrators distributed among the worshippers pamphlets containing 50 guidelines for the enforcement of Shariah in all spheres of life including legislation, human rights, education, health, employment, taxation and banking. They asked the media to formulate a code of conduct to deal with obscenity. The government officials should undergo special training to fully understand their Islamic duties. They demanded Urdu be declared official language and that interest-based banking system be abolished to be replaced by an Islamic one.

Unfortunately, the Lal Masjid episode is the outcome of the establishment’s calculated policy to give free hand to some religious elements to pursue their political agenda outside the ambit of law. For the feudal-oriented ruling elites, the real threat does not stem from such fanatic religious groups, but from democratic forces which can, if they happen to come into power, disempower them.

In preventing the advent of democracy, extremist Islamic groups and the establishment are the natural allies. For long, the Musharraf regime had looked the other way when dozens of private Shariat courts were established in different parts of Pakistan. Currently, there are 54 private Shariat courts. Hafiz Saeed’s Jamaatal Dawa (JD) runs 24 and Siphah-i-Sahaba five in different parts of the country. In the Shakai agreement in 2004, in the tribal areas of Pakistan the government had allowed Baitullah Mehsud to enforce Shariat in the areas under his control. He not only established courts but also formed a Shariah police. Reports of attacking schools, video and barbershops in tribal areas and some parts of the NWFP in the name of enforcing Shariah indicate the mushrooming of such elements who in the name of Islam want to impose their way of life on the rest of society.

At least on two occasions, the government should have taken strong action against the mosque complex administration. First, when it issued last year a ‘fatwa’ that a funeral prayer and Muslim burial of a soldier killed fighting in Waziristan is not valid. The fatwa was signed by other 500 so-called scholars. Till 2005, Maulana Aziz was serving as the official ‘peshimam’ in Lal Masjid. It is still a government-run mosque and is controlled by the Ministry of Religious Affairs. The Maulana was however dismissed from service after his issuance of the fatwa. But he was reinstated on the intervention of Ejazul Haq, the federal minister of religious affairs. Besides, he was declared a proclaimed offender in a murder case two years ago but has so far not been arrested by the state authorities. Such a timid behaviour of the state was backed by a section of the establishment.

Second, the occupation of children’s library that encouraged the two clerics to mobilize seminary students was not timely vacated.

It was primarily because of the severe warning by the elements belonging to Waziristan against any crackdown on the mosque militants that the government gave up the idea of taking any action against the seminaries. Around 5,000 armed men from Waziristan had come to Islamabad to express their solidarity with them.

As long as the ruling elites continue to pursue a non-democratic and exploitive approach on matters of national importance, religious and ethnic extremist groups will remain a threat. The problem is that the so-called secular elite of Pakistan is least concerned about addressing issues which cause social injustices, political instability and economic exploitation of the masses. People at the helm of affairs fail to realize the fact that the tendency to create a state within a state provides enough space to religious fanatic individuals and groups.

Instead of focusing on the areas of human development, improving the quality of life of people, establishing stable economic and political institutions and the rule of law, the state is more eager to maintain the status quo and prevent a positive political change in the country. Overcoming the steady rise of religious fanaticism in Pakistan is not easy because of the systematic policy of patronization pursued by a segment of ruling establishment. The Lal Masjid affair proves the bitter fact of state’s inability to ensure rule of law and provide basic security to its citizens.

The writer teaches at the department of international relations, University of Karachi.
amoonis@hotmail.com
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Old Tuesday, May 29, 2007
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Government inaction
A part-real, part-imagined chronology of what Lal Masjid brand of Shariah entails for the country

By Arif Jamal

January 21, 2007

Scores of completely veiled girl students from Jamia Hafsa, armed with batons and bamboos, break the locks of the only public library for children in Islamabad, which is adjacent to the Lal Masjid, and occupy it. They are protesting the demolition of illegally constructed mosques on stolen land. They say they are raising their voice because the local residents had failed to do that.

The Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Fareedia are affiliated with the Lal Masjid. The Capital Development Authority, reportedly under the instructions from federal intelligence agencies, had demolished illegally constructed mosques including Amir Hamza mosque on the Murree Road to improve the security of the VIP motorcades frequently commuting on that highway. They justified their action with an old ruling of the Council of Islamic Ideology (CII) that such mosques and madrasas are unIslamic.

January 26, 2007

The event attracts little attention from the national press and no action from the government till January 26, 2007 when, during his Friday sermon, Khateeb of the Lal Masjid Maulana Abdul Aziz asks the government to reconstruct all the seven illegally constructed mosques or face suicide attacks. Minutes after his threat, a security guard at a local five star hotel died in a suicide attack. Intelligence agencies reportedly suspect al-Furqan, a breakaway group of Jaish-i-Mohammad, of being behind the suicide bombing. Al-Furqan is led by Commander Abdul Jabbar, once number two to Jaish-i-Mohammad founding amir Maulana Masood Azhar, who was closely linked with the Lal Masjid clerics. He was arrested by intelligence agencies for his involvement in the suicide attacks on General Musharraf in 2003. Abdul Jabbar had recently been released from the custody of an unknown intelligence agency.

January 27, 2007

The male students from Jamia Fareedia, who had joined their veiled female colleague, have been turning the Lal Masjid into a fortress without anybody noticing it from the very first day of the crisis. Now, they start going out in the markets and threaten video shops to close their immoral business. There is a sense of insecurity all over the city. The Lal Masjid moral brigade includes many baffled outsiders.

February 6, 2007

Islamabad has reportedly been receiving unprecedented threats of suicide attacks from previously unknown groups for several weeks now. Intelligence agencies are working to foil many terrorist attacks in Islamabad. Another suicide attack takes place at the Islamabad airport.

