After his ill-advised dismissal of the chief
justice of Pakistan’s supreme court ignited
violent protest, President Pervez Musharraf may
be banking on Islamic fanatics to create chaos in
the nation’s capital, Islamabad. Many suspect
that an engineered bloodbath that leads to army
intervention, and the declaration of a national
emergency, could serve as a pretext to postpone
the October 2007 elections. This could make way
for Musharraf’s dictatorial rule to continue into
its eighth year - and perhaps well beyond.
This perverse strategy sounds almost
unbelievable. Musharraf, who George Bush
describes as his “buddy”, supports an
“enlightened moderate” version of Islam, and
wears two close attempts on his life by religious
extremists as a badge of honour. But his secret
reliance upon the Taliban card - one that he has
been accused of playing for years - is increasing
as his authority weakens.
Signs of government-engineered chaos abound. In
the heart of Islamabad, vigilante groups from a
government-funded mosque, the Lal Masjid, roam
the streets and bazaars, imposing Islamic
morality and terrorising citizens in full view of
the police. Openly sympathetic to the Taliban and
tribal militants fighting the Pakistan army, the
two cleric brothers who head Lal Masjid, Maulana
Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, have
attracted a core of banned militant organisations
around them. These include Jaish-e-Muhammad,
considered a pioneer of suicide bombings in the
region.
The clerics openly defy the state. Since January
21, baton-wielding, burka-clad students of the
Jamia Hafsa, the woman’s Islamic university
located next to the headquarters of Lal Masjid,
have forcibly occupied a government building, the
Children’s Library. In one of their many forays
outside the seminary, this burka brigade swooped
upon a house that they claimed was a brothel, and
kidnapped three women and a baby.
Male students from Islamabad’s many madrasas are
even more active in terrorising video-shop
owners, whom they accuse of spreading
pornography. Newspapers have carried pictures of
grand bonfires made with seized cassettes and
CDs. Most video stores in Islamabad have now
closed. Their owners duly repented after a fresh
campaign on May 4 by militants blew up a dozen
music and video stores, barbershops and a girl’s
school in the North-West Frontier Province.
Astonishing patience has been shown by the
Pakistani state, which on other occasions freely
used air and artillery power to combat such
challenges. Lal Masjid seems to operate with
impunity - no attempt has been made to cut off
its electricity, gas, phone or website - or even
to shut down its illegal FM radio station. The
chief negotiator appointed by Musharraf, Chaudhry
Shujaat Hussain, described the burka brigade
kidnappers as “our daughters”, with whom
negotiations would continue and against whom "no
operation could be contemplated".
Clerics realise that the government wants to play
ball. Their initial demand - the rebuilding of
eight illegally constructed mosques that had been
knocked down by Islamabad’s civic administration
– became a call for enforcement of Sharia law
across Pakistan. In a radio broadcast on April
12, the clerics issued a threat: "There will be
suicide blasts in the nook and cranny of the
country. We have weapons, grenades, and we are
expert in manufacturing bombs. We are not afraid
of death."
Lal Masjid’s head cleric, a former student of my
university in Islamabad, added the following
chilling message for our women students:
"The government should abolish coeducation.
Quaid-e-Azam University has become a brothel. Its
female professors and students roam in
objectionable dresses. I think I will have to
send my daughters of Jamia Hafsa to these immoral
women. They will have to hide themselves in
hijab, otherwise they will be punished according
to Islam. Our female students have not issued the
threat of throwing acid on the uncovered faces of
women. However, such a threat could be used for
creating the fear of Islam among sinful women.
There is no harm in it. There are far more
horrible punishments in the hereafter for such
women."
Indeed, on May 7, a female teacher in the QAU
history department was physically assaulted in
her office by a bearded, Taliban-looking man who
screamed that he had instructions from Allah.
What’s next? As Islamabad heads the way of
Pakistan’s tribal towns, the next targets will be
girls’ schools, internet cafes, bookshops, and
shops selling western clothing, followed by
purveyors of toilet paper, tampons, underwear,
mannequins and other un-Islamic goods.
In a sense, the inevitable is coming to pass.
Until a few years ago, Islamabad was a quiet,
orderly, modern city no different from any other
in Pakistan. Still earlier, it was largely the
abode of Pakistan’s elite and foreign diplomats.
But the rapid transformation of its demography
brought with it hundreds of mosques with
multi-barrelled audio cannons mounted on
minarets, as well as scores of madrasas,
illegally constructed in what used to be public
parks and green areas. Now, tens of thousands of
their students with prayer caps dutifully chant
the Qu’ran all day. In the evenings, they roam in
packs through the city’s streets and bazaars,
gaping at store windows and lustfully ogling
bare-faced women.
The stage is being set for transforming Islamabad
into a Taliban stronghold. When Musharraf exits -
which may be sooner rather than later - he will
leave a bitter legacy that will last for
generations, all for a little more taste of power.