Imran's engagement with the terrorists

The characterization of Imran and his supporters is spot-on. Pacify your better natures with talk of ‘engagement’ while attending and blasting rhetoric at rallies and with terrorists in support of Mumtaz Qadri and Osama Bin Laden. See the article for links to most facts listed. I’d like to see Imran Khan fanbois dispute any of what is bolded below.

Imran Khan: engaging delusion
There was a moment last December when the mirage shimmered and briefly dissipated for many Imran Khan supporters. **Amidst a tsunami of Sipah-e-Sahaba (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba/Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) flags, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) Vice President Ijaz Chaudhry thundered on stage at the Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC) rally **in Lahore. The special message that he delivered from his quaid, Imran Khan, touched the usual conspiracies and clichés about India, America and the Pakistani government. Yet, many PTI supporters were taken aback by their party rubbing shoulders with sectarian murderers and terrorists. Khan himself was questioned on sharing a platform with the likes of JuD and SSP. Unfazed, Khan simply said it was his duty to “engage” with everyone no matter how extreme.

The mirage reconstructed itself. PTI acolytes parroted the party line. The PTI was not associating with terrorists. It was “engaging” fringe elements to wean them into the mainstream. This rhetoric is attractive without being accurate.

Consider. In May 2011, PTI leaders attended a rally with JuD that condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden, and pronounced him –– a man who had declared war on Pakistan –– a “Martyr of Islam.” PTI leaders also attended rallies with JuD and other extremist organisations on January 30, 2011 and October 29, in favour of Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy laws, and to express admiration for Salman Taseer’s assassin. Khan’s message, delivered by Ijaz Chaudhry, was one of endorsement. He called Pakistan’s blasphemy laws “divine,” foreclosing any reform.

Further, in April, 2011 Khan personally visited the Darul-Uloom Haqqania to seek support for his anti-drone dharnas – the campaign many see as a watershed in his rise. Popularly known as “the University of Jihad,” the Dar-ul-Uloom is accused by the Federal Investigation Agency of being the launching pad for former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. It has schooled the Taliban’s top leadership, including the Afghan warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, who derives his name from his proud affiliation with his alma mater. And Khan’s “engagement” there? Extolling the virtues jihad as a mandatory obligation – the very ideology the would-be jihadis are indoctrinated with.

The DPC’s anti-Ahmadi activities are well-documented. Less so are the PTI’s, which has attended events arranged by the Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat to discuss “increasing anti-social activities by Qadianis [Ahmadis] destroying the country’s peace”. Little surprise, then, that PTI leaders were behind the bigoted boycott of Ahmadi-made products by the Lahore Bar Association.

**At DPC rallies PTI leaders are seen erupting in wild applause, encouraging the militancy, xenophobia and misogyny spouted by the likes of Ahmed Ludhianvi of the SSP and Hafiz Saeed of the JuD. In fact, PTI president Javed Hashmi recently named the UN-declared terrorist Hafiz Saeed to be a “preacher of peace” on the same day that Saeed was publicly calling for “holy war”.
**

In this light, who is engaging whom? And where does engagement drift into naked endorsement? It appears that the PTI, instead of peeling away extremists, is pandering to the hateful agendas of Pakistan’s Islamist and hyper-nationalist lunatic fringe. Moreover, as these organisations gain a mainstream podium to disseminate their extreme views, they are gaining a veneer of legitimacy with mainstream voters and PTI supporters. Indeed, the terrorist SSP has undergone a resurgence since its outings with the DPC and PTI.

