Preventing More Lal Masjids

#94 by Yasser

OK, does that mean you don`t have any coherent answer to my question? Thanks, but I suspected as much. And if mothers do teach manners, I don`t see your mother having done a very good job, or is it that that`s what she wanted you to speak?

...The divide in the Pakistani society is not along religious lines, as i have emphasized on many occassions, on this site........the divide is along two lines: ethnic and financial.......the ethnic divide transcends religious and financial lines.......

.........The financial divide is, now, coming through religious lines.......it is not a coincidence that all the individuals who end up in these madrassahs are from the poor rural families of pakistan.......if the divide was religious alone, then one would see rich, poor, and middle class pro-madrassah inviduals in this school, from all parts of the society......much like one sees in ethnic politics and memberships of parties like MQM and ANP.......

.......However, the madrassahs all cater to the poor......has anyone ever wondered why?

.......It is, thus, far too easy (and too selfish) to write off the madrassah students (and teachers), not to mention the whole concept of a madrassah as a tumor-like growth in the pakistani society, which needs to be removed through violence........to the point of supporting the killing of its members ......

.......Students capturing video shop owners are not evil people........they are brainwashed people.........they need not be killed.........they need to be rehabilitated.........the solution is not to allow them to, first, aggregate in a madrassah and get brainwashed, and then to kill them, when they act funny...........anyone going through such brainwashing would act funny; including you and i........

.........The deeper the economic divisions in Pakistan run, the deeper the religious divisions will happen to be.........as long as the politics of the country is dominated by the 1% to 5% elite, which does not open its doors to the poor, the poor will continue to aggregate towards the one group, which offers them some form of acceptability, i.e. the religious right.........

.........Poor people send their kids to madrassahs, because that is the only place, which provides them with free education and lodging...........not because they want to produce future maulvis.......i am certain if they could send their kids to aitchison college and then onwards to oxford, they would surely do so..........

if the govt. cannot offer them this opportunity and if the elite of the society (i.e. chowk crowd) runs the govt., then i am afraid the govt. has to accept responsibility, as do all of us, for the wide social gaps that have appeared in the pakistani society......

all of us have some level of responsibility for what has happened in lal masjid.......it is far too easy to pass on the blame to the crazy antics of two misguided mullahs and their brainwashed young students.........

#96 by bulleya

“Poor people send their kids to madrassahs, because that is the only place, which provides them with free education and lodging...........not because they want to produce future maulvis.......”

Wrong on many counts…. Why poor Sindhis and Baloch and a majority of Punjabis poor kids don’t go to madrasah?
The truth is that going to Madrassah is a tradition in NWFP and becoming a mullah was a good option for landing job in any mosque. At least 70% of Pesh Imams in Pakistan are from NWFP. Even in remote Sindhi villages you will find Pathan pesh imam and mauzin.

Karachi madrassah are full of Pathan kids. You will rarely find a poor mohajir kid in the madrassha. Tando allahyar near Hyderabad is a major Madrassah with dorm and 90% kids are from NWFP and Quetta and not from Sindh.

Yes, there is a correlation between poverty and Madrassah but in Pakistan it is mostly the tradition and not just poverty.

The rise in Madrassah in the last 20 years is because there are now more mosques in Pakistan. Thanks to Zia ul Haq!

Incoherence does not deserve a coherent response. Hence this is not a response to the foul mouthed interactor from Hydro-bad...

Anyone who thinks that it is Jinnah who warned Gandhi against Mullahs and Deobandi politics again and again... is to blame and not Gandhi (see post 88) who encouraged them into politics for his own nefarious ends...and Gandhi who got them to abuse every Muslim without a beard and with a lifestyle different than their own... is not credible. Anyone who thinks Shias, Barelvis, Ismailis, Bohris, Ahmadis etc who fought united for their just rights under Jinnah`s leadership... are to blame for Deobandi terror ... is just stupid. No Historian has made such a claim. No historian ever will.

Atleast... unlike Gandhi who failed to control the Islamic extremists that he so willingly unleased.... Pakistan Army proved yesterday that it knows how to bring down the monsters it creates for certain purposes..

#36 by bluegaze

Good musings. Great to have you here! Finally an old-style lefty pak commie-- true to my heart! Welcome!

That said, while I agree with your basic thesis, about this wave of talibanization not necessarily being about Islam, I think you take it too far when you say that ``even those who promote and have promoted its various shades knew that it was not about religion.`` This, surely, is selling the power of religion really short.

