Lal Masjid standoff and show down Mustafa Khan

The chequered history of showdowns at mosques and temples is nothing new in the subcontinent. Be it Hazratbal in Shrinager, or the Golden Temple in Amritsar. But Tuesday’s confrontation between the inmates of the two madrassas adjoining Lal mosque and security forces in Islamabad came as a big surprise. Excepting a bunch of women who could have been proactive, no one would have even guessed that burkha clad women and girls would become amazons taking the cudgel and even guns against the male security personnel, the rangers. Women had fought shoulders to shoulders with men in the days of the Prophet, too. But in a country where women’s role and status are increasingly whittled down, it makes news. Very rarely do we have a Mukhtaran Mai or an Asma Jahangi, or Nilofar Bakhtiar, tourism minister, hugging a parachute instructor making headlines.
No doubt Pakistan had had a woman prime minister. But she was more a progeny made prominent and carried on the crest of a sympathy wave during an election. But the women ringed against the parapets of the madrassa at Lal mosque and marching in phalanx in the environs were a sight to see. One of them would go down in history ominously warning that fidayeen or suicidal attacks shall take place. Her Kalashnikov loomed significantly from behind her black veil. Her shrill cry for revenge was unmistakably frightening even to any would be diehard misogynist. But the fragility of the gender was itself on display as a teen aged girl was carried by women. A sniper’s bullet had smashed her fingers and thumb. Long sticks in hands spoke volumes for the resolve of the women. Their lilting recitation of the Koran turned into war cry. Their braving all the odds to confront the armed rangers within easy shooting range was simply awesome. They were well instructed and knew what duties they would otherwise be assigned to do in such a violent situation. They were dousing the tear shell canisters with bucket water without showing signs of any intimidation. They marched out aggressively in tune with the call for retaliation from the loudspeaker atop the minaret of the mosque.
If anything, this is cleansing within. Pakistan has had extreme swings in fashions and morals. At one time women had taken to wearing very boldly designed and cut blouses and had adopted western culture. Then came Bhutto hosting parties and propositioning women and Mustafa Khar charming others with his good looks and womanizing. For a country that is founded on piety by the pious it was prodigious and profane. Then came Zia ul Haq who made a sea change which would make the Qaide Azam turn in his grave.
Seen with backdrop of larger picture in the life of Muslims elsewhere, the Jamia Hafsa women are a contrast. They are ill at ease with the decadent and degenerate practices around them and resent them very much. Prostitution may be the oldest profession in the world, even Socrates knew it. But then they vehemently oppose it. They would kidnap the pimp and the prostitute to stop it straight away. Or even the masseuses, for they are ther contamination of the body. Who knows what goes on in the den of the mystique masseurs from China.

A glimpse of how things and people subvert moral life and suborn the innocent and the unsuspecting is given in Blaspheme of Tehmina Durrani. She was one of the wives of Mustafa Khar, a right hand man of Zullfikar Ali Bhutto. He had incestuous affair with his sister in law which Tehmina has recorded in her autobiography called My Feudal Lord. It became the best selling book in Europe and made the Europeans to pitch in on treatment of Muslim women by their own men and ultimately Islam. However, Durrani’s novel is even more revolutionary and a barometer of what was in the air that touched off the standoff and the showdown at the Lal mosque. There is a pir sahib at a tomb. He takes a tender under age girl, Heera, as his wife. He tortures and rapes her at will. After he is satiated with her he makes video films of his having sexual intercourse in all funny shapes. Then he makes her sleep with his friends and do the same and have it filmed. He abuses children including his own daughter and kills some of them. There are some families who have had troubled relations with the pir sai. He treats members of those families cruelly, tortures and kills them. One of them ingratiates herself to the pir and becomes his servant and kills him one fine day. This is how the fiefdom and feudalism in Pakistan plays havoc.

