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PAKISTAN CANNOT BE — — USED AS A BATTLEGROUND FOR IRAN VERSUS SAUDI ARABIA PROXY WAR

Posted by admin in "Jihadi" Outfits of Terrorism, Afghan -Taliban-India Axis, Foreign Policy, Hypocrites in Islam, India, Jahiliya "Jihadis"Illiterate Fanatics, MUSLIMS, OUTRAGE AGAINST MUSLIM GENOCIDE, Pakistan Fights Terrorism, Pakistan's Fights Terrorism, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE on February 23rd, 2013

Saudi & Iranian should take their battles elsewhere, Pakistan is not up for sale as a battleground for the destruction of Shia-Sunni Unity. The blood of 1,200 Pakistanis Shias of Hazarawal ethnicity is on the hands of Saudi sponsored proxies, the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi. They are  a creation of Saudi money

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Background Reading

The New Cold War

There has long been bad blood between
 into the island kingdom of Bahrain. The ruling family there, long a close Saudi ally, appealed for assistance in dealing with increasingly large protests.

 

iranflag

 

 

Iran’s flag

Iran

  • Active troops: 523,000
  • Battle tanks: 1,613
  • Combat aircraft: 336
  • Regional allies: Syria, Hezbollah, Hamas

Source: Military Balance

Iran soon rattled its own sabers. Iranian parliamentarian Ruhollah Hosseinian urged the Islamic Republic to put its military forces on high alert, reported the website for Press TV, the state-run English-language news agency. “I believe that the Iranian government should not be reluctant to prepare the country’s military forces at a time that Saudi Arabia has dispatched its troops to Bahrain,” he was quoted as saying.

The intensified wrangling across the Persian—or, as the Saudis insist, the Arabian—Gulf has strained relations between the U.S. and important Arab allies, helped to push oil prices into triple digits and tempered U.S. support for some of the popular democracy movements in the Arab world. Indeed, the first casualty of the Gulf showdown has been two of the liveliest democracy movements in countries right on the fault line, Bahrain and the turbulent frontier state of Yemen.

Saudi Arabia’s flag

SAUDI ARABIA

  • Active troops: 234,000
  • Battle tanks: 565
  • Combat aircraft: 349
  • Regional allies: Gulf states, Egypt, Lebanese Sunnis, Fatah

Source: Military Balance

But many worry that the toll could wind up much worse if tensions continue to ratchet upward. They see a heightened possibility of actual military conflict in the Gulf, where one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies traverse the shipping lanes between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Growing hostility between the two countries could make it more difficult for the U.S. to exit smoothly from Iraq this year, as planned. And, perhaps most dire, it could exacerbate what many fear is a looming nuclear arms race in the region.

Iran has long pursued a nuclear program that it insists is solely for the peaceful purpose of generating power, but which the U.S. and Saudi Arabia believe is really aimed at producing a nuclear weapon. At a recent security conference, Prince Turki al Faisal, a former head of the Saudi intelligence service and ambassador to the U.K. and the U.S., pointedly suggested that if Iran were to develop a weapon, Saudi Arabia might well feel pressure to develop one of its own.

The Saudis currently rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and on antimissile defense systems deployed throughout the Persian Gulf region. The defense systems are intended to intercept Iranian ballistic missiles that could be used to deliver nuclear warheads. Yet even Saudis who virulently hate Iran have a hard time believing that the Islamic Republic would launch a nuclear attack against the birthplace of their prophet and their religion. The Iranian leadership says it has renounced the use of nuclear weapons.

How a string of hopeful popular protests has brought about a showdown of regional superpowers is a tale as convoluted as the alliances and history of the region. It shows how easily the old Middle East, marked by sectarian divides and ingrained rivalries, can re-emerge and stop change in its tracks.

There has long been bad blood between the Saudis and Iran. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni Muslim kingdom of ethnic Arabs, Iran a Shiite Islamic republic populated by ethnic Persians. Shiites first broke with Sunnis over the line of succession after the death of the Prophet Mohammed in the year 632; Sunnis have regarded them as a heretical sect ever since. Arabs and Persians, along with many others, have vied for the land and resources of the Middle East for almost as long.

These days, geopolitics also plays a role. The two sides have assembled loosely allied camps. Iran holds in its sway Syria and the militant Arab groups Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Palestinian territories; in the Saudi sphere are the Sunni Muslim-led Gulf monarchies, Egypt, Morocco and the other main Palestinian faction, Fatah. The Saudi camp is pro-Western and leans toward tolerating the state of Israel. The Iranian grouping thrives on its reputation in the region as a scrappy “resistance” camp, defiantly opposed to the West and Israel.

For decades, the two sides have carried out a complicated game of moves and countermoves. With few exceptions, both prefer to work through proxy politicians and covertly funded militias, as they famously did during the long Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s and 1980s, when Iran helped to hatch Hezbollah among the Shiites while the Saudis backed Sunni militias.

But the maneuvering extends far beyond the well-worn battleground of Lebanon. Two years ago, the Saudis discovered Iranian efforts to spread Shiite doctrine in Morocco and to use some mosques in the country as a base for similar efforts in sub-Saharan Africa. After Saudi emissaries delivered this information to King Mohammed VI, Morocco angrily severed diplomatic relations with Iran, according to Saudi officials and cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks.

As far away as Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, the Saudis have watched warily as Iranian clerics have expanded their activities—and they have responded with large-scale religious programs of their own there.

 

Reuters

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (above, in 2008) has recently compared the region’s protests to Iran’s 1979 revolution.

In Riyadh, Saudi officials watched with alarm. They became furious when the Obama administration betrayed, to Saudi thinking, a longtime ally in Mr. Mubarak and urged him to step down in the face of the street demonstrations.

The Egyptian leader represented a key bulwark in what Riyadh perceives as a great Sunni wall standing against an expansionist Iran. One part of that barrier had already crumbled in 2003 when the U.S. invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein. Losing Mr. Mubarak means that the Saudis now see themselves as the last Sunni giant left in the region.

The Saudis were further agitated when the protests crept closer to their own borders. In Yemen, on their southern flank, young protesters were suddenly rallying thousands, and then tens of thousands, of their fellow citizens to demand the ouster of the regime, led by President Ali Abdullah Saleh and his family for 43 years.

Meanwhile, across a narrow expanse of water on Saudi Arabia’s northeast border, protesters in Bahrain rallied in the hundreds of thousands around a central roundabout in Manama. Most Bahraini demonstrators were Shiites with a long list of grievances over widespread economic and political discrimination. But some Sunnis also participated, demanding more say in a government dominated by the Al-Khalifa family since the 18th century.

Protesters deny that their goals had anything to do with gaining sectarian advantage. Independent observers, including the U.S. government, saw no sign that the protests were anything but homegrown movements arising from local problems. During a visit to Bahrain, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the government to adopt genuine political and social reform.

But to the Saudis, the rising disorder on their borders fit a pattern of Iranian meddling. A year earlier, they were convinced that Iran was stoking a rebellion in Yemen’s north among a Shiite-dominated rebel group known as the Houthis. Few outside observers saw extensive ties between Iran and the Houthis. But the Saudis nonetheless viewed the nationwide Yemeni protests in that context.

Reuters

Saudi Arabian troops cross the causeway leading to Bahrain on March 14, above. The ruling family in Bahrain had appealed for assistance in dealing with protests.

