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KARACHI, July 13: Scores of rallies were held outside different mosques in the city after the Friday prayers to protest against the Lal Masjid/Jamia Hafsa operation. The countrywide protest call was given by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and Wafaqul Madaris Tanzeem’s leaders against what they said was a massacre of students in Islamabad.
However, Wafaqul Madaris Sindh chapter spokesman Maulana Abdul Hameed Rabbani told Dawn that their call was not for staging protest rallies, but to express disapproval through Friday sermons.
He said peaceful protest gatherings were held in all mosques and madressahs, where resolutions were passed condemning the use of brutal force instead of pursuing the agreement that was reached with the efforts of the ulema.
The main rally was held at Lasbela Chowk. The participants raised slogans and held aloft banners inscribed with anti-government slogans and demanded an investigation into the events leading up to the failure of ulema’s negotiations.
One of the banners advised the army to conquer Lal Qila and not Lal Masjid.
MMA central leader Syed Munawwar Hasan, who is also Secretary-General of the Jamaat-i-Islami, expressing his indignation over the army operation, regretted that the army, which was supposed to defend the country’s borders, was being used against its own people.
‘1,000 killed’
Claiming that 1,000 people were killed in the Lal Masjid operation, he asked if the army had ever killed such a large number of enemies.
“Is the job of the army confined to carrying out bombings in Bajaur, raining fire on Balochistan and becoming spectators to the massacre of people on May 12 in Karachi?,” the MMA leader asked.
Referring to President Musharraf’s earlier threat to the Lal Masjid forces to give up arms or prepare for death, the MMA leader advised Gen Musharraf not to overawe people with military might, warning that unarmed children had humbled superior military powers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.
He said that one general (Yahya Khan) had split the country and now, another was demolishing mosques. But rest assured, he thundered, General Musharraf would be made accountable for the tragedies of May 12 and Lal Masjid.
Former senior minister of the NWFP government Sirajul Haq pointed out that the students who were studying at the Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa were those whose parents were killed in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.
From bouquets to brickbats
He said there was a time when people used to offer bouquets to army personnel in the streets. But, he said, due to the president’s anti-Islamic drive, now the army had to move in convoys and no soldier in uniform could move freely as a common citizen in the streets of the country.
The MMA leader said that like Imam Hussain (AS) was martyred in Karbala by cutting off the water supply, for the students of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa, Islamabad was turned into another Karbala.
He said that the blood of Abdul Rasheed Ghazi would usher in an Islamic revolution in the country.
Dr Mairaj-ul-Huda Siddiqui said that the army was being used to advance the US agenda by Gen Musharraf.
Maulana Omar Sadiq said Abdul Rasheed Ghazi was not an extremist but a soldier of Islam and the entire nation saluted him.
He said the issue could have been solved in a peaceful manner, but it was Gen Musharraf who sabotaged it.
Abdul Halim Ghauri, Nasrullah Shaji and Yunus Barai also spoke.
‘Worst tragedy in Pakistan’s history’
JI Karachi chief Dr Noorul Huda Siddiqui, speaking at a protest meeting in Gulshan-i-Hadid, said the operation was the worst tragedy in Pakistan’s history.
MMA MNAs Mohammad Hussain Mehanti and Laeeq Ahmad Khan also addressed the gathering.
