The Qadri enigma, stunt & aftermath
Was it the establishment who used Tahirul Qadri but failed, or was it Qadri who used the establishment and succeeded?
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Pakistan Spring?
During a talk that I was invited to deliver early last year at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and then at the Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science & Technology (SZABIST) in Karachi in November 2012, the question that kept coming my way the most from Pakistani students was that whether Pakistan can or will ever experience something akin to the Arab Spring?
The truth is Pakistan is perhaps one of few Muslim countries that has experienced these kinds of Springs on numerous occasions.
Most of the times these have led to the ouster of military dictators and, ironically, on one occasion a protest movement actually ended up preparing the ground and an opening for a military coup and subsequent dictatorship.
It is important to keep all this in mind before one attempts to launch into understanding phenomenons where men like cricketer-turned-politician, Imran Khan, and more recently, Dr. Tahirul Qadri, were both seen (and imagined) as being the forces who would lead a Pakistan Spring of sorts.
I am always surprised to notice the negligible amounts of knowledge most young Pakistanis have about the previous generations’ notable role in making Pakistan perhaps the only Muslim country (apart from maybe Turkey), where a number of democratic movements constantly challenged military dictatorships, making sure that unlike a majority of Arab countries, Pakistan never had a one-party dictatorship that ruled for decades.
In the late 1960s, a movement led by leftist students forced Pakistan’s first military dictator to resign, paving the way for multiparty democracy.
A student is grabbed by security personnel for trying to assassinate the first Pakistani military dictator, Ayub Khan in Peshawar in 1968.
In 1977 a right-wing movement rose against an elected but authoritarian ‘socialist’ regime that, however, ended up ushering in a reactionary military dictatorship.
This dictatorship then faced at least three major democratic movements in the 1980s, making way for democracy’s return in 1988.
Then between 2006 and 2007, a widespread movement forced another military dictator to hold multiparty election and eventually resign in 2008.
All those Springs that took place in the Arab world were against one-party rules and dictatorships that had been dominating the politics of the impacted countries for decades.
In Pakistan, young followers of men like Imran Khan and Dr. Tahirul Qadri have often talked about emulating the uprisings in Arab countries. But ever since 2008 Pakistan has been under an elected ruling coalition of centre-left parties and an active parliament.
Imran Khan, the charismatic former captain of the Pakistan cricket team and (ever since 1996), the head of his centre-right party, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (Pakistan Justice Party), has been threatening to wipe out Pakistan’s ‘corrupt politics and system’ with the help of a ‘revolutionary tsunami.’
Though ever since 2010 he has been able to get a pretty decent number of urban middle-class youth on his side, he has struggled to blunt accusations that claim him to be an ‘artificial construct of the military-establishment’ and being soft on Islamist extremists that have been haunting Pakistan for years now.
Khan has categorically refuted these allegations, but he has certainly reoriented his revolutionary rhetoric and now overtly states himself to be a democrat who believes that real change in Pakistan can only come through the ballot.
Imran Khan is still an enigma for many Pakistanis. Accused by his detractors of being soft on Islamic extremists, Khan has always vehemently denied the allegations.
But just when everyone was waiting for the current coalition government led by the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) to complete its 5-year-term in March this year and announce fresh election, Dr. Tahirul Qadri appeared on the scene, waving his fist to lead a ‘long march’ to occupy Pakistan’s manicured capital, Islamabad, and turn that city into a Tahrir Square (the place where the Arab Spring was launched in Egypt).
His sudden appearance and move took everyone by surprise. Most of his critics in the government, the opposition and the media were quick to denounce him as being yet another ploy and puppet of those sections of the country’s military-establishment and intelligence agencies who have been blamed time and time again for derailing democracy in Pakistan.
Ever since 1958, the military has thrice toppled civilian set-ups, accusing them of being corrupt and compromising Pakistan’s internal and external security.
However, each one of these military regimes fell and were replaced with democratic governments.
But this hasn’t meant the ouster of the military and its agencies as political players. They have continued to be eyed with great suspicion by democratic parties and often accused of propping up individuals to challenge, discredit, and disrupt popular political parties.
Thus, it was natural for the critics of the military-establishment to once again look at it with suspicion when Dr. Qadri arrived to ‘bring a revolution’ and ‘true democracy’ just months before one of the first smooth and democratic transitions of power was set to take place in Pakistan.
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Qadri, who?
