Author: Alex Rodriguez
Publication: Los Angeles Times
Date: July 22, 2011
URL: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/22/world/la-fg-pakistan-islamist-bullies-20110722
After philosophy students and faculty members
rallied to denounce heavy-handed efforts to separate male and female students,
Islamists on campus struck back: In the dead of night, witnesses say, the
radicals showed up at a men's dormitory armed with wooden sticks and bicycle
chains.
They burst into dorm rooms, attacking philosophy
students. One was pistol-whipped and hit on the head with a brick. Gunfire
rang out, although no one was injured. Police were called, but nearly a month
after the attack, no arrests have been made.
Few on Punjab University's leafy campus, including
top administrators, dare to challenge the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, or the IJT,
the student wing of one of Pakistan's most powerful hard-line Islamist parties.
At another Lahore campus, the principal disdainfully
refers to the Islamists as "a parallel administration."
The organization's clout illustrates the
deep roots of Islamist extremism in Pakistani society, an influence that extends
beyond radical religious schools and militant strongholds in the volatile
tribal belt along the Afghan border.
University administrators fear that the IJT's
influence on many campuses will lead to an increase in extremism among the
middle class, from which the next generation of Pakistan's leaders will rise.
"These people have connections with
jihadi groups, and they are taking hostage our campuses," said Sajid
Ali, chairman of Punjab University's philosophy department. "This is
a real danger for the future of our country."
Fellow students and teachers regard them
as Islamist vigilantes. In addition to trying to separate the sexes, they
order shopkeepers not to sell Coca-Cola or Pepsi because they are American
brands. When they overhear a cluster of fellow students debating topics, from
capitalism to religion, they demand that the discussion stop and threaten
violence if it continues.
The recent trouble here at Punjab University
started when a posse of IJT members slapped a male philosophy student for
talking with a female classmate. Students and faculty members organized a
protest rally, which led to the dorm attack on June 26. Shahrukh Rashid, 22,
who was among those attacked, said the police have been of little help.
"One of the police inspectors told us,
'Whatever is done is done,' " he said.
University officials say that government
leaders in Punjab, the country's wealthiest and most populous province, have
allowed the IJT to flourish rather than jeopardize their political alliances
with hard-line clerics at the helm of religious parties. Even when students,
teachers or university administrators seek criminal charges against IJT members,
the police rarely respond.
"If the government wanted to solve the
problem here, they could do it overnight," said Asif Mahmood Qureshi,
principal of the Government Islamia College, a state university in Lahore,
the provincial capital.
IJT members don't allow him access to their
dormitory, and physically force students and teachers to join their protests.
With support from a bloc of teachers sympathetic to the IJT's cause, they
have managed to control the school's teachers union, Qureshi said.
"They don't want the principal to do
anything without their consent," said Qureshi, the administrator who
referred to the organization as running a parallel administration.
At Punjab University, IJT sympathizers include
some teachers and even some of the security guards, teachers and students
say.
Ali, the chairman of the philosophy department,
said students and teachers in most of the university's academic departments
do not resist. The IJT won't allow music classes on campus, Ali said, so the
music department's teachers meet their students at a concert hall off campus.
Standing up to the IJT can trigger severe
consequences. Last year, an environmental sciences professor, as head of the
school's disciplinary committee, expelled several IJT members for unruly behavior.
A group of IJT students stormed into his office, beat him with metal rods
and smashed a flowerpot over his head. He survived the attack.
When IJT members attacked the philosophy
department dorm late last month, the students fought back, chasing the fundamentalists.
Within 15 minutes, the IJT youths had fled.
"We've never been cowed by them,"
Ali said. "So we're on an island at this university."
The IJT's campus leader, Zubair Safdar, acknowledged
that some student members went to the philosophy department's dormitory to
confront students there, and that fights broke out. The IJT members involved
later apologized to the department's students and teachers, Safdar said.
"It was a miscommunication between the
IJT students and the philosophy students," he said.