While putting off their scheduled plan to lay the foundation stone of Jamia Hafsa, around five hundred Lal Masjid male and female students on Friday gave their “final warning” to the government to reconstruct the seminary. Otherwise, they said, the government must brace itself for the “recurrence of the bloody events of 2007 because thousands of students were prepared to embrace martyrdom”.
Led by the spouse of Red Mosque cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, Umme Hassan, who has been recently released, hundreds of female students clad in black veils shouted slogans of “Al-jehad Al-jehad, Labbaik Labbaik”, and “Ghazi tere khoon se inquilab aayega”. They recalled the scenes of what had happened around four years back when a conflict took place between the Lal Masjid students and country’s military forces that resulted in 154 reported deaths.
Lal Masjid controversy appeared to once again cripple the capital city when, on last Friday, Maulana Abdul Aziz had vowed to start rebuilding Jamia Hafsa within a week.
But the students who swarmed in great numbers at Lal Masjid to attend the inaugurating ceremony of Jamia Hafsa on Friday were disappointment when the cleric announced in his Jumma sermon that negotiations were underway with the government representatives and he was extending his deadline to the next week.
Separately, Umme Hassan said on Friday strongly criticised the government and the country’s armed forces. She said all the female students of Jamia Hafsa were ready to confront the military, if the latter ever tried to launch any operation against them. Talking to the reporters here, she said Malik Riaz, a business tycoon, had warned them, citing an army officer named Brigadier Imtiaz, that the forces were planning another ‘massacre’ of the students.
“We are ready to die but how an army, which fled from the Kargil battlefield, can defeat the women of Jamia Hafsa,” she said, adding that the students had seen enough bloodshed and they had no fear of any military offensive.
“We had given the government one week to make arrangements for the reconstruction of Jamia Hafsa and it will be harmful for the country if the authorities failed to do so,” she added. Hassan said that if the government could provide big pieces of land to universities such as COMSAT, NUST and others, why it was against the construction of Jamia Hafsa.
The chief cleric of the Red Mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz, told Pakistan Today that he had had talks with Interior Minister Rehman Malik and that was why he postponed the reconstruction work for another week. He said it was strange that the authorities concerned were reluctant to rebuild Jamia Hafsa despite the orders of the superior judiciary.
An official source in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), however, told this scribe that land on which the Jamia Hasfa was constructed was meant for a public library and it was still the property of the Education Ministry.
He said the local administration was ready to allocate a piece of land for the seminary at a different location but still the matter was a bone of contention between the authorities and the seminary administration.
Abdul Azizi, when asked whether he was ready to accept a piece of land for Jamia Hafsa at some other location, said he was ready to accept that offer only if the new plot would be of the same commercial value as of the old one. He said the price of land at the present location was about Rs 10.8 million for one kanal.
Back in 1992, Maulana Abdullah, the father of Maulana Abdul Aziz laid the foundation stone for Jamai Hafsa and the seminary was built on the land adjoining the Red Mosque.
In April 2007, Abdul Aziz set up a controversial ‘qazi’ court comprising 10 Lal Masjid muftis, who were tasked to enforce Shariah laws over the entire neighborhood. The events that followed led to a bloody operation by the security forces, which later cleared the mosque and the madrassa compound, the occupants of which had taken up arms.
shame on you rehman malik……………
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