‘Islamic court’ thumbs nose at state

ISLAMABAD: Two Islamabad-based hardline clerics, who announced on Friday the setting up of a Qazi court or a parallel judicial system in the Lal Masjid to Islamise Pakistani society, are actually inspired by Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden with whom their father Maulana Mohammad Abdullah had been meeting frequently till 1998.

According to an announcement from Lal Masjid made during the Friday prayers, the court comprising 10 Muftis would decide disputes and give their verdict in accordance with ‘Islamic injunctions.’ They also exhorted followers to become suicide bombers if their Taliban-style movement was forcibly suppressed. “Our youths will shake their palaces with their suicide attacks,” Maulana Abdul Aziz warned.

A similar system of parallel judiciary had already been set up in the Malakand Agency of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and adjoining areas by pro-Taliban leader Mufti Muhammad. However, it is for the first time that such a system is being enforced in the heart of Islamabad, right under the very nose of an enlightened moderate General Musharraf.

In a recent interview, Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, the younger son of the Maulana Abdullah, confessed that his father had special ties with Osama and the two had met on several occasions. Maulana Abdullah’s Friday sermons were popular among the military and the civilian bureaucracy, and he often preached the cause of jihad, till his murder in 1998.

His two sons, namely Khateeb Maulana Abdul Aziz and Vice Khateeb Maulana Abdur Rashid Ghazi, have kept his legacy alive, both his calls for jihad and his mysticism.

While Maulana Abdul Aziz heads Islamabad’s biggest madrassa called Jamia Fareedia, Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi runs the Lal Masjid, which has long been regarded as the city’s main mosque for the followers of the Deoband faith. It caught the eye of its detractors during the protest campaign by pro-Taliban forces in the aftermath of the 9/11 incidents and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

However, the critical point came when Lal Masjid hosted a major conference of ulema and clerics about four years ago to issue a fatwa which not only opposed the military operation in Waziristan but also called for a boycott of the last rites of soldiers killed in the fight with Islamic militants.

Before the setting up of the Qazi court, the management of the Lal Masjid had challenged the writ of the government three times in three months — first, they occupied government’s Children Library located next to Madrassa Hafsa in Islamabad on January 21, then they abducted three women accusing them of running a brothel in Islamabad and thirdly, they started threatening video shops, setting a deadline for them to close their business.

These developments have raised questions about authenticity of the repeated claims being made by the Musharraf regime to have taken concrete measures to uproot extremism and contain fanatic elements. Yet, the opposition believes that whatever was happening was a ploy of Musharraf to deceive the international community and make it believe that the menace of Talibanisation has spread to Islamabad and the choice was between a military dictatorship and religious fanatics.