The happenings at the Lal Masjid in Islamabad have begun to reverberate. Clerics in Peshawar are threatening to attack and close down brothels in the city while vigilantes of Islami Jamiat Talaba at the University of the Punjab have been emboldened into taking action against what they term a policy to turn the PU into a den of obscenity. So far the IJT shock troops have beaten up some students, taken out a noisy rally, attacked and vandalised a concert at a department and are threatening to do even more unless the varsity administration relents and, as one observer quips, “hands the university back to the IJT”.The Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi (see interview) says while he is firm on getting the government to reconstruct the demolished mosques, he is not prepared to take the law into his hands. He calls the various news reports against his seminaries sheer propaganda. He also denies that students from his seminaries have been threatening women drivers and shopkeepers in Islamabad. According to him these are the doings of criminal gangs and they could have been put up at it by the agencies.
The situation in Peshawar is most ironical. There, in the presence of an MMA government high on Islam, clerics of Mutahidda Shariat Mahaz (MSM), led by Maulana Yousaf Qureshi, are insisting that the government is not doing enough to cleanse the city and the province of immorality. This has got the chief minister, Akram Khan Durrani, up and very peeved. He views this “Islamisation” drive as “an attempt to de-legitimise and ‘bring down my government’.” (See related story)
Down south, in Karachi, the MQM took out a rally April 15 and denounced the vigilantism of the rightwing. The party hit out at Lal Masjid and said that any further allowance to that crowd would only result in other groups coming on line and making such demands. But while the MQM can be dismissed by the religious elements as a secular entity and therefore inevitably against them, it is the response of the MMA government in the NWFP which is instructive.
The NWFP government knows well that it cannot allow small, self-styled groups of religious leaders to undermine the government’s writ. Qazi Hussain Ahmed of Jama’at-e Islami has already gone and sided with Lal Masjid. It shows that he finds affinity in the Lal Masjid’s radicalism with his own. But the bigger component party in the MMA grouping is not amused and its chief minister feels that what is happening in Islamabad and Peshawar only serves to “defame the madrassas”.
It is in this backdrop that The Friday Times has sought to investigate the issue and interview relevant people to ascertain and analyse what is going on and how it might unfold.