The government of U-turns has lifted the ban on the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) in line with the “secret agreement” it had signed with the group on October 31, despite its march from Lahore to Islamabad punctuated with sporadic violence. It may not be wrong to assume that the TLP has brought the PTI government to its knees.
Proving the members of Imran Khan Cabinet including National Security Advisor Moeed Yusuf wrong, who had claimed that the government would not tolerate breaking of law by the TLP miscreants, the top businessmen and religious leaders helped draw yet another secret agreement.
The government has refused to disclose the details of the arrangement, but it is clear that a politically expensive agreement has been inked as a result of which the TLP will get more than a pound of flesh for calling off its march. Every time the TLP has undertaken such a protest march, it has tortured and killed policemen without being held accountable for these crimes.
It was the sixth time the religious group had taken to the streets to press for the acceptance of their demands. Each time, they had successfully managed to block the twin cities of Islamabad and Rawalpindi causing incalculable sufferings to the people and exposing the inability of the government of the time to combat the threat.
Needless to say, no private group is more powerful than the state. Yet, when it comes to the TLP the state has repeatedly failed to establish its writ. What encourages it to act with impunity is a question that begs a credible answer.
The Islam that is contained in the Holy Quran and that we have learned from the life of the Holy Prophet (SAWW), which Prime Minister Imran Khan is passionately dedicated to promoting, is not the religion manipulated by such organisations and their operators.
Their brand of violence and hate is their own coinage, their own fabrication which has nothing to do with the religion of the holy book. By allowing these hate-mongers to promote a religion that is a denial of the ingrained values and precepts of real Islam, we are all rendered guilty.
Time really has come to determine which kind of Pakistan we want to take into the future. There was a Pakistan that the Quaid-e-Azam outlined on August 11 from the floor of the first constituent assembly which was a liberal, enlightened and tolerant country where people would have lived in harmony among themselves.
The government’s mishandling of the crisis has once again brought into sharp focus the wide gap between what this government says and what it ends up doing. The TLP issue cannot be ignored. The protestors may pack up and go home but they do so by extracting a steep cost from the government.
We can understand the government’s eagerness to avoid bloodshed in the country. But an excessively militarised approach which invokes acts of extreme violence has to be defanged.
