KARACHI: ‘The ministers are lying through their teeth’
By Hasan Mansoor
KARACHI, July 11: Mufti Mohammad Naeem, head of the Jamia Binoria Site Town, has been an open critic of the Lal Masjid duo’s anti-vice campaign and was a member of the elite ulema committee who tried to persuade the two brothers to shun their activities earlier this year when they started kidnapping people and formed private morality courts inside the mosque.
He did not shy away from calling the pair ‘misguided.’ But after the military operation and killing of Abdul Rasheed Ghazi among scores of others, Mufti Naeem’s viewpoint has changed entirely.
For him, the government deliberately aborted a done deal and unnecessarily opted for an operation that took many innocent lives.
Q: What do you think about the ulema’s failure to end the week-long stand-off in Islamabad?
A: It was not our failure. In fact, we had succeeded in brokering an agreement and got it approved by the government and Abdul Rasheed Ghazi. Everything was agreed upon by the two sides when all of a sudden the situation changed and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said the deal papers should go to President Pervez Musharraf as he wanted to have a final look.
It left us bewildered as earlier Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was the man in-charge from the government’s side that had formally approved the deal. Yet, we did not mind Chaudhry Sahib’s assertion and agreed to wait for the president’s consent. The ministers returned as night fell and we found a totally different agreement.
The new agreement had no relevance with the one the two parties had agreed upon. Believe me, the development was horrible for us because we sensed something awful was about to happen. Still, we sent the agreement to Ghazi, which he rejected.
We were staying at a house near the Lal Masjid when a military officer approached us and asked us to leave the place in 15 minutes. Soon we heard that the operation had formally been launched.
Q: What changes did you witness when the agreement returned from the President’s House?
A: In the agreed deal there was no mention of Ghazi’s arrest and of him standing trial. He rejected the agreement because it was drafted anew with conditions which he had already rejected.
Q: Rasheed Ghazi had also wanted blanket clemency for the foreign militants?
A: No, there is no truth in that. Ministers Ejazul Haq and Tariq Azeem are lying through their teeth. When we heard the two ministers mentioning Ghazi’s alleged demand for clemency for foreign militants, we inquired about this from Ghazi on the telephone. He showed his ignorance and said the ministers were lying.
Q: Tell us about the possible fallout of this incident on Pakistan’s future.
A: Only Allah knows the future. But we believe that the blood of innocent children, women and men would not go to waste. Our ministers’ rights are not higher than ours, but they are powerful and armed with the weapons of hypocrisy and falsehood and don’t mind going to any extreme to retain their positions.
They are assigned to misleading the media through their own fabricated truth. Just before his martyrdom, Ghazi had demanded to send the media inside the mosque to show the truth to the world. But our rulers stopped the media and are still not allowing them to go inside and assess the actual situation.
Q: You do not agree with the government’s claim about the minimum loss of life during Operation Silence?
A: I no longer believe the government’s claims. I think the number of casualties is much higher than what is being claimed.
Q: The operation must have caused anxiety among the pupils and teachers of over 15,000 madressahs across the country?
A: Yes, they are shocked and saddened over the widespread killing of innocent people. But we will not allow our pupils to take to the streets because that is not our job. We are religious scholars and not politicians. We’ll lodge our protest with no one but Allah. We’ll try our best to keep our students within the seminaries so that their futures are secured.
Q: The government says that through Operation Silence it has successfully restored the writ of the law?
A: But the government has no plans against the feudal lords and influentials that are openly running states within the state. Why is the government so compassionate towards them while it kills others?
KARACHI, July 11: Mufti Mohammad Naeem, head of the Jamia Binoria Site Town, has been an open critic of the Lal Masjid duo’s anti-vice campaign and was a member of the elite ulema committee who tried to persuade the two brothers to shun their activities earlier this year when they started kidnapping people and formed private morality courts inside the mosque.
