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India-Pakistan

India’s super spreaders

2020-04-07

[Daily Pioneer] At a time when the Union and State Governments and institutions are working with the single determination to contain COVID-19, the Tablighi Jammat has turned out to be a spoiler The latest estimates of the Union Health Ministry indicate that over 35 per cent of the COVID-19 cases that are springing up in the country have their origins in the conference organised by the Tablighi Jamaat, an Islamic evangelical movement, in New Delhi in the second half of March, which was in gross violation of State Government orders. At a time when the Union Government, State Governments and every national institution is working with single-minded determination and focus to contain the pandemic that has affected over a million patients globally and claimed over 50,000 lives, the Tablighi Jammat has turned out to be a spoiler. Displaying gross irresponsibility by flouting the orders of the Delhi Government, the Jamaat held a conference of thousands of its members. The congregation continued even as devotees were barred entry in the most popular temples, including the Balaji Temple in Tirupati, the Siddhivinayak Temple in Mumbai, the Sai Baba temple in Shirdi, the Dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer and the Haji Ali Dargah in Mumbai. Lakhs of other temples, churches and religious places remained closed as per Government orders in their areas.

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India-Pakistan

Nuggets From The Urdu Press

2012-06-10

When Hina Khar embarrassed Zardari Writing in Express Nusrat Javeed narrated that when a high level American person came to see President Zardari in connection with foreign policy and Pakistain's attendance of the Chicago Conference on Afghanistan the president was favourably disposed to consider the invitation when it came. Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar was also there but she threw in a monkey wrench by intervening (phat pareen) and telling the American guest that Pakistain could not commit to Chicago until Parliament had issued the new guidelines on Pakistain's foreign policy. President Zardari was shaken by this and thought he had to deal with another Shah Mehmood Wormtongue Qureshi. This could have ended her prospect of becoming prime minister in case Gilani had to go. Moinuddin Chishti jihadi saint Columnist Hamid Mir wrote in Jang that the famous saint of Ajmer Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti was reputed to be a saint of peace but in his day he was known to favour jihad in the name of Islam. When he saw that the Hindu Rajputs were becoming too cruel he called in the Moslem invader Shahabuddin Ghauri from Afghanistan. Ghauri came and trounced Prithvi Raj Chauhan. This gave rise to the naming of missiles by India and Pakistain. India named its missile Prithvi (not after Prithvi Raj but as one of the elements of nature) and Pakistain retaliated by naming its missile Ghauri. (India's other bigger missile is Agni which proves that Prithvi was not named after Prithvi Raj.) Zardari was a 'munshi' of America Leader of PPP Bhutto Shaheed, Ghinwa Bhutto was quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt as saying that those who are demanding more provinces are speaking the language of America. She added that Zardari was a 'munshi' (clerk) of America. She asserted that Bilawal was not the rightful heir of the Bhutto legacy. Her children are from the son of Bhutto therefore the rightful heirs of the Bhutto Legacy. Some graves give off nice smell Daily Jang reported from a popular GEO TV programme in which a soul expert Allama Shabbir and a group of gravediggers discussed the experience of soul (ruh) after separating from human body. They all agreed that after death the soul of the dead person does not reside in the house as some people believe. But they agreed that some graves belonging to good and pious people start giving off perfume. Not even food allowed on Nato route Leader of the Defence of Pakistain Council of holy manal parties Maulana Samiul Haq said in Express that his followers will spill blood to stop the NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A collection of multinational and multilingual and multicultural armed forces, all of differing capabilities, working toward a common goal by pulling in different directions... supplies when they resumed. He said he would not allow even the supply of food to NATO forces through the Pak route. Ex-ISI boss Hameed Gul said America was coming next to Balochistan ...the Pak province bordering Kandahar and Uruzgun provinces in Afghanistan and Sistan Baluchistan in Iran. Its