A number of people are questioning that how come Pakistan’s most powerful religious party, Jamat-e-Islami (JI), has declared Hakeemullah Mehsud, a murderer of hundreds if not thousands of fellow citizens, as martyr while Pakistani soldiers who have sacrificed their lives fighting terrorists as ‘merely dead people’. There is nothing new to be get surprised on these edicts; this is what JI and numerous other hardline religious and sectarian parties and outfits firmly believe and convey the same to masses to cause split in the nation. JI chief is no different from Lal Masjid clerics who issued a fatwa (religious edict) in 2004 on the behest of Al Qaeda declaring Pakistani soldiers fighting Taliban in tribal areas as murtad (ones who committed apostasy), asking mosque imams not to lead their funeral prayers if they get killed in encounters. That fatwa started the confrontation between then President Pervez Musharraf and Lal Masjid hardliners which reached at peak in July 2007 when the mosque and adjacent seminary were raided to rid the place of worship of terrorists.
Though we are now in 2013, but it’s not different from 2004 and 2007. Pakistani nation has been deliberately divided to facilitate support to terrorists in the name of religion. Sadly a number of people who still blindly follow these religious leaders and clerics are, knowingly or unknowingly, aligning with terrorists. It’s time for the nation to come out of a state of denial before it gets too late. A nation who doesn’t acknowledge sacrifices of its sons and martyrs and makes the murderers as heroes is doomed for self-destruction. Terrorists have already destroyed Somalia and Afghanistan in the name of religion, and now they are moving ahead with their destruction spree all across the Muslim world.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia
