LAHORE: Pakistan needs to aggressively pursue jihad against India for the liberation of Kashmir, even if it results in nuclear war, said speakers at Jamaatud Dawa’s Kashmir Solidarity Rally on Saturday.
“The only solution to the Kashmir issue is jihad,” said JD chief Hafiz Saeed. This jihad should continue as long as Kashmir remains under Indian forces’ occupation, he said. If the fighting led to nuclear war between Pakistan and India, that would be “no problem”.
The Jamaatud Dawa is officially proscribed as a terrorist organisation, both by the government of Pakistan and the United Nations.
Others at the rally advocated nuclear war too. Hafiz Saifullah Mansoor, chairman of the Kashmir Action Committee, said that the government should use its nukes if needed in the war for Kashmir. Markazi Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith Lahore head Rana Nasrullah said Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were not just for deterrence and should be used against India for the independence of Kashmir.
Thousands of flag-waving JD activists attended the rally on The Mall. They marched from Nasser Bagh to Faisal Chowk, shouting ‘Allaho Akbar’ and ‘Sabilina sabilina, al jihad al jihad [We choose the path of jihad]’. Many children were also at the rally, dressed in military fatigues and brandishing toy guns and swords.
Hafiz Saeed said the government’s rhetoric was not representative of the true voice of the Pakistani people on Kashmir. The public, he said, wanted Kashmir freed from Indian rule “at any cost”. He warned Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to withdraw his forces from Kashmir or prepare for Ghazwa-e-Hind (Battle for India).
He also accused India of harbouring terrorists who had bombed the Samjhota Express train, killing many Pakistan. If India did not deal with its terrorists, he said, the JD would have to deal with them itself.
JD leader Hafiz Abdul Rehman Makki suggested that the government set up a Ministry of Jihad to lead the fight against India in Kashmir. The JD would provide one million volunteers to the ministry to fight in the jihad. He asked the army chief to ready Kalashnikovs for these volunteers. In case he did not, Hafiz Saeed would provide the weapons himself. He said the JD was ready to pay for the proposed ministry. “We know the strength of the Indian armed forces and we have prepared for jihad accordingly. We will fight till Kashmir is liberated,” he said.
Another JD leader, Hafiz Abdus Salam bin Muhammad, said Islamic injunctions instructed each Muslim country to attack at least one non-Muslim country every year. He prayed for the revival of the Taliban.
Maulana Ameer Hamza of the JD spoke about Raymond Davis, the American consulate employee arrested for the shooting of two motorcyclists near Qartaba Chowk in Lahore. He said Davis was a Blackwater agent involved in all terrorism incidents in Lahore. “If the Punjab Police can’t get any information from him, they should hand him over to me and I will make him confess within one day,” he said.
Kashmiri leader Shabbir Shah, in a telephonic address to the rally, said that Pakistanis were the only people to understand the miseries of Kashmiris. He said Pakistan was a symbol of the Islamic Ummah and hoped it would continue to support the Kashmir cause.
Kashmiri leader Ghulam Muhammad Safi said every Pakistani government had hurt the Kashmir cause but many Pakistanis had sacrificed their lives fighting for Kashmir.
PML-N MNA Naseer Bhutta, former Tehrik-i-Insaaf MNA Zaheer Abbas Khokhar, Jamaat-i-Islami Lahore leader Ameerul Azeem, JI secretary general Liaqat Baloch and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed also addressed the rally.
The PPP Punjab Human Rights Wing, Tehrik-i-Yakjehti Punjab, Al-Badr Mujahideen and JUI-F Lahore also held rallies in protest at the human rights violations in Kashmir by Indian forces, close to the Lahore Press Club. However, the rallies were overshadowed by the far bigger JD rally on The Mall.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 6th, 2011.
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