Pak cracks down on Anti Shia activity

Ray · 09-03-2006, 13:59 PM

Quote:

Sunday, September 03, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

Four video shops’ owners jailed for selling anti-Shia CDs

By Akhtar Amin

PESHAWAR: An anti terrorism court (ATC) on Saturday sent the owners of four video shops to jail after charging them with selling CDs and cassettes containing anti-Shia speeches by leaders of the banned group Sipah-e-Sahaba.

The ATC judge had given Kabuli police station a one-day physical remand for the men on Friday for selling the banned CDs and cassettes. City police arrested the four men Maulana Hafizur Rehman, Qari Munawar Hassan, Ihsanullah and Iftikhar on Thursday, in a crackdown on literature and other material that could lead to sectarian violence.

The police charged the arrested men under sections 8 and 9 of the Anti Terrorism Act (ATA) and 295A of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).

According to the first information report (FIR), the CDs and cassettes contained anti-Shia speeches recorded by Haq Nawaz Jhangwi, Maulana Ziaur Rehman and the late Maulana Azam Tariq, leaders of Sipah-e-Sahaba, as well as Tariq Jamil, a leader of the Tablighi Jamaat, and Mufti Munir Shakir.

In the speeches, the leaders had criticised literature written by Shia religious leaders against companions of the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH).

In the court premises, a district leader of Ahle-Sunnat Waljamaat called the police action a one-sided crackdown. “The government should also arrest and seal the literature written by Shia leaders against Shan-e-Sahaba,” he said.

He said if President Pervez Musharraf was sincere in wanting to curb extremism in the country, the government should also seize the hate literature written by Shia leaders.
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...3-9-2006_pg7_5

There is no dearth of wails, rants, raves and indignant protest on this forum and in all forums that there is no Shia Sunni rift in Pakistan and all that it was a figment of imagination of non Pakistanis and RAW.

Indeed if that was so, this shows that the Sunnis takes immense delight in lampooning the Shias.

That's friendship?

Notwithstanding, it is good to learn that Musharraf is taking this nonsense seriously.

Ray · 09-04-2006, 14:25 PM

Monday, September 04, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

New militant group targeting Shia leaders

By Shahzad Malik

ISLAMABAD: Pukhtoon militants who fought against the US-led invasion of Afghanistan have formed a new anti-Shia militant group, according to investigators inquiring into the assassination of Shia leader Allama Hassan Turabi.

Sources told Daily Times that Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials had learnt of the new group from interrogations of three men arrested for suspicion of involvement in the prominent Shia cleric’s murder in Karachi. The FIA team, headed by its director general, Tariq Pervaiz, has sent a report to the Interior Ministry detailing its findings.

The suspects - Sultan Mehmood alias Saifullah and Muslim, Mohammad Amin alias Khalid and Abdullah, and Mohammad Rehman alias Mani – told investigators the group was planning suicide attacks against Shia leaders, says the report.

The new militant group is led by Mufti Ilyas and Hazrat Ali of Darra Adam Khel. Its members include men who recently fought against US forces in Afghanistan, and have links with Abdullah Mehsud, the militant leader responsible for the attack on Chinese engineers at the Gomal Zam Dam site, and other militants from Waziristan and Afghanistan. It also includes some women members.

The report says that the new group has no links with any other militant organisation, including the banned sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and is active in Quetta, Karachi and other major cities in Pakistan. It also says the group has established a supply line of weapons and ammunition between Darra Adam Khel and Karachi.

The Interior Ministry has directed the provincial chief secretaries and Islamabad chief commissioner to identify members of the group operating in their areas. Security officials in Waziristan and other tribal areas have also been put on alert, the sources said.

The ministry has asked the special investigation group of the FIA in Peshawar to collect information about Mufti Ilyas and Hazrat Ali, and investigate their possible links with other militant groups in the country, the sources added.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...4-9-2006_pg1_1

Ray · 09-04-2006, 15:47 PM

Quote:

Monday, September 04, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

EDITORIAL:How we deny sectarianism and then pay for it

Eleven Pakistani pilgrims to Karbala have been brutally murdered by sectarian thugs in Iraq. The Pakistanis and three Indians, all male, were travelling to holy Shia sites in Iraq on Thursday when they were attacked in Anbar province, heartland of the Sunni insurgency. The attackers first separated the 14 men from women and children, then bound their hands and shot them in the head at point blank range. Pakistan has condemned the killings and has belatedly warned its citizens against travelling to Iraq. But those who deny that sectarianism exists everywhere in the Muslim world and pin the current death toll of nearly a thousand a month in Iraq on the Americans should take pause.

