The Islami Jamiat-e-Talba (IJT), the student wing of the hard-line religious party known as the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), seeks to enforce its fundamentalist agenda, intimidating and sometimes attacking students and teachers alike, LA times reported.
After philosophy students and faculty members rallied to denounce heavy-handed efforts to separate male and female students, the IJT struck back: In the dead of night, witnesses say the wing workers showed up at a men’s dormitory armed with wooden sticks and bicycle chains. They burst into dorm rooms, attacking philosophy students. One was pistol-whipped and hit on the head with a brick. Gunfire rang out, although no one was injured. Police were called, but nearly a month after the attack, no arrests have been made.
Few on the Punjab University’s (PU) leafy campus, including top administrators, dare to challenge the IJT, the student wing of one of Pakistan’s most powerful hard-line right wing parties. At another Lahore campus, the principal disdainfully refers to the IJT as “a parallel administration.” The organisation’s clout illustrates the deep roots of extremism in Pakistan. University administrators fear that the IJT’s influence on many campuses will lead to an increase in extremism among the middle class, from which the next generation of Pakistan’s leaders will rise.
“These people have connections with jihadi groups and they are taking hostage our campuses,” said Sajid Ali, chairman of the PU Philosophy Department. “This is a real danger for the future of our country.” Fellow students and teachers regard them as vigilantes. In addition to trying to separate the sexes, they order shopkeepers not to sell Coca Cola or Pepsi because they are American brands. When they overhear a cluster of fellow students debating topics, from capitalism to religion, they demand that the discussion stop and threaten violence if it continues.
The recent trouble at the PU started when a posse of IJT members slapped a male philosophy student for talking with a female classmate. Students and faculty members organised a protest, which led to the dorm attack on June 26. Shahrukh Rashid, 22, who was among those attacked, said the police have been of little help. “One of the police inspectors told us, “Whatever is done is done,” he said.
University officials say that the Punjab government has allowed the IJT to flourish rather than jeopardise their political alliances with hard-line clerics at the helm of religious parties. Even when students, teachers or university administrators seek criminal charges against IJT members, police rarely respond. “If the government wanted to solve the problem, they could do it overnight,” said Asif Mahmood Qureshi, principal of the Government Islamia College.
IJT members did not allow him access to their dormitory, and physically force students and teachers to join their protests. With support from a bloc of teachers sympathetic to the IJT’s cause, they have managed to control the college’s teachers union, Qureshi said. “They don’t want the principal to do anything without their consent,” said Qureshi, the administrator who referred to the organisation as running a parallel administration. At the PU, IJT sympathisers include some teachers and even some of the security guards, teachers and students say.
The PU Philosophy Department chairman said that students and teachers, in most of the university’s academic departments, do not resist. The IJT would not allow music classes on campus, Ali said so the music department’s teachers meet their students at a concert hall off campus. Standing up to the IJT can trigger severe consequences. Last year, an environmental sciences professor, as head of the school’s disciplinary committee, expelled several IJT members for unruly behaviour. A group of IJT students stormed into his office, beat him with metal rods and smashed a flowerpot over his head. He survived the attack.
When IJT members attacked the philosophy department dorm late last month, students fought back, chasing the attackers. Within 15 minutes, IJT members had fled. “We’ve never been cowed by them,” Ali said. “So we’re on an island at this university,” he said. IJT nazim Zubair Safdar acknowledged that some members went to the philosophy department’s dormitory to confront students there and that fights broke out. IJT members involved later apologised to the department students and teachers, Safdar said.
“It was a miscommunication between IJT students and philosophy students,” he said. Safdar denied that the IJT relies on violence to get its message across. Seated at his desk in a small office at a dormitory dominated by IJT members, the 27-year-old sociology student said that his organization is opposed to male and female students sitting together because “the university is not a date point, it’s a place of education.”
He also denied that IJT members rough up male students who resist. “We just talk to them,” he said. “We are trying to create an environment that puts students on the right path. We don’t forcibly push students onto that path.” At Government Islamia College, Qureshi paints a portrait of a school under siege. Last year, IJT members staged 33 protests in six months, often threatening to beat students and teachers if they did not join the rallies. The demonstrations created major disruptions in the college’s routine; many students refused to show up to classes for two or three days after a protest because they feared that the IJT would instigate more violence.
Qureshi says he lacks the means to fight back. The power to suspend or expel students lies with the college’s board of governors, which has not been convened since January because of a pending lawsuit filed by IJT students challenging the board’s authority. His attempts to get Punjab provincial education officials to clamp down on the IJT’s behaviour have been ignored. In January, IJT members smashed the windshield and windows of Qureshi’s 1990 Nissan car and broke down the front door of his office. He met with the Punjab education secretary and asked him to intervene.
“I explained what happened, but all I got from him was silence,” Qureshi said. The IJT’s logo, a blue shield with a star and crescent moon, is plastered all over campus: on walls, lampposts and the school’s main gate. On the perimeter walls, IJT graffiti declare that “Martyrdom is our desire and jihad is our way. Islam revolution is our destination. So join us.” Qureshi cannot keep the group’s images out of even his own office. Affixed to a file cabinet behind his desk and a nearby bookshelf are IJT stickers. Asked why he doesn’t peel them off, Qureshi laughs nervously. “I have control, but not so much,” he said.
