 PESHAWAR: Qari Fazle Amin from a small village in Charsadda district has become the talk of the town after reportedly blowing himself up in Afghanistan. “He, who went to Afghanistan to kill kafirs (infidels)?” asked a nine-year-old boy from Akhun Zafar Baba village in the Shabqadar area, 25 kilometres north of Peshawar, when Daily Times inquired about Amin’s house. “Did you know him?” the boy asked.
| "When I grow up I wanna be cannon fodder, just like him!" |
Amin was one of eight boys of the locality who went missing in Afghanistan some time ago and the third to have reportedly conducted a suicide bombing in that country.
| But really, the Taliban is an Afghan problem. It's not like Paks are conducting warfare against a supposedly friendly neighboring state. |
The news of Amin’s “martyrdom” reached his village on September 17 and thousands of people including Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leaders have visited his house since and offered fateha for him.
| I'm sure Fazl was just proud as punch to see the JUI-F flag flying briefly over Garmser. Not that there were any Paks or Pak domestic organizations involved in that little fiasco, of course. It's not like JUI-F was an ISI front or anything... |
AminÂ’s father Maulvi Aleem, who is a prayer leader in the nearby Aranda village, said Amin had sought his permission to go to Afghanistan, but he did not allow him.
Aleem, however, prayed that God may accept his son’s “sacrifice”. He said that Amin had gone to Rawalpindi in April to find a job, but he did not return. “I received a message in June this year that Amin has been killed in Afghanistan, but it was wrong,” Aleem said. “Amin was misguided by Aminullah of the nearby village, who too blew himself up in Afghanistan,” he added.
| "He wuz a simple, misguided yoot..." |
Aleem was delivered the message of his son’s death by a group of some 20 men unknown to him. “Amin conducted a successful suicide attack against the enemy in Afghanistan’s Helmand province on August 28,” Aleem quoted the men as telling him. “I have no more details of his death,” he said in a choked voice, adding, ”I don’t have his body . . . , no grave, no funeral, nothing.”
| The definition of "successful" seems fairly fluid there in the Pak hinterlands. Qari Fazle boomed himself at a market, killing 17 and wounding 47. If "success" is measured by corpse count, then Qari Fazle done good by their lights. If success is measured by actual military value, it was a nuisance killing. |
Aleem said his son was a Hafiz-e-Quran and took little interest in worldly affairs. “I had to end his engagement after he refused to get married. He said he would have 72 wives in heaven.” Aleem said that Amin had refused to work with his cousin in a shoe factory because “his cousin did not offer prayers regularly. This is how he was and all my attempts to change him failed.”
| Almost a cliche of misplaced Islamic arrogance, wasn't he? I'm glad he's dead. |
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