ISLAMABAD, 29 March 2003 — More than half a century of struggle between secular and religious forces in Pakistan is drawing to a close with pro-Western liberals in retreat, a top leader said yesterday.
The religious right saw victory, as Pakistanis reacted to bloody images from the Iraq war and united to condemn the US-led force, the leader of the country’s largest religious party and an influential opposition legislator, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, told Reuters. “The Western forces have been conquered,” said the white-bearded Ahmed, a softly spoken man whose words carry weight in the country.
“Pro-Western forces have no conviction, they have no message,” he said. Ahmed’s party has fought for influence against mainstream political parties in every street and town of Pakistan for the past 50 years.
But it was only last October’s general election, which saw unprecedented gain for religious parties, that turned Ahmed’s party into a major parliamentary force.
The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal an alliance, which includes Jamaat-e-Islami, won 68 seats in the 342 National Assembly. The religious parties have been helped by inflamed Muslim passions over Iraq, which Ahmed said had exposed US designs for “global hegemony”.
“The Islamic identity has become a reality, Islamic movements have come alive,” Ahmed said. “In the entire world, an independent identity of Muslims is emerging.”
The new-found unity over Iraq — including pro-Western elites, liberal middles classes and Islamists — was boosted by a fear that Pakistan was the United States’ next target because of its nuclear weapons, Ahmed said.
“Thinking that our turn will not come is like closing your eyes to the reality,” he said, adding Pakistan would escape a fate similar to Iraq only if Washington failed there.
He said Pakistan should align with France, Germany, China and Russia — UN members that opposed the US-led war on Iraq.
“We have to take steps to save ourselves...But if it (Pakistan) waits for its turn then we are doomed.”
Despite strong opposition, President Pervez Musharraf has remained a close ally of the United States in its war against terror. However, he has kept his distance from Washington on Iraq. Nuclear weapons and violent militancy are factors that cloud Islamabad’s relations with Washington.
Ahmed said militancy was confined to splinter groups frustrated by the injustice Muslims faced and their violence would end when the causes were addressed, including the resolution of the Palestine and Kashmir issues.
Critics accuse Ahmed of not condemning violence by militants, including the Al-Qaeda network that is, blamed for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
He said he did not know what Al-Qaeda was. “It is a product of Western propaganda. The element of militancy that we have is due to a reaction,” he said. “The mainstream political parties have not gone for violence.”
Ahmed said the West and Islamic countries should talk, to try to understand each other and try to co-exist peacefully.
Militancy was “not the real face of Islam,” which carried a message of peace and justice, he said.
“We should live like brothers, in spite of differences, in spite of differences of religion. We can live together.”
