DAR AL ISLAM - PAKISTAN: JIHAD PREACHING MOSQUE & HOSTAGE TAKING IN ISLAMABAD

Trouble brews at Islamabad's jihad-preaching mosque
By Can Merey
dpa German Press Agency

Islamabad- The hostage-taking of three police officers bystudents attached to Islamabad's notorious Red Mosque Wednesday againhighlighted the rising strain of religious militancy in the veryheart of the Pakistani capital.

If the police did not to release several of his students andteachers they would face a jihad, or holy war, warned cleric AbdulRashid Ghazi, deputy head of the Lal Masjid, or red mosque, andadjacent madrassa religious school where Osama bin Laden is regardedas "our hero".

But their arrest and the seizure of the officers and an allegedmanager of a local brothel during a morality dispute is a sideshow tomore sinister activity inside the giant complex with 11,000 students.

"We encourage our people to go and fight (foreign troops in Afghanistan)," Ghazi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa during a recentvisit.

Any means of stopping the "aggressors" was justified, includingsuicide bombings, and it was just a matter of time before theinternational contingents are forced to leave, he said.

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