LAHORE, Jan 7: Jamaat-i-Islami acting amir Syed Munawwar Hasan alleged on Monday that a situation was being created to keep religious parties out of electoral process or out of power.

Opening the three-day session of his party’s central Shoora, he said that religious parties were being defamed under a well thought-out plan that they were working for chaos or a bloody revolution.

However, he said his party would continue its democratic struggle for the supremacy of the constitution.

The participants in the Shoora meeting will review the political situation in the country, the possible emerging scenario and the role the JI should play to achieve its targets.

Giving his assessment of the situation, the JI leader alleged that the military government was working on the US agenda, and President Pervez Musharraf’s support for secularism was becoming clearer by the day.

He said it was for this reason that the general was using various kinds of prefixes with Islam which he would not allow to take roots.

He said until recently Gen Musharraf used to draw a line between freedom movement and terrorism and he always termed the liberation struggle in occupied Kashmir as jihad. But, he regretted, the moment the US labelled Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad as terrorist organizations, the Pakistan government also started action against them.

Syed Munawwar Hasan said the rulers should bear in mind that in the case of a war against India it would be the jihadi organizations and not the NGOs which would support him.

The JI leader said the situation had dramatically changed after Sept 11 and now the US was bent upon targeting Islamic countries in the name of action against terrorism.

A resolution adopted by the participants demanded that the army should return to the barracks at the earliest to be able to focus on the national defence. It said that provision of political leadership was the right of the elected representatives, and in case some people in military uniform wanted to play that role they should first take off their uniform and have themselves elected by the people.

The resolution said that if Gen Musharraf had become president and was running the country through the National Security Council, he should be prepared to face accountability for his political role.

The resolution also condemned the detention of JI Amir Qazi Husain Ahmed and JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and demanded their release along with all other political prisoners.