KARACHI, Jan 20: Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad has appealed to political parties to sort out their differences lest “undemocratic forces should enter the political scene and derail democracy”.

He said that the Muslim world is facing many burning issues, asserting that the issues were once confined to Kashmir and Palestine, but now Pakistan’s very existence is at stake. He cited threats from within the “establishment and the army, who after becoming US allies are opening the gates for Indian conspiracies.”

The JI chief, who is on a short visit to Karachi, was talking to a group of journalists at the residence of the late Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani here on Tuesday.

He visited the residence to pay his respects to the memory of the late Maulana Noorani, who played a key role in bringing religious groups from different schools of thought together under the banner of the Muslim Yekjehti Council and the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal.

Mr Ahmad held a meeting with the Vice Chairman of the World Islamic Mission and chief patron of Markazi Jamaat Ahle Sunnat Sahibzada Owais Noorani Siddiqui, Mufti Muneeb-ur-Rehman, Muhammad Hussain Mehanti, Mufti Jan Muhammad Naeemi and Saleem Zia of PML-N and others.

Referring to the “conspiracies of anti-Islam forces” he said the move to remove the objectives resolution from the Constitution was part of the idea that a secular Pakistan could survive, but not an Islamic Pakistan. Holding the US and its lobby in Pakistan behind all such moves, he termed them “a conspiracy to undo Pakistan”.

The JI chief warned those present that religious forces would protect the objectives resolution and the Islamic Pakistan to the last drop of their blood.

He said the enmity of the US against Muslims was not a secret, the testimony of which was its propaganda against Pakistan’s nuclear programme by expressing apprehension of its falling into the hands of “irresponsible people”. He said it was retired General Pervez Musharraf who further promoted this US policy and now the same policy was being pursued by the present government.

Mr Ahmad said unity amongst the entire nation was the need of the hour in order to foil the conspiracy being hatched through the establishment against the country.

He said our army chief Gen Ashfaq Kayani’s assertion that if there was any threat to our eastern border, Pakistan would withdraw its army from the western border was a testimony to the fact that Pakistan was fighting an American war, one which we should abandon as it is causing devastation from anti-Pakistan forces who were taking advantage of the situation.