Jamiat’s hooliganism

DAWN.COM
Enough is enough. The hooliganism of the Punjab chapter of the Islami Jamiat Tulaba needs to be checked forthwith and immediate efforts are required to rein in the elements inclined towards violence that call the shots in that student organisation.
Friday’s incident at Punjab University, which saw IJT activists thrashing security personnel, cannot be viewed in isolation. In April, IJT students attacked a professor, Iftikhar Baloch, but the principal accused managed to evade arrest, possibly on account of his political connections. Almost at will, IJT members disrupt any function at Punjab University that features music and intimidate people who choose to mingle with the opposite sex. They are dominating the campus with their obscurantist views and the administration looks the other way more often than not. Why is that? Are they scared of the Jamiat? Or could it be that the Zia era and the rule of the Sharifs saw the induction of faculty and non-teaching staff that shares the bigoted views of the IJT?Campuses in Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, isolated incidents notwithstanding, are not held hostage in this way. For all their faults, student organisations there somehow manage to counterbalance the influence of people opposed to progressive thought. In Punjab, however, the IJT does what it deems fit in any given situation and usually gets away with it. It would be unfair to say that the free rein enjoyed by the IJT in Lahore and elsewhere in the province is indicative of a Punjabi mindset. What is more likely is that the political elite of the Punjab endorses the same ‘conservative’ views espoused by the IJT. The student wings of the various incarnations of the Muslim League seem to be no match for the IJT, but that raises yet another question. Do they share a common cause or is the muscle of the IJT, built up over the decades with the patronage of the politically insecure, simply too intimidating to confront? The Punjab government needs to step in here and stem the rot. Otherwise it will be seen as a party to a cause that no right-thinking person can support.