February 9, 2007

Seminary students from outside Islamabad, particularly from the tribal areas, have been joining their co-believers in the Lal Masjid without any hindrance since the start of the crisis. The government appears to have decided to take actions against the illegal acts of the Lal Masjid clerics and their followers. Police force is deployed around the mosque. The two clerics vow to resist any action. Rawalpindi and Islamabad are under siege both by law-enforcement agencies and seminary students for all practical purposes.

February 11, 2007

Four leading jihadist ulema, namely Maulana Saleemullah Khan, Maulana Sher Ali, Maulana Taqi Usmani, and Maulana Abdur Razzaq Iskandar, with tacit government blessing, come to negotiate with Lal Masjid administration and resolve the crisis. They hold negotiations with the two clerics and support their point of view in the meeting but express their helplessness in public.

February 12, 2007

The government finally bows down before the ulema and promises to reconstruct the demolished mosques. Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Ijazul Haq inaugurates the reconstruction of Ameer Hamza Mosque. A five-member and an 11-member committee are formed to resolve the issue permanently. It appears the issue will be resolved soon. However, that does not happen. The situation continues to worsen and the moral brigade of the Lal Masjid continues to spread its tentacles.

March 28, 2007

The moral brigade of the Lal Masjid breaks into a private house and kidnaps three women and a six-month old baby. They accuse the women (and the baby) of running a brothel. She is released after she accepts to abandon her profession under threat to her life. Later, she denies the charge. Many believe she was punished for being a Shia. The government turns a blind eye to the activities of the Lal Masjid moral brigade, their illegal acts go unchecked.

May 18, 2007

Under the direction of the two clerics, the students from Jamia Fareedia kidnap four policemen who were on duty. The Lal Masjid asks the government to release all the 11 students who had been arrested for burning a video-shop in the capital and other illegal acts. Police registers an FIR but is stopped from taking action to get the kidnapped policemen freed from illegal confinement.

May 19, 2007

Under an agreement with the government, the Lal Masjid released two abducted policemen against the release of four arrested students. They said they would release the other two policemen only after the release of the remaining seven arrested students. The government denies to have any one of them in custody.

May 20, 2007

Nearly 13,000 police and Rangers gather in Islamabad to carry out an operation to get the abducted policemen released from illegal confinement at the Lal Masjid. At midnight, the government once again bows down for unexplained reasons.

December 2007

Encouraged by the happenings in Islamabad, the students of the Darul Uloom in Gujranwala demand the imposition of shariat in the country. In the meanwhile, following in the footsteps of the students of the Lal Masjid, they announce to impose their own shariat in the neighbourhood. The moral brigade of the Darul Uloom in Gujranwala roams around the city, shutting down the video-shops and throwing acid on the faces of unveiled women. The pace of Talibanisation in Gujranwala is faster than in Islamabad, given its more conservative population.

December 2008

In the year 2008, more Darul Ulooms in Punjab announce to impose shariat in their neighbourhoods. They all start by shutting down video-shops and throwing acid on the faces of unveiled women.

January 2009

The local warlords try to snatch territory from the neighbouring warlords in efforts to increase their area of influence. The bigger warlords chase their weaker rivals and increase their influence.

March 2009

All the Islamist and jihadist forces are unleashed after having shown patience at the local successes of their rivals. The big militias try to overrun the small warlords. The clever ones join the bigger militias while the smaller ones are eliminated from the scene. Then, the bigger militias wage jihad against their sectarian rivals, who were once grouped in the MMA.

December 2009

The process of Afghanistanisation is complete by the end of the year 2009. Local clerics-turned-local warlords are controlling their neighbourhoods, in some cases, small towns, and, in a few cases, cities. The liberal and democratic people have died or left the country. One rarely sees women in public life or in the streets.

The brief chronology of events from January to May 2007 is real while from May 2007 to December 2009 is imagined. If the situation continues as it is, the reality may not be very different provided the regional or international situation remains the same. The reality may be worse if the other regional actors such as India and Afghanistan decide, individually or collectively, to take action against the growing jihadist threat. The situation may improve only if the jihad factory is shut down for good. That is unlikely to happen in the given circumstances.

All hopes of the situation getting better vanished after the federal government decided not to take action to get the two kidnapped policemen freed. The two clerics and their militia are still holding the two policemen at the time of writing this article. With each passing day, the Lal Masjid episode adds to unanswered questions. The latest unanswered question is why did the government refuse to take action after gathering 13,000 police and Rangers?

We will never get the official answer. However, the Musharraf regime stands exposed for encouraging the rise of the fundamentalists in the country. The government had been explaining away the rise of the Pakistani Taliban in the tribal areas and the NWFP by giving different excuses. However, the Musharraf regime has to blame itself for the rise of fundamentalism in the national capital, and the rest of the country.
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Old Tuesday, June 05, 2007
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Kaaba imam’s advice

ARE the Lal Masjid clerics listening? On Saturday, the imam of Kaaba, Sheikh Abdul Rahman al-Sudais, said some truths that should be taken note of not just by the fanatics running the bizarre Lal Masjid show but by all those waging private jihad on their own people. Even though he was talking in reference to the Lal Masjid stand-off, the imam’s words of advice and caution apply to all those who have made a cruel joke of jihad and all noble Islamic concepts. Talking to newsmen at the Punjab House in Islamabad, Sheikh Sudais said that mosques should not become centres of mischief, violence and conflict. He added that individuals could not arrogate to themselves the right to enforce Sharia, because that was the responsibility of the state. Unfortunately, the kind of thinking the Lal Masjid epitomises has been with us for long, accentuated by the fallout of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The ‘jihad’ against the Soviet Union turned out to be a tragedy for Pakistan, for it did incalculable harm to this country’s social fabric and became a source of what is today the world’s number one problem — terrorism. While there is no doubt that the Afghans were justified in taking up arms against their country’s occupiers, many countries, including America, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, gave it the colour of jihad and found Ziaul Haq’s Pakistan a willing tool in their hands. The US armed and funded jihadi organisations, which later, even after the Soviet withdrawal, developed a stake in the continuation of the jihad, the choice of the targets depending on the jihadi organisations’ political expediency. Sometimes fellow mujahideen in Afghanistan were the target; sometimes Pakistan’s own people and governments. The current stand-off at the Lal Masjid testifies to this kind of obscurant philosophy.

