Protests have erupted across Pakistan as supporters of the Tehreek-i-Labbaik (TLP) have come out on the streets against the arrest of party chief Allama Saad Hussain Rizvi. Major highways, intercity roads were closed as protests broke out in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi, as well as Lahore, capital Islamabad and in several other areas. Local media reported clashes between police and protesters there. The streets in Pakistan’s main cities have turned violent after Saad Rizvi, leader of the TLP, was arrested by police in Lahore on Monday.
Rizvi is demanding that the government expel the French ambassador over depictions of Prophet Muhammad published in the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo last year.
TLP leaders say that the Imran Khan’s government had “violated” an agreement signed with the party in February to stave off the threat of further protests over perceived “blasphemy” by French President Emmanuel Macron.
In November last year, the TLP had blocked most of major highways into the capital Islamabad over the issue of remarks by President Macron that had been considered Islamophobic. At the time, the government signed a deal with the party wherein it promised to consider expelling the French ambassador, banning all French goods into Pakistan and guaranteeing an amnesty to all TLP protesters arrested during those demonstrations.
The party’s new young firebrand leader, Hafiz Saad Rizvi, was appointed as his father’s successor shortly after the death of TLP founder Allama Khadim Rizvi on November 19, 2020. Saad had given a deadline to the Pakistani government to fulfil his demands, “If you have forgotten the promise, see our history…You’ve got time until Feb 17 to expel the French ambassador,” Saad warned the government.
Prime Minister Imran Khan promised the group in a new agreement that his government would take the matter of expelling the French ambassador to Pakistan and other issues before parliament to make a decision before April 20.
Last year, Charlie Hebdo had republished cartoons of the Prophet in its edition marking the start of the trial against the surviving terrorists involved in the deadly attacks on the magazine's offices in 2015. Although there's no mention of the issue in the Quran, Islamic scholars broadly agree that depictions of Muhammad should be forbidden. Many Muslims find such depictions distasteful. Last year after French President Emmanuel Macron defended the right to publish the cartoons in late October, particularly given the publication's recent history and suffering.
Macron's comments came shortly after a young Muslim beheaded a French school teacher who had shown the caricatures in a class on freedom of expression that explored the killings at Charlie Hebdo. That murder brought the issue back to the fore in France, which culminated in new draft security laws, which are currently being debated in France's parliaments.
The TLP party has a history of staging demonstrations and sit-ins to pressure the government to accept its demands.
In November 2017, followers staged a 21-day protest after a reference to the sanctity of the Prophet Muhammad was removed from the text of a government form.
According to the experts, the TLP had been testing the nerves of the Pakistan government for a long time and PM Imran Khan adopted a conventional approach of appeasement and pressure whenever TLP supporters came out onto the streets.
There are at least 247 religious groups and parties operating in Pakistan with hard-line, religiously inspired motives and ambitions. These organisations have wanted power either through entry into the corridors of authority or recognition of the influence of its religious zeal and street power on politico-ideological and policy matters.
The TLP began as a faction demanding the release of Mumtaz Qadri – a body guard who gunned down Punjab governor Salman Taseer in Islamabad in 2011. Later, Qadri cited Taseer’s calls for reforming the country’s blasphemy laws. Qadri was hanged in 2016.
Rizvi, its leader, reportedly once told journalists that if he took power in the nuclear-armed country he would “wipe France and Holland off the face of the earth”, over cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed published there.
Pakistan security forces have remained hesitant to clamp down on religious groups, fearing any heavy-handed move could spark a violent backlash similar to the insurrection spurred by a military crackdown on Islamabad’s Red Mosque in 2007.
Meanwhile, a video has gone viral on Pakistani social media, in which members of the Pakistani military are seen shouting slogans with the TLP activists. The Jawan standing with the light machine gun on an open jeep sings the slogan al-jihad-al-jihad. A crowd of thousands of fundamentalists standing below is heard shouting “Pak Army Zindabad'' slogans.
Now the question is: Will PM Imran Khan and army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa bow to the fundamentalists and expel the French Ambassador from Pakistan and sever all ties with France?
