ISLAMABAD, 12 April 2007 — A leader of the Islamabad mosque who is at the center of a growing controversy threatened yesterday to retaliate if the government attempted a crackdown.
The Lal Masjid or Red Mosque in Islamabad has caused the government headaches with its Taleban-style anti-vice patrols and by issuing a “fatwa” against a woman minister for being pictured hugging a paragliding instructor.
“If it comes to a do-and-die situation we will use our right to self-defense,” Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the mosque’s deputy leader, told AFP by telephone.
“Whatever arms we have are with licenses obtained in the past through normal official procedures,” he said when asked to comment on what appeared to be assault rifles carried by madrasa students standing guard on the mosque’s walls.
The mosque leader refused to respond to comments by intelligence sources that the students of two madrasas, which are attached to the mosque had stored petrol to make crude firebombs.
On Friday Abdul Aziz, the chief imam at the mosque in downtown Islamabad and Ghazi’s brother, threatened to launch “thousands” of suicide attacks if government security forces launched an operation against the compound.
He also announced the formation of a Shariah court, which two days later issued the fatwa against Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar.
The government of President Pervez Musharraf is continuing negotiations with the mosque’s leaders despite public pressure to tackle what has been described as “Talebanization” in the heart of the capital.
Musharraf told a public rally in the eastern city of Sialkot that the mosque’s students were not the real enemy in the battle against extremism, and that the government did not want to fight them.
“Newspapers say the government is weak and I am showing signs of weakness or some fear. It is not a question of any fear,” Musharraf said. “But they are not enemies that we should attack and eliminate.”
Casualties in any raid on the mosque would be bad for Musharraf, a key US ally in the war on terror, at a time when he faces a political crisis over his removal of Pakistan’s chief justice.
