Sharia at gunpoint?

THE government now has no choice but to relentlessly pursue the religious fanatics who have become a threat to the state and society. Besides the soldiers killed in the line of duty, the Lal Masjid crackdown resulted in the death of many innocent men, women and children. But the Aziz-Ghazi duo had left the government with no other option. The only regret is that an operation that should have been carried out in January, when the Hafsa girls occupied the children’s library, took place in July. This six-month gap was utilised by the militants holed up in the mosque to strengthen their position and convey their perverted philosophy to the people through the media. Let not the same mistake be repeated, for what is going on in Fata and the NWFP calls for an immediate and firm response. Incidents such as Saturday’s suicide attack in North Waziristan that killed at least 18 soldiers cannot be tolerated. The reaction among sections of tribesmen in Bajaur, Battagram and Swat does not reflect the consensus in Pakistan on the Lal Masjid stand-off. Many people have criticised the mistakes made by the intelligence agencies and security forces before and during the operation and regretted the loss of innocent lives. But by and large there is unanimity on the despicable methods adopted by the two brothers to blackmail the nation and the government.

In the NWFP, too, the reaction to the entire episode has by and large been positive, but sections of tribesmen under the Taliban influence have vowed revenge. Their fanaticism is evident from the fact that they do not really care who gets killed or injured or maimed. Their quarrel is with the government, but they would not mind killing innocent people when their suicide bombers blow themselves up in public places. Those who want to enforce Sharia at gunpoint deserve to be tackled with the full force of the state. Their violence and the coverage they get in the media may give an impression that they are about to take over Pakistan; actually, they are in a small minority. As the Lal Masjid affair shows, no religious scholar or madressah management has approved of the criminality perpetrated by the two brothers. Barring the MMA, which is a political alliance that misses no opportunity to flay the government, most ulema have either criticised the Lal Masjid leadership or stayed aloof. No one of any consequence has supported the Lal Masjid clerics.

What we are witnessing in parts of the Frontier is merely a continuation of the anti-government movement launched by pro-Taliban tribesmen since the American attack on Afghanistan and Islamabad’s decision to join the war on terror. The Lal Masjid affair has come in handy for them. While talks and tact must be part of the strategy to pacify the area, the fanatics led by clerics should be told that force will be met with force, and they will be responsible for the loss of innocent lives. They must be told bluntly that Sharia cannot be imposed through force, and the people of Pakistan will resist any such attempt. Unfortunately, the acute differences between the government and the opposition have emboldened the militants. While the government, in a show of unilateralism, tried to go it alone, the opposition parties seemed more interested in the London conference than in making sincere efforts to end the Lal Masjid stand-off and save lives.

Bush’s misplaced optimism

IN spite of conceding that only limited progress has been made, President George Bush has refused to admit the need for a change in his Iraq policy. Astonishing as it may seem, the American president believes that victory is still possible. Addressing a press conference on Thursday, the president said that “war fatigue” had set in and the Baghdad government had not fully come up to his expectations; he nevertheless indicated that a change in policy depended on what America’s top commander had to say in his report due in September. Mr Bush’s admission that his government was far from achieving the desired results came one month after all the additional troops — 28,000 of them — had reached Iraq. But this ‘surge’ has failed to effect any improvement in the security situation. In fact, law and order seems to be getting worse, and American casualties continue to rise. The president spoke after the release of an interim White House report, which said the situation in Iraq was “complex and extremely challenging”. According to the report, there was a feeling in Iraq that America was more or less on the way out, and this had made reconciliation among different Iraqi factions difficult because they felt the US did not have a long-term commitment to their country.

Ignoring the bipartisan report by Mr Jim Baker and Mr Ian Hamilton, President Bush has refused to give a withdrawal date and made no attempt to find a negotiated solution to the Iraqi crisis by engaging with Syria and Iran to end the bloodletting. While some Congressmen from his own party and sections of the media consider Iraq a lost cause, the president continues to believe in a victory. The result of the refusal to admit the truth will mean continued misery for the Iraqi people and more American casualties. In the one year available to him, President Bush must devise a pragmatic exit strategy in which the UN must be involved meaningfully in the Iraqi situation. An unthinking and abrupt American withdrawal could lead to Iraq’s dismemberment.

