The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North-West Frontier Province and Its Implications in

Colonial India and Pakistan 1914-1996

Author(s): Sana Haroon
Source: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Jan., 2008, Third Series, Vol. 18, No. 1
(Jan., 2008), pp. 47-70
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Royal Asiatic Society of
Great Britain and Ireland

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 The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North- West

Frontier Province and its Implications in Colonial India

and Pakistan lgi^igg?1

SANA HAROON

The commitment of North-West Frontier Province Pakhtun religious politics towards the
quest for a society and state governed by religious leaders was directed through the colonial
period, and into the national period, predominantly by the ulama known as Deobandis.
These ulama took their title from the madrasa Darul Ulum Deoband in the United Provinces
in north-India and came to prominence through championing Muslim interests in colonial
NWFP After the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the creation of Pakistan in 1947,
the United Provinces remained in India, separating Pakistani scholars trained in Deoband
from Indian Deobandi theologians, and indeed from the school itself. But these ulama
continued to call themselves Deobandis and were central to the successful demand for the
constitutional declaration of Pakistan as an Islamic state; and brought Islam to bear on
national and provincial legislation from positions in parliament. Increasingly well-organised
and well-funded, NWFP Deobandi ulama established madrasas and mosques in the province,
strengthening the preserve of religion and their own authority. When the Afghan resistance to
the Soviet occupation began in 1978, a section of the resistance organisation working in exile
in Peshawar gravitated towards these Deobandi institutions, drawing the Deobandi ulama of
the NWFP into the jihad. Sustaining links to the Afghan fighters even after the withdrawal of
the Soviets, the NWFP Deobandis contributed to and encouraged the emerging organisation
of the Taliban, becoming champions of their reactionary brand of Islam.
The history of the rise of the Deobandis in the NWFP is marked by two contradictory
realities: that the Deobandis have never been able to dominate parliamentary politics on
their own strength; and that Deobandi Islam has come to define the politics and public life
of the NWFP more than any other political or social movement. Tracing this progression
demonstrates the extent to which Deobandi successes in the political realm have relied
on compacts with other political groups while maintaining close connections within the
'Deobandi' community.

1 This research was made possible by a post-doctoral fellowship grant from the Past and Present Society in 2005
2006. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the centre of South Asian studies Conference in Cambridge
2005 and the Anglo American Conference 2006. Useful suggestions have been made by Barbara Metcalf, Francis
Robinson, Sarah Ansari.

JRAS, Series 3, 18, 1 (2008), pp. 47-70 ? The Royal Asiatic Society 2008
doi:io.iOi7/Si356i86307007778 Printed in the United Kingdom

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 48 Sana Haroon

'Deobandis' and the early politics of the Pakhtun north-west

The Darul Ulum Deoband madrasa was established in the United Provinces in north India,
in the late nineteenth century. The founders of Deoband were concerned with how study
of the hadith and the Quran should be used towards reforming practice of the Muslim faith.
The roots of the Deobandi pedagogy lay in the writings and teachings of Shaikh Ahmed
Sirhindi, the seventeenth-century Sufi who urged the reform of Sufi religious practices and
came to be known as Mujaddid Alf Sani. Sirhindi's ideas, which formed the basis of the
Mujaddidiyya shaakh or branch of the Naqshbandiyya Sufi philosophy, were developed by
Shah Wali Ullah, the greatest South Asian Islamic thinker of the eighteenth century, who
argued for the re-introduction of the Quran and hadith into Sufi tariqa. Shah Wali Ullah s
thought evolved in two ways - his teaching was taken to the Pakhtun regions north of
Punjab and into Afghanistan in the 1820s by his grandson Shah Ismail and Sayyid Ahmed of
Rai Bareilly; and later it was incorporated into the programme of study, known as the dars-i
nizami, which was taught at the Darul Ulum Deoband by others of Walli Ullah s spiritual
and methodological successors.
While the Deobandi curriculum abandoned the Sufi premise for the prescriptions of
Sirhindi and Shah Wali Ullah, and focused entirely on imparting knowledge in relation to
the hadith, Quran and interpretative method, one Sufi tradition did remain discreetly in
place within the institution: the use of the bait (pledge or oath) between teachers or murshids
and their students. The bait was not a standard device used between all students and teachers
at the school, nor did use of the bait suggest that the Sufi tariqa was being taught at the
school in addition to the standard curriculum. It was an important symbol however, which
maintained the link between the school and the Sufi legacy of Shah Wali Ullah. This device
- which was a private and emotional act selectively practiced between students and teachers
at the Darul Ulum - allowed the ulama of Deoband to reach out into the distant locale
of Pakhtun Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya practice to draw religious leaders there into the
Darul Ulum Deoband programme of study. Some Pakhtun religious leaders, most notably
Haji Turangzai, a mulla from Charsadda, professed to have taken the bait at the hands of
prominent Deobandis. Many others were drawn to the institution on the basis of their
shared commitment to the Sufi philosophy of Shah Wali Ullah without necessarily taking
the bait.2 These connections, bolstered strongly by the Darul Ulum Deoband's reputation,
led to scores of Pakhtuns from the NWFP seeking an education at that institution from
around the end of the nineteenth century.3
Political organisation in the Pakhtun regions was delayed by the late creation of the NWFP
province in 1901 and limited by the small number of publications, the use of the foreign
Urdu and English languages by the existing newspapers, and low literacy rates. Nevertheless, a
complex of religious, ethno-linguistic and anti-colonial concerns came to constitute an urban
arena of public political action in the NWFP by the 1920s. In an effort to hold a concerted
anti-colonial stance, organisations with differing, disparate objectives supported each other
against organisations and parties opposed to the principles of non-cooperation and civil

