New Delhi: Pakistan is more oppressive for its people than India is, so there is no question of supporting it in case of a war with India, say Pakistani clerics, who do not get along with their iron-handed army.
While the Pakistan military is busy with plans against India in the wake of bilateral tensions over Kashmir’s Pahalgam terror attack last month, Pakistani clerics seem to have taken a side—they are with India if a war breaks out.
Internal tensions and ethnic issues, which have isolated Pakistan from its religious clerics, are now out in the open for the world to see.
In a viral video from Sunday, the imam of Lal Masjid in Islamabad—Maulana Abdul Aziz Ghazi—asks his congregation a startling question, “If India and Pakistan go to war, how many of you will support Pakistan?”
No hands go up.
A symbol of defiance against the State of Pakistan for a long time, Abdul Aziz pauses before delivering his verdict. “There are very few [hands],” Abdul Aziz says after looking at his audience. “It means many are enlightened now.”
The video, widely circulated on social media, shows Abdul Aziz denouncing the Pakistan military, accusing authorities of widespread repression, and claiming governance in Pakistan had grown more oppressive than that in India—a bold and controversial claim.
“Did the Lal Masjid tragedy happen in India?” Abdul Aziz asks, referencing the 2007 siege of the mosque, and subsequently, scores of deaths. “Does India bomb its own citizens? Are people disappearing in India like they are in Pakistan?”
Lal Masjid & its history
Lal Masjid has long been a flashpoint in Pakistan’s turbulent political and religious landscape since the times of Pervez Musharraf. In July 2007, the mosque was at the center of one of the most intense internal conflicts in the country. Security forces launched a military operation in the mosque to dislodge radical clerics and armed students posing a challenge to state authorities.
The siege, Operation Silence, followed months of rising tensions. The mosque students were allegedly holding anti-vice campaigns against alcohol, smoking, and sex work in Islamabad. They raided businesses, burnt media material, and set up a parallel sharia court. But, after the killings of Chinese workers in Peshawar—a terror act that drew sharp condemnation from the key Islamabad ally Beijing—forces, after attempts at negotiations with the students had failed, stormed the mosque and launched a full-scale assault.
Though the military eventually took control of the mosque, the operation deepened fissures in Pakistani society, radicalised segments of the population, and transformed Abdul Aziz into a controversial figure. His brother and co-leader, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, was killed during the operation.
In his Sunday sermon, Abdul Aziz accused the State of systemic brutality, referring to the thousands of Pakistanis, be it Baloch, Pashtuns, political workers, religious clerics, and journalists, who allegedly have gone missing over the past two decades.
“There is a movement for the disappeared in Pakistan,” his sermon goes. “Mothers and sisters are sitting in protest. People are tired of asking the courts for justice—they are now praying to Allah.”
Such criticism, once confined to human rights organisations and opposition parties, has increasingly found a platform in religious spaces, once closely aligned with the Pakistani establishment. In this case, the criticism appears to have gone further.
According to the imam, even some ethnic and religious minorities in Pakistan now see India—a country often criticised by Pakistani clerics for its treatment of Muslims—as offering more basic freedoms.
His sermon points out the right to protest in a democracy, condemning “government-backed fatwas” in Muslim-majority nations supporting oppressive regimes.
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Abdul Aziz
Muhammad Abdul Aziz Ghazi, the long-serving imam and khatib of the Red Mosque in Islamabad, remains one of the most polarising religious figures in Pakistan. A leader within the Deobandi movement of Sunni Islam, Aziz is known for his hardline positions, anti-State rhetoric, and symbolic role in one of the most violent domestic confrontations in the history of the country—the 2007 siege.
Aziz is also the chancellor of Jamia Faridia and Jamia Hafsa, both religious seminaries closely linked to the mosque. Authorities have long accused both of promoting extremist ideologies. He is also the elder brother of Abdul Rashid Ghazi, killed in July 2007 in the Pakistan military operation inside the mosque.
At the time, Abdul Aziz was captured while trying to flee disguised in a burqa. He has later claimed that a sympathetic intelligence official suggested the disguise, advising him to leave quietly to avoid arrest. Photos of his arrest became a national spectacle, drawing both ridicule and sympathy, depending on political affiliation.
Abdul Aziz, after his arrest, was slapped with the charges of incitement, kidnapping, and murder. However, following time in custody for nearly two years, the Supreme Court of Pakistan granted his release on 16 April 2009, acquitting him later in 2013. Despite more than two dozen cases filed against him since 2001, none have led to a conviction.
Since his release, Abdul Aziz has resumed his leadership role at Lal Masjid and continued to deliver sermons critical of the State and its policies. Of late, he has drawn attention for his vocal condemnation of State oppression, particularly the enforced disappearances affecting the Baloch, Pashtun, and other religious communities. His sermons frequently invoke comparisons with India, arguing that Muslims in Pakistan face worse repression than in the neighbouring Hindu-majority country.
Pashtuns join in
Abdul Aziz is not the only cleric voicing anti-Pakistan sentiments.
Clerics from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) region are echoing similar sentiments.
A video shows a cleric from KP—whose identity ThePrint could not establish—saying that if a war does break out, KP will not support Pakistan.
In his video, he says Pashtuns want India to attack Pakistan. “I swear upon the Quran—when I was in jail, prisoners would pray for an Indian attack. We would sooner get along with the Indian Army than with Pakistan because of how oppressive they were to us.”
He further added, “You have harmed Pashtuns so much. Do you think we will stand with you? Do you think we will chant Zindabad for you? You have oppressed our lands. You have oppressed us, the Pashtuns. Which Pashtun child have you not left in tears?”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
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