Submit your comments on this article | ||
India-Pakistan | ||
Women stage sit-in in Pakistan | ||
2007-02-12 | ||
Veiled in burqas and armed with bamboo canes, scores of female seminary students have occupied a children's library to protest plans to demolish mosques and madrassas built without permission on government land. The unusual protest has pitted Pakistan's government against the chief of one of the country's largest Islamic schools, long suspected of militant links. ``The protest is their form of jihad (holy war). They started it on their own, and since we are sharing the same feeling, I have offered them support,'' the chief cleric of the Lal Masjid mosque that runs the seminary, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, told the Associated Press. Ghazi, an outspoken critic of Pakistan's support of the United States, denied instigating the library protest, although he is the seminary's vice principal. His open support could rally thousands to the cause -- as he has in the past for anti-government and anti-U.S. protests. Since late January, about 200 female students have been occupying the children's library, which is run by the municipal authority and is sandwiched between the mosque and the sprawling Jamia Hafsa seminary -- which provides a free Islamic education for some 6,500 girls and women. The standoff has highlighted Pakistan's apparent inability to regulate its more than 13,500 seminaries, amid international concerns that a minority of the schools promote extremism and provide militant recruits for the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan.
Shireen Mazari, director-general of a pro-government think tank, said the land dispute posed fundamental questions about the state's ability to uphold the law, and asked why city administrators failed to prevent the illegal construction in the first place. Naeem Iqbal, a spokesman for Islamabad police, said authorities were seeking to resolve the dispute peacefully. Pakistan's religious affairs minister met protesters Wednesday to discuss the standoff, and ``there has been no decision as yet'' to use force, Iqbal said. Expectations that security forces could be planning to break up the protest prompted hundreds of male and female seminary students and local youths to gather around the mosque late Friday, shouting, ``Jihad is our way!'' and ``Allah is Great!'' They pelted security forces with stones, fearing a raid on the library could be imminent. | ||
Posted by:ryuge |
#3 Shireen Mazari, director-general of a pro-government think tank Her organization is ISI front. One of her recent successes was a honeypot operation where one of her young "researchers" bedded the British Military attache to Pakistan and got intel from him. The Brigadier returned to London in disgrace. |
Posted by: john 2007-02-12 16:32 |
#2 Just another case of muslims hiding behind women. |
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2007-02-12 12:05 |
#1 We want to be oppressed by a devil cult. [sigh] Because of people like this, I don't care about "innocent civilians" killed when attacking jihadis. Heck, that's fewer to breed. |
Posted by: Jackal 2007-02-12 06:54 |