The two-day international conference on “extremism & terrorism in Pakistan: Challenges and sustainable solution” organized by the University of Sindh Jamshoro in collaboration with Hans Seidal Foundation Germany was brought to an end on Tuesday with the joint declaration consisting of nine significant points, it recommended that public resilience for eliminating terrorism, extremism was must whereas women in the country ought to be empowered to curb extremist ideologies through which the brains of youngsters are washed by the terrorists.

The joint declaration also proposed Sindh University (SU) to take the lead against extremism & terrorism by establishing an institute/centre of moderation on the campus so that the students should get to know the real definition of fundamentalism, extremism and terrorism and prove to be moderate and liberal in nature with a lot of forbearance and patience.

 The declaration added that Government needed to build the capabilities and mental approach of Pakistani nation by making education as well as health quite free and common in the country while being the soil of Sufis; Sindh should take the lead in preaching of peace.

It also recommended that rule of law must be promoted so that law abiding society could be formed adding that zero tolerance should be shown for religious schools/Madaaris involving in any kind of violence including suicidal attacks.

The declaration said that for halting corruption, good governance ought to be ensured and diplomatic efforts must be intensified to present the best and peaceful image of the country and its people globally.

Before the joint declaration in his speech, Dr Guna Ratna of Srilanka termed Islam as not to be a drive of terrorism and Talibanization but he said people like Osama Bin Laden and Al-Zawahri took the parts of Ayat of Holy Quran and Hadith just to fulfill their political objectives. “Osam Bin Laden was businessman and Al-Zawaheri a doctor by profession, then how can we assume them to be Ulma? They used Islam for their political purposes; they mesmerized innocent people with the tactics of telling them certain Ayat of Holy Quran proving that the USA and Europe were the bitter opponents of Islam and Muslims,” he said.

He proposed Sindh University of setting up an institute or a centre of moderation at SU in a bid to promote tolerance, brotherhood and love among the students and the masses. “I suggest government to make education and health free for the people like Srilanka did and this practice can keep the masses not to pay attention to that Jihad which is forcibly imposed by the Taliban and Al-Qaeda,” Dr Guna Ratna stated.

He linked the rule of law with education, saying schools in the country should be empowered with rigid check and balance adding that the service providers of internet should be held responsible provided that they allow terrorist organizations to launch fund raising campaign through it.

Aijaz Khan of Peshawar University termed the bad governance a disease while corruption just a symptom, saying government needs to treat the disease of bad governance with it the corruption would come to an end itself.

He called it a tragedy that political governments in Pakistan never delivered and they with their vulnerability always provided opportunities to the military to intervene assuming that nothing will change despite holding 100 elections in the country until and unless the feudal system is eradicated. “Our feudal rulers always created problems for the country and people; the masses must say no to them in next election so that a ray of hope for change could look on,” he stated.

The former foreign secretary and ambassador Shamshad Ahmed Khan said that he had proposed many political leaders to carve in new provinces in an attempt to root out corruption, ensure good governance in the country. “We will have to carve in eight more provinces in every province so that no any chief minister of Punjab considers himself ruling like any premier in the country;Punjab chief ministers always act like emperors,” he observed.

He said that small administrative units will help eradicating coruption and ensuring good governance adding that new provinces must not be carved in on ethical or linguil basis but on administrative point of view.

Speakers at an international conference underscored the need for coming up with some equal powerful counter-narrative against extremism and terrorism.

The two-day event on “Extremism and terrorism in Pakistan: challenges and sustainable solutions” that started here at a local hotel on Monday has been organized by the University of Sindh (SU) in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and Hanns Seidel Foundation, Germany.

Speaking on the occasion, SU Vice-Chancellor Nazir A. Mughal stated that the word of fundamentalism was used by the international community and discussed implications of extremism on higher education.

He said Pakistan was faced with a number of conflicts nationally and internationally and its history was replete with wars.
Ironically, he said, foremost target of extremists had been the Muslim world itself. Minority wanted its philosophy thrust over majority.