In my view, if Hoodbhoy`s error lies in dismissing all extra-religious factors in his analysis, your`s seems to be the opposite. Hoodbhoy is right on the money when he speaks of religious sentiment being the prime motivator behind, well, religious extremism on campuses, and is also correct about the extremists` peculiar fixation on `morality` of a particular kind. It`s understandable why he`d extrapolate his university experiences of such militancy to wider society, though he`d do well to consider the many other ingredients in the mix there.

Saying that ``religion is being used`` by all and sundry doesn`t really exculpate religion. That it can be used in the first place should give us pause, if we are earnestly looking for solutions. There will always be human conflict, after all. But must it always be addressed, and ``solved``, through extremist religious views and methods? This, I believe, is where Hoodhboy`s prescriptions are quite relevant. A sea change of mentality is required in those who, sooner or later, finding themselves in an unjust situation, seek to enforce `solutions` that create greater injustice. Power easily corrupts. And it probably corrupts the less educated more than it does the well educated-- at least those educated into a more scientific mindset.

#86 by Mantolives

[Amazing... bash poor Jinnah who warned people like Gandhi against extremist forces again and again ... but don`t mention a word about Gandhi who encouraged Mullah fascists. Lets blame the shias and ahmadis and Ismailis and Barelvis (i.e. ``Children of TNT`` or ``Children of Hate blah blah) for Wahabi extremism even though they warned against it again and again... but lets not mention the machiavellian monster Gandhi who released the Wahabi extremism into South Asian Politics.

Thankfuly history has been recorded for people to know the truth:


Achyuth Patwardhan, one of the Socialist stalwarts in the Congress, has given a remarkably candid and self critical analysis of the Congress Party vis-a-vis Khilafat: `It is, however, useful to recognise our share of this error of misdirection. To begin with, I am convinced that looking back upon the course of development of the freedom movement, THE `HIMALAYAN ERROR` of Gandhiji`s leadership was the support he extended on behalf of the Congress and the Indian people to the Khilafat Movement at the end of the World War I. This has proved to be a disastrous error which has brought in its wake a series of harmful consequences.]


Ah, so it is Gandhi who is responsible for ``releasing the Wahabi extremism in South Asian politics``?

Hmmm...

So who is responsible for Islamism in China, in Thailand, in Bali, in Australia, in USA, in Britain, in Netherlands, in Belgium, in France, in Germany, in Turkey, in Chechnya, in North Africa, in Iran and in the rest of the world?

Eh?

The time has come to look within. If you guys don`t, you`ll be MADE to. The world is not going to tolerate this garbage for very long.

Keep watching....

#48 by Saima Shah:
Great post, Saima. Gets to the heart of the matter.

HP #97: ``Wrong on many counts…. Why poor Sindhis and Baloch and a majority of Punjabis poor kids don’t go to madrasah?....The truth is that going to Madrassah is a tradition in NWFP and becoming a mullah was a good option for landing job in any mosque.``

.......One simply has to look at the financial condition of the madrassah students to see that they are all poor; or at least 99% poor.........This does not mean that, ``all`` poor people send their kids to madrassahs........some, if not most, don`t send their kids to any school......others send them to citizen foundation type schools (if available) which offer free education......

however, it is true that those in madrassahs are poor........and (mostly) rural.......if madrassah attendance was more tradition than anything else, then it would cut across financial lines.......it would not only exist amongst poor........

the major common factor amongst madrassah students is not that they are pathan........if that were the case, you would see rich pathans in madrassahs also.......

the % will be different from different provinces, but the common factor, invariably, will be poverty (and lack of access to upper class educational facilities)...........

PH writes <<< The writers conclude that this is a contrived problem, not a real one. They are dead wrong. Lal Masjid underscores the danger of runaway religious radicalism in Pakistan. >>>

They are not ``dead wrong`` in stating that it was a contrived problem. They are wrong in assigning blame. That the Pakistan Army manufactured this crisis serving outside masters, does not mean that its current leadership i.e. Musharraf or his supporters within the military did it..

The fact that US agents (not necessarily blue eyed Caucasians) have infiltrated all major Mullah militant organizations (including Al- Qaeda central) is also a fact that only someone without historical knowledge of this region and the US modus operndi will deny. That the mullah Ghazi was prevented from surrendering at the last moment by those surrounding him (he was more valuable dead than alive) is also a fact, and if prevented from surrendering at the end, nothing precludes that he was prevented from surrendering before. The guy might even have been a hostage. That such agents of the Shaitan require only a phone call to be set free after capture is also not a prepostrous claim.

