Re: Musharaf Buildozing Mosques in Islamabad
Indeed, a bunch of militant lady ninjas who have taken over a library and have issued statements while holdng machine guns they have to be in the right.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070209/india_nm/india287051
TheISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A Pakistan Muslim cleric at the centre of a row over illegally built mosques vowed resistance on Friday if authorities tried to evict women religious students occupying a public library as part of a protest. row has pitted authorities in the capital, Islamabad, against radical clerics and their followers at a city mosque well known for criticism of the government and anti-U.S. and pro-Taliban sentiments.
The dispute has raised apprehension in the city after two bomb attacks, widely suspected of being carried out by Islamist militants, in the past two weeks.
“If they do something with us, if they attack, it is logical, we’ll do something,”
said Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, deputy chief cleric at the Lal Majid, or Red Mosque, in a central Islamabad neighbourhood.
**Women students at the mosque’s seminary, the Syeda Hifza madrasa, occupied a public library **next to the mosque last month to protest against the demolition of another mosque that authorities said had been built illegally on state land.
City authorities have offered alternative sites for mosques and religious schools which, officials say, have been put up illegally, including the Syeda Hifza madrasa.
But the city campaign against encroachment has outraged some conservatives, including the women student protesters clad in all-enveloping burqas, who are demanding the demolished mosque be rebuilt and plans to take down more be scrapped.
Some newspapers have reported the women students occupying the library were armed but Ghazi said talk that the mosque had many guns was not true. Whatever guns were there were properly licensed, he said.
JIHAD
Ghazi called for calm and said the government was inflaming the situation.
“The government is making it complicated. Students are students, they can’t be dealt forcefully … They are making an issue because they are madrasa students,” he said.
But his brother, the mosque’s chief cleric Abdul Aziz, called for jihad, or holy war, during the weekly Friday prayers.
“We have to carry out jihad and for that we have to come out of madrasas,” Aziz told hundreds of supporters crowded into the mosque. “Are you ready for sacrifice? Are you ready to come out?”
Women students in black burqas stood on the roof of their madrasa listening to the sermon, while young men carrying sticks, their faces covered by scarfs, guarded the mosque, searching people coming through its gates.
“Islamic law or martrydom” read a banner over one gate.
The Friday Times newspaper said the authorities’ campaign against encroachment had stirred a hornets’ nest of militancy.
“If the administration’s patience runs out, the situation could get messy,” the liberal newspaper said.
“The extremist mullahs (clerics) seek to exploit the freedoms of liberal democracy to overthrow it and replace it by their dictatorship in the name of religion.”
we all wish u listened to your own advice!