[sacw] SACW Dispatch 11 Sept.99

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
11 Sept.99
http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex
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#1. Islamist school chains [in Pakistan]
#2. Unhindu Hindus [at work in the US]
#3. Muslim voters wisen up,...[& reject Fundamentalists in Kerala]
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#1.
[From: http://www.thefridaytimes.com/
The Friday Times, 10 - 16 September 1999]

Islamist school chains and the coming New Order

By Khaled Ahmed

The September 5 all-Pakistan strike was a remarkable show of the market's
resistance to the government's policy of General Sales Tax (GST). The
political opposition jumped in to take advantage of a non-political issue.
At least in Punjab, the shopkeepers took advantage of the agitational
politics of the opposition parties to stave off the GST. In Sindh, PML's
politics of interference caused the GST protest to become a total strike.
The opposition gathered under the banner unfurled by Nawabzada Nasrullah
Khan, but the Jamaat-e-Islami and Leghari's Millat Party staged their
shows separately.

Editorials warned the government of the cumulative effect of bad
governance on the anti-GST strike. There was strong sub-text in most
columns about the possible mid-term change of government. 'Intelligence'
was offered on how the change would come in the absence of any
constitutional methodology of mid-term removal. The army, the columnists
said, was offended with the prime minister although there were no overt
signs of this. The opposition remains convinced it can bring the government
down. Observers 'guess' at their 'covert' connections within the army high
command.

There are new powerful players in the field. Allama Tahirul Qadiri of
Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) is financially strong, can mobilise activists,
but cannot win elections. His base is the chain of schools, colleges and a
university, under the mother organisation, Minhajul Quran. His Minhaj
University is located near his headquarters in Faisal Town Lahore.

His chain of institutions dominates the province of Punjab down to the
district and tehsil levels. He has been able to bring out school-children
during the hot weather to beef up his party's showing on the roads. The
grand opposition's 'joint' action is heavily dependent on his party's
ability to provide transport, decorate the roads with banners and provide a
state-of-the-art networking of public address system along the city roads.

Allama Tahirul Qadiri's public service in the sector of education is big
business which earns good money in a seller's market. The schools are
modern English-medium, instructed by a competent faculty, and complete
with an efficient busing system. The Allama is an organisational genius
(comparable to Ilyas Qadiri of 'green-turban' Dawat-e-Islami) and occupies
centre-stage in the opposition's 'joint action' because of his money and a
sophisticated command system.

Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari has begun financing his Millat Party's show
of strength, which is unusual for a feudal politician. But he is greatly
helped in this regard by his brilliant lieutenant, Muhammad Ali Durrani of
Pasban, who is also in the education business. His WISE chain of schools
and colleges gives courses in general education, commerce and computer
sciences. His MA and MCS (Masters in Computer Science) courses are given in
affiliation with Punjab University. They are located in the most up-market
areas of Punjab and Islamabad and are all extremely successful
commercially. It must however be stated that Durrani's public service
vision continues to be reflected in the 400 schools he runs free for poor
students.

Durrani is from Bahawalpur and is backed by his ancestral feudal holdings.
He is fired by a genuine desire to do good for the common man. He was the
organisation man behind Imran Khan's historic fund-raising campaign; now he
is backing Leghari. Durrani is linked to Qazi Hussain Ahmad since the days
when he ran the new youth wing of the Jamaat. His Pasban created a new
'progressive' face for the Jamaat which Qazi Sahib allowed. The dominant
new image of Pasban finally did not jibe with the Jamaat shura. Qazi's
daughter still works in one of the enterprises of the Pasban-WISE empire.
Durrani is in turn the link that exists between Qazi Sahib and Leghari.

The Jamaat is the most organised political party in the country, led by a
dedicated non-clerical politician whose charisma has increased over the
years. He is austere, lives a simple life, and is almost a model leader in
times of double-faced political hypocrisy. His campaign against the
government is consistent, relentless and innovative.

The ruling PML cannot bring itself to oppose him openly. Some PML members
make no bones about their hidden allegiance to him. When the PML high
command thought that Qazi Sahib was ploughing his separate furrow, it tried
to break this 'duality' existing within the party during Qazi's innovative
dharna agitation in 1996. While the Mian Family moved from spiritual
allegiance to the Jamaat to the spiritual support of Dr Israr Ahmad, the
party was lukewarm to the new turn. Sheikh Rashid and Ijazul Haq had to
face the wrath of their leader Nawaz Sharif for joining Qazi Sahib's
agitation against the PPP government in 1996.