So who is Dr. Qadri, and how did he manage to gather thousands of devoted men, women and children to stay for almost four days in Islamabad’s freezing winter, rain and amidst the ever-present threat of suicide bombings by the rabid extremist lot always lurking in the shadows in Pakistan?
Dr. Qadri is a former failed politician but who, in the last 15 years or so, worked relentlessly to build a loyal network of pious Pakistani and Indian Muslims around the world who belong to the Sunni Barelvi strain of Islam.
Barelvi Islam is the evolutionary outcome of a 19th century Islamic reformist movement that emerged in undivided India.
Three such movements emerged among the Muslims of the region, especially after the fall of the Muslim empire in India.
One advocated a return to the original Islam of the ‘rightly guided Caliphs’, and the exorcising of ‘innovations’ introduced in the Islam practiced by Indian Muslims.
The second movement pleaded a more rational and practical understanding of the Qu’ran and Shariah and for the adoption of ‘western education and sciences’.
The third was a reaction to the first movement that found Islamic strains like Sufism repulsive and the practice of visiting Sufi shrines heretical.
Barelvi Islam is a continuation of the third movement that fuses Sufism with the centuries-old sub-continental traditions of Muslims visiting and worshipping at shrines of Sufi saints and incorporating many practices that emerged due to the interaction of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism in undivided India.
Ahmed Raza Khan (right), the 19th century Islamic reformer, scholar, polemic and founder of what became to be known as ‘Barelvi Islam.’
This strain of Islam that has always been seen as being more tolerant, flexible and inclusive compared to some other strains of the faith present in region, became the dominant faith among Pakistan’s Sunni Muslims.
Even today, a majority of Pakistanis follow this strain, in spite of the fact that ever since the 1980s Saudi Arabia has been funneling in huge amounts of money and resources to prop up Islamic seminaries, mosques, clerics and leaders associated with the more puritanical, aggressive and anti-Barelvi schools of thought.
Though Barelvi Islamic leaders and outfits have often been accommodated and flirted with by secular parties, and are squarely against puritanical Sunni Islamic outfits such as the Taliban, al Qaeda and various anti-Shia sectarian organisations, they have been staunchly and at times, violently inclined to blunt any moves attempting to relax the controversial Blasphemy Laws first introduced in the 1980s during the reactionary Ziaul Haq dictatorship.
Dr. Qadri is a former student activist who in the 1970s belonged to the moderate Barelvi youth organisation, the Anjuman Taleba Islam, at the Punjab University.
His group usually allied itself with various progressive and leftist student groups during student union elections against the student wing of the fundamentalist Jamat-e-Islami.
Flag of the Anjuman Taleba Islam, the moderate/Barelvi Islamic student organisation that Qadri was a member of at college and university.
After graduating in 1974, he enrolled as a lecturer at the same university and then went on to get his PhD in Islamic sciences.
Details of Dr. Qadri’s political career between 1978 and 1989 are rather muggy.
Some of his critics describe Qadri as a political charlatan who in the 1980s was close to PML-N chief, Nawaz Sharif, the man whose family in those days were staunch supporters of military dictator, General Ziaul Haq.
During a 2008 lecture on the Barelvi Islamic TV channel, QTV, Qadri claimed that it was he who forced General Ziaul Haq to formulate the Blasphemy Laws, whereas he then denied doing this (on a British TV channel), and in fact claimed that he doesn’t agree with the law.
There are three views about what Qadri was up to during the Zia dictatorship.
One view is that Qadri opposed the dictatorship’s pro-Deobandi orientation and was dismissed from the faculty of the Punjab University for his opposition to the Zia regime.
The second view is that Qadri became close to the Zia regime and helped it formulate a number of controversial ‘Islamic laws.’
The third view is propagated by Qadri himself in which he claims that in spite of the fact that Zia offered him many political posts, he refused to accept them and instead spent his time on becoming an Islamic scholar.
What is certain though is that Qadri formed his Barelvi organisation, the Minhajul Quran (MQ), in 1981.
In 1988 Qadri formed his own party, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT). He described it as a party that would strive to bring a ‘spiritual revolution’ (Roohani Inquilaab) in Pakistan.
Qadri addressing a press conference in 1990.
He allied his party with the left-leaning PPP during the 1990 election, but after facing defeats, he almost vanished from the political scene.
This is when he seriously worked to turn MQ into a large Islamic evangelical outfit, preaching Sufism and trying to regenerate Barelvi Islam that had experienced a tough challenge from the more conservative schools of faith in the 1980s.