In Pakistan violent sectarianism is alive and kicking even though the media, the government and the political parties are mostly in denial about its consequences. The same day, however, we heard the news that an anti-terrorism court (ATC) in Peshawar sent the owners of four video shops to jail after charging them with selling CDs and cassettes containing anti-Shia speeches by “leaders of the banned group Sipah-e-Sahaba”. Significantly, it was not only the Sipah-e-Sahaba men that were guilty but also a leader of the Tablighi Jamaat whose congregations in Lahore have been attended in the past by our presidents and chief ministers. Another offender mentioned in the FIR was the infamous Mufti Munir Shakir who created a civil war-like situation in Khyber Agency not long ago.

Nothing kills Muslims like sectarianism and what is happening in Iraq is being concealed behind much misplaced hand-wringing over civil war. The man who plunged the country into this hell, Abu Musaab Zarqawi, went there from Pakistan, primed with sectarian politics. And Pakistan has been steadily killing its religious leaders and other prominent citizens since 1986 when the three major Deobandi seminaries in Karachi, Lahore and Nowshehra issued fatwas apostatising the Shia community. Meanwhile, the Grand Ayatollah Sistani of Iraq has again taken to his diplomatic quietism in the face of blood-thirsty Shia gang-leaders like Muqtada al Sadr and Mahmoud Hassani heading the sectarian war against the equally murderous Sunni revivalists aided and abetted by Shia-hating Arab infiltrators from Iraq’s neighbouring states.

In Pakistan the anti-Soviet jihad was essentially anti-Shia in origin and ideology but no one paid any attention to this fact. Ruling Sunni establishments in Pakistan, it may be recalled, had prepared “nation building” textbooks after 1947 in which most of the “great men” were known to have been Shia-baiters. The politicians were ignorant. The clerics who knew kept quiet. Today Pakistan is ripe for the plucking because of its internal strife, but the trend is to deny rather than accept the disease and rectify it. Had sectarianism been admitted and its proponents punished, the 11 Pakistanis who died in Iraq wouldn’t have gone there. Let us give you an example of how everyone reacts to sectarian violence in Pakistan. This case study pertains to the ashura killings of the Hazaras in Quetta in 2004; and curiously the “politics” of Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Sistani is indirectly involved.

A well-known columnist wrote in Jang (March 5, 2004) that he was greatly uplifted (taza dam kar diya) when he heard the Iraqi Shia saying that the death of 200 of them in Iraq on ashura was not the work of Muslims (read Sunnis) because no Muslim could do such a thing. The Shia in Iraq instead said that the evil deed was done by someone else (kissi aur ka hath). The columnist then said that the Shia of Pakistan should develop the same kind of thinking (issi soch ki zarurat hai) about the ashura massacre of Quetta, which killed nearly 50 Shias. Another influential columnist wrote that the ashura massacre in Quetta was just like the massacre in Baghdad and Karbala and the Muslims were convinced that it was not done by the Muslims themselves. In present times, when America had unleashed its aggression on the Muslims, no Muslim group could think of killing another Muslim, he argued, concluding that in the case of the Quetta massacre another country (read India) could have joined America in committing the evil deed and those who investigate the massacre should keep the idea of a foreign hand (beruni hath) in mind. Yet another columnist wrote that a Foreign Office spokesman in Islamabad had stated that Indian consulate in Afghanistan was involved in the ashura massacre in Quetta. In the Senate the opposition members thought that it was a conspiracy hatched by a big foreign power. (All these columns were published on the same day.)

Allama Hassan Turabi, a highly respected Shia leader representing his community in the Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), was killed in July this year by a suicide bomber brainwashed by a Deobandi seminary in Karachi, which the police “will not name for reasons of security”. Turabi, who had been attacked many times earlier, had just returned from a rally held by the MMA to condemn America and Israel for invading Lebanon. The party that began its career by demanding the apostatisation of the Shia community — Sipah-e-Sahaba — is alive and kicking; it held a grand rally in Islamabad two months ago, as if to put the Shia community on notice. There are cities in Pakistan — Gilgit, Parachinar, Jhang, Karachi, Hangu, Kohat — where a sectarian war can flare up any moment.

