‘Good looking Jamaat-e-Islami’

The Jamaat-e-Isla­mi (JI) has sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence in Pakistan’s domes­tic pol­i­tics due to its strong rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media, its abil­i­ty to show street pow­er and its con­nec­tion with both the secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment and mil­i­tant out­fits. How­ev­er, as far as its vote bank is con­cerned, it hasn’t done too well. The main rea­son for this could be that the JI car­ries the tag of Deoban­di Islam, which most Pak­ista­nis do not fol­low. Anoth­er rea­son is that although the gen­er­al pub­lic is very nar­row-mind­ed and con­ser­v­a­tive in its reli­gious out­look, it is very lib­er­al and sec­u­lar when it comes to per­son­al lifestyle. It wish­es death on ‘kafir’ (infi­del) India; but will not stop watch­ing Indi­an movies. It likes to hate the USA with a pas­sion; but craves an Amer­i­can­ized way of liv­ing.

Both Pakistan’s estab­lish­ment and the JI have felt the need to have a front orga­ni­za­tion with a mod­er­ate sem­blance for quite some time now – one which has the poten­tial to win pop­u­lar­i­ty in the mass­es. This desire was reflect­ed in the JI’s cre­ation of Pas­ban in the ear­ly 1990s. Its name was changed to Shabab-e-Mil­li when Pas­ban was banned in 1995 after its involve­ment in vio­lence. Appar­ent­ly, these were inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tions; yet it was too obvi­ous that they were JI pro­tégés. The pub­lic pos­tures of these orga­ni­za­tions leaned more towards nation­al­ism than Islam. To arouse enthu­si­asm, patri­ot­ic songs were played with music in Pasban’s ral­lies, which was against the tra­di­tion­al JI cul­ture. The Crick­et World Cup vic­to­ry of 1992 was cel­e­brat­ed by Pas­ban all over Pak­istan by hold­ing Junaid Jamshaid’s ‘Pep­si-Pak­istan’ con­certs. Pas­ban was pub­li­cised in all pos­si­ble ways. It, how­ev­er, lacked a leader pos­sess­ing the mag­net­ism nec­es­sary to attract the pub­lic. Both the JI and Pakistan’s deep state were look­ing for a charis­mat­ic char­ac­ter like Jin­nah and ZA Bhut­to – some­one who had the glitz of West­ern cul­ture but a mind­set of an Islamist. One senior JI mem­ber who had pre­vi­ous­ly been the naz­im of the Isla­mi Jami­at Tal­a­ba (IJT) at Pun­jab Uni­ver­si­ty, Hafeez Ullah Niazi found the right per­son for this job. Niazi hap­pened to be the broth­er-in-law of the crick­et­ing super star, male sex sym­bol and Casano­va of inter­na­tion­al repute, Imran Khan.

JI’s ear­ly nur­tur­ing of Imran

It was easy for Hafeez Ullah to preach Maudaudi’s Islam­ic ide­ol­o­gy to Imran, who, after enjoy­ing the best of this world was per­haps seek­ing the same for the next world.

Imran retired from crick­et first in 1987, after his team’s defeat in the World Cup semi-final at Lahore, but reversed his deci­sion at the insis­tence of Gen­er­al Zia ul Haq. After win­ning the 1992 World Cup as cap­tain, he attained the sta­tus of a nation­al hero, after which he final­ly hung up his crick­et shoes. A series of arti­cles writ­ten by Imran from 1987 to 1992, in which he crit­i­cised west­ern cul­ture and the British Empire and empha­sised the pro­mo­tion of one’s own Islam­ic-nation­al­is­tic iden­ti­ty, reflect­ed the JI’s brain­wash­ing. The JI had got hold of Imran in the ear­ly stages of his rever­sion to his native cul­ture.

Imran, who wished to remain in the pub­lic eye even after retir­ing from crick­et, start­ed build­ing a non-prof­it can­cer hos­pi­tal in Lahore. Pas­ban helped him in orga­niz­ing the fundrais­ing cam­paign for this pur­pose. Here, anoth­er dou­ble stan­dard of the JI was exposed. Since the mid 1980s, Pak­istani artists had been per­form­ing in shows in India. In return, event orga­niz­ers in Pak­istan tried to invite Indi­an artists to Pak­istan. How­ev­er, all such events had to be can­celled due to vocif­er­ous threats by Pas­ban. But in 1995 when Imran invit­ed Indi­an movie stars such as Rekha, Vin­od Khan­na, Sonu Walia and Kabir Bedi to per­form in Lahore for the fundrais­ing of his hos­pi­tal, Pas­ban did not object even a bit.

