News
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Three years on, the Lal Masjid legacy bites
* Cleric Abdul Aziz says hard times have hit and donations have decreased
* Seminary is facing the worst financial crisis
* Little money to teach and feed 5,000 studentsISLAMABAD: Three years after security forces cleared Islamabad’s Lal Masjid of radicals and cleric Abdul Aziz was arrested while escaping, his call for Islamic revolution is as fiery as ever, but hard times have hit.
The government may have reached a kind of stalemate over what was once a militant bastion, but the bearded man with a black turban and soft voice says times are tight. Inflation is high and donors are not as generous as in the past.
“We are facing the worst financial crisis. We have 5,000 students to teach, educate and feed and we can’t meet our expenses,” he told AFP, after spooning mango into the mouth of a three-year-old adopted son.
As a result, he said, there will be no commemorations of the week-long standoff between government forces and militants who used the Lal Masjid as a base for a vigilante campaign in the capital.
Security forces stormed the building in a leafy boulevard on July 10, 2007, and a number of people were killed. The Jamia Hafsa, an adjacent girls’ seminary and hostel, was later demolished.
The operation opened the floodgates to militant attacks in the country. Taliban and al Qaeda-linked groups have gone on the rampage, bombing their way around the country killing more than 3,500 people since then.
Former president Gen (r) Pervez Musharraf lost power the following year, replaced by a civilian administration, but the war between the government and the Taliban has spread like wildfire in the tribal areas.
The army has redeployed forces from the border with India, hurling 140,000 troops into battle against the Taliban in the northwestern tribal belt and to wrest back control of the Swat valley. The bombing of Islamabad’s Marriott Hotel in September 2008 sparked an exodus of Westerners. Attacks turned Peshawar into a fortress and bomb attacks have become frequent in Lahore.
On the eve of the third anniversary, suicide bombers slaughtered over 100 people near the Afghan border, targeting the local administration and peace efforts. Although millions dispute his assessment, Aziz presents Islamic rule as the one-stop solution to Pakistan’s social, economic, political and security woes.
“The mosque changed the track of the nation towards revolution,” he said. “After that, the whole nation took a turn towards Islamic rule of law and Islamic system,” he claims.
According to government records, there are more than 15,000 seminaries in the country, educating around five percent of the 34 million children who are in education.
Islamabad administrator Amir Ahmed Ali says there are 305 in the capital — 140 of them registered, up from 128 registered last year. Zafarullah Khan, director of the independent Centre for Civic Education, acknowledged that donations had slowed.
“But I think these seminaries are otherwise flourishing and the government seems helpless to tackle the issue by either bringing them in the national mainstream or taking action against them,” he said.
Jamia Hafsa says it educates around 650 girls in Islamic studies and the holy Quran, the majority of whom board. At their new, cramped quarters, classrooms double up as dormitories when bed rolls are shaken out at night.
Staff say the girls also study science, maths, English and computer studies, but few demonstrate fluency in English and two computers seen by AFP on a recent visit were not turned on.
“Everything has happened because our rulers were dictated to by the United States and England,” said Ume Hassan, Aziz’s wife.
The mosque was a flashpoint in the capital and there were fears it could become one again when Aziz was released on bail last year.
But he and his wife deny any link with jihad. When the roomful of girls dressed in the niqab were asked whether any of their relatives were fighting against government troops, there was silence. Imtiaz Gul, an expert on the tribal belt, said the so-called Ghazi Force, set up by Abdul Aziz’s younger brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was still operating, and allied to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban and Afghanistan’s Haqqani network. afp
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk