Author:
Publication: The Free Press Journal
Date: February 5, 2001
AS angry mobs of religious students
set fire to a popular cinema in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar
last week, many observers saw more than just a thriving business going
up in smoke, reports AFP.
They also saw the destruction of
military ruler General Pervez Musharraf's promise to erase the negative
image of Pakistan as a country beholden to a minority of religious extremists.
It took little more than a blasphemous
letter to a local newspaper, albeit highly offensive, to spark two days
of violent riots in the conservative capital of North West Frontier Province
(NWFP).
Fanned by the leaders of Pakistan's
main fundamentalist parties, hundreds of stick-waving youths rampaged through
Peshawar anti other towns in NWFP, initially with the implicit consent
of the police.
In the process they destroyed two
businesses - the Frontier Post which published the offending letter, and
the Shama cinema, which was targeted apparently for spreading "Western
influences" in its movies.
"We pinned a lot of hope on Musharraf
when he spoke daringly in the beginning. We took him as a progressive person
but once again the government seems to be scared of religious parties,"
said women's rights activist Shehnaz Bukhari.
"Nobody in the government. can dare
check from where these religious parties are getting all the money and
arms which they are spreading all over the country."
Musharraf, who went to school in
secular Turkey and is known as a moderate, Muslim, seized power in a coup
in October 1999 with promises, among others, to wipe out corruption and
restrain fundamentalist groups.
But so far the chesty general has
retreated on several fronts in the face of opposition from the religious
lobby. Most notably he dropped plans to soften the blasphemy law, which,
carries a maximum penalty of death.
Seven staff members of the Frontier
Post, including the managing editor and the senior reporter, have been
charged under the blasphemy law in relation to the letter published on
Monday.
The regime has also committed itself
to introduce interest-free domestic banking by July, and in December it
was forced into embarrassing negotiations with a little known group of
extremists which had threatened to 'invade" Islamabad to enforce Islamic
Sharia law.
Some analysts say all this points
to Musharraf's vulnerability as the moderate head of an army with strong
conservative elements. They fear that the religious groups are looking
for any opportunity.
