[DAWN] Deposed Lal Masjid...literally the
Red Mosque, located in Islamabad and frequented by all sorts of high govt officials. The proprietors, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi, unleashed their Islamic storm troopers on the city, shutting down whorehouses and beating people up who weren't devout enough. The Musharraf govt put an end to the nonsense by besieging the place. Abdul Aziz Ghazi was nabbed while he was trying to escape dressed up like a girl. BBC reported that the corpse count at 173, but other claims, usually hysterical, say there were up to 1000 titzup. Among their number was Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Everyone then said tut-tut and what a nice guy he had been...
holy man Maulana Abdul Aziz
...nutball holy man who runs the Lal Masjid in the heart of Pakistain's capital. After instigating a rebellion against the state in 2007, he was caught trying to sneak away dressed in a burka. He rejects democracy as un-Islamic, which it probably is...
has alleged that an officer from the country's premiere intelligence agency "was conspiring against him", while other officials were in contact with him in an effort to sort out the differences between the two sides.
In a written statement and a video message, released via the official Facebook page of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa
... the Islamic nunnery maintained by Lal Masjid....
, Maulana Aziz claimed he was in negotiations with an officer of the Inter-Services Intelligence
...the Pak military
intelligenceagency that controls the military -- heads of ISI typically get promoted into the Chief of Army Staff position. It serves as a general command center for favored turban groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, tries to influence the politix of neighboring countries, and carries out a (usually) low-level war against India in Kashmir...
(ISI).
However,
a woman is only as old as she admits...
he claimed that while the negotiations were moving in the right direction, another senior ISI officer was acting as a 'spoiler'.
"I have been told by one of my followers that a brigadier in ISI, who belongs to the 'other sect' is conspiring against me," he said, adding, "I know they are making false videos about me [accusing me of] taking extortion money..."
He also claimed that the intelligence authorities were promoting extremism in the country with their attitude.
"A major recently called and I invited him for a meeting so that we can understand each other," Maulana Aziz said in the video.
But an ISI spokesperson Dawn spoke to rejected the holy man's claims of meeting a major belonging to the agency, terming it "propaganda".
"Maulana Abdul Aziz has a track record of fabricating stories and there has been no contact between him and any agency personnel," the spokesperson said.
But ICT officials, on condition of anonymity, said that Islamabad police personnel and members of the civic administration had visited the holy man and tried to persuade him to obtain pre-arrest bail from the courts.
"This is strange; we have seen him visiting various parts of the city, buying fruit from street vendors on the sidewalk near the vacant plot that used to be the Children's Library," an ICT official said.
In the video, Maulana Aziz also made sectarian remarks, claiming that people with names such as 'Shah', 'Haideri' and 'Shaheedi' were involved in the killings of holy men from the Ahle Sunnat school of thought, including his own father.
"First a false case was registered against me and now they want me to obtain bail," the holy man said, adding, "since the istakhara (divine guidance) is unfavourable, I am reluctant to post bail now."
The issue of posting bail arose after PPP Senator Farhatullah Babar sought to move a privilege motion against the interior minister, who had earlier claimed in the Senate that there were no cases against Maulana Abdul Aziz. But Senator Babar showed documents that included an Islamabad High Court arrest warrant, issued around 11 months ago.
Talking to Dawn, he took the government to task over the release of the holy man's latest video. "This is a clearly a violation of multiple laws and the question is where is the National Action Plan."
"The violations are related to hate speech, fanning militancy, instigating sectarianism, inciting terrorism and challenging the state again," he said, adding that either the government, including the interior minister, were complicit, or they were afraid of one man.