2See Sana Haroon, Frontier of Faith: Islam in the Indo-Afghan Borderland (London, 2007).
3'List of students who passed from the Dar-ul-Ulum, Deoband' in Youth and Student Movements, Special
Branch Peshawar files, NWFP archives [hereafter SBP].

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 The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 49

disobedience.4 The new mechanisms of the public - public debate, party organisation and
print technology - subsumed the relatively small number of anti-colonial activists without
regard for the subtle variations in their agendas. The few venues for public meetings drew a
mixed urban audience constituted by those who could be reached through newspapers, the
distribution of pamphlets and posters, and word of mouth.5 Furthermore, the NWFP had
a majority of Muslims and was without a significant non-Muslim population outside the
cities of Peshawar and Dera Ismail Khan. Hence, although inspired by a number of different
(often contradictory) discourses of anti-colonial, religious, left-wing and nationalist politics,
the small number of actors in the province were forced to band together on the basis of
a single shared objective of gaining native political rights and representation. Early public
political meetings were held in the major Peshawar mosques ? Masjid Mahabat Khan and
Masjid Qasim Ali Khan - and included religious personalities, but these venues were not
overtly intended to restrict political participation to those who were religiously inclined,
as participants were from a variety of backgrounds.6 A mix of western-educated students,
businessmen, tradesmen, scholars of religion, and a religious elite coming out of a Sufi
tradition, was drawn to these gatherings and into large public demonstrations as avenues for
asserting social and political agendas.
The first major instance of direct Deobandi engagement in the politics of the North-West
Frontier was in the period 1914-1919. Maulana Mahmudul Hasan, the then chancellor of
Darul Ulum Deoband, wanted to contribute to the anti-colonial and pan-Islamic effort
by inviting a Turkish attack on British India on its north-western frontier. These initial
relations between Deoband and the Pakhtun north-west were conceived loosely on the
almost mythical model of Sayyid Ahmed of Rai Bareili s 'jihad' against the Sikhs in the
1830s and intended to reclaim a space and dignity for the practice of the Muslim faith by
militant means.7 However Mahmudul Hasans scheme was discovered and ended with the
incarceration of its primary organisers. As the movement coincided with the beginnings of
local political mobilisations in the North-West Frontier Province, many local participants
moved effortlessly into the provincial staging of the India-wide 'khilafat' mobilisation of
Muslims to demand the protection of the Turkish caliphate and the integrity of the Ottoman
lands in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of Pakhtun nationalist
organisation.8

