Adil Najam
The pictures coming out of Islamabad are not good. Not good at all.
Here is yet more evidence – as if we needed more evidence – of a society at war with itself. The hostage-taking by women students from Jamia Hafsa in Islamabad of the residents of a house that they allege is a brothel is not just another act of vigilantism and a breakdown of governance; it is also a manifestation of a nation divided against itself. Coming at a time when the legitimacy of the government is at its lowest after the recent fiasco of the Chief Justice’s removal, the powers in Islamabad seem to have little ability and even less stomach to address the criminality of this act given their own recent actions.
What we are seeing now are the signs of a society without direction, a state without control, a government without legitimacy.The result seems to be laathi raaj; quite literally. If one believes that the violent and coerced imposition of any one view – conservative or liberal; secular or religious – is wrong, then one has to reject all laathis. One has to be as opposed and as appalled at the laathis (sticks) being wielded by the burqa-clad women on Jamia Hafsa as one was a few weeks ago to the laathis wielded by the police at lawyers and media offices a few weeks ago.One assumes that readers of this blog are well aware of the events not just of yesterday but of the last many weeks. If you are not, this video newsreel from BBC gives some background.
To view another perspective, here is a video that seems to have been made by/at Jamia Hafsa itself and presents the views of women leaders from within Jamia Hafsa.
The coverage of major Pakistani newspapers of the story is itself indicative of a divided society, of divided sensibilities, and of divided priorities. Here, for example, is the headline and excerpts from Dawn:
Madressah force on the offensive in Islamabad: Move to impose Talibanisation; three women kidnapped
Signs of Talibanisation appeared quite evident on Wednesday in the heart of the federal capital when hard-line religious leaders and hundreds of men and women activists from the local madressahs challenged the writ of the government for the second time by trying to force their brand of Islamic justice in Islamabad. They first took hostage three women from a house near their stronghold of Lal Masjid for allegedly running a brothel and later forcibly detained two security personnel in protest against detention of their four supporters, two of them women teachers of Madressah Hafsa. The madressah students, mainly women, had been taking rounds of the nearby markets for a few days, threatening video and music shop owners to close down their business. In some way, they had been encouraged by the soft pedalling by the government on their earlier action of occupying a children’s library two months back, which still remained in their control.
The three women were apparently kidnapped two days ago, but the situation took the form of a confrontation on Wednesday when the authorities detained four madressah people on the charge of threatening video-shop owners. The madressah students reacted violently, and within no time two police vans were attacked and two security officials taken hostage. Later, the ulema and local administration reached an agreement under which Qamar Abbas of Islamabad police and Hammad of Punjab police were released with their official vehicles. In return, the two women teachers and two other activists were released by the police. However, the three kidnapped women were still stated to be in the custody of the students of the madressah and negotiations were under way for their release.
Headline and excerpts from the story in Islamabad-based The News:
Police give in to Jamia Hafsa students
Female students of Jamia Hafsa seminary, backed by male students of other Madrassas, prevailed on the Islamabad police after a daylong showdown here on Wednesday. The trouble started when the seminary students and teachers, supported by their patrons in Lal Masjid, decided to take the ‘community correction role’Â? in their hands and kidnapped an old woman, her young daughter and daughter-in-law on Tuesday night blaming them for ‘immoral activities’Â? in the area. The Islamabad police and the district administration started negotiations with the Lal Masjid management to get the three women released. However, the students as well as their patrons refused to cooperate with the authorities. In a ‘tit-for-tat’Â? move the police picked up two female teachers and as many drivers of the Jamia Hafsa seminary who were busy threatening the shopkeepers selling video and audio CDs in a local market at 9.30am on Wednesday. The teachers were identified as Tasleem Bibi and Saeeda Bibi while the drivers were identified as Muhammad Ayub and Zabta Khan.