In Bahrain, where many Shiites openly nurture cultural and religious ties to Iran, the Saudis saw the case as even more open-and-shut. To their ears, these suspicions were confirmed when many Bahraini protesters moved beyond demands for greater political and economic participation and began demanding a constitutional monarchy or even the outright ouster of the Al-Khalifa family. Many protesters saw these as reasonable responses to years of empty promises to give the majority Shiites a real share of power—and to the vicious government crackdown that had killed seven demonstrators to that point.

But to the Saudis, not to mention Bahrain’s ruling family, even the occasional appearance of posters of Lebanese Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah amid crowds of Shiite protesters pumping their fists and chanting demands for regime change was too much. They saw how Iran’s influence has grown in Shiite-majority Iraq, along their northern border, and they were not prepared to let that happen again.

As for the U.S., the Saudis saw calls for reform as another in a string of disappointments and outright betrayals. Back in 2002, the U.S. had declined to get behind an offer from King Abdullah (then Crown Prince) to rally widespread Arab recognition for Israel in exchange for Israel’s acceptance of borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War—a potentially historic deal, as far as the Saudis were concerned. And earlier this year, President Obama declined a personal appeal from the king to withhold the U.S. veto at the United Nations from a resolution condemning continued Israeli settlement building in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The Saudis believe that solving the issue of Palestinian statehood will deny Iran a key pillar in its regional expansionist strategy—and thus bring a win for the forces of Sunni moderation that Riyadh wants to lead.

Iran, too, was starting to see a compelling case for action as one Western-backed regime after another appeared to be on the ropes. It ramped up its rhetoric and began using state media and the regional Arab-language satellite channels it supports to depict the pro-democracy uprisings as latter-day manifestations of its own revolution in 1979. “Today the events in the North of Africa, Egypt, Tunisia and certain other countries have another sense for the Iranian nation.… This is the same as ‘Islamic Awakening,’ which is the result of the victory of the big revolution of the Iranian nation,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran also broadcast speeches by Hezbollah’s leader into Bahrain, cheering the protesters on. Bahraini officials say that Iran went further, providing money and even some weapons to some of the more extreme opposition members. Protest leaders vehemently deny any operational or political links to Iran, and foreign diplomats in Bahrain say that they have seen little evidence of it.

March 14 was the critical turning point. At the invitation of Bahrain, Saudi armed vehicles and tanks poured across the causeway that separates the two countries. They came representing a special contingent under the aegis of the Gulf Cooperation Council, a league of Sunni-led Gulf states, but the Saudis were the major driver. The Saudis publicly announced that 1,000 troops had entered Bahrain, but privately they concede that the actual number is considerably higher.

If both Iran and Saudi Arabia see themselves responding to external threats and opportunities, some analysts, diplomats and democracy advocates see a more complicated picture. They say that the ramping up of regional tensions has another source: fear of democracy itself.

Long before protests ousted rulers in the Arab world, Iran battled massive street protests of its own for more than two years. It managed to control them, and their calls for more representative government or outright regime change, with massive, often deadly, force. Yet even as the government spun the Arab protests as Iranian inspired, Iran’s Green Revolution opposition movement managed to use them to boost their own fortunes, staging several of their best-attended rallies in more than a year.

Saudi Arabia has kept a wary eye on its own population of Shiites, who live in the oil-rich Eastern Province directly across the water from Bahrain. Despite a small but energetic activist community, Saudi Arabia has largely avoided protests during the Arab Spring, something that the leadership credits to the popularity and conciliatory efforts of King Abdullah. But there were a smattering of small protests and a few clashes with security services in the Eastern Province.

The regional troubles have come at a tricky moment domestically for Saudi Arabia. King Abdullah, thought to be 86 years old, was hospitalized in New York, receiving treatment for a back injury, when the Arab protests began. The Crown Prince, Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, is only slightly younger and is already thought to be too infirm to become king. Third in line, Prince Nayaf bin Abdul Aziz, is around 76 years old.

Viewing any move toward more democracy at home—at least on anyone’s terms but their own—as a threat to their regimes, the regional superpowers have changed the discussion, observers say. The same goes, they say, for the Bahraini government. “The problem is a political one, but sectarianism is a winning card for them,” says Jasim Husain, a senior member of the Wefaq Shiite opposition party in Bahrain.

Since March 14, the regional cold war has escalated. Kuwait expelled several Iranian diplomats after it discovered and dismantled, it says, an Iranian spy cell that was casing critical infrastructure and U.S. military installations. Iran and Saudi Arabia are, uncharacteristically and to some observers alarmingly, tossing direct threats at each other across the Gulf. The Saudis, who recently negotiated a $60 billion arms deal with the U.S. (the largest in American history), say that later this year they will increase the size of their armed forces and National Guard.

And recently the U.S. has joined in warning Iran after a trip to the region by Defense Secretary Gates to patch up strained relations with Arab monarchies, especially Saudi Arabia. Minutes after meeting with King Abdullah, Mr. Gates told reporters that he had seen “evidence” of Iranian interference in Bahrain. That was followed by reports from U.S. officials that Iranian leaders were exploring ways to support Bahraini and Yemeni opposition parties, based on communications intercepted by U.S. spy agencies.

Saudi officials say that despite the current friction in the U.S.-Saudi relationship, they won’t break out of the traditional security arrangement with Washington, which is based on the understanding that the kingdom works to stabilize global oil prices while the White House protects the ruling family’s dynasty. Washington has pulled back from blanket support for democracy efforts in the region. That has bruised America’s credibility on democracy and reform, but it has helped to shore up the relationship with Riyadh.

Rising Tensions in the Gulf

A look at the Sunni-Shiite divide in the Middle East and some of the key flashpoints in the cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran

The deployment into Bahrain was also the beginning of what Saudi officials describe as their efforts to directly parry Iran. While Saudi troops guard critical oil and security facilities in their neighbor’s land, the Bahraini government has launched a sweeping and often brutal crackdown on demonstrators.

It forced out the editor of the country’s only independent newspaper. More than 400 demonstrators have been arrested without charges, many in violent night raids on Shiite villages. Four have died in custody, according to human-rights groups. Three members of the national soccer team, all Shiites, have also been arrested. As many as 1,000 demonstrators who missed work during the protests have been fired from state companies.

In Shiite villages such as Saar, where a 14-year-old boy was killed by police and a 56-year-old man disappeared overnight and showed up dead the next morning, protests have continued sporadically. But in the financial district and areas where Sunni Muslims predominate, the demonstrations have ended.

In Yemen, the Saudis, also working under a Gulf Cooperation Council umbrella, have taken control of the political negotiations to transfer power out of the hands of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, according to two Saudi officials.

“We stayed out of the process for a while, but now we have to intervene,” said one official. “It’s that, or watch our southern flank disintegrate into chaos.”

Corrections & Amplifications

King Mohammed VI is the ruler of Morocco. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the ruler was Hassan II.

—Nada Raad and Farnaz Fassihi contributed to this article.

 

We have Zero Tolerance for Sectarian Terrorism. Let there be no doubt. These Jihadis are turning on than that fed them during the Soviet Afghan War. Taliban are no different than any other Dogs of War, at the pay of any Master, who sponsors them.

