PERHAPS inevitably, given the furore and great controversy surround-ing the episode, former president-cum-army chief Pervez Musharraf is to be investigated by the capital police, at the behest of the Islamabad High Court, for the murder of Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his mother in the Lal Masjid operation. Mr Musharraf has much to answer for in his years ruling this country and the Lal Masjid episode was mishandled from the start, but in this case murder charges are really a step too far. That the shrillest voices calling for murder charges against Mr Musharraf in this particular case can be heard from the religious right says much about the ideological motivation behind the demand. That is also precisely why the Lal Masjid operation remains hugely controversial: there are segments of the population that have no problem with vigilantism, kidnapping, illegal occupation of state land and sundry other crime so long as it is done in the name of religion.

Yet, there can be no room in a law-abiding, pluralistic, tolerant and rights-respecting Pakistan for the many threatening, illegal and violent acts of the Lal Masjid leadership in the months leading up to the military assault on the mosque. When memories are short, and perhaps deliberately selective, it helps to revisit the past. As 2007 rolled around, the capital was under siege from a new form of moral policing and vigilantism. From the memorable image of cane-wielding women stalking the streets of Islamabad, looking to purge it of vice as defined by them, to occupying a children’s library, from kidnapping to illegally stockpiling arms to setting up its own courts to dispense so-called Islamic justice, Islamabad, indeed the country, had never seen anything like it before. It was unacceptable and no administration could tolerate it. Something had to be done.

There were clearly mistakes made in the operation against the Lal Masjid complex. For one, it took too long for the Musharraf administration to decide that the activities of the Ghazi brothers had to be shut down. Then, after that decision was taken, the failure of negotiations led to a predictable, if ill-advised and immediately unnecessary full-scale attack on the complex. Perhaps a better trained, more cautious administration would have tried less lethal tactics to evacuate the complex and get the recalcitrant core of would-be martyrs to surrender. But that still does not add up to murder charges against Mr Musharraf. Islamabad could not be allowed to succumb to the brazen vigilantism and threats of the Lal Masjid brigade.