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Nation of Proscriptions

Serving as a perfect recipe for a dysfunctional society, the case of banning the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) may not be different, as every proscribed party in the country resurfaces with a new face, a new name, but the same ideology

By Ambassador M. Alam Brohi | December 2025
Saad Rizvi, head of the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP).

“Violence breeds violence. The autocracy and authoritarianism induce intolerant, violent, and militant tendencies in society, prejudicial to the state. At the same time, democratic, participatory, representative, and rule-based governance tends to appeal to and bring out the goodness of citizens by instilling in them the importance of respecting laws and promoting peace, the common good, and collective well-being. Underdeveloped or developing societies prevent crime by instilling a fear of the law and law enforcement. In contrast, developed nations emphasize the importance of law-based conduct in a society where wrongdoing is generally viewed as an offense against the well-being of the entire society and the state, resulting in severe social condemnation and pressure on law enforcement to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrator of the crime.

We live under different conditions with an omnipresent and omnipotent establishment that manages every state affair, from politics to the economy, judiciary, and defence, and exploits fault lines within society to strengthen its grip. The Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), a far-right Islamist party, was formed by a firebrand preacher, Syed Khadim Hussain Rizvi, in 2015, allegedly at the instigation of some deep state elements to deprive the PML (n) of the rightist votes in the general election scheduled in July 2018. His followers were religious diehards and reacted violently to any perceived blasphemous remarks at home or abroad. Although based in Lahore, he would direct his guns towards Islamabad in any situation requiring protests to pressure the ruling clique. He organized such sit-ins during the eventful tenures of Pakistan Muslim League (n) and PTI from 2013 to 2022 and made victorious returns to Lahore.

Syed Khadim Hussain Rizvi passed away in November 2020 and was succeeded by his son, Saad Hussain Rizvi, as the second Ameer of the party. He continued following the ideological and political footprints of his father, acting as the self-appointed guardian of the blasphemy laws and reacting violently to any event perceived as blasphemous or injurious to Muslim interests. This time around, the party wanted to record its protest over the unjust Gaza Peace Plan in front of the US Embassy in Islamabad.

U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled his peace plan for Gaza on September 29 and solicited the support of the major Muslim countries. Nine major Muslim countries, including Pakistan, supported the plan. The TLP took offence, calling the peace plan a disgrace to Palestinians, and announced a long march to Islamabad. The federal and Punjab governments were clearly embarrassed, particularly in view of Washington’s recent bilateral tilt towards Pakistan, with President Donald Trump untiringly admiring our senior political and military leaders. Syed Saad Hussain Rizvi misjudged the likely reaction of the authorities in Islamabad and Punjab to protests outside the US Embassy.

On the first Friday of October, the party was unable to gather a sizable crowd to move towards Islamabad, as the Punjab police successfully sealed all roads to prevent the convergence of crowds in Lahore. However, on the second Friday (10 October), the TLP activists fought a pitched battle to break the police siege. They took the Grand Trunk Road to Islamabad. At Muridke, the administration had dug up deep and wide trenches to stop the long march. A heavy contingent of armed police and paramilitary forces, accompanied by armoured vehicles, had cordoned off the area. The marchers chose to camp there instead of ending their march. The atmosphere was overcast with apprehension, and the air was heavy with the nauseating odor of human blood. A gloom hung over the surroundings.

On 13 October, the security forces, in the wee hours of the night, launched a violent crackdown on the demonstrators using armoured vehicles. This caused heavy loss of previous lives, forcing the marchers to disperse. Later, the Federal authorities, on the recommendation of the Punjab administration, proscribed the TLP. Per law, the leaders of a proscribed party would be barred from holding any elected office in the future unless they disassociate themselves immediately from its ranks. Thus, many TLP leaders have announced their disassociation from the party. The mosques and seminaries of the TLP have been handed over to a committee of religious leaders, rather than the province’s Auqaf and Religious Affairs Department. This appears to be an apparent concession made at the behest of religious leaders. The Federal Government would now refer the matter to the Supreme Court to confirm or dismiss the proscription of the party.


The mélange of religion with politics and the registration of political parties based on sectarian ideology and following has been a bad experience in the country. For that matter, the politics of Islamist parties in all the Muslim countries, or the conflict between the Islamists and liberals over the Muslim world, has led to the fragmentation of societies and violence. We take the example of Ikhwans in Egypt, the National Islamic Front in Sudan, the Islamic Salvation Front in Algiers, the Islamic Parties in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran. The subsequent Jihadist groups that mushroomed in South Asia, South West Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East as a consequence of the Afghan wars believed in violent struggle against the liberal and somewhat secular rulers, proclaiming to establish an Islamic state.