The Lal Masjid clerics have failed to realise that self-righteousness, arrogance and instigation to violence lead to anarchy in society, producing the very opposite of what they claim to fight for. Thus, obeying the Quranic commandment to “spread good and suppress evil” requires wisdom, mercy and goodwill towards all. The Lal Masjid leadership, on the other hand, seems to have taken leave of its common sense by glorifying crime and violence in the name of religion. The two brothers have threatened to unleash a wave of suicide bombings. In other words, the Lal Masjid’s brainwashed boys and girls would kill innocent men, women and children because they want to enforce Sharia. One could understand their reservations about some of the existing laws, but is slaughtering innocent human beings the way to turn these laws Islamic? Similar examples abound. In Fata, fanatics do not let doctors give polio drops to children, they attack shops selling CDs, and threaten barbers giving shaves to men by bombing their salons.

The pity is that while the imam of Kaaba speaks the truth, most religious parties and leaders have for political reasons chosen to keep quiet on the Lal Masjid stand-off and other manifestations of ‘jihad’ led by semi-literates. Nothing has done greater harm to Pakistan and to the cause of Islam than the religious parties’ and elements’ brazen use of Islam for political and obscurantist purposes. The vast majority of the people of Pakistan are Muslim, and they love their religion, but they have shown no sympathy for the Lal Masjid brigade. It is time Pakistani ulema, too, realised the danger to Pakistan from such infantile concepts of ‘enforcing’ Islam.
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Old Sunday, June 10, 2007
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Imam’s rebuke to clerics




By Kunwar Idris
Sunday,JUNE 10, 2007


MAULANA Abdul Rashid Ghazi, deputy chief and spokesman of the Lal Masjid-Hafsa-Faridia establishment, has called upon Gen Pervez Musharraf to abdicate in favour of the then visiting imam of Kaaba, anoint him as Amirul Momineen and let him govern Pakistan under the laws of Sharia with the help of a consultative council of the ulema.
The suggestion may sound frivolous but it is hard to imagine the Lal Masjid clerics jesting. Their continuing disdain and defiance of the authority of state and the intimidating visits of their students to music shops, revellers at wedding parties and to the capital’s premier hospital to investigate blasphemy charges against some Christian nurses show their relentless belligerence, and not a jocular streak in their pursuits or behaviour.

To vindicate their right to enforce the Sharia in Pakistan (they want to settle for nothing less in bargaining with the government ministers and Chaudhry Shujaat Husain) they have now chosen the wrong person to look up to. Though a scholar of some distinction who is respected for his precise and emotional recitation of the Holy Quran, Sheikh Al-Sudais is, after all, only a paid employee of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia where even the monarch is content to be recognised as the servant of the holy places of Islam.

Sheikh Al-Sudais, thus, could have no pretensions to being the commander of the faithful nor would he be accepted as such by the general body of Muslims in Pakistan or elsewhere. The kingdom of which he is a subject allows public expression and enforcement only of the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam (its practitioners are in a minority in Pakistan) and that too as interpreted by the government.

The other doctrinal schools — the Hanafi, Shaafi and Maliki — and the Shias are left out. The Shias who make up nearly 10 per cent of the population feel particularly sequestered for the Jafari fiqh does not even form part of the kingdom’s judicial structures nor are they included in the royal consultative councils.

The Arabian peninsula comprising many independent regions was unified by the puritanical ideas of Ibn Abd al-Wahab and the combat strength of the Ibn Saud clan both hailing from Najd and campaigning together for well over a century. The combination of this austere religious creed and raw power has endured and remains the hallmark of present-day Saudi Arabia. Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud captured Riyadh in 1902 and, riding a wave of conquests that followed, expelled the Sharifian Hashemite ruler of Hejaz and founded the Saudi dynasty in 1924.

Against this background the imam of Kaaba had no option but to react to the flattering suggestion of the Lal Masjid clerics with a rebuke. Enforcing Sharia, he told them, was a business of the state and not theirs. The imam then went on to beseech the Almighty to save President Musharraf from the machinations of the envious and the wicked so that he and King Abdullah together could defeat the forces of Islamic extremism and exterminate the enemies of Islam.

Overwhelmed by a public reception that could well rival the pope’s in the Philippines or Brazil, the imam described Pakistan and Saudi Arabia as citadels of Islam. In a narrow liturgical sense perhaps they are but, woefully, international humanitarian organisations widely and frequently disseminate their findings that the freedom of thought, conscience and religion in both countries is severely curtailed by the laws of the state and arbitrary decrees of the clergy. In today’s Saudi Arabia, the government and the ulema blend into one harmonious whole. In Pakistan they are sometimes in cahoots and sometimes in conflict.

Truly speaking, if there is a country today that comes closest to being called the citadel of Islam it is Iran. It has its own version of Amirul Momineen in Ayatollah Khamanaei, a consultative council of Islamic scholars and an elective parliament. The women are compelled to observe a code of behaviour but are free to join any profession alongside men. But this statement carried any further would open doors to a controversy that is best avoided.

Both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, like every other country of the world, Muslim or otherwise, are territorial states each having its own form of government, laws and national interests which are not entirely linked to religious beliefs. If beliefs were to weigh, Indonesia and Malaysia wouldn’t be so closely and profitably involved in Asean or Saudi Arabia in the Arab League while all three are content to pay only lip service to the moribund OIC.

