ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The acting chief of Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), Syed Munawar Hasan, has said his party will soon launch a campaign against the elements who want to eliminate Islamic values from the society.

Speaking at a seminar organized by the JI women’s wing here on Saturday, Mr Hasan said those people were living in a fool’s paradise who thought that this country — founded in the name of Islam — could be transformed into another Turkey.

He attributed the Indian aggressive posture to the impotence of the military rulers at home who had so eagerly sided with the US against Afghanistan. However, he pointed out, the move had failed to prevent India from mobilizing its forces against Pakistan.

Mr Hasan described the rulers as “a frightened lot”, saying, “frightened people make silly decisions.” This, he said, was evident in that the enemy (India) was continuing to make one demand after another whereas President Gen Pervez Musharraf was ready to accept all those demands.

The ban on Jihadi organizations and the handing over of the people wanted by India, Mr Hasan warned, would not solve the issue being raised by India.

He said the September 11 incident had given a licence to the anti-Islamic forces to divide and weaken the Islamic Ummah and reinterpret the Islamic history.

He regretted that Gen Musharraf, who used to take pains in telling the world the difference between the Kashmiri freedom struggle and terrorism, had failed even to mention the poor Kashmiris while being pushed by the US to move against the Jihadi organizations.

The JI chief said that the real targets of the US-led international coalition’s so-called war on terrorism were Islam and the Islamists.

He said no eyebrows were raised if Hindus subjected Kashmiris to the worst form of state terrorism, Israelis terrorized Palestinians, Russians killed Chechens and Irish, Tamil and many other non-Muslim outfits resorted to terrorist activities. Only Muslims were being subjected to hatred, he added.

He said the US had subjected the innocent Afghans to terrorism and now waged a war on the Islamic culture in Afghanistan while the interim government lacked the teeth to stop the continued bombings and killings.

The worst part of this inhuman treatment being meted out to the Afghans and other Muslims throughout the world, he said, was that their rulers were standing along side the perpetrators of these coercions. Hence the Islamists, he said, were facing a dual challenge — one posed by the international anti-Islamic forces and the other by their own rulers.