By IANS
Karachi : Clerics and madrassa students here have said that they "will not stop" those who want to reinforce the Lal Masjid complex in Islamabad, where clashes between Pakistani security forces and militants and students killed 12 people.
Several students from the Jamia Binori madrassa staged a demonstration to protest the clash in Islamabad Tuesday and shouted anti-government slogans. Students of the Jamiat Talba Arabia seminary also protested outside the press club to protest the government operation against Lal Masjid.
Addressing the demonstrators, the Jamaat-e-Islami's (JI) Kararchi ameer, Mairajul Huda Siddiqui, criticised the government operation at Lal Masjid and demanded its immediate stoppage. He suggested that a committee of ulema should be formed and the government should negotiate with that committee.
There have been 'fears' that another clash like the one around Lal Masjid could break out in Karachi, a city with an estimated 300,000 students in over 2,000 madrassas.
The Jamia Darul Khair's principal Mufti Usman Yar Khan has said those students who wanted to take part in the Lal Masjid jihad would not be stopped.
He said this while answering a question on Lal Masjid's call for jihad and support from other madrassa students all over Pakistan.
Khan told Daily Times that Tuesday's clash between security forces and the Jamia Hafsa students was the "worst incident in the history of Pakistan".
He was of the view that both parties should resolve the issue by dialogue. He also said that the demands of the Lal Masjid people were according to sharia.
Faheem Ahmed, a student at Jamia Binoria, the training ground for those drafted into the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan and later in the Taliban and where Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden reportedly stayed in the mid-1990s, wondered how security forces would tackle seminaries and mosques around the country if they could not tackle one mosque in Islamabad.
Ahmed said: "We are ready to do anything to claim our rights and when our leaders will give the orders we will do just that."
The police cannot enter a seminary's premises. "The work of the police is to do duty outside the madrassa," Special Branch DIG Zakir Hussain told Daily Times.
The madrassas of Karachi are divided into five broad categories according to their theological points of view: Deobandi, Barailvi, Ahle-e-Hadith, Jamaat-e-Islami and Shia. Many of them are members of the Ittehad Tanzeematul Madaris-e-Deeniya Pakistan and around 1,000 of them are Deobandi.