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| Afghanistan/South Asia |
| Mufti Shamzai — a profile |
| 2004-05-31 |
| Renowned religious scholar Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai was assassinated by unidentified men outside his apartment on Sunday morning. Mufti Shamzai was patron-in-chief of Maulana Masood Azhar’s banned Jaish Mohammad outfit and retained the same status when the outfit renamed itself Tehrik-al-Furqan, which was also banned by the government last year. On July 1, 1999, at the height of the Kargil war, Mufti Shamzai, Mufti Jamil Khan and Dr Abdur Razzaq had issued an edict of jihad against India in Islamabad in response to a request from the Harkatul Mujahideen. The fatwa ordered that all seminaries in Pakistan should suspend their classes and send their students to Jammu and Kashmir to participate in the jihad. They also called Lt Gen (r) Hamid Gul and Lt Gen (r) Javed Nasir, former directors general of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), and Musharraf Allah’s gifts to the nation. After the Kargil war, Mufti Shamzai started a campaign against Nawaz Sharif, the then prime minister, for allegedly betraying the jihadis and Pakistan Army by succumbing to United States pressure and withdrawing Pakistani troops and jihadis from the Kargil heights and accused him of collaborating with the US against the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Mufti Shamzai was a member of the clerical delegation that went to Kandahar on September 28, 2001, along with Lt Gen Mahmood Ahmed, the then ISI director general, for discussions with Mulla Omar on the Bin Laden issue. The other members were Mufti Saleemullah, Mufti Taqi Usmani, Mufti Muhammad Jamil, Maulana Fazle Rahim, Qari Saeedur Rahman, Maulana Abdul Ghani, Maulana Muhammad Hasan Jan, Qari Mufti Sher Ali Shah and Maulana Haji Abdul Rahman. The Darul Uloom Islamia Binori Town mosque in Karachi houses one of the largest religious seminaries in Pakistan. It is perceived to be one of the most influential centres of hardline Deobandi Sunni Muslim ideology in the world. Since its establishment in 1951, the mosque and its seminary have been at the forefront of religious education to some 3,500 students at one time and now more than 10,000 pupils. Before the 9/11 attacks on the US, most pupils were drawn from Afghanistan and the Pashto-speaking areas of the NWFP, besides from abroad including Africa, the Philippines and Malaysia. Now, only 99 foreign students are taught there, according to a seminary official. It has a large number of smaller affiliated seminaries both within and outside Karachi. In the same month four years ago, another eminent religious scholar affiliated with the same religious school was killed in an ambush. Maulana Yousaf Ludhianvi was gunned down on May 18, 2000 on his way to the International Khatm-e-Nabuwwat offices in Sharifabad. They’re the group who spearhead the anti-Ahmadi movement, yet another group that these Mullahs hate. |
| Posted by:Paul Moloney |