4 A single-sheet cyclostyle poster circulated in Peshawar by the JUH condemned the organisations Liberal
League and Aman Sabha as acting under the influence of 'colonial officers' to 'subvert the objectives of non
cooperation'. See 'Islami Fatwa Liberal League wa Aman Sabha mein Shareek Hona Sharan Haram Hai' (JUH,
1921), Oriental and India Office Collection [hereafter OIOC].
5 Single-sheet posters and pamphlets were used to publicise meetings and a political strategy. A cyclostyle
summary, single-sheet version of the fatwa of the JUH printed by the Khilafat committee Dehra Dunn (Peshawar
District) was circulated in this medium. 'Ulama-yi Hind ka Mutafiqa Fatwa' (JUH, 1921), SBP
6This political activity was not religiously inspired, but part of an emerging political discourse popularised
by the All India National Congress. Pakhtun historian Allah Baksh Yusufi credits Sayyid Ali Abbas Bukhari of
Peshawar with introducing the tactics of public political expression to the NWFP by leading the first major public
demonstrations, in Sarhad AurJaddo Jehed-i Azadi (Lahore, 1986), pp. 129-130.
7Hussain Ahmed Madni, Tehrik-i Reshmi Rumal (Lahore, 1966), p. 418.
8The Muslim position was bolstered by a compact between Hindu and Muslim leadership to jointly pursue an
anti-colonial objective. Gandhi, through the All India National Congress, launched the non-cooperation movement
simultaneously, calling for a boycott of British goods, non-payment of taxes and mass resignations from government

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 50 Sana Haroon

This transition is best represented in the career of one Peshawar-based Deobandi, Maulana
Abdur Rahim Popalzai, a Pakhtun from Peshawar descended from a line of Sufi pirs.9 In
addition to his regional pre-eminence as a pir, he was accorded status of alim as he studied
the dars at Darul Ulum Deoband and returned to establish a madrasa at Peshawar. Popalzai
maintained contact and gave support to the Deobandis in the Tribal Areas, he also began to
be drawn to the k/z/Ztf/^-non-cooperation movement's drama of public demonstrations and
speeches.10 During the same period, Popalzai became acquainted with left-leaning Pakhtun
intellectuals and political activists of the Bharat Naujawan Sahaba, a Marxist student group,
and the Mazdoor Kissan Party, a movement for peasant emancipation.11 In 1927 Popalzai
launched the short-lived Sarfarosh newspaper which publicised the concerns of the Marxist
student organisation the Bharat Naujawan Sahaba. These years also marked the beginnings
of the Khudai Khidmatgar movement, a Pakhtun nationalist non-violent movement of civil
resistance and political reorganisation, started by Abdul Ghaffar Khan.12 Popalzai joined the
movement, spent time in jail for his public speeches against the government, and then threw
his support behind a new movement - a peasant uprising in Bannu, for which he was jailed
again.13 He was being deeply influenced by Congress and leftist politics in the province,
which had introduced an Urdu press in the province, and tentatively introduced Pashtu
journalism as well.14
While his primary commitments were well removed from anything that was tangibly a
religious politics, Popalzai continued to attend and speak at meetings of ulama in his father's
mosque, Qasim Ali Khan.15 In 1929, along with other 'Khilafatists\16 he participated in a
deputation of Peshawar ulama and Tribal Areas mullas to Afghanistan17 to try and rally support
for the deposed Amir Amanullah Khan, a great patron of the Deobandis in Afghanistan.18
But without party organisation Popalzai floundered; like many other political activists who
were inclined towards an exclusively Muslim political identity, until the entrenchment of a
provincial wing of the Deobandi party.

employment. For more on the impact of the KMtf/aJ-non-cooperation period on public political action, see Ayesha
Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London, 2000).
9Shamsur Rahman Nomani's short biographies of Deobandis in the NWFP in Suba-yi Sarhad Kay Ulama-yi
Deoband (Peshawar, 2001) notes that many were involved in the Khilafat movement, some individually, and some
in connection to Popalzai.
10Yusufi suggests that the culture of public demonstration was introduced as early as 1912. However it was not
until the Khilafat period that the public expression of political objectives was used on a mass scale for common set
of objectives. See Yusufi, Sarhad, pp. 129-130.
11 Khan, Aik Ishtiraki, p. 18.
12See Mukulika Banerjee, The Pathan Unarmed (Karachi, 2000).
13Abdul Jalil Popalzai, Hurriyet-namah-yi Bannu (Peshawar, n.d.).
14See Yusufi, Sarhad. Yusufi dates the start of serious broadsheet journalism in the NWFP in the mid-i920s.
The most significant contributors to journalism were Yusufi himself, Ghulam Ghaus Sehrai, and Qazi Muhammad
Wali Khan (pp. 176-179). Yusufi started publishing the Sarhad to popularise the Khilafat agenda in 1926, Ghulam
Ghaus Sehrai started publishing the Azad in 1937.
15Peshawar Intelligence Bureau Diaries [hereafter PIBD], June 1931.
16Although the Khilafat movement ended unremarkably in 1921, many activists continued to call themselves
Khilafatists in tribute to the originating ideals and organisation engendered by the movement. This is discussed
further in reference to the NWFP below.
17Abdur Rahim Popalzai, Afghanistan Mein Qayam-e-Aman (Rawalpindi, 1929; reprint Peshawar, 1996), p. 8.
18Amanullah Khan was championed as the saviour of Islam after the dissolution of the Ottoman Caliphate in
key Deobandi writings. See Madni, Tehrik, pp. 149-151.