Qadri reappeared on the political scene as a supporter of Pakistan’s last military dictator, General Parvez Musharraf, who toppled the second PML-N government in 1999.
Calling himself an ‘enlightened moderate’, Musharraf wanted to bank on Qadri’s MQ to find a middle ground for his dictatorship between Zia’s radical Islam and secularism.
Qadri had a falling out with Musharraf in 2004 when the later chose a motley crew of anti-PPP and anti-PML-N politicians over Qadri’s PAT to become his regime’s civilian expression.
Qadri (third from right in the third row) was one of first civilian politicians to pledge his support to General Musharraf. Other leaders seen in the picture include, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, Imran Khan and Farooq Laghari.
During this period Qadri became a Canadian citizen. In 2010, when suicide bombings against the military, police and common civilians grew alarmingly in Pakistan, Qadri, who by now had gathered a huge following among the more religious minded Barelvi Muslims, wrote a 600-page fatwa against suicide bombings.
Copy of the English translation of Qadri’s fatwa against suicide bombings.
To him and his followers, he had become the moderate face of Islam and the defender of the peaceful injunctions and spirit of the faith in a world reeling from Islamist violence.
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Reemergence and aftermath
In Pakistan, he was mostly forgotten as a politician, but among pious Barelvis he became popular as an Islamic scholar, and a televangelist on QTV.
Neutral viewers found his style to be rather eccentric, especially when he shared with his followers the many divine visions he’s had and the colorful way he interpreted his followers’ dreams.
Barelvi Islam is rich in symbolism, extroverted in its liking for devotional dances and music, and of behavior that the modernists describe as being superstitious.
To its more conservative sub-sectarian Sunni opponents such as the Deobandis and the ‘Wahabis’, it is downright heretical.
It is Barelvi Islam’s colorful, emotive, inclusive and largely non-jihadist nature that has kept it thriving as Pakistan’s ‘folk religion’, especially among the rural and semi-rural peasantry and sections of the urban petty-bourgeoisie.
The hypnotic eastern music genre, Qawali, is an extremely popular ritual and art-form among the Barelvis.
Though Qadri, seeming egoistical and at times somewhat maniacal in his attitude during his ‘long march,’ and most probably pushed to the fore by the usual anti-politician ‘establishment,’ did manage to demonstrate a rather refreshing angle in the already multi-angular politics of Pakistan.
Over the last decade, Pakistanis seem to be fatigued by not only the toothlessness of their elected representatives, especially in the face of a collapsing economy, deteriorating law and order situation and extremist violence; they now seem equally weary of the animated alarmists in politics, media and the establishment who always seem to be threatening bloody revolutions, and warnings about conspiracies of ‘anti-Pakistan/Islam’ forces and ‘nefarious designs of India and the US.’
In spite of the fact that Qadri launched his rhetoric against the country’s two main democratic parties, he was equally open in his condemnation of those Islamist terrorist outfits that have succeeded in scaring even the most animated and ‘revolutionary’ media personnel and leaders.
When cornered in this respect, these personalities at once launch into anti-US tirades that have now become a kind of self-parody of sorts.
Though Qadri ended his march by accepting negotiations with the same ruling coalition he had vowed to topple, his was perhaps one of the most spectacularly peaceful ‘revolts’ ever seen in a violent country like Pakistan.
Qadri shares a joke with the government’s negotiation team that met him on the fourth day of his ‘long march.’
Now the question is, was he really a stooge of the establishment? Someone propped up but failed to deliver?
I personally believe that he was. But his backers underestimated two vital facts:
1. The democratic parties are now willing to come together like never before in the face of a threat posed to the democratic system by the establishment.
2. The Sunni denomination that Qadri belongs to is neither jihadist nor revolutionary.
Or who knows, there might even be another possibility: With the way he in the end softened up with the members of the coalition, maybe it was Qadri who manipulated the establishment so he could return to the political arena with a bang … ?
Nadeem F. Paracha is a cultural critic and senior columnist for Dawn Newspaper and Dawn.com
The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.
hi guys,
the problem is that in our country we use POLITICAL ref / MONEY/ARMS as power, a poor person has no chance.So the corruption is rife in the country and people say it’s democracy where your PRIME MINSTER,PRISIDENT,MINSTERS,OPPOSITION PARTIES all involved in CORRUPTION MONEY LAUNDERING.THEY ALL HAVE MONEY STASHED ABROAD. THEY ONLY CARE FOr THEM SELFS.
