| April 21, 2002 | Sunday | Safar 7, 1423 |
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Hope for those in US prisons?
Capital’s festive mood
HAVING earlier announced its intention to curb militant activity in the country’s madressahs, the government now seems to be translating this policy into action. According to a report appearing in the press, the federal authorities have asked the provincial governments to move swiftly against those madressahs which encourage and support militancy. Those seminaries that engage in such activities are to be “identified and sealed”. Another means of penalizing offending madressahs is to starve them of Zakat funds. These funds will now be disbursed only after clearance by the concerned home departments. The madressahs will be asked to seek affiliation with the newly created Madaris Boards, failing which they will be deleted from the list of those entitled to Zakat funds. The move to clamp down on madressahs reflects the realization that some of these institutions have been fanning sectarianism and engaging in terrorist activites. Many madressahs not only indoctrinate their students into following an extremely narrow and sectarian version of Islam, they also exhort students to take up arms against those who differ with their views. Many madressahs go as far as to offer military training to students on the ground of waging jihad in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya and beyond. Unfortunately, this training is just as easily deployed on the home front against rival sects, a fact seen in the horrific rise in the number of sectarian killings in recent years.
President Pervez Musharraf has spoken out strongly against such elements on several occasions, even before the events of Sept 11. Since Pakistan became an active partner in the US-led war against terror, however, there has been a more marked determination to act against such institutions. In his seminal address to the nation on January 12, the president came out in the clearest of terms against those who engage in violence in the name of religion. He announced his intention to clamp down on such elements, including those madressahs that support terrorism. He had also suggested that a new curriculum would be devised for the madressahs in order to provide a more broad-based and modern education to students.
Although madressahs have existed in the subcontinent for centuries, it was in the eighties, when the Afghan war was at its peak, that the institution received a tremendous boost. In the years that followed, madressahs mushroomed, boosted both by foreign funding and by Zakat money from the favourably disposed Zia regime. Many of these newer madressahs were highly politicized and militant in nature. According to one study, there were a mere 138 madressahs in Pakistan at the time of independence, a number that has soared to about 7,000 today. It must be clearly stated that many of these madressahs perform a valuable social service by providing religious training as well as free board and lodging to the poorest of the poor. Many of them have no truck with militancy and simply fulfil the community’s demand for imams and khateebs at mosques across the country. The government should ensure that it does not victimize such madressahs in any crackdown against militancy, and target only those institutions that poison the minds of their students, give arms and military training to them and preach a narrow and intolerant version of the faith. Many of these madressahs happen to be controlled by clerics sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Last October-November they were in the forefront in organizing “wheel jam” strikes that sometimes led to violence. The current directives, that emphasize a careful scrutiny of each institution before taking action against it, must be implemented in a way that does not hurt those madrrassehs that are serving a noble cause.
AT last a civil rights group has challenged the illegal detention of hundreds of Muslims who had been rounded up by US agencies in the aftermath of Sept 11 and are now in prison. The US authorities have not found any positive evidence that could link these young men to terrorist activities, but they continue to be held incommunicado. Of the 1,200 Middle Eastern and Pakistani men in detention, many are guilty of only overstaying in the US. The Immigration and Naturalization Service — the only competent authority in such cases — has already issued deportation orders for this category of prisoners. But the justice department refuses to release them or even discuss their fate. The current class action suit, which aims at securing the release of the detainees, names US Attorney General John Ashcroft as the defendant, and offers a ray of hope to the families of those incarcerated.
Independent civil rights bodies, including Amnesty International, have criticized Washington for the en masse detention of Muslims. Because they are not US citizens their civil rights stand drastically curbed under a new anti-terrorism law, which gives US agencies the right to detain non-citizens pending investigations. However, even the law in question requires that suspects be arraigned within a stipulated number of days of their detention. Despite criticism from rights groups and a report on the plight of the prisoners, released by Amnesty International in March, Washington continues to turn a deaf ear to their illegal confinement. Given the kind of justice being meted out to these prisoners on the US mainland, there seems little hope for the hundreds of alleged Al Qaeda men who remain chained, blindfolded and gagged at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay. Indeed, if this is what America has come to in the aftermath of 9/11, perhaps the Americans need to reword their favourite prayer from ‘God bless’ to ‘God save America’.
IN the run-up to the referendum on April 30, the capital city displays all the sights and sounds of festivity and gaiety. President General Pervez Musharraf’s photograph is up on every lamppost on the city’s major thoroughfares, along with the slogan in Urdu that states, “the decision is yours”. These colourful blue-red and green-red banners have been put up by a citizen, but clearly with the full blessings of the administration. Normally the only time when these lampposts are adorned with colourful flags in this manner is when foreign heads of state visit. It is strange that this private individual, whose name is also on every banner, is being officially allowed to “campaign” for the president in the referendum in this manner. In addition to the banners, festive lights decorate trees along the main roads, glowing at night as they do in the weeks leading up to Eid-ul-Fitr and Christmas. These lights have apparently been put up by the Capital Development Authority to celebrate its Margalla Festival.
Strangely enough, by coincidence or by design, at least three major festive events are taking place in the capital in the run-up to the referendum. Apart from the first ever Margalla Fest, there is also the Artisans-at-Work Festival at the Lok Virsa, which began on the 13th, and the month-long annual Industrial Exhibition at Shakarparian which will start in the last week of April.
There is nothing wrong with all these festivities, except perhaps for their timing. One would have expected that a referendum on an issue that will determine the future destiny of this politically-battered nation be conducted with an air of dignity and sobriety rather than with the kind of outlandish gaiety being displayed. But, then, what is wrong if a festive touch is added to a political scenario that is increasingly getting grim?