Sim­i­lar­ly, JI has always slan­dered its rivals by find­ing faults in their per­son­al lives. For instance, in the 1970s it tar­get­ed the ‘un-Islam­ic life style’ of ZA Bhut­to. In pub­lic speech­es and in slo­gans, it called Bhut­to “shara­bi” and “za’ni” (alco­holic and adul­ter­er). How­ev­er, Imran’s col­or­ful life nev­er both­ered the JI. In the case of Bhut­to, the JI went as far as to allege that his moth­er was a Hin­du. When in 1994 Imran, the crit­ic of West­ern cul­ture and British aris­toc­ra­cy, mar­ried a woman from a British Jew­ish elit­ist back­ground, JI did not even raise an eye­brow.

Mak­ing of PTI under JI’s fos­ter­ing

Imran’s links with the JI are too obvi­ous. Ini­tial­ly JI’s Qazi deployed its expert cam­paign design­ers along with two of Pasban’s found­ing mem­bers — Shab­bir Sial and Mah­mood-ur-Rasheed (elect­ed as mem­ber of the Pun­jab Assem­bly on a JI/IJI tick­et in 1988) — to help Imran organ­ise his cam­paign for the 1997 elec­tion. The JI itself boy­cotted that elec­tion. Sial lat­er served PTI as its pres­i­dent in Lahore, a posi­tion now held by Rasheed.

Ejaz Chaudhry, PTI’s vice pres­i­dent and incharge youth affairs, con­sid­ered to be Imran’s clos­est advis­er, is ex-JI and son-in-law of Maududi’s imme­di­ate JI suc­ces­sor, Mian Tufail Muham­mad. Anoth­er VP of PTI, Abdul Hafeez Khan, is an ex-IJT naz­im of Pun­jab Uni­ver­si­ty.

Since its incep­tion, PTI’s gov­ern­ing body has been pop­u­lat­ed by ex-mem­bers or sym­pa­thiz­ers of the JI. Usu­al­ly, two par­ties devel­op a rival­ry if mem­bers of one are snatched by the oth­er. But in this case, JI mem­bers joined the PTI on the behest of JI, under an orches­trat­ed infil­tra­tion of an up and com­ing par­ty. Not only was Imran quick to for­give the IJT when its work­ers man­han­dled him at Pun­jab Uni­ver­si­ty in 2007, but the per­son he appoint­ed as chief of PTI’s stu­dent wing (ISF), Ehsan Niazi, is also ex-IJT. Stu­dents run­ning from the IJT because of its hood­lu­mism and join­ing the ISF will again find them­selves under an ex-IJT man.

As elec­tions draw near, the grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of the PTI will attract oppor­tunists from all polit­i­cal back­grounds. How­ev­er, PTI will most like­ly retain its core group that has JI’s ide­ol­o­gy deep-seat­ed in its heart and mind.

PTI con­nec­tions with Jihadists

Dur­ing 1995–1996, just before the launch of PTI, Imran had numer­ous meet­ings with Gen­er­al Hamid Gul. News­pa­pers of the time were full of spec­u­la­tions that Imran and Gul were joint­ly launch­ing a par­ty to pro­vide an alter­na­tive lead­er­ship to those fed up with bipar­ti­san pol­i­tics. This did not hap­pen, prob­a­bly to avoid the expo­sure of Imran’s close links with for­mer mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment who were still close to Jiha­di out­fits.

How­ev­er, Lt. Gen­er­al Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, who had served as sec­re­tary infor­ma­tion dur­ing Zia-ul-Haq’s regime and was said to have close links with the secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment, was one of the found­ing mem­bers of PTI and went on to become its sec­re­tary gen­er­al. It is also worth not­ing that in 1997, soon after the launch of PTI, Imran toured Chech­nya where, for one week, he was the guest of the pres­i­dent of Chech­nya, Mujahideen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov, who lat­er insti­tut­ed full sharia law in Chech­nya.

