Nearly two years after the arrest of Abdul Aziz on multiple charges of inciting violence against the state of Pakistan, the firebrand cleric of Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque has returned to the pulpit with a promise that he will continue with his struggle to establish Shari’a, or Islamic law, throughout the country. Just a day after he was released on bail, Aziz, wearing his trademark spectacles and graying beard, returned to the Red Mosque, the site of a weeklong siege in 2007 between the mosque’s seminary students and the Pakistani military, to deliver a sermon ahead of Friday prayers. Thousands of worshipers flocked to the centrally located mosque, spilling into the surrounding streets and kneeling on makeshift prayer rugs while Aziz’s voice boomed out over loudspeakers