native Baloch propulation is being displaced by Pashtuns and Punjabis and they aren't happy about it... and he was unhappy that Maulana Fazlur Rehman Deobandi holy man, known as Mullah Diesel during the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ... had changed his stance on the NATO supply route. Saudis don't oppose gas pipeline The Foreign Office was forced to say in Jinnah that Soddy Arabia ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... was not opposed to the Iran Pakistain gas pipeline and that the visit of the deputy foreign minister of Saudi Arabia had not visited Pakistain to force Pakistain to abandon the project. The rumour was that Saudi Arabia was opposed to the project because that would lighten the sanctions on Iran and make it strong enough to make the bomb and threaten the Arab states. Attacks on Kandahar and Bannu prisons Columnist Hamid Mir wrote in Jang that two important jailbreaks were achieved by the Taliban in the month of April. In April 2011 they attacked the big prison of Kandahar in Afghanistan and easily took away 500 of their dangerous member terrorists. In April 2012, they attacked the big prison in Bannu in Pakistain and walked away with 286 hardened criminals including a number of their members held there. At Bannu over a hundred of Taliban came across a number of security checkposts in their vehicles and no one could stop them because of fear of being killed. America's discriminatory apology policy Daily Jang had Hamid Mir saying that when India's actor Shahrukh Khan was held at the American immigration for two hours the Americans apologised to India but America would not apologise to Pakistain after killing Pak troops at Salala Checkpost in November 2011. But America was forced to use the Pak route for its supplies because the Russians and Central Asians had asked for too much money for passage through their territory. 'Karant' pir of Jhelum Reported in Jinnah a spiritual guide called Saeen Abid called 'Karant Pir' in Sarai Alamgir in Punjab was raping innocent women by promising to solve their domestic problems. Women called on him at his home where he used live electric wire in his doorway to render them senseless after which he raped them. He used electric current to stage his miracle and was therefore called 'karant' Pir. Jamaat accepted Zia rule Writing in Jang Hamid Mir started that after General Zia imposed his military rule and tried to validate it through Islam, a number of religious leaders opposed him. They were: Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer who was killed during a rally of his party, Ahle Hadith. Allama Ariful Hussaini of the Shia faith too opposed him and he was killed in Beautiful Downtown Peshawar. But Jamaat Islami decided to join his government and live under his Shariat Bill. Sughra Imam almost became minister of state Reported in Mashriq daughter of PPP leader Syeda Abida Hussain almost became minister of state in the Foreign Office after being appointed by President Zardari. But incumbent minister Hina Rabbani Khar opposed the appointment and threatened to resign if Sughra Imam was inducted. Shabasha, Pasha! Famous columnist Major (Retd) Mehmood Abbasi wrote in Jinnah that General Pasha head of the ISI was true soldier and loyal to Pakistain and only those people were happy over his final retirement because he had not done them any favours. He became disliked by those who took bribe from America after he opposed America's infiltration of Pakistain with spies like Raymond Davis and talked back to the bullying US officials. He also unmasked the treasonable conduct of Ambassador Haqqani who was working for the Americans by allowing spooks to enter Pakistain without checking. Pasha did not forgive Haqqani and because of his sincerity also persuaded General Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... to honestly tell the Supreme Court what had transpired in the 'memo' case. 'Nuclear father' speaks out! Dr AQ Khan told Nawa-e-Waqt that PM Gilani was continuing to insult the Supreme Court which was not right while the Supreme Court was not able to come up to the expectations of the people by not deciding some major cases. He said Reko Diq was given in the hands of Chief Minister Raisani who could not tell the tail of a frog from its head. Judges should not threaten lawyers! Quoted in Mashriq lawyer and human rights ...which are usually open to widely divergent definitions... worker Asma Jehangir stated that the courts should not threaten lawyers when they give their valid views about the running cases. She said Memo Commission had no law under which it could suspend the practice of a lawyer. The judges should remain within the ambit of law while deciding.

