ISLAMABAD: When Maulana Fazlur Rehman delivered his tirade comparing the situation in Fata with the state of India-held Kashmir last week, no one expected his remarks to go unanswered.

So it was no surprise that on Tuesday, opposition lawmakers made full use of private members’ day to lash out at the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-F) chief for “weakening Pakistan’s stance with regards to Kashmir”.

This prompted a sharp reaction from JUI-F parliamentarians, who walked out of the house to protest the way their leader was being “maligned in his absence”.

The thorny issue was raised by Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Ali Mohammad, who read out Article 5 of the Constitution, which deals with ‘loyalty to state and obedience to Constitution and law’.

At a time when blood is flowing in Kashmir and India has staged the drama of Uri and surgical strikes, the PTI MNA from Mardan argued, the JUI-F chief had actually handed New Delhi “a trump card”.

“He is the chairman of the Kashmir committee, a seasoned politician and a religious scholar, yet he has the gall to suggest that there is more injustice in Fata than in Kashmir. Is the Pakistani flag ever torched in Fata, I ask you?”

The PTI lawmaker also took issue with the JUI-F chief’s comparison of the situation on the LoC to the state of affairs on the Durand Line and asked whose dictation the Maulana was following. “At a public meeting in Charsadda, Fazlur Rehman claimed that Operation Zarb-i-Azb actually targeted the people of Fata. Is that something that behoves a man of his standing?”

But it was PML-N MNA Tallal Chaudhry who first came to the JUI-F chief’s defence. “Parliament should be considered a forum for debate. If we cannot speak freely on ground realities inside this house, where will we go?”

He warned against doubting someone’s patriotism or terming them traitors because they had spoken their mind, recalling Mehmood Khan Achakzai’s recent remarks against intelligence agencies with relation to the Quetta bombing.

Rising in her seat, JUI-F’s Naeema Kishwar Khan reminded the PTI that while Maulana Fazlur Rehman was speaking on Fata reforms in the house, Imran Khan was on vacation in Nathia Gali. “We must consider the context he was speaking in. His point was that we should not impose any decision on the people of Fata. Just like India isn’t allowing Kashmiris their right to self-determination, not asking the people of Fata what they want is akin to imposing our will on it.”

She also defended her leader’s stance on Zarb-i-Azb, saying that the operation had rendered thousands of tribal people homeless and claimed that this was what Maulana Fazlur Rehman meant when he said that Zarb-i-Azb seemed to be targeting the people of Fata.

She and her party colleagues then walked out of the house to register their protest.

Published in Dawn October 5th, 2016