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 51

The Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad: consolidating a provincial Deobandi position

With the establishment of political representation through separate electorates for the
Muslims and Hindus by 1916, Muslim public political activity in the NWFP was, as in
the rest of India, tending towards the representation of religious identity.19 This was what
David Gilmartin has termed 'particularism' ? public participation circumscribed by the
politics of communal identities.20 Although left-leaning organisations like Bharat Naujawan
Sahaba of the NWFP and nationalist groups like the Zalmai Pakhtun tried to articulate a
provincial position that included the large urban Hindu and Sikh populations of Peshawar
and D. I. Khan, Islam-centric political symbols such as the Ottoman Caliphate and protection
of mosques dominated in the majority-Muslim province. As the organisation of the Muslim
electorate and the public articulation of the community's legislative concerns began in the
province, Deobandis used their public social authority over Muslims to claim a part of that
political representation.
The political wing of the Darul Ulum Deoband, the Jamiyatul Ulama Hind [JUH], had
been established in 1919. The JUH had entered Indian politics on the back of the khilafat
movement, but then, motivated by both a concern for mobilising the Muslims of India, and
the greater anti-colonial Indian nationalist cause, the Jamiyatul Ulama Hind sought to secure
Muslim presence in the emerging political space and devolution of powers within India.
Ulama of the JUH took up communal issues and proposed the ulama as leaders and political
representatives of the Muslims of Hind. They also spoke strongly in favour of maintaining
separate electorates for Muslims and Hindus (seats reserved for Muslims and Hindus in
proportion to population in legislative assemblies), and a system of legal adjudication under
'customary law' which privileged the ulama as spokesmen for the principles of the faith.
These efforts were inherently a means of circumscribing the Muslim community of India
and establishing the authority of the ulama over it.
When a JUH committee was established just outside Peshawar in 1924, the one-time
khilafat activists, who had been unfocused after the failure of the khilafat movement, were
drawn by the new agenda they popularised.21 Together, the old khilafat activists and the
new JUH committee popularised both the agendas of civil disobedience and the importance
and autonomy of Muslim customary law. Their influence was limited until 1927 when the
revived NWFP kkilafat-JUW activists invited the JUH central committee to hold its annual
meeting in Peshawar. The JUH leadership was strongly committed to the province for its
large Muslim majority and was eager to see political reforms introduced there on the same
lines as in the rest of India, and readily agreed. At the conference, the president went on to

19 While the electoral expression of Muslim-ness was limited - see Farzana Shaikh in Community and Consensus in
Islam: Muslim Representation in Colonial India (Cambridge, 1989) ? the ideological expanse of the Muslim imagination
was not similarly confined, see Jalal, Self and Sovereignty.
20Although David Gilmartin posits his theory of 'particularism' in opposition to Sandria Freitags theories
about the formation of the public in colonial India, the electoral religious identity that he describes circumscribed
the formation of the Muslim electorate but did not supersede mechanisms by which the public operates such as
press, and the significance of places of religious congregation and the performance of ritual.
21 At the first meeting of thejamiyatul Ulama Committee Ziarat Kakasahib, a resolution was passed condemning
the Sharif of Mecca and calling for a Khilafat deputation to Angora. PIBD, 30 August 1924.

