In Remembrance
Red Mosque assault and Killing of Hijabi women Changed the History of Pakistan
by Kaukab Siddique, PhD
After 9.11, the FBI set up headquarters in Islamabad and entered Pakistani homes with the cooperation of Pakistani intelligence services. This situation became very clear in the search for the killers of Daniel Pearl, the Israeli who entered Pakistan with a US passport.
Musharraf was so emboldened by the lack of resistance by the Pakistani population that he decided to tackle the only source of Islamic resistance which was in Islamabad itself: The Red Mosque. Here a firebrand preacher Abdur Rasheed Ghazi had organized a seminary for Islamic women which attracted several thousand young women and girls some of whom were survivors of the devastating earthquake in the north.
Jamia Hafsa, the women’s seminary named after the daughter of the second Caliph, Umar ibn al-Khattab, r.a., decided to carry out an Islamic cleansing campaign against Musharraf’s corruption within Islamabad, It was an entirely peaceful movement but the women would carry long sticks known as lathis to keep predatory males away who often want to prey on defenseless women in Pakistan. The Hafsa women would go to stores selling porno movies or semi-nude films or erotic songs and remind the owners of the Hereafter and the Fear of Allah. Some of this preaching, which would attract crowds, was successful. One shop owner took out all his videos and movies, put them on the sidewalk and set them on fire. [This was presented by the BBC as "militant Islamic women snatching tapes and setting them on fire.”]
Then the girls and women in burqa found that a procuress was being used to provide women to Musharraf’s officials right in Islamabad under Musharraf’s nose. The girls complained to the regime and met a stony silence. Then they started preaching to the procuress, telling her that she was violating God’s Law and threatening dire consequences. She laughed at them and reminded them of her contacts with the "higher ups” in the government. Finally they kidnaped her and kept her quite unharmed till she signed a confession naming her contacts and her activities.
The girls then went after the regime which was demolishing mosques in areas through which Musharraf traveled out of Islamabad. As part of their protests they took over a library and would not leave.
The point the young women were making was that General Musharraf was violating God’s Law. He had no writ from the people of Pakistan and no one had given him permission to support the USA.
At the instigation, it is said, of the US and Israel, Musharraf started conducting raids on the Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa. Some of these attacks were terrifying but they had the opposite effect. The young men in the Red Mosque [Lal Masjid] armed themselves.
Abdur Rasheed Ghazi’s sermons in the Red Mosque were bringing support from the oppressed people of Pakistan. To counter him, the regime brought the Imam of the Ka’aba who imputed that these activities of young women were unIslamic and they should not be coming out of their school. Abdur Rasheed Ghazi, who knew several languages including Arabic, was not impressed by the Imam of the Ka’aba and gave blistering khutbas to counter the Saudi move.
Gradually the regime tightened the police and then military encirclement of the Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa. Musharraf got in touch with the religious establishment and learned that the maulvies felt threatened by the development of a mosque in which women played a central role. Musharraf also fooled the Muslim political parties to hold a meeting in London during which time he launched his military offensive against the Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa.
The people supporting Abdur Rasheed said they had the right to have light weapons to defend the mosque from physical attack. When one of Musharraf’s elite commando officers broke into the women’s seminary by breaching its wall, he was killed.
Musharraf could have starved the people in the mosque into submission. Instead he decided on a full scale military invasion. The young people resisted with their small arms but were slaughtered by Musharraf’s elite forces using heavy weapons. Even phosphorous was used and among those killed by this forbidden explosive was Abdur Rasheed Ghazi’s mother. He went down fighting. May Allah grant him jannat al-Firdous.
AFTERMATH
It took Pakistani political parties quite a while to realize what had happened, that in the capital city of a country founded on Islam, in a city named Islamabad, military force was used to destroy a mosque and a seminary full of ba-hijab Islamic women.
But the people of Frontier understood what had happened. Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa’s tragic end ignited the pro-Sharia movement which was against a secular Pakistan, The Sharia movement had been there for years but now it took specific form. Huge crowds came out to support Maulvi Fazlullah and others organized the peaceful takeover of the beautiful area known as Swat. Sharia courts were set up to quickly settle disputes which had been in the secular courts for years. The message of the Red Mosque spread like a wild fire in all areas of Frontier province.
An organization which emerged, though it is a collection of many groups, is now famous or notorious as the Tehreeke Talibane Pakistan [TTP] mostly from the poor masses and peasants.
When the movement reached Buner, the US complained to Pakistan that the Islamics were now only 76 miles from Islamabad. CNN and the entire US media took up this theme of "great danger” to civilization. The Pakistani military then did to Swat what it had done earlier to the Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa. The ENTIRE POPULATION of Swat was evicted to create a free fire zone for the military. Anyone who remained could be killed. In the intense fighting which followed thousands of Pakistani troops, civilians and mujahideen were killed. The military killed at least 30,000 people including 3,000 mujahideen and lost 6,000 or more troops.
There are mass graves in the area where the army has carried out "extra judicial executions.”
The people were up in arms [small arms] all over Frontier province. The regime went after them, cuttingn off food supplies using air strikes and heavy artillery. Maulvi Fazlullah was trapped and barely escaped across the Frontier into Afghanistan where the Taliban are successful. The army destroyed medressas and mosques run by Fazlullah and the Pak Taliban but were not able to silence his short wave radio which had a large audience of women.
The army then went into Hangu, Adam Khel, Khyber and finally South Waziristan. America was insisting that it should go into North Waziristan also but protests by Jamaate Islami stopped it.
After Munawar Hasan was removed from leadership of JI by an internal manipulation organized by the army, North Waziristan was occupied and its entire population was expelled.
The way to peace in Pakistan is by way of communication with the "militants.” If they want Shari’a, why not withdraw the army, let independent media go in and let them have Sharia.
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