Lal Masjid: How a Jihadist Mosque in Islamabad Became a Launchpad for Terror and Forced Sharia Across Pakistan

This 2019 Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan poster, displayed outside Lal Masjid in Islamabad, publicly offered a 10 million Pakistani rupee reward for the killing of Faraz Pervaiz on blasphemy charges and identified his location in Bangkok, Thailand.

Lal Masjid sits barely a mile from the center of Islamabad. For years it operated as one of the capital’s largest Deobandi terror mosques under the control of the Ghazi brothers, jihadis Maulana Abdul Aziz and his younger brother Abdul Rashid Ghazi. Alongside the mosque they ran two major jihadi seminaries: Jamia Hafsa for women inside the compound, and a larger men’s madrasa several miles away at the foot of the Margalla Hills on valuable land.

The Ghazi brother jihadis openly rejected Pakistan’s post 9/11 alignment with the United States of America against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. They labeled President Pervez Musharraf a traitor. They organized protests after the killing of Sipah-e-Sahaba leader Azam Tariq. Most significantly, they issued a fatwa declaring that Pakistani soldiers killed fighting the Pakistani Taliban were not martyrs.

In early 2007 the situation escalated from rhetoric into open parallel authority. Female jihadis from Jamia Hafsa seized a children’s library adjacent to the mosque after authorities moved against unlicensed mosques. Male and female jihadis formed vigilante squads. They raided CD and DVD shops, threatened shopkeepers to stop selling “Western” or “un-Islamic” goods, and conducted moral policing across Islamabad in broad daylight. This was the same pattern previously seen in the tribal areas and Swat, now transplanted to the capital.

The jihadis went further. In March, they abducted women they accused of running a brothel and briefly seized policemen. In May, after the arrest of some of their own people, they kidnapped four policemen (later more), holding them inside the mosque complex and demanding the release of their comrades. In late June a squad attacked a massage parlor run by Chinese nationals, seized several Chinese women and a man, and held them inside the compound until Chinese diplomatic pressure forced their release. The Ghazi brother jihadis warned that any government action would turn the country into a field of suicide bombings. They also set up their own Sharia court inside the mosque.

Journalist Zafar Abbas described the process as a “creeping coup.” On the same day jihadi Abdul Aziz gave the government one week to impose Sharia nationwide or face consequences. Authorities hesitated. They feared a bloodbath involving women and girls and worried that a crackdown would ignite wider unrest. They issued warnings but took little decisive action until Chinese anger and the open defiance became impossible to ignore.

In early July 2007, security forces surrounded the terror complex. Clashes began on 3 July, when jihadis tried to seize a government building; more than twenty people died in the initial exchange. Hundreds of jihadis and Abdul Aziz himself left the compound; Aziz was caught trying to escape in a burqa. Abdul Rashid Ghazi and the remaining hardcore stayed. On 10 July commandos launched the final assault. After hours of room to room fighting, more than one hundred people inside were dead, including Ghazi, women, and children. Authorities reported recovering foreign Muslim fighters and a letter of encouragement from al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The siege did not end the Islamic problem. It radicalized it. Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video the next day calling on Muslims to wage jihad against the Pakistani state. Attacks on military, police, and civilian targets surged immediately. Suicide bombings, Improvised Explosive Device IEDs, and ambushes multiplied across the tribal areas, Swat, and even Islamabad itself. Within months the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was formally announced under Baitullah Mehsud, with demands that included the release of jihadi Abdul Aziz and the imposition of Sharia. The Lal Masjid Terror operation became a rallying cry used by jihadis to justify war against the Pakistani state.

Jihadi Maulana Abdul Aziz was eventually released in April 2009 after the Supreme Court granted him bail. He had faced numerous cases involving terrorism, abductions, and the occupation of the children’s library. The court found insufficient grounds to keep him detained on the library charge after he had already received bail or discharge in most of the others. Within days of his release he returned to Lal Masjid and delivered a khutba calling for the enforcement of Sharia across Pakistan and readiness for sacrifice. Supporters carried him into the mosque on their shoulders. Later, terrorism charges related to the Chinese and other abductions were dropped or transferred to ordinary courts.

The same networks that had run parallel courts and held hostages in the capital did not disappear. They adapted. One vehicle that emerged from the aftermath of the 2007 operation was the Shohada Foundation of Pakistan Trust, established to pursue cases and claims linked to those killed or affected in the siege. Among its trustees and public spokesmen was jihadi Hafiz Ehtesham Ahmed, a Rawalpindi resident who has repeatedly presented himself in that capacity.

In March 2017, jihadi Hafiz Ehtesham Ahmed became the complainant in a case registered by the Federal Investigation Agency’s Cyber Crime Circle. FIR No. 07/2017, dated 19 March 2017, invoked sections of the Pakistan Penal Code on outraging religious feelings and blasphemy (including 295-A, 295-B, and 295-C), the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016, and provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act. It alleged that multiple social media pages and accounts were disseminating material deemed blasphemous. Among the pages named in the FIR were “Bhensa,” “Machar,” “Islam Institute,” “Jogan,” and “Molvi Burqa.”

The name “Molvi Burqa” was not incidental. It referred directly to the July 2007 incident in which jihadi Maulana Abdul Aziz was captured while attempting to leave the Lal Masjid complex disguised in a woman’s burqa an image that became one of the defining, and for many of his supporters humiliating, moments of the siege. Critical commentary that invoked that episode, along with broader criticism of the mosque’s leadership and the jihadist networks associated with it, was treated as criminal under the FIR.