The people here showered flowers and affection on Imam Al-Sudais because he came from the land of the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and leads prayers in the House of God there. While the welcome he received cannot be taken as an endorsement of the ideas and values that the present-day Saudi kingdom represents, the imam’s advice must be heeded.

The litmus test would be whether the Lal Masjid clerics submit to the his view that implementing the rule of Sharia is not their job, and that they must not reduce a place of worship to a centre of mischief where the students, especially veiled women, are used as pawns in their political ambition.

As schools of thought go, clerics Aziz and Rashid are closest to the imam’s doctrine. Maybe, at the end of the day, they are left wondering whether the imam came only to convey this dampening message from the king and clergy of Saudi Arabia. Whatever the purpose of the imam’s visit and the authority behind his view, the people of Pakistan have the right to hope that their dithering government would now feel fortified enough to enforce its writ at least at the centre of its power.


http://www.dawn.com/2007/06/10/op.htm#2
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Old Tuesday, June 26, 2007
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Lal Masjid theatrics: mob rule or 'topi drama'?



By Prof Adil Najam
Tuesday,June 26, 2007
The standoff created by the attack on a 'massage' centre in Islamabad by the Lal Masjid militia and the abduction of a number of Chinese nationals lasted less than a day. The criminality of this shameful act notwithstanding, the matter was thankfully resolved and the 'pious posse' from Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa released the kidnapped individuals. However, far from resolving the larger crisis of puritanical vigilantism, this episode has only deepened it. The government has succumbed, yet again, to the militant tactics of the Lal Masjid leadership who have, in turn, declared victory. This episode will further embolden the already violence-prone brigands at the two madressahs and we are likely to see an escalation in their demands as well as their tactics. Meanwhile, with the government has once again demonstrated an inability and/or unwillingness to act decisively. The much-cherished 'writ of the state' continues to rot in tatters.

This loss of control by the state apparatus -- not only in the far reaches of the tribal belt but in the very heart of the federal capital -- is much more than a spiralling 'law and order' situation; it is an erosion of state sovereignty. The militants from Lal Masjid have been acting not just with impunity, but in equality to state functionaries. With all the pretensions of a state within a state, Lal Masjid 'authorities' are now negotiating as equals with government 'authorities.' And they have been doing so with increasing frequency and with amazing success.

What is even more surprising than the abdication of control by the state is the lack of outright outrage amongst the public. Somehow our national passions are far more likely to be flared by the award of meaningless honours to unimpressive novelists by foreign governments thousands of miles away than by the spectacle of crumbling state sovereignty in the very heart of our national capital. This lack of public outcry is partly -- but only partly -- explained by the political savvy of the Lal Masjid leadership. Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his comrades have shown great ingenuity in their choice of issues and in operational execution. By focusing on issues of public morality and highlighting the government's failures in enforcing its own laws, they have been able to present themselves as reformers rather than as bullies and as guardians of social virtue rather than as promoters of intolerance.

Much more than that -- and even amongst those who fully recognise the gravity of situation -- one finds a pervasive feeling that there is more to the Lal Masjid theatrics than meets the eye. Even members of parliament have been suggesting that the government and its intelligence agencies are manipulating the Lal Masjid militancy. There is a widely held view that even if the intelligence agencies are not actively 'managing' the Lal Masjid, the government is choosing to tolerate and possibly encourage its antics for its own short-term goals. The common refrain is that everything happening at the Lal Masjid is part of an elaborate 'topi drama' -- an intricate, carefully calibrated, stage-managed confrontation which is not a confrontation at all.

But why would the government (either directly or through its intelligence agencies) collude with the leadership of the Lal Masjid to produce or tolerate situations -- the continuing capture of a children's library, abduction of alleged brothel workers, hostage taking of policemen, and now the kidnapping of Chinese nationals -- that are clearly embarrassments for the government? That the government, despite all the instruments of force at its command, has been repeatedly caving in to the demands of the stick-totting madrassah students has fuelled rumours of secret deals and devious deceptions. But it also makes the Lal Masjid crowd look like heroes even as the government comes out looking ineffectual.

What possible benefits does the government derive that would outweigh this embarrassment? Two reasons are commonly given. First, there is the theory of domestic payoff. It is argued that strategically timed eruptions from Lal Masjid can provide valuable respite and distraction from other irksome political crises, especially the continuing saga of the chief justice debacle. The second theory posits the possibility of international payoffs. In this case, the argument is that since each eruption from the Lal Masjid is quickly contained, but never fully resolved, the military regime is sending a message to its US patrons that (a) Pakistan remains a country at the brink of fundamentalist fervour and (b) military control is needed to keep such militant groups in check.

Even if there were some in the realm of power who once actually believed in such ideas, neither of these theories is empirically defensible today. In relation to the first, it is now abundantly evident that Lal Masjid woes add to, instead of distracting from, the domestic political mess. Quite clearly, nothing that has happened by or in the Lal Masjid has made even the slightest dent in the public or media enthusiasm for following the minutia of the chief justice story. The second theory stands equally discredited. Instead of viewing the Lal Masjid skirmishes as evidence of just how bad things are in Pakistan, most analysts in Washington now see this unending drama as proof that the military government is increasingly unable to contain the rebirth of Talibanism in Pakistan. In short, the continuation of the Lal Masjid crisis is not merely an embarrassment for the government, it is actually dangerous for the regime; both domestically and internationally.

I am, of course, not privy to the inner thinking of the intelligence apparatchiks in Pakistan. However, it is at least likely that this is less of a 'topi drama' than people seem to believe. That whatever the relationship between intelligence agencies and the Lal Masjid might have been in the past, today the 'movement' (as Maulana Ghazi likes to call it) has assumed a life all its own as a very potent -- and ugly -- manifestation of self-sustaining vigilantism and mob rule. If so, the government's inaction against this 'movement' can be explained either as a gross miscalculation of the lurking dangers, or it could be based on a real fear that touching the hornets nest at Lal Masjid would unleash demons so horrific that our already divided society will be further torn apart. The government's own statements suggest that it is the latter.

