Speakers at Hamdard Shura urge for unity against terrorism

December 11, 2009
By Irfan Aligi

KARACHI: Speakers at the meeting of Shura Hamdard Karachi chapter urged the people of Pakistan to keep unity among their ranks and an eye on suspicious persons and their activities to counter the ongoing terrorism in the country, which is a great threat to the existence of Pakistan. The meeting was held on Thursday at a local hotel on the theme “Increasing terrorism in Pakistan”.

Justice (retd) Haziquel Khairi had presided the meeting. Shura Hamdard Pakistan and Hamdard Foundation Pakistan President Mrs Sadia Rashid was also present.

Speaking on the occasion, former ambassador of Pakistan Mahdi Masud said if the vicious circle of terror had not been finished in Pakistan there would be left no time for the progress of the country. Prevailing terrorism was a heinous design to extremely weaken Pakistan so that it could not maintain its freedom.

“We should not take it for granted and shun our confused thinking on this matter and be united to foil this nefarious design”.

Justice (retd) Haziquel Khairi said that coming American troops in Afghanistan be made responsible that no terrorist from Afghanistan should be able to enter into Pakistan otherwise our difficulties would be doubled.

Commodore (retd) Sadid Anwar Malik was of the view that our secret agencies were involved in corruption and was not able to comprehend the terrorists before the suicidal attacks.
Khalid Ikram ullah Khan said that it was on record Al-Qaida had given a statement in 2007 that Pakistan was enemy No 1 and nobody took notice of it.

He said that the so-celled religious scholars and politicians, who opposed the creation of Pakistan, were now out to give support to Taliban in order to weaken Pakistan.

He questioned what would happen if terrorists succeed to cause a ship to sink at the Karachi Port.

A local journalist, Nusrat Nasrullah said that the media was doing its best in highlighting the national issue as compared to 1971 when it was controlled. It was then impossible to get actual situation of East Pakistan until Dec 15 and just a day later on Dec 16 Dacca Fall had taken place.
“We have been living for a long time under martial law governments and became habitual of controlled. We are addicted to a psyche of conditioned mindset and want to see everything controlled”.

“We hate America, but would like to have a visa for USA because we are in a state of distrust and a victim of uncertainty”, he said adding that the war in which we are involved now was a war of values. Intellectuals of this country should come forward to guide people in this war of values and ideologies.

M A Sabzwari was of the opinion that unless war in Afghanistan was over we would not be able to end terrorism in our country.

Saeed Siddiqui said that the ongoing situation was the result of our wrong thinking, which we adopted during the regime of General Zia, who made war of two super powers our war and Mujahideen and Taliban were born in our society who were now targeting mosques, public places and G H Q, too.

He alleged that the supporters of Taliban were those who had opposed the creation of Pakistan so we should make aware of our new generation about the ideas of Jinnah and Iqbal to counter the opponents of Pakistan.

Dr Mirza Arshad Ali Beg said that the rulers themselves were security risk. “Democracy does not exist in Pakistan and the prevailing democracy is against our national temperament”, he said adding that self-reliance was a far cry and we became handicapped for others for every thing.
He claimed that foreign loans had reached up to US $ 60 billion due to economic failure, mismanagement and corruption and unless the corruption was not fully curbed, we could not be able to stabilize our economy.

Brig. (retd) Syed Muzaffar Ul Hasan, Col (retd) Mukhtar Ahmed Butt, Adm. (retd) M I Arshad, Safia Malik and Naushaba Khalil Sattar also addressed.