Karachi: Mualana Abdul Aziz is one of Pakistan’s most senior clerics and now perhaps one of its most controversial. A judge has ordered his arrest for allegedly refusing to condemn the massacre by Taliban militants at a school in Peshawar earlier in December. Protests have erupted outside the Red Mosque in Islamabad where he teaches. Aziz is defiant.
The cleric, who is also known as ‘Mullah Burqa’, is accused of threatening the protesters outside the Red Mosque after he refused to condemn the deadly Taliban massacre in Peshawar school that killed over 140 children.
Enraged by the cleric’s blatant remark, Pakistani civil society groups have called for his execution as well.
The cleric earned himself the moniker – ‘Mullah Burqa’ – after he fled Red Mosque military raid in 2007 in a burqa. However, later he was caught and paraded through the capital on television live.
Pakistan’s issue of arrest warrant against Abdul Aziz comes as a part of the government’s stepped-up efforts to crack down on terrorism after a Taliban assault on a Peshawar school killed more than a hundred of innocent souls.
Other than intensifying its military operation Zarb-e-Azb against terrorists, Pakistani government also lifted the moratorium on capital punishment in terror cases, and has so far hanged six terror convicts after President Mamnoon Hussain turned down their mercy pleas.
Bureau Report
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