Obstructing relief efforts

THE cyclone and flood situation in Balochistan calls for joint action by government and independent agencies in order to bring relief to thousands of people living without food, shelter or medicines. Instead, the opposite seems to be happening. The authorities have warned the NGOs of dire consequences if they fail to comply with directives to obtain NOCs from the Frontier Constabulary before carrying out relief work and to route their supplies through government agencies. According to a report, relations between the NGOs and the government have been strained for some time with certain independent agencies refusing to route supplies through the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA). The reluctance of the NGOs to follow government instructions is understandable. After all, the NDMA, a fledging organisation, came in for considerable flak following its slow response to the calamity in Sindh and Balochistan, despite prior warnings from the Met department. However, this is the time to quickly resolve what appears to be a procedural question and to find some middle ground whereby relief work can be expedited without any group being allowed to obstruct supplies to victims.

Realising that the government has the wherewithal to ensure that aid reaches flood-affected areas, it would be imprudent of the NGOs to stop their work in protest, instead of trying to thrash out the matter with the relevant authorities. However, the government must bear the greater responsibility for obstructing those who are seeking to bring succour to the victims. It should be simplifying rules and procedures, and not complicating them with its unhelpful attitude that is obstructing relief work. After all, its record in disaster management is poor, and it has a lot to learn from organisations that have more experience in effectively responding to the needs of those afflicted by natural calamities.

Obscurantism: silence is no option

HOW does it feel to see a tragedy about to happen? Especially when you can do little to prevent it? Utterly helpless and impotent. Watching the Lal Masjid drama unfold in Pakistan over the past couple of weeks, you knew a catastrophe was about to take place. Yet you could do little about it. I had felt the same impotent helplessness on the eve of the Iraq invasion.

Perhaps, for once President Pervez Musharraf is right. The bloody siege of the Lal Masjid that dragged on for more than a week might not have ended in any other way. The general is right. It was indeed inevitable.

To be fair to the Pakistani leadership, it gave enough time and a long, long rope to the clerics inside the mosque to tie themselves with. It was as though the whole world knew what was going to happen to those inside Lal Masjid. Only those at centre-stage and in the thick of action didn’t seem to know it.

Why didn’t Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi see reason? Why did he have to give up his own life and play with those in his custody? What was he trying to prove? And what has he if anything achieved?

We may never know the answers to these questions. But what I know for sure is that the Lal Masjid episode has inflicted yet another deep wound on Islam’s already bruised and battered visage.

This is yet another example of how Islam faces the greatest threat from not some alien enemies but its own so-called followers. With friends like these, does Islam need any more enemies? My God, what an embarrassment for Pakistan and the whole of the Muslim world this whole sordid business has been.

How the name of a great religion that stands for peace has been dragged through the mud by the self-styled defenders of the faith. And all of us could do little about it.

Islam is one faith that has no concept of clergy. But most Muslims respect Islamic scholars or ulema as the intellectual and spiritual heirs of the Prophet (PBUH). But the antics of the Lal Masjid clerics did not exactly make you proud of these champions of the faith. The highlight of this tragicomedy had been the attempt by the older of the two brothers to flee in a head-to-toe veil.

It wasn’t always like this though. Many simple believers initially had a word of praise or two for Lal Masjid boys and girls when they ran an anti-vice campaign in Islamabad.

By cracking down on alleged prostitution rings operating from five-star hotels and posh neighbourhoods right in the capital the Lal Masjid administration had won itself many an admirer at home and abroad.

Okay, in their missionary zeal they might have ended up on the wrong side of the law. But they sought to do what Pakistani authorities had ostensibly failed to do. However, the Lal Masjid folks took matters a tad too far by turning the mosque into a fortress and taking on the state. Islam and its most noble Prophet would never have allowed young boys and girls to get entangled in an armed conflict like this, let alone use them as bargaining chips in a bloody and pointless confrontation with the powers that be.

I am no fan of Musharraf. Indeed, whenever possible I’ve added my voice, for what it’s worth, to the chorus against the Pakistani leader’s role in America’s absurd war on terror. The general has a lot to answer for; the widespread human rights violations on his watch being only one of them. Hundreds of innocents from Pakistan and Afghanistan have simply disappeared as men like Musharraf and Karzai bend backwards to ‘cooperate’ with their friends in Washington.

This, however, does not mean individuals like Maulana Ghazi should set up their own state within a state. That too right in the heart of the capital.In the end, what has the outfit behind the mosque drama achieved? Little. A large number of innocent people have died, the majority of them young religious students.