 

Iran and Saudi Arabia have stabbed Pakistan on the back. They have taken undue advantage of our love and friendship and used our soil to fight their proxy battles. These two nations, whom Pakistanis have served to educate and taught them basic health care skills, have returned our favours by making our nation their killing field.  They have brainwashed our people through their own tarnished brand of faith and used them through financial incentives, to fight their sectarian wars.

 

These Jihadis need to be arrested en masse in all cities of Pakistan and Deprogrammed by Islamic Scholars from all Fiqh of Islam. Without a massive deprogramming process, they will continue to create turmoil in Pakistan. Their heinous behavior involves attacking most weak and vulnerable. These cowards have chosen the defenceless, innocent, and peaceful Hazawal Pakistanis, who cannot fight back.

 

Quetta is not a playground for the Un-Islamic “Jihadi” Fanatics, funded by Saudis and Iran. Pakistani blood is not cheap it is precious. All Pakistanis need to close ranks and fight the Takfiri Jihadis. They do not represent Islam and its Core Values. Islam does NOT teach killing innocent men, women, and children, whether Muslims or Non-Muslim, or Atheists. Islam is a Deen, which protects the sanctity of human life and protects minorities.

 

The communist kafirs of the Evil Soviet Empire have been defeated. US forces is exiting Afghanistan in 2014. Takfiris should be offered a choice either get educated in a state registered Darul Uloom or be mainstreamed in an Islamic University. But, they should never be left by alone to practice their heinous ideology. Pakistan is not a battlefield for hire, for Iran versus Saudi Arabs Un-Islamic Sectarian Wars.

 

Reference

 

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Amb.Saeed Qureshi : Slaughter of Shias in Pakistan

Posted by admin in Corruption in Islamic Countries, Jahiliya "Jihadis"Illiterate Fanatics, MUSLIMS, Pakistan's Fights Terrorism, PML (N) CORRUPTION, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE, THE BATTLE FOR PAKISTAN SERIES on February 20th, 2013

Slaughter of Shias in Pakistan
By Saeed Qureshi

 

PAKISTAN THINK TANK & ITS MEMBERS CONDEMN

THE MURDEROUS FOUNDER OF LASHKAR-I-JHANGVI UNDER PROTECTION

OF NAWAZ & SHAHBAZ SHARIF’S PML(N)

RESPONSIBLE FOR 1200 MUSLIM LIVES

SHIA +SUNNI=MUSLIMS 

 
 
 
 

Pakistan was created for the Muslims of the sub continent to live in peace and to be immune from the domination of the Hindu majority. I would not prefer to go into the rationale and justification of that decision on the part of the Muslims leaders then fighting for an independent Muslim state.
What I want to emphasize is that the treatment that Muslims of the subcontinent feared from the Hindus, the same awful treatment is being meted out to the Shias that patently are a sect within Islam like many other sects, including Wahabis, Brelvis, Deobandis, Ismailis, Qadria, Chishtia, Naqshabandi and Suharwardi.
The Shia –Sunni fratricide however started following the death of Prophet Muhammad on the issue of his successor. Thus Islam was divided forever, into two branches.  The Sunni claim that the appointment of first three caliphs was right. The Shias believe that the caliphate which they term as Imamate was the divinely ordained right of a member of the bloodline of prophet, who they claim was prophet’s son-in-law and cousin brother Hazrat Ali.
The day Pakistan was declared as the Islamic Republic, the seeds of the sectarian discord were sown. Not only was that but the country pushed into the lap of the cruel and merciless religious bands getting stronger with the time passage. With the time passage, the religious animosity and cutthroat sectarianism has attained new horrendous heights.
Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) is a Sunni Deobandi Pakistani organization. It was formed in 1985 by a conservative Sunni cleric Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, in collusion with the then military dictator Ziaul-Haq. Its tacit and declared goal then was and is to stem the spillover influence of 1979 Iranian Revolution in Pakistan. When Pervez Musharraf banned it in 2002 as a terrorist organization, it reemerged under a new name “Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat.
The Lashkar-e- Jhangvi is a breakaway faction of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan. It was established in 1996 by two former stalwarts of SSP namely Riaz Basra and Malik Ishaq. LJ has ties to the Talban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Al-Qaida, and Jundullah.

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These and other religious militant factions have been wreaking havoc by fomenting sectarian wars and forcing the respective government in Pakistan to accept their dictates. Since its establishment, the SSP and LJ have launched countless attacks on the Shias, their religious processions, shrines and mosques killing them in innumerable numbers.
Recently, in such sectarian attacks, the LJ have claimed responsibility for 10 January 2013 bombing, killing 125 Shias. It has also claimed responsibility for the latest 16 February Quetta bombing killing 81 and wounding 178, mostly Shia people.

The Shias have also been retaliating from time to time in launching counter attacks and killing the prominent SSP and LJ leaders. Some of the prominent LJ leaders, targeted by Shia attackers are mentioned here. Jhangvi was killed in 1990.

His successor Zia-ur-Farooqi died in a bomb explosion on January 19, 1997 at the Lahore Court. Farooqi’s successor Azim Tariq was killed by gunmen in October 2003. Riaz Basra was also killed in 2002 in a cross fire between the Shia militants and police on one side and his fighters on the other.

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In August 2009 Maulana Ali Sher Hyderi, the fourth chief of SSP, was killed by Tehreek-e-Jafaria extremists while traveling by car through Khairpur district in Sindh. Another leader of LJ Abdul Rauf was killed by extremists in February 2010. All these killings were carried out by the Shias to avenge the death of their community members.

 

In regards to Balochistan, while the peace in that volatile province is nonexistent for a variety of factors for several decades, no serious efforts have been mounted to establish writ of the government and restore much needed law and order. The most a government could do was to hand over the governance to the armed forces of Pakistan.
The Baloch separatists received a new fillip after the cessation of former Eastern wing of Pakistan. Also with the killing of Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, the insurgents and separatists got a new lease of life to continue their covert violent activities. The rebels wanting independence of Balochistan may be small in numbers but they possess the capacity to create mayhem because they operate clandestinely.
Politically no meaningful efforts were made in the initial phases of the simmering insurgency and initiation of the movement for an independent Balochistan. There is no doubt that India and other foreign powers are interested in further truncating Pakistan to serve their respective agendas.
India and the western countries including America would not want the Gawadar Port to be fully functional and handed over its charge to its builder China. The latest devastating killings sprees of the Hazara Shias seem to be the warning shots or a revenge action for handing over the administration of the Gawadar port to the Peoples Republic of China.
The inimical powers that want further partition of Pakistan, also want a buffer zone between Iran and Pakistan so as to launch the operations against the Islamic republic of Iran. It is understandable that Israel along with Saudi Arabia and other conservative Sunnis states would not like Iran to emerge as a strong partner in the Middle East.
The only way to keep a close eye on Iran is to have an enclave from where the anti-Iran insurgency can be effectively launched. There can be no better place for that than Baluchistan.
Baluchistan has been grossly mishandled by the successive governments in Pakistan. Balochistan voluntarily joined the federation of Pakistan when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into two independent states. It is still a part of federation. In case of East Pakistan, it was due to inept handling of the Pakistan army under Yahya Kahn that led to the bloody insurgency and thus that vital part of

Pakistan broke away from the federation.
The brutal treatment meted out to the Shias is now assuming frightening dimension, further undermining the   fragile law and order situation in Balochistan. It can explode into a full-fledged sectarian war that can be exploited by such powerful groups as Balochistan Liberation Army and anti- Pakistan foreign powers.
The maintenance of adhocism or the status-quo or handing over the control to the army is not a permanent solution to that incendiary situation. It is a colossal issue that needs to be resolved with utmost sagacity, statesmanship and objectivity.
The incumbent government falls short of that criteria. Admittedly, under the 18th amendment, the provinces particularly, Balochistan got more powers, resources and independence. However, that remarkable measure would remain counterproductive, unless the flames of insurgency are doused and the uprising is nipped in its bud.
There is a dire need for a comprehensive and far reaching strategy to be put in place by all the stakeholders including the local patriotic leaders, the army, the political parties and the religious sects of all hues and cries to restore normal life in that strategically important province.

