JI also hopes to win back Mohajirs

Karachi: From Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s (MQM) dissidents to those who loathed it for its politics that eventually devoured their hold on the city, all seem to be having a field day as the party’s iron grip over the metropolis seemingly dissipates under the state-led crackdown that commenced following Altaf Hussain’s umpteenth ‘anti-state’ diatribe last week.

After former MQM mayor Mustafa Kamal, who now heads the Pak Sarzameen Party (PSP), advised MQM workers to join his party’s ranks to rid themselves of MQM’s ‘dirty politics’, the city’s once strong political party, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), has also deemed the time fit to regain its lost support within the Mohajir community. 

Addressing a press conference, on Monday, the JI Karachi chief, Hafiz Naeemur Rehman, said the Mohajir community was the most oppressed ethnicity in Pakistan.

“Those who wish to label them as the subjugated or the oppressed may do so. Individuals have used communities to further their own agendas,” Rehman stated.  

The JI city chief presented his party as the most viable option to all MQM workers who did not have a criminal background. “I want you to hold pens not guns in your hands; books not extortion chits; I want you to excel in respectable fields of education,” he observed.

He also announced launching the party’s membership campaign from September 1, during which the public would be contacted to join the JI. The party was also to get its offices restored and new ones established in areas where it was unable to operate owing to presence of terrorists working under the disguise of political parties.

Although not naming the PSP, the JI leader rejected the ‘state’s policy’ of targeting some groups within the MQM while sparing others.

“The discrimination has brought the intentions of those in the corridors of power under serious doubts.” It was impossible for people to be clear of all previous crimes on a mere switch of loyalties, the JI official further added.

“Politics of favouritism would not be tolerated in Karachi; the group is equally to blame for the turmoil the city was pushed into, and could now not be given a clean chit,” he maintained.

 The JI leader further stated that cosmetic measures to curb terrorists would not bear any fruits, providing them a shelter in other political parties would not solve the problem. With most of MQM’s area offices demolished or sealed, Rehman said demolishing offices, particularly of MQM and PPP, which were built illegally on government land was acceptable, but those built as per the law should be allowed to function.

JI and Mohajir politics

The party may have lost its grip on Karachi’s Mohajir community but, according to political analysts, it had mustered proper support from them after the 1947 partition.  It had earned the community’s favour through the social work it did for refugees that arrived from across the Indian border.

Before partition, the Muslim League in the name of religion had managed to make inroads in the lower-middle and middle class Urdu-speaking community, but after the historical event it was JI that penetrated the support; the view was endorsed by several intellectuals in their books and articles.  

French scholar Laurent Gayer in his book titled “Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City,” noted that after the partition government services were not enough to meet even the most basic needs of the refugees, and the JI proved more responsive in addressing their woes. 

“Between 1947 and 1954, 1.5 million refugees benefitted from welfare activities ranging from burial of unclaimed dead bodies to the management of refugee camps and the distribution of food, medicine and clothing,” Gayer writes.

“The success of this campaign was instrumental in incorporating social work into the structure of the party. In 1958 KMC polls, the JI won 18 out of the 23 seats that showed the party’s growing popularity among Karachi’s Mohajir community,” he maintained. 

Fast forward to 1970s and early 1980s, the residents of Karachi voted for the JI and twice elected Abdul Sattar Afghani as the city’s mayor. But following the MQM’s emergence on the political landscape, the JI’s support spiralled downward in the metropolis.

The local government polls of 1987 and the general polls in the following years proved that the MQM had dealt a severe blow to the JI’s vote bank, which largely comprised the Mohajir community. 

A political analyst and journalist, Tausif Ahmed Khan, said the weakening of MQM in the city would push the Mohajir community back towards religious parties - which were once its representatives.

Not of the opinion that JI would be successful in winning back its voters, Khan, however, believed that frustration would lead the community to start supporting hardcore sectarian groups.

An MQM leader, requesting anonymity, said his party’s leadership had ever since its inception comprised young, educated people from the middle-class who worked with the community on the ground and spread political awareness.

“As a result of our politics, Karachi’s people rejected the JI and its pro-extremist politics and started voting for the MQM,” he told The News. “The JI Karachi now sits out of general elections following the party’s successive defeats at the hands of MQM.”

However, a few JI members did not agree to the MQM’s view. They believed that the party’s support base was still intact and its candidates would still get votes.

The MQM after its emergence created a new support base and introduced new slogans along with violence,” a JI member quipped. “That is why other political parties have vanished from the constituencies but the JI is very much there with a proper organisational set-up.”