Pakistan’s Imran Khan government took the risky decision of banning social media for some time on Friday, a day after proscribing Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), an outfit that has mobilised and choked the streets with a sea of protesters.

Khan’s decision to obstruct the cyber-waves followed nearly three days of rioting by the TLP, after its leader Saad Rizvi was arrested.

The radical TLP had launched the countrywide protest on Monday, after the arrest of its chief Saad Hussain Rizvi ahead of the April 20 deadline that the Islamists had set for the Imran Khan government to expel the French ambassador. TLP had sought the French envoy’s exit following the re-publication of cartoons of the Prophet in a French media outlet.

Prime Minister Khan justified his decision by pointing out that it was the responsibility of the state to protect the public from riots. The move was also meant to reimpose the writ of the state, flouted with impunity by the TLP hordes.

But there is glaring hypocrisy and double standards here. Khan’s government underwritten by the powerful military establishment, had signed an agreement with the TLP in November last, agreeing to expel the French ambassador. The TLP launched a massive protest in November last year against the cartoons but dispersed after the agreement with the government to expel the ambassador by February. The deal was extended until April 20.

Pakistan’s controversial Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid justified today’s move by saying the that the government wanted to build consensus, but the TLP men were bent on marching on to the streets. When he was asked about the agreement between the TLP and Imran Khan’s government, Rashid told the media that a resolution that did not portray Pakistan as an extremist country would be presented.

The Pakistan government says that Rizvi’s demand could not be met as any action on the French ambassador or French products could “harm Pakistan’s interests”.

The TLP has held several large-scale demonstrations on the issue of perceived “blasphemy”, a sensitive topic in Pakistan that can ignite large reservoirs of public fury. In a recent incident a religious scholar from the minority Shia community was axed to death in the central town of Jhang after being accused of blasphemy.

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.

The TLP party has a history of staging demonstrations and sit-ins to pressure the government to accept its demands. The TLP shot to fame in 2017 when it held a massive protest for three weeks in the busy Faizabad interchange near Islamabad. It lifted the lockdown of the city after the then government sacked the law minister.

According to experts, the TLP had been testing the nerves of the Pakistani 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.

In Pakistan, it is a well-known fact that the TLP was nourished by the state for its vested interests. If today it has spiralled out of control, the blame lies with those who helped it grow into the threat it is today.

Meanwhile, the French embassy in Pakistan has issued an advisory to its nationals asking them to leave Pakistan immediately following violent anti-France protests by the TLP.

It is said that in Pakistan, the real power rests with the Army. But the TLP has exploded that myth, and now we find that real power in that country rests with the religious extremist organisations patronized and supported by the Pakistani army. It is the State of Pakistan that financed and patronized thousands of madrassas which have churned out hundreds of thousands of fundamentalists-terrorists, who have been working for the destruction of peace in the country and its neighbours.