Our society will continue to face religious intolerance, militancy, and violence unless a liberal and secular political culture is established to take firm roots in the country

We sowed the seeds of religious intolerance with the adoption of the Objectives Resolution as the preamble of the future Constitution on 12 March 1949, at the peril of the Quaid-e-Azam’s famous speech of 11 August 1947, which had clearly delineated the main features of the new Constitution. The hydra-headed religious intolerance struck violently against one minority religious group in Punjab in 1953, and Martial law was clamped to control the bloody riots. The Martial Law authorities took into custody over 100 religious activists and their leaders, including Syed Abul Ala Maudoudi and Moulana Abdul Sattar Khan Niazi.

The religious indoctrination continued as seminars of various religious sects mushroomed. We saw intermittent sectarian clashes during the commemoration of the Karbala tragedy. These clashes never spiraled into widespread riots. However, the apprehension of any violent confrontation continued to prevail in the atmosphere. The religion was further weaponized through the rash process of Islamization of laws and promulgation of new sensitive religious laws by General Zia-ul-Haq. He used the religion and pulpit to justify his coercive and violent treatment of political activists, nationalists, journalists, liberals, secularists, and socialists. He executed the first elected Prime Minister of the country and many others on flimsy grounds. The religious militancy received an impetus from the jihadi culture engendered by the so-called jihad against Godless communism in Afghanistan.

While jailing his political opponents and critics, Z.A. Bhutto also contributed to the weakening of the political forces in the face of the rising religious extremism. He dismissed the elected government of National Awami Party (NAP) leader, Sardar Attaullah Mengal, in Balochistan in July 1973, and later arrested the Pakhtun and Baloch nationalists, including Khan Abdul Wali Khan, Ajmal Khattak, Khair Bux Mari, Ghous Bux Bizenjo, Sardar Attaullah Mengal, and others, and banned the NAP. He set up a tribunal to try these leaders in Hyderabad Jail for the crime of treason. It was shocking to see an elected leader of the caliber of the late Bhutto indulging in such vindictiveness.

All his political opponents, including Mian Tufail Muhammad of Jamaat-e-Islami, Chaudhry Zahoor Illahi of Muslim League, the Pakhtun leaders, and Sindhi nationalists, were tacitly in agreement with the vindictive General Zia over his judicial murder. They all proved men of straw. The NAP was initially revived as the National Democratic Party by Sherbaz Mazari and Begum Nasim Wali Khan, and later reformed as the Awami National Party. General Zia also played with the idea of banning the Pakistan People’s Party to deprive the Bhuttos of their popular political base. But he had the precedence of NAP before him. Instead, he chose to divide the party and the population of Sindh along ethnic lines. The Mohajirs had a grievance against Bhuttos, partly due to the Sindhi Language Bill passed in July 1972, and mainly because of the loss of political and administrative dominance they had enjoyed before Bhutto’s period.

Thus, we witnessed the emergence of the Mohajir Qaumi Movement (MQM) and two factions of the Pakistan People’s Party – the National Peoples Party and the Progressive People’s Party, led by Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi and Moulana Kausar Niazi. These leaders could not outshine the charisma and the popularity of Bhutto’s ladies. The sword cannot kill political ideas and ideals, nor can leaders be eliminated through executions or coercive measures. Bhutto had rightly claimed that the Bhutto fallen would be more powerful than the Bhutto erect. Parties and their leaders are banished from the political arena by equally strong narratives and electoral defeats. The coercion, imprisonment, and false and politically motivated prosecutions enhance their public acceptability, giving them a legendary aura.

The Ahl-e-Sunnat wal Jamaat and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement were proscribed. The Sunni Etihad Council and Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan filled the vacuum created by the disappearance of Ahl-e-Sunnat. The MQM also became kosher after a bunch of so-called leaders disclaimed their association with the MQM, Altaf Hussain, and re-named their faction as MQM-Pakistan. They continue behaving as their master’s voice. In the last elections, they emerged with an unbelievably huge parliamentary strength, which even surprised them as a jaw-dropping surprise.

To sum up, we could say that every proscribed party in Pakistan resurfaced with a new face, a new name, but the same ideology. The case of TLP may not be different from those proscribed political and religious entities. Our society will continue to face religious intolerance, militancy, and violence unless a liberal and secular political culture is established to take firm roots in the country, following the example of modern Turkiye.”

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