LAHORE, Dec 23: Awami National Party (ANP) president Ehsan Wyne has declared the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal MPs attack on the musical show organized by the Pakistan Medical Association in Gujranwala as a fascist step and terrorism against peaceful citizens.

Talking to a group of reporters here on Monday, he said taking law in ones own hands and torture of citizens in the name of religion was the severest kind of lawlessness.

He said such acts of a handful of religious men had defamed Islam all over the world. The MMA was not authorized to judge which step was Islamic and which was not, he added.

In the presence of national institutions like army and police and at a time when elected governments, both in the centre and in the province, were working, no-one could be allowed to revive the pre-Islamic tribal era when one could attack others when and where one wished so, he said.

He claimed that such a step was exploitation as the newly installed federal government needed MMA’s support in securing the vote of confidence on Dec 30.

Referring to the Punjab chief minister’s direction that the FBI should not be allowed to raid any houses in the province, Mr Wyne demanded that the government should also check MMA parliamentarians from torturing people.

Otherwise, he said, the country would suffer like Afghanistan had at the hands of the students of the MMA’s seminaries.

He urged the president, the prime minister and the Punjab chief minister to take note of the MMA’s “fascist” step before it was too late.