The PML's longing for the Jamaat has persisted even during the days when
the Jamaat has become a challenger to the ruling PML. Dr Israr has not been
able to win the allegiance of Muslim Leaguers beyond the Mian Family. Dr
Israr framed the 15th Amendment which remains unpopular with the
second-rung Muslim League leadership. While pretending to be upset with
Qazi Hussain Ahmad, they continue to declare their faith in the ideology
of the Jamaat. To Nawaz Sharif this 'longing' for the Jamaat is made to
appear a part of the policy to undermine Qazi's leadership at the polls. It
is for this reason that the Jamaat is no longer interested in elections.

Qazi Hussain Ahmad's appeal among the intelligentsia is growing,
especially in the state-controlled educational institutions, almost all the
country's labour and professional unions, and among the middle levels of
the Punjab bureaucracy. However, Qazi's organisational strength is matched
by his finances. His is the richest party in Pakistan. The Jamaat leaders
surrounding him are individually men of substance and own properties worth
billions. Fund-raising is no problem.

The 'strongmen' of the Jamaat are today comparable to the 'strongmen' of
the PML in terms of wealth and sheer physical clout. Federal minister Nadir
Parvez is a war hero with a brother commanding a corps in Quetta as
Lt-General, and a strong power base in Faisalabad inherited from his fabled
'strongman' father. He can be easily matched by the Jamaat leader Liaquat
Baloch in all respects, except that Baloch is next in line to Qazi himself.

Chairman Privatisation Commission. Khwaja Asif, is another PML 'strongman'
who can be compared with Jamaat's Hafiz Salman Butt, an old student leader
like Liaquat Baloch. The Jamaat leaders enjoy an edge by reason of their
dominance of the lower levels of 'proselyte' Punjab administration.

Qazi's donors come from the export-based industry, the most well-known
being the maker of footballs for international soccer contests and cutlery
in affiliation with UK's Sheffield, Sialkot's Prof Amin Javed. Prof Javed
is preparing to start a new daily newspaper, Insaf, from Lahore.

The Jamaat-affiliated institutions offering courses in business management
and computer science dominate the province. A chain of prestigious and
well-reputed colleges all over Pakistan, including Lahore's well-known
Punjab College of Commerce, is owned by the Jamaat financier, Mian Aamir
Mehmood. A similar chain is owned by the sons of Khurram Murad, the late
editor of the Jamaat journal, Tarjumanul Quran. They are called the ILM
chain of institutions preparing students in business management and
chartered accountancy.

The Daawa chain of schools in Punjab, run by Lahore's Dawat wal-Irshad,
are centres of Islamic teaching with strong computer-technology backing.
The leaders of Dawat wal-Irshad, Prof Hafiz Saeed and Prof Zafar Iqbal, are
both teachers at Lahore's state-owned Engineering University. The strong
point of Dawat wal-Irshad is its patronage of the great jehadi militia,
Lashkar-e-Tayba. The Daawa chain is probably the largest in the province.

In a pie-chart of English-medium private sector educational institutions
in Punjab, only a 10 percent section will be occupied by the well-known
institutions: LUMS (upper crust English-medium Islamist) and
Beaconhouse/Bloomfield/LCAS/Aitchison, etc, (upper crust English-medium
secular). The rest 90 percent would probably go to the middle class
English-medium Islamist institutions that concentrate on business careers
through courses in management and computer sciences.

If the opposition succeeds in toppling the PML government, the 'power' may
not go to the 'secular' parties but to the Islamists who will provide the
'technocrats' needed to run the presumed long-term interim government. The
army remains the only 'medium' of change in the minds of the 'joint'
opposition against the PML. That some significant actors are discounting
the possibility of change through the army was revealed by the resignation
of ex-senator Tariq Chaudhry from Tanzimul Ikhwan, the Chakwal-based
seminary run by ex-army officers for an aggressive Naqshbandi sufi leader,
Maulana Akram Awan.

According to Tariq Chaudhry, who is reputed to be an old army
'connection', he resigned because Maulana Akram Awan began contacts with
the PML without consulting with the Tanzim shura, after he had announced
his opposition to Nawaz Sharif in the post-Kargil period. Millat Party
chief Farooq Leghari had linked up with Maulana Akram Awan by paying a
visit to his seminary at Manara in Chakwal, but the Tanzim leader may now
be distancing himself from a 'revolution' he no longer believes will happen.