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 52 Sana Haroon

announce the establishment of a formal JUH presence and concern in the NWFP in the
form of the Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad or JUS.22
The JUS organised the first major local articulation of the JUH national political objectives
in the NWFP, leading a demonstration in opposition to the Sarda Act which set a minimum
age for marriage, on the grounds that this was interference in customary practice.23 There
was a compact between the JUH and the All India National Congress (AINC), the Hindu
majority nationalist party led by Gandhi, at the centre. Hence the Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad
was expected to support the Khudai Khidmatgars, the NWFP branch of the AINC, in
political programmes such as resisting taxation and calling for a boycott on highly taxed
commodities such as alcohol; and refer to Gandhi's authority and leadership. But the JUS
leadership began also to highlight exclusively Muslim interests in the province. They called
for the disbanding of the government appointed charitable trusts on the grounds that "the
charitable trusts of the Muslims of the frontier are purely religious trusts, therefore their right
of management falls to the Muslims and any sort of interference from the Government cannot
be tolerated". The JUS ulama also voiced general concerns about the level of agricultural
tax as it affected the predominantly Muslim land owners.24 In public statements by the JUS,
Gandhi and the ulama were equated as political leaders, and the creation of respect for the
ulama in this authoritative capacity was encouraged through public campaigns. This concern
was reiterated the following year in response to political reforms in the NWFP that created
a legislative council for the province. Resolutions passed by the JUS, publicised in posters
around the city, declared that the reforms would be accepted on the grounds that sufficient
representation was granted to the JUS and that provincial law would be based on the shari'a.

All political and non-political organisations should not transgress the shari'a and should consult
the central Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad in all important matters... the ulama should keep watch over
matters of shari'a.25

The JUS further resolved to send a deputation of ulama to the Chief Commissioner
NWFP to discuss conditions in the province.26
Establishment of the Deobandi-dominated JUS was the beginning of the process by
which Deobandi ulama of the NWFP began to rationalise and regularise their authority as
a natural political leadership in the province, urging that Muslim religious life and public
participation could not be separated. In 1928 the JUS called for a majlis-i shura, or assembly

22Anwar Shah Kashmiri, Khutba-yi Sadarat (JUH, 1927) pp. 36-40.

23TheJUH central organisation had highlighted and organised around three central issues during the 1927-193 5
period - the Rangila Rasul movement, the Sarda act, and the Shahidganj Mosque protection. The Rangila Rasul
agitation was sparked over a book published in 1924 by a Hindu, Rajpal, that described the Prophet Mohammad
as a self-indulgent philanderer. The Sarda Act was a piece of legislation that had raised the legal age for marriage
from twelve to fourteen years this was declared to be an unacceptable interference by the government in a matter
governed by religion. The agitation over the Sarda Act was exacerbated by the feeling that Hindus supported the
legislation. The Shahidganj mosque issue contested the site of a mosque built in the Mughal Aurangzeb's times
that had been taken over as a Sikh gurdwara in the nineteenth century. This issue became a highlight of public
controversy once again in the 1930s. Because of the distinct Hindu-Muslim tensions surrounding these three issues,
the activities of the JUH have generally been classed as 'communalist' - a part of the Hindu-Muslim opposition.
24'The magnificent demonstration of the Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad and unanimous decision of the ulama' (JUS,
i93i)
25'Decisions taken at a meeting' (JUS, 1931).
26'Decisions taken at a meeting'.

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 53

of representatives, to bring the NWFP Muslim groups into one single formation under
the authority of the ulama.27 A number of district-level committees were set up under the
supervision of the JUS in Bannu, Hazara, Charsadda, Nowshera, Tappa Mohmand, Barzai,
Swabi and Swat. In 1931 the JUS invited all the ulama of the NWFP to a meeting at a
Peshawar mosque to "settle the disputes of people according to shari'a".28 After the meeting
it was claimed by the JUS that they had a petition, signed by ten thousand people, calling
for the application of shari'a in the NWFP.29 In pursuit of this objective, some JUS district
committees began to serve as informal courts in order to establish shari'a-based dispute
resolution systems at the local level. Residents were encouraged to come to the ulama of
the JUS for settlements rather than turning to the state-run courts for justice or taking
matters into their own hands.30 Despite not having a direct access to the legislative assembly,
the ulama managed to represent their agenda to that body through personal supporters. A
Peshawar member of legislative council questioned the government's sanction of the sale of
alcohol in the province, given the moral values of the province's Muslims. He argued that
'public opinion' had confirmed the JUS's opposition to the sale of alcohol and picketing of
shops:

The inhabitants of Peshawar, [as well as] Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan and Hazara have
contributed towards this noble cause. As far as public opinion is concerned, it is sure to resent
things which are against religion and morality.31

The JUS provincial committee and district committees created a new brand of political
religious leaders in the province. Ghulam Ghaus of Hazara, who will be discussed in greater
detail below, made his debut into frontier politics through the district committee JUS
Hazara. Maulana Shakirullah of Bannu, who presided over the inaugural session of the
Frontier Province Muslim League in 1937, also entered the arena of public politics through
a district JUS committee,32 as did Maulana Muhammad Shoaib who later became president
of the Frontier Province Muslim League.33

Popular Politics 1927-1947

During the two decades leading up to independence and partition, the place of the religious
elite trained in, or sympathetic to, a reformist discourse and practice in the arena of public
political activity and social direction was confirmed. Increasing popularity of the ulama was
as much a function of the expression their politics took as it was an endorsement of their
ideological position.

27 The Jamiyatul Ulama Sarhad printed posted announcing the formation of a Majlis-i Shura of local Muslims.
Representatives were invited from other greater-Peshawar groups and committees. CID report 20 December 1928,
SBP.
28CID report 22 June 1931, SBP.
29'The magnificent demonstration'.
30CID Reports, 9 May 1931, 12 May 1931, PIBD, SBP, June 1931.
31 Comment by Member Legislative Council, Pir Bakhsh of Peshawar, 23 May 1932, in NWFP Legislative
Council Debates, Vol. 1, 1932.
32Wiqar Ali Shah, Ethnicity, Islam and Nationalism (Karachi, 2000), p. 101.
33Muhammad Shuaib was named secretary JUS, Charsadda at its formation in 1931- Zamindar, 5 June 1931.

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 54 Sana Haroon

The relevance of the ulama to the public debate and the strength of their demands were
deeply dependent on their use of print technology. They sought to publicly reiterate their
role and importance in political mobilisations using this medium34 well before the issues were
raised at the level of the legislative assembly.35 Use of print technology by the ulama of north
India has received careful and subtle analysis in the work of Francis Robinson and Qasim
Zaman. Their writings establish that a more popular and accessible application of religion
emerged through the technologies of print and the 'Muslim landscape' described in it. This
landscape was constituted by both a world of Islam - images and news of other Muslim
peoples and concerns36 - and by a north-Indian, Urdu-reading audience, which could be
accessed through mass-printed commentaries.37 Print technology, largely in Urdu, provided
the platform on which the interpretative authority of the ulama could be publicly asserted
and developed in the NWFP Posters advertising meetings and the resolutions reached in
congresses of ulama were distributed through the mosques and bazaars of the cities.38 Early
Peshawar newspapers reported the political concerns and demands of the khilafat committees
and the JUS.
Urdu was the language of Muslim north India, and the language within which a Muslim
political thought developed. While Pashtu was the most popular spoken language in the
NWFP, public discourse, particularly in print, was dominated by Urdu, even through
the early years of Pashtun linguistic and ethnic nationalism as nurtured by Ghaffar Khan.
Newspapers were predominantly published in Urdu, although some began to print pages in
Pashtu to supplement the Urdu.39 Preference for Urdu as the language of public political
debate was a result of both the better development of Urdu as a written language through the
education system, and the preference of the Muslim elite for the language for its suggestion
of a common identity and concerns, tying the Muslims of India together as a coherent
community.40 Of the few books published with official sanction in the NWFP in the 1930s
and 40s, all were either in English or Urdu.41 Mastery of Urdu was in itself a mark of
distinction, and Deobandi ulama were well placed to contribute to a public debate in Urdu
in the NWFP, as the madrasa encouraged the use of Urdu as a medium of interpretation and
commentary on religious text.42
The fact that Pashtu was the language predominantly spoken in the NWFP, compounded
with the fact that literacy was very limited, meant that access to written language itself,
let alone the printed Urdu language, was very limited. Any understanding of the subtleties
of debate represented in printed Urdu would have been restricted to a very small male

34See Jamiyatul Ulama Afghan, Da Suba-yi Sarhad Da Ulama-o-Qurbani (Peshawar, 1931).

