Notwithstanding the profound sense of grief and rage shared by so many Pakistanis in the wake of Peshawar massacre, the response from the civil society would have been predictable. Indeed it was very conventional for the first two days; a few protests and vigils in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and some other big cities to offer prayers for the victims and express sympathy with their families, the total number of protesters not more than a few thousands in a country of over 180 million.
However, one man’s courage, ingenuity and charisma brought new vigour, passion and audacity in how civil society responded to the Peshawar incident. Jibran Nasir, 27, was visiting Islamabad for a day from Karachi. When Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric at Lal Masjid, a controversial mosque in the heart of Islamabad, refused to condemn the Peshawar attack, Jibran came up with an interesting idea. He would hold a peaceful vigil in front of the Lal Masjid, Jibran decided, protesting against the pro-Taliban cleric and demanding the government take action against the hate speech propagated by people like Maulana Abdul Aziz from the pulpits of mosques and in the media.
Jibran announced that after the vigil, he would offer prayers in the mosque, giving a symbolic gesture of reclaiming it from the extremists. Unlike many in the liberal and secular civil society, who would avoid invoking religion in such situation, Jibran’s approach was very different: symbolically reclaiming Islam from extremists by reclaiming the mosque – the platform they use to propagate their version of Islam. First, I thought it was a dangerous idea, given the history of the mosque and its occupants. But it was a great idea nonetheless: identifying the villains like the Maulana and taking our message and expression of resistance to them.
Jibran started his campaign by making a Facebook event page. Within very short time the campaign succeeded in bringing out hundreds of people in front of Lal Masjid, many of them very prominent figures from the civil society – writers, intellectuals and poets. The crowd was charged, speeches were made and slogans were being raised against Taliban and their sympathiser cleric. Clad in black Shalwar – Kameez and standing confidently in the middle of the protesters was Jibran Nasir. He stood out with his neatly trimmed short beard and intense look in his eyes. Jibran was trying to control the protesters, some of whom wanted to go inside the mosque which would have inevitably led to confrontation and violence, for Abdul Aziz’s followers had already come out and were threatening the protesters.
What Islamabad saw that evening was unity among an emboldened and angry civil society. Unlike protests of the previous two days, this one was bigger and it was getting a lot of traction in the social media that was abuzz with live updates from the protest; #ArrestAbdulAziz was trending. We had found the ‘enemy’ that lived within Islamabad, close to our homes. What we saw during the next few days was sustained protests, first in front of the mosque and then at the Aabpara Police station, putting pressure on the police to register FIR against the cleric and arrest him. While initially police resisted the pressure, they had to act in the face of public pressure.
Jibran was soon joined by some other seasoned activists like Farzana Bari, Shaan Taseer, and Syed Naeem Bokhari, among others, who formed a core group coordinating with the police and the protesters. The leaders and protesters were defiant even in the face of direct threats from Taliban and Lal Masjid clerics. The leaders were saying that they would take the protests across Pakistan and reclaim the mosques that are misused by clerics. They were determined to see Abdul Aziz behind the bars. And they did achieve that outcome partially when arrest warrants of the cleric were issued, though the police has not yet arrested him.
While it is too early to say what the civil society initiative has achieved, for it started even less than two weeks ago, I think an analysis of the strategy, tactics and messaging of the unique protests is necessary to predict the potential for its sustainability and the possibility of transforming it into a wide counter-extremism movement.
Focussing on Lal Masjid cleric was a good strategy in the short-term, giving out a strong message to Taliban apologists and sympathizers that we will come after you if you will support the terrorists; that we will take the legal recourse to apprehend you. The messaging was also inclusive and the organisers tried to avoid the impression that liberals are attacking a mosque. Use of social media was done very smartly. Video messages by Jibran on Facebook also got a lot of traction, where he spelled out the Charter of Demands in very simple but powerful language.
Having said that, fixated with Lal Masjid cleric, the leaders do not seem to have a long-term strategy, or at least they have not yet articulated one. Terrorism stems from the extremist ideology, a narrow and bigoted interpretation of Islam, which Taliban and the Lal Masjid cleric espouse. This ideology has been systematically promoted in Pakistan over the last many decades. Religion was deliberately instrumentalised for foreign policy and domestic agenda. In fact the roots of the problem go further back in our history. They originate from a theocratic nature of our state. The leaders of the protests did not try to contextualize and historicise the issue. They kept it simple: arrest Maulana Abdul Aziz, who propagates hate speech. Well, who patronised and promoted people like the maulana? Who leveraged their following for recruitment of militants for Jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir? How can you blame Maulana without mentioning his erstwhile benefactors, who still support some good Jihadis?
Characters like Maulana are not the only ones who believe in the millenarian worldview; the ideology of extremism is pervasive in our society. Mosque is but one platform, one religious institution captured by the Taliban worldview. So are our schools, where hatred is instilled in young minds, so are our universities. The new face of the civil society manifested in the leadership of Jibran Nasir and Shaan Taseer seized the initiative, making the protests successful, but how will they “reclaim mosques” and how will they take this message to the people who are not standing with them, who are on the other side of the fence, who are very different from the privileged and educated segment of society represented at the protests. Jibran and others, who want to curb extremism in our country, will have to think and think hard about these issues. Otherwise we will have lost another opportunity to reclaim the narrative, our religion and our country.
Extremism is a mindset, an approach that we need to root out from its buds, we are lost otherwise