‘Incitement to anarchy’: Clerics fume over Taseer Shaheed posters

Tahaffuz Namoos-i-Risalat Mahaz spokesman says posters will be torn down during Monday rally.

LAHORE: The Tahaffuz Namoos-i-Risalat Mahaz has said posters on The Mall calling the slain governor Salmaan Taseer a martyr are a “provocation” and an “incitement to anarchy” and Tahaffuz protesters would tear them down during their rally on Monday.

A Pakistan Peoples Party official who helped put up some of the posters said those reacting angrily to the posters were the ones provoking disorder.

Several city roads including stretches of The Mall, the road from Dharampura to Saddar, and the road from Garhi Shahu to the Lahore Press Club, feature the posters hanging from electricity poles. They say: “Salmaan Taseer Shaheed Tera Khoon Rayegan Na Jaega” (Salmaan Taseer, martyr, your blood will not be wasted).

Apart from a portrait of the late governor, the posters feature images of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, as well as the person who paid for the posters, Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza. They also mention the names of PPP workers Shahida Jabin, Amir Saeed, Shabbir Babar and Taj Haider.

Tahaffuz spokesman Ziaul Haq Naqshbandi dismissed the posters as the work of “a handful of NGOs acting against Islam on the behest of western forces”. He added that their actions were “inviting anarchy” on the streets.

“If these people do not desist from calling Taseer a martyr, there will be anarchy. We will remove all such banners and streamers from The Mall during our rally on Monday,” he said. He demanded the government ban such “hate material”.

PPP Punjab general secretary Samiullah Khan said that the posters supporting Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, the self-confessed assassin of Taseer, were the ones that constituted hate material, since they glorified a murderer, and should be torn down.

“These clerics should promote tolerance rather than hatred,” he said. “They may remove the Taseer posters, but they can’t remove Taseer’s love from our hearts.”

Naqshbandi said that all Pakistani citizens supported Qadri, and cited a Facebook page where, he said, 96 per cent of people had voted in favour of Qadri’s actions. He did not mention that most of the clerics and groups voicing support for Qadri were protesting against Facebook as an “anti-Islam” website not long ago.

Idara Sirat-i-Mustaqeem Pakistan head Dr Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali said the posters would cause unrest in the country and it was up to the government to stop them. He said the government’s carelessness had resulted in Taseer’s death and by not acting against the posters it was inviting more trouble.

At a Tahaffuz conference at Aiwan-i-Iqbal last Sunday, Sunni Ittehad Council spokesman Muhammad Nawaz Kharal had said it was wrong to call Taseer a martyr or to protest against his killing.

Shahida Jabeen, one of the PPP officials responsible for the posters, said that if the posters were removed by the protesters on Monday, they would be put up again. She said she had known Taseer as a fellow prisoner in the Lahore Fort and also as an election rival, but they remained on good terms. She described him as a “torchbearer of humanity”.

Jabeen, who is senior vice president of PPP Punjab Labour Bureau, said that the party had never pursued confrontation with anyone and would not remove banners put up by anyone else. “If they remove our streamers, it will show their intolerance and it will be they who are inviting anarchy,” she said. “Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) never harmed a creature but these clerics claiming to be his followers don’t think twice about killing men and women. Pakistan is a sovereign state and every citizen has a right to live independently. Why can’t we say a single sentence in favour of our friend Salmaan Taseer?”

Jabeen said some people had gotten angry when she was putting up the posters, but she had told them that she was illiterate and was only putting them up because they featured a picture of Taseer.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2011.