The writer is a senior journalist and a former diplomat

 
 

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Shaykh Ahmad Deedat: Sunni-Shia Unity

Posted by admin in Islam: The Universal Message of Peace, MUSLIMS, OUTRAGE AGAINST MUSLIM GENOCIDE, Pakistan-A Nation of Hope, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE on February 19th, 2013

Sunni-Shia Unity

 

A lecture by

Shaykh Ahmad Deedat

 

 
 The Following speech By Shaykh Ahmad Deedat, who is a world renowned scholar from South Africa was made following his trip to the Islamic Republic of Iran on 3 March , 1982. 
 

INTRODUCTION 

In the Holy Quran, Allah (SWT) says “It is he who has sent his apostle with guidance and the religion of truth so that he may make it prevail over all religions even though those who worship false Gods may detest it” (Quran 9:33). Even though the United States, Russia and all the superpowers may detest it. Allah’s promise is not conditional on the strength of the superpowers. In its widest sense the Islamic movement spans the entire ummah, in its narrowest it represents that part of the ummah which is most advanced in its struggle towards establishing Islam as a total way of life. 

A few years ago one could not recognize a single leading edge in the Islamic movement. This was the bleak outlook which faced the ummah as history moved into the final decade of the 14th century Hijra. But the world was unaware of the Islamic movement in Iran. Iran under the ex-shah was beyond the pale of Islam. Iran was a blind spot. We were Sunni and our age old ignorance was deep and total, and thus when the Islamic revolution in Iran began to make headlines in early 1978. The bulk of Muslims, who called themselves Sunni, were caught unaware. The Shah’s propaganda had then blamed the Islamic masters. The western media, and the Muslim media manipulated by the west, and the alienated regimes of Muslim countries had then dismissed the events in Iran as insignificant. All of us were slow in recognizing the new reality in Iran. There has been a systematic attempt at smearing Islamic Iran. And the western media deliberately promoted false accounts of the events of the Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini who was indeed the founder of the revolution, and the leader of the Islamic republic of Iran. 

This campaign against Iran is nothing new. Right from the beginning vested interests have carried on an unending campaign against the Islamic revolution in Iran. this evening our guest speaker, Mr. Ahmad Deedat who is a distinguished scholar of Islam, who hardly needs any introduction to the public and who has just returned from his trip to Iran, will present to us his first hand account on Iran. I now call upon Mr. Ahmad Deedat to speak to you.(applause). 

Shaykh Ahmad Deedat 

I seek refuge from the accursed Satan, In the name of God the Beneficent the Merciful. 

The Holy Quran says: 

“And if you turn away (from Islam and the obedience of Allah), He will substitute you for some other people, and they will not be like you.” Quran 47:38 

Mr. chairman and brothers: While we are looking skeptically of the miracle of a nation reborn. Allah’s inexorable decree is finding its fulfillment in the rise and fall of nations which is mentioned in the verse I have just read to you from Surah Muhammad. In the last section of the last verse Allah(swt) reminds us, and warns us that if ye turn back from your duties and responsibilities if you do not fulfill your obligations then he will replace you with another nation. 

Our urdu speaking brethren use these words so beautifully when they describe some mishap that occurs in the community in talking about that other nation that can replace them. It is actually Quranic. And this really has been happening throughout history again and again. Allah (swt) first chose the Jews, the Bani Israel as he tells it in the holy Quran: “O children of Israel! call to mind My favor which I bestowed on you and that I preferred you to all other nations.”(Quran 2:47). That favor was that they should become the torchbearers of the knowledge of God to the world. This was the honor, this was the privilege that was at first given to the Jews But because they did not fulfil their end of the obligation, a Jew amongst the Jews Hadhrat Isa (A.S.) as recorded in the Christian gospels told them “That the kingdom of God shall be taken away from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”(The Bible, Matthew 21:43). And that nation, we will happily own up is the Islamic ummah. It was taken away from the Jews and given to the Muslims. The Muslims then, among them who were the Arabs at first, were given by Allah (SWT)the privilege that they became the torchbearers of light and learning to the world , but when they relaxed and failed to bring forth the fruits, Allah(swt) replaced them with another nation. In history, we remember the Turks and Mongols destroyed the Muslim empire and when they accepted Islam they became the torchbearers of light and learning to the world. 

As Iqbal beautifully describes this situation: “O’ you Muslims, you will not perish if Iran or the Arabs perish, that the spirit of the wine is not dependent on the nature of it’s container.” The container is our nations, our boundaries and the spirit of Islam is not dependent on our geographical boundaries or national limitations. So this is what Allah (swt) does again and again, he chose the Jews then he chose the Arabs then when they became lax he chose the Turks and when they became lax another people and so on and this is a continuous process. If you don’t do the job, Allah(swt) will chose another people who will. In the world today there are a thousand million Muslim, that is ,one billion we boast! And 90 percent of this one billion happens to be the Sunni branch. We have stopped delivering the goods so Allah(swt) chooses a nation that we have all been looking down upon. The Iranians! The Shias! History has been very unkind to our brethren in Iran that the shah happened to be the ruler, and his name happened to be Muhammad. Imagine, that this mans name happened to be Muhammad and he really wasn’t a believer. It’s hard for us to imagine today, but once you go to that country and you go into the details and find out what was going on. That this Iranian the shah it seems to be,that he was a foreigner. If Hitler conquered this land and oppressed them, then we could understand. If the Russians conquered the people, we can understand. But here is a man who is an Iranian, speaking Persian, whose name was Muhammad, and look at what he was stooping to. For sixteen years he had forbidden Jummah prayers. Sixteen years. We had been equating Iran with the shah and the shah with Iran. To us they were synonymous terms. But when you go into details we learn that the shah and the Iranian people were both apart. They were in reality foreigners to one another. 

Now about this visit of mine to Iran and my impression. Let me begin with the place where I had the first fragrance of this Iranian brotherhood of ours and it happened to be in Rome. First I smelled it, and then some of my companions had smelled it in the Rome airport. We were waiting to get on the plane, and we had some problems with visas and one of our men was given the responsibility of overcoming these problems. So he goes to the Iran air office and he tells our problem to a young lady wearing full Islamic attire with her body well covered. It was Beautiful, Just beautiful to look at. And I mean that when you look at these people in this attire you see that they are beautiful people. So there was a lady in Rome and you brothers should have seen the way she handled these problems. And someone came to me and told me, man if you want to see a real Iranian Muslim girl you should come over and I went and some others went and we saw. And that was the first whiff we had of the Iranian ummah in Rome. 