The act of “excluding” is unfortunately the trend in all Muslim states basing themselves on sharia. Some communities are excluded as full Muslim citizens with “popular consensus”, as if it were part of the “bonding” the population needs to become a nation. After that, other communities are threatened as potentially “excludable” and the process goes on till the state is overwhelmed by a mercy-killing implosion. We should recall that the “caliphate” of Mullah Umar in Afghanistan was nourished on the blood of the Hazaras. Pakistan should not draw its nourishment from the same source. Instead it should take concrete steps to resist the hardline clerics who want to live in the past and settle scores outstanding from ancient times. *
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...4-9-2006_pg3_1

This is an unique report that honestly discusses how Moslems delude themselves and as normal blame everyone else for their own misdeed andmischief!

I dislike this statement - No Moslem would do that!

As if Moslems are not human beings but some other creatures of nature beyond human foibles!

Indeed if as the claim Islam is truth, let them open up their eyes and see truth - the verities and realities of what they have reduced Islam to!

If indeed, they love their religion as they claim!

There are many Moslems who see reality but very few like this writer admit to themselves and others the reality that exists!

Ray · 09-04-2006, 16:59 PM

I quote the famous epigram by the great ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (around 2 centuries BCE):

Is God willing, but not able, to defeat Evil?
Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing?
Then he is malevolent.
Is he both willing and able?
Then whence cometh Evil?
Is he neither willing nor able?
Then why call him God.

**Parihaka** · 09-04-2006, 17:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ray

I dislike this statement - No Moslem would do that!

This is the big problem I have when debating anything to do with Islam. The logic I'm presented with is that it's not Islam that is doing this, that or the next thing because that's not what a true Muslim would do.
Therefore anything enacted by muslims in Islams name that might reflect badly on Islam is simply not.
Kind of like claiming the crusaders weren't anything to do with Christianity because they weren't following Christs teachings.

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09-04-2006, 14:25 PM	#2 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 27,195 Country:	Monday, September 04, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version New militant group targeting Shia leaders By Shahzad Malik ISLAMABAD: Pukhtoon militants who fought against the US-led invasion of Afghanistan have formed a new anti-Shia militant group, according to investigators inquiring into the assassination of Shia leader Allama Hassan Turabi. Sources told Daily Times that Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) officials had learnt of the new group from interrogations of three men arrested for suspicion of involvement in the prominent Shia cleric’s murder in Karachi. The FIA team, headed by its director general, Tariq Pervaiz, has sent a report to the Interior Ministry detailing its findings. The suspects - Sultan Mehmood alias Saifullah and Muslim, Mohammad Amin alias Khalid and Abdullah, and Mohammad Rehman alias Mani – told investigators the group was planning suicide attacks against Shia leaders, says the report. The new militant group is led by Mufti Ilyas and Hazrat Ali of Darra Adam Khel. Its members include men who recently fought against US forces in Afghanistan, and have links with Abdullah Mehsud, the militant leader responsible for the attack on Chinese engineers at the Gomal Zam Dam site, and other militants from Waziristan and Afghanistan. It also includes some women members. The report says that the new group has no links with any other militant organisation, including the banned sectarian group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, and is active in Quetta, Karachi and other major cities in Pakistan. It also says the group has established a supply line of weapons and ammunition between Darra Adam Khel and Karachi. The Interior Ministry has directed the provincial chief secretaries and Islamabad chief commissioner to identify members of the group operating in their areas. Security officials in Waziristan and other tribal areas have also been put on alert, the sources said. The ministry has asked the special investigation group of the FIA in Peshawar to collect information about Mufti Ilyas and Hazrat Ali, and investigate their possible links with other militant groups in the country, the sources added. http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...4-9-2006_pg1_1

09-04-2006, 16:59 PM	#4 (permalink)
Ray Postmaster General *Military Professional* Join Date: 08-20-03 Posts: 27,195 Country:	I quote the famous epigram by the great ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (around 2 centuries BCE): Is God willing, but not able, to defeat Evil? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both willing and able? Then whence cometh Evil? Is he neither willing nor able? Then why call him God.

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