On December 02, a number of people gathered in a mosque in a middle-class suburb of Karachi to offer funeral prayers in absentia for a young engineering graduate. Abdul Rahman Shujaat, an activist of Pakistan’s most influential religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami, was killed last week in a drone attack on a terrorists’ hideout in North Waziristan. Obviously Shujaat’s family members and Jamaat-e-Islami disassociated themselves from queries what has led Shujaat not to persuade his engineering career but to become part of a feared terrorist organisation – Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan. However, their disassociation from the deeds of Shujaat doesn’t mean anything in the face of policies advocated by Pakistan’s religious parties.
It was Jamaat-e-Islami’s ameer who recently declared Taliban leader, Hakeemullah Mehsud, as martyr; Mehsud was also droned in North Waziristan. Another religious leader went one step ahead by declaring even a dog a martyr if ever killed by the Americans. It’s obvious such a definition of jihad and martyrdom will encourage a number of their activists and innocent citizens to wage jihad against their own people. In Pakistan, we are a facing a great contradiction wherein even terrorists are loved and lauded for their acts against general public and security forces. Perhaps time has come for these religious parties to do a deep introspection of their policies; they can’t live a two-pronged life. They have to decide whether they are with terrorists or with the rest of the Pakistan.
MASOOD KHAN
Jubail, Saudi Arabia