Dharna Questions

The 1947 separation caused the migration of many leading Deobandi scholars to Pakistan. This included Mufti Mahmood, the father of Maulana Fazlur-Rehman, the current president of a faction of Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Islam (JUI). Moreover, Mufti Mahmood, an ethnic Pashtun, became the chief minister of Pakistan’s North-West Frontier in 1972 for nine months although he is reputed to have stated that mercifully he was not part of the sin of the creation of Pakistan.

The 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led to te pashtuns playing a major role in the Afghan jihad and a large number of these fighters were drawn from Deobandi seminaries, which received considerable CIA and Saudi funding. The Soviet Union eventually withdrew from Afghanistan and Deoband became the religious base for much of the Taliban movement that ruled Afghanistan until 2001. Many Taliban leaders and fighters, including its founder Mullah Omar, studied in Deobandi seminaries, many of which were also influenced by Wahhabism due to Saudi funding. Even Hakimullah Mehsud, the commander of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), studied at a Deobandi seminary in Hangu District of North-West Frontier, now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). TTP wreaked havoc in Pakistan following the Lal Masjid debacle in 2007.

In this backdrop, Maulana Fazlur Rahman began his political career as the secretarygeneral of JUI in 1980 at the age of 27 after the death of his father Mufti Mahmud who was the JUI leader before his death. In the mid-1980s, the JUI split into two factions – the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (S) led by Maulana Samiul Haq and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (F) led by Maulana Fazal ur Rehman, who maintained his contacts with the Taliban and ran with the hare while hunting with the hounds.

Maulana Fazal ur Rehman was elected as a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan in 1988 general elections from D.I. Khan for the first time and was generally a member of the parliament until 2018. According to WikiLeaks, the Maulana had expressed the desire to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan to Ann Patterson, US Ambassador to Pakistan, at a private dinner in 2007. He has been leader of the opposition in the Parliament and has enjoyed the status of a federal minister and was head of the Kashmir Committee under various governments. He was also an unsuccessful candidate for the position of President of Pakistan in 2018.

As for his Dharna, the jury is still out on the Maulana’s rationale for staging it in the first place. It has been known from the very beginning that the dharna would not extract the resignation of Prime Minister Imran Khan so what was Fazlur Rahman trying to achieve? Relevance – as he has not been able to digest being out of the Parliament and not heading the powerful Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir.

There are sinister conspiracy theories that are suggesting that certain enemies of Pakistan are supporting the Maulana. It is true that the focus on the Kashmir issue has been diluted. The Maulana set out on his “Freedom March” on the “Kashmir Black Day”. The day the march reached Islamabad, India formally issued a notification detailing the boundaries of the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, and also released a new political map of India. Narendra Modi had the temerity to depict Gilgit-Baltistan as a part of Ladakh in the new map, and the whole of Kashmir, including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) as Jammu and Kashmir Union Territory.

There were also visuals of the Taliban flag being part of the Maulana’s March. There have been threats to the military too – veiled and unveiled. Till the writing of this article, the sit-in was continuing because the Maulana had refused to call it a day till somebody important requested him to pack his bags. He was continuing  with the dharna despite thefact that poor madrassah students who were participating in the sit-in were freezing in Islamabad’s cold and rain – while the Maulana and his top cohorts slept in a cozy house in the city.