35The issues represented in the earlier pamphlet were raised in council in 1932. See NWFP Legislative Council
Debates, Vol. 1, 1932.
36Francis Robinson, 'Islam and the Impact of Print', Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Delhi, 2001),
p. 78.
37Muhammad Qasim Zaman, 'Commentaries, Print and Patronage: 'Hadith' and Madrasas in Modern South
Asia', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 62, 1 (1999), p. 70.
38PIBD, 1928-1931.
39 Sarhad printed twenty six pages in Urdu and included a Pashtu supplement of sixteen pages. Other papers,
Paigham-i Sarhad (1930), Azad (1937) and Paigham (1940), were published solely in Urdu. See Omar Amer, A History
of the Press in the NWFP (Peshawar, 1987?), pp. 111-120.
40See Peter Hardy, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972), pp. 143?144.
41'Catalogues of Books Printed and Registered in the North-West Frontier Province 1933-1945', OIOC.
42Metcalf, Islamic Revival, p. 103.

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 55

elite, one that was probably already dominant in the public sphere, whether through
religious leadership, political activism, or material prosperity The ulama's interpretative
commentaries and injunctions were made accessible to a wider audience in a simplified
form through repetition by rich merchants and traders in bazaars, by imams in mosques,
and by activists in loud public demonstrations.43 While the actual relevance of the ulama's
religious interpretative and textual authority to regional religious practice is questionable,
the public visibility afforded them by print culture was real and determined.44
The increasing involvement of the ulama in the public and political sphere led to a rise
in competition between the ulama and the avowedly secular Khudai Khidmatgars who
were organising a province-wide political presence and strategy. Although deeply invested
in Muslim politics and the safeguarding of political participatory structures, the Jamiyatul
Ulama never contested an election in undivided India. The stance of the central JUH
was pro-Congress, and accordingly the JUS supported the Congressite Khudai Khidmatgars
through to the elections of 1937.45 However the secular stance of Ghaffar Khan, leader of the
Khudai Khidmatgars, disparaging the role of religion in government and social leadership,
was driving a wedge between the ulama of the JUS and the Khudai Khidmatgars, irrespective
of the commitments of mutual support between the JUH and Congress leaderships.
In trying to highlight the separateness and vulnerability of Muslims in a religiously
diverse public space, the directives of the NWFP ulama began to veer away from simple
religious injunction to take on a communalist tone. The ulama highlighted 'threats' posed by
Hindus to Muslims in the province. Accusations of improper behaviour and molestation of
Muslim women were levelled against 'Hindu shopkeepers' in Nowshera.46 Sermons given
by two JUS-connected maulvis in Nowshera declared the Hindus the 'enemies' of Islam and
Muslims.47 Posters were distributed in the city warning Muslims not to buy or consume
foods prepared and sold by Hindus in the bazaars.48 In 1936, a Hindu girl was abducted by a
Muslim in Bannu and then married to him. The government demanded the girl's return, but
popular Muslim opinion, supported by a resolution passed by the Jamiyatul Ulama Bannu,
demanded that she stay, stating that she had come of her free will, had converted to Islam,
and was now lawfully married and had to remain with her husband.49 Government efforts to
retrieve the girl led to accusations of the government being anti-Muslim and of encouraging
apostasy, and so stirred up strong anti-Hindu sentiment across the majority Muslim NWFP.
Increasingly obsessed with the definition of the Muslim, some members of the JUS
began to take up sectarian issues. Most notable among these was Maulana Ghulam Ghaus
of Hazara, later to become secretary of the Jamiyatul Ulama Islam in Pakistan. Maulana
Ghulam Ghaus had received part of the dars at Deoband, and was one of the 'authentic'
Deobandi influences in the JUS. He was deeply influenced by the Ahrars, a vocal and militant

43 Religious debate, which had so long been restricted to the quiet recesses of the madrasa and articulated in
detailed, carefully referenced tracts, was based in a careful study of the Arabic language and the validity of a chain of
transmission. Religious study was a restricted domain, dependent on a fluency in Quranic Arabic and an accurate
knowledge ofhadith.
44PIBD, 1931-1937.
45CID report, 17 April 1937, SBP.
46CID report, 18 July 1934, SBP.
47NWFP Political Diaries [hereafter NWFPPD], 5 August 1934.
48Poster found in Qissa Khwani Bazaar, NWFPPD, 30 July 1927
49CID report, 7 October 1936, SBP.

