Unchecked Mushrooming: Flourishing madrassas under the scanner

296 seminaries constructed illegally in the capital.

ISLAMABAD: 

The assassination of Minorities Minister Shahbaz Bhatti has led to an increase in efforts to clamp down on extremist elements. Sources on Monday said that the interior ministry had sought records of illegally constructed madrassas (seminaries) from Islamabad administration and the Capital Development Authority (CDA).

The official also gave reference of two letters written by the ministry to the relevant authorities on January 31, 2011 and February 19, 2011 in this connection.

Over 300 madrassas are functional in the capital at the moment. An official of Islamabad administration informed The Express Tribune that except for four madrassas constructed during General Ziaul Haq’s regime, the rest were set up illegally in connivance with authorities.

The four built in Zia era are Jamia Faridia in E-7 sector, Jamia Slafia in H-8, Jamia Muhammdia Ghosia at Chak Shahzad and Jamia-tul-Kosar near H-8.

According to official record, Wafaqul Madaris of Deoband school of thought has around 80 to 100 madrassas. Tanzeem-ul-Madaris of Barelvi school of thought has 50 to 60 and Wafaqul Madaris Al Salfia of Ahl-e-Hadith school of thought has around 20 to 30 madrassas. Moreover, there are 15 to 20 madrassas of Rabta-ul-Madaris of Jammat-e-Islami, while Wafaqul Madaris Al Shia of Fiq-e-Jaafria has 10 to 15 madrassas.

Wafaqul Madaris dropped the name of its sole legally constructed madrassa, Jamia Faridia, due to Lal Mosque administration’s hard stance that lead to a deadly military operation back in 2007. The representatives of different religious groups held that CDA had not allocated land at proper locations, as many mosques had been built on the banks of dirty drainage streams.

“Wafaqul Madaris and other religious groups have built numerous mosques and seminaries in the city without obtaining permission,” mentioned a report prepared by the Islamabad Capital Territory. CDA has allocated land for mosques in every sector but the religious groups were also building seminaries on unauthorised land. Previously constructed buildings are being expanded beyond permitted levels, the report held.

The report said some of the mosques and seminaries are established on roadsides, some on green belts and some have violated building by laws of the CDA.

In some cases the CDA had allowed only two rooms for a mosque but the management constructed huge buildings. A senior official of the CDA’s enforcement directorate said the authority was hesitant in taking action fearing reaction from religious clerics and students of different madrassas.

Spokesman of Wafaqul Madaris, Qari Abdul Qudus said, “We directed our sister organisations to follow the law of the land and confine themselves to the educational activities. But because of discretionary attitude on the part of authorities, these mosques and seminaries were built without following proper procedure.”

He further said it was the responsibility of the government to coordinate with clerics committee comprising officials of religious ministry, Wafaqul Madaris, Auqaf department and other relevant groups to address the issue.

Responding to a question, Qudus said the problem was not being treated properly and requests were not being entertained. “With the rise in population the requirements for more markets and mosques also increased,” he added.

The city administration however threw around the responsibility of allowing the construction and not taking timely action.

Director General Planning Ghulam Sarwar Sindhu of CDA told The Express Tribune that it was task of ICT to remove illegal construction. He said a committee was constituted in this connection under the head of Deputy Commissioner (DC) Islamabad, while CDA was only part of surveys in which the number of illegal construction was identified.

When contacted, DC Amir Ali Ahmad offered to provide magisterial support to the CDA if it launched an operation against such mosques.  He said that land for a mosque has to be allocated by the CDA and cleared by police and intelligence agencies before it can be constructed within prescribed parameters.

  

By Azam Khan

Published in The Express Tribune, March 8th, 2011.

Pakistan: Silence has become the mother of all blasphemies

Pakistan's mullahs and muftis have managed to blur the line between what God says and what they say

Mohammed Hanif
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 March 2011 18.58 GMT

Two months ago, after Governor Salmaan Taseer's murder and the jubilant support for the policeman who killed him, religious scholars in Pakistan told us that since common people don't know enough about religion they should leave it to those who do – basically anyone with a beard.

Everyone thought it made a cruel kind of sense. So everyone decided to shut up: the Pakistan Peoples party (PPP) government because it wanted to cling to power, liberals in the media because they didn't want to be the next Taseer. The move to amend the blasphemy law was shelved.

It was an unprecedented victory for Pakistan's mullah minority. They had told a very noisy and diverse people to shut up and they heard back nothing but silence. After Pakistan's only Christian federal minister, Shahbaz Bhatti – the bravest man in Islamabad – was murdered on Tuesday, they were back on TV, this time condemning the killing, claiming it was a conspiracy against them, against Islam and against Pakistan. The same folk who had celebrated one murder and told us how not to get murdered were wallowing in self pity.

In a very short span of time, Pakistan's mullahs and muftis have managed to blur the line between what God says and what they say. The blasphemy law debate was about how to prosecute people who have committed blasphemy against the prophet Muhammad and the Qur'an. Since repeating a blasphemy, even if it is to prove the crime in a court of law, is blasphemous, no Pakistani has a clear idea what constitutes blasphemy. Taseer had called the blasphemy law "a black law" and was declared a blasphemer. The line between maligning the Holy Prophet and questioning a law made by a bunch of mullahs was done away with. What would come next?

During the last two months sar tan se juda (off with their heads) has become as familiar a slogan as all the corporate songs about the Cricket World Cup. Banners appeared all over Karachi and Islamabad last week demanding death for a Pakistani writer. The only problem is that nobody quite knows what she has written. Her last book came out more than eight years ago and, if it wasn't so scary, it would be ironic that it is called Blasphemy. It was a potboiler set mostly in religious and spiritual leaders' bedrooms. The banners condemning her say that not only she has insulted the prophet, she has insulted religious scholars.

