[This development coincides with new accusations from the Trump administration that Pakistan is giving shelter to anti-Afghan militants and “agents of chaos,” which it has denied. The emerging religious groups have no connection with Afghanistan, but they have condoned violence against Hindu-led India or to support the honor of Islam.]
By Pamela Constable
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Sheikh Yacoob, right, a
Muslim scholar from a hard-line Islamist movement,
canvasses for votes.
(Pamela Constable/The Washington Post)
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ISLAMABAD
— One candidate was from a
banned group, its leader under house arrest for past ties to armed militants.
The other was from a movement built around the cult of an assassin and the
belief that blasphemers against Islam deserve death.
Few people noticed the campaign posters
pasted in many run-down alleys that featured these obscure, bearded figures and
religious messages. Instead, the nation was waiting to see which of two
mainstream political parties would win a crucial Sept. 17 parliamentary
election in Lahore.
But when the final results were announced,
the two hard-line Muslim candidates had placed third and fourth in a race with
numerous other contenders, winning 11 percent of the vote. It was a stunning
debut for two Islamist groups that had shunned electoral politics but built
devoted public followings, inspired by figures who used violence in the name of
defending their faith.
It was also a sign that such groups, long
considered to be at the fringes of Pakistani society, are making unprecedented
inroads into the mainstream life of an impoverished, fast-growing country of
207 million. More than 90 percent of Pakistanis are Muslim, and many have felt
increasingly frustrated by a lack of opportunities and justice under multiple
leaders from the wealthy elite.
This development coincides with new
accusations from the Trump administration that Pakistan is giving shelter to
anti-Afghan militants and “agents of chaos,” which
it has denied. The emerging religious groups have no connection with
Afghanistan, but they have condoned violence against Hindu-led India or to
support the honor of Islam.
The timing is also significant because the
Lahore contest was seen as a prelude to national elections scheduled for next
year. The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N and the opposition Pakistan Justice
Movement came in first and second, respectively. But the two fringe religious
campaigns did well with just a fraction of the publicity and effort, and with
literally no prior political experience.
“The resurgence of the religious ultra-right
in politics ought to be a matter of concern for state and society,” the editors
of Dawn, Pakistan’s leading daily paper, wrote Wednesday, noting that both
candidates ran as independents at the last minute after their parties had
problems registering.
“Testing by stealth the viability of
mainstreaming militant groups is unacceptable,” they wrote. “The two radical
campaigns bode ill for next year’s general election.”
Pakistan has several Islam-based parties,
some of which are anti-West and pro-sharia but have been participating in the
democratic electoral system for years. None has ever won a significant role in
power, except from 2002 to 2008, when a coalition of religious groups governed
the conservative northwest province now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Until now, though, extreme parties mostly
have built support through mosques and religious appeal. Some have changed
their names, added front groups, embraced popular causes and carried out
charity work to soften their image. Some have benefited from selective government
tolerance and appeasement, even when accused of terrorism by Pakistani or
international officials.
The party that backed candidate Sheikh Yacoob
in the Sept. 17 race was the latest of many offshoots of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a
radical anti-India militia accused of masterminding a terrorist siege in Mumbai
in 2008. After that, it rebranded itself as Jamaat-ud-Dawa, a religious
teaching institute, and founded a separate charity to provide disaster relief.
A month ago, it established its first political party, the National Muslim
League.
But the central figure behind all these
groups remains Hafiz Saeed, 68, the fiery cleric who founded Lashkar in 1987
and has been a relentless crusader against alleged Indian abuses of Muslims in
Kashmir, a contested border region. The popularity of that cause — and of Saeed
— has made Pakistani authorities reluctant to imprison him or fully enforce
their own ban on his organizations.
“People love Hafiz Saeed, and we see him as a
hero,” Yacoob, 46, a Saudi-trained Islamic scholar, said in an interview during
his campaign, which featured the benign party symbol of a power-saving
lightbulb. He said he found “a lot of silent support” for Saeed when going
door-to-door, and he dismissed accusations of Saeed’s role in the Mumbai siege
as “all Indian propaganda. It was never proved in court.”
Other groups with extreme creeds have
appealed to Pakistanis who are not connected to Islamist militancy but who feel
a deepening attachment to Islam and view it as under attack — whether from the
West, domestic secular forces or muscular Hindu leadership in next-door India.
This is the case with the Movement in Service
to the Messenger of God, the anti-blasphemy group on the Sept. 17 ballot. It
arose in 2010, when a Christian peasant woman was sentenced to death for
blasphemy and the Punjab provincial governor, Salman Taseer, suggested that the
harsh anti-blasphemy laws needed to be revised. Mumtaz Qadri, one of Taseer’s
guards, shot him dead out of religious conviction. Last year he was hanged for
murder, but to some Pakistanis he has become a cult figure.
“Ours is a long struggle for the respect of
the prophet and for those who gave their lives for him,” said Allama Khadim
Rizvi, the movement’s founder. He said the group already is making plans to
participate in next year’s national elections. “If we win, we will serve the
people and struggle to establish Islamic rule in this country, based on Islamic
justice for all,” he said.
The Lahore results also have triggered a
renewed debate on the sensitive subject of how state authorities, especially
security and intelligence agencies, treat various banned or extremist groups.
The issue already is raising official hackles and disputes here because of the
Trump administration’s accusations that Pakistan is providing sanctuary for
anti-Afghan militant groups.
Both the anti-blasphemy and pro-Kashmir
movements have been unofficially tolerated because of their public popularity,
and Pakistan’s intelligence agency has long been reported to abet
Lashkar-e-Taiba in its various incarnations. Saeed has been repeatedly placed
under house arrest, then allowed to return to his fiery pulpit in Lahore on
Fridays. The activities of Qadri’s devotees have been watched carefully but
left alone.
Some analysts suggest it is better to allow
such groups to join the political process, assuming it will de-radicalize them.
Others say it is a dangerous mistake, because it will legitimize extreme views
and stir up sectarian fights. A new chance to test these theories will come in
just one month; since Yacoob’s candidacy did so well in Lahore, an official of
the Saeed-led group Jamaat-ud-Dawa has now registered to compete as an
independent in another parliamentary race in the northwest city of Peshawar on
Oct. 26.
“By participating in the electoral process,
these outfits are trying to spread their influence in society. This is
alarming, because it means that sectarianism and friction will increase,” said
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political analyst in Lahore. “They cannot win elections
and come to power. There is no planned effort to bring them into the
mainstream. They can only cause problems, because their agendas haven’t
changed. They just want to control more and more segments of society.”
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