There are fears that hundreds could have died in Operation Silence. Desperate parents are still looking for their children. Your guess is as good as mine as to what happened to tens of hundreds of students or their remains, if they got caught in the crossfire. The day the curtain came down on the saga, a concerned host of a Pakistani television channel asked one of his guests what he thought of the armed conflict.

“Since both sides in the conflict happened to be Muslim, who would be considered martyrs?” wondered the TV host. “Pakistani soldiers storming the mosque or those inside?” Pertinent question, indeed. But the religious scholar on the panel understandably had a tough time answering it.

So were Maulana Ghazi and his followers true martyrs or misguided soldiers of Islam? I don’t know how the Lal Masjid heroes will face their Maker, especially after misusing His home and bringing so much suffering to those sheltered there. But the shame it has wrought on Pakistan and the irrevocable damage it has inflicted on the rest of the Muslim world will haunt us for a long time to come.

Increasingly, the extremists are using Islam’s fair name to pursue their agenda. From Pakistan and Afghanistan to Iraq and Palestine, Muslims helplessly watch as all kinds of thugs sully the image of their great faith and distort its teachings.I have been a strident critic of the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and its disastrous policies in the Muslim world, repeatedly confronting the Americans on the shame of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. At the same time though, I cannot shut my eyes to the barbarities Muslims are inflicting on fellow believers and others in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

How could anyone condone what is going on in Iraq? Recently, more than 150 people were killed in Iraq in a single day. In fact, on average 100 people get killed daily in the occupied Iraq. I know this war has been imposed on Iraq by the US. But what noble cause do the so-called insurgents serve by targeting those innocent men, women and children — all of them obviously Muslim?

Resistance of foreign occupation is fine. But what are the insurgents — or whoever they are — trying to prove by unleashing this murderous campaign against fellow Iraqis?

This is the same all across the Muslim world. The extremists have hijacked our faith, exploiting and abusing it to promote their hate-filled agenda. There are individuals and groups in the Muslim mainstream who are genuinely inspired by Islam and its liberating teachings. And they are agitated by the suffering of their fellow believers around the world. They use just, peaceful and lawful ways to register their protest.

But there is a dangerous fringe that will stop at nothing to achieve its objectives. More alarmingly, it seeks to speak and act on behalf of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. From targeting innocents in Muslim countries to unleashing terror on western targets, this fringe continues to invent new ways of distorting Islam’s humane message and teachings – turning the whole world against Muslims.

For years I have repeatedly argued that the centuries of western exploitation of the Muslim world and ongoing injustice in places like Palestine are at the heart of extremism in the Muslim world. I still stick to my stance. The world will continue to burn as long as the West ignores the sources that fan these flames.

That said, it is time for the mainstream in the Muslim world to assert itself. Muslim intellectuals, scholars, politicians, journalists and ordinary people must speak out — individually and in unison — against these attempts to distort and destroy their great faith.

After the July 7 bombings in the UK two years ago, I had pleaded with the Muslims around the world to assert themselves against the extremists, presenting the real and true visage of Islam. There had been few lone voices like mine then. Today it’s growing into a chorus. Following the recent failed terror strikes in the UK, British Muslims came out on the streets declaring: “not in our name”.

It’s time for all of us — every Muslim from Morocco to Malaysia — to say in one voice “not in our name.” Trust me, silence is not an option now. If we remain silent, Islam’s enemies will speak for us.

The writer is a Dubai-based journalist.
aijazsyed@khaleejtimes.com

The Mars rovers

"IT'S spring on Mars and the dust-devil season has begun," reported Nasa's website earlier this year - news from an extraordinary interplanetary project. In 2004 Nasa landed two remote vehicles on the surface of Mars, each designed to travel short distances across the planet, carrying out geological tests and sending back photographs.

Both landed successfully, avoiding the sad fate of Britain's Beagle 2 probe, which vanished in 2003. Designed to last three months, they have now been in service for more than three years ––- over 1,000 sols, or Martian days. The two rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, landed on opposite sides of the planet.

Spirit, which spent its first few months rolling into a hilly Martian landscape, has sent back clear evidence that water once existed on the planet. It was trapped for most of one Martian winter by a lack of sunlight, but returned to life when spring arrived.

Opportunity, its partner, has spent the last few months exploring the edge of a large crater, searching for a route in. Now it is about to head down the slope, but plans have been put on hold by a giant dust storm on Mars' surface.

–– The Guardian, London