Lal Mosque Drama!

‘Musharraf staging Lal Masjid drama’Staff Report
Daily Times, April 10, 2007

PESHAWAR: President Pervez Musharraf is behind the Lal Masjid drama, said Awami National Party (ANP) NWFP President Bashir Ahmed Bilour on Monday while addressing a press conference at the Peshawar Press Club.

Bilour said the Lal Masjid incident was ‘a drama staged by General Musharraf’ to show the west that Talibanisation had reached even Islamabad, the federal capital, and it was necessary that he remain in uniform. He said Musharraf also wanted to divert public attention away from serious issues like the presidential reference that he had filed against the suspended chief justice of the Supreme Court. He said the chief justice issue had united all political parties that extended full support to lawyers.

Bilour said the Muthida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) and generals had once again joined hands to exploit religion. He said religious parties had distorted the true image of Islam due to their lust for power. He condemned the MMA leadership and the MMA government in NWFP for their double standards over the Lal Masjid and the chief justice issues.

He said on one hand that the government was bombing houses and religious institutions in tribal areas and that Balochistan seemed helpless against a handful of students trying to impose their own style of Sharia in the federal capital.

Bilour said the ANP was a secular and nationalist party and that it never used religion in its politics. He said if General Musharraf wanted peace and stability in the country, he must step down immediately and call a roundtable conference of all politicians, including those in exile, to solve the current political crisis. He demanded the setting up of an independent election commission to hold fair, free and transparent elections in the country.