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Pakistan: Muslim cleric at “Martyr Osama bin Laden Library” says “a majority of Pakistani people love Osama bin Laden”

May 7, 2014 12:35 pm By Robert Spencer

REDMOSQUEA majority of Pakistani people love Osama bin Laden? Then why is Pakistan still considered a reliable ally by the learned analysts in Washington? And doesn’t the Red Mosque’s bin Laden Library, as well as the popularity of the mosque honoring Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of the foe of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, give the lie to the ever-unexamined dogma that the Islam of al-Qaeda is a twisted, hijacked version of the real thing, propagated by a tiny minority of extremists? But this question, too, will remain unexamined.

“Paying Homage to Bin Laden, Mosque Re-emerges as Bastion of Militancy,” by Declan Walsh and Salman Massodmay, New York Times, May 6, 2014 (thanks to Kenneth):

LONDON — Rising from the heart of Islamabad, the Red Mosque has long been a barometer of militant Islam in Pakistan. In the 1980s it funneled fighters into the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan. In the ‘90s its leaders made an awe-struck pilgrimage to visit their hero, Osama bin Laden, at his farm outside Kandahar.

Years later, the mosque itself became a battlefield in an eight-day siege and firefight in July 2007 that pitted soldiers against militants and students holed up inside, and ended with over 100 deaths. It was a turning point for Pakistan — a sign that Islamist militancy, a long-favored strategic tool for the Pakistani military, had become a pressing threat to the government and the country’s biggest cities.

Now the Red Mosque is back in the public eye, at a crucial moment in a national debate over whether to negotiate with militants, as the government is struggling to do, or to fight them more robustly.

The chief cleric of the Red Mosque, Maulana Abdul Aziz, has inserted himself into the argument with a typically showy gesture: the inauguration of a new library named after the slain founder of Al Qaeda.

“If Pakistan truly has freedom of expression, then we should be able to express our love for our heroes,” said Mr. Aziz, a willowy, bespectacled man with a wiry gray beard, in a room with the sign “Martyr Osama bin Laden Library” on the door. “And we love Osama bin Laden.”

But the Red Mosque’s resurgence is about more than publicity stunts. As a jihadi brand, it has burnished its credentials as a citadel of Islamist revolt. And, just as they did seven years ago, the mosque’s clerics are exploiting the government’s failure to offer an alternative vision of Pakistan’s future.

“We need a strong counternarrative, something that gives purpose to the war against the Taliban,” said Pervez Hoodbhoy, a Pakistani physics professor and outspoken critic of religious fundamentalism. “But that is lacking. And while people criticize the Taliban for their tactics, many believe their hearts are in the right place because they are fighting for Islam.”

Today, Mr. Aziz delivers thunderous Friday sermons from the lavishly refurbished Red Mosque, a stone’s throw from the Parliament building. And he oversees a network of madrasas that teach 5,000 students.

Only seven years ago, the mosque was in the throes of a pitched battle against the authorities. Mr. Aziz tried to escape the siege under the cover of a burqa, a purse clutched in his gloved hands, but was captured and paraded by the intelligence services on national television, still wearing the black cloak.

The cleric’s brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, and his elderly mother died in the firefight. After the siege was over, Mr. Aziz was charged with murder, abduction, arson and terrorism. Yet within a couple of years, the mosque and Mr. Aziz were back in business.

Malik Riaz Hussain, a sympathetic property tycoon, provided a temporary home for hundreds of madrasa students and spent at least $150,000 on refurbishing the bullet-pocked mosque. He attributed his generosity to pragmatism rather than to religious conviction.

“I have huge interests in Islamabad and Rawalpindi,” the businessman, who has close ties to the military, told The New York Times in a 2010 interview. “Bad law and order is bad for my business.”

The city provided land worth millions of dollars in central Islamabad for the rebuilding of Jamia Hafsa, a women’s madrasa that was bulldozed after the 2007 siege. The madrasa, whose construction is not complete, is home to the Osama bin Laden library.

But it is the courts that have been most indulgent toward Mr. Aziz and his followers. Over the past year, judges have dismissed all of the 27 criminal charges against Mr. Aziz, who at times has used the courtroom as a pulpit to call for the imposition of Shariah law….

At the Bin Laden library, Mr. Aziz offered a qualified denunciation of violence — it was justified only in self-defense, he said — and denied accusations that his reverential gesture toward the onetime enemy of America was a publicity stunt.

“A majority of Pakistani people love Osama bin Laden,” he said.

Opinion polls do not support that assertion, but it is true that many Pakistanis — torn among Taliban violence, anger toward America and continued uncertainty about the place of Islam — harbor ambiguous feelings toward Bin Laden.

And names do matter. Away from Islamist violence, the naming of public buildings has become contested ground in the struggle between Islamists and democrats.

Islamabad’s main airport, for example, is named after Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader who was killed by militants in late 2007. A few miles away a new mosque honors Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the extremist who in 2011 gunned down Salman Taseer, the Punjab governor and crusader against the country’s harsh anti-blasphemy laws.

At Jamia Hafsa, Mr. Aziz has named a dispensary after Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman who is serving an 86-year prison term in the United States on charges of attempting to kill an American soldier and an F.B.I. official in Afghanistan….