Heera thinks that emancipation is at hand. But then her own son dons on the mantle of his father and treats his mother the way his father did. She takes the video and shows it the followers of the pir. They are horrified by their polluting the wife of their pir. One of them loved her in his younger days and hoped to marry her. The tapes simply filled him with revulsion. She meets tablegi jamat people and sees hope that there was a source of reforming the whole system.

That system of licentiousness was making inroads in the Pakistani society is not in doubt and hence the strong reaction of the Hafsa madrassa women. This might remind you the orgy and debauchery of Bali in Indonesia. The construction of the Karakoram road made it easy to the Chines masseuses and call girls to be imported. The guardians of law in turn are sucked into the trade. Women brought up and educated in the culture of modesty and shame cannot stomach what was transpiring across the road and were agitated. One of them said
“I’m not afraid of the police, I’m afraid of God.”

Even so, their taking law and order in their own hands with fellow students of the other madrassa at the Lal mosque is reprehensible. Their crying for blood of the rangers or the officers of the government queers the pitch against them. Their teachers should have been there or else their family elders. Over a score of people lost their lives. Who is to account for it? Would Abdul Rashid Ghazi own his role in it and take the blame for it? Where was he whole afternoon on Tuesday when the women were in the forefront of the protest? Maulana Aziz was caught sneaking out in burkha, bathetic in the face of tall claim of Jihad. What a travesty of Jihad when the inmates of the mosque shoot at a father who walks forward to retrieve his daughter and a boy getting shot at when he tries to leave the complex at the appeal of his father outside! Where is Jihad when the brimstone sermon deliverer Maulana Aziz ends up in a whimper? In the burkha he looks more a harlequin than a Muslim divine.

However the most redeeming feature of the sorry episode is the groundswell in the public opinion of the Pakistanis. They have voiced their inner feeling of anguish and shame for what was happening at the mosque. They prayed for not only the well being and safety of those within the mosque and the seminaries but also for peace and sanity to prevail. Without any reservation they expressed their abhorrence for such acts. This flies in the face of the general belief in the West and India that the Pakistanis are violent and inclined to terrorism. In fact there is a tradition in India to blame Pakistan for every act of murder or massacre, and, now, attacks on mosques within India!

There is no compulsion in religion. Not even in the matter of protesting. The television visuals will have disastrous effect on the psyche of the world. Diffused teaching of Islam over time would have prevented the ugly clash. But that might not last long for there is the silver lining of the clash within (in the sense of Martha C Nussbaum’s conception of Gandhian philosophy) the hearts and minds of the Pakistanis. They have begun to feel what Imtiyaz Dharkar so aptly put the other day when she spoke at the release of her book in Delhi” : "The Terrorist at My Table asks crucial questions about how we live, work, travel, eat and listen to the while preparing for attack. What do any of us know about the person who shares this street, this house, this table, this body? When life is in the hands of a fellow-traveller, a neighbour, a lover, son or daughter, how does the world shift and reform itself around our doubt, our belief?"

Another aspect is that General Musharraf allowed the situation to worsen to show to the world how difficult it is to hold election in the present time. In January the students laid siege to the children’s library, in March the students seized three Pakistani woman whom they considered to be pimps. In May they kidnapped three police personnel. Then they took by force six Chinese masseuses. The General could have acted faster and earlier by snipping it in the bud.

There is widespread support for Talibans in the inmates of the Lal mosque. Talibans are a product of Pakistani efforts at reform made possible by bankrolling of expenses by the US for its own strategic interest against Russia and China, the godless communists of yesterday. Being strictly religious, the Talibans would be endeared by the people there. At times Musharraf comes under the American pressure to confront the Talibans. That is how Lal mosque comes in picture. It is very tight rope walking for the General or anyone who would be in his place. The US is a symbol of hostility and aggression on Iraq, closeness to Israel. Its proxy war against Al Qaeda through the Pakistani army is a double edged weapon. The Lal mosque crystallizes all this.
mustufamustaqueem@rediffmail.com