Sikhs expelled for not paying Jaziya
habshi
up. This is going to be our fate if due to demographic aggression
Islam becomes the dominant religion in our countries.
Jaziya ie 30% tax is mandated in the Quran , so the moderate
Muslims cant oppose it
Lahore: The Taliban has expelled at least 50 Sikh families from the
Orakzai Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) after
they failed to pay 'Jazia'. The Taliban had demanded 12 million rupees
as protection money from the Sikhs, who have living in the region from
hundred of years, but they could arrange only 6.7 million rupees.
Later, it was reported that the extremists occupied houses and shops
of the Sikhs in Qasim Khel and Feroz Khel areas of the Agency and
auctioned their valuables for 0.8 million rupees, The Daily Times
reports. Earlier, the Taliban had also demolished houses belonging to
the Sikh community in the region.
For more International news
The Taliban's Orakzai Agency chief Hakeemullah Mehsud ordered the
demolition of the houses after the Sikhs failed to meet a deadline
fixed for
Romanise
Is not Shiv Sena collecting protection money from everybody living in
Mu,bai?
habshi
Sikhs , and then take over their lands and houses as has happened in
Indian Kashmir , Bangladesh etc.
The horrendous population growth in Islamic countries -'non
existent Allah will provide'- mentality is escalating poverty . Impose
a one child limit now.
excerpt telegraph.co.uk
At least the fighting and bloodshed was over, he reasoned. But he was
wrong.
First the strutting Taliban gunmen demanded 100,000 rupees (�800) a
month from his family's dried fruit business. Then when they had
drained it of cash they decided to make a bloody example of his two
young uncles who could no longer pay.
They took Aminullah and Sajjar away to the outskirts of the village
and there they beheaded them. Afterwards they threw the bodies in the
river," he said in a quiet voice.
"We have run from Swat to this new place. But now the Taliban have
nearly caught up with us again."
After leaving Swat, escaping through Buner valley, the family arrived
at a village near the town of Swabi, where they rented a house with
what was left of their savings.
But then the Taliban invaded Buner, bringing them to within 20 miles
of Mr Ali's new home.
Now the Taliban seem poised to spread like a rising tide into the
fertile farmlands that lie between them and the capital Islamabad,
only about 40 miles away.
Unlike the poor rural border areas where the Taliban have their main
strength, the region around Swabi is one of the wealthiest in
Pakistan, its rich farmlands irrigated by canals, modern roads with
petrol stations every few miles, and a standard of living of which
most can only dream.
Mr Ali's eyes filled with tears as he told his story, one which is all
too familiar to refugees fleeing the Taliban. His family has suffered
not just at their hands, but at the hands of the Pakistani security
forces tasked with hunting them down. He lost 11 of his relatives in
Swat in an army bombardment, unleashed after a bogus tip-off that
Taliban fighters were hiding in their home. Many refugees claim that
the army has killed more civilians than the Taliban when it has used
heavy firepower.
A few days later another nine members of his extended family died,
caught in crossfire while trying to escape fighting. The survivors
fled, as more than half a million have in Pakistan, to become refugees
in their own land.
Mr Ali has no doubt why his family was singled out by the Taliban. It
was not because they were held to have violated some extremist Islamic
doctrine, but because they owned a business.
Their Taliban persecutors were drawn from the ranks of the landless
and the dispossessed, a mix of young men from Swat, Bunir and more
remote valleys and a sprinkling of foreigners who are believed to be
Afghans and Uzbeks. Some Talibs want to impose the extreme religious
vision they have grown up hearing about in madrassas, the strict
religious schools where only the Koran is taught. But many simply want
to seize a once-in-a-lifetime chance to enrich themselves in the chaos
by looting and extortion. Both types seem to enjoy taking revenge on
the businessmen and landowners whom they have always resented.
The Taliban's propaganda makes much of their claim that they are
enforcing Islamic laws by taking money from the rich and giving it to
the poor. In the north of Swat, landowners have been chased out and
their cherry orchards handed over to villagers. Elsewhere, the better
off pay a "tax" that resembles a protection racket.
To families like Mr Ali's, which have suffered the brunt of the
Taliban, what they are doing looks like a vicious form of class
warfare with a bogus religious sanction.
Many of the poor feel the same. A labourer harvesting wheat for 200
rupees (�1.70) per day spat when the Taliban were mentioned. "They
just give us bullets," he said.
But for others in Pakistan's impoverished countryside, much of it run
like great, semi-feudal estates where the peasantry have always been
ground down by absentee landlords, the Taliban are seen as heroes who
are coming to relieve their suffering.
