PESHAWAR, Oct 28: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (F) central executive council member Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai said on Sunday that President Gen Pervez Musharraf has no right to remain in power after siding with America against Afghanistan.

“Musharraf openly supports the US and its allies against Taliban. And under the Islamic laws if any Muslim cooperates with infidels against Muslims, he must be excommunicated from the religion,” Mufti Shamzai remarked while addressing a protest rally at Chowk Yadgar.

The procession was taken out from the Qasim Ali Khan mosque near Qissa Khwani Bazaar.

JUI(F) General Secretary Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haidery also addressed  the rally, organized on the call by Taliban supreme leader Mulla Mohammad Omar to protest against the US strikes on Afghanistan.

Against the previous exercise of setting effigies on fire during protest processions, Maulana Haidery slaughtered the effigy of President Bush.

Around 1,000 JUI(F) activists, carrying portraits of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, attended the rally.

Mufti Shamzai said Pakistan had adopted a policy of double standards as on the one hand the government had given bases and provided information to America and on the other, President Musharraf advised the US to end its military operation in Afghanistan as soon as possible.

He called upon the government to openly support the Taliban in the war.

Opposing the broad-based national government formula for Afghanistan, he said Pakistan needed a broad-based government and asked Gen Musharraf to hand the power over to people’s representatives. He said the Taliban were the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan and there was no room for puppets on Afghan soil.

He demanded that the government immediately release JUI chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and withdraw the treason case against him.

He also asked the government to allow Pakistanis to bring the bodies of those relatives home, who were killed in the US bombing on Afghanistan.

Maulana Haidery said that despite technological superiority, the US air force had failed to dislodge the Taliban government.

He said President Bush would not dare to send his delta forces to Afghanistan for ground operations.

He said that his party would send volunteers to Afghanistan to fight shoulder to shoulder with Taliban fighters against the Americans.

He said that the fate of America would not be different from that of the former Soviet Union and Great Britain.