Dear Qazi Sahib,

While speaking on the Geo TV on July 13 you claimed that around 1,000 male and female students were murdered during the military operation in Jamia Hafsa, the Islamic school attached to the Red Mosque. You also said that the dead were being buried mercilessly in the darkness of night by the army and paramilitary forces. It seems that the Qazi is grieving for the dead in the Red Mosque. According to The News, Lahore, July 13, MMA’s Punjab party Chief, Mr. Liaqat Baloch said, “… the death toll was much higher - more than one thousand and the MMA had decided to register a murder case against General Pervez Musharraf for killing a large number of innocent men, women and children.”

This is rich. Even before the blood of the dead of the Red Mosque could dry, you and your friends in the the MMA, a constituent of the government of General Musharraf - a partner in the crime of murder of democracy in Pakistan have started proclaiming your innocence. When Nawab Bugti was killed, you and the MMA did not call the General a murderer. During the last two years the forces of the government of Pakistan have killed hundreds in Waziristan, Baluchistan and FATA and yet the MMA did not see those acts of mass killings as murders. But the killings in the Red Mosque seem to have shaken you. Or is it really so?

Why do I feel that your grief and Mr Baloch’s rhetoric are sham and empty gestures? Qazi Sahib can you please explain why you and your cohorts remained a part of a government which is headed by a “murderer’ and wait for him to kill more, particularly those who in your opinion were innocent persons. I am sure if you and the other illustrious leaders of the MMA including the great Maulana of JUI had all put a human chin around the besieged Red Mosque, the”Murdering General" would have stopped in his tracks.

May I ask you, Qazi Sahib whether you believed in the brand of Islam propagated by Abdur Rashid Ghazi and Mohammed Abdul Aziz and approved the so-called “arresting”, “detaining”, “indoctrinating” and “punishing” of ordinary civilians for their “moral lapses” by the young and the “innocent” men and women of the Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa. Pray why did you and the leaders and the members of the MMA not join the Imams of the Red Mosque. Pray why did you remain quiet all these days when the government of the “murderer Musharraf” was threatening to take action against the young and “innocent” men and women ’inspired’ by the philosophy of the Imams?

Qazi Sahib, what General Musharaf and his forces have done in the Red Mosque is bad. But in the first place do you think that those “innocent” young men and women should have been put in that situation at all? Imam Gazi and Imam Abdul Aziz are directly responsible for the safety of young people in the mosque. They were students of religion. They were training to be scholars of theology. But the two Imams indoctrinated these young people from very poor homes and turned them into a band of moral police.. Most of these young people had no places to go to. The seminaries of Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa were the only homes they knew. Their graves were dig by the Imams when hey started indoctrinating these young “innocent” recruits. Musharraf’s killers only finished the job that the Imams started.

Qazi Sahib, this is not a new situation. You have expressed such helpless grief in not so distant past over the hundred of Mujahids whom you and your good friend Maulana Fazlur Rahaman recruited from the homes of the poor in NWPF, Baluchistan and rural Punjab and sent to Afghanistan for Jihad. What did you do Qazi Sahib, when General Musharraf abandoned these boys in Afghanistan and left them to be butchered by the American soldiers? You raved and ranted! You expressed extreme grief. And, you joined the government of General Musharraf. This is the simple truth about you and the MMA.

I the name of the God the Merciful, I request you not to sully the memory of these innocent youth, men and women, who would have been alive today had they not been so horribly indoctrinated and turned into the soldiers of the Red Mosque.