Early morning on Friday, May 11, officials of the capital administration sat down with Lal Masjid cleric Abdul Aziz to convince him that he should not deliver the sermon that day.
Among the reasons cited was that Abdul Aziz ceased to be the official khateeb of Lal Masjid back in 2004, when the capital administration withdrew that status following his fatwa against the Pakistan Army over the military operation in Waziristan.
Abdul Aziz waited till the last minute to decide but eventually caved in to the pressure and did not deliver the sermon.
The Lal Masjid cleric has had these chats with city administration officials regularly for the last decade. These meetings have increased over the last three years. During this time, Aziz has announced his allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and also glorified the perpetrators of the December 2014 attack on the Army Public School in Peshawar.
Civil society activists led by Jibran Nasir protested against Aziz after he came out in support of the attack on APS
This latest round of talks became urgent when the Lal Masjid’s Shuhada Foundation announced that Aziz would deliver his first Friday sermon in three years. While the Shuhada Foundation claims the radical cleric has been acquitted in all cases against him, in fact many cases have not yet been heard by the respective courts and others whose first investigation reports (FIR) have not been registered.
In January 2017, Aziz was acquitted by a judicial magistrate after he was accused of threatening activists. The case was filed by activist and lawyer Jibran Nasir, who has also filed two other cases against the Lal Masjid cleric for hate speech and for paying allegiance to ISIS.
“The Daesh [ISIS] case is pending in the Supreme Court, and the case not been heard for over a year,” Nasir reveals.
City administration officials say that they have not been asked to take action against Aziz since the cases against him are still pending. Multiple government officials have confirmed off the record that they have not taken action against Aziz because of the fear of backlash reminiscent to the fallout of the 2007 Lal Masjid Operation. While Aziz had managed to escape in a burqa at the time, over a 100 were killed in the military operation launched at the mosque under the General Pervez Musharraf’s regime, ostensibly to protect Chinese citizens as attacks on them were linked to the mosque.
City administration officials say that they have not been asked to take action against Aziz since the cases against him are pending
A surge in violence was witnessed across the Punjab, including the capital, a repeat of which the government has been actively trying to avoid.
“Abdul Aziz is a bogeyman for [the government], because of the violent fallout from 2007 Lal Masjid operation. They feel that he is not doing any practical damage and only uttering nonsense, so let him do it,” says Jibran Nasir.
“If we take action against him, he will become a hero unnecessarily. But they could have taken action after the APS attack, because the public were outraged and the atmosphere was conducive for action.”
Muhammad Amir Rana, director of Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS) and security analyst, believes the onus is on the courts for action against Abdul Aziz.
“If he is currently on bail, then it is the responsibility of the court – the police cannot do anything about it. Police has to take action so that there is no threat to the security situation,” he says. “But police cannot take action to contradict the courts, which should be hearing these cases as a priority.”
Interior Ministry officials confirm that Abdul Aziz’s example has been used to come up with a plan to regulate the capital city’s mosques. A list of 44 subjects for Friday sermons has been created under the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA) and will be shared with clerics of over a thousand mosques.
Jibran Nasir believes the move can potentially backfire.
“There should definitely be monitoring, but uniform sermons can backfire as well. One can imagine a time when a totalitarian government is ruling and there is a need for political awakening. The mosque, being a community centre, should not be barred from socio-political critique,” he says.
“There is a lot of religious diversity in terms of sects, so I think monitoring is better so that they don’t break the law. But there should be freedom to express their views,” he says.
The question of Aziz’s fate hinges over his potential reform. This has come under the light of the mainstreaming of groups like the Tehreek-e-Labbaik (TLY) and the creation of political parties like the Milli Muslim League (MML) as offshoots of the Hafiz Saeed-led groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), which despite being banned nationwide are still functioning with immunity.
Jibran Nasir says reform and mainstreaming of radical individuals and groups is possible if common ground is actively sought.
“Abdul Aziz’s own son-in-law was missing for over a year. If in the future he takes out a rally for missing persons, I’ll support him. If he takes up the cause for clean water and arsenic poisoning in rivers, would you not support them?” he says.
“We need to find common ground with him and other hard-line clerics. That is the problem with the on-going mainstreaming of militants – they are not being asked to work for the welfare of their constituencies, they are just being handed tickets to the parliament.”
Muhammad Amir Rana agrees that Aziz can be reformed, but maintains that it would require a proper strategy from the government.
“Every group in the world can be rehabilitated but that depends on whether the state wants to do it or not and how they want to do it. If they have a plan, he can be put through the reform process. I don’t think the government has any strategy in this regard,” he says. “Reform is only possible if the groups and individuals in question acknowledge the writ of the state, and follow the rule of law.”
