Fazlur Rehman speech: ‘People pushed to extremism by West’

Rehman says Muslims had been subjected to the worst atrocities in the name of the ‘War on Terror’.

SUKKUR: Chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) Maulana Fazlur Rehman said on Sunday that religious people were being ‘pushed’ towards extremism by ‘western forces’ and being provided with guns by them as well, adding that JUI would foil this ‘conspiracy’. Addressing the Dastar-e-Fazilat Conference in Sukkur, he said Muslims had been subjected to the worst atrocities in the name of the ‘War on Terror’. He highlighted that the USSR was defeated in Afghanistan two decades ago and now the US was facing the same ‘humiliating defeat’. He also announced that the JUI would organise an anti-US protest in Larkani on December 22. Rehman demanded that the government make public secrets deals it had allegedly entered into with the US. Declaring the suspension of Nato supplies and the evacuation of Shamsi airbase a positive move, he added however that these steps were only ‘temporary’.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 12^th, 2011.