Activists of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan shout slogans as they gather at the funeral ceremony of a protester who was killed during a demonstration against a US-made anti-Islam film, in Karachi, yesterday.
ISLAMABAD: Thousands of Islamist activists in Pakistan staged new demonstrations yesterday against a US-made anti-Islam film, as the death toll from the previous day’s violent protests rose to 21.
More than 5,000 protesters marched towards the parliament in Islamabad, including hundreds of women, chanting “We love our Holy Prophet” and “Punishment for those who humiliated our Prophet”.
Some 500 people from the hardline Islamist group Jamaat-ud-Dawa staged a protest in front of the US consulate in the eastern city of Lahore, chanting “The US deserves only one remedy — jihad, jihad”.
The protests were peaceful, in contrast to the previous day’s demonstrations.
Religious groups said they were also planning demonstrations in Karachi, the scene of the worst violence on Friday, after the funerals of some of those killed during the protests.
Protests against the film “Innocence of Muslims”, which mocks Islam, have erupted across the Muslim world and tens of thousands took to the streets across Asia and the Middle East Friday as Western missions closed amid fears of violence.
Anger has also been stoked by the publication in a French magazine of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (Peace Be Upon Him).
On Friday the violence was worst in Pakistan with witnesses estimating that nationwide rallies mobilised more than 45,000, mainly members of right-wing religious parties and supporters of banned terror groups, although the numbers were still small in a country of 180 million.
Four more people died overnight from wounds they received during the protests, taking the number killed across Pakistan in the day of demonstrations to 21.
Fifteen people were killed in Karachi, the country’s largest city, and six in the northwestern city of Peshawar, health department officials said.
The combined total of wounded in Karachi, Peshawar and in the capital Islamabad was 229.
“The total death toll from the anti-Islam film protests reached 15 in Karachi as three more succumbed to their injuries overnight,” Sagheer Ahmed, provincial health minister in southern Sindh province, said.
Mukhtiar Khan, a senior doctor at the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar said that one more person died from his wounds in hospital, taking the total killed in the city to six.
While the Pakistani government’s announcement of ‘Yaum-e-Ishq-e-Rasool’ (Love the Prophet Day) on Friday was intended to officially lend support to Pakistanis protesting against the anti-Islam film and be a national expression of love for the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH), as the day unfolded and much of the country was engulfed in violent and fatal protests, many questioned the wisdom of pronouncing the national holiday.
“The announcement of the day was the collective decision of the federal cabinet and was a good decision,” Interior Minister Rehman Malik said yesterday.
“If we had not declared this a national holiday, all the people in Karachi and other cities would have been stuck in their offices and shops due to the protests. What would they have done when the protestors had come to burn things?
Everything would have really gone down then.”
Thanking God that “things in Islamabad remained under control,” he claimed that this would not have been the case if the national holiday had not been sanctioned. “There is always wisdom in these things, trust us,” the interior minister said.
However, as thousands of Pakistanis staged violent protests on the government-sanctioned day, leaving several people dead in their wake, it became clear that whatever wisdom had animated the decision to observe a day of protest may have indeed failed.
“It was the government’s job to give people direction and leadership,”
PTI Chairman Imran Khan said.
“They should have said there is no need for protests; we will take action at international fora, we will educate the West about why this film has hurt Muslims.”
But according to Khan, instead of providing guidance to people, the PPP government decided to placate the awan (public) for its own narrow gains.
“When they (PPP) saw people angry, they decided to placate them and pander to them,” he said.
“The problem here is that the government has no overarching policy on how to deal with such crises; they are just going along with the situation, making bad decisions as events unfold.”
For Khan, the government’s biggest failure is that it does not understand that the people of Pakistan increasingly see the war on terror as a war on Islam.
Overall, 23 people have been killed in Pakistan during protests over the past week.