LONG LIVE DANDA WALLA
Bible says there will be several false Messiah who will pretend to be the real (messiah). Dr. Qadri from all his antecedents seems to be a false one.
The real Messiah do not come from outside of the people they are trying to save and then do not run away without delivering.
Can any one tell what has Dr. Qadri delivered and what is his impact except that he got his four days or TV limelight. Is any thing changed?
I think its a bit of both, he was just a distractionto hide something more controversial. He is definitely backed by army but it became to obvious and they had to retreat to make it look like a real thing and nothing to do with army, and its not difficult to gather a big crowd in Pakistan any leader can do that, people here are frustrated & desparate and need something to do. Some adventure, there is not much to look forward in terms of getting ahead with their careers, social status & lives. These type of gatherings feed their low self esteem and also boost their moral as being productive. Regardless of what ever it is onething is for sure, this country is going down the hill and i dont see much hope but a ‘moajiza’ that might be able to save this country.
why can’t it be Zardari’s ploy to further divide anti-PPP vote in the Punjab?
Lets’ use cricket as a parable to understand the long march.Two things are important to be successful in cricket : a) the ability to coordinate ball with bating 2) the ability to understand the sense of timing. If we apply these two things in the context of Dr. Qadri’s long march, one feels Dr. Qadri has mistaken on both. First, his ability to coordinate the long march with a firm stance on the popular demands has been too vague and too jittery. Second, his understanding the sense of timing to stage the long march is just wrong. Dr. Qadri is an eloquent and fiery religious speaker, but he’s just too fickle and indecisive as a leader. He miserably failed himself as well as those who participated in his long march.
Qadri’s drama ended up with a hope as anticipated by the media, resulting in mild increase in his popularity and giving him a hope that his party might get a couple of seats. However he is an opportunist who tried to enter the gov. by back door in Musharraf’s tenure and left Pakistan disheartened when he was not given the share that he expected and his sudden appearence on the political arena shows that he is supported by the forces of evil who want to destabilize Pakistan. But in my opinion he will not be able to gain a single seat if the elections are fair.
The writer of this article was not unbiased. He manipulated few things as per his own mind. If I start giving answers to all his points, I might have to write another article. So, I will only mention this to all readers that please do not make any picture of Dr. Tahir-ul-Qadri in their mind as per this article. As far as politics is concerned, he has made it very clear that neither he nor his two sons, who are also PHD, will take part in elections. This long march has made every pakistani aware of the constitution. These corrupt politicians have no place to hide now except launching propaganda compaign against TUQ. Every body is talking on personality of TUQ. See what he has done, what is his vision and in which direction he is working. If at all he wanted to topple the government, he would have done that sitting at 1 km from parliament with millions of people. So please wait and keep watching what that agreement between government and TUQ is going to do in upcoming elections and every body pray for a change in the country.
I believe that the agreement is of no value. TUQ’s movement had already flopped when the opposition parties gathered on one platform during all this scene. The govt. merely provided him an exit route so that he could take something back with him when he had come so far with a number of followers!
I don’t know if a change is going to happen in the upcoming elections as a result of agreement b/w govt and TUQ but I am surely going to follow up with interest on TUQ’s oath violation proceedings at the Canadian Federal Court (if the media report is correct) for which he has been summoned to appear on February 5 and for which he has engaged a team of four lawyers to defend him. It would be a public service if the Court and or Canadian Government also looks into the assets and finances of TUQ, his family and organization.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/496174/oath-violation-qadri-to-file-appeal-in-canadian-federal-court/
P.S: Asylum oath violation.
Tahir Qadri incident was test for Pakistan democratic system and Pakistanies should celebrate democracy prevailed, However unless the next leader (Imran Khan) deals with ISI/Millitary there will be always a threat
I think , present political set up of Pakistan does not need qadri or Imran type people. A secular , pro people with socialist mind set are need of hour. Qadri and others like him will only create chaos and ultimately help to fundamentalist. better let the pakistan elect their new Government.
read what socialists have done in France. They are root cause of chaos. Hollande, Jose socrates .. list is huge
Imran khan and PTI is secular. that is why it has people like Samson Simon Sharaf and singer/musician Abrar Hussain in its leadership.
I think Mr. Paracha is out of touch with the Islamic Spirituality that brought Islam to the sub-continent. Dr. Qadri might have made a mistake in indulging in politics, but he is one of greatest Islamic scholar that Pakistan has. If ever there is a Khomeini like revolution in Pakistan it is only people like Dr. Qadri who could lead it. Mr. Paracha stated that Dr. Qadri is a religious leader of the peasants and illiterate – he is wrong – the people who follow him and believe in his Islamic teachings include very educated people who could sort out pseudo preaching from real Islam.
