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India-Pakistan

JI protests against Mullah Qadir's execution

2013-12-14

[Pak Daily Times] Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It maintains close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. the Taliban, and al-Qaeda. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... (JI) on Friday staged a protest against the execution of JI leader in Bangladesh, Mullah Abdul Qadir. Several protestors blocked University Road against the killing and demanded Pakistain to expel the Bangladeshi ambassador to his country. Addressing the protestors outside the Bait-ul-Mukarram Mosque in Gulshan-e-Iqbal after Friday prayers, JI Sindh chief Dr Merajul Huda Siddiqui said the so-called war crimes tribunal of Bangladeshi government awarded death penalty to Mullah over fake testimonials.

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India-Pakistan

The bigots within

2011-06-21

[Dawn] Circumvention, hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness describe best the behaviour of clergy and politicians when it comes to condemning faceless myrmidons and extremism. Fearing electoral losses, the politicians and Learned Elders of Islam have chosen to either remain mum or side with the rising tide of bigotry and fanaticism. Speaking out against it can result in death, as has recently been demonstrated. This tends to blunt the impulse to criticism. The Sharifs of Punjab are playing the most dangerous game with the fate of Punjab vis-à-vis terrorism which has become entrenched in the province due to denial of the threat's existence. There have been allegations of them being in arms with various jihad boy elements for petty political gains. Earlier, Punjab's senior minister Rana Sanaullah was photographed with the chief of defunct Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistain during the by elections in south Punjab. Following this, Shahbaz Sharif and Interior Minister Rehman Malik Pak politician, current Interior Minister under the Gilani administration. Malik is a former Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) intelligence officer who rose to head the FIA during Benazir Bhutto's second tenure. He later joined the Pak Peoples Party and was chief security officer to Bhutto. Malik was tossed from his FIA job in 1998 after documenting the breath-taking corruption of the Sharif family. By unhappy coincidence Näwaz Shärif became PM at just that moment and Malik moved to London one step ahead of the button men. exchanged endless salvos of claims for and against the existence of Punjabi Taliban. And yet it exists. Imran Khan ... who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... is another politician of the same ilk who wants us to think that faceless myrmidons are only after Pakistain because we are fighting a "US war" and not a war for our own survival. He conveniently ignores the terrorists' proclamation of "fighting to create an Islamic system in Pakistain". However, we can't all be heroes Somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by... ANP is an exception which bravely and boldly took the case of the cut-throats on, wrestled free Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat... and South Wazoo and suffered several casualties in its ranks and file. Shrinking from its duty, the Parliament has failed to take ownership of the counter terrorism action. They have not amended the 1997 Anti Terrorism Ordinance which lapsed and has not been re-promulgated ever since. The politicians share the mindset with the clergy who otherwise issue infidelity verdicts at the drop of hat, like their cousins in the pre-Protestant Movement's clergy, but refuse to educate people to exorcise the genie. Most share the perverted 'jihad' mindset of imposing a system based on blood and gore. One would question their quest for Islamising Pakistain. The preamble to our Constitution says no unIslamic law can be passed in the country. A republic with majority Mohammedans has never passed anything even remotely unIslamic. But constitution matters little to them which they consider based on "munkirat". Barring the argument, the roots of intolerance go back to the '50s at times of movement against the Ahmadis. Later, the country bore witness to the blood curdling Shia -Sunni violence at the behest of the Saudis and the Iranians. This progressed into internecine intra-sunni conflict. And now fundamentalist insurgency. They are waging their "jihad" in clear violation of the Holy Koran and Hadith. As Javed Ahmad Ghamdi points out "Jihad can only be launched by the state and not independent actors otherwise it turns into chaos." Unfortunately, all the followers of Pakistain's chapter of Deoband school approve of terrorism, whereas scholars running the Deoband Institution in India have rejected and denounced terrorism as unIslamic. Qazi Hussain Ahmad of Jamaat-e-Islami refuses to denounce the Taliban offensive and terms it justified. His party, now led by Munawwar Hassan, is up in arms over action against feared terrorist and criminal mastermind Ilyas Kashmiri. Jamaat-e-Isami's Bloody Karachi chief Merajul Huda Siddiqui says Kashmiri's death is being celebrated by India. A departure from this trend is 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 ... Albeit too little too late, Fazl's reaction coincided after two life attempts on him. Stopping short of categorical rejection, he criticised terrorism, saying "violence has no parallel in Islam." But there were some religious luminaries who acted like "light at the end of the tunnel". They bit the dust in opposing Taliban and al Qaeda's brand of Islam. Foremost among them was Maulana Hassan Jan who was a Taliban ideologue and tried to convince the latter of the wrongdoing. He received several warnings but he didn't budge from opposing the macabre deeds and was bumped off. Dr Ghulam Murtaza, Dr M Farooq, vice chancellor of International Islamic University, Swat, Mufti Naeemi, and Maulana Hassan Turabi slammed the violence perpetrated by the fringe elements openly and boldly but had to pay with their blood for sticking to their conviction. Another critic, noted scholar Javed Ahmad Ghamdi has to leave the country following persistent life threats. The Learned Elders of Islam as a whole should have taken the lead role in explaining and defining terrorism as a vice which only sows more confusion and chaos. Their effort should have been directed at reformation and education. Let's see how long it takes for sanity to prevail. Pakistani society has been engaged in driving out or killing the moderates for two generations. Who remains who is both courageous and sane, around which those who would retake their society can crystallize?

