Student militancy.

Byline: Saad Rasool

As Maulana's supporters sharpen their batons and do their military parades (with a guard of honor to Maulana), people have started asking who these bearded baton-wielders are, and what is their political ethos. Are they peace-loving students of Madrassas - trained primarily is matters of the faith - who are now being asked to present themselves as human shields for Maulana's political ambition? Or, do some of them, have a history of (and training in) combat? Are they all members of JUI(F) or its madrassas, or does Maulana's force also include more nefarious elements of student militancy?

Members of the government claim that, while most of Maulana's uniform-wearing guards are members of JUI(F), there are also other (more 'militant') elements who have joined Maulana's cause. Specifically, in closed circles, law enforcement agency personnel reveal that members of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba (IJT), from across universities and colleges in Pakistan, have been inducted in Maulana's baton-wielding force. And that some fraction of such IJT participants have training in combat and militancy.

After all, just a few years back, intelligence and law enforcement agencies arrested a student, suspected of links to militant organizations, from the campus of Punjab University in Lahore. From his room in the University hostel, allegedly under the control of IJT, banned substances and 'important' documents were also recovered. In the weeks to follow, two more suspects were arrested from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), both alleged members of the student group IJT.

Who is the IJT? What is their mandate? What kind of influence do they exert in our society, and in particular over the universities and the student lives? How are they funded? How do they exert such influence in our university culture? And why are the university administrations so impotent in the face of IJT powers? Does the government have any responsibility to step in and fix this rot of our educational culture? Or should we simply sit quietly at the side, surrendering the hot boiling pots of academic life to a culture of violence and extremism? In a country already at war against the menace of religious terrorism, can we allow our student organizations to become the breeding grounds of intolerance? Or do we - all of us, individually and collectively - have a responsibility and a stake in the issue?

A brief history first: formed on 23rd December, 1947, by an...