This complicated the situation as the male and female students retaliated by kidnapping two police officials and confiscating two official police vehicles â€?one belonging to the Punjab police and the other to the Islamabad police at 12.30 pm on Wednesday. The male students belonging to different Madrassas blocked roads to protest the police action. The Islamabad police high-ups, it was reliably learnt, ordered the Station House Officer (SHO) of the Aabpara police station to take action and get the policemen.â€? Constable Kaamal Abbas (Islamabad police) and Hamad Raza (Punjab police) released from the custody of the students who had taken the men and vehicles inside Jamia Hafsa. However, the SHO showed reluctance because he did not have enough force to deal with any untoward situation. Subsequently the SHO was suspended, it was learnt. It was also learnt that the government came under immense pressure from unknown quarters that the federal interior secretary, in a top-level meeting, ordered release of the teachers and drivers ‘unconditionally’Â? expecting the Jamia Hafsa administration would reciprocate the ‘peace gesture’Â?. The Islamabad police released the two female teachers and the drivers who had been taken into custody for creating disturbances in a busy city market. The detainees were released from the Aabpara police station around 7.30pm. The seminary students released the two police constables, along with their vehicles at 9.30pm, who were kidnapped earlier in the day. However, the three women, who were kidnapped by the students of different Madrassas of Islamabad on Tuesday night from a thickly populated locality of sector G-6/1, were still not released.
Finally, headline and excerpts from The Nation:
Jamia Hafsa students raid brothel; Government gets cops released after accepting demands
Students of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa challenged the writ of the government by making hostage two police constables and three alleged prostitutes and brought the government down to its knees by getting released the Jamia’s teachers arrested by the police here Wednesday. However, behind-the-scene lengthy dialogue between the Lal Masjid administration and the government authorities led to the release of the two teachers, their driver and a servant, and the police cops along with their vehicles. Ghazi Abdul Rasheed, Vice Principal of the Jamia, while talking to the media claimed that the three women had been captured for running a prostitution den and would not be released until and unless they renounce their “illegitimate business” or they would be punished under the Islamic laws…
Ghazi also announced that the operation against the brothel houses would continue and in this regard the Lal Masjid administration had established a complaint cell. Ghazi had earlier declared at a press conference that the hostages would not be released until the authorities did not free the detained teachers of Jamia Hafsa and Khalid Khwaja, a human rights activist. Ghazi said that according to the agreement between the authorities and Lal Masjid, Khalid Khawaja and remaining five students of Lal Masjid would be released within next 15 days. He also said that the captured women would be handed over to the authorities only after they were assured registration of a case against them. Ghazi told the media that the girl students of Jamia Hafsa, had launched a campaign against obscenity and video shops in the city. He said one of the owners of a video shop informed the students that Aunti Shamim was running a brothel in the G-6 Sector. According to him, the girl students went to the house of Shamim to advise her to stop this illegitimate business, however, she shouted at them and used abusive language. During investigation, some of the locals also complained about her illegal business…
Meanwhile, the residents of Sector G-6, near to Lal Masjid, also conducted a press conference in the premises of the mosque and demanded of the authorities concerned to take stern action against the accused Aunti Shamim for allegedly running a brothel here in the federal Capital. The residents of the area have also formed a community Federation to resolve issues as ownership rights are with the government. President of the Federation, Chaudhry Shaukat and the federation member, Asif Jamal, flanked by a number of inhabitants were present in a crowded press conference along with Vice Principal of the Jamia Hafsa, Maulana Abdul Rashid. They accused Aunti Shamim for running the brothel in the locality and added that they had complained so many times to the authorities concerned over the increasing unethical activities in the locality but the authorities concerned did not take any action as she was influential. They justified the action taken by female students of the Jamia Hafsa who on Tuesday night raided the residence of the accused and taken her hostage in Jamia Hafsa along with her daughter and daughter-in-law. It is a good action taken by the female students,the authorities concerned possibly could not takeÂ?, said Ch Shaukat.
