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RELIGION-PAKISTAN
Bombing Closes Shrine Off For Women
By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Mar 19, 2009 (IPS) - Few women are visiting the mausoleum of the famous 17th century mystic poet Abdul Rehman Baba since suspected Pakistani Taliban bombed it.
"We have ordered our women not to visit the shrine anymore," says Murad Ali, a resident of Hazarkhwani, where the tomb is located. "Our women would go to there nearly every week," he adds.
"The vandalism (on Mar. 5 ) is the work of the Taliban, to restrict women to their homes and prevent them from venturing out in public," says Ali, a local shopkeeper.
Khanum Bibi, a local poetess, says Rehman Baba was an icon of peace and love and was a preacher of universal brotherhood. "Destroying his tomb is like attacking humanity. Miscreants have committed an unforgivable crime," she asserts passionately.
The poet who is revered as a Sufi saint has a wide following in northern Pakistan and across the border in Afghanistan. Both Pakhtoons and Pashtuns, as they are called in Afghanistan, claim the poet as their "national bard".
Khanum Bibi believes the desecration of the Peshawar mausoleum is a "declaration of war against the Pakhtoon nation"! "It is a sacred place for us because he was a true follower of Islam," she says.
The tomb complex, which was reconstructed in 1994, was deliberately targetted in the early hours of Mar. 5. Abdul Aziz, from the family of caretakers of the shrine, says they had received threatening letters warning of an attack if women continued to visit the mausoleum.
Moreover, "some bearded and long-haired people, seemed to be Taliban, had visited the tomb asking us to purge it of women," he adds.
The ‘poet of peace’ was born into a well off family in a village 4 km south of Peshawar. But he chose to become an ascetic and died in Hazarkhwani in 1707 where he is buried.
Pakhtoons - men, women and children - throng his mausoleum and keep his books in their homes like they do the Koran, says Rohan Yousafzai, secretary of the Progressive Writers’ Association.
No social or cultural event is complete without the recitation of Rehman Baba’s poetry from collections known as the Diwan.
Saleem Raz, president of the World Pashto Congress, remarks that Rehman Baba’s universal appeal makes it hard to understand who would desecrate his tomb? The poems have been translated in English, Punjabi, Urdu, Dari and other languages.
"It is a conspiracy to defame Pakhtoons," well-known poet Abaseen Yousafzay asserts. "The perpetrators of the crime are neither Pakhtoons nor Muslims," Saeed Bibi, a postgraduate student at the University of Peshawar says hotly.
Chief of Peshawar Police Safwat Ghayyur told IPS the police have launched an investigation. "It is not clear who is responsible," he claims.
Northern Pakistan has been engulfed in violence led by Pakistani Taliban groups. Like the Afghan Taliban, they practice a radical Islam that prohibits women from being seen in public and girls from going to school. They have cracked down on shops selling music and films and stopped barbers from shaving beards.
A thriving entertainment industry here in the North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) has been crippled by violence and killings.
A renowned Pashto comedian Alamzeb Mujahid who was abducted in broad daylight from the upmarket Hayatabad Township in Peshawar on Jan. 12, announced his retirement on his release. Mujahid was associated with national Pakistan Television (PTV) for the last two decades and has a fan following in Pakistan and neighbouring Afghanistan.
On Dec. 22 last year, suspected Taliban murdered Shabana, a traditional female dancer, and left her body hanging from an electric pole in the centre of Mingora, capital of Swat district in the NWFP.
Last year in March, militants destroyed the 400-year-old shrine of Abu Saeed Baba at Shaikhan village in Sarband, bordering Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas).
"The fanatics, a product of the Afghan war, are bent upon eliminating the cultural heritage of Pakhtoons. They started their battle with the bashing of singers and dancers in different parts of the province. Now they have attacked the tomb of Rehman Baba to terrorise women, who visited the historic mausoleum," Yousafzai of the Progressive Writers Association says.
Human Rights Commission of Pakistan chairperson Asma Jahangir issued a statement to the press. "The bombing at the mausoleum cannot be condemned strongly enough. Rehman Baba is the national poet not only of the Pakhtoon people, but (also) of the whole of Pakistan. It is ironic that the mausoleum of a poet advocating peace and tolerance has been targeted by the militants."
The provincial government has announced immediate reconstruction of the damaged portion of the mausoleum. But can they provide security to women visitors to the shrine? (END)
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