Looking back: Lal Masjid

Tuesday, February 17, 2009 12:02 AM

By Aisha Fayyazi Sarwari

So we thought we need to be part of the victory dance where the mullahs are getting shown their place by the forces and we thought we should take my daughter along so the cops can see us as non-enemy combatants, sort of use her as child shield. We got to G6 close to the infamous Lal Masjid up until the cordoned walls of the mosque where a bunch of over aged adolescents are holding women and children hostage to further their dreams of undoing the state in Pakistan and establishing a khilafat.

I talked to the troops nearby who said "mullah jaisey he hatiyaar aur asla dal-deytey hain, operation uswaqt khatam." It’s over when the mullahs lay down the arms. At the moment there can be no commando action because kids and women are more likely to get caught in the crossfire. The best strategy is to bleed their resources and hope that the mulllahs will surrender. He explained, so at least someone had clarity.

I looked up ahead and just three blocks down was this much-talked-about place that conjured visions of a dystopia, right out of Margret Altwood's book, The Handmaid's Tale. What is it that these men really want?

a) They want women because women are easy to command by using their nature and need for stability against them and assuming the provider status over women

b) They want women to be vessels of children because a concept of a new future comes from freshly controlled women and their easily brainwashed newborns

c) They want women to be reared for reproduction hence the hype about protecting honor so ideology or loyalty is as clear as lineage

d) They want a direct patriarchal chain of command that defines the man as the commander

e) They want to instill a sense of empowerment in the male students that the state cannot give them by defining vice as the main variable to be controlled and control of women as the method to curb sin

f) They want to convince the world that they have God's mandate by getting themselves labeled as "Wali-Allah's" with an eerie similarity to the name "mahatma".

g) They want to trumpet up the social security issues and shortcomings of the state by stepping in to provide for the poor and hence receiving the poor's obedience - No representation without taxation - if the state does not provide for its people, it needs not get their opinions counted either. And you have an entire class of misfits and social deviants with corrupted DNA.

As much as the mullah's deserve a mighty forceful punishment for compromising the country, its points of interest and opportunity, like FDI, and as much as they have only promoted their own brand and agenda by undermining Islam itself as a religion of evolution and growth, they are not the only party that has created the fiasco.

The Pakistan Army's interests are not Pakistan's interest. The Pakistan Army has created a save haven for all ISI sponsored militants that fought the Afghan war in the 70's and then sent them off packing to Kashmir and Chechnya, and now that the wars are fading the rabid dogs have turned against their own people looking for the blood of others, in the Shias the Ahmadis or whoever doesn't parrot exactly what they say.

A country created by one of the most secular and liberal leaders in South Asia could never have let these people in the country, never given them legitimacy or voice by accepting that religion of one brand has more place than another. In fact Jinnah said religious consideration would have no place where running of the state affairs was concerned, declaring unequivocally "Pakistan will not be a theocratic state to be run by priests with a divine mission." He said "You are free to go to your mosques, temples or any other place of worship in Pakistan. That has nothing to do with the business of the state."

Yet the Pakistan Army has always fueled the people who are the descendants of the most violent opposition to the Pakistan movement. This movement is one that was built for the people of this region who would otherwise never get the opportunities that they now have. It was a movement that envisioned economic uplift of a group of people, Muslims of India, who were increasingly marginalized under the British and would fade away under the Hindu dominated India if safeguards were not put in place.

One needs to drive on the motorway from Lahore to Islamabad to see how Punjab that was a constant source of military resource and raw material to the entire Indian Empire, has now focused its military advancement and mineral resource strength to Pakistan, which is predominantly Muslim, and particularly this mountainous region on which Islamabad is built.

These Lal Masjid goons don’t know that had it not been for Pakistan they would be nomads hopping around with mountain goats as would their children and their children’s children. They now harm the same country, malign the very principles that have brought their kids so close to globalization and the equal opportunity it presents. While globalization sidelines, and makes a stranger out of a citizen in their own country, it also makes plain the route progress is taking and advises one to give up on reactionary, small minded, limited goals that focus on individuals and not advancement of human intellect.

Religious bigots are not Pakistan’s monopoly but when you arm them with abundance and train them as soldiers for holy war, then pull out of command you have utter chaos and civil war. The US and ISI and Lal Masjid folks, all hand and glove, now running around like chicken without a head. The question is what do you do to deviants in a society, whose deviant behavior is self-created?