Just like standing still in the middle of the road at the sight of the blinding lights of a truck speeding towards it does not save the life of the stunned deer, doing nothing about this escalating crisis out of fear that doing anything will only make things worse is not going to help the government, or Pakistan. Something needs to be done, and done fast.

Contrary to popular logic, there may be important payoffs for the government if it does act to judiciously dismantle militancy at Lal Masjid. Internationally, it will be seen as an important victory and a real step against rising Talibanisation. Domestically, it will mean one less crisis to worry about and could rally support from the moderate majority in Pakistan who once supported General Musharraf but have now become disenchanted. Ultimately, however, the most important reason to dismantle the militancy is that it is the right thing to do.



The writer is a professor of International Negotiation and Diplomacy at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, US, and the founding editor of Pakistaniat.com Email: adil.najam@ tufts.edu


http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=61940
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The Lal Masjid defiance




By Tasneem Noorani
Friday, June 29,2007


THE issue of Lal Masjid has been in focus for several months now and has baffled everyone. How is it that the administration and students of a mosque-cum-madressah located in the middle of the federal capital and whose imam is a government employee, have taken upon themselves the task of improving the moral standards of Islamabad residents?

They seem to have arrogated to themselves the powers of the district administration/police for tackling ‘vice’. They have become the unsolicited anti-vice squad of the city.

According to one press report on the recent release of Chinese workers abducted by the seminary students, they were freed only after the DC and SSP Islamabad held talks with the Lal Masjid administration, beseeched it for five hours and even touched the knees of some leading clerics begging them to free the Chinese.

It is difficult to comprehend how a government which has not refrained from using force in Waziristan or Balochistan or for that matter Karachi (May 12), can touch the knees of the Lal Masjid management.

The importance of these incidents can be gauged from press reports that the kidnapping of the Chinese from Islamabad’s F-8/3 sector was being monitored closely by the president and prime minister.

The importance assumed by the Lal Masjid administration is such that they are inviting the ambassadors of countries they have issues with to their premises as if it were the government. And the envoys are obliging them. According to press reports, the Saudi ambassador visited the Lal Masjid, one assumes in lieu of the imam of Kaaba who criticised the conduct of the Lal Masjid brigade, in response to which the Lal Masjid management wanted to explain their position.

As for the number of high-ranking officials visiting the mosque to negotiate, one has lost count. Not to mention the president of the ruling political party. So we have a situation where the mosque management has developed clout which it could not even have dreamt of a few months ago. They are the hottest candidates for TV talk shows and all channels request them for priority time when such incidents take place, even though one of the maulanas does not want his face to be shown on the screen.

Won’t this win-win situation that this particular madressah has devised for itself provide an incentive to other madressah bosses, especially those in Islamabad?

In Islamabad alone, there are 127 madressahs with thousands of students of which the majority are boys. These madressahs are located mostly in residential areas while a few are located in green belts. Almost all the students come from outside the city. Most come from the Northern Areas and the NWFP and some are as young as four years.

Interestingly, these are the only residential education institutions allowed to operate in the city. For regular schools, CDA has strict rules and discourages the opening of new schools in residential areas even though they are only day schools.

As per the ultimate objective of CDA, it is planning to give space to these regular schools in special school sectors so that they can be removed from residential areas. There are no such plans for Islamabad’s madressahs located in residential areas.

Most regular residential schools, like cadet colleges, are in the hinterland or in the suburbs of the cities, so that children can have more space to themselves, cannot disturb the general population and are not adversely influenced by interacting with the general public which comprises all types of people.

The Lal Masjid saga is likely to present a role model to the more than 14,000 madressahs in the country, specially the ones in the capital. From all accounts it is a win-win situation for the Lal Masjid management.

The viewpoint repeatedly expressed by the administration is the fear of loss of life in a confrontation strategy. Now, in a law-enforcement action of any sort, loss of life cannot be ruled out but that does not deter governments from doing their duty. Similarly, a crime does not decrease in its seriousness because it is committed by women, however chivalrous the law-enforcement agencies may want to be.

The fear created by the implicit threat of suicide bombing is a factor which apparently weighs with the government. Unfortunately, this new weapon, though in a few cases real, is mostly being used as a threat.

In the case of the government’s confrontational stance against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the danger of suicide bombings is enhanced. The president and prime minister have faced such attacks in the past for following tough policies. But that has not deterred the government in continuing with its hard stance against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Why then is it being deterred in this case?

Let us assume a scenario in which the government continues to follow a policy of “knee-touching”. We should not be surprised to see raids on more “unIslamic” establishments and, in due course, when a certain momentum has been gained, raids on ordinary residences on the suspicion of unIslamic activities being carried out there.

Can the government afford to allow such arbitrary implementation of values held by such groups? Tomorrow another group of people, from a different school of thought or religious sect, will take their cue from the current situation, threaten suicide bombing, and start enforcing its own point of view by raiding homes and kidnapping people.

The government’s perplexing inaction has given rise to many theories. One is that it is behind the whole affair to distract the public from the general political crisis in the country. Another is that it does not want to open another front by annoying the maulvis, although in this case, the actions of the Lal Masjid has not received the support of mainstream religious parties.

Whatever the reason, this continuing saga, apart from encouraging other groups, is nerve wracking for the representatives of foreign countries based in Islamabad. This is all the more significant as these diplomats’ reports to their capitals and foreign journalists’ reports to their papers are the ones which develop international perceptions about Pakistan.