The registration of the case took place against the backdrop of proceedings in the Islamabad High Court. Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui who, as a lawyer in the immediate aftermath of the 2007 operation, had represented jihadi Maulana Abdul Aziz was at the time dealing with petitions seeking the removal of content deemed blasphemous from social media. Court directions in that period contributed to the formal opening of investigations, including the inquiry that produced FIR 07/2017. Jihadi Hafiz Ehtesham Ahmed, acting as spokesman and trustee of the Shohada Foundation, supplied the complaint that initiated the specific case.

The matter later moved to an Anti-Terrorism Court. In January 2021, ATC Judge Raja Jawad Abbas convicted three of the arrested accused and sentenced them to death for the alleged social media content; a fourth received a ten-year sentence. The court issued perpetual arrest warrants for the remaining absconding accused, including Faraz Pervaiz. A proclamation order published in Dawn on 14 November 2017 had already publicly listed Faraz Pervaiz and three others as proclaimed offenders in the same FIR.

This sequence is not a side note. It shows continuity. The same institutional networks that had demanded the nationwide imposition of Sharia, kidnapped police officers and foreign nationals, and enforced their version of morality by force in the heart of the capital later used the formal legal system through a foundation spokesman as complainant, under judicial directions from a judge who had earlier defended the mosque’s leader to pursue those who continued to examine or criticize that history. The inclusion of the page “Molvi Burqa” in the FIR is itself a reminder of the 2007 events; its treatment as grounds for criminal complaint illustrates how the memory of the siege was converted into a tool for silencing discussion of it.

Why has the Pakistani state repeatedly failed to contain this form of Islamic terrorism? Several interlocking reasons are clear from the record.

First, significant sections of society, including parts of the Islamic establishment and even some state institutions, view the demand for Sharia as legitimate rather than criminal. Public reaction after the 2007 operation was often critical of the government for “overreacting,” not of the jihadis for running parallel courts, kidnapping people, and enforcing their version of morality by force. This sympathy makes sustained military or legal action politically costly.

Second, the military’s primary strategic focus has long been India. Diverting large numbers of regular troops for prolonged counter-insurgency against domestic Deobandi and other jihadist networks was viewed as a distraction and a risk to morale. Frontier Corps units, often poorly trained and sometimes sympathetic to the jihadis because of shared ethnicity, bore much of the burden. When operations were launched in Swat or the tribal areas, they were frequently incomplete; forces would clear areas then withdraw, allowing jihadis to return.

Third, Pakistan has long practiced a double game. While fighting some Pakistani Taliban groups that attacked the state, it simultaneously provided sanctuary, support, or at least tolerance to Afghan Taliban networks and the Haqqani group operating from Pakistani territory against NATO forces in Afghanistan. Intelligence agencies maintained contacts and, according to multiple accounts including those of Afghan Taliban commanders, offered varying degrees of facilitation. This selective approach undermines any consistent message that jihadist ideology itself is unacceptable.

Fourth, peace deals repeatedly rewarded the jihadis. In Swat, agreements allowed Mullah Fazlullah’s men to impose Taliban style justice executions for “un-Islamic” behavior, burning of girls’ schools, public hangings while the state extracted only temporary and unenforced promises of restraint. Similar patterns occurred in the tribal areas. Each deal bought short term quiet at the price of further territorial and ideological gains by the jihadists.

Fifth, legal and institutional weakness compounds the problem. Cases against high profile Mullahs drag on or are softened. Bail is granted. Charges are dropped. The same networks that once operated openly from Lal Masjid continue to produce or inspire new generations of jihadis, while the state treats the symptoms (individual attacks) more readily than the ideological infrastructure of madrasas, mosques, and political parties that legitimize jihad and Sharia enforcement by force. The use of blasphemy and cyber-crime statutes, with a Shohada Foundation spokesman as complainant and under the shadow of judicial directions linked to a judge who had previously represented jihadi Abdul Aziz, is one further expression of that pattern: the legal system is more readily mobilized against critics than against the original sources of parallel authority and violence.

Lal Masjid terror demonstrated in the capital what had already been happening in the periphery: a determined minority can seize parallel authority, kidnap citizens, burn and destroy symbols of “un-Islamic” life, and demand nationwide Sharia when the state is unwilling or unable to assert a monopoly on legitimate violence and law. The Supreme Court’s 2009 decision to release jihadi Abdul Aziz, the Mullad’s immediate return to delivering a khutba with the same goals, and the later conversion of the siege’s memory into a blasphemy complaint naming the page “Molvi Burqa” illustrate how, even after a bloody confrontation, the legal and political system often defaults to accommodation of jihadist networks and the suppression of those who document or challenge them.

The pattern continues. Jihadist groups still recruit, still enforce their Islamic version of morality through intimidation or brutal violence where they can, and still exploit the gap between the state’s official claims of fighting terrorism and the reality of selective enforcement, ideological sympathy in society, and strategic calculations that treat some jihadists as assets against external enemies. Lal Masjid Terror was not an isolated aberration. It was a visible expression of a deeper contest over who writes the law and who enforces it in Pakistan.

The Islamic Republic of Pakistan remains, in many ways, a much larger Lal Masjid.