When we landed in Iran, we were taken to a five star hotel which was there before the revolution known as the Hilton hotel but is now known as Hotel Istiqlal. And we were taken around. to places of interest and I will relate to you some of the things we saw and I will try to describe the feelings one has. If I remember correctly, the first thing we visited was the Behesht Zahra cemetery. Behesht means paradise in Persian and Zahra is the title of Fatima Al-Zahra (AS) who was the daughter of Prophet Muhammad (saw). And Zahra means the radiant one. So it was called Radiant paradise. And before arriving in Iran, I had read about the Behesht Zahra cemetery. And I remember when Imam Khomeini had arrived in Tehran he made a trip to the cemetery. And I’m thinking why does one go to the cemetery? To make du’a? Yes. For the departed souls? Yes. And when you think of cemeteries here in South Africa you think of Brookstreet and Riverside. You cant imagine that this cemetery is square kilometers by square kilometers. You Just cant imagine. It is a big open ground where about a million or two million people can be accommodated. And people gathered here because it is the easiest place where people can release their emotional and spiritual baggage because there you have the martyrs. Their were 70,000 or so people who were martyred in this revolution and 100,000 maimed. Unarmed people with only the slogan “Allahu Akbar” as their weapons had toppled the mightiest military force in the middle east. So we went to this cemetery There were about a million people there. There were men and women and children and we were greatly inspired by the enthusiasm and the feeling of our brothers and sisters there. It was mid winter there, and the men and women and children were sitting on the cold ground for hours on end. In mid-winter on the ground with no carpets or chairs! A nation that could endure that discipline for hours on end , you can only imagine what destiny Allah(swt) has planned for them. A day or 2 later on my program I read Behesht Zahra cemetery, again. The first time we went for a lecture, but we had seen the graves people reciting poems of sorrow and reciting dua’ and I thought this second visit would be redundant. Why should one go a second time? I’ve seen what a cemetery is. But all my companions were going and I thought if everyone else was going, it wouldn’t be good for me to stay in the hotel relaxing when all my companions are going in these buses to a cemetery. But I went and I became very happy. And the second time I went it was a Thursday afternoon and Thursdays in Iran is like Saturdays for us. And tens of thousands of people were in the cemetery. This was a custom. It was like Eid. Tens of thousands are there, for what else, but to charge their spiritual batteries. It was a constant reminder to not forget. “My son gave his life for Islam” or “my father gave is life for Islam ” that they gave their life for Islam. With that kind of system, Every Thursday is a spiritual injection and reminder that they are willing to give their life for Islam. 

There was a town hall that accommodated 16,000 people, compared to the biggest town hall in South Africa which is the Good Hope Center in Capetown for 8,000. This was built by the shah to boast his own “Aryan myth”. He was boasting not only that he was the shahanshah or king of kings, but also that he was the aryamehr, light of the Aryans. What is this Aryan sickness? Remember Hitler bragging about being Aryan because the Germans are Aryans. And the Hindus boasting we are Aryans. If my people, the Gujarati people, weren’t Muslims we’d be boasting about being Aryans as well. The ex shah claimed to be the light of Aryans and he built this monument as a tribute. He built another monument spending millions to commemorate his ancestor Cyrus the great, a pagan, a mushrik and squandering the wealth of this nation for this project. In 1984 he was supposed to have the world Olympics in Tehran to boost his ego even further. In this town hall we saw athletics, gymnastics, acrobatics. Unfortunately we Muslims here in South Africa are like jellyfish, that is we have made ourselves into jellyfish. Our young men do not participate in that kind of activity. Who here does athletics, gymnastics, acrobatics we do not do that here. It’s not for us. Who does jogging, You know the young people here, when I meet them I shake hands with them and they are like jellyfish. Almost every young man you meet in Iran appears to be an athlete. They are doing sports on a world standard and it makes one feel so happy because there they are not projecting Iran. They are not talking about Iran “we are Iranians, we are Aryans” instead they are talking about Islam, about Islam, about Islam. There was not one semi-naked girl, not a single girl who was half naked there. If the shah had his way, if he was alive and organized it, there would have been semi-naked girls for everyone to stare at and feast upon. 

In Iran everything is Islamic to strengthen the morality of the people, boosting the men and women by the thousands. We were thrilled , we were thrilled to see our children, we felt as if theses were our children, our own brothers and sisters, we were really thrilled. We saw these as things that our children can do. Then we went through a military parade with different groups of Iranian men and there was no shortage of man power. You know, some people want to go and help our Iranian brethren. Alhamdulilah there is no shortage of man power they only want the tools, and the weapons. If the Iranians had the military weapons that the Israelis had, the whole of the middle-east would be free from every kind foreign intervention in no time. This is a nation that can do it. The spirit is there, the spirit of Jihad is there in each and every man and woman in the nation. It seems that the whole nation is involved in promoting Islam. We are talking about 20 million people that they can put into the field. If they had the weapons and the materials, every man woman and child would can go and do jihad. 

Then we visited the Iraqi prisoners of war. As you know when this war started Iraq attacked Iran. The whole country was in turmoil. Iraq felt that the Jews did it to the Arabs in 6 days, then they will do it to the Iranians in 3 days and the whole world thought that in one weeks time, Iran would crumble to pieces. And do you know how long it has been now? It’s been a year and a half, and even more. And in the beginning there were twenty to one odds against them in men and materials and the Iranians turned the tables and brought the odds to 3 to one still against them. And they were able to push them back. They recaptured all their land and a hill that was named Allahu Akbar. Before I went to Iran Dr . Kalim Siddiqui from the UK jokingly remarked that “you guys have half a chance of becoming martyrs (shahid)..” It was a joke and it nearly became true. While we were coming out of a city on the war front there was a field of tanks. And our young men came out of the buses and started to climb onto the tanks taking pictures to show people back home. Then one of the tanks in the courtyard came out for a training demonstration on how it works and suddenly we hear gunfire and in the distance we saw smoke coming from a few places and some of our young men got scared and started hiding behind bushes., and it turns out that we were under attack from the Iraqis. And there were bombs exploding all around us and Allah (swt) saved us. And remember Khaled had said that was half a chance that we would become martyrs, well it almost became a full chance. (laughter). 

We visited those wounded in the war and no one was complaining about what had happened to them. One man had his leg amputated, and there were no tears, I never saw a single tear from anyone, and they were asking if it was possible to go back to the front. Their regrets were not about their injuries but why they can’t go back to the front to fight and become shahid, this is the ambition of each and every Muslim there. When we visited the prisoners of war the Iranians had captured 7000 prisoners of war and they looked healthy, well clothed, well fed. One of my friends was interested in finding out what the Iraqi prisoners felt about their condition first hand. And anyone he asked said that they were being looked after very well. Then I had an idea. Some were here for over a year and others for a few months and I was wondering how many people had committed suicide. And I asked each group of the prisoners of war and asked each group how many people committed suicide. They said not one. I then asked the next group and so on. Not one single person committed suicide amongst the 7800 prisoners of war. And if we look at our so called civilized western country of South Africa, 46 people committed suicide in our prisons this year alone and they are well fed well clothed have their own cells and 46 committed suicide so far. And if people are not well treated some are going to want to find an easy way out but there was not one single person who committed suicide amongst the 7800 prisoners of war. 