**Can one reasonably expect the nature of PTI’s “engagement” with the far-right to be substantially different when Imran Khan does not believe jihadist radicalisation to be a concern? Having opposed military operations against the Taliban and terrorist organisations, Khan has stated that in power he would cease any action against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Recently he went so far as to state that “there is not a threat to Pakistan from Taliban ideology.”
This is stunning given the backdrop of the spiralling persecution and slaughter of Pakistan’s beleaguered minorities, including Shias, Ahmadis, Hindus and Christians, by the Taliban and groups sharing their sectarian ideology –– among them PTI’s DPC partners. Khan’s position becomes positively morbid considering that a staggering 40,000 Pakistanis have been killed in militant and terrorist attacks since 2001. Whatever routine of blame-the-imperialist one engages in to explain the existence of these terrorists, the fact is their ideology –– unthreatening to Khan –– accommodates mass murder.
**
Here, then, is the rub. Politics is about nurturing electoral constituencies and ensuring survival. If far-right politics and appeasing extremists successfully paves the way to power, then after years in the political wilderness Khan will have found his electoral niche. Those making excuses for this political opportunism are engaging only delusion.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

I dont think that any engagement will work especially on sectarian outfits like SSP/LJ/ASWJ.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

No worries all demons evils terrorists corrupt turn into angles/saints under the great leadership of hazrat imran khanヾ(@⌒ー⌒@)ノ

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

This is clearly a blunder by Imran Khan.

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

Let us kill Imran Khan :2guns: and once we are done, would someone please tell me how do we eliminate SSP, JuD, LeT, LJ and TTP??? :cheer:

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

Just because it you ravage, I answer.

There is thing with intellectuals, they can get obsessed with some thing which is apparently ideologically extremely remote.

1-Iqbal was obsessed with tribal pahstoon and their simplicity, and thought residents of mountains one day are going to bring the change.
2-I see hasan nisar obsessed with MQM, no relation no ties.... he just loves the idea...
3-People whos intellect/integrity we cant question STILL obssessed with PPP.

Yes, IK needs to be smarten up and to keep his intellectual needs and political demands in sperate boxes.

And BTW that obsession is less with TALIBAN and more with tribal pahtoons!!!!

After seeing the every-thing-goes kind of city people in pakistan can you really blame him admiring the other kind????

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

Just because theres no easy answers or shortcuts to eliminating SSP, JuD, LeT and TTP does not mean Imran’s ‘strategy’ of participating in rallies where Mumtaz Qadri and Osama Bin Laden are glorified, Ahmadies are demonized, and mass murderers are given a friendly face is by any means correct or palatable.

That is as logical as ‘we cant get rid of people who throw acid on women’s faces so lets be friends with them and say they are a part of normal society’.

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

that’s the best you can come up with?

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

Thanku :blush:

Thats an interesting theory, and I havent heard it before. Its good that you acknowledge his limitations! But I do think its not about ‘city’ folk, after all the lahori PTI lawyers that got Ahmadi products banned and generally the difai pakistan folk are mostly urbanites too. But yeah, maybe it is a psychological problem of being fascinated by violent radicals.

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

As I said before, its not radicals, well they could be now , but those people have a history that can get any ones attention.

I fell in love with him when he stopped playing cricket, and wrote first article about hapititus B.

The guy is not scared of learning, if you judge him for what he thought wrong 6years ago, you can be really off!!
Its not nawaz sharif :smiley:

I swear IK has some of the finest ideas, thing is are masses ready ???
He has to take care of his heard slowly… But trust me… the guys in synchronized… with where the world issues starts.
Be it global warning, or cooperate amreeka driving the world to ditch… he knows..

Above I believe we need him, more then he needs us.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

I cannot come up with anything, that's why I invitied you to put on table something concrete to eliminate those guys.

First you spend two decades to bring those monsters about to fight your proxy wars from Kabul to Kashmir. You keep forcing your entire society to listen to Friday sermons eulogizing those holy warriors and donate something before you leave mosques, let your country become a jihadi workshop for aspirants from all over the world to come, train and practise their skills wherever they want — until they return to their training centre to twists the hands that trained them that you wake up and start hating them.

Tell me a lie as barefaced as this that you can fight them off, and this one also that your policy to make them bite the dust through power has been immensely successful so that I can clap for you. Tell me that you have been hugely successful in isolating them within your society. Tell me that Karzari and Obama do not want to talk to Taliban. Tell me that Britain did not talk to the IRA. Tell me that Madrid did not talk to the ETA. Tell me that Colombo did not talk to the LTTE.