Early this year, the government inducted Mr. Aziz into the talks with the Taliban, hoping to use him as a militant interlocutor. But in February the cleric abandoned the process. No talks are possible, he said at a news conference, before Shariah law replaces Pakistan’s Constitution.

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Filed Under: "Tiny Minority of Extremists", mosques, Pakistan Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. mark says

    May 7, 2014 at 1:00 pm

    Many Muslims harbor a secret hatred of extremist brothers. But maybe just as many harbor a secret love for the evil that they do. So-called moderate Muslims like to keep their comments on ‘the war on evil’ to a minimum. That silence always makes me suspicious.

  2. Walter Sieruk says

    May 7, 2014 at 1:46 pm

    Two things needs to be stated about what happened after the extermination of murderous fiend, Osama bin Laden. First, it’s interesting that some imams in different countries complained that bin Laden didn’t get a proper Islamic burial because he was buried at sea. Those imams have no right to complain. For bin Laden recived a better burial then his innocent victims on September 11, 2001 did for he was buried mostly intact . In contrast, some ofthe victims bodies were never found in one piece. Some ofthe victims had only a few bonds and teeth left. Furthermore, many Islamic scholars in America after 9/11 acting as apologists for Islam made the claim that bin Laden wasn’t a real Muslim and that he was just a criminal who “hijacked the peaceful religion of Islam for politics.” They may have been very disingenous in making of that claim. Nevertheless they made it. So if that claim is true then theimams have nothing to complain about sif he wasn’t really a true Muslim.

    • john spielman says

      May 7, 2014 at 4:16 pm

      Question: What were the last words Osama Bin Laden said to his wife be
      fore he went to bed that fateful night?
      Honey, before you go to bed , be sure you feed the dogs, I’ ll feed the fish.

  3. Walter Sieruk says

    May 7, 2014 at 1:59 pm

    When the heroic Navy SEAL”s were successful in the elimination of the heinous villian, Osama bin Laden, the people of Washington DC came out on the streets with great joy. To put this in another way, as for the sucessful extermination of bin Laden by the good people who are the Navy SEAL’s became known, the people of Washington DC felt great joy that bin Laden was destroyed. This type of thing is described in the Bible. For Proverbs 11:10. reads “When good people are successful ,the whole city is happy, and they shout for joy when evil people are destroyed.” [ERV]

  4. Walter Sieruk says

    May 7, 2014 at 2:19 pm

    It’s of some interest that by all accounts when Osama bin Laden heard that so many people dies on the day of September 11, 2001 all he could do was sit around and grin. It must be true in what they say being “What goes around comes around.” For when it all came back on him in tha small fort that he lived in the report was he look scared, he was no longer grinning. To may be put in a different way. The Bible teaches “A man reaps as he sows.” Galations 6:7. Bin Laden sowed violence and killing and he reaped violence and getting killed. Furthermore, Jesus taught “He who takes up the sword dies by the sword.” Matthew 26:52. So bin Laden took by the firearm so he died by the firearm. Thus he brought his own death in himself. So as for the death of that hidious Osama bin Laden it’s “Good riddence to bad rubbish.”

  5. Champ says

    May 7, 2014 at 4:24 pm

    Pakistan: Muslim cleric at “Martyr Osama bin Laden Library” says “a majority of Pakistani people love Osama bin Laden”

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    And muslims love muhammad (perdition be upon him), the most vile criminal known to man! …so this proves that they love the vilest of things.

  6. eib says

    May 7, 2014 at 7:14 pm

    Are women and non-Muslims allowed to read at the Osama Bin Laden library in the Red Mosque???

  7. dumbledoresarmy says

    May 12, 2014 at 7:51 pm

    Anybody notice something about the byline of this NYT article?

    “Declan Walsh and Salman Massodmay”.

    So many, many, many times one sees this sort of thing, nowadays, *whenever* a western media outlet runs a story emanating from the mohammedan world, *and* often whenever they run a story bearing upon the doings of the allah gang colonies within the *non-Muslim* lands.

    That is: there are two names on the byline – one, obviously non-Muslim, being the name of a non-Muslim reporter, and alongside that, the obviously MUSLIM name of one whom *I*, personally, am inclined to dub their Muslim “minder”. One wonders exactly how much independence of thought and action the non-Muslim reporter actually has…and just how much BS is fed to them – perhaps even along with subtly veiled threats, and all the other stuff mohammedans are so good at – by their “minder”?

    I have seen this business of the two names on the byline – the non-Muslim name and the Muslim name – in quite a few reports that have appeared in the Aussie press, reports on assorted mohammedan doings within our country. Why?

    It might be a bit of a project for someone: to track it, country by country (Australia, US, NZ, Canada, UK, wherever), and see just how prevalent it is, not only in “foreign” stories such as this report on something in Pakistan, but also in “domestic” stories featuring mohammedans.

    For purposes of comparison, it might be worth tracking NYT stories – and stories sourced from AFP, AP, Reuters, etc – on events within *Israel*, to find out whether the bylines also regularly feature two names, one Gentile and one Jewish. Do they feel the need to have an “Israeli/ Jewish” perspective on / adviser for every story they run about Israel, in the same way as they very obviously think they need a *Muslim* perspective on/ adviser for every story they run about Muslims/ Muslim lands?

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