11 - 17 October 2001
Issue No.555
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 11 - 17 October 2001 Issue No.555 |
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For and against
The leader of the Shiite community in Pakistan has lashed out at the Taliban but said he opposed the US military strike against Afghanistan. The man in the middle spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly
At a time when fundamentalist Islamic parties and groups in Pakistan have been staging daily rallies in support of the ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Saudi militant Osama Bin Laden, the large Shiite community has been largely silent.
El-Sayed Sajid Al-Naqawi, leader of the Islamic Shiite Ja'afaria movement
More than 25 per cent of Pakistan's 140 million people are Shiites, meaning they are not considered a minority in the real sense, all the more so because of their presence throughout the country and because of their often close relationship with the Sunni majority. Inter-marriages are not uncommon and members of the same family could belong to the two Islamic sects.
Shiite leaders, however, say they have been victims of the Taliban. Extremist fundamentalist Sunni groups who describe Shiites as infidels and who have been launching attacks against their religious leaders and followers, maintain training camps in the Afghan city of Jalalabad. The Taliban has rejected official Pakistani requests to hand them over for trial.
Attacks on Shiites have also posed a major security threat to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and his military regime. Shiite groups claim that at least 2,000 Shiites have been killed in sporadic sectarian attacks over the past 10 years.
Last week, suspected members of the Sahaba Army (Sipah Sahaba) opened fire on worshippers leaving a Shiite mosque in Karachi, killing six people, including a six-year-old child. The following day, suspected Shiite militants shot dead four people, including a child, and injured eight more outside a Sunni seminary in the same city. Shiite leaders fear that sectarian violence could increase with growing anti-government and pro-Taliban protests throughout Pakistan.
Al-Ahram Weekly interviewed El-Sayed Sajid Al-Naqawi, leader of the Islamic Shiite Ja'afaria movement.
What is your reaction to the US-British military strike against Afghanistan?
I don't think America and Britain should have attacked. The majority of victims will end up being the Afghan people themselves. Their houses, properties and airports will be destroyed. The Afghan people are deprived, oppressed and poor, and they committed no sin to warrant suffering the consequences of the US attack.
Meanwhile, America did not provide any evidence to back its claim that Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban movement are terrorists or that Osama, in particular, was behind the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington.
However, we cannot deny that there are terrorist training centres in Afghanistan. There are Pakistani terrorists who have been receiving training there for years under the Taliban's protection. These terrorists were responsible for the killing of hundreds of Shiites here in Pakistan. We repeatedly asked the Taliban to close down these camps or expel these terrorists. The government also requested the same thing several times but they did not respond. When the United States attacked Afghanistan for the first time in 1998, its missiles hit Khaled Ibn Al-Walid training camp that belonged to members of the Sipah Sahaba [the group blamed for most Shiite killings]. I also know that the leader of this group, Riad Basra, went into hiding immediately after the 11 September attacks.
What is your view, as a religious leader, concerning the call for jihad against Christians and Jews issued by Bin Laden and his followers?
I don't accept this kind of jihad. Killing innocent civilians, as we saw in the World Trade Center in New York, can never be a form of jihad. These kinds of attacks cause damage to Islam and its reputation. Terrorists here in Pakistan have been killing Shiites for years. But I strongly resisted calls for revenge. We cannot enter a mosque or a market and start spraying people with bullets, then describe this act as jihad. This is not acceptable in Islamic law or with regard to any humanitarian values. Killing innocent civilians cannot be justified even if America has been attacking civilians in Iraq. We strongly condemn what America does in Iraq but we also condemn what happened in New York.
How then do you think America should react to the 11 September attacks?
America should think of the roots and reasons behind what it describes as terrorism. If we assume that the man who smashed the plane into the World Trade Center was a Muslim, then his heart must have been filled with fire. Why did he have such immense anger and hatred in his heart? The main reason behind this is the killing of innocent Palestinian civilians by the real terrorists in Israel. If this killing continues, so will what America describes as terrorism. Such terrorism will not stop by killing Osama Bin Laden and his associates.
Many Muslim scholars have denounced the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam, considering it extreme. What is your view?
We should avoid acts that distort Islam's image. As Muslims, we are also obliged to practise ijtihad (interpretative judgment) and follow our holy book, the Qur'an, and the Sunna (acts and sayings of the Prophet Mohamed) in a way that suits our needs and problems in the 21st century. Taliban rulers do not practise this kind of ijtihad. Thus, they took several measures that could only do harm to Islam's image. Women, for example, are fully entitled to education and work in both public and government offices. Destroying the Buddhist statues in Pamiyan was also useless and meaningless. Nobody used to worship these statues, and they were only a reminder of a certain historic era. Interfering in peoples' personal lives and forcing them, for example, to grow a beard and punish them if they didn't, is also an extreme practice that has nothing to do with Islam.
But it seems the Taliban are popular in Pakistan. Do you think pro-Taliban supporters here could cause serious problems?
The majority in Pakistan does not support the Taliban. There might be between just 10 and 15 per cent of the population which supports them. These groups are able to cause big problems, though, because of their strength and infiltration into government and army ranks. Successive governments in Pakistan have supported these extremist groups over the past three decades. Now these same groups are posing a strong threat to the government. What scares me personally is that terror attacks against Shiites could increase, with the state weakening and concentrating its effort on confronting pro- Taliban protests. The problem could be exacerbated if the US-British attacks lead to the killing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not just a neighbour; there are also many tribal and family links between the two countries that go centuries back.
Do you believe that Pakistani governments provided support to the Taliban?
Of course, successive Pakistani governments used to support the Taliban, including President Musharraf. However, after the 11 September attacks, he decided to break ties with them, and he now supports a broad-based government in Afghanistan in which the Pakistani government would have a major say politically. The real problem is in the army. The army is the only disciplined institution in Pakistan. We have no real government or a parliament or democratic institutions. The army is the ruler of Pakistan. Of course, there are elements in the army that support the Taliban and those could cause problems. But the army seems united so far behind Musharraf's decision to cooperate with the United States.
Why do you think Sunni extremist groups have been attacking Shiites in Pakistan?
The origin of the problem dates back to former military ruler Zia ul-Haq. At that time, Shiites in the early 1980s staged major demonstrations demanding some of their rights. Zia viewed this move as a challenge to his power and backed small extremist groups in attacks on Shiite religious leaders.
Meanwhile, Shiites here are paying the price for the conflict between the Taliban and Iran. Iran supports the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance fighting against it. In return, the Taliban provide support for Pakistani terrorists killing Shiites here and provide them with military training. The real problem that the Taliban overlook is that it is our fate that we are Shiites like the majority in Iran. But this does not mean we take our orders from Tehran or that we have anything to do with Iran's policies.
Besides this terrorism problem, we fully enjoy our freedom of worship in Pakistan, and we have no problems at all with the Sunni majority. In one family, you could find two brothers: one Sunni and the other Shiite. The Ja'afaria movement also has good ties with all major political parties here. We have our representatives in parliament and we took part in several coalition parliaments in the past. Only a minority of extremists causes us a problem because of their terrorism.
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