ISLAMABAD: While the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) is flexing its muscles for an anti-government march, the government has decided to use the “religion card” to counter the move.

Sources in the government said on Thursday that Prime Minister Imran Khan had assigned Religious Affairs Minister Pir Noorul Haq Qadri to get in touch with Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and try to dissuade him from going ahead with his decision to march on Islamabad.

The sources said the prime minister had also asked the minister to suggest measures that the government could take to cope with the opposition’s plans for agitation.

Pir Qadri held meetings with prominent figures belonging to the Deobandi school of thought on Thursday.

The JUI-F had filed an application with Islamabad’s deputy commissioner for permission to hold a march on Oct 27, but the chief of the party, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, said on Wednesday that the marchers would enter Islamabad on Oct 31.

A fresh application is likely to be filed soon, but the previous application, filed by the Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haidery, the party’s secretary general, had neither mentioned the timing nor place for the gathering in Islamabad.

Talking to Dawn, Senator Haidery said “exercising our right to protest at D-Chowk is neither illegal nor does it pose a threat to democracy”. On the other hand, he added, closing down D-Chowk to the public was against the law.

An open-ended application — one that neither specifies the venue nor the date — suits the authorities as they can now allow the JUI-F to hold the march at a place and time of their own choosing, for instance at Parade/Exhibition ground in Sector I-7, opposite Kachnar Park.

Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2019