Lal Masjid - A time for Retrospection

Lessons of the Red Mosque Massacre: The Role of the Military

Sheharyar Shaikh

As the dust from the Red Mosque slowly settles on the ground and the decapitated body parts of Jamia Hafsa’s female students are sullenly picked up from the smoking rubble, the prevailing mood in Pakistan is anything but jubilant. An army reared to protect and serve the country deliberately used brute force against a largely innocent people caught in the imbroglio. Moreover, many who had been following the Red Mosque crisis for days are now left with dozens of unanswered questions surrounding the official version of the event. Reports are now surfacing that General Musharraf had planned to raid the mosque complex back in February but then decided to delay it so as to bring maximum PR advantage to his government – a government heavily discredited inside the country for failing its people and which now readies, after having won a shameful victory, for an undeclared war against its citizenry. A recent Stratfor report predicts that the Red Mosque operation ‘is likely the beginning of a long confrontation’ and such operations will inevitably lead to a clash involving ‘nationwide social unrest’. Way to go, General Musharraf!

Were the imams of Red Mosque wrong in their understanding of the fallen soldiers as non-martyrs? One might as well ask: How can a Pakistani Muslim soldier who fires arms against another Muslim and dies in the process all the while serving the Bush agenda for Pakistan become a martyr? He is a mercenary – a meager tool to carry out foreign designs, not a shaheed. Even the possibility of a moral ambiguity in the matter is surprising.

Please check the whole Article and others comment the article is written by someone else who have criticised the above abstract:

http://indianmuslims.in/lal-masjid-a-time-for-retrospection/

my commments:

I am with the writer (Sheharyar Shaikh). please dont interpret the facts. People inside the mosque tried to negotiate but no one was there to listen their voice. The Army could have released the gases to make them unconcious and might have captured them. But why it didn’t? because its not only Musharraf behined it but there is someone else behined the scene. The orders were issued from the so called “Super Power”.

And there are many cases in Islamic history, when there were fights between muslims and muslims. I cant comment who was right in those days but now its infront of our eyes. I think people here are too obsessed with America and its ideology. And dont you think, we muslims just to show our secular face becoming Anti-Islam.

All of us know that America’s so called anti-terrorism is “Anti-Islam” but still we are supporting it. But why? do we dont have any choice? Think over it my friends!