APS attackers are worse than heretics: Sufi Muhammad

PESHAWAR: Sufi Muhammad, the chief of the proscribed Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) has said the perpetrators of the attack on the Army Public School are even worst than heretics.

Speaking to a private media channel, he strongly condemned those whose have raised arms against the state and the army, and said that Pakistan Army is the defender of the nation.

He said they had launched a peaceful campaign which changed radically after the United States led invasion of Afghanistan. He said government launched the ‘Tehreek-e-Muhammadi’ in May 1994 but they had opposed it.

He strongly lashed out at Mullah Fazlullah, the chief of the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) who is also his son-in-law, saying that he (Fazlullah) in connivance with the Taliban hijacked their campaign and turned violent. He said that he returned to Pakistan after the situation in the Afghan capital Kabul but was arrested in Parachinar.

The TNSM chief said that Islam has strictly prohibited attacking schools and educational institutions, raise arms against the state, and fighting against the nation’s army, and even prohibited attacks of non-Muslim women and children.

He said the Taliban have the signs present in heretics and are not Mujahids (freedom fighters) rather Khawarij (heretics), and those fighting against the army only deserve to be sentenced to death.

He said that Islamic injunctions prohibit attacking schools, and the attackers of Army Public School are heretics, who have been expunged from the fold of Islam for brutally martyring innocent children.

He further said that Pakistan Army is safeguarding the country from conspiracies hatched in India and Afghanistan. He added that fighting against the army is not jihad, and the country would have suffered a lot worse if the army was not present, while the real jihad is being done by officers of the army.

It may be mentioned controversial cleric was released on Monday after eight years of confinement in view of a verdict of the Peshawar high Court. He was arrested on 26 July 2009 in Swat and was facing over twenty-one different cases.