Adil Najam
The news is developing by the moment. But the bottom-line is clear. The security forces have taken control of the Lal Masjid from militants after a severe gun-battle. But the story is far from over.
It will continue to unfold. There are too many unanswered questions. They will certainly be asked and discussed threadbare; here at ATP and elsewhere. But the real story of tomorrow remains the same as the real story of yesterday. Can a society that is so deeply divided against itself learn the lessons of tolerance? This question will continue to haunt us well into the future, in multiple shapes, in multiple forms, in multiple contexts.
This is a question that we at ATP have confronted from our very beginning and will continue to confront. But now is not the time to ponder on this. Even though what has happened had become inevitable over the last many days, I am too heartbroken to be able to do so.
Right now I can think only of Muzammil Shah (photo, from Associated Press, above). This photo was taken as he waited for his son who was inside the Lal Masjid. I do not know whether his son was there voluntarily, or as hostage. But I do know what the look of Muzammil Shah’s face means. The more important question is whether his son came out alive or not. I pray that he did.
Analysts – me included – will discuss what happened at length. They will try to understand the meaning of all this. What does this mean for Pakistan politics? What does this mean for Gen. Musharraf’s future? What does this mean for Islam? For Democracy? Does the fault lie with Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his militant supporters for creating a situation that could only end this way? Why did he not surrender? Is the blood of everyone who died not on his head for his stubboness and arrogance? Or, maybe, it is the government that is to blame because it did not act earlier? Act differently? Waited just a few days more for a negotiated solution?
Right now all these questions seem really petty and small. This is not the time for scoring cheap political points. This is not the time for spin.
Moreover, there are too many questions to ask. To answer. The head hurts as you think of them. But the heart hurts even more as you look at the face of Muzammil Shah.
Maybe the only really important question is the one that you can read between his wrinkles: “Why? Oh God, why? Why must things happen this way?”
Musharraf was wrong, not because he ordered the storming of Lal Masjid-Hafsa complex, but because he dragged his feet for too long in confronting the tide of hatred spilling over from some madrassas and mosques. He was late not by few months, but by several years.
Residenst of Islamabad would recall that in early 2004, fired by the sermons of the Ghazi brothers, the students of Jamia Faridia (an affiliate of Hafsa) rampaged through the Melody Market in Islamabad attacking video shops and setting fire to the only cinema house in the capital. They were protesting the murder of Maulana Azam Tariq who had been gunned down earlier, presumably by his sectarian rivals. Since the students had been brainwashed into believing that movies spread obscenity in society, they found the cinema house and the people associated with it a fit target for their rage. When the young chowkidar of the cinema house tried to escape the burning building, the protesters threw brickbats at him blocking his escape. The poor young man died inside the smoke-filled building.
It is then when Musharraf should have acted. Instead, his emissaries, the Q leaguers, continued to appease the Ghazi brothers — pampering and inflating their egos.
‘A stitch in time saves nine’ may be an old and tired cliché but it is true even today. If we fail to mend the tear immediately, when it’s already pretty late, very soon the whole garment, which is Pakistan, will be in tatters.
May be…but I don’t hand weapons in their hand and teach them to go kill others. I suspect this will only get them in trouble.
Stranger, do you have kids in your family or your own?
This is the answer;
“…their clergy will be the worst creation under the sky, divisive movements (Fitna) will rise from them and return to them’”
woh kon theen,kahan chali gayee