A society as divided as ours — always prone to religious blackmailing under a dynastically-hostage political system, cannot wait forever for one policy to succeed. Until you invent a bomb that kills only fanatics, you may need to weigh all options however aburd they may sound.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

a) Stop training/tolerating terrorists and mainstreaming them when they arent fighting your enemy.
b) Adopt a law enforcement policy towards the terrorists that remain on the loose. There is no convenient way out of this.

[quote]

Tell me a lie as barefaced as this that you can fight them off, and this one also that your policy to make them bite the dust through power has been immensely successful so that I can clap for you. Tell me that you have been hugely successful in isolating them within your society. Tell me that Karzari and Obama do not want to talk to Taliban. Tell me that Britain did not talk to the IRA. Tell me that Madrid did not talk to the ETA. Tell me that Colombo did not talk to the LTTE.

[/quote]

First off, LTTE were eventually eliminated with a military operation. Secondly "talking" to terrorists is DIFFERENT from joining their radical syndicates, joining their political rallies celebrating terrorists like Mumtaz Qadri and Osama Bin Laden. "Talking" to terrorists is different from participating in anti-ahmedi rallies and coming on platforms for the boycott of minority products. "Talking" to terrorists is different from saying the ideology of terrorists is not dangerous.

How long has Imran Khan been "talking" to terrorists? Pretty much the same time period that the policies you regard as failed. While I can name many terrorists who are no longer killing because they are dead or apprehended, please name a few successes from Imran Khan's talking 'strategy' (what a delusion this is)... a few people who were terrorists, but then decided Imran Khan's "talking" is the ticket. This idea that Imran Khan is "talking" terrorists out of their disgusting past and heinous future persists in the absence of even the tiniest shred of real world evidence.

[quote]

A society as divided as ours — always prone to religious blackmailing under a dynastically-hostage political system, cannot wait forever for one policy to succeed. Until you invent a bomb that kills only fanatics, you may need to weigh all options however aburd they may sound.
[/QUOTE]

As the article demonstrates with evidence, the opposite is true. Imran Khan used to justify terrorists. Thanks to the political opportunism, his party has been pulled into the same fetid pool of fundamentalism these parasites thrive in. It is Imran Khan's party going to terrorist rallies and talking like terrorists, NOT terrorists going to Imran Khan and reforming. People who would victimise ahmadies havent stopped thanks to Imran Khan. It is Imran Khan's party leading the way for ahmadi boycotts.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

khiska huwa aadmi hai or better put an akhrot.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

I guess support from military would be conditional on support to/collaboration with such outfits.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

Just pray for Imam Mehdi's arrival.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

Well this is not just a mere blunder. This is exactly what Imran is. If he doesn't do it then he is not Imran.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

Brother, do something instead of just praying.
Actually, DON'T do one thing. DON'T vote for Imran. He is a khariji appeaser.
He will destroy Pakistan in his Pashtun nationalistic zeal. (In fact his policies are/will hurt Pashtun people the most. Real Pashtun nationalists are those Pashtun who are against Taliban and their ideology).

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

Let us vote for Imran Khan, and then please tell me how would you eliminate SSP Taliban through negotiations when they call democracy kufr, and consider anyone disagreeing with them a kafir worthy of killing?

It is at best naive and at worst stupid to think that one can appease these khariji criminals through mere “negotiations”. I can’t believe people go along with this pathetic argument from Imran.

Re: Imran’s engagement with the terrorists

Sure beats doing nothing. :hoonh: Tell me, what has the current governments accomplished, how many terrorists they put behind bars, how many did they execute and parceled to heaven (or hell, depending on who is doing the talking), how many people who were treading (or planning to tread that path) were brought back to life. None. Nothing major, no concrete steps.

And besides, if these TTP or SSP chaps don’t want a return through mere negotiations, then by all means, finish them off by force.

Re: Imran's engagement with the terrorists

For what it's worth Imran Khan is live right now in GEO TV's program** Lekin**. ;) And talking in detail about his views on engagement with the terrorists. Pretty much what I thought his views would be, worth seeing it on YouTube for people who consider him a fundamentalist without a beard.