Brotherhood stirring up unrest in Pakistan

Aya Ezz

Siraj-ul-Haq, leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, the branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in Pakistan, constitutes a major security threat in his country.

This comes against the background of his inflammatory speeches and statements which he uses to encourage violence against the government.

Huge Brotherhood March

On February 14, the Jamaat-e-Islami leader led a long march in protest against inflation.

He told the media in Gujrat, a city in the Punjab province of Pakistan, that people participating in the march suffered hunger and poverty.

The government, he said, has to step down immediately.

“Only the ruling class is happy in this country,” Siraj-ul-Haq said.

He called for the formation of a caretaker government and immediate general elections in the country.

Meanwhile, Jamaat-e-Islami had mobilized poor and needy Pakistanis in the march. The movement claimed that 23 million Pakistanis could not get by while commodity prices keep rising.

Siraj-ul-Haq said ordinary Pakistanis and farmers do not have access to flour; sugar; water, or electricity.

He also accused the ruling party in Pakistan of acquiescing to the instructions of the International Monetary Fund, which is at the end, according to him, is impoverishing Pakistan and its people.

Siraj-ul-Haq called for distancing the military from politics.

All its experiments, he said, had failed.

He led the march to Rawalpindi city, from Gujrat, before reaching Lalamusa, another city of the Punjab province.

Brotherhood only can

Siraj-ul-Haq said his movement only can rescue Pakistan and improve the living conditions of its people.

He revealed that after Lalamusa, his march would head to Kharian city and Saraj Alamgir town before reaching Jhelum city on the east bank of the Jhelum River.

Incitement

When the march stopped in Jhelum, Siraj-ul-Haq addressed the participants by saying that the ‘cruel rulers’ of Pakistan cannot reduce inflation.

“These oppressors have oppressed Pakistan, and the debt has become the size of the Himalayas,” he said.

He also incited the participants by saying: “the borrowers are asking people to economise on their consumption of tea and bread, they are getting rich, and the people will pay the gas, electricity and water bills … where from will they do this?”

He said the price of flour had surged to 160 rupees per kilo, and onions to 275 rupees per kilo.

Constant threat

This man poses a constant threat to the government in Pakistan, due to his continual inflammatory rhetoric, using elements of the group to carry out his terrorist plans.

Last August, he threatened that if his movement’s demands in Malakand District were not met, its militants would storm the homes of the governor and the prime minister.

He threatened to use violence in the presence of the provincial governor of the ruling party and other leaders.

Political analyst Mohsen Alieddine said Jamaat-e-Islami aims to stir up internal strife and chaos.

This in turn, he said, would cause escalation in Kashmir.

“This will create a favourable environment for extremist groups,” Alieddine told The Reference.

He added that this would also serve the interests of the group.

“It currently exploits the economic crisis in the country to do this,” Alieddine said.

He explained that internal conflicts and chaos caused by the Brotherhood in Pakistan would also serve terrorist groups, including the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Foothold

For his part, political science researcher, Shukri Abdul Hamid, said the leader of the Brotherhood in Pakistan tries to spread chaos to find a foothold on the political arena, following his defeat in the 2013 elections, and his withdrawal from the elections that followed when he realized that his popularity had declined significantly.

Abdul Hamid explained that Siraj-ul-Haq is constantly trying to use religion to serve his movement’s political goals and serve the issue of reconciliation in Kashmir.

This is especially true, he said, against the background of the man playing the card of terrorism in Kashmir to achieve his movement’s demands.