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9 January 2018

Pakistan's Dangerous Slide to Extremism

Adam WeinsteinMichael Kugelman

Last month, a sit-in led by cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi and his Tehreek-e-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah (TLY) political party brought the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to a two-week standstill. nWhile the event will eventually recede from memory, its implications will be far reaching and long lasting. Indeed, the sit-in barely mustered several thousand participants, but its impact can’t be overstated. Above all, it reflects the dangerous evolution of extremism in Pakistan. The protest, which occurred at the Faizabad interchange connecting the cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi, was motivated by a change that Pakistan’s law minister, Zahid Hamid, had made to an oath that must be uttered by newly elected parliamentarians. The change (which was quickly reversed) pertained to the part of the oath declaring Muhammad as the final prophet. TLY denounced the move as a conspiracy to undermine the status of the Prophet Muhammad, and demanded Hamid’s resignation.

One of us (Michael) was in Islamabad several days before the sit-in began, while the other (Adam) was there while the event was unfolding. Both of us found an unsettlingly stark contrast between the state of minds of the government and the protestors.

In the days leading up to the protest, the government appeared scared. Blockades were erected well before the protesters arrived, snarling traffic across the entire city. Travel anywhere around Islamabad and Rawalpindi became a nightmare. The city was effectively placed on lockdown in anticipation of a small group—numbering not more than a few thousand—that many had never heard of.

Later, once the sit-in was in place, a walk through the interchange yielded some striking sights. Young men with large sticks patrolled on-ramps as empty buses blocked street lanes. TLY members manned the main checkpoint, cheerfully frisking passersby and acting as de facto traffic police. Others dozed on an eerily empty highway.

What stood out about the sit-in at that moment was not its chaos, but its calm. Not to mention a serene yet strong sense of purpose from the protestors.

In conversations, TLY members had nothing to say about geopolitics or domestic politics. Instead, their main message—other than heaping scorn on Ahmadis, a beleaguered Muslim minority community that many hardliners denounce as apostates—was this: “We are only here to protect the dignity of the Prophet, peace be upon him.” They insisted that their event was both peaceful and necessary.

The protestors’ tranquility contrasts with the fiery speeches made by Rizvi, their leader, in recent months. In one video, Rizvi angrily laments that many Pakistanis were prevented from attending the 2016 funeral of Mumtaz Qadri—a policeman executed by the state for having executed Punjab Province Governor Salman Taseer in 2011 for daring to speak out against Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy law—while the entire country came out for beloved philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi’s funeral that same year, even though, according to Rizvi, his charity raised “16,000 illegitimate children.” Rizvi’s rhetoric is explicitly violent. He has called on abducted liberal social media activists to be killed, and he defends the extrajudicial execution of alleged blasphemers, many of whom are religious minorities falsely accused of this charge. “Death to blasphemers” is one of TLY’s rallying cries.

After a bungled attempt by police to break up the sit-in, a deal was struck. The protestors got everything they wanted—and much more too. Not only did the law minister step down, but the government agreed to take action against officials involved in the operation to clear the highway of protesters, and it agreed to release all arrested protesters. Additionally, it agreed to pick up the tab for all the property damage caused during the sit-in—even though much of it was inflicted by the protestors.

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