Daily Times

Sir: There is no need to be surprised at Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar’s announcement in Washington, on February 22, 2015 whereby he said that, as the Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz had submitted a written apology to the capital police for his (in)famous justification of those terrorists who murdered more than 150 students and their teachers in a Peshawar school, the government would not go after him so as to avoid any negative consequences. My question to the interior minister is: is this now the official policy to deal with extremists emitting venom? What else does one expect from a government whose top leadership has been sympathizers of religious/sectarian outfits? This enforces the view that religion/sect-based parties have an upper hand when it comes to implementation of the recently adapted Nation Action Plan (NAP). If this is not the case then why has the proscribed/banned outfits list been removed from the NACTA website? Point seven of NAP reads: “Ensuring against re-emergence of proscribed organisations”. Obviously, first you need a list of banned outfits before you ensure they do not function under new names. Point five of NAP reads: “Countering hate speech and extremist material”. Can we presume submission of an apology by the Lal Masjid cleric good enough as “countering hate speech”?

Regardless of tall claims and targets outlined in NAP and after sacrificing 50,000 Pakistanis, regrettably we are still a confused lot. On one side we vow to eliminate the menace of religious/sectarian terrorism, on the other hand we are unable to ideologically challenge al Qaeda, the TTP, IS/Daesh and all who claim to be jihadi warriors to establish/revive the caliphate. Do we not mourn the droning of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, call them our ‘misguided’ brethren, subscribe to their ideology while sometimes disagreeing on methodology, generously fund them in the name of jihad and charity, provide working space in mosques and seminaries and openly preach hate material against other religions/sects?

Let us be frank and truthful to ourselves: religion/sect-based terrorism will not go away by military means only. It needs a real jihad against the mindset that is producing zombies ready to kill and be killed while dreaming of afterlife rewards. The grand mufti of al Azhar University was spot on while addressing the counterterrorism forum in Mecca, when he linked extremism to the “bad interpretation” of the Quran and the life of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), and called for radical reforms of religious teachings to tackle the spread of extremism.

Yes, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Tayeb may be right on this point but who can challenge the interpretations considered valid for centuries?

MASOOD KHAN

Jubail,

Saudi Arabia