Daily Times

The 25-year-old British soldier, Drummer Lee Rigby, who spent six months in Afghanistan in 2009, was hacked to death last week in Woolwich, London, by two black men, using a meat cleaver. The assailants were Muslims. One of them was reported as saying: “The only reason we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily” and “We apologise that women had to see this today, but in our lands our women have to see the same.” The interesting thing is that both the suspects had been on MI5’s watch list for eight years but were assessed as ‘peripheral figures’.

Michael Olumide Adebolajo, one of the attackers, is a convert to Islam; he was a former Christian who had been angered by the Iraq invasion. It is believed that one of these men may have tried to travel to Somalia, the war-torn African country, supposedly a training ground for violent jihadists. It was reported that “the extremist cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad, who has been expelled from Britain, told The Guardian he had tutored Adebolajo in Islam after he converted to the religion in 2003. He was the former leader of al-Muhajiroun, an organisation banned for professing extremist views.” The western media has termed the incident ‘terrorism’.

Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf’s (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan and Prime Minister-in-waiting Mian Nawaz Sharif have both decided to open a dialogue with the Taliban, in an attempt to bring peace to Pakistan and Maulana Sami-ul-Haq, Chairman of the Difa-e-Pakistan Council and a known Taliban sympathiser has been approached to act as an intermediary. The maulana has said that he would contact Mullah Umar, amir Afghan Taliban and Hakimullah Mehsood, head of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), both of whom are his students, as soon as both the federal and KP provincial government and Pakistan’s army give him assurance that they are on the same page and commit to reviewing the foreign policy: stopping the drone attacks and undertake not to yield to foreign pressure. Earlier this month, General Ashfaque Pervez Kiyani, Chief of Army Staff, said that the war being fought on our soil is very much our war, and any transgression on our land has to be defended.

But the question that is boggling most of the educated Pakistanis’ minds is how and on what terms do we negotiate with the Taliban? If the interviews being given by Maulana Sami-ul-Haq are anything to go by, the Taliban, and Maulana has been quick to add, the ‘religious parties’ want Pakistan to disassociate itself from ‘America’s war-on-terror’ and put an immediate stop to the lethal drone attacks being carried out on our soil — which kill and maim thousands of innocent Pakistani civilians. So far so good. But then the Maulana wants implementation of ‘shariat’, the establishment of a welfare state and a complete revamping of our judicial system, stating that all religious parties are on the same page as the Taliban on this, and to make the matters more interesting he says that once an accord has been reached, the Taliban may join the government and/or the mainstream religious parties. Now, here is where, I, an ordinary woman of Pakistan, is constrained to think: if the people of Pakistan wanted the religious parties in charge and running the country as per their ideology and concept of ‘shariat’, surely the election results would have shown otherwise? Please do not get me wrong: I want Pakistan to be a welfare state, to be able to deliver on the fundamental rights as enshrined in the Holy Quran and the constitution. I want equality for everyone — education, health, food — everything, to be of the same standard. But do I want the maulanas or the Taliban to impose their decisions on me? No, thank you. I can wear a dupatta, a chaddar, a hijab or even a shuttle-cock burqa, but I will only do it if I want to myself. I have studied in a ‘girls’ only’ institution, even when I lived in London, but I will send my children to co-education institutes if I want to, not when someone holding a gun tells me to. But then, I am also constrained to think what if all those negotiating with the Taliban forget why we voted for them and not ‘them’!

Article 256 of the Constitution states: “No private organisation capable of functioning as a military organisation shall be formed, and any such organisation shall be illegal.” So do the Taliban fall within this definition? If we safely assume that the Taliban is an illegal organisation then is a dialogue with them justified? And if assuming it is, then if any illegal demands are put forward by them, which violate the Holy Quran and also come in conflict with the fundamental rights given to the citizens of Pakistan, what then? In April this year, The New York Times reported that the American government had entered into secret talks with the Taliban in 2010, some of whom had been flown into Qatar on an American plane. If our Prophet (peace be upon him) could hold talks with the infidels of Quraish and become a signatory to the Treaty of Hudaiybiyyah, which guaranteed 10 years of peace — not that it was upheld by the Quraish — then surely the Pakistani government can hold talks with the Taliban?

The Woolwich killings have unleashed a fresh spate of, what now seems eternal venom against Islam and Muslims. It is being called terrorism instead of an isolated incident of murder by two men, but then to be fair, the manner in which the Woolwich killing took place would fall squarely within our own definition of terrorism. The suspects said that they killed Rigby because “Muslims were dying daily.” While this is no justification to kill a soldier who was on duty in a foreign country under orders, it is a fact that the illegal and unlawful invasion of Muslim lands and the unwarranted killing of innocent children and entire families by the US and its allies is also terrorism. Michael Moore in response to the reaction on the Woolwich killing tweeted “I am outraged that we can’t kill people in other counties without them trying to kill us!” Glenn Greenwald wrote in The Guardian: “It’s true that the soldier who was killed yesterday was out of uniform and not engaged in combat at the time he was attacked. But the same is true for the vast bulk of killings carried out by the US and its allies over the last decade, where people are killed in their homes, in their cars, at work, while asleep (in fact, the US has re-defined militant to mean to mean ‘any military-aged male in a strike zone’).”

In a Q&A with Senator Lindsey Graham on drones and targeted killing at the Senate Judiciary Sub-committee on April 23, 2013’ Graham states: “Once you’re designated an enemy, we don’t have to make it a fair fight. We don’t have to wake you up if we’re going to shoot you. And that’s the point, is don’t become part of an enemy, and here’s the problem, how do we know if you’re part of an enemy. That is a legitimate, honest inquiry here. So what I’m suggesting is that we kind of back off and look and see the goal we’re trying to accomplish.” Given the kind of self-righteous attitude exhibited by Graham and the US, the PTI and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz may be well advised to make sure they are not sleeping with the enemy…whoever ‘it’ may be!

The writer is an advocate of the High Court