Return of Qadri

Few would have taken notice of ‘Sheikhul Islam’ Allama Tahirul Qadri’s public meeting at the Minar-i-Pakistan had he not managed to put on as impressive a show as he did. It was a mammoth gathering. Well informed observers, however, point out that those who came to hear him speak were not the usual political types or curious onlookers who attend rallies addressed by popular leaders.

Like the evangelical preachers in the US, he has a large following as a spiritual leader, and also presides over an elaborate school network financed by donations from individuals as well as certain Western governments. That is where the audiences came from, and is the reason why the agenda he laid out before them failed to elicit an enthusiastic response normally on display at such gatherings.

Qadri is an ambitious man and an enterprising one, too. He rose from humble beginnings as an Imam in a Karachi mosque and later in the Sharif family’s mosque in Lahore to establish, with their support (land and other largesse) his NGO, Minhajul Quran, moving on to launch his own political party, Pakistan Awami Tehrik, twice fighting elections for a National Assembly seat, losing once and winning the second time in 2002 elections with the blessings of the then military dictator General Pervez Musharraf. Realising that his real calling lay elsewhere, he resigned two years later to devote his time and energy to the more profitable work at Minhajul Quran, which brought him a lot of financial aid from devotees as well as Western governments eager to help the relatively tolerant Bralvi clerics and their outfits with a view to countering the onslaught of radical Salafists. At least in one case, they were to get badly burned. As the previous US Ambassador Cameron Munter was to later acknowledge he had given money to a certain Bralvi organisation only to find it showering praises on Governor Salmaan Taseer’s assassin.

Qadri, on the other hand, consistently projected a liberal image, endearing himself to interested outsiders acquiring along the way a television channel for sermonising, picking also a habit of delivering sermons in English to Pakistani audience (he digressed into English during his Minar-i-Pakistan speech as well for the benefit of his foreign friends). When the debate over the controversial blasphemy laws became hot, he gave a fatwa against suicide bombings, writing a whole book on the subject, which earned him world-wide attention in a special CNN interview. Soon afterwards, he fled Pakistan to take refuge in Canada, of which he is a citizen, and went on living a comfortable life, going on lecture tours in his adopted country as well as in Europe, and occasionally addressing, via phone, public meetings back in Pakistan. Suddenly something else caught his attention, prompting him to return to Pakistan raising a curious slogan: Save state, not politics. His mission: to try and postpone the upcoming national elections.

An estimated over Rs 100 million is believed to have gone into the Minar-i-Pakistan event and about that much on its advertisement campaign. He denied he had come to seek postponement of the elections, and yet quoted copiously from the Constitution to stake out a bizarre case that elections must not be held until and unless constitutional provisions that promised better quality of life for all citizens and the ones pertaining to qualifications/disqualifications of candidates were implemented (none of this of course occurred to him at the time he participated in two previous elections.) He has given the government less than two weeks to meet his demands or get ready to face a ‘two million march’, demanding also – contrary to a constitutional provision that a caretaker set-up be chosen through mutual consultation between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition – that it must include the army and the judiciary.

Not only his demands are ridiculous, the ‘Sheikhul Islam’ possesses rather dubious credentials. In this age of information revolution, he has been saying one thing in Pakistan and another to Western audiences thinking no one will notice the contradictions. Internet is teeming with videos in which he is seen taking divergent positions before Pakistani and foreign audiences on the controversial blasphemy laws, telling different groups what they wanted to hear. Then there is a particularly irreverent video. Judged by Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution dealing with Parliament members’ qualifications and disqualifications he wants implemented, Qadri can’t even stand as a candidate let alone set conditions for others to observe. According to Article 62, among other things, a person can qualify to be a member of parliament if “he is sagacious, righteous, non-profligate, honest and ameen”; and under Article 63 a person is liable for disqualification if “he ceases to be a citizen of Pakistan or acquires the citizenship of a foreign state.”

Lecturing religious gatherings is different from challenging democracy stakeholders. Nothing will happen if he leads his two million march to Islamabad. The example of the march for the restoration of judiciary does not apply. That was a broad-based democratic movement for a lofty cause while his campaign is aimed at undermining the democratic process. There is more though to his effort than meets the eye. The nagging question is that who may be behind the effort? Is it the PPP which wants to drag on for some more time? Possible. But then if the ‘Sheikhul Islam’s’ other demand of putting in place a government of technocrats instead of a caretaker set-up is serious, that suits none of the major player: the PPP, the PML-N or the PTI. Is it because the Western countries are wary of seeing a less reliable post-elections partner as they conclude their Afghan adventure? Maybe. Or is it the usual suspect getting impatient to wrest back control? That is more likely. We will get the answer in due course. For now, the ever ambitious ‘Sheikhul Islam’ seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. Various stakeholders in the democratic process – major political parties, the media, judiciary and civil society – will not allow anyone to harm the fruits of their labour. Already the unmasking of his real face has begun.