While we have only given selected passages from the three stories, we urge readers to follow the links given to read the three stories in full, and to also read Urdu newspapers. What you will see is that it is not only the headlines that show the societal divisions but also what each story choses to cover, and how.
ISLAMABAD: The government has directed the Islamabad administration not to take “immediateâ€
The issue at the heart of the matter is the non-recognition of legitimacy of State of Pakistan by a section of our society representing the far right. These are the descendants of the people which did not see the creation of Pakistan very kindly and now they want to force their will on the rest of the society. Their refusal to accept the Authority of the state of Pakistan will only lead to Anarchy very ably fueled by the corrupt and incompetent elite that govern our beloved country.
Editorial, The News, March 30, 2007
Who will fight this Talibanisation?
The events of recent days in the NWFP town of Tank and in Islamabad should shatter the assessment of all those policymakers, government functionaries and members of civil society who thought that Talibanisation was a feature only of FATA or some other remote and backward area of the country. Tank, which is now under curfew, and where several people were killed as extremists (thought to be allied with a Waziristan militant commander with whom the government brokered a ‘peace deal’ last year) launched an all-out attack on Tuesday night, is the district headquarters of Tank district and not far from Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Lakki Marwat, all reasonably large towns of NWFP. The violence there began on Monday after a school principal had the courage to call in the police after jihadis barged into his institution and tried to win new recruits to their cause. The local SHO also responded and he sadly paid for it with his life, reportedly killed in the most cold-blooded manner possible, after he thought he had managed to broker a truce with the militants who would leave the school peacefully and without any new schoolboys in tow. The principal was kidnapped the following day from his home and he too paid for his courage in standing up to these extremists with his life — on Thursday it was reported that his body was found from South Waziristan. The militants who attacked Tank on Thursday have been linked to pro-Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud since this is his area of influence, although he has himself denied any such connection. However, it is worth reiterating that on many occasions in the past militants have carried out attacks against government installations and security personnel or killed so-called ‘informers’ in areas under their influence but then disassociated themselves from these acts. One can only hope that the president is absolutely one hundred per cent accurate when he says that those elements in the intelligence agencies who in the past had supported the Taliban, the jihadis and their sympathisers are no longer in the service of the government and that now any assistance to these extremists is coming, if at all, from retired intelligence officials.
The other disturbing development is taking place right in the heart of the federal capital. In this case particularly, the government and the Islamabad local administration are to blame for not having acted earlier when the female students of Jamia Hafsa had forcibly and illegally occupied a children’s library demanding that this occupation would end only after the government rebuilt a portion of a mosque complex that had been demolished by the Capital Development Authority because it was built on encroached land. Now since those protesting claim to be religious students, one would first like to ask them their position on the legality of a house of worship – both from the temporal and the theological point of view – that is built on encroached land. Had the government acted promptly and strongly against this illegal occupation of the library and told the students and their madressah patrons that mosques built on illegal land are not legal, and had the students been ejected and not allowed to roam around Islamabad and launch ‘raids’ perhaps what happened on Wednesday could have been pre-empted. But as usual, the government seemed to sleep through this all, with the religious affairs minister claiming a “breakthrough” some weeks ago in the occupation stand-off.
This ‘breakthrough’ was that the government would rebuild the demolished parts of the mosque. The minister also managed to pose for the cameras as he laid the first ‘brick’ of this promised rebuilding operation. But the naivete of the minister and all those in the government who agreed to this view of giving concessions to the undue and illegal demands of extremists in the country was once again proven wrong when after being given a foot they proceeded to demand a mile. Hopefully, in any future negotiations, the services of the good minister will not be used. Instead of leaving the library and returning to their seminary as any God-fearing law-abiding citizens would have done (they in fact would not have occupied the library in the first place), they placed more demand before the government and refused to end their occupation. The initial ‘raid’ they conducted on one of the capital’s busiest bazaars amazingly went unnoticed by the police and local administration, again making one wonder whether some elements in either or both organisations were perhaps sympathetic to the cause of these extremists. An SHO has apparently been suspended for failing to act against the students when they ‘raided’ the market but one would like to ask the government what it plans to do in the case of the minister, whose ‘breakthrough’ emboldened these extremists so much that they believed they could go about dispensing their own warped interpretation of religion and law on everybody else, holding even policemen hostage in the process.