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India-Pakistan

No Muslim involved in suicide attacks in country

2009-12-14

KARACHI: Floating the idea of a change in the Pakistani society, Jamaat-e-Islami's top leadership at a congregation of the JI's workers unanimously blamed the United States' agencies for terrorism, chaos and anarchy in Pakistan. "The US wants international control on the Pakistani nukes, and terrorism is just a pretext to achieve that target," said JI's chief Munawar Hassan at a one-day training congregation held at Nishtar Park on Sunday. Elderly people as well as women with children also attended the congregation. They carried flags and raised slogans in support of the JI's manifesto, and condemned the US and anti-Islamic forces. He said the US also wanted to impose its decision about Kashmir on Pakistan, and its allies want to declare Pakistan as an unsafe state. "No Muslim is involved in suicidal attacks in Pakistan, and rather Blackwater (Xe) - a US private contractor - and Indian agents are involved in these incidents," he said. Hassan expressed dissatisfaction over the lack of action by the government against India, and urged the foreign minister and interior minister to "take concrete measures against India for its dirty role in Pakistan". He said that officials of the US agencies as well as Blackwater were being held on a daily basis but they were being released on the directives of the interior minister, who regularly denies its presence in Pakistan. He said the interior minister should defend Pakistan instead of the US interests. The JI chief asked the COAS Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani to prove the army's performance and success by producing the 10-month performance report of the military operation. "Terrorists had reached the military GHQ and remained there for more than 24 hours, so why should we believe in the success of the Army operation," he questioned and added that the operation caused an increase in terrorist attacks. He demanded the government to immediately stop the operation and opt for negotiation, and added that the offensive had displaced more than five million people. He said the JI would stage a countrywide three-day protest on December 14, 15 and 16 against India for resorting to water aggression and turning Pakistan into a desert. He also said the war against terrorism is only targeting Muslims, and therefore is a war against Islam. JI's deputy chief Sirajul Haq and Foreign Affairs head Abdul Ghaffar Aziz in their address lashed out at the US-led Islamophobia. Aziz said Palestine's Hamas, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and Islamists in Tunis and Turkey were heading to their goals patiently but successfully. Nasarullah Shajji was the in-charge of the congregation and JI's Mohammad Hussain Mehanti, Merajul Huda and Dr Shahid Hashmi also spoke on the occasion.

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India-Pakistan

May 12 convictions could have prevented Karachi blasts: JI

2007-10-21

Jamat-e-Islami (JI) Karachi Ameer Dr Merajul Huda Siddiqui has said that blasts Thursday night were an attempt to hold back the ongoing political process in country and the inquiry into this violence would yield nothing. “It was quite astonishing that despite the government’s claims to have provided the latest jamming devices, the bombs went off,” he said. He was of the opinion that the outcome of the inquiry into the blasts would be the same as that of the Nishtar Park bomb blasts, the May 12 mayhem, the mini bus G-7 target killings and the murder of JI activists during the bye-elections in May 2004. “If the people behind the May 12 mayhem had been exposed and punished, the PPP rally blasts might have not taken place,” he told Daily Times. He expressed the hope that the government would expose the people behind the Oct 18 violence and that justice would be done. “There are people who need the status quo in the country by halting the political progress with such violence but they should not forget that halting political progress is tantamount to a silent revolution,” he opined, adding that the Sindh government should be ashamed of what had happened on Oct 18 and should quit. Pakistan has reached the brink of a “sea of blood” and the law and order situation would be a main question during the forthcoming general elections. “It is very sad that as the daughter of Z A Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto has joined hands with alien forces and it is on record that the US Secretary of State was directly involved in Benazir Bhutto’s return,” he said. “We support suicide attacks in areas where Muslim are held slaves but in Pakistan where the doors of dialogues are open, the suicide attacks are condemnable. We want to finish them because we believe that the culprits should be dealt with under the existing law.”

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India-Pakistan

Perv Again Challenges Islamist Radicals

2007-04-03

The stand off between two powerful clerics and their followers at Islamabad's Lal Masjid mosque and the Pakistani government is entering a new phase after last week's showdown over a local brothel and the clerics' anti-vice campaign. President Pervez Musharraf is seeking to isolate the brothers politically with a view to then ordering their arrest. Many religious scholars came forward to Musharraf's call Sunday and condemned the radical brothers, Ghazi Abdul Rasheed and Maulana Abdul Azi. But the men are adamant their students' action against an alleged brothel owner was legitimate and supported by the masses. The woman was held captive for three days and several policemen were also seized. Students from the two madrassas or Islamic seminaries associated with Lal Masjid - one male and one female - were closely involved in the clashes with the security forces. In January hundreds of burqa clad women from the female seminary occupied a children's library in Islamabad, to protest against the demolition of unauthorised mosques in the capital. The action against the brothel was part of the mosque's recent "anti vice campaign" which critics say is a clear sign that lal Majid has become the heart of the pro-Taliban movement in Islamabad. Lal Masjid on Monday was once again surrounded by para-military troops and female police, an indication that a major operation is imminent. However the two brothers - both wanted by Pakistan's interior ministry - are still defiant. Maulana Abdul Aziz gave the federal government a week within which to "enforce Sharia", saying that if it failed "clerics will Islamise society themselves." "Today 26 people in the neighborhood where the prostitution den was situated, wrote a letter to the ministry of interior and asking them to prevent the return of the women" Ghazi Abdul Rasheed told Adnkronos International (AKI) by telephone on Monday evening after a press conference in Islamabad inside the four walls of Lal Masjid. "What the students of our seminary did was basically a popular demand and the neighborhood also applauded that. Now the issue is over. We have released the woman [alleged brothel owner] after her confessions. We have moved on and the government should also move on" Ghazi Abdul Rasheed asserted. Nevertheless, interior minister Aftab Sherpao said the government would maintain the rule of law at all cost. "We have a deep regard that it is a womens seminary so we would not go blindly inside the premises but there are cases registered against the management of the seminary for abduction of a women so we would obviously pursue those cases at all cost," Sherpao briefed AKI from Islamabad by phone. In a speech to mark Sunday's celebrations of the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, President Musharraf called on religious scholars in Pakistan to come forward and decide whether what Lal Masjid people had done was right or wrong, and if they find it wrong to then take up action against them. "I disagree with the actions conducted by the female students of Jamia Hafsa [the women's seminary managed by Lal Masjid]. Nobody has the right to take the law into their hands. Even if they found anything wrong they should have apprised the state machinery," Mufti Naeem of Jamia Binoria Karachi, told AdnKronos International. But Ghazi Abdul Rasheed was adamant that, according to the Prophet Mohammed’s traditions, any vice should be stopped by force or, if there is not enough strength, Muslims should speak out against sin. "The government is considering isolating Jamia Hafsa through political manipulations and is intending to use force but we rest assured that if anybody tried to use any force against Jamia Hafsa we would resist," a top leader of Jamaat-i-Islami, Dr Merajul Huda, told AKI. Another dangerous gambit against his political enemies.

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India-Pakistan

Pakistan clerics seethe; JaD says Pope must go

2006-09-22

From BBC Radical Muslim clerics and scholars in Pakistan have demanded the removal of Pope Benedict XVI for what they called "insulting remarks" against Islam. The Pope should be dismissed for "encouraging war and fanning hostility between various faiths" the hundreds of senior Muslims said in a joint message. The Pope has said he is "deeply sorry" that his words, quoting a 14th Century Christian emperor, had upset Muslims. But his apology was rejected by the Muslims meeting in Lahore, Pakistan. "The Pope, and all infidels, should know that no Muslim, under any circumstances, can tolerate an insult to the Prophet [Muhammad]. If the West does not change its stance regarding Islam, it will face severe consequences," said the joint statement. The group behind the meeting, Jamaat al-Dawat, has been listed by the US government as a "terrorist" group for its alleged links with Kashmiri militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba. "The Pope's statement against Prophet Muhammad was not unintentional," said Sajid Mir, a religious scholar and MP who took part in the meeting. "He has opened a new and an organised front against Islam and Muslims should prepare themselves for jihad because the Pope's insulting remarks against Islam follow President George W Bush's statement on crusades," he said. From AFP Hundreds of Pakistani Islamists held street protests to condemn Pope Benedict XVI for remarks they regard as anti-Islamic, with one leader saying the pontiff should be crucified. Demonstrators Friday poured out of mosques after the main weekly Muslim prayers in Pakistan's largest city Karachi, the eastern city of Lahore, the capital Islamabad and other urban centres. "If the pope comes here we will hang him on the Cross," Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, a senior leader of Pakistan's main alliance of radical parties, told around 200 noisy demonstrators in Islamabad. The alliance, called the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal or United Action Front, forms part of the parliamentary opposition and is often heavily involved in street protests in mostly Muslim Pakistan. Ahmed also said the pope had joined US President George W. Bush's "crusade" against Muslims, referring to Christians who fought against Muslims from the 11th through the 13th centuries. In Karachi police said at least 100 hardliners shouted slogans demanding an apology from the pope and criticising the United States. "Religious leaders like the pope should not use (US President George W.) Bush's tone," Merajul Huda, Karachi chief of the hardline Jamaat-i-Islami party, told the rally. Witnesses said more than 300 people chanted slogans against the pope outside an Islamic school in the central city of Multan. Dozens more massed in Lahore. Prayer leaders also condemned the pope during Friday sermons around the country. A gathering of hundreds of fundamentalists in Lahore on Thursday said Pope Benedict should be removed from his position for his "blasphemous" comments. The Pakistani parliament has also condemned the pope's comments and the foreign ministry summoned the Vatican's envoy in Islamabad last week to lodge a protest.

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