Sermons blared from loudspeakers at Lal Masjid at the start of a three-day Nifaz-e-Shariat-o-Azmat-e-Jihad Conference on Friday that attracted thousands of clerics, madrassa students and activists from religious outfits across the country.Young madrassa students wielding batons and covering their faces with veils, guarded the area around the mosque, bordering Jamia Hafsa, with motorists and passers-by curious about the commotion. Religious messages were put up on tree trunks on the Municipal Road that runs alongside the mosque, in addition to several banners. The most prominent one addressed the prostitutes advising them to first seek forgiveness and then to visit Jamia Hafsa to learn about Islamic teachings. “The madrassa teachers have set up a special centre for them (prostitutes) where they will be provided with complete financial support,” the message said and continued that “such women will be made to undergo Islamic courses and the Jamia will help them marry noble men so they can lead good lives.”
The message has a clear reference to the recent events in Islamabad which saw the Jamia Hafsa students and Jamia Fareedia kidnapping a woman allegedly running a brothel and her three relatives including a six-month-old child. They all were set free after two days of confinement in Jamia Hafsa premises.
Some of the other messages pasted by the Tehreek-e-Talba and Talibat demanded that the government shut down brothels and other such places, and run television, radio and newspapers under Shariat to prevent calamities such as earthquakes in future.
While inside the mosque the conference continued, several stalls outside displayed a variety of things including maswaks, perfumes, caps, religious CDs and cassettes, Islamic magazines and booklets on subjects like the ideal wife and loyal husband. Also up for sale were religious newspapers published in Peshawar and Karachi but Jamia HafsaÂ’s recently launched paper Khabarnama Jamia Hafsa, was not readily available.
Growing signs of extremism in the heart of the town left most people worried. They called for immediate action against the hardliners and students of Jamia Hafsa who, they said, had been challenging the writ of the government. The madrassa students illegally occupied a children’s library next to their madrassa in January and are still occupying the library, abducted a woman allegedly running a brothel, and threatened owners of video shops to close their businesses in addition to setting a deadline for the government to enforce Shariat. “The manner in which these students have been intimidating shopkeepers and others must be checked immediately otherwise things will get out of hand,” said Tayyab Suleman, a passer-by. “The government gave them an inch and it is no surprise that now, they have taken a mile,” he said.
Fakhar Ali, another pedestrian, told Daily Times that whatever was going on today was the result of the government’s refusal to act against the Jamia Hafsa students and administration. “These people now know that they can go about terrorising people in the name of religion as no action against them seems imminent,” he said. As the day wore on, a bulk of CDs and DVDs apparently brought in by a local shopkeeper were brunt by the madrassa students who declared them un-Islamic.