We went to visit the Imam, Ayatollah Ruhollah Musawi Khomeini. There were about forty of us who waited for the Imam and the Imam came in and was about ten meters away from where I was, and I saw the Imam. He delivered the Lecture to us for about half an hour, and it was nothing but the Quran, the man is like a computerized Quran. And the electric effect he had on everybody, his charisma, was amazing . You just look at the man and tears come down your cheek. You just look at him and you get tears. I never saw a more handsome old man in my life, no picture, no video, no TV could do justice to this man, the handsomest old man I ever saw in my life was this man. There is something unique to his name, too. First he is called Imam Khomeini. The word Imam is to us a every cheap word. Wherever we go somewhere we ask who is the Imam of the Masjid here. To the Shia there is only one Imam in the world and he is the Twelfth Imam , they believe in the concept of Imamate and that the Imam is the spiritual leader of the ummah. And the first Imam according to the school of Imamate is Hazrat Ali(RA). Then comes Imam Hassan who is the second Imam, Imam Hussein the third Imam all the way until the twelve Imam, Imam Mohammad who disappeared at the age of 5 and they are expecting his return. They use the term “occultation” something like a spiritual hibernation like the Ashab Al-cahf. And that he is expected to come back and he is the only one in the world who can be called Imam. Most of their scholars are called mullah, and Ayatollah means Allamah And Ayatollah Khomeini is called Imam out of respect but they are waiting for the real Imam to come. Ruhollah is the name his father gave him and do you know what it means? Ruhollah means the ‘word of God’ and this is the title of Hazrat Isa(as) in the Quran. Then he is Ayatollah which is another title of Hazrat Isa(as) in the Quran. Al-Musawi is from the family Musa and from the city of Khomein which is where his last name Khomeini comes from. …(break in audio at 41: 05 seconds). But they are waiting for the Mahdi, and not Khomeini. They want to clean the stables and make preparations for the Mahdi to come. In the Sunni world we are also waiting for the Mahdi to come but we want him to clean the stables for us, make us masters of the world and to make us sit on the thrones. The Sunni world is just passively waiting. Until then we can carry on with all our petty little squabbles, whatever we are carrying on now. And it is only the Imam Mahdi which can clean the world for us. This is the Sunni line of thinking. Khomeini on the other hand tells his followers that we must help prepare the way so that when he does come everything is already set up for him to act on. While we, the Sunni world are waiting for Imam Mahdi to pull the chestnut out of the fire for us, the Shias are preparing the world for his arrival. 

You know there were many people with us from all over the world. And I found types and types and types of sick people, a mental sickness that is. I came across an alim from Pakistan Mauna Sahib and he thought that there was something wrong with our Shia brothers. You see in Iran when someone is lecturing and the name Khomeini is mentioned people stop and everyone says durood on the Prophet(S) three times. But when the name Mohammad is mentioned they send durood once. And this alim from Pakistan says ” look at these people just look at them. What kind of Muslims are these people. When the name Mohammad is mentioned they send durood on the Prophet(s) once but when the name Khomeini is mentioned they send Durood on KHOMEINI three times.” 

I said ” What do they say , what do they say in this so called ‘durood on Khomeini’. ” 

He said: Peace be upon Mohammad and the family of Mohammad. 

I said ” Who is Mohammad? Khomeini? Who named Khomeini as Mohammad. Their durood is on Prophet Mohammad(s) and you say it is on Khomeini.” 

You know it’s a sickness. There are many learned men but their minds are so prejudiced. They are just looking for faults. [1] 

Another example is that the Shia brothers when they make salat, they have a piece of clay (turbah) that they do sajjdah on. And he says “see what they are doing here. This is shirk. They are worshipping a piece of clay. ” I said why don’t you ask them why they place their foreheads on a piece of clay and learn the logic behind this. You see, the first time I experienced this was in Washington D.C., the Iranian students there had invited me to give a lecture there at the university where they were studying in America. At that time, it was time for Isha and we made salat. And everyone was given a piece of clay. I at the time thought it was so funny, so I put it aside and I made my salat with the Iranian students. And after salat I wanted to know about this and I asked them. Why do you carry this clay tablet everywhere you go in your pocket. They said ” we are supposed to do sujood on Allah’s earth with our foreheads touching the earth. We say “subhanna rabia Allah” three times with our foreheads touching the earth.” So the Shia want to actually touch the earth with their foreheads and not a manmade carpet. They want to be true to the expression of praying with the forehead actually touching Allah’s earth. You see they don’t worship the clay tablet as many wrongly think. And this is always something that we Sunnis are always making fun of and mock the Shia, but on my way out from Tehran across the plane in the aisle were two Shias and when prayer time came one of them took his clay tablet out of his pocket and, Allahu Akbar, performed salat right there on the plane in his seat, and when he finished he gave this to his neighbor and he performed salat. And this may seem like a joke to us. Isn’t it? And there were dozens of Sunnis on the plane and out of those dozens of Sunnis only one young man did the salat, and I tell you that young man wasn’t me. But we are laughing at the other Guy. He is sitting there and doing something better than we are and we make fun of them and sit in judgement. He may not as polished and refined as we are in South Africa. You know we Muslims in South Africa are very polished and refined in our salat. The Arabs are no match for us, the Iranians are no match for us, the Americans bilalans, the Negroes they are no match to us. With the Arabs you are bowing down in ruku and the guy next to you pushes you aside to make space.(laughter) Who knows brothers, maybe it is valid, we don’t know. You know, between the four Sunni mazhabs the Hanafi, Hanbali, Maliki and Shafei there are over two hundred differences in salat alone. Did you know that? Two hundred. But we take it for granted. The Shafei says amin loudly and we say it silently, they say bismillah loudly we say it silently and there is there is no problem. A s a child my father would repeat the famous formula that he in turn learned from his father. : “all the mazhabs are equally valid and the truth for them is in the hadith and the Quran.” And so we accept it. When it comes to the Shafei, Hanbali, Hanafi and Maliki we are tolerant but when it comes to the Shia you see he is not in the formula that we are taught as a child, so what ever little idiosyncrasies there exists between us and them we cant tolerate and reject we say that he is out because we are programmed to believe in only the four. But we accept the idiosyncrasies between the four. 

I say why cant you accept the Shia brothers as a fifth madhab. And the astonishing thing is that he is telling you that he wants to be one with you. He is not talking about being Shia. He is shouting “there is no Sunni nor Shia there is one thing, Islam.” But we say to them “no you are different you are Shia.” This attitude is a sickness of the devil. He wants to divide us. Can you imagine we Sunnis are 90% of the Muslim world and the ten percent who are Shias want to be partners and brothers with you in faith and the 90% are terrified. I cant understand why should you the 90% be so terrified. They should be the ones terrified. And if you just knew the feelings that they have for you. During Jummah prayers in Iran, there are a million people. And you should see the way they look at you when you pass by, they recognize that you are a foreigner and not one of them and tears start rolling down their cheeks. This is the feeling that they have for you, but you say no, you want to keep they out, afraid that they will absolve you. You can only be absolved if there is something better than what you have. I don’t know, maybe some of you think I am a Shia, but I’m still with you all here. What is all this Shia-Sunni tensions? It is all politics. These antagonisms we have are all politics now. If a Sunni brother somewhere does something wrong you say oh the individual is not being very Islamic, he is a kaffir, But if a Shia does something wrong you want to condemn the whole Shia community, the whole nation of millions, and say they are all rubbish just because one Shias actions are not very Islamic. At the same time where we look the other way if one of your relatives does something serious because he is your father or your uncle. One group of Sunnis says to another “you are not a Muslim” another group of Sunnis says “you are not a Muslim you are a kaffir” look that’s among us, and we fight among ourselves. And some of us do funny things. 