The presumed 'long-term interim government of technocrats' replacing the
PML government is likely to get into trouble internationally because of its
extremely isolationist world-view. The factors that have brought the PML to
grief - nuclear and Kashmir policies - will in fact be reinforced by the
'technocrats', accelerating Pakistan's economic slide towards a failed
state with consequent internal upheaval and fragmentation.
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#2.
[From: SAJA E-mail Discussion List
http://www.saja.org/lists

India Today (North American edition)
Sep. 14, 1999 ]

ALTERNATE ACCENT | Tunku Varadarajan

UNHINDU HINDUS
Apolitical Intolerance Has Now Struck the Community

I am a Hindu. My childhood was steeped in Hindu scripture and prayer, and we
often spent our vacations in Benaras, where my old grandmother lived in
Hanuman Ghat. My father took us to the Ganges in the mornings, where - in
spite of the obvious presence of muck - we had a reverential, but rapid,
snaan together. My father prayed to the gods, giving them thanks and asking
for their blessings. I prayed to the gods too, also begging them to spare me
from the agony of water-borne diseases. Our religion was calm and tolerant,
quite different from other creeds. As a Hindu, over the years, I've observed
cultural fanatics from the other religions go about their cretinous business.
I've watched daft ayatollahs, and their brainless acolytes in Bradford,
Karachi and Lucknow, rant against Salman Rushdie's allegedly offensive
writings. "Burn, burn, burn," the mobs bayed. "Ban, ban, ban," the mullahs
spewed.

I've watched Christian hotheads attack Martin Scorsese for his film, "The
Last Temptation of Christ", with bands of aggressive pickets heckling
cinemagoers. I've seen Jewish extremists disrupting archeological digs in
Jerusalem - digs that would have revealed vital new information about the
earliest years of their own religion - on the grounds that they were
sacrilegious. Hindus, I've always held, do not behave in this way. I am not
saying that there have been no acts of savagery by Hindus. The assault on the
Babri Masjid in Ayodhya was a shameful case of Hindus behaving in a manner
that was - and there's no other way to put this - un-Hindu. But even those
barbaric kar sevaks were not as bad as the vandals I have described in
preceding paragraphs, for theirs was an expression, however unpalatable, of a
political revolution that was then sweeping India. Those who objected to
Rushdie, Scorsese and the archeologists were, on the other hand, an
abominable species of knee-jerk primitivist. There is nothing worse than
apolitical intolerance. No, not even Babri Masjid.

But the disease has now struck Hindus. What is worse is that the Hindu
cultural loony resides in America. Taking a cue from the fire-breathers of
other religions, some American Hindus have made it their mission to scrub out
anything "offensive" to Hindus from this country's cultural canvas. When Mike
Myers posed for a jocular spread in Vanity Fair dressed as a Hinduesque
demigod, the Hindu loonies howled for his blood. When the makers of the TV
series Xena screened an episode starring Hanuman, these caterwauling
Hinduistas demanded that it be withdrawn.

These cultural madmen trained their guns recently on Eyes Wide Shut, the new
film by Stanley Kubrick, demanding that Warner Brothers expunge an "orgy"
scene because the soundtrack contains a shloka from the Bhagavad-Gita. Ajay
Shah, convenor of American Hindus Against Defamation (AHAD), boasted that "we
gave them 13 days notice" to pull the offending soundtrack.

I am sorry to report that Warner Brothers has caved in. I am sorrier to
report that I live in a country where groups like AHAD call the shots. Can't
the nice Hindus of America, the civilized ones, do something to shut these
people up?
--------------------------------------

#3.
[From: http://www.rediff.com/election/1999/sep/10keral.htm
Rediff on the Net, 10 september 1999]

