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Pakistan: Sunni strike to protest against clerics murder
[ADN Kronos] By Syed Saleem Shahzad - Sunni organisations throughout Pakistan have announced plans for a nationwide strike on Saturday to protest against the murder of the respected religious scholar Sarfraz Naeemi. Sarfraz Naeemi and five others were killed late Friday in a suicide attack at the Jamia Naimia Islamic school in the northeastern city of Lahore.

Prime minister Yousaf Raza Gillani joined political leaders and religious scholars from all sects in condemning the killing which occurred late in the day to coincide with Friday prayers. Some even called it a conspiracy to draw Pakistan into a serious sectarian war.

Sarfraz Naeemi was one of the most respected religious scholars of the Brelvi school of thought, the majority sect in Pakistan and a leading critic of the Taliban.

He had said that suicide attacks were prohibited under Islam and described Taliban militants as traitors who were anti-Pakistan.

Sarfraz Naeemi also announced a religious decree to justify the killing of the Taliban through military operations and spoke at a series of conferences jointly sponsored by the government of Pakistan and the Pakistani army last month.

News of the suicide attack spread quickly across the country on Friday and angry protesters took to the streets of the major cities of Karachi, Lahore, Multan, Hyderabad, Faisalabad and elsewhere, forcing many shopkeepers and other businesses to close their doors.

In the cities of Lahore, Rawalpindi and Karachi, protesters blocked roads and brought traffic to a standstill as they pelted cars with stones.

The Friday suicide attack is a landmark event in Pakistan as it is the first major retaliation by the Taliban against a military sponsored campaign to mobilise people against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda.

Through the same campaign a series of conferences were arranged where religious scholars issued decrees against the Taliban and suicide attacks.

All the conferences were attended by Brelvi school of thought (Sufis) the largest school of thought of the country while the Deoband school of thought followed by the Taliban boycotted them.

Naeemi was very close to former prime minister and current opposition leader Nawaz Sharif who heads the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz, and his brother Shahbaz. Both brothers condemned his murder in a statement issued late Friday.

The chief of Jamaat-i-Islami Pakistan, Syed Munawar Hasan told Adnkronos International (AKI) that Naeemi was a soft-hearted person and his killing was a great loss.

Nevertheless, he said such attacks were the result of inappropriate government policies, NATO's presence in the region and the military operation in the North West Frontier Province.

Shia leader Allama Abbas Kumaili said a statement the killing was an attack on people who oppose terrorism.
Posted by: Fred 2009-06-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=271879