Leadership change required to save Malalas: JUI-F chief

Maulana Fazlur Rehman asks people to switch over to religious leadership to ensure peace, security, development.

SUKKUR:

Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman said on Sunday that the religious leadership hold the key to ensuring law and order and economic stability in the country.

“Malala Yousafzai is my daughter and I strongly condemn the attack on her life and if you want to safeguard your Malalas and want her to return home safely from school, you have to reject the incumbent leadership and elect religious leadership,” he said addressing the Islam Zindabad Conference at the Airport Road.

Referring to Muttahida Quami Movement chief Altaf Hussain’s instructions about collecting data of the religious clerics, the Maulana said that a state within state has been established. “I don’t see any difference between them and the Taliban.”

He said there was no sectarian violence when the leadership of the subcontinent was in the hands of clerics. Sectarian violence, according to him, started in the 20th century, when South Asia was taken over by the leadership which had received education from Oxford and other Western institutions.

He said violence which started in 20th century, continued in the 21st century.

“The vested interests are busy stoking hatred between Shias and Sunnis, Baloch and Pakhtuns, Punjabis and Pakhtuns, Sindhis and Muhajirs. You have to switch over to Islamic leadership to get rid of these problems,” he asserted.

He said that the law and order situation had turned abysmal be it Fata, Balochistan, or Sindh and it seemed as if the purpose of creating Pakistan was “murder, extortion and kidnapping for ransom”.

“How can we improve law and order when 70% of the budget is spent on defence and there is nothing left for the common people,” the JUI-F chief asked rhetorically.

“We have failed to do something for the welfare of the poor, except blaming each other for corruption,” he said.

Addressing the government, the JUI-F leader said that the country’s economy cannot be improved by blaming each other. “We have to get rid of the IMF and depend on our own resources to become self sufficient.”

Only the JUI-F can pull the nation out of the present crisis, he claimed.

The JUI leadership claimed that this was the biggest public rally in the history of Sindh, in which thousands of JUI workers and supporters participated from all over Sindh and some parts of Balochistan.

More than 1,000 JUI volunteers were deployed on the security of the venue, while a heavy contingent of police was also deployed in and around the venue to avert any untoward incident.

Ranger personnel were also on standby to meet any emergency. Walk through gates were installed at different places, while JUI volunteers were allowing people inside the venue after a thorough body search.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 15^th, 2012.