Namoos-e-Risalat or Namoos-e-ISI? – by Yousuf Nazar
Guardians of the namoos-e-ISI
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Namoos-e-risalat or namoos-e-zia-ul-haq? – by Abbas Ather
Politicizing blasphemy law: who is behind Namoos e Risalat movement?
The cat is out of the bag. For months, I have suspected that the ISI is back to its old game of using the paid-mullahs to expliot the religious sentiments of the masses to destablize the country and capture it again. They did it in 1977 using the PNA and nizam-mustafa movement. The ISI used the pretext of Salman Rushdie’s book to pay late Maulana Kausar Niazi to stage demonstrations in Islamabad in 1989 to destablize Benazir Bhutto’s government. It has been doing it all in the name of Islam whereas it has itself worked closely worked with the CIA for decades and so have the Maulanas like Fazalur Rehman and Tufail Mohammed.
Throughout Musharraf’s regime, Maulana Fazaur Rehman, JUI and other religious parties played the role of loyal opposition and collobarated with him. The JUI was against the lawyers movement. Now the ISI seems to have given him a green signal to play the old games again by explioting the name of the holy prophet (PBUH).
On the 16th December the cat was out of the bag when another ISI agent and the head of Jamaat ud Dawa Hafiz Muhammad Saeed made his first public appearance in Islamabad in over two years at a meeting of leaders of key religious parties and hardliners ostensibly in the name of the opposition to the changes in the country’s blasphemy law. Saeed has addressed gatherings and rallies across Punjab since he was released from house arrest last year but had not visited Islamabad in the recent past. Addressing the gathering, Saeed stressed the need for a well-organised media campaign in favour of the blasphemy law. PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain – also a known ISI agent and loan defaulter known for his corruption – also attended the meeting, which called for a country-wide strike on December 31 to oppose moves for changes in the blasphemy law. The meeting was also attended by another puppet of the intelligence agencies, Ejazul Haq, who is the son Ziaul Haq who was one of the biggest CIA agents in the history of Pakistan.
Today more than 20,000 people rallied in Karachi on Sunday, apparently against the proposed reform of a blasphemy law. Religious groups blocked a main thoroughfare in Karachi’s teeming metropolis holding banners in support of the police guard who shot dead Punjab governor Salman Taseer on Tuesday over his views in favour of the law’s amendment. “Mumtaz Qadri is not a murderer, he is a hero,” said one banner in the national Urdu language in support of the man who carried out Pakistan’s most high-profile political killing in three years. Most intriguingly but not surprisingly, the rally leader was Qari Ahsaan of the banned group Jamaat ud Dawa. He addressed the crowd from a stage saying, “We can’t compromise on the blasphemy law. It’s a divine law and nobody can change it.”
I have also noted that some of the people who are writing on facebook condemning Salmaan Taseer and making tall claims to defend Islam are journalists who I have personally known to be taking instructions from the intelligence agencies when I did live programmes with them.
It all adds up. The deep state is out to reconquer Pakistan again. Once again, it is using the old strategy of using Quran, the name of the holy prophet, Namoos-e-Risalat through its agents and hirelings, to enflame raw sentiments, whip up the frenzy of the mobs to to ultimately once again conquer Pakistan in the name of saving Islam. But the real aims are to restore its tarnished reputation, reclaim the role of the principal puppeter in Pakistani politics (which has been somewhat diluted by emerging new centres of power) as well as strengthen its bargaining position viz-a-viz the Americans with whom it seems to have developed some serious disagreements lately.
Cross-posted from State of Pakistan