Pak Islamic leader opposes expulsion of Muslims

Pak Islamic leader opposes expulsion of Muslims
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

KARACHI, JULY 13: A fundamentalist Islamic leader in Pakistan on Thursday opposed a government plan to expel all illegal Muslim immigrants, admitting many were wanted for terrorism in their home countries.

"Pakistan should protect these people as they came here as our guests to participate in the Afghan jehad (holy war)," Fazlur Rehman, head of the Jamiat Ulemae Islam (JUI) party, told AFP. "They will be killed if they are extradited, as many of them are wanted in their countries for terrorist activities," said Rehman, whose JUI backs Afghanistan's hardline Taliban Islamic militia.

Pakistan's military-led government is planning a crackdown on foreigners, particularly Arab nationals who stayed illegally in Pakistan after the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Pakistani Interior Secretary Hasan Raza Pasha last week said the government was giving all illegal immigrants three months to return home.

He excepted some two million Afghan refugees. Officials have said thousands of people from different Muslim countries arrived in Pakistan shortly after the Soviet invasion in 1979 and participated in the 10-year anti-communist war in Afghanistan. Soviet forces withdrew in 1989 but many war veterans decided not to go back. They settled in Pakistan or joined Islamic seminaries.

The United States has criticised Pakistan's government for not doing enough against Muslim militants on its soil allegedly involved in terrorism abroad. But the nine-month-old government of military ruler General Pervez Musharraf's also faces influential Islamic parties at home.

Religious schools have refused to divulge information about foreigners studying in Pakistan. "We have already decided not to give any details to the government about our pupils, whether Pakistani or foreigners," an official of the Tanzeemul Madaris organisation of religious schools said. Pakistan has expelled 300 foreigners, most of them Egyptians, in the past five years.