Unless we sort out this crisis sooner than later, we should not be surprised to see Pakistan slipping a few notches from its already rock-bottom position in independent international surveys under the category of the “most dangerous country”’ or “states on the threshold of failing” etc.

http://www.dawn.com/2007/06/29/op.htm#2
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The Hafsa brigade and Talibanization


Khadim Hussain
Monday,July 02,2007


All national dailies of Pakistan reported on June 24, 2007: “On June 22, 2007, the Hafsa brigade raided a massage parlour in the federal capital and kidnapped several Chinese, most of them women (they have since been released), as part of the ongoing Rasheed-Ghazi brothers’ Jihad to enforce Sharia in Pakistan.” Further, “Riding in three vehicles, the students of Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa as well as the students of Beaconhouse System of Schools raided a massage centre located in a posh Islamabad sector and abducted the inhabitants of the parlour.”

This was the third high profile abduction by the Hafsa brigade. Keeping aside the argument by the Jamia Hafsa and Lal Masjid for the enforcement of a presumably established Islamic code, because the code itself and the means to establish the code have already been challenged by mainstream Islamic scholars in the form of a negative reaction by the Wifaq-ul-Madaris, a board of the madrassas affiliated to the Deobandi school of thought, and by even the religio-politcal parties like Jamiat-e-Ulema-i-Islam and Jamaat-i-Islami, three main and interesting issues emerge from the analysis of the present event of abduction by the Hafsa brigade.

First, the administration of the Lal Masjid and Hafsa claims that the Hafsa brigade took action against the Chinese massage parlour at the behest of students from Beaconhouse Schools System (BSS) (Wikepedia: “The Beaconhouse School System – largest chain of private schools in Asia, located in Pakistan”). It is a system of educational institutions that caters to the elite and upper middle class of Pakistani society. The BSS has adopted the British education system providing courses that enable the students to appear for Cambridge University O and A level examinations, grade 10 and 12 respectively. The BSS has a couple of branches in the federal capital, two junior institutions which have students from grade 1 to 8 and a senior school, also called Beaconhouse Margalla Campus located in H-8, which has students from grade 1 to 12. The cultural environment of the institutions is quite open if not completely liberal. The junior sections provide co-education while the senior sections have separate spaces for boys and girls in the same premises of the Margalla campus.

The recent studies on the system by the graduate students of the universities in Islamabad portray a picture of a completely Western style of education as well as a comparatively liberal environment on the Beaconhouse campuses. Some of these studies even suggest that a majority of the teenage students’ body is addicted to smoking but despite all this, the students who graduate from Beaconhouse, when they join different professional universities in the federal capital, have been observed to have usually more critical thinking, creativity and argumentation. If the claims of the Hafsa and Lal Masijid were believed to be true, what does this indicate? Does it show anarchy? Is it desperation? Is this some kind of psycho-engineering? Is it the sign of a severe kind of confusion that has engulfed Pakistani society after 9/11? Or has Beaconhouse degenerated to transform into another kind of Jamia Hafsa and Jamia Faridia?

Second, Lal Masjid remains under guard for 24 hours by the Islamabad administration. Whenever I happen to pass through sector G of Islamabad, which is three or four times daily at different hours of the day, I find cops on vigil in their blue uniform. They have established a semi-police station by installing a large tent just in front the Lal Masjid. The students of Hafsa and Faridia went from G-6 to F-8/3 in three vehicles (they did not ride in a helicopter of course) to abduct more than half a dozen people. It takes at least 30 minutes to reach F-8/3 from G-6 if there are no traffic jams, which usually there are. The Hafsa brigade had to pass through a number of extremely busy signals after abducting the Chinese from F-8/3. Though the police department in Pakistan is never known for efficiency, keeping in view that the Hafsa issue has attracted the attention of the international media, one would rightly expect that the police might not ignore what was happening in and around the Hafsa and Lala Masjid. What were the whole police department and a host of other intelligence agencies doing when the Chinese were being abducted and brought to the premises of Jamia Hafsa? If they were not aware of what was happening just under their nose, all of them must be tried in a court of law for their inefficiency. If they were aware and let the whole drama be staged on Friday and Saturday, they proved the words of the Islamabad Deputy Commissioner during the release ceremony of the abductees, “We will do it together with Jamia Hafsa.” Probably, one has to interpret the event in a different manner.

The suspended Chief Justice (CJ) of Pakistan had announced to go to Multan from Lahore by road the other day, June 23, 2007, a day after the Chinese were abducted. The CJ’s caravan was predicted to reach Multan within 14 hours, but it had yet to reach Multan even after 30 hours. The earlier journeys of the suspended CJ were known to have gathered unprecedented crowds of lawyers, common people and political workers. Has the government of General Musharraf panicked when the momentum of the movement against it continued to gather more weight and velocity even after forcing the private electronic media not to cover live telecasts of the CJ yatras to different cities of the country? Has the government resorted to using all state resources and especially intelligence agencies to stem the tide of the lawyers’ movement? This line of argument was taken by several members of parliament in the National Assembly during a debate on the Hafsa issue. Minister of State for Interior Affairs, Zafar Warraich, said during the debate in the National Assembly, “I know that taking action is the solution but this could result in fatalities. These people would then demonstrate and play politics with corpses. The government would carry out an operation against the militants if the whole house asked to do it.” This seems to be an ingenious argument. Has the government ever asked permission for action against the militants in Bajaur, North Waziristan and South Waziristan? Has it ever considered the lives of the common people precious enough during forced disappearances? Does the international community at large buy the argument that if General Musharraf is not supported, the militants will take over power in Pakistan? Several political observers and analysts think that the whole movement around the CJ issue, which is gathering momentum with each passing day, revolves around completely structural and secular issues and so they think it absurd to presume that the only alternative to General Musharraf’s government is well-trained militants. It is thus argued that the issues militants take up are not as penetrating in the masses as are shown or perceived by the Western media.