Fur­ther­more, PTI’s soft, apolo­getic stance on the Tal­iban issue is a well-known fact. Imran has been oppos­ing mil­i­tary oper­a­tions against the Tal­iban and try­ing to jus­ti­fy the move­ment as a “Push­toon nation­al­ist resis­tance against occu­pa­tion forces”. He has been one voice with Islamist par­ties on the issues of war on ter­ror, drone attacks, Aafia Sid­diqui, Ray­mod Davis etc.

Imran’s right hand man, Ejaz Chaudhry, has close links with fanat­ic sec­tar­i­an orga­ni­za­tions like Sipah-e-Saha­ba Pak­istan. Chaudhry active­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ral­lies of anoth­er extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion, Aal­mi Majlis Tahaf­fuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat, noto­ri­ous for its extreme hatred and incite­ment to vio­lence against Ahmadis. Chaudhry took the podi­um at a ral­ly held by them in favour of Mum­taz Qadri (the self-con­fessed killer of Salmaan Taseer) where he declared that he spoke for Imran Khan when he said that the blas­phe­my law is a god­ly law that no one should dare touch. More­over, his dis­course on the alleged involve­ment of the CIA and RAW in the PNS Mehran attack is iden­ti­cal to TTP-SSP-LeJ-JI rhetoric.

When in 2007 Imran was arrest­ed protest­ing against the dec­la­ra­tion of emer­gency by Gen­er­al Mushar­raf and detained in D.I. Khan Jail, the then TTP Pres­i­dent Bait­ul­lah Mehsud threat­ened to blow up the jail if Imran was not released. His state­ment appeared in all lead­ing news­pa­pers and Imran was released with­in 24 hours. Lat­er on Octo­ber 02, 2008 when Mehsud made a pub­lic appear­ance in South Waziris­tan, local pres­i­dent of PTI Toofan Bur­ki gar­land­ed him and put a tra­di­tion­al pagri (tur­ban) upon his head.

Anoth­er PTI mem­ber, Shireen Mazari (also known as ‘Lady Tal­iban’), who is its spokesper­son and advis­er on for­eign affairs, is known for her advo­ca­cy of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries in the media. She writes a reg­u­lar col­umn for the web­site run by Ahmed Quraishi (who gives Zaid Hamid a run for his mon­ey in pro­mot­ing base­less the­o­ries to blame atroc­i­ties and actions of the Tal­iban on oth­ers). Mazari is said to have close con­nec­tions with the secu­ri­ty estab­lish­ment. She is a reg­u­lar lec­tur­er at the Nation­al Defense Col­lege where her spe­cial­ized sub­ject is Islam­ic ide­ol­o­gy. If the cur­ricu­lum of the ‘edu­ca­tion­al rev­o­lu­tion’ that Imran Khan wants to bring in Pak­istan is going to be designed by likes of Mazari, then our schools will pro­duce more Tal­iban than even madras­sas do.

Will PTI deliv­er?

In his recent ral­ly in Lahore, Imran Khan said noth­ing new but pushed the sin­gle-point the­sis of the estab­lish­ment in which all the prob­lems of the coun­try are attrib­uted to the cor­rup­tion of the politi­cians. This is the agit­prop that the deep state of Pak­istan has been ampli­fy­ing through the media since the restora­tion of the demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem in 1988 and on the pre­text of which many elect­ed gov­ern­ments were dis­missed halfway through their man­dat­ed peri­od. Imran has strength­ened the belief of the com­mon man that cor­rup­tion real­ly is the actu­al cause of all his mis­eries, which is only a small part of the truth. The hyper­bole of this over­state­ment has always been aimed at play­ing down and con­ceal­ing the root cause of the country’s actu­al dis­tress, which in fact is the jin­go­ism and mar­tial plans of our estab­lish­ment. The estab­lish­ment is eat­ing up our country’s lim­it­ed resources and, along with the big­ot­ed mul­lahs, is the major obsta­cle to our nation’s progress. Imran Khan rep­re­sents both these ele­ments.

This dis­parate nation is once again seek­ing a rem­e­dy for its prob­lems from the source of the prob­lem itself. If Imran Khan now has the cure of the prob­lems of the coun­try, then the JI had it all along. In that case, the peo­ple of Pak­istan were fools for not elect­ing the JI a long time ago.