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SECOND OPINION: Fear and loathing of Hisba Bill —Khaled Ahmed’s Urdu press Review

An Islamic state is never legitimate because it fails to bring true ‘shariah’. Rulers who try their hand at it either lose power or lose their lives. General Zia brought ‘shariah’ but Maulana Samiul Haq immediately tabled his own shariah bill, claiming that the other one was a bogus one. Then General Zia got killed. After that, prime minister Nawaz Sharif tried to bring in true ‘shariah’ with his 15th amendment but lost power and nearly lost his life

The MMA government in the NWFP is a Damocles’ sword hanging over the head of Pakistan. It definitely wants to do something for the people of the NWFP, but it is also committed to the ‘true Islam’ which its inflexible clerical supporters will not let go of. To please these supporters MMA ministers have promised a Taliban type of shariah in the province. Needless to say, all kinds of ‘lesser’ Muslims are scared of what might ultimately transpire.

Daily Jang (September 2, 2004) reported that in a seminar in Peshawar one speaker Anwar Kamal Marwat stated that Hisba Bill was not really needed after the Shariat Bill. He said the muhtasib under the proposed Hisba Bill would have unlimited powers and his office will be of five years tenure after which period it could be extended indefinitely. He said this would amount to a kind of monopoly over all law. Bashir Ahmad Bilour said that Hisba Bill clashed with the Constitution and was an attempt to bring about a Taliban type of government in the NWFP. He said the clergy had set up its own private jail in Nowshehra under a Shariat Council which had no legal authority. He said the Supreme Court should take suo motu notice of this breach of law in Nowshehra because people were in jail there illegally.

An Islamic state is never legitimate because it fails to bring true shariah. Rulers who try their hand at it either lose power or lose their lives. General Zia brought shariah but Maulana Samiul Haq immediately tabled his own shariah bill in the Senate, claiming that the other one was a bogus one. Then General Zia got killed. After that, prime minister Nawaz Sharif tried to bring in true shariah with his 15th amendment but lost power and nearly lost his life. Mullah Umar then tried his hand in Afghanistan and is now on the run; and his tough shariah is nowhere in sight. The shariah doesn’t improve the Muslims’ lot but it scares the hell out of them.

Quoted in Nawa-e-Waqt (September 2, 2004) ex-ISI chief Hameed Gul said that Pakistan had played all its cards to get India to resolve the Kashmir dispute and now there was no card left to play. He said Pakistan first declared ceasefire unilaterally, then allowed India to fence the LoC and then talked of a solution outside the UN resolutions but nothing had happened.

Hameed Gul is right about the first part. Pakistan has played all its cards, the last one being jihad, which put the integrity of the state at stake. It is now time to change tack or sink. The new policy is to bind the wounds inflicted on Pakistan by jihad. It has its own cards, but they are different from the ones that were played in the past but got ruffed.

Writing in Jang, (September 4, 2004) Javed Chaudhry stated that because Pakistan was a poor country its nationals were maltreated at the airports of countries like Turkey, Iran, Bangladesh and Jordan. Our passports were looked at with suspicion at these airports too. On August 31, 12 Nepalis were killed in Iraq by terrorists but back in Nepal people attacked the PIA office building. They also did this to the Egyptian embassy. They did this because Pakistan was a poor country. They did not care that the terrorists who killed 12 Nepalis had also earlier killed Pakistanis.

Why did the Nepalis attack Pakistanis in Kathmandu? Because they equated the killer of Nepalis in Iraq, Zerqavi, with us. Why did they equate Zerqavi with us? Zerqavi now doing terrorism in Iraq in the name of Al Qaeda had come from Jordan to fight jihad in Afghanistan. He started a business in honey collection in Peshawar and called his family to Pakistan. He probably also married a woman in Peshawar. He got money from Al Qaeda in 2001 to organise his own terrorist unit. He got in touch with Kurd terrorists while in Herat and thus became connected with Ansarul Islam and sent many of his terrorists to Kurdistan. He cuts off the heads of his hostages with his own hands. Dr Akmal Waheed and Dr Arshad Waheed had kept him in their house in Karachi and looked after him and then sent him to South Waziristan for onward journey to Afghanistan.

Writing in Nawa-e-Waqt (September 5, 2004) magazine, Major (Retd) Amir Afzal stated that Zafarullah Khan was made foreign minister of Pakistani under pressure from the British and American media. During the war in Kashmir army officer Akbar Khan was striking effectively against Indian troops but his action was slowed down by Liaquat Ali Khan’s submission to Mountbatten. After that Zafarullah Khan made long useless (bay-maqsad) speeches at the UN to delay the results of the Kashmir affair. Col Akbar Khan was told that he would become brigadier only if he brought his troops back from the Kashmir front.

Pakistanis hate Zafrullah Khan because he was a Qadiani but he was Pakistan’s best representative at the UN. Allama Iqbal’s son Justice (Retd) Javid Iqbal who was at the UN with him testifies to the fact in his autobiography. One can however cavil with Zafarullah Khan over his acceptance speech when the Objectives Resolution was presented at the Constituent Assembly in 1949. He had been appointed foreign minister by the Quaid against the advice of many in the Muslim League. In a way he betrayed his leader knowing full well that he would never have okayed the resolution.

According to Nawa-e-Waqt (September 14, 2004) Prof Muzaffar Mirza said that he had seen the Quaid in his dream whose interpretation was that America would go to pieces (tukray-tukray). He was commenting on his new book Millat ka Pasban. Great teacher of journalism Miskeen Hijazi said that his ideal late Mirza Munawwar had predicted that Afghanistan would be the graveyard of communism which came to be true.

If the author of a factual book relies on dreams what does he expect to achieve? One might say that the Quaid would have thought more about Pakistan and its tendency to become tukray-tukray. A more ‘normal’ dream would show him grieved by the tukray-tukray process of 1971 and the possibly more tukray-tukray after we are done with Balochistan and Wana. *

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