Muslim voters wisen up, then lose interest in Kerala

By George Iype in Manjeri and Ponnani

Ever since Palathody Abdul Rasheed was ostracised for learning Kathakali
and Tasni Banu was hunted by fundamentalists for her choice of a life
partner, Muslim voters in Malappuram has wisened up.
Political parties and candidates have no fear of fundamentalists in the
predominantly Muslim Lok Sabha constituencies of Manjeri and Ponnani
disrupting the poll; if anything, it is the voter's apathy that worries
them.
It was in Manjeri that Rasheed, 22, was shunned by fellow Muslims for
learning Kathakali. It was in Manjeri that Banu, 20, a college student, was
hounded for falling in love and marrying Abdul Nazar, a rationalist
activist.
Rasheed and Banu are today symbols of a new generation of Muslims who defy
the intolerance unleashed by fundamentalist organizations in Manjeri,
Ponnani and other Muslim pockets in Kerala. As you travel across the Muslim
boroughs you see that minority politics has not lured the voter.
Manjeri, with 56 per cent of the electorate of the Muslim community, and
Ponnani, with 66 per cent from the community, are two Lok Sabha
constituencies where for years the electorate have voted in the Indian
Union Muslim League, a part of the Congress-led United Democratic Front in
Kerala.
But in this election, even during the third round of campaigning, the
voters have been indifferent to electoral politics.
Thus, wherever IUML candidate E Ahmed campaigns in Manjeri, not more than
50 people turn up for the meetings. Ahmed, contesting from Manjeri for the
fourth time, is surprised. "I'm confident of my victory but never before
have voters shown this kind of disinterest," he complains as he sets out to
tour his constituency.
Everyone knows Ahmed will win though Manjeri sports candidates from the
Communist Party of India-Marxist, the Bharatiya Janata Party and a handful
of Muslim groups.
In Ponnani, IUML president Ghulam Mahmood Banatwala, a Muslim leader from
Bombay, is seeking re-election for the seventh time. Banatwala has won from
Ponnani since 1977 except in 1991 when the IUML's Ebrahim Sulaiman Sait
contested. But this time, Banatwala is doing everything to ensure he is
elected by a good margin.
"People have not been enthusiastic about elections this time. So we expect
a low turnout and therefore, we don't want to take any chances," a local
IUML leader said.
Locals say they are not afraid of peripheral Muslim fundamentalist
organisations.
"We hate these organisations who try to be the moral police in our area.
Most poor, illiterate Muslims in the area are convinced they have been
taken for a ride by the extremist groups," says Muhammad Bashir, a lecturer
at Manjeri's Unity College, where Banu fell in love with Nazar.
Some organisations that have been campaigning to infuse in people the
spirit of communalism, and religious intolerance are the People's
Democratic Party, the National Democratic Front and the Jamat-e-Islami.
But these outfits, especially the PDP and NDF, have fallen between two
stools in their search for allies in the Lok Sabha elections since neither
the UDF nor the LDF wants them. Thus, though the PDP and NDF have fielded
candidates in Manjeri, Ponnani and a few other Lok Sabha constituencies
across the state, not many Muslims openly back these candidates.
The PDP is not very active after its chairman, Abdul Nasser Madhani, was
arrested and imprisoned in the Salem central jail in connection with the
Coimbatore bomb blasts. Another setback was the links reported between the
party and fundamentalists recently arrested in connection with a suspected
plot to kill some political leaders, including Chief Minister E K Nayanar.
But the NDF, a Kozhikode-based organisation, has been in the forefront of
militant Muslim outfits that set about victimising people like Rasheed and
Banu. The police say the NDF, which has been campaigning against school
uniforms, the singing of Vande Mataram in schools and the lighting of
traditional lamps, is mainly responsible for Muslim radicalism in
Malappuram.
But NDF council member K M Ashraf says the organisation does not unleash
violence.
"Hindu forces and Congress leaders indulge in religious fundamentalism in
disguise. We have been trying to awaken Muslims about the need for a
progressive outlook in life," he said. "In the election, if people are
showing a lukewarm attitude, especially in Manjeri and Ponnani, it is
because they are fed up with leaders like E Ahmed and Banatwala," Ashraf
said.
State PDP secretary Poonthura Siraj claims his party will teach the UDF
and LDF a lesson in this election because both fronts have deserted
Madhani. "Both the UDF and LDF sought our crucial support base in past
elections. Now, because our leader is in jail, Congress and Communist
leaders are pretending to drift away from us," he said.
However, the PDP's main agenda is not to fight against the UDF and LDF.
"The BJP is our main enemy. Our effort is to defeat the Hindutva and
fascist forces represented by the BJP," Siraj said. In the 1996 assembly
and Lok Sabha elections, all the PDP candidates had lost their deposits.
But in Ponnani, the PDP put up a good performance by polling more than
23,000 and 35,000 votes in the 1996 and 1998 Lok Sabha elections. Siraj
claims the PDP will improve its share of votes this time. But the local
people say they will reject outfits like the PDP and NDF.
"We are all traditional Muslims. But we feel some of these organisations
have not been preaching to save us. They have been practising the ideology
of hatred," said Ahmed Koya, a general stores owner in Ponnai said.
Not many believe that either the NDF or PDP will have any impact this
election. "Muslims in Manjeri and Ponnai may be poor. But slowly they are
also awakening to the threats posed by minority communalism and its
perpetrators like the NDF and PDP," says Ayed Mohammed Anakkayam, who heads
the Yukthivada Sangham, a rationalist organisation to fight religious
fundamentalists in Manjeri.
Syed Mohammad, who has written a couple of books on Muslim fundamentalism,
says the fundamentalists raised their heads after the Babri Masjid
demolition in 1992. "Now the Muslim community may not be in a position to
prevent the trend of growing communalism. But at least not many in the
community will support and vote for these organisations," he added.
"Our effort is to convince the Muslims that it is not the laws of the
Quran that is leading some leaders in the community now. The community is
being misled by external forces like the NDF. We are here to stop them,"
Syed Mohammad added.
These days the Yukthivada Sangham holds regular street corner meetings to
educate the Muslims, telling them how young people like Rasheed and Banu
are being made victims of minority communalism and religious
fundamentalism.