What is perhaps equally worrying is the fact that there may be many in Pakistani society who may think that what these extremists posing as students have done is good and necessary. After all, with all the intolerance and bigotry that one is exposed to as a Pakistani in the course of one’s daily life (from the mosque imam’s often virulent sermon, the bias and prejudice manifest in the national curriculum, the overdose of religious programmes and channels on television, to the increasing tide of religiosity in society and the tendency among many people to bring in religion into just about everything), the government and civil society have themselves to blame for this increase in Talibanisation. As for the government, it fails on several counts. Foremost among them is its remarkable — and sadly enduring — inability to take a stand against extremists forces such as in Tank and the Jamia Hafsa students, deeming such matters ‘sensitive’ and then burying its head in the sand like an ostrich, pretending everything is all right, and continuing to think (at least some sections of the government and security establishment do, it would be fair to assume, subscribe to this view) that a way of having leverage with our regional neighbours means supping with the extremists and jihadis. In addition to this, the government is guilty of adopting a clear double standard. liberal and law-abiding progressive elements are tear-gassed and lathi-charged when they organise peaceful protests but when the extremists and obscurantists indulge in violent protests they are given undue concessions and a free hand to act with impunity. Tank and the Jamia Hafsa episode should serve as a wakeup call to the government. It must act decisively now. The future is only going to get bleaker unless madressah and national curriculum reforms are carried out and the overt display of religion in national life is curtailed, to levels normally found in other Muslim countries such as Malaysia or the Gulf states. As for civil society, and those who think they are non-extremist (i.e., progressive, liberal and/or moderate), they better stand up and speak against the extremists or risk their very existence and way of life coming under a permanent threat.
Salamalikum,
As I’ve mentioned in other posts, the problem here is the action and not the intention and the cause. Adnan Siddiqi has already posted some ahadeeth but one I want to quote for those who reject naseehat under the umbrella of views being imposed on them is this: al-deenu al-naseeha (this religion is naseehat), and this hadeeth should be read with the hadeeth of al-Bukhari that Adnan quoted.
But, the problem is that the women shouldn’t have taken the law in their own hands. Yes, if the women hadn’t taken any actions against this brothel, the government wouldn’t have done anything to stop this illegal activity, in a Muslim society, no less! Despite that, there is a ijama of scholars on the issue that Muslims aren’t allowed to take imposing of punishment under shariah in their own hands. That’s why there is supposed to be a qazi in a Muslim society and every matter is brought in front of the court. Even, for example, let’s say a spouse finds another spouse with a stranger in the bed and clearly the spouse knows that this person should be stoned in public. Still, the spouse is supposed to refer the case to the qazi knowing that the guilty party can completely deny the allegation and the situation can reach to the level of qazaf and lu’aan, in which the guilty spouse can escape any punishment in this world. It’s not allowed for the spouse to kill the guily party or have the guilty killed.
Allah knows best, but there’s a hadeeth concerning this as well but I can’t find it. Even though I’m not pleased with the religious parties in Pakistan, which mostly comes under jamiat ulema-e-islam, the jamiat web site even calls it extremism when “vigilantes take law into their own hands after much frustrationâ€
Here is what I think needs to happen if law and order has to retain any credibility.
1. Investigate if the establishment was really a brothel and if it is then take swift and immediate action against it.
2. Take swift and immediate legal action against the women from Hafsa Jamia for kidnapping women and also kidnapping policemen.
3. Take swift and immediate legal action against any madrassas through land-grabbing and and by breaking land laws.
My point is that if law and order is to be respected then it needs to be applied equally and to everyone.