Pakistan struggles to contain Red Mosque fury
telegraph.co.uk
Hardline protesters burned effigies of Gen Musharraf shouting 'Long live the martyrs'
President Pervez Musharraf's regime sought to reassure Pakistan's Muslim clergy yesterday as the authorities tried to contain public anger over the siege of the Red Mosque.
Minor protests took place in cities across the country. The regime is braced for an Islamist backlash after commandos stormed the mosque and killed about 100 people.
Protesters burned effigies of Gen Musharraf and President George W Bush, shouting "Long live the martyrs" and "Musharraf killer".
Ijaz al-Haq, the minister of religious affairs and a key figure in the failed talks that preceded the assault on the mosque, said he was negotiating with Pakistan's clergy.
"The ulema [clergy] was disappointed with the breakdown of negotiations but they themselves had very little respect for the leaders of the Red Mosque," he said.
Mr al-Haq, the son of the former military dictator Gen Zia al-Haq, courted controversy when he said Britain's decision to knight the controversial novelist, Sir Salman Rushdie, justified suicide attacks. He later denied making the statement.
But yesterday Mr al-Haq said the knighthood was "not only a provocation but a slap in the face of the Muslim world".
As for the recent attempts to detonate car bombs in Britain, he said: "These affairs … can be expected after the knighting of such people."
In a recent TV broadcast, Mr al-Haq made a tearful defence of Pakistan's madrassas, or Muslim colleges, which have been labelled havens of extremism and centres of terrorist recruitment. Yesterday he sought to distance himself from the two clerics who led the mosque extremists.
"In March I realised that the two clerics were psychological patients," he said.
The number of women and children killed in the storming of the mosque is the subject of heated conjecture. Hospitals and morgues have been closed to journalists.
Mr al-Haq said no more than 250 people were inside the mosque at the time of the attack. The regime says 100 died, but reports in the local media accuse it of covering up the true number of civilian dead. They claim hundreds of women and children have been secretly buried. |
