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ISLAMABAD - Abdul Rashid Ghazi vowed to die in his Islamabad mosque rather than surrender -- a pledge he kept Tuesday when he was cut down in intense crossfire after troops stormed the building.
Yet the firebrand 43-year-old cleric's apocalyptic calls for his death to spark an Islamic revolution in Pakistan belied his once relatively moderate lifestyle.
The bespectacled, articulate militant -- who attended a madrasah in his youth -- was remembered as a moderate pupil by a professor at the mainstream
Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.
"He was a normal, moderate student who was well adjusted to a co-educational system," Naim Qureshi, one of Ghazi's history professors, told AFP.
Ghazi did a master's degree in history in 1987-88. A photo of him and his classmates still hangs on the history department's wall.
"In studies he was OK but I don't remember his grades. I remember that he had a normal beard," Qureshi said, comparing it with the bushy, grey,
Islamist-style beard that Ghazi sported in later life.
Ghazi married into a moderate family and lived a relatively westernised life. He took a government job in the education ministry and also worked with UNESCO, the UN's culture organisation.
"Ghazi used to share jokes, often spoke in English, moved in mixed company and was an active student," said a university friend who asked not to be named.
His father, Abdullah Aziz, who founded the Red Mosque, was so angry about his lifestyle that he handed over his property to Ghazi's brother, current mosque leader Abdul Aziz.
Abdul Aziz was caught last Wednesday trying to flee the compound in a burqa.
Ghazi completely changed after his father was shot dead inside the mosque by a lone gunman, thought to be from a rival Islamic group. He joined his brother Abdul, who took over the mosque in 1998 and nominated him as his deputy.
Ghazi also established links with Pakistani intelligence services, who earlier had used his father and brother to help foster Islamists who would support the anti-Soviet "jihad" in Afghanistan and the subsequent rise to power of the Taliban.
When the 9/11 attacks took place in the United States, friends said no trace of the "old," westernised Ghazi remained. But he also began to move away from his state sponsors.
Security sources said he had close links with pro-Taliban militants and agitated against President Pervez Musharraf's decision to back the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.
Colleagues said that in 2004 he survived an attempt on his life and since then had always carried a Kalashinkov with him.
"You always find an AK-47 in his car, with him in the madrasah and even at his bedside," one colleague said.
By 2007, Ghazi and Aziz had become entirely committed to turning Pakistan into a Taliban-style Islamic state.
Their students raided music stores and brothels and kidnapped people allegedly involved in "vice," including seven people from Pakistan's closest ally and biggest military supplier, China.
Since the mosque came under siege a week ago, Ghazi repeatedly said that he would rather be "martyred" than give in to the government.
Rasool Bakhsh Raees, a professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management and Sciences, said Ghazi was foolish to take on the government in the first place.
"No sane person could think of doing that," he said. - AFP/ir
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