I would never want Khomeini like leader for us!
Mr Paracha there is much more than what you have written.
1. How did Qadri get his SUV Buttelt proof container in Pakistan. When did this whole process start?
2. Despite being on the hit list of the Beastly Talibaan, why did Talibaan behave so nicely and let him carry on?
3. Whenever Pakistan/India are moving closer some incident ridiculous incident like Bombay attack, border firing occurs and stop it.
These are serious questions unless we find the answer and eliminate this ENEMY WITHIN…nothing is going to change this time it was Qadri next time it will Madaari….
Capt Khan are you referring to ISI when you say enemy within? not sure if your brothers and fellow citizen see that way
But still after border incident, both countries have vowed to move further with peace talks..( leads to nowhere, but lets give it a chance)
Capt Khan, you have hit the bull’s eye. Qadri came like AAYE BAHAAR BAN KE LUBHA KAR CHALE GAYE
This business of Barelvis, Deobandis, Wahabi Deobandis, etc etc. Why has Islam become so complex?It’s ust like keeping dozens of plastic cards in your wallet and not knowing when to use one. Surely, there should be one Isalm like there is only one God.
by the same token then there should have been one religion, don’t you think?
I had a wise Iraqi friend who once told me that revolutions led by peasant leaders and the clergy have lead nations to disaster as both are narrow minded, lack vision and misuse power once in authority.Pakistan seems to be getting both.
a la Mao?
So who is Dr. Qadri, and how did he manage to gather thousands….?
Answer to this question is very simple. Qadri has been using religion for his gatherings for so many years and religion is a very powerful tool. He has created his image of a religious scholar etc. and that is why people went after him.
TUQ’s speech and rally has caused a stir, but it contained several fundamental weaknesses, as well as contradictions.
Firstly, there was that statement, about half-way through, giving the message that we can’t vote now because it would be asking people to decide to remain in, or leave, in a corrupt system when they had no idea of what that corrupt system really is. ( What I mean here is the whole political system is infected individualism and pork barrel from top to bottom, I mean from the office clerk to The President of Pakistan) That was intellectually very weak of TUQ, because we’ve been in the ever-changing Pakistan for 65 years, and we know exactly what it’s about: full political union into a United States of Pakistan ( I hope you understand what I mean here as everyone has now has his own cartel of regional politics ) with quasi-dictatorial powers for its leaders. That situation isn’t going to change. Furthermore, TUQis claiming here that he has a chance of reforming the Pakistan. And that’s a second example of weak intellect, because he doesn’t stand a chance of achieving that.
He did begin to criticise the over-grown bureaucracy of the Pakistan, but, doubtless scared of upsetting those bureaucrats, failed to mention their ridiculousy high salaries, expenses and generous pensions, and missed out all reference to the ludicrous situation,
So, faced with all that we know, only too well, about the dictatorial and tyrannical Pakistan (ignored referenda, broken treaties, direct interference of Military and so called IJI), we now have to wait till next election in May 2013 and that only if we vote.
Only Malik Rehman knows the truth.
“Imran Khan is still an enigma for many Pakistanis. Accused by his detractors of being soft on Islamic extremists.”
Khan is a bit of an enigma to himself I’ll bet. He needs protection from militants who are not afraid to pull a trigger, that’s all.
Imran belongs to deobandi sect (Same as Taliban and other extremists) so there is nothing to worry for him until he give visit to any shrine, if only killing innocent people is the terrorist agenda behind suicide bombing, the biggest gathering is in Raiwand but terrorist wont blow themselves there because they have same ideology, for your kind info these are very well planned targets which you can only see on influential people who belong to minorities or Brelvi majority which are mostly now converted to wahabi or deobandi. you will only witness these terrorist blowing themselve on Ashura or Eid Milad un Nabi.
One thing a Pakistani learns when coming abroad and meeting his co-religionists from around the world is how differently he thinks from them.
And how much behind the others, the Turks, the Persians, the Arabs, the Indonesians, and the Malaysians are from him in outlook towards reality.
The reason – East India Company, the Raj, the close American alliance, and finally, Iqbal and Jinnah.
Pakistanis are at least 500 years ahead of other Muslims in thinking about the world.
What is going in Pakistan in not the Pakistani spring, but Islam’s spring that has been going on for at least 100 years.
