Jhang and Jhangvis

Until then, a dust storm was not just a dust storm; it was a sign of the wrath of the Almighty over the murder of some innocent person. Until then, people had believed that mosques were sacred spaces where they could communicate with their creator. Even exchanging harsh words within their precincts was a sacrilegious act. But things were changing fast – in the name of God.

As most readers know, a ‘rehal’ is a wooden rest used for placing the Holy Quran during recitation, which, due to its association with the holy book, carries an element of sanctity. In 1990, a 14-year-old boy used a rehal to murder a middle-aged crippled man within a mosque in Muzaffargarh. It was a Sunni mosque, though built by a Shia industrialist, and the victim was a Shia who used to pray there every day. The boy, with shining bright eyes and an innocent smile, told me at the district prison that his life had been transformed by speeches of Maulana Haq Nawaz Jhangvi, a fiery orator who founded the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) in 1985.

Maulana Masroor Nawaz      Jhangvi, a son of the slain founder of the SSP, has won the by-election for the Punjab Assembly constituency PP-78, defeating over two dozen candidates, including those fielded by the PML-N and the PPP. Though he was contesting as an independent candidate, Masroor Jhangvi is closely associated with his father’s party, now operating as the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ). Both the SSP and the ASWJ have been banned by the government for their involvement in terrorism.

Shocked over the election results, many commentators view the election of Masroor Jhangvi as a failure of the government to implement the National Action Plan (NAP) and as proof that extremism does exist among common people in the country. After all, Masroor Jhangvi is part of a banned outfit and he used hate speech throughout his campaign.

Though they have been involved in violence and terrorism, the SSP and ASWJ have never been away from mainstream politicians and politics. Weeks before the by-elections, the federal interior minister held a meeting with a delegation of Difa-e-Pakistan Council (DPC), including Maulana Muhammad Ahmed Ludhianvi, the chief of the banned ASWJ. Soon after the meeting, DPC was allowed to hold a rally in Islamabad even though Section 144 was imposed in the city.

Rana Sanuallah Khan, a provincial minister in the PML-N’s government in Punjab, has also been accused of harbouring close ties with the ASWJ. However, such interactions are not limited to the PML-N and are not necessarily ideological. From 1993 to 1996, the SSP allied with the PPP government and even had a minister in Punjab’s coalition government.

The SSP has remained closely associated with the JUI-F from which the group broke away in 1985. Before founding the SSP, Haq Nawaz Jhangvi held the office of the deputy head of the Punjab chapter of the JUI-F. The SSP started with the stated aim of making Pakistan a Sunni state and ensuring Shias were declared non-Muslims through an amendment to the constitution. Its preferred methods have remained violence and hate speech. Though the JUI-F and the SSP differed over the use of violence against Shias, the close relationship has survived over decades.

While the Sipah-e-Sahaba thought that their mother party, the JUI-F, was not extremist enough, a group within the SSP believed that their party was not violent enough. This group, led by Riaz Basra, formed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) in 1996. The group carried out a large number of massacres and murders. Even LeJ has not been completely dissociated from the political arena as it has provided foot soldiers to Afghan Taliban during their rule in Afghanistan and was given safe havens in Kabul.

In 1999, when Nawaz Sharif’s government was ousted through Musharraf’s military coup, it had developed serious differences with the Taliban government over providing protection to Riaz Basra and his fellow LeJ terrorists in Kabul. In fact, Nawaz Sharif had put the Taliban on notice on this count. With the ouster of the Taliban government, Pakistan enjoyed temporary respite from sectarian violence as many LeJ sectarian terrorists were killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The SSP and the various terrorist organisations it has spawned over time can take credit for a good part of militancy in the country. However, despite three decades of venom and violence, it has failed to win popular appeal and promote its identity-based agenda.

Pakistani society has succeeded where the state, political parties and government institutions have failed. Sectarian violence has remained a form of terrorist activity as organisations such as the ASWJ have failed to pitch people against each other. Sectarian violence has not taken the shape of riots but remains limited to violence inflicted upon innocent people by terrorist groups. After terrorists from outside the community carry out massacres and leave, the community, irrespective of sectarian affiliations, comes together to mourn the death of innocent people and collectively blames the state for its failure to protect them.

People have not stopped electing Shias to the highest political offices. Many Shias have also been appointed at senior positions in the non-elected government offices. However, terrorism has ravaged their lives and made them feel unsafe in their homes, communities and at their mosques and imambargahs.

NAP has raised hopes for a change in the state’s attitude towards sectarian outfits, promising to take          “strict action against the literature, newspapers and magazines promoting hatred, extremism, sectarianism and intolerance” and “deal firmly with sectarian terrorists”. Strict action has been taken against terrorists allied with LeJ and hundreds of cases have been registered against khateebs spewing sectarian hate speech from the pulpit.

However, sectarian extremists, who hide behind politics and stutter as they defend Pakistan against India, have not been dealt with properly by the government and other state institutions, including the ECP and the courts.

It is heartening that soon after the by-election in Jhang, the government took steps to honour another son of Jhang, known around the world for a different reason. Dr Abdus Salam was awarded Nobel Prize for his contribution to physics in 1979, a few years before the SSP was founded in his city and soon after the Afghan jihad started.

Dr Salam was not able to join a ceremony organised to honour him at Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) Department of Physics – which was founded by one of his former students, Dr Riazuddin  – due to fierce protests by student activists of the Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT), the student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

Some 37 years later, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif approved a plan to rename the same department of the QAU as the Dr Abdus Salam Centre for Physics and also approved five annual scholarships for Pakistani students competing for doctoral programmes in physics at overseas universities. Is the glass half-full, half empty or just a mirage of change? We cannot afford to merely wait and see.

The writer is an anthropologist and development professional.

Email: zaighamkhan@yahoo.com

Twitter: @zaighamkhan