Lal Masjid: State within a State

With  fundamentalists calling the shots, Musharraf's  government has made the tactical error of breathing life into Pakistan's Islamists

Sonya Fatah Islamabad

"We have no intention to wage a war against the government leading to a bloodbath," Maulana Abdul Aziz, the leading cleric at Islamabad's controversial Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, told a local reporter during an interview at the mosque's premises on the morning of Monday, April 23, 2007. "However, if it launches a crackdown on Jamia Hafsa or Lal Masjid, of course, the movement would automatically turn into a militant movement." 

Such statements from Lal Masjid's main man are not empty threats. The Red Mosque is not in the spotlight for the first time. It has enjoyed the attention of presidents past and present, of visiting dignitaries and the country's military chiefs for several decades, and its strength, like that of the Taliban, has grown to be largely independent. 

As decisions made by President General Musharraf weaken his control in Pakistan, and as political parties, legal bodies and human rights groups combine to protest in force against the president, the Red Mosque's leading clerics are piggy-backing on the momentum, promising all kinds of ultimatums, including suicide bombs, if the government tries to interfere in their affairs. The ultimatums by Islamist bodies mean it's a significant crisis for the Pakistani president, but his solution lacks vision. With a growing internal crisis on his hands, and the development of Talibanisation on Pakistan's western borders and main western cities, Musharraf is walking a political tight-rope.  

Observers feel Musharraf's tried-and-tested and failed process of military solution followed by appeasement has wrecked havoc in the tribal areas. It will have the same result in the Lal Masjid controversy. "This is a government concentrating on elections and regime control," says Samina Ahmed, project director, South Asia, for the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention think-tank that is headquartered in Belgium. "The problem is that regime survival is the objective. If that priority means making yet another deal with the mullahs,  that is what they will do." 

And so, not surprisingly, on April 11, 2007, the Pakistan Muslim League's Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain was sent to negotiate with the Lal Masjid's brothers-in-arms. The brothers, Mullah Abdul Aziz and Abdul Rashid Ghazi have been threatening to start their own sharia court, calling the Pakistani legal system 'unIslamic'. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz's cabinet has been divided over how to deal with the law-breaking mullahs of the Red Mosque but the government's chief negotiator, Chaudhry Hussain, has already penned some masterstrokes. 

A long list of legal grievances documents the vigilante actions taken by students of the mosque's affiliated madrassas, the Jamia Hafsa, for women, and the Jamia Fareedia. The women of Jamia Hafsa, in particular, have been active vigilantes. For instance, armed with long, bamboo staves and dressed from head to toe in black burqas, women students barged into the home of suspected brothel owner, Shamim Akhtar. The moral brigade bound and gagged the woman, her daughter, daughter-in-law and a six-month baby, and kept them under their watchful gaze. The women, called 'sinful Shias'‚ were disgraced, but for three days the Pakistani government appeared paralysed.