Now that schools have re-opened the friction in Pakistani society between the hard-core terrorists, their sympathizers, the pacifist religious conservatives (who are hard to tell apart from the Islamist extremists,) and the general populace has moved to the universities.
Yesterday there was a large clash of students at the Sindh Medical College as students of the Punjabi Student Association (PSA,) fought with members of Islami-Jameyah-e-Talaba,(IJT,) which is the recruiting ground for Jamiat Islami members and leaders.
IJT is an Islamist organization at heart, and their self-professed goal is to create “global Islamic Society”. Since the 80’s they have steadily muscled other student organizations out of power, and demonstrated their bigotry by getting laws enacted declaring the Ahmadi sect as apostates or Takfir. [Editor: take the wikipedia entry linked above with a grain of salt, it appears to have been written by IJT.]
In the wake of Lal Masjid some students are getting tired of them. An IJT leader was murdered yesterday in his hospital bed after the fighting. Today in retaliation the PSA house was burned down, and orders are out vacate student hostels as a result. This will bear watching.
At the heart of it you have some serious, dedicated medical students wondering what worth their degree will be in the wake of Lal Masjid and the Glasgow airport bombing perpetrated by Doctors from the sub-continent.
The essentials of that paradox, Doctor “jihadis” , is summed up by this article from a July 5, 2007 article in the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat daily, where Al-Arabiya TV director ‘Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed wrote:
“Not all doctors are angels, though theirs is the most respected and most needed of professions… But still, our expectations were not so low as [to think] that some of them would stoop to the level of murder and terrorism. This is a more violent shock than anything in the past.
“The shock was not the news of planned bombings in Britain, since all corners of the world are filled with news of violence. The shock that jolted everyone was that the suspected criminals were doctors and individuals from the health sector…
“How can those who give justifications for these actions explain the fact that a doctor could plan to kill innocent people who wanted to travel with their children, or passers-by in a crowded square?
“These people are sick, even if the walls of their clinics are decorated with medical diplomas.
“I can say, sadly, that they have done more harm to their people than any of the other groups that Al-Qaeda, and the countries that fund it, have chosen in order to carry out impure missions…
“Al-Qaeda and its sponsors have not left the Muslims any area where they can be free of them. They have succeeded in presenting Islam as an evil religion that even uses doctors to kill innocent people – despite the fact that they spent years studying and training in order to save people’s lives, without regard to their religion, race, or gender.
“If someone were to try to defame the image of the Arabs and the meaning of Islam, they could not succeed as much as those who, year after year, specialized in presenting a bad example, as though to emphasize that this is not a problem of poverty or personal lack.”