Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak
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<strong>Frontline</strong> <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong><br />
clerics. After returning to <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong>, Hafiz Saeed took up a teaching<br />
job at the Department of <strong>Islam</strong>ic Studies at the Lahore University of<br />
Engineering and Technology. His two brothers lived in America. One<br />
was head of an <strong>Islam</strong>ic centre and the other pursued an academic<br />
career. Hafiz Saeed himself had never travelled to the USA or any<br />
other western country. 9<br />
In the early 1980s, Hafiz Saeed joined the mujahidin war in<br />
Afghanistan which also brought him into close contact with Abdullah<br />
Azzam and Osama bin Laden. <strong>The</strong>ir ‘dedication to jihad’ inspired<br />
him immensely. ‘Osama was a man of extraordinary qualities,’ he<br />
recalled. 10 Azzam, a Palestinian who had worked as a professor of<br />
<strong>Islam</strong>ic jurisprudence at the University of Jordan in Amman had a huge<br />
influence on Hafiz Saeed. <strong>The</strong> Palestinian scholar arrived in <strong><strong>Pak</strong>istan</strong><br />
soon after the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces and took up a<br />
teaching position at the <strong>Islam</strong>ic University of <strong>Islam</strong>abad. But his stint<br />
was short. He shifted to Peshawar and emerged as the main jihadist<br />
ideologue. <strong>With</strong> Saudi finance he recruited volunteers for the Afghan<br />
jihad from all over the Arab world. He was assassinated in a bomb<br />
attack in Peshawar in 1989.<br />
Azzam helped Hafiz Saeed establish Markaz Dawal al-Irshad<br />
(MDI), an organization for <strong>Islam</strong>ic preaching and guidance which was<br />
ideologically affiliated with Wahabi Ahle Hadith. In the tradition of<br />
the reformist Sunni movements, the MDI sought to purify society and<br />
<strong>Islam</strong> of ‘outside influences’. Its sprawling headquarters in Muridke on<br />
the outskirts of Lahore housed a university, a farm, a clothing factory<br />
and a carpentry workshop. <strong>The</strong> objective was to create a model<br />
<strong>Islam</strong>ic environment removed from any state interference. 11 In 1994,<br />
the movement set up a network of schools across the country with the<br />
objectives of promoting the Wahabi version of <strong>Islam</strong> and preparing the<br />
students for jihad. <strong>The</strong> MDI observed a strict educational philosophy<br />
that was directed towards developing a jihadist culture and to produce<br />
a reformed individual, who would be well versed not only in <strong>Islam</strong>ic<br />
moral principles, but also in science and technology. <strong>The</strong> teaching<br />
was aimed at producing an alternative model of governance and<br />
development. 12 <strong>The</strong>se schools, located in the poorer urban and rural<br />
neighbourhoods, attracted children of families who could not afford a<br />
better education. <strong>The</strong> organization encouraged its supporters to have<br />
large families, so that more volunteers were available for jihad.<br />
Hafiz Saeed founded LeT in 1990, soon after the withdrawal of<br />
Soviet forces from Afghanistan, as a military wing of the MDI to wage