Abdul Rashid Ghazi comes across a little like Jerry Garcia. He wears oval-shaped, wire-rimmed glasses, has a grey, fist-length beard, and sports curly hair that flips wildly around his ears and neckline. He even has the former Grateful Dead frontman's easy smile and chill demeanor. University educated, he talks in idiomatic English, and, during one recent conversation, we even swapped stories about hanging out on the beaches in Thailand.
This is a bit surprising, considering that Ghazi and his brother, Maulana Abdul Aziz, are leading an Islamic revolution in Pakistan. His mosque, Lal Masjid or "Red Mosque," has long been considered one of the most anti-American and pro-Taliban mosques in the country, dedicated to enforcing sharia law in matters of vice and virtue. Over the past three months, however, Ghazi and his followers have become more assertive, overrunning a public library, kidnapping a brothel owner, and organizing a public burning of un-Islamic albums and DVDs.
Located on a quiet, leafy street in one of Islamabad's most expensive neighborhoods, Lal Masjid, too, seems an unlikely center for an Islamic revolution. The compound is walking distance from the National Assembly building, the U.S. Embassy, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) headquarters, and, incidentally, my house. But, since a brigade of talibat, the feminine form of Taliban, forcibly occupied a children's library adjacent to Lal Masjid in late January, the mosque has become a fortress. Thousands of jihadis have descended on Islamabad to defend it, taking up positions along the compound's pink walls and parapets, clutching wooden staffs, their faces hidden by checkered scarves. Massive, homemade posters drape from the walls, praising jihad. Dozens of black flags, showing two crossed swords and inscribed with Islam's profession of faith, La illaha illa Allah ("There is no God but God"), fly over the mosque and on lampposts at nearby intersections. When I asked Ghazi what the flags stood for, he smirked. "It is our own and not from anywhere in particular," he said. "But some are saying it is like the Al Qaeda flag."
Ghazi affectionately refers to the women as his "female commandos" and says the takeover of the library was a long time coming. President Pervez Musharraf's government "challenged the writ of Allah" by destroying a number of mosques in Islamabad; his girls responded by "challenging the writ of the state. Whose writ is greater?" he asked rhetorically.
The army has threatened to remove the women with force, but it hasn't yet. Musharraf reportedly wanted to launch an air strike, but some of his top generals convinced him otherwise. The establishment of a mini-Taliban state in Islamabad has caught Musharraf at a bad time. Since early March, lawyers in black suits have been leading frequent protests against Musharraf for his suspension of the chief justice of Pakistan on flimsy charges of nepotism. In Karachi on May 12, more than 40 people died when the chief justice arrived in the port city and gun battles broke out between pro- and anti-government political parties. In March, the police stormed the offices of a private television channel in Islamabad for broadcasting footage of rioters clashing with police right outside the studio's windows. That afternoon, while I stood in front of the ransacked office, my eyes and nostrils stinging from the tear gas lingering in the air, a man approached me, shaking his head in disbelief. "In only a week, Musharraf has alienated two pillars of society--first the lawyers and now the media," he said. "What is he thinking?"
Meanwhile, the Taliban continue to make trouble in the border areas. On April 28, a suicide bomber reached within ten feet of the interior minister before blowing himself up, killing 28 people. (The minister escaped with light injuries.) Just two weeks later, another suicide bomber struck a restaurant in Peshawar, killing two dozen more. All the distractions have left even the staunchest Musharraf supporters wondering if he has the ability--or the will--to keep Ghazi and his kind at bay.
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