Third, it was previously considered that the wave of Talibanisation prevails only in those areas where the population is largely Pushto speaking. Who brought militancy to Islamabad? The two brothers who lead Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa are on the government payroll. They are regular government servants. They are running their movement from a government-owned mosque. Has somebody from Swat or from Khyber Agency with his FM radio in his pocket come to Islamabad to start a militant action against the alleged brothels of Islamabad? Which area was penetrated from the other is a question yet to be answered by the analysts and government functionaries in Islamabad. Who made an environment conducive for breeding militancy and Talibanization in the region and why? Who allowed the enlightened academics and intelligentsia to be victimized by both the agencies and the militants? Who allows the militants to run their illegal FM radios? Why would the militants be able to force barber shops and video shops close down? These questions are being asked by all and sundry in this ‘land of the pure’.

I discussed these questions with a number of academics, journalists, opinion leaders and development organizations on June 23, 2007. Most of them were of the opinion that the military establishment and the Bush administration both were responsible for these developments in Pakistan. They think that an open debate be initiated in all the educational, political and civil society organizations on the issues of the direction of the Pakistani state, security paradigm of the Pakistani state and the power structure of the state. Some of them believe that the process of debate has already started in the shape of the movement around the CJ issue.

The writer is an academic based in Islamabad

http://www.thepost.com.pk/OpinionNew...05198&catid=11
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Old Thursday, July 05, 2007
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Lal Masjid endgame


Thursday, July 05,2007



The 30th anniversary today of Gen Ziaul Haq's coup d'etat finds a central part of the capital of Pakistan a virtual battlefield. Tuesday, the first day of what is being described as the government's "countdown" to its long-promised operation to end the armed rebellion of the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa clerics, saw ten people dying during exchanges of fire. Residents around the mosque-seminary complex are fleeing their homes and there is a curfew in the area. It is a frightening thought what kind of situation the operation itself would produce. While the death toll so far is most unfortunate, the fact of the matter is that the government seems to have little choice but to act in the manner that it did since Tuesday. It is a sign that the government of President Pervez Musharraf has at last decided to grasp the nettle and started a process it was needlessly putting off. One can only hope that the matter is now resolved without any further loss of life or injury.

Despite the wide welcome the government's reaction has received among ordinary Pakistanis, questions are being raised as to why the basic measures that are being adopted at this late stage were not taken before. If it had been imposed before, the curfew would have prevented the entry of terrorists and their supporters into the complex, with their gadgets and their fearsome weaponry whose very procurement by civilians is a mystery; Maulana Abdul Aziz is a remarkably modern man for someone who is such a strong believer in omens and divinations he bases his jihadi decisions on them. The government has moved only now to disconnect water and electricity to the mosque and seminary. An earlier discontinuation of these would have forced most of those inside to leave sooner or later. It's surprising that the government didn't know that, as is apparent now from the interviews of the bewildered pupils leaving Lal Masjid, a large number of the occupants were virtual prisoners, or at least didn't know exactly why they were there or were being held, more or less, against their will. Their victimisation lends another unfortunate aspect to the authorities' dragging their feet.

Among the critics, there are those who see the delay as part of a government plan to use the operation as a kind of a diversionary tactic -- away from other pressing problems, some of which had been hogging the media spotlight of late. Their argument is that it is not exactly a coincidence that the operation came a day after the government took a severe battering before the Supreme Court's 13-member full court (which also resulted in a blanket ban on intelligence personnel from the superior courts). However, there is no proof really to lend any validity to their standpoint. Other criticisms though, especially those that question how and why the government permitted the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa students to occupy state-owned property for months on end and how the complex managed to build up a sophisticated weapons arsenal (given that it is situated in the heart of the federal capital and at a stone's throw from the headquarters of the ISI) are valid.

As for Lal Masjid itself, a little bit of a history lesson would help contextualise what has happened. The father of the two brothers who run Lal Masjid, Maulana Abdullah, was close to Gen Zia and many a senior politician and military man. During the time of the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, Lal Masjid became a favoured conduit for sending 'mujahideen' to Afghanistan, and also Kashmir. It is also widely believed that he was patron to several sectarian groups such as the banned Sipah-e-Sahaba, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Harkatul Mujahideen. Even now, and as publicly stated by President Musharraf, several members of the banned Jaish-e-Mohammad, for whose leader's (Maulana Masood Azhar) freedom Maulana Abdullah had publicly spoken many a time, were said to be hiding in the compound and helping the two brothers. The question that should be foremost on everyone's minds and which governments past and present need to answer is why the situation was allowed to come to this. Why wasn't the jihadi manufacturing machine fuelled by extremist seminaries and mosques such as Lal Masjid not reined in and kept a tight leash on? Also, the issue of Lal Masjid and what has been happening, especially the revelations that many of the students were not exactly willing residents, should hopefully attract public and media scrutiny on the role played by madressahs towards fostering extremist views in the country. Of course, a solution to this problem is not easy since it involves the decrepit and crumbling mainstream education system, but these are all questions and issues that need answers and introspection.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=63137
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Old Thursday, July 05, 2007
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An end at last?



Thursday,JULY 05,2007

THE Lal Masjid drama was not fully over when these lines were written, but at least 16 people had been killed and countless injured in a bloody confrontation that could have been avoided if common sense had prevailed. The Lal Masjid high command and the government both must answer certain questions. First the chiefs of the Lal Masjid rebellion: in what way have the brothers Rasheed and Ghazi advanced the cause of Islam which was supposed to be the aim behind the ‘government’ and the ‘court’ they had set up in the sacred precincts of the mosque? Does Islam approve of crime — raids on homes, kidnapping, attacks on shops and defiance of the law of the land — to enforce Sharia? Did the raid by girl commandos on the home of a woman of presumed ill repute abolish prostitution throughout the country? Is asking young boys and girls to take the law into their own hands the best way of teaching them Islam and making them good Muslims? Did not the Holy Prophet (PBUH) say that the best Muslim was one from whose hands and tongues other Muslims were safe? Did the self-deluded clerics of the Lal Masjid conform to this Hadith? Did it not occur to them that no government — Islamic or otherwise, democratic or dictatorial, civilian or military — would tolerate the defiance of its writ for long and that sooner or later the government was bound to act, especially after the nationals of a friendly country like China had been kidnapped?