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India-Pakistan

Ajmer probe throws up Hyderabad links

2007-10-14

Forensic experts have determined that the explosive devices used in Thursday’s blast at the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti closely resemble those placed in Hyderabad’s Mecca Masjid five months ago — a fact which raises the prospect that the same terror group may have executed both strikes. Tests conducted on an unexploded device recovered from the shrine late on Thursday night, as well as shrapnel recovered from the bomb that detonated killing three, have shown that both devices were packed with dynamite. India proscribed the production of nitroglycerine-based explosives like dynamite in 2004, but large stocks are believed to be still available on the black market. As at the Mecca Masjid, the bombs used in Ajmer were designed to be triggered by a mobile phone’s built-in alarm clock, which was set to 6:10 p.m. Rajasthan police sources said the second bomb, stuffed inside a bag which also contained a crude map of the shrine, probably failed to explode because the phone’s speaker did not generate a voltage adequate to charge the detonator. Similar mobile phone malfunctions led to the failure of a second bomb planted in the Mecca Masjid and the car bombs fabricated by Bangalore engineering student Kafeel Ahmed for use in Glasgow and London earlier this year. Forensic experts said the fault was most likely caused by the use of mobile phones with low-grade components. Rajasthan police investigators have arrived in Hyderabad to question suspects held for the Mecca Masjid bombings. Karachi-based Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami terrorist Abdul Mohammad Shahid, who also uses the code-name ‘Bilal,’ is wanted by Interpol for his alleged role in the Mecca Masjid bombings, as well as the subsequent serial bombings in Hyderabad this August. Rajasthan police sources noted that the Islamist terror networks, of which Shahid was a part, were known to have used Ajmer as a transit point in the past. In December 2005, police in Ajmer interdicted a consignment of three Kalashnikov assault rifles, 229 cartridges and 15 detonators hidden in a truck carrying marble to Hyderabad. Investigators claimed that the truck’s driver, Baramulla resident Shabbir Ahmed, had been tasked by the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen’s Pakistan-based chief, Mohammad Yusuf Shah, with delivering the weapons to terror cell in Hyderabad. Ahmed, a one-time operative for the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, had joined the Islamist Hizb-ul-Mujahideen after training in Pakistan in 1990. Shabbir Ahmed told the Rajasthan police that the weapons were intended for Mujib Ahmed, a key figure in the terror networks now run by Shahid. Ahmed had spent several years in jail for his role in the 1990 assassination of Additional Superintendent of Police Krishna Prasad. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but was released by the Andhra Pradesh government in 2004 as part of a controversial Independence Day goodwill gesture. Soon after Mujib Ahmed’s release from prison, investigators found that he reactivated his links with the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami and Hizb-ul-Mujahideen. When Mujib was re-arrested in the wake of the Ajmer weapons haul, police discovered that he had produced several films in which he appealed for funds for his new terror operations from Islamist sympathisers in West Asia. Amjad Ali, who was among Mujib’s most trusted lieutenants, was responsible for recruiting Shahid. Ali, who the Central Bureau of Investigation held responsible for the assassination of former Gujarat Home Minister Haren Pandya, is thought to have despatched Shahid and at least 20 other Hyderabad men to train at the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami facilities in Pakistan after the 2002 communal pogrom in Gujarat. Several members of Mujib Ahmed’s network, including Nalgonda resident Abdul Rehman, were arrested for their alleged role in the 2005 attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.

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India-Pakistan

Live bomb found

2007-10-13

Ajmer: A live bomb was found near the main gate of the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti here on Friday, a day after a blast killed two and injured 17 at the dargah.

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India-Pakistan

Musharraf’s return to ‘jihadi option’?

