Islamist student group said to terrorize Pakistan campuses

[xchrom]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pakistan-islamist-bullies-20110722,0,2552464.story

Reporting from Lahore, Pakistan—
After philosophy students and faculty members rallied to denounce heavy-handed efforts to separate male and female students, Islamists on campus struck back: In the dead of night, witnesses say, the radicals showed up at a men's dormitory armed with wooden sticks and bicycle chains.

They burst into dorm rooms, attacking philosophy students. One was pistol-whipped and hit on the head with a brick. Gunfire rang out, although no one was injured. Police were called, but nearly a month after the attack, no arrests have been made.

Few on Punjab University's leafy campus, including top administrators, dare to challenge the Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, or the IJT, the student wing of one of Pakistan's most powerful hard-line Islamist parties.

At another Lahore campus, the principal disdainfully refers to the Islamists as "a parallel administration."

[snagglepuss]

1. Another reminder that Islam is the pinnacle of peacefulness.

[Igel]

2. Not new.

Old, in fact. Started reading some Pak newspapers in 2001. Around 9/15, to be a bit more accurate.

Fairly quickly I noticed the pattern. Every few months IJT or some related group would do something bad. Enforce the rule against having campus political rallies by having a political rally on campus and then wading in with batons to break up the illicit rally, before having a victory rally to celebrate enforcing the no-rally rule.

Attack a woman professor for making them think impure thoughts by not being properly submissive.

During the Red Mosque occupation they were especially active. They all but seized student elections. Have all but cowed the teacher's union into submission. Have obtained quiet veto authority over courses and student life and student activity funding.

This was quite a while ago, too. Their affiliation with JI is not formal but real, but they have links with a lot of other groups as well (thus providing JI with plausible deniability *and* giving JI an indirect and utterly deniable route into all sorts of other organizations).

It's hard to do much about them because for political reasons Pakistan has been radically Islamized, except for some of the more secular folk. With no good nationalism to sustain it, with no really wonderful claim to political, economic, or technological superiority over the obviously inferior ex-subjects of the great moghuls, some justification for oxygen consumption had to be found. If the question is, "Why aren't I really nothing more than worthless donkey shit? the answer is, all too often, "God has chosen me." And, when honor and dignity come into play a second time, they continue, "God has chosen me to make sure everybody else follows me ... uh, my god." The usual response from those surrounding is, "Oh my god!" which prompts frantic head nodding and whip-lashing from the zealots.

In any event, to act against IJT is to cause incredible rabble-rousing activities in mosques, leading to the kind of protest just as peaceful as we saw in Afghanistan in response to the Qur'aan burning in Florida.

Truly gentle souls and compassionate. (Ooo...anastrophe.)