Now the government. If it had to bare its teeth, should it have waited for six long months to do so? Were not the Lal Masjid militants encouraged in their criminality by the government’s kowtowing to the religious right? Did not the invitation to the Imam of Kaaba and the help sought from him for defusing the Lal Masjid crisis betray the government’s will to act? Should foreign help be sought for solving domestic problems, no matter how grave? The government must also let the people know about the role of the secret agencies in this case and their incompetence, if not complicity in the affair. Why did the law enforcement agencies fail to prevent the smuggling of arms and stocks of fuel into the mosque? Why were not non-lethal methods — like cutting off supplies and sequestering the mosque — adopted to tire out the brainwashed lot inside?

The Lal Masjid drama has not yet come to an end, though the denouement seems to have begun. But one thing is clear: the government must not offer more talks. Such a move will be misunderstood and encourage the misguided clerics. The Lal Masjid brothers are guilty of blackmail, murder, vandalism, trespass and kidnapping. If they surrender or are captured alive, they must be given the benefit of a fair trial in an open court. The crimes they have committed are a blot on the fair names of the ulema. That is not how the great ulema produced by South Asia — Shah Waliullah, Maulana Maudoodi, Ahmad Raza Khan Barelvi, Shabbir Ahmad Usmani and others — ever asked their followers to behave. Regrettably, the government found itself isolated because neither the MMA leadership nor the secular parties categorically condemned the Lal Masjid brigade. It is now for the Pakistani people to decide whether they want the kind of Islam that Iqbal and Jinnah stood for or the intolerant, obscurantist brand being preached and practised by bigoted semi-literates.

http://www.dawn.com/2007/07/05/ed.htm
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Serving enlightened moderation


Aziz-ud-Din Ahmad
Thursday, July 05,2007

Another challenge to the writ of the state by the Lal Masjid clerics resulting this time in at least a dozen dead including a Ranger and a private TV channel cameraman. In view of the past relations between the government and the seminary many had thought this too was going to be a fixed bout which would end in a draw to benefit both sides politically. Coming as it did on the eve of the CJ's case talking a crucial turn and four days before the London APC, there was also a perception that the stand-off was might have been stage managed to divert attention from the first and creating dissension's in the later.
Things have, however, gone out of the hand of the two sides this time. The government was forced to station Rangers around the Lal Masjid to put an end to the students' raids on the perceived dens of vice after the strong reaction from Beijing which demanded guarantees that its citizens would not be kidnapped again and a stern action against those who had taken away the Chinese message centre personnel.
The Lal Masjid clerics under-estimated the pressures on the government. Confident of getting away with anything as before the seminary students provoked the Rangers and indulged in display of their own firepower. The government was left with no option but to retaliate.
The government has been saying that it had hesitated from taking stern action because there were hundreds of women and children inside Jamia Hafsa. This is ludicrous, as it has shown no compunction while bombing scores of Baloch settlements and Waziristan villages. It had in fact avoided to take action in Islamabad because the Lal Masjid clerics were politically beneficial. They added to the worries of the West and increased its dependence on the military government, divided the opposition and diverted attention from anti-Musharraf protests.
Musharraf has worked hard to create a false perception in the West that Pakistan, along with its nuclear assets, would fall like ripe fruit into the hands of the rabid extremists in case he was not holding fort in the presidency. Every now and then he has encouraged the clerics to ratchet up their rhetoric and create scenes to scare the shit out of those conducting the war on terror. He has subsequently held talks with the extremists to defuse the artificially created crisis, creating an impression that he has performed a feat that no civilian government was in a position to do.
It is not without reason that the two obscure clerics running Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa should have suddenly burst in on the political stage in the election year.
In January acting in defiance of the law of the land, the Jamia Hafsa brigade illegally occupied the Childrens' Library Complex in their neighbourhood. In normal circumstances the capital city administration would have sent a police contingent to get the premises vacated and arrest the culprits. In this case it mysteriously acquiesced in the illegality.
This naturally emboldened the extremists. In March the seminary students took away three women from an adjacent locality on charges of indulging in prostitution. They also kidnapped two policemen. Instead of punishing the students for breach of law the government entered into bargain to secure the cops' release.
As the lawyers movement gained strength after the action against the CJ, the government encouraged the clerics to make outrageous demands to divert the attention from the countrywide protests. On April 2 Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa announced they were working for an Islamic revolution and warned the administration of dire consequences if it tried to put hurdles in their way. A few days later the two clerics set up a Qazi court, a parallel judicial institution, with the self assumed mandate to decide disputes in accordance with Islamic injunctions. The government allowed this to happen despite protests by human rights organisations. As the lawyers movement spread and demands that Musharraf doff the uniform increased, attacks by the seminary students multiplied. The government continued to look the other way.
On June 1 the Lal Masjid brigade attacked the nurses hostel at PIMS maintaining that Quranic verses had been desecrated by someone. Three weeks later, armed students over reached themselves by kidnapping nine Chinese masseurs, including six women. A triumphant Ghazi Abdul Aziz later declared: "We released them in view of Pak-China friendship and after an assurance by the local administration that all such health clinics and message centres where 'objectionable activities' are carried out would be closed in Islamabad".
With the break up of the nexus with Lal Masjid the government has at last been deprived of a source of political strength. It is ironic how religious extremism was made to serve a government that claimed to stand for enlightened moderation.
E-mail: azizuddin@nation.com.pk

http://www.nation.com.pk/daily/july-2007/5/columns4.php
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