I met one brother who told me when you go to Newcastle go visit Mr. So and so and inshallah everything will be taken care of for you. So I went to the man and exactly as I was told he took me home for lunch and when I’m sitting at the table I see on the wall ‘burat’ you know what burat is? A donkey like animal with the face of a woman its supposed to provide electrical force. I told him this is not right. Allah(swt) created electrical force, you can not create it with a statue of a donkey with a woman’s face. Oh and he was so upset. But he’s a Sunni, he was a brother and is still my brother. This Sunni-Shia tensions is the work of the devil to divide us. 

Let me say something about Iran. What I found was that everything is islamically oriented. The whole nation is geared towards Islam. And they are talking about nothing but the Quran. I have never had a single experience with an Iranian when the man contradicted me when I’m talking about the Quran. Whereas our Arab brethren again and again you quote them the Quran and they try to contradict you with the Quran. They are Arabs, they are supposed to know the Quran better than us, but the Iranians seem to be on the wavelength of the Quran. Everything he is doing everything he is thinking about is the Quran. You remember Tabas[2] when the American people wanted to free the hostages. The mightiest most technologically advanced nation on earth, a nation that can land a man on the moon and bring him back, a nation which tells you which part of the moon they will land and bring them back, they send mars and Jupiter probes. A nation that warned Pakistan about the tidal wave tragedy and they didn’t heed the warning. They warned the Israelis in 1973 that the Arabs were on the move, they didn’t heed the warning. That nation couldn’t land in Iran. Imagine they went there with their helicopters and crashed them selves and got themselves killed. Imagine. A nation that lands on the moon and comes back cant land in Iran. And the Iranian people were not in any position to do anything to them. The Americans could have gone and done what they wanted to do. I went and saw the American embassy and you think that its just a big building, but man its acres and acres right in the center of Tehran. They could have easily gone in and gotten these people out, even if they lost a few men. They could have achieved their goals. It was very well planned. But you know what happened? Fiasco, retreat failure, the Imam Khomeini is told what has happened. He doesn’t say Subhananla, he doesn’t say Alhamdulilah, you know what he said. He quotes the Quran : “Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the companions of the elephant?” 105:1 These are the words that came out of him. I tell you he is a Quranic computer. 

You know what they call those huge helicopters? Jumbo helicopters, and those big planes are called jumbo planes. You know what jumbo means in Swahili, Elephant. It’s a Swahili word. That’s where they got the name. So these elephant sized helicopters go and the Imam says: “Have you not considered how your Lord dealt with the possessors of the elephant? Did He not cause their war to end in confusion,” Quran 105:1-2 

But we are so skeptical, the Muslim world has become so skeptical we don’t believe in the Quran anymore. You don’t really believe in the Quran, for most people it is all for entertainment, for the good spiritual feelings that you get when reciting the Holy Quran. But the directives that Allah(swt) gives, nobody seems to care. May Allah (swt) make these brothers of ours, the torchbearers and light of learning today to the Muslim world . And here is a nation geared to do the Job. When you look at them the earnestness that is in them, a nation that is not afraid, when you look at them with the enthusiasm they have. They are not afraid to say “marg bar amrika” death to America.. Then say “marg bar shuravi ” death to USSR. Imagine that! (laughter from the audience). And death to Israel.” Can you imagine a nation doing that and not in the least afraid. This is not the Islamic spirit that is in us here, but the Iranians are all heart and mind. They don’t say “this is an Iranian revolution “or “we are Iranians”. They are talking about Islam, an Islamic Revolution. This is not an Iranian revolution but that this is an Islamic revolution. It’s a revolution for Islam and little wonder why the nations of the world cant stomach it because it is Islam that they cant stomach. So my dear brothers and sisters I have taken so much of your valuable time already. And with these words I take leave of you to sit down and to take your Questions. 

[1] ” O ye who believe! if any from among you turn back from his Faith, soon will Allah produce a people whom He will love as they will love Him,- lowly with the believers, mighty against the rejecters, fighting in the way of Allah, and never afraid of the reproaches of such as FIND FAULT. That is the grace of Allah, which He will bestow on whom He pleaseth. And Allah encompasseth all, and He knoweth all things.” Quran 5:54 

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Asad Kharal,The Express Tribune: The Murdering Mullas of Pakistan: Lashkar-i-Jhangvi’s Malik Ishaq received a montly stipend from Sharif brothers {(PML(N)} Government

Posted by admin in BOOT THE SCOUNDRELS OR SHOWDAZ, Corruption, Jahiliya "Jihadis"Illiterate Fanatics, LIAR POLITICIANS, Looters and Scam Artists, Morosi Siyasat & Political Crooks, NAWAZ SHARIF, Pakistan's Fights Terrorism, Pakistan's Hall of Shame, PML (N) CORRUPTION, PML(N), SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE on February 19th, 2013

 

 

O, What a Shame for Pakistanis to see the Murdering Mullas/Fanatical Goondas of Punjab are being patronized by the Sharif brothers… 
Adnan Khan,
Pakistan Think Tank Commentator

  

Unknown-11

 

 

 

 

 

LAHORE: Malik Ishaq enjoyed Punjab government’s financial assistance ever since the Sharif’s came to power in 2008, officials on condition of anonymity told The Express Tribune. The accused terror kingpin belonging to banned Sunni outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), nominated in 44 cases in which 70 people were killed, allegedly received a monthly stipend, during imprisonment, from the Punjab government. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah confirmed the disbursement but clarified that it was given to Ishaq’s family, not him, as per orders of the court. However, upon further investigation, it was revealed that nor was there any such disbursements during former president Musharraf’s tenure, nor was there any court order pertaining to the matter. REFERENCE: LeJ’s Malik received monthly stipend from Punjab govt By Asad Kharal Published: July 16, 2011 http://tribune.com.pk/story/210827/lejs-malik-received-monthly-stipend-from-punjab-govt/ 

Ghalvi while talking to The Express Tribune confirmed that on the direction of Multan City Police Officer Amir Zulifqar, Multan and Vehari police have provided two policemen to him for security protection. Furthemore, Ghalvi has also relocated from his native town out of fear for his own life. He had been currently residing in two different locations, moving back and forth for security purposes.

However, leaving Ghalvi out, two other key witnesses and one complainant have not been provided any security as of yet and fear for their lives.  The men identified as Khadim, Sikandar and Abdul Ghafour (complainant) are the only people to have survived the court cases which have taken 20 lives, including eight people who were murdered purely for being associated with the case.

“I can be attacked at any time and I do not know if I will be alive tomorrow or not, as you know almost everyone who was a witness or a relative has been slain,’ said Sikandar, who  now operating a cloth store in Dokota on Multan Road.

“When Ishaq was in jail eight people were killed mercilessly by the same group,” said Khadim Hussain, who is now a farmer in Dokota.

