Pakistan’s mainstream religious parties have once again formed an alliance of more than 22 parties to promote religious harmony among the country’s different sects and religious schools of thought. This new alliance ‘Milli Yakjehti Council’ (MYC), meaning the ‘religious harmony council,’ has been named after a 17-year-old alliance that has successfully served as a platform to settle sectarian disputes and tussles among rival religious groups.
This time, the revival of the MYC is being treated as an effort to abandon the political alliance of MMA (Muthida Majlas-e-Amal) that was created after 9/11, and which successfully formed governments in the two provinces of Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province (now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).
Jamaat-e-Islami has been behind these alliances. However, MYC’s revival at a time when election alliances are being made has intrigued many a political analysts.
Former head of Jamaat-e-Islami, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, played a motivating role in gathering religious leaders on a unified platform, which comprises some Deobandi and Salafi groups as well besides hard-liner Sunni and Shiite groups.
The alliance aims at opposing and discouraging bloodshed and terrorism in the name of sectarianism, but for many it is the formal burial of the MMA before the elections.
Interestingly, all religious parties agreed and signed a 17-point code of conduct that was prepared during the MMA’s formation in 2001, and has once again been adopted as the basic document in today’s meeting announcing the revival of the alliance.
One of the main items among the code of conduct is to protect the blasphemy law of the country that permits courts to give capital punishment to those committing blasphemy against the Prophet (peace be upon him), and his companions and family.
Secular parties and groups launched campaigns against this law and successfully mounted pressure upon the secular PPP government to amend the existing blasphemy law but the revival of the MYC has created resistance against these efforts.
Converting this council into an election alliance is a possibility, which is too early to predict.
Pak parties revive alliance for sectarian harmony
