Pakistan's Embattled Mosque Reopens With Fresh Momentum

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Three months after a bloody commando raid shuttered a haven for radicalism in the heart of this mild-mannered city, the Red Mosque is open again. And in some ways, little has changed.

At prayers this month, calls for Islamic revolution once again echoed from the minarets. Worshipers talked of overthrowing the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in favor of a Taliban-style government. Many wore the red knit prayer caps long favored by Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the firebrand cleric who was killed in the last hours of a nine-day standoff that transfixed Pakistan and seemed to embody the country's struggle with religious extremism.

But here's what was different at the Red Mosque: The crowd that turned out for prayers, relatively modest in size before the siege, spilled out of the mosque and into the courtyard. It continued down the street and filled an adjacent park. Afterward, impassioned worshipers talked about how they had come to honor the "thousands" who had died. (Government estimates put the number of dead at 103.) They walked the adjacent grounds where the girls' madrassa, or religious school, once stood, sifting the rubble for bits of bloodstained masonry. And they said a special prayer for the Red Mosque martyrs, at which point almost everyone began to weep.

The government had hoped that raiding the Red Mosque would strike a powerful blow against radical religious groups in Pakistan.

Instead, the mosque has become a memorial, a rallying cry and a propaganda tool for those groups, giving them more recruits and fresh momentum to unleash vicious attacks. Al-Qaeda leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have both dwelt on the Red Mosque in recordings that call for jihad against Musharraf. Their pleas have been answered in a surge of violence that has claimed more than 1,000 lives and has turned even more Pakistani territory into hostile terrain for the country's army.

Until a couple of weeks ago, the government could at least boast about the tactical victory of retaining control over the mosque itself. But after an aborted reopening in July that ended with the government-appointed cleric fleeing an angry mob, the mosque was returned to the group that operated it before the raid.

On Oct. 3, policemen peeled back layers of barbed wire, and forklifts hoisted away the roadblocks that had encircled the mosque for months. Hundreds of followers of Ghazi and his brother, the imprisoned Maulana Abdul Aziz, streamed in, many flashing victory signs.

"Inshallah" -- God willing -- "this mosque will be exactly the same as it was before. If it is not the same, then we will make it the same," said Abdullah Rahman, 20, an electrical engineering student with a scraggly beard and a red knit cap. "Ghazi was martyred because of the truth. Jihad is the truth. So if the same situation comes again, we will be ready to face it. Even more ready than before."

Syed Ali Hussain, also a student, agreed. Two years ago, he said, he believed "Islam was a religion of terrorists." But after listening to leaders such as Ghazi, he came around to their point of view. The United States and Musharraf, he said, are like burglars who break into a house and then are surprised when they are met with violence. "If the owner of that house defends himself, he should not be called a terrorist," said Hussain, 23, who spent the first two days of the siege in the mosque but was then sent home because there were not enough weapons. "Newton once said that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

While the faithful said their prayers, vendors set up shop in the mosque's courtyard, selling a pamphlet written by Umme Hassan, Aziz's wife. The cover features an elaborately doctored image of the mosque under fire from attack helicopters and tanks. The mosque burns, blood drips down the page, and the headline reminds readers, "The martyrs say to you: Don't forget our sacrifice."

Within the pamphlet, Hassan, who ran the girls' school, offers her version of events. She tells how the government provoked the standoff and how her girls suffered once it began. They ran out of food and water after just two days, she writes, and anyone who ventured out into the open to find new supplies was instantly shot.

The government has told a much different story. The confrontation, the government says, was instigated entirely by the mosque's clerics, who were abducting prostitutes and police officers as part of their campaign to enforce Islamic law. Security forces were only reluctantly sent in to keep the peace, and once they laid their siege, they did everything possible to spare innocent lives while they battled heavily armed radical fighters. The clerics were well prepared for a fight they knew was coming and had stocked up on food and water, as well as weapons, officials have said.