Many well-known Pakistani political commentators
seem bent upon trivializing Lal Masjid. Although
the mosque’s bloody siege has now entered into
its fifth day, for them the comic sight of the
bearded Maulana Abdul Aziz fleeing in a burqa is
proof that this episode was mere puppet theatre.
They say it was enacted by hidden hands within
the government, expressly created to distract
attention away from General Musharraf’s mounting
problems, as well as to prove to his supporters
in Washington that he remains the last bulwark
against Islamic extremism. The writers conclude
that this is a contrived problem, not a real one.
They are dead wrong. Lal Masjid underscores the
danger of runaway religious radicalism in
Pakistan. It calls for urgent and wide-ranging
action.
That the crisis could have been averted is beyond
doubt. The Lal Masjid militants were given a free
hand by the government to kidnap and intimidate.
For months, under the nose of Pakistan’s
super-vigilant intelligence agencies, large
quantities of arms and fuel were smuggled inside
to create a fearsome fortress in the heart of the
nation’s capital.
Even after Jamia Hafsa students went on their
violent rampages in February 2007, no attempt was
made to cut off the electricity, gas, phone, or
website - or even to shut down their illegal FM
radio station. Operating as a parallel
government, the mullah duo, Maulana Abdul Rashid
Ghazi and Maulana Abdul Aziz, ran their own
Islamic court. They received the Saudi Arabian
ambassador on the mosque premises, and negotiated
with the Chinese ambassador for the release of
his country’s kidnapped nationals. But for the
outrage expressed by China, Pakistan’s
all-weather ally, the status quo would have
continued.
For a state that has not shied from using even
artillery and airpower on its citizens, the
softness on the mullahs was astonishing. Even as
the writ of the state was being openly defied,
the chief negotiator appointed by Musharraf,
Chaudhry Shujaat Husain, described the burqa
brigade militants as “our daughters” with whom
negotiations would continue and against whom "no
operation could be contemplated".
But this still does not prove that the fanatics
were deliberately set up, or that radicalism and
extremism is a fringe phenomenon. The Lal Masjid
mullahs, even as they directed kidnappings and
vigilante squads, continued to lead thousands
during Friday prayers. Uncounted thousands of
other radically charged mullahs daily berate
captive audiences about immoralities in society
and dangle promises of heaven for the pious.
What explains the explosive growth of this
phenomenon? Imperial America’s policies in the
Muslim world are usually held to blame. But its
brutalities elsewhere have been far greater. In
tiny Vietnam, the Americans had killed more than
one million people. Nevertheless, the Vietnamese
did not invest in explosive vests and belts.
Today if one could wipe America off the map of
the world with a wet cloth, mullah-led fanaticism
will not disappear. I have often asked those of
our students at Quaid-e-Azam University who toe
the Lal Masjid line why, if they are so concerned
about the fate of Muslims, they did not join the
many demonstrations organized by their professors
in 2003/4 against the immoral US invasion of
Iraq. The question leaves them unfazed. For them
the greater sin is for women to walk around bare
faced, or the very notion that they could be
considered the equal of men.
Extremism is often claimed to be the consequence
of poverty. But deprivation and suffering do not,
by themselves, lead to radicalism. People in
Pakistan’s tribal areas, now under the grip of
the Taliban, have never led more than a
subsistence existence. Building more roads,
supplying electricity and making schools - if the
Taliban allow - is a great idea. But it will have
little impact upon militancy.
Lack of educational opportunity is also not a
sufficient cause. It is a shame that less than
65% of Pakistani children have schools to go to,
and only 3% of the eligible population goes to
universities. But these are improvements over 30
years ago when terrorism was not an issue. More
importantly, violent extremism has jumped the
educational divide. The 911 hijackers and the
Glasgow airport doctors were highly educated men
and were supported in spirit by thousands of
similarly educated Muslims in Pakistan and the
world at large. It is not clear to me whether
persons with degrees are relatively more or less
susceptible to extremist versions of Islam.
The above, as I have argued, are insufficient
causes although they are significant as
contributory reasons. There are more compelling
explanations: the official sponsorship of jihad
by the Pakistani establishment in earlier times;
the poison injected into students through their
textbooks; and the fantastic growth of madrassas
across Pakistan.
But most of all, it has been the cowardly
deference of Pakistani leaders to blackmail by
mullahs. Their instinctive response has been to
seek appeasement. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had
suddenly turned Islamic in his final days as he
made a desperate, but ultimately unsuccessful,
attempt to save his government and life. A
fearful Benazir Bhutto made no attempt to
challenge the horrific Hudood and blasphemy laws
during her premierships. And Nawaz Sharif went a
step further by attempting to bring the Shariah
to Pakistan.