He said scholars assessed and interpreted the given issue. If Islam was associated with terrorism, let pages of history be opened to recount that Jewish guerrillas used terrorism against the British in Palestine. Tamils of Sri Lanka invented the art of suicide vest, Greek terrorists carried out assassination operation against the USand Sikhs used terrorism against British.

He said Islam had been a unifying force of a high order and as a global universal faith it had created a broad civilization that shared many common principles of philosophy, the arts, and society, a vision of moral life, a sense of justice, jurisprudence etc. He rejected Western conception that Muslims were terrorists or Islam taught terrorism.

He said Western media had branded seminaries as factories of jihad and nurseries of violent, extremists Islamists.

According to his information, there were over 17,000 religious scholars in 2005. They provided free medicines to poor, sent their followers to seek votes on slogan of ‘Islam is in danger’ and these students after graduating from seminaries were sent to public universities to convert traditional students to their way of life. Thus campuses had become breeding grounds and recruiting targets for extremism inPakistan.

He called for evaluation of seminaries every three months to assess curriculum and teaching of faculty, students and their policies and the government should initiate a pilot programme in seminaries to modernize their curriculum.

Hussain Haroon, former envoy to the United Nations, called for identifying the problem correctly and putting ‘our own house’ in order first. He said that Jews had resolved their issues with Christianity as far as threat perception was concerned. There was a threat perception involving Muslims and Islam.

He said good governance and better economic development could address most of problems as they played an important role in redressing grievances of people.

President of Policy Architects International, Washington, Dr Rodney W. Jones traced history of jihad or militancy. The latter fought against Sikhs. He added that Islam was not an issue but the issue was that there were many perceptions about Islam, reflecting sectarianism.

He said the Pakistani establishment failed to abandon its policy of using militants as proxies as policy instruments. Taliban used to be against theUSbut now they were against Pakistani state.

He referred to Gen Kayani’s definition of extremist in his last year’s Independence Day speech when he said that anyone trying to thrust his opinion over others was extremist and anyone trying to thrust opinion with gun was terrorist.

Researcher of Portuguese Institute of International Relations and Security, Dr Daniel Pineu stated that Pakistani academicians were not coming up with equally powerful counter-narrative against terrorism and extremism. Flow of information on terrorism was unhindered and Pakistani society was consuming this knowledge in the absence of a counter-narrative. Pakistani experts should come up with a more analytical assessment of the situation as descriptive kind of evaluation was not appreciated abroad.

He said that despite being secured people, the West was feeling insecure; they feared for disease, violence and terrorism.

Former ambassador Shamshad Ahmed — who moderated the second session — disagreed with the contentions raised by
Dr Rodney W. Jones. He said that apparently Dr Jones and CIA were on the same page as far as their narrative onPakistan and Islam was concerned. He said Pakistani people were used as proxies, mercenaries and even as agents. He praised Dr Daniel’s presentation and said that it was realistic as Dr Jones clearly absolved his country of the responsibility of creating the monster that was known as the Taliban.

Director Centre for Aerospace Power studies PAF, Air Commodore Jamal Hussain, Dr Shabana Fayyaz,Assistant ProfessorDefence & StrategicStudiesDepartmentQuaid-i-AzamUniversityalso gave presentation on sub-conventional warfare and women’s role in moderating extremism.

The said papers which were scheduled to be held in Old Campus Hyderabad, Nuzrath College Hydrabad, Mirpur Khas Law College, Nawabshah Law College, Dadu Law College and Sis Tech College Sukkur from 3439 candidates have been postponed due to the strike in different cities.

The new for the papers would be announced later on whereas the rest papers would be taken as per schedule.

According to a press statement issued here from P.R. Office, the CM Sindh had to visit Sindh University (SU) Jamshoro on April 23 but due to some of his essence engagements, his visit has been postponed till April 26.

The chief minister would inaugurate institute of microbiology during his visit to Sindh University Jamshoro.