| Speaking out against it can result in death, as has recently been demonstrated. This tends to blunt the impulse to criticism. |
Punjab are playing the most dangerous game with the fate of Punjab vis-à -vis terrorism which has become entrenched in the province due to denial of the threat's existence. There have been allegations of them being in arms with various jihad boy elements for petty political gains. Earlier, Punjab's senior minister Rana Sanaullah was photographed with the chief of defunct Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain during the by elections in south Punjab. Following this, Shahbaz Sharif and Interior Minister Rehman MalikPak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Näwaz Shärif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men.
exchanged endless salvos of claims for and against the existence of Punjabi Taliban.
| And yet it exists. |
... who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five...
is another politician of the same ilk who wants us to think that faceless myrmidons are only after Pakistain because we are fighting a "US war" and not a war for our own survival. He conveniently ignores the terrorists' proclamation of "fighting to create an Islamic system in Pakistain". However,
we can't all be heroes Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by...
ANP is an exception which bravely and boldly took the case of the cut-throats on, wrestled free Swat
...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...
and South
Wazoo and suffered several casualties in its ranks and file.Shrinking from its duty, the Parliament has failed to take ownership of the counter terrorism action. They have not amended the 1997 Anti Terrorism Ordinance which lapsed and has not been re-promulgated ever since.
The politicians share the mindset with the clergy who otherwise issue infidelity verdicts at the drop of hat, like their cousins in the pre-Protestant Movement's clergy, but refuse to educate people to exorcise the genie. Most share the perverted 'jihad' mindset of imposing a system based on blood and gore.
One would question their quest for Islamising Pakistain. The preamble to our Constitution says no unIslamic law can be passed in the country. A republic with majority Mohammedans has never passed anything even remotely unIslamic. But constitution matters little to them which they consider based on "munkirat".
Barring the argument, the roots of intolerance go back to the '50s at times of movement against the Ahmadis. Later, the country bore witness to the blood curdling Shia -Sunni violence at the behest of the Saudis and the Iranians. This progressed into internecine intra-sunni conflict. And now fundamentalist insurgency. They are waging their "jihad" in clear violation of the Holy Koran and Hadith. As Javed Ahmad Ghamdi points out "Jihad can only be launched by the state and not independent actors otherwise it turns into chaos."
Unfortunately, all the followers of Pakistain's chapter of Deoband school approve of terrorism, whereas scholars running the Deoband Institution in India have rejected and denounced terrorism as unIslamic.
Qazi Hussain Ahmad of Jamaat-e-Islami refuses to denounce the Taliban offensive and terms it justified. His party, now led by Munawwar Hassan, is up in arms over action against feared terrorist and criminal mastermind Ilyas Kashmiri. Jamaat-e-Isami's Bloody Karachi chief Merajul Huda Siddiqui says Kashmiri's death is being celebrated by India.
A departure from this trend is
Maulana Fazlur Rehman.Deobandi holy man, known as
Mullah Dieselduring the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ...
Albeit too little too late, Fazl's reaction coincided after two life attempts on him. Stopping short of categorical rejection, he criticised terrorism, saying "violence has no parallel in Islam."
But there were some religious luminaries who acted like "light at the end of the tunnel".
They bit the dust in opposing Taliban and al Qaeda's brand of Islam. Foremost among them was Maulana Hassan Jan who was a Taliban ideologue and tried to convince the latter of the wrongdoing. He received several warnings but he didn't budge from opposing the macabre deeds and was bumped off.
Dr Ghulam Murtaza, Dr M Farooq, vice chancellor of International Islamic University, Swat, Mufti Naeemi, and Maulana Hassan Turabi slammed the violence perpetrated by the fringe elements openly and boldly but had to pay with their blood for sticking to their conviction. Another critic, noted scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamdi has to leave the country following persistent life threats.
The Learned Elders of Islam as a whole should have taken the lead role in explaining and defining terrorism as a vice which only sows more confusion and chaos. Their effort should have been directed at reformation and education. Let's see how long it takes for sanity to prevail.
| Pakistani society has been engaged in driving out or killing the moderates for two generations. Who remains who is both courageous and sane, around which those who would retake their society can crystallize? |