 The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) has condemned the raids being carried out by law enforcement agencies on religious seminaries all over the country.
| "Nope. Nope. That'll never do!" |
It announced that it would hold protests on Friday.
"Which Friday?"
"Every Friday!" |
âThe MMA condemned the raids on religious schools especially on Jammia Hifsa (religious seminary for female students),â Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, deputy secretary general of the MMA said while addressing a press conference on Wednesday. He said that religious scholars across the country would criticise the government policies in the Friday sermons.
| I thought they did that every week? |
âInterior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao should resign because when contacted he could not even explain the motive behind the recent raids,â Maulana Shah Abdul Aziz, an MMA MNA said on the occasion. Hafiz claimed that the UK and the US had advised the government to raid religious schools. âThe recent raids are a retaliation to the Hasba Billâs passage in the NWFP Assembly,â he added.
| "Yeah! Dat's what it is! The boomers are just a pretext! All them arms and ammunition, that's just a pretext!" |
He alleged that the raid on Jammia Hifsa was conducted under the guidance of officials of the UK.
"I say, Reginald! What shall we do this evening?"
"Let's raid Jammia Hifsa, Clive! Thump a few natives, wot?"
"Oh, jolly good idea!"
"I'll go get my monocle!" |
He said that 40 students of the seminary were seriously injured during the raid and a teacher suffered a miscarriage.
| "Whoa, Percy! Careful you don't step in that!" |
âLaw enforcement agencies have arrested hundreds of office bearers of the Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) including Mufti Ibrar, the lover personal secretary of Maulana Fazlur Rehman, and Maulana Sajid Farooqui, a senior JUI-F leader,â Hafiz claimed.
| Hmmm... Golly. Gosh. Wonder why they mighta done that? |
He said that religious schools were not involved in promoting extremism or terrorism and if the president and the prime minister wanted to arrest terrorists they should âask Information Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmed about the people who established the training camp near Fateh Jangâ.
| By golly! What a good idea! By the way, who got the wench from Jamia Hifsa preggers? Was it Clive? |
The MMA secretary general claimed that he knew the person who gave Rashid Rs 50,000 per Kalashnikov and said that former chief of army staff Mirza Aslam Baig and former director general of Inter Services Intelligence Hamid Gul had participated in the training of militants.
| Oh, I'm so suprised. Hamid Gul? He seems such a nice man! And Mirza Aslam Beg? I always thought he was so reasonable... |
Hafiz warned the government that if it did not put an end to the undue aggression against seminaries, the MMA would use force to put a stop to it, and the government would be to blame if the situation got out of hand.
| I just love that tight turban sort of logic: "Knock off trying to control our penchant for violence or we'll... ummm... get violent. And it'll be all your fault, because there's no way we could possibly control our impulses." |
Hafiz also accused the government of suppressing the freedom of the press. He condemned the ominous statements issued by the government directing newspapers not to publish any material that promoted sectarian violence. |