Such slavish kow-towing had powerful
consequences. The crimes of mullahs, because they
are committed in the name of Islam, go unpunished
today. The situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas
is dire and deteriorating. Inspired by the fiery
rhetoric from mosques, fanatics murder doctors
and health workers administering polio shots.
They blow up video shops and girls schools, kill
barbers who shave beards, stone alleged
adulterers to death, and destroy billboards with
women’s faces. No one is caught or punished.
Pakistan’s civil society has chosen to remain
largely silent, unmoved by this barbarism.
This silence has allowed tribal extremism to
migrate effortlessly into the cities. Except for
the posh areas of the largest metropolises, it is
now increasingly difficult for a woman to walk
bare-faced through most city bazaars. Reflections
of Jamia Hafsa can be found in every public
university of Pakistan. Here, as elsewhere, a
sustained campaign of proselytizing and
intimidation is showing results. In fact, it
would do little harm to rename my university, now
a city of walking tents, as Jamia Quaid-e-Azam.
On April 12, to terrify the last few hold-outs,
the Lal Masjid mullahs declared in their FM radio
broadcast that Quaid-e-Azam University had turned
into a brothel. They warned that Jamia Hafsa
girls could throw acid on the faces of those
female university students who refuse to cover
their faces. There should have been instant
outrage. Instead, fear and caution prevailed. The
university administration was silent, as was the
university’s chancellor, General Musharraf. A
university-wide meeting of about 200 students and
teachers, held in the physics department,
eventually concluded with a condemnation of the
mullahs threat and a demand for their removal as
head clerics of a government-funded mosque. But
student opinion on burqas was split: many felt
that although the mullahs had gone a tad too far,
covering of the face was indeed properly Islamic
and needed enforcement. Twenty years ago this
would have been a minority opinion.
The Lal Masjid crisis is a direct consequence of
the ambivalence of General Musharraf’s regime
towards Islamic militancy. In part it comes from
fear and follows the tradition of appeasement.
Another part comes from the confusion of whether
to cultivate the Taliban - who can help keep
Indian influence out of Afghanistan - or whether
to fight them. One grieves for the officers and
jawans killed in the on-going battle with
fanatics. It must feel especially terrible to be
killed by one’s former friends and allies.
What should the government do after the guns stop
firing and the hostages are out, whether dead or
alive? At least two immediate actions are needed.
First, those who publicly preach hatred in
mosques and call for violence against the
citizens of Pakistan should be denied the
opportunity to do so. The government should
announce that any citizen who hears such sermons
should record them, and lodge a charge in the
nearest designated complaint office. The guilty
should be dealt with severely under the law. In
the tribal areas, using force if necessary, the
dozens of currently operating illegal FM radio
stations should be closed down. Run by mullahs
bitterly hostile to each other on doctrinal or
personal grounds, they incite bitter tribal and
sectarian wars.
Second, one must not minimize the danger posed by
madrassas. It is not just their gun-toting
militants, but the climate of intolerance they
create in society. Where and when necessary, and
after sufficient warning, they must be shut down.
Establishment of new madrassas must be strictly
limited. Apologists say that only 5-10 percent of
madrassas breed militancy, and thus dismiss this
as a fringe phenomenon. But if the number of
Pakistani madrassas is 20,000 (give or take a few
thousand; nobody knows for sure) this amounts to
1000-2000. Although all are not equally lethal,
this is surely a lot of dangerous fringe.
The government’s madrassa reform program has
fallen flat on its face, and future efforts will
do no better. It was absurd to have assumed that
introducing computers or teaching English could
have transformed the character of madrassa
education away from brain-washing and rote
memorization towards logical behaviour and
critical thinking. Did the adeptness with which
Lal Masjid managed its website really bring it
into the 21’st century? Madrassas are religious
institutions; they cannot be changed into normal
schools. It is time to give up wasting money and
effort in attempting to reform them and, instead,
to radically improve the public education system
and make it a viable alternative.
The Lal Masjid battle is part of the wider civil
war within the Islamic world waged by
totalitarian forces that seek redemption through
violence.
Their cancerous radicalism pits Muslims against
Muslims, and the world at large. It is only
peripherally directed against the excesses of the
corrupt ruling establishment, or inspired by
issues of justice and equity.
Note that the Lal Masjid ideologues - and others
of their ilk - do not rouse their followers to
action on matters of poverty, unemployment, poor
access to justice, lack of educational
opportunities, corruption within the army and
bureaucracy, or the sufferings of peasants and
workers.
Instead their actions are concentrated entirely
on improving morality, where morality is
interpreted almost exclusively in relation to
women and perceived Western cultural invasion.
They do not consider as immoral such things as
exploiting workers, cheating customers, bribing
officials, beating their wives, not paying taxes,
or breaking traffic rules. Their interpretation
of religion leads to bizarre failures in logic,
moral reasoning, and appreciation of human life.