Re: Musharaf Buildozing Mosques in Islamabad
By Kamran Haider Fri Feb 9, 11:45 AM ET
ISLAMABAD (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.
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The 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.”
I’m not interested in your article … it is as much proof as asking you for an honest opinion.
- Kamran Haider is a biased reporter, all of his articles … I means ALL of his articles are anti-Islamic just do a google search and you will see. He is a reuters agent, pro-liberal Shi’ia, pro-West …
- The method of his writing is clearly biased … Read the higlighted text. Two of his cases are built on the opinions of other western papers, this is not proof, this just banter.
- He mentions two bomb attacks are ‘widely’ suspected … did he do a survey? It’s nonesense and you know it.
- Jihad has been defined by him … incorrectly might I add. There is not a single quote that demonstrates the meaning of the word Jihad as used by the people he interviewed was meant on an offensive basis. Yet he alleges to this.
- Note he says officials ‘SAY’ that the mosques have been built illegally. That they have not provided proof and that there has been no court case to render the validity of that claim.
Fraudz … I know why you have given yourself this name now …
