If the Islamabad administration is not careful and does not engage in a meaningful public relations rapport with the citizens we might find another trouble looming after the decision to pull down the Jamia Hafsa, and the appointment of Maulana Ashfaque as the chief cleric of Lal Masjid (the red colour of the mosque has been changed to green).
Already, Madrassah leaders have been speaking that they would rather have been the ousted and now arrested cleric Maulana Aziz installed. A number of burqa clad former girl students of Hafsa have also protested that their seminary has been pulled down into rubble.
These voices need to be heard by the Islamabad administration, because the Juma prayers scheduled at the mosque could be quite messy, even though the administration has said it has enough police guards at the premises during prayers.
Many people believe that the emotive aspect of Hafsa seminary, the administration needs examine its strategy and undertakes public relations to win the support of the people. Merely stating that engineers examining the structure have found it inappropriate as living quarter and have advised it to be pulled down would not be saying enough.
At this moment, the administration would certainly need many peoples' approval to go through with its plan. That is to say that the administration is still counting on show of force and President Musharraf's prescription on the national networks on July 12, of taking the fight against militancy to conclusion.
The operation against the Lal Masjid did not win complete national endorsement except from two mainstream parties - the PPP and the MQM. Even these parties, as well as many people inside the country, feel saddened at the ugliness of the enormity of fire power used against what they now talk about innocent girl students.
The incident has created an unfortunate backlash, especially in the tribal region, of which Wednesday's incident at Bannu is not the first. NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani has already named it as counter result of what happened at Lal Masjid a fortnight ago.
As reports in the international press suggest that the threat from al Qaeda has sprung up again, and the danger of Jihadis resurging has not entirely faded away.
In this context, a book published by the National Book Foundation this month provides a lurid eye-opener. The book profiling the Jihadi mindset written by Sohail Abbas, examines the phenomenon from a close angle, after conducting interviews of 517 Jihadis cloistered in Haripur and Peshawar jails for crossing back into Pakistan without papers in the aftermath of 9/11 tragedy in US.
Although the story relates to events nearly six-year-old, Suhail Abbas writes: "The study retains its relevance on this day ... because of the psychological make up of Jihadis, and the level and intensity of the underlying factors for Jihad have been further accentuated to manifest violent acts as suicide bombings."
The recent reports of Hafsa girl student Saima Khan and her sister Asma suggests they wanted to die a martyr, because they had sworn an oath on the Koran to die.
The 194-page book profiling the Jihadi mindset, has reproduced gist of several case studies of Aslam, Akbar, Hashim, Imran, Jalal, Jameel, Rasheed, and Usman, all former Jihadis.
The author raises the question whether the poverty and lack of education (of these young men) was cleverly exploited by the politically-motivated groups, and whether their illiteracy and poverty make a perfect combination for recruitment to a Jihadi mission?
"People told me that if I went to Jihad, not only my sins but also those of my parents would be washed away, and my parents would go to paradise. I was happy and became keen to go. I left my house", stated Jameel in an interview with author Sohail Abbase.
The book has demographic data about Jihadi groups, with reference to their ages, different regions to which they belonged to and the languages they spoke, as well as their urban or rural background. Sohail writers that in the Haripur group 54.4 percent and the Peshawar group, 49 percent had no religious education. In 41 percent of the cases, religious inclination did not come from parents but they received it from sources outside the family.
There is a very strong similarity in the view of the Hafsa girl students, most of them coming from poor families. As stated earlier, the girls had sworn to martydom.
It might be pertinent to remind that the Jihadi cult was encouraged, financed and promoted by the US administration during the Soviet invasion. After the withdrawal of Soviet forces and disintegration of USSR, the Americans simply forgot about Afghanistan and the Jihadi groups they created. The tables turned when 'in the aftermath of 9/11 America decided to remove the (religious) government of Afghanistan.'