Nevertheless, regardless of the process, watch for the fallout. Did this crisis benefit or harm Musharraf is the key question. Well the PH has stated in the above quote the American pov, that ``runaway religious radicalism`` exists in Pakistan. Isn`t that what the Americans emphasise when they ask Pakistan to ``do more``, and let Karzai give the drubbing to Musharraf. Now, Allah certainly forgives the apostates who have repented, but the US elite never deal again with someone that has not offered them full submission. Rumor has it that Saddam offered them the oil fields as well as free access to his mama`s corpse but the declined the offer. As the US prepares the hellfire with the Mullah`s finger prints on it aimed for his a$$ the only option left open for Musharraf (as was for Saddam) to stay alive is to sublet the Mian`s summer home in Saudi Arabia on a long-term basis.

If any of you had read how Kermit Roosevelt manufactured the crisis that led to the ouster of Mossadeq in Iran, you`d recognize these tricks and how this Mullah`s death will lead to Pakistani on Pakistani fighting both sides supported and funded by these agents of the Shaitan...

Regarding causation of Mullahism, the blame goes to the Colonial British who used religion, and their agents the Sir Allama and the ``Quaid`` to implement religious exclusion and ``divide and rule`` as fact while surrounding it with flowery rhetoric of Islam and liberalism, later the US elite and its occupation force found it very expedient to use this for its own perverse ends. Of course there are consequences, you can`t just use and forget, you end up mainstreaming the Frankenstein of your own creation....

#98 by Yasser

Suddenly Yasser doesn`t refer to (or abuses) interactors` mothers or other family members anymore. Puzzling to say the least.

Anyone who thinks that it is Jinnah who warned Gandhi against Mullahs and Deobandi politics again and again... is to blame and not Gandhi (see post 88) who encouraged them into politics for his own nefarious ends...and Gandhi who got them to abuse every Muslim without a beard and with a lifestyle different than their own... is not credible.

And yet, the same Jinnah loudly proclaimed that Hindus and Muslims were so different from one another, that living together would mean bloodshed and anarchy. Or was that a different person and not Jinnah? Please enlighten us, we`re all ears.

Anyone who thinks Shias, Barelvis, Ismailis, Bohris, Ahmadis etc who fought united for their just rights under Jinnah`s leadership... are to blame for Deobandi terror ... is just stupid. No Historian has made such a claim. No historian ever will.

Aww Yasser, trying to be more clever than we really are, are we? I`m not blaming Jinnah for Deobandi terror as you`re smartly trying to misrepresent, but Muslim League terror, unleashed by his call to Direct Action, which according to Leaguers, included any action against the Constitution, and common sense would suggest included murder. Subsequent events proved many commentators, historians, and even ordinary newspaper reporters (who predicted largescale bloodletting) true.

Masadi sahib,

(Regarding causation of Mullahism, the blame goes to the Colonial British who used religion, and their agents the Sir Allama and the ``Quaid`` to implement religious exclusion and ``divide and rule`` as fact while surrounding it with flowery rhetoric of Islam)

You are dead wrong as far as MAJ(pbuh) is concerned. He never believed in religious exclusion (you can ask ur friend Manto mian to mail you a copy of the famous 8/11 speech) nor did he ever sorround his demands with the flowery rhetoric of Islam.

Regards

#105 by majumdar

ROTFL!!!

Harishbhai,

Re: #106

I wasn`t making fun of anyone. MAJ (pbuh) genuinely never believed in religious exclusion. It is another matter that the state that he created soon enough got around to doing just that.

Regards

Majumdar,

Thanks for the clarification for the blind.

Is it any wonder that Masadi and Harish mian have reached similar conclusions.

Re: # 104

I have already answered all these lies several times inter alia here http://www.chowk.com/show_article.cgi?aid=00007141&channel=university%20ave&start=0&end=9&chapter=1&page=1

Since you seem to an expert at recognising ``kicks in the groin``... would you say majumdar`s 107 was a kick in the groin and or a slap on your face?

first of all, i agree with Dr. Pervez that an early action, especially cutting the supply lines of the masjid and jamia as well as electricity and gas etc would have put presure on the people there. had the government responded to it early perhaps this bloodshed could hve been voided and these elements would have been curbed long before.

furthermore, we do need to see to the problwm of growing religious elements into the higher educational institutions like QAU. these institutes are to impart the education among the youth and to develop thinking and analytical human being so that they could think in an expanding horizon rather than closing the doors of knowledge onto themselves...