Needed: A Befitting Response from the Pakistani Community

By Ali Hameed via e-mail

Please invite your readers attention to this letter published in the Washington Times. Such anti-Pakistan letters deserve a befitting response from the Pakistani community.

Pakistan is guilty by association

In response to my Nov. 14 Op-Ed column, “The other rogue state,” Asad Hayauddin, Press Attache of the Embassy of Pakistan, writes that my assertion about Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism is “unsubstantiated” (“Pakistan prosecutes persecutors of minorities,” Nov. 22).

Yet from Oct. 27 to Oct. 29, the Jamaat-e-Islami, one of the world’s leading terrorist organizations, held an international convention in a suburb of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. The Jamaat-e-Islami (Islamic Party) may not be on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, but it is the godfather of several groups listed as terrorist by the U.S. government.

The convention was attended by Rached Ghannouchi, who is the fugitive head of Tunisia’s terrorist organization Ennahda. Mr. Ghannouchi has been barred from entering the United States.

The convention also was addressed by Syed Salahuddin, “supreme commander” of Hizbul Mujahideen, which is but another name for one of the groups listed as terrorist by the State Department.

Hizbul Mjuahideen’s specialty is killing Hindu villagers in isolated regions of Kashmir, a policy deeply resented by the victims’ Muslim neighbors. Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami, made Mr. Salahuddin the hero of the Islamabad convention.

Mr. Ahmad has argued repeatedly for retaliation against Americans if the United States takes any action against Osama bin Laden. An Arabic book written and published by bin Laden’s partisans mentions that as early as 1980 he used to frequent Mr. Ahmad’s headquarters in Lahore, Pakistan, to make donations to the Jamaat-e-Islami.

As far as Islamist terrorism is concerned, past governments of Pakistan have substantiated it abundantly.

In 1973, the Pakistani government arrested the then head of the Jamaat-e-Islami and prepared to ban this terrorist group. An oil-rich Arab state, however, prevailed upon Islamabad not to touch the group.

The present government in Islamabad may find it difficult to prove that all previous investigations were wrong and that the jihad proclaimed by the Jamaat-e-Islami and its various regional offshoots is nothing but moral rearmament. Jamaat-e-Islami takes pride in its terrorist activities and is always keen on providing hard evidence to bolster its image as a party of hard-liners.

In Canada and the United States, its branches even ran a campaign supporting the terrorist government of Sudan, another rogue state.— Khalid Duran, Editor, TransIslam Magazine Bathesda