The Red Mosque

Lal Masjid or the Red Mosque (1965- ) is the second largest mosque in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. Its schools are among the largest madrasas in the country, teaching the Koran, jihad and death to America.

This week, on Tuesday July 10th 2007, the army stormed the mosque. After a day and a night of heavy fighting it took control, ending a week-long stand-off between the government and the mosque. But hundreds are feared dead, most of them women and children.

The leaders of the Red Mosque are on friendly terms with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda and would love to see a strict Muslim government like the Taliban gain power in Pakistan.

Till now their aims have been much more modest: to bring sharia (Muslim law) to Islamabad.

The city refused to go along with the mosque’s ideas. So the mosque took the law into its own hands and brought sharia to its bit of Islamabad – by force. They threatened music shops that sold Bollywood and dance music. They stormed a brothel and carried away some of its women to make them change their ways. They also took land that was not theirs.

This sort of thing went on for months. The government did nothing. But once Chinese workers were affected and China protested the government took action. On July 3rd the army was sent in. It cut off the mosque and its girls school from all food, water and power.

Thousands left the mosque and the school, but hundreds remained, mostly women and children. To die for their faith, some say. To keep the government from striking the mosque, say others.

The leader of the Red Mosque is Maulana Abdul Aziz. He escaped wearing a woman’s burka, which covered him from head to toe, but the army was not fooled and caught him.

Inside the mosque his younger brother, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, took over. He said he would die for his cause and so he did. He hopes that his death will cause Pakistan to rise up and overthrow President Musharraf. So far his movement has had little broad support.

The two brothers are the sons of Maulana Fazlullah. He came to Islamabad from a poor part of Punjab and founded the Red Mosque in 1965. By the 1980s some of the top people in Pakistan were going there. People assume that he and his sons have had friends in high places, especially in the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service.

In the 1980s Fazlullah used his position at the mosque to urge men to fight in Afghanistan in the holy war against Russia. His sons have followed in his footsteps, only this time the jihad is against America.

Fazlullah would be surprised at the way his son Ghazi turned out. While he was still alive Ghazi was very Western. He refused to grow a beard or study the Koran. But all that changed after Fazlullah was murdered in his own mosque.

See also:

• Red Mosque – their website. It might be unreachable.
• Pakistan
• Afghanistan
• Koran
• jihad
• America
• Osama bin Laden
• Taliban