2006-06-10

Khaled Ahmed’s A n a l y s i s General Pervez Musharraf brought Pakistan out of its Dark Age of death and destruction by rolling back Pakistan’s 20 year old jihad. He banned the jihadi organisations - once nurtured carefully by the ISI - to win back space for Pakistan in the international polity. But there was a measure of ambiguity in his approach that made many think that he could be merely hiding jihad under the bushel for the time being, to be brought out to threaten the world once again. The time probably has come to threaten the world a la? General Hameed Gul, Pakistan’s de facto ruling strategist, who is once again parading his trigger-happy vision on the TV channels. In its May 2006 issue monthly Herald published a report by Azmat Abbas that the government had allowed Sipah Sahaba to reinstate itself on the condition that it would no longer indulge in militancy (sic!), violence of the verbal or active sort. The Sipah, now renamed Millat-e-Islamia Pakistan (MIP), held its first post-ban meeting in Islamabad on 6 April 2006 under the surveillance of the agencies. This rally was the outcome of an understanding reached between Sipah and the government in March 2006. But when the party convened with a gathering of 5,000 people it became a show of strength of the old sectarian terrorist Sipah. The government allowed Brigadier (Retd) Zaheerul Islam Abbasi – the officer who failed narrowly to stage a military-religious coup in 1995 but is now running his own extremist organisation – to harangue the gathering. Sipah Sahaba rides again? The meeting chanted anti-Shia slogans and vowed to avenge the deaths of their leaders Haq Nawaz Jhangvi and Maulana Azam Tariq at the hands of the Shia. Literature of anti-Shia exhortation was distributed as well as videos depicting beheadings of American soldiers in Iraq. MIP leader Dr Khadim Hussain Dhillon said his party had held its gathering with the government’s permission after he had protested the government’s according of normal protocol to Allama Sajid Naqvi the leader of the banned Tehrik Jafaria while Naqvi was a member of the MMA. The intelligence officers looking after the Sipah told Herald that the gathering was the outcome of a long drawn out process of negotiation with the banned organisation. This also involved a reconciliation between the Sipah and the Shia organisation. Arrested leaders, like the fanatically anti-Shia Maulana Muhammad Ludhianvi, were to be released and in return the rabid Shia leader of Sipah Muhammad, Allama Ghulam Raza Naqvi would be released and sent to Gilgit where he would head a seminary. The Shia of Gilgit were making preparation to celebrate his entry there. The government went ahead and further made peace with the anti-Shia activists, members of the dreaded Lashkar-e-Jhangvi. (Rustam Khan Muawiya, Asghar Muawiya and Ghulam Farid were let off at the Sindh High court. Member of MMA, Shia leader Allama Hassan Turabi was attacked in Karachi the very next day in which he narrowly escaped death. He issued a statement connecting the attack with the release of the Lashkar members.) Lashkar-e-Tayba revived? Earlier on 2 May 2006, the State Department in Washington named Pakistan’s Jamaat al-Dawa and its affiliated Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq as “terrorist organisations that pose a threat to the United States”. Everybody knew that Jamaat al-Dawa was earlier the dreaded Lashkar-e-Tayba banned by a UN Committee as a terrorist organisation. The Idara Khidmat-e-Khalq had been active in the relief and reconstruction work in the Azad Kashmir areas affected by the October 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. It now developed that the Idara could not be used to rescue the bad image the Jamaat al-Dawa had garnered for itself over the recent years. Its leader Hafiz Said had constantly condemned the policies of the government in general and President Musharraf in particular, and had used all kinds of dire threats. For some puzzling reason, President Musharraf has been soft on Jamaat al-Dawa. Some say because the son of an important personality in Islamabad is a member of the outfit, but why allow its firebrand leader Hafiz Said to constantly badmouth him? All the other dreaded jihadi outfits banned either by the UN or put on the terrorist list the United States have duly changed their names and are operating quietly without shooting off their mouths. At one point this year President Musharraf actually called in all the police chiefs of the country and asked them to catch hold of the old jihadi outfits on the UN terrorist list now operating under changed names; but nothing happened. The attitude of the president has been most puzzling, especially after the fact that he had nearly gotten himself killed at the hands of the fanatic activists of these very jihadi militias. Lashkar/Dawa becomes popular? Then Islamabad literally issued an edict defying the Washington categorisation of Jamaat al-Dawa. The Foreign Office was made to say that Pakistan had no plans to act against the two Islamic charities listed by the United States last week as terrorist organisations. Its stance was however correct. ‘We are not required, and we do not put any entities on the terrorist lists, if action is taken under the domestic US law’, it said, ‘However, if the UN Security Council’s sanctions committee were to designate any organisation (as a terrorist group), then it becomes a legal obligation to take action’. The Foreign Office statement was followed on 6 May 2006 by demonstrations in which hundreds of residents demonstrated against the US in Garhi Habibullah and Balakot, NWFP, where the banned organisations are still running tent villages and hospitals for locals ‘where 90 percent of the non-government organisations (NGOs) are wrapping up their camps after finishing relief projects’. The press noted that Jamaat al Dawa had become popular in the earthquake-hit region and its activists had become ‘heroic icons’ for the local population. The Jamaat al-Dawa was even more popular in Azad Kashmir where its relief work was much aided by the fact that it had been active there as a jihadi militia under the