The complainant (Abdul Ghafour) of the first case against Ishaq in which 12 people were massacred during a majlis, said he has been awaiting justice for 14 years but has completely lost hope since the release of Ishaq.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 16th, 2011.

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PAKISTANIS PLEASE WAKE-UP! PPP & ZARDARI ARE HELL BENT ON DESTROYING SOHNI DHARTHI : “The State Should Establish its Writ in Balochistan”

Posted by admin in Corruption, Looters and Scam Artists, MUSLIMS, Pakistan's Hall of Shame, SHIA +SUNNI = MUSLIMS=ISLAM=PEACE on January 23rd, 2013

 January 21, 2013.

 

Abdul Khaliq Hazara

Editor’s note: In the backdrop of increasing attacks on the Hazara, Shia community in Balochistan, The News on Sunday published an exclusive interview of Abdul Khaliq Hazara, the chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party. We are republishing the interview, which was conducted by journalist Aoun Sahi,  for our readers’ interest with special thanks to The News on Sunday. 

The News on Sunday: Do you think imposition of the governor’s rule in Balochistan would help the cause of Hazaras?

images-61Abdul Khaliq Hazara: In fact, imposition of the governor’s rule was not a demand of the Hazara Democratic Party (HDP). We are not in favour of army control in Quetta.

However, after the killing of 100 people on Jan 10, our ulema and elders demanded the governor’s rule. The main purpose of this demand was to get rid of the Raisani government in Balochistan. We want a targeted operation to be launched in Quetta under army because we do not trust police and FC.

Quetta is a small city. If the army is serious it can locate and arrest the terrorists in Quetta within a week. Our main demand is that the government should establish its writ in Balochistan.

TNS: Your views on the targeted killings of the Hazara community…

AKH: We do not see targeted killings in their current context, where a particular mindset, with support from provincial government and the elements of state security agencies, kills Hazaras. The targeted killing is also a product of failed policies of the state as successive governments were reckless in the last three decades in the region. Pakistan’s role in the Afghan jihad in the 1980s, when the state promoted ‘jihad’ in the country and sponsored terrorist groups, resulted in numerous problems. It gave rise to the Kalashnikov and drug culture in Pakistan. Quetta became the hub of these activities in the last three decades because of its geographic position. Today, we are reaping the results of those policies.

The Hazara community in Quetta is concentrated on its western and eastern sides. We need to travel thorough the city to go from one side to the other. The first incident of targeted killing happened in 2001 when terrorists attacked a van, killing 10 Hazara passengers. Again, 12 Hazara police cadets were gunned down when terrorists attacked their vehicle in June 2003. The first suicide attack against the Hazara community occurred in July 2004 when terrorists attacked a Friday congregation at Imambargah Kalan. In 2008-09, attacks against our people increased and then from 2011 onwards our people started getting targeted inside the city. Doctors, professors, students, businessmen and sportsmen have been targeted and killed. The motive behind these terror acts is simple — push Quetta into a hell of sectarian violence as all Hazaras in Quetta belong to the Shia sect. So far, more than 1000 Hazaras have been killed in Balochistan in the last one decade.

In September 2011, the buses in Mastung near the ancestral village of ex-CM Balochistan, Aslam Raisani, were stopped and after checking their ID cards, 26 of them were killed on the spot. In April 2012, more than 30 Hazara people were targeted in 10 days. In 2012, more than 120 Hazara people were killed while in the first 10 days of 2013 more than 100 Hazaras have been killed. Everybody knows the killers as they do not hesitate to claim responsibility. After the last incident, in which more than 100 people of our community were killed, LeJ phoned journalists in Quetta and openly claimed responsibility. They said they had asked Hazaras to leave Quetta by the end of 2012 or they would be wiped out.

TNS: But why are Hazaras under attack?

Tear_drop_by_JosCos-1AKH: Hazara community in Balochistan overwhelmingly belongs to the Shia sect and they are also easily recognisable because of their features. It is true that after the Iranian revolution some elements among Hazaras and other Shia communities in Pakistan were enthusiastic about spreading their message. They tried to convert people from other sects. The ‘Saudi Arabia element’ resisted this move strongly and pumped in billions of rupees to strengthen anti-Shia forces in Balochistan. The first wave of sectarian tension in Balochistan started in the mid-1980s while the second started after 9/11. It was time when anti-Shia forces had become so strong that they could operate at their will.

We strongly condemn Saudi Arabia and Iran’s proxy war in Pakistan. It was the duty of our state to stop this war but, unfortunately, strong elements of state have become part of that war. Extremism, sectarianism, and terrorism are being promoted in Balochistan with the help of elements in our state institutions. On January 11, the LeJ once again threatened they would either kill or get killed to wipe out Hazaras from Quetta. The LeJ, in fact, wants to provoke us, so we start attacking our innocent Sunni Pushtun and Baloch brothers in Quetta.

TNS: How difficult is it for you to keep the Hazara youth peaceful?

AKH: Hazaras are peaceful people. It is true that after 2004 attack on a Shia procession, Shias also turned violent and burnt some shops. But there are other Shias than Hazaras in Quetta. We have Shias from different ethnicities from Punjabi, Urdu speaking, Pashtun, Balti, etc. We always tell our people that the LeJ and its supporters want to push us in a situation which leads to civil war in society. We still believe in peaceful protests.

After the January 10 incident, we had two sit-ins in Quetta — one at Alamdar Road while I, alongwith my party activists, demonstrated in the red zone, in front of the IG office. But not a single incident of violence occurred from our side. Most of our youth have been deprived of education; some of them have also started joining religious elements. People have lost their businesses and jobs. They cannot move freely in their own city. More than 30,000 Hazaras have already migrated out of the country. Parents have been forcing their sons to leave the country. Our PhDs have been working as labourers in Australia and other countries. Still, an overwhelming majority of our community believes in peace. We still want to solve our problem peacefully.

images-54TNS: You talked about involvement of some state elements. Do you have proof?

AKH: So far, more than 1000 Hazaras have been killed in Balochistan but not a single killer is in police custody. It arrested the masterminds of these attacks in the past, including the LeJ head of Balochistan, Saif Usman, and his deputy, Dawood Badini. Both were awarded death punishment from a terrorist court in 2003. They escaped from jail situated in the high security zone in Cantonment, Quetta. Even when they were in jail, they were treated like special guests and allowed to carry on their activities from jail. The performance of the Interior and Home Secretaries, IGP Balochistan and heads of other law enforcement agencies are abysmal as they have failed to provide protection to the people. People have lost confidence in police and other law enforcement agencies as terrorists always succeed in evading arrests. In several incidents of targeted killings of Hazara community, motorbikes of local police were used while many of the attackers were in FC uniforms. They attacked people close to FC checkposts but were never apprehended. I strongly believe that some elements in our security agencies help terrorists to identify the targets and then also support them reach their targets with ease.

TNS: What is the solution?

AKH: Our rulers and state departments need to take the situation seriously. They need to establish their writ. They need to give confidence to people — that the state cares about them. At one point our main demand was that our cases be pursued. I appeal to all the democratic, liberal, political and progressive forces to come ahead and perform their responsibility for protecting the society from falling into the brutal hands of extremists in the country. (Courtesy: The News on Sunday)

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