This is the re-opening of the debate that was closed 1400 years ago after the death of our Prophet AS – whither Islam – guns or butter, the same battle that every society wages – Republicans vs Democrats in US, Tories vs Liberals in Canada.
Islam had split into two political camps, the Umarites (later became Sunni, Wahabbi, Qadiani) and Fatimites (who later became Shia, Ismaili, Alevi). In 632 AD Muslims chose war over peace, guns over butter. The rest is history.
Islam spread, and the reason was simple – Muslims had a new religion much advanced than others, tied to advanced trading economy, while others – Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism were tied to agrarian economy. Though Islam won, it had to adapt backwards because the subjects were rural and agrarian not city and industrial/trade.
When Europe came to the same fork (agrarian to trading) in 17th century it had two models of trading origin, Hellenism and Islam (Athens and Mecca). Since Islam had become backward, the West chose its native Hellenism to continue forward. Europe chose Democracy, and advanced America chose Socratic Republic – the same guns vs butter battle. Democracy led to its natural end – the 20th century carnage in Europe.
With increasing trade and industrialization, Islam needed adaptation again. Indian Islam was the most advanced because of its link to trading England. Its resurgence began with the likes of Sir Syed, Iqbal and Jinnah.
Today, the land poor, water poor, resource poor world is becoming Arabia 7th century writ large. The natural model for this is Mohammedan/Quranic Islam.
The West flounders under the same strains Islam did 800 years ago, making the same mistakes – wastefulness, profligacy, pornography, homosexuality, fantasy …
Pakistan is a lucky land. It has the right mix of leadership minded Fatimites and management minded Umarites (1 to 4). Islam challenges the Corporate Capitalist West today – militarily, socially, intellectually, spiritually, economically. The Mohammedan socio-economics is way ahead of Socratic one.
Sufism was a reaction to the heartlessness of mainstream Islam just as Buddhism was to the heartlessness of Hinduism. It also served a link between the Fatimites and Umarites.
A Sufi Iqbal was instrumental in bringing the Fatimite Jinnah and Umarite others together and creating Pakistan. A Sufi Qadri may play the same role again for Pakistan to its rightful place in leading the Ummah and then the Globalized and trading world. Islam’s spring will flower in Pakistan.
Onward Qadri.
venerable sir—Islam did not spread as peacefully as you have put.
Immense bloodshed of the Infidel happened. Immense. The Sikh Khalsa was only baptised cuz of that. A peaceful religion become militant to save themselves.
What about the Hindu people ? Someday read the laws of Dhimmitude–not from foolish books published by islamic apologists–but those who faced the brunt of religion of peace.
How the ancient university of Nalandha was razed down, and monks in the thousand cut down.
What did Ghazni, Ghori, Khilji, Abdali, Nadir Shah, aurengzeb do.. Surely they were not promoting trade.
They were cutting down, infidel in the thousands and other would run and embrace Islam.
And since you cant leave Islam—they were permanently imprisoned.
Actually the Sunni Denomination that you speak of IS JIhad but not violent for the sake of violent. Note that Sindh, Kashmir, and Punjab provide large chunks of Pak Armed Forces. All Barelvi areas.
Sufi Islam is the true revolutionary spirit that will see out the those who seek the quick fixes.
“In the late 1960s, a movement led by leftist students forced Pakistan’s first military dictator to resign, paving the way for multiparty democracy.”
Communism. It seemed like a good idea at the time. You can’t sell Godless Communism to Muslims, so you end up with democracy instead.
Struggling to figure out (ye mazmoon TUQ pe hai ya Imran Khan pe?) usual NFP’s attacking approach.
Both the military and Qadri probably found each other with the help of a few MQ disciples. Perhaps a Brigadier’s relative was attending an MQ gathering when a light bulb flashed. Or it could’ve been over a few ‘drinks’ in Canada that the idea came up. Who knows.
at least Qadri send shivering down the spine of the old corrupt political parties…they collected together in a palace at Riwind
I agree to all this but it was very strange of Qadri to stand up after years to a long march and agree to nothing but played with the feelings of people even the people were happy after that…!!!
Interesting article depicting background analysis of the subject matter TUQ. What ever the synopsis of the march, time will divulge.One positive thing has come out of it is that people POWER does work!
I hope people will realize the power of the vote, collectively they can move mountains!
The glass is half full.
And just when we thought NFP was writing like he used to, he is back with a bang!
was NOT*