Attack on Qazi: A Preposterous Allegation
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
A hospital stretcher was probably being pushed to the operation theatre for an emergency craniotomy on a 15-year-old girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban three days ago. We had held onto our prayers longer, with hearts beating faster, pleading very hard to the Almighty God for her safe recovery. Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the former Ameer of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), regrettably, but not surprisingly, had confused the issue, more than ever, by only condemning the attack without denouncing the perpetrator. What a shame.
Keeping his guards up against any provocation to the extremists, he had proclaimed, “A 14-year-old child is neither entirely aware of her circumstances, nor can she be fully committed to a cause. At this young age, there must be someone else behind the scenes exploiting her innocence, and whoever has manipulated her is equally guilty of the crime as her shooter.”
To make further inroads with the Taliban, Qazi Hussain Ahmed narrated the story about her father and touched upon the condemnable role of the international news agencies in taking advantage of the innocence of Malala Yousafzai. “When she was 11 years old, the ground situation in Mingora, Swat was really bad, almost like a curfew. During that time, a BBC representative stayed in her house for three days as a guest of her father, in which he had a chance to converse with her in detail,” he said. “The video tapes of that interview are available and can be provided to the media upon demand. After that discussion with the BBC representative, she was introduced to the Pakistani NGOs and groomed for a ‘special purpose’.”
Decoding that ‘special purpose’ is not complicated at all. For ordinary citizens, it can be easily translated to reduce extremism in Pakistan where religious intolerance has been escalating at an alarming pace since 9/11, and has seriously endangered the peaceful existence of the whole society. But in the eyes of the JI, such a motive is only called secularism and has to be opposed vehemently. Qazi also pointed out that after the attack on Malala, the hidden agenda of the Pakistani spy agencies and the army to launch a military operation in North Waziristan (NW) was not obscure any more, and his party would not favor any assault against the Taliban in that area upon the demand of the Americans. Even though in the eyes of many experts, an army operation in NW is inevitable; and can presumably help reduce violence in the country at least to some extent, but the JI has decided to resist it in any case, as it has decided to object to any action that can promote the (self-defined) secular ideology.
But we do not want to get involved in this contentious debate at the moment because of the paucity of real data; instead what we want to examine, although briefly, is the concepts of the JI behind their jihad policy. Once we get a grasp on their policy inspirations, we can then easily understand their next strategy, and it would not surprise us anymore. To summarize, their theory has always been to stay safe and be involved in active jihad at the same time. It can be described further as: choose your enemy carefully that cannot, even remotely, harm you; if you reckon someone can harm you, then do not make him/her your enemy. (This policy does not apply to the Muttahida Qaumi Movement because they snatched the home ground of Karachi from the JI and caused them electoral homelessness.)
Following that simple rule, Qazi has attempted to appease the extremists after being attacked by the Pakistani Taliban, who have now proved their virility not only to the JI but also to all the religious political parties of Pakistan. To ensure further his safety, he has also nominated the US as his personal enemy, completely ignoring the fact that just a few years ago, even after 9/11, he used to publicly admire the US for its pluralism (obviously stemming out of its secular constitution) during his visits to the US. He had happily sent his son to the US for higher education without being concerned about his safety, secure in the knowledge that there was no imminent threat to him or his family from the world’s biggest power.
The sad truth is different. We all know that Qazi was threatened by radicals after an interview in which he had criticized the violent policies of the Pakistani Taliban. The Taliban had later issued their rebuttal with a warning of a forthcoming attack on the former Ameer. In that situation, rather than taking the bull by the horns and realizing it was time to show courage and resolve, Qazi, a former Senator, has regrettably tried hard to mend his ties with the extremists. Using the anti-American public sentiment and deliberately obfuscating the issue, he has consistently condemned the US for everything that has gone wrong in Pakistan, but has not mustered up the courage to go after the real perpetrators of the attempted assassination of both Malala Yousafzai and himself. In that way, he has stuck to the core ideology of his party where perhaps personal safety is the top priority even when the safety of the nation is compromised. What a shame.
(The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com )
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