A personal memoir...of the two brothers
Ali Asim
...of the two brothers
I first met Maulana Abdul Aziz in 1999, much before I met his younger brother, at the
Jamia Faridia in Islamabad's posh neighbourhood -- Sector E -- where I had gone to interview a maulvi for a European TV channel.
The gunman at the gate of the madrasa stopped me by saying that outsiders were not allowed to go in. I requested him to put me through to someone responsible in the madrasa. But, he flatly refused. What was more offensive was the way he pointed towards my European colleagues and remarked, 'These infidels will not be allowed to enter the sacred building of the madrasa.'
I refused to leave without doing the interview.
In the meantime, I saw a saintly man coming out of the madrasa building. Every one around stood still and silent in a very respectful manner as the man approached them.
The mild-mannered maulana asked me to follow him to the library when I told him why I had come here.
'You can ask me any question about Islam. I cannot answer political questions. I am not a political man,' he spoke thus.
'Tell him it is unIslamic to take photographs!' he pointed towards the cameraman. There
was no way that he could be persuaded. The maulana, however, allowed us to take snaps of the building and the empty library. He was no help to a journalist under performance stress. I rarely met him afterwards.
His younger brother, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi turned out to be quite a pleasant contrast. I first met him in October 2001 at a small rally outside the Lal Masjid. He was ranting about the consequences of a US-led assault on the Taliban. He seemed to be the most radical cleric I had ever come across. I decided to shoot a few questions after he was done. The maulana had no issues with the interview. Sensing that I was working for the foreign media, he asked me to ask the questions in English. For the next few minutes, he spoke only in English, without faulting with words. 'If Pakistan sided with the Americans, there will be a civil war in Pakistan very soon,' he said.
'Will you fight against the Pakistan Army?' I asked.
'Why not?'
No one had dared to use such a language in the media; at least, not to my knowledge.
Later, I got to meet with and interview the maulana quite often. Rashid Ghazi seemed to understand the media and its requirements very well, and knew that journalists were a 'necessary evil'. We became rather frank overtime.
Sometime in the year 2004, I reminded the maulana about his first interview with me and told him that he had been proved wrong. He laughed and said, 'You think that Waziristan is not part of Pakistan?'
I said sheepishly, 'But, it's not happening in Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi.'
He again laughed and said, 'It will. Just wait!
'Islamic revolution is the fate of Pakistan and the ummah!' he declared.
He was a rather 'candid' jihadist and never minced his words. When I asked him to shoot a documentary film inside the Jamia Faridia, he was game for it and escorted us inside the madrasa. He did not stop us from taking any shots. I remember, when I spotted a poster of Harkatul Ansar in a classroom and asked whether the madrasa belonged to the terrorist organisation, he laughed and said, 'No, but the students are allowed to be a part of any religious party such as the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan, or Harkatul Ansar.'
'And al-Qaeda?'
With familiar ease, he replied, 'Why not? They all work for the same goal.'
The maulana denied that he himself had ever been a part of al-Qaeda, but said that his deceased father had been a close associate of Osama bin Laden.
-- Arif Jamal
Play free games, earn tickets, get cool prizes! Join Live Search Club. Join Live Search Club!