| "There can be no compromise. If our demands are not fulfilled, we cannot guarantee that there will be law and order" |
The new imam at Islamabad's oldest mosque, the scene of a July "massacre" of up to 1,000 female students by police commandos, yesterday told the first Friday prayer service since the mosque reopened that the building would be repainted red "with our own blood" if necessary. At least 10,000 worshippers knelt in prayer at the Lal Majid, or Red Mosque, which was repainted yellow during an earlier attempt by authorities to patch bullet holes and reopen the mosque under government control.
The congregation yesterday spilled out onto an adjacent four-lane boulevard with a tree-lined median, where men in white skull caps knelt shoulder to shoulder as Abdul Ghaffar, the chief imam who survived the July 10 raid in which the former leader died, gave the traditional Friday sermon. "It should be painted again red because red is the color of the blood we shed. If the government doesn't do it, we will repaint it with our own blood," said Mr. Ghaffar, who took over the mosque this week under orders of the Pakistani Supreme Court.
He said a sprawling girls' seminary adjacent to the mosque, where many if not most of the victims are thought to have died, must be rebuilt.
"There can be no compromise. If our demands are not fulfilled, we cannot guarantee that there will be law and order. There will be protests, unrest and we may have to use our last option," he said — possibly a cryptic reference to threats to unleash "waves of suicide bombers" made by the former chief imam, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who died in the raid.
|