Ink on the news item about sit-in of the religious chieftains on the occasion of Mumtaz Qadri’s chehlum in Islamabad had barely dried when another news item hit the headlines that more than 20 religious parties and groups of the country have declared open season on the government: they have decided to start a political campaign throughout the country against the Women Protection Law by holding public rallies and their campaign would finally converge in Islamabad through a million march. This declaration is sufficient to give sleepless nights to the federal government whose hands are already full with umpteen other pressing law and order problems. Not long ago Maulana Fazlur Rehman had said rather sardonically that while the religious forces in the country are not in a position to form a government of their own, they are fully capable of bringing down any sitting government , if they so desire, by uniting on a single platform. Is the JUI(F) chief now going to put into practice this statement of his?Isn’t he not a part of the sitting federal government?Must he and his ministers not resign from the federal cabinet before he launches any political agitation?He, obviously, cannot have the best of the both worlds, he cannot bite the hand that feeds him. One cannot have a cake and eat it too. Or is it, that men of the cloth, fully realising that the government’s days were numbered as it was in the autumn of its constitutional term, and they have fully squeezed it whatever they wanted to squeeze from the ruling party, it was about time they said good bye to it and win sympathies of the gullible masses by whipping up religious sentiments of the masses over highly sensitive issues before the advent of new elections in order to gain cheap popularity?
The clerics who assembled in Lahore the other day for deciding to give a tough time to the government over the Women Protection Law, also described Mumtaz Qadri’s hanging as a judicial murder and pleaded for the release of those clerics who ransacked the federal capital on his chehlum. They obviously want to win the sympathies of the Brelvi sect by shedding tears on the registration of criminal cases against them for destroying official and private property in Islamabad recently. One would have expected that they would condemn the hooliganism committed by the marchers to Islamabad from Rawalpindi after the chehlum of Mumtaz Qadri in which precious property was damaged by them. If they don’t see eye to eye with the government over the Women Protection Bill, the best course for them is to mount pressure on the government in parliament and by holding seminars instead of threatening to take to the streets.
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