Causes and effects
While the National Action Plan (NAP) remains largely unimplemented nine months after its formulation, the government is particularly hesitant in the enforcement of recommendation that concern the seminaries. A large section of the bodies imparting religious instruction has not been registered or regulated so far. Their sources of funding still remain largely unverified. It is no wonder that the two sons of a former cleric were apprehended by the police and Rangers in Islamabad on the charge of possessing a lethal weapon and a military uniform. The way those running the seminaries have been pampered and the violations of laws by their students and teachers ignored are bound to encourage violent tendencies in them.
The Lal Masjid is an outstanding example of a mollycoddled seminary whose students and teachers have been treated as being above law. After the Army Public School (APS) tragedy in Peshawar Maulana Aziz, the head of Lal Masjid, issued a shameful statement saying he would neither condemn the killing of the children nor consider them as martyrs. This led to protests by civil society demanding his arrest. Despite the registration of an FIR and the issuance of the warrants, the cleric could not be arrested. Again, the interior ministry was reluctant to get a case registered against the Lal Masjid students who had issued a video and a message inviting the IS, or Da’ish, to Pakistan to avenge the Lal Masjid killings in 2007.
There is a need to thoroughly de-radicalise the seminaries to rid Pakistan of violent religious and sectarian organisations. Some of these are funded by charities in the Gulf with terrorist links. The donors want foot soldiers for al Qaeda, TTP or IS. Unless the government establishes a mechanism of regulating the seminaries, as required under NAP, and has full information of the sources of their funding, the seminaries will continue to produce extremists, sectarian terrorists and malcontents who can be used by terrorist outfits and foreign agencies for their nefarious aims.
Forget the seminaries and look for print and electronic media. In press, a paper from Karachi which claims it was founded by Father of Nation, has most comments from Indians and anti Pakistan. All our TV channels show third rate Indian programs and films which is disgusting. Pervez Rashid should be ashamed.
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