The IJT all over

The attack by members of the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba on a social gathering arranged by Pakhtun students on the Punjab University campus is both shocking and unsurprising. At least five of the students were injured so badly in this wanton attack by the IJT that they had to be rushed to hospital. Sadly, such violence has come to be expected of the IJT. The student wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami considers itself the arbiter of ‘morality’ on campuses around the country and enforces its will on pain of force. Just in the last decade alone, there is a long list of vigilante attacks carried out by the IJT. It has attacked Valentine’s Day celebrations, forcibly shut down book fairs organised by other organisations or students who are not affiliated with any student organisations and even brutalised students on campus at the height of the Musharraf emergency. The group has not even spared girls playing cricket at Karachi University. The IJT is also responsible for having armed university campuses across the country, a culture that has led to fatal shootouts. The IJT’s thuggish nature goes back even further than this. It used violence against leftist student groups during the Ayub Khan dictatorship and then acted as a campus enforcer for Ziaul Haq – which is when it came to truly dominate universities, particularly in Punjab. Violence is inherent to the IJT and the so-called ideology it stands for, and hardly a few months go by without reports of the group being involved in clashes with other student groups, bringing campus life to a standstill.

It is rather unfortunate that, true to form, some political parties have used the incident as a means to score points by pointing to or implying in their statements what can be called the so-called ethnic dimension. But the kind of unbridled violence practised by the IJT, whether in Punjab or in Sindh or in any parts of the country, cannot be explained in ethnic terms. The focus instead should be on the inherently violent nature of the right-wing ideological extremism of this group which has been using and abusing ‘religion’ and ‘morality’ as weapons of political domination. The response from the IJT’s parent organisation – the Jamaat-e-Islami – has been lukewarm to say the least. The JI has said it will comment on the matter till it has had time to investigate it, even though the party is well aware of the IJT’s violent tendencies. Everyone who knows the history of the JI and     the IJT knows how well-organised they are and how well-structured their actions always are. The JI cannot be exonerated for failing to openly condemn such violence or for always ensuring protection to the IJT when it indulges in such acts. Punjab Law Minister Rana Sanaullah has said the students responsible will be held accountable although he also raised the possibility of outside forces – belonging to the same group – being involved. It is not difficult to see how problematic such a statement is when it can be seen as implying that the IJT members working within the university ‘may not’ be involved.         That this is how the IJT works to cover up its acts of aggression is not exactly a revelation.        The issue at hand should always be the way the IJT treats public universities as its personal playground where it bullies everyone else into submission.    It is up to the administration of universities around the country to take a stand and declare they will now have a zero-tolerance policy towards violence. Politicians too should stop protecting goons in the guise of students. The IJT cannot be allowed to continue its reign of terror – though in all probability it will.