One day last month, 14 of them arrived in two vehicles at Mr Ali's new
village and took over the mosque for a day to broadcast a message of
jihad over the loudspeakers. They didn't seem to care that the area is
supposed to be under firm government control.
"I like the Taliban. When they come, peace comes," murmured a
15-year-old boy called Anwar who was working in the same teahouse
where Mr Ali related his suffering.
"The Taliban come and tell the ladies that they must not wear Western
clothes. They bring true Islam. They share money with those of us who
don't have it."
Given the alarming collapse in the Pakistan government's ability to
defend its territory from ragbag tribal fighters, he may not have to
wait much longer for the new order that he thinks the Taliban will
bring.
From the teahouse, The Sunday Telegraph risked a drive through the
lush fields of tobacco, sugar cane and wheat to Rustam, the last town
held by Pakistani government forces. A few hundred metres up the road
from the final checkpoint, at the base of an arid range of mountains,
was Buner � and the Taliban enemy.
These black-turbaned fighters have struck real fear into the
politicians of Islamabad and their American backers � who have
repeatedly warned in the last month that Pakistan faces grave danger
from Islamic militants.
That immediate prospect may have receded this weekend, with the
Pakistan Army finally galvanised into action by critical Americans
into launching Operation Black Thunder to drive the Taliban back.
But there has been no disguising that advances by a few hundred
lightly-armed fighters in the last month have humiliated a government
whose credibility looks increasingly fragile. Incredulous Pakistanis
have asked how their powerful army cannot defeat such a rabble, and
why their government seems so paralysed.
Talk of the Taliban taking over Pakistan once seemed fantastical. Now
it is genuinely frightening.
Yet it was only when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton castigated
the weak government of President Asif Zardari that any action was
taken. Many Pakistanis have drawn the conclusion that the army � much
of which is bearded and deeply religious � sympathises with their
enemy, or at least is unwilling to fight fellow Muslims in what many
regard as "America's war".
The stakes are high for Britain in this conflict. Gordon Brown, the
Prime Minister, warned on a visit to the region last week that the
mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan are a "crucible of
terrorism".
A few days after the warnings from Western allies the army finally
started using effective force against the Taliban, with jets and
artillery pounding their positions and helicopter gunships launching
strikes on Thursday.
A convoy of tanks on transporters roared up the road from Swabi to
Rustam past squalid refugee encampments of patched tents.
The tanks were protected by Frontier Corps soldiers with turbans
wrapped around their heads against the fierce sun. They had the alert
look of soldiers who were expecting trouble: bristling with guns, eyes
scouring the fields intently for signs of ambush.
In Rustam, a fly-blown trading town where the mountains reach a lush
plain which runs to the capital Islamabad, all but a handful of shops
were padlocked and shuttered.
A patrol of eight police commandos were lounging in the centre of the
town, carefully spread out so they did not present a bunched-up target
for a suicide bomber. Watching them was a small crowd of the town's
men, the ones who had stayed. They were hanging around in the main
bazaar to see whether the Army could push the Taliban back.
Some were determined to resist the holy warriors. One such was
Mohammed Ashraf, 62, a baker whose shop was still open and who had his
Kalashnikov ready in case they broke through.
"Death comes with the Taliban but I am not afraid of death. I will
fight them," he said defiantly.
Moments later there was a loud explosion as a Taliban rocket was fired
at a Pakistan Air Force helicopter clattering overhead.
The crowd of men scattered for cover but soon reformed.
"That makes about thirty rockets from them today," one man said with a
sheepish grin as he returned from his hiding place. "So far they
haven't hit anyone in the town." Rustam's population faced a choice
between fleeing, and probably losing everything they owned if the
Taliban's looters arrived, or staying and perhaps being killed if they
attempted to defend their possessions.
Car salesman Hidayat Khan, 45, a burly man with a huge moustache,
insisted with a hint of desperation that the army would stop the
Taliban from advancing.
His friends in Buner were too afraid of the Taliban to leave their
homes, he said.
"There are a lot of terrorists there and nobody is doing any work," he
said. "If they see a good car they will simply kill the owner and take
it." He scoffed at the Taliban's propaganda that it was taking from
the rich to give to the poor as part of a social revolution to promote
an Islamic state.
"They are cruel people. They have no kindness," he said.
The Taliban's advance has forced the government to take steps that
would have appeared a ludicrous overreaction just a few months ago. In
the prosperous town of Haripur, about 10 miles from Islamabad across
the Margalla Hills, Pakistani special forces have taken up defensive
positions.