So now disagreeing with anyone who has a beard and armed bodyguards can get you killed. The PPP government has tried to appease this lot by silencing the one-and-a-half liberal voices it had. What it didn't realise is that you can't really appease people who insist their word is God's word, their honour as sacred as the Holy Prophet's. In Pakistan, silence is the mother of all blasphemies. Most Pakistanis are committing that blasphemy and being punished for it.

Mohammed Hanif is a journalist and author of the novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes

The politics of appeasement

THE fire the PPP tried to fight by starving it of the oxygen of publicity and public debate has just consumed another one of its own. In three years, the party has lost its iconic leader, a provincial governor and a federal minister.

And still, nothing.

Fretting about Shahbaz Bhatti`s security, arguing over how best to mark his death in the National Assembly (believe it or not, the two minutes of silence in the NA was a compromise — no one dared lead a prayer for a man sentenced to death by extremists), turning on one another out of fear and paranoia that they may be next.

But Rehman Malik isn`t the problem. Babar Awan isn`t the problem. Even Asif Zardari isn`t the problem.

The problem is that the PPP has collectively lost its way. It is fighting yesterday`s battles.

This government`s raison d`être has come down to the narrowest of interpretations of government: completing its term.

Once upon a time, the single-point agenda may have made sense. If it were, say, the `90s, just surviving a full term may have helped stem the rot. Back then, society and state were not in freefall. A government completing its term may have helped bring much-needed political stability, back then the first step towards nudging the country on to a better trajectory.

But this isn`t the `90s. We`re no longer on a desultory trajectory, the goofy country trying to feel its way towards a better future.

The problem for the PPP, or at least those inside the party trying to coax its leaders to take more aggressive stands on some issues, is that there is a powerful argument against anything but the narrowest of governance agendas: the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

The blinding pace of events since her assassination — elections, insurgencies, terrorism in cities, Afghanistan, Mumbai, judicial crises, the list goes on — has obscured the fact that the party is still in a state of paralysis, ruled by a regent, waiting for its boy king, unsure of what the future holds.

For this, part of the blame must fall on BB. Like most leaders in politically unstable countries, hers was a one-person show. BB had minions around her, not a genuine second-tier leadership with political capital and standing of its own.

So when she was brutally struck down, gone with her was the vision for the party, what it stood for, how it could evolve to meet new challenges. There was no, in corporate parlance, `business continuity plan`; there was just a Bhutto continuity plan.

Paralysed, frozen, frightened and paranoid, the group that has coalesced around Asif Zardari has searched for answers to their predicament — but by looking backwards to what they think BB would have done.

If you can set aside the deepest of suspicions about their motives and intentions, the political approach of Asif Zardari & co is likely to have been shaped by four things: the Zia experience; the decade of democracy; exile under Musharraf; and the negotiations with Musharraf that culminated in the infamous NRO.

Out, in, out, in — if you were thinking about how to get in and stay in, the only untested strategy? Complete a term.

Never been done before. Everyone says it`s a good idea. And, perhaps most importantly, in a politics of severe constraints and limitations, one of the few things a politician can genuinely try and achieve.

Complete a term. That`s probably what BB was thinking. And that`s probably where Zardari got the idea from.

But there was a fifth period which also shaped BB`s thinking, a period that was tragically too brief and came too late to filter through to the leaders running the PPP today.

It was the period between Oct 18 and Dec 27 in 2007. Between the two devastating attacks, the bombing in Karachi which was meant to kill her and the attack in Pindi which did.

By all accounts, BB was a changed woman in those 10 weeks. She seemed to have understood that the game had moved on, that it was no longer just about elections and completing terms and politics of survival.

Pakistan had changed in the decade she was away. What were once distant warnings about inevitable consequences of myopic policies had turned into flesh and blood, stalking the country for prey, seeking to grow its numbers.

BB seemed to grasp the new reality of Pakistan in her final weeks. It meant pressing on, reaching out to reassure a frightened public, dispensing with the policies of appeasement.

For sure, everything we know of those final weeks of her life suggests she also felt afraid. But she didn`t let that fear overwhelm her.

In all the wild conspiracies surrounding her death, one fact remains unchallenged. When she appeared out of that sunroof, there was an element of the visceral in her act. The leader of the largest political party in the country was reaching out to her people. There was a bond that tied leader to ordinary man and BB knew it had to be sustained.

Now, today, with Shahbaz Bhatti dead, with Salman Taseer buried, with BB herself gone, perhaps Asif Zardari and his lieutenants need to focus on the last weeks of BB`s life.

Yes, a full term for a government would be unprecedented. Yes, it would help the democratic project. Yes, Pakistan`s democracy needs strengthening.

But that alone is no longer adequate. BB understood that in her last weeks. Retreat, withdrawal, appeasement, they are no longer options. The cancer has spread too far and wide.

BB is no more with us. But Asif Zardari and the PPP can help ensure her final, pivotal, realisations were not laid to rest with her.

The writer is a member of staff.

cyril.a@gmail.com

Shahbaz warns Malik against fanning provincialism

Updated at: 1603 PST,  Thursday, March 03, 2011
ISLAMABAD: Chief Minister Punjab Shahbaz Sharif has warned Interior Minister Rehman Malik against fanning provincialism by relating terrorism to any province, Geo News reported on Thursday.

Talking to media after condolence meeting with the family of deceased federal minister for minorities Shahbaz Bhatti here.

He said that the whole nation was sad over the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti.

Shahbaz Sharif stated that there should not be politics in the name of killing, adding that provincial government would fully cooperate in the investigation into assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti.

The Chief Minister expressed displeasure over the term “Punjabi Taliban’ used by Interior Minister Rehman Malik in the federal cabinet.(GEO URDU)