Pakistani Cleric: Institute Sharia or Face our Shahideen from Planck's Constant

PAKISTAN: CURB 'VICE' OR FACE SUICIDE ATTACKS, MOSQUE WARNS

Madrassa followers burning
CDs and videos as part
of their crusade against
"vulgar material"
Photo: ADNKI

Ten days ago Maulana Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric of the Lal Masjid or Red Mosque in Islamabad (the capital of Pakistan), gave the Pakistani government one month's notice to curb "vice" or his followers will take matters into their own hands at peril of suicide attacks if it does not eliminate gambling dens, video shops and brothels.

In addition, Aziz announced that a Sharia or Islamic court will be established by the mosque, made up of ten religious scholars who will decide disputes and give their verdict in accordance with Islamic law. Also announced was the formation of a Baitul Maal or a kitty where contributions would be collected to finance the movement.

His followers have been challenging the government in recent months. Students of the Mosque's madrassas occupied a children's library in Islamabad to protest the demolition of several mosques the movement had constructed without government authorization. The group also kidnapped three women and a child for allegedly running a brothel and threatened the owners of a shop selling videos and CDs that were "obscene and vulgar", which means "Western" material.

Today, as reported by the BBC, tens of thousands of people have protested in the Pakistani city of Karachi against a radical mosque and its religious schools in Islamabad.

BBC News,
Karachi protest at Sharia mosque
The protest organisers, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), branded the mosque "religious terrorists".
The MQM is largely supportive of the policies of President Pervez Musharraf.

MQM leader Altaf Hussain told Sunday's rally by telephone from London via loudspeakers: "Islam is a religion of peace and there is no place in it for using force or terrorism.

"The people of Islamabad are insecure and under threat due to the activities of these religious terrorists."

Aziz of course blames all these vices on the influence of the West from General Musharraf's 1999 coup and the straying from Islamic principles since then. One may wonder what his true motives may really be since video shops and brothels already existed way before Musharraf came along. It seems to me that he is merely using the vice as a pretext to finally make Pakistan into another Talibanish hellhole.

Before anyone starts thinking to themselves that here we finally have "moderate" Muslims protesting against terror tactics, think again: the MQM has had a violent past and is likely protesting that some other terror group is vying for power and they would prefer if only they were in charge. Things are not always as they appear.

Ever since Saudi Arabia began financing madrassas outside its own borders, there have been movements from students of those schools to push an Islamic agenda in secular Muslim countries. Recently there have been protests in Turkey over an Islamic-leaning prime minister becoming the country's president. [Al Jazeera]

Saudi money has even showed up lately lining the pockets of former President and current idiot Jimmy Carter whose recent insane remarks about Israel can be explained away by the fact that he's been shamelessly bribed to take a hard-line Islamic view of the Middle East.