tutelage of the ISI. As reported in Dawn , on 10 May 2006, hundreds of people staged a rally in Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir, to condemn the United States’ ban on the Jamaat al-Dawa: ‘Down with America, down with Bush’, the demonstrators shouted. According to daily Jang (29 May 2006) a sessions judge in Peshawar, after hearing the famous Al Qaeda and Sipah Sahaba lawyer Javed Ibrahim Paracha, ordered that a group of Egyptian mujahideen languishing in jail, be released, be treated at Al Khidmat Hospital, and then handed over to Mr Paracha pending their deportation to Egypt. Christians and Hindus love Lashkar/Dawa? Then on 17 May 2006, more than one hundred Hindus and Christians from different parts of Sindh staged a demonstration in front of the press clubs of Hyderabad and Karachi ‘against the United States’ recent move to include the Jamaat al-Dawa on its list of “terrorist” organisations’. The next day however the Christians in Punjab rebelled against the orchestrated pro-Dawa protest. A leading Christian organisation in Punjab, National Commission of Justice and Peace (NCJP), condemned the pro-Jamaat al-Dawa rallies by Christians and Hindus in Sindh, particularly haris of Thar, saying that it was an ‘establishment-sponsored’ ploy to glorify the jihadi militia. The statement was bold because it was made in the city where Jamaat al-Dawa is headquartered. If there was an effort afoot to return to the ‘jihadi option’ through the reinstatement of Sipah Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, it was already greatly undermined by the Nishtar Park massacre of the Barelvis on 11 April 2006. It soon became apparent that it was not a Shia-Sunni sectarian incident but a Sunni-Sunni one. As put in Urdu, it was not an act of terrorism based on fiqh but on maslak , and this is how it began to be described on the TV channels. Monthly Urdu journal Naya Zamana in its issue of May 2006, wrote that during the Afghan war against the Soviet Union, Saudi Arabia had funded a number of organisations to carry out its Wahhabi project in the region, and one of these organisations was Lashkar-e-Tayba, then headquartered in Muridke Lahore, as Markaz Dawat wal Irshad. The project was of spreading ‘pure Islam’ not only in Afghanistan but in Pakistan too as a bulwark against the emergence of a Shia state in Iran. The intent of Imam Khomeini to export the Shia revolution to the rest of the Islamic world was in parallel to the Saudi ambition of spreading the Wahhabi model. After Shia-Sunni terror, it is Sunni-Sunni terror: According to Naya Zamana , the publications of Jamaat al-Dawa/Lashkar-e-Tayba and Sipah Sahaba (Khilafat-e-Rashida) criticised and condemned the Shias together with the Barelvis. The Barelvis were dubbed a moderate version of Shiism and both were together dubbed a version of Judaism. After General Zia, this Wahhabi Islam was used in Kashmir too and the state itself became more and permeated with this hardline faith. It was in the face of this Wahhabi dominance that Sunni Tehreek was defensively created to protect the interests of the Barelvis with force. As observed by Naya Zamana , when JUP chief Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani attended a rare gathering of the Barelvis in Lahore in those days he made a speech in which he declared that ‘there were one lakh kalashnikovs in the Muridke headquarters of Lashkar-e-Tayba which will not be used in Kashmir but against the Barelvis in Pakistan’. Wahhabism and Deobandism are characterised by an opposition to popular culture and it literary and festive forms and is finally also opposed to democracy in favour of khilafat. They are hostile to the mystical batinya traditions of Waris Shah, Shah Husain, Mian Mir, Data Sahib, Khwaja Nizamuddin Auliya, Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Hazrat Zakariya Multani, etc. Wahhabism easily apostatises those that don not follow its strict order; and after someone is declared outside the pale of Islam his property is thought to be rightfully owned by the Wahhabis through looting and confiscation. It is on this principle that Barelvi mosques were taken from them. In the case of Jamaat Dawa or Lashkar-e-Tayba, this extended to taking Barelvi girls into forcible marriage after abduction and the looting of banks in the tradition of an early Companion, Abu Jandal, who funded jihad in this fashion. (After Hafiz Said’s faction fell foul of the Ahle Hadith party of Prof Sajid Mir, one Qari Hanif issued a series of audio tapes in which he accused Hafiz Said chief of Jamaat al-Dawa of looting banks in Gujranwala and abducting Barelvi girls.) Viability of jihad option: President Musharraf’s attitude towards Jamaat al-Dawa has puzzled almost everyone who has watched Pakistan. Now some critics connect it to the on-going ‘peace process’ with India where he expects India to match Pakistan’s ‘flexibility’ on Kashmir”: If India fails to deliver, Pakistan will take out the Lashkar-e-Tayba card and start playing it again . This option becomes pointed because Hafiz Said is a wanted man in India. According to Frontline (5 Nov 2005) on December 22, 2000, ‘Lashkar-e-Tayba (LeT) claimed responsibility for the Red Fort attack in which three Army personnel lost their lives. The main accused in the case, Mohammed Arif alias Ashfaq, a Pakistani national and a member of the LeT, used his mobile phone to convey to BBC correspondents in New Delhi and Srinagar his organisation’s responsibility immediately after the shootout. This, apart from the other pieces of evidence pointing to the LeT’s involvement in the attack, was the basis of the trial court’s conclusion that the LeT planned and carried out the assault’. The truth is that jihad is no longer an option. It is not an option even if only for brandishing under the nose of the world community. It gains nothing for Pakistan in regard to the Kashmir dispute; but it will certainly force the country’s civil society into making another painful shift to adjust to Hafiz Said’s parallel government. Even if the fiat has come from Saudi Arabia, it is not in the best interest of Pakistan.

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