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 56 Sana Haroon

Muslim movement concerned with the propagation of Islam, but more concerned with the
creation of an independent India within which religion, culture and government would be
freed from the control of the British.50 Although the Ahrars were technically pro-Congress,
their local politics and rhetoric were focused on creating a space for an Islamic government
and maintaining a Sunni orthodox ideological unity within the community. They took
up a personal battle against the Ahmedi community; the followers of the teachings of
the nineteenth-century Mirza Ghulam Ahmed of Qadiyan, who claimed to be a prophet
continuing and extending the teachings of Muhammad.51 Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi took
control of the Ahrars and the Anti-Ahmedi movement in NWFP, devoting many of his
sermons to disparaging the current Mirza and the Ahmedi community for the heresy of
rejecting the finality of the Prophet Muhammad.52 He solicited and received support for
the anti-Ahmedi movement from other district committees of the JUS.
Ghulam Ghaus ultimately joined and became an office holder within the Ahrar party
established in the NWFP in 1935. This commitment overrode his commitment even to
the unity of the JUS, and he openly declared himself opposed to Maulana Shakirullah,
president of the JUS in 1937, because Shakirullah supported the Ahrars' competitor group,
the Khaksars.53 The Ahrar-Khaksar split dominated the activities and concerns of the ulama
of the NWFP over the next years. Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi declared the leader of the
Khaksars, Allama Inayatullah Mashriqi, a heretic,54 eliciting strong condemnation from
Maulana Zafar Ali Khan in Lahore.55 The confrontation was brought to a head at a public
gathering at a mosque in the small town of Akora Khattak, north of Peshawar where
both Ghulam Ghaus and Maulana Marwat of the Khaksars were invited to represent their
opinions about the accusations of heresy. All ulama of the NWFP were informed about and
invited to the debate. Significant amongst these were Maulana Abdul Haq of Akora Khattak,
recently returned from teaching at the Darul Ulum Deoband, who was asked to chair the
debate; and Maulana Shakirullah.56 Ghulam Ghaus reiterated his accusation of heresy against
Inayatullah Mashriqi, adding that Mashriqi had declared in his published commentaries on
the Quran that the English were pious and virtuous people and would join the Muslims
in heaven.57 In the ensuing debate, Marwat, as spokesperson for the Khaksars, defended
Inayatullah Mashriqi on the grounds that the latter was a good, practising Muslim. However,
when the meeting turned to the chair for a decision, Abdul Haq supported Ghulam Ghaus's
judgement.58 Following the decision, all Khaksars were declared non-Muslim by the Ahrars.

50Shorosh Kashmiri, Khutbat-i Ahrar (Lahore, 1944), Introduction.

51 See Ayesha Jalal, The State of Martial Rule (Lahore, 1999), pp. 151-154, for a general discussion of the Ahrar
condemnation of the Ahmediyya in India and post-partition Pakistan.
52CID report, 5 February 1936, SBP.
53 It is important to note that Shakirullah supported the Khaksars over the Ahrars because the former were
pointedly non-sectarian in their position. Special Branch report 27 August 1937, in 'Jamiyatul Ulama Bannu'.
54Ghaus's declaration was made in a mosque in Akora Khattak, 19 November 1937.
55Abdul Haq's career and contributions will be discussed in greater detail further down. See 'Ahraron kay
challenge ko Majlis-i Ittihad-i Millat nay manzur kiya, Sarhad, 27 November 1937.
56Hakim Abdul Khaliq, 'Mujahid-i Millat Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi aur Khaksaron kay darmyan aik muartakah alara-u
munzarah ki dilchasp roedad\ in Al Haq, Abdul Haq Number, March 1993 (Akora Khattak), pp. 733-736.
57Hazarvi quoted Mashriqi's writings that stated of the Christians, 'Their children will appear as the hurs and
ghulman [promised as a reward to pious Muslims] in heaven.' 'Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi aur Khaksaron kay darmyan ,
P- 734
5SIbid., p. 734

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 57

Ahrar-supporting 'imams', the leaders of prayers in mosques, refused to perform death rites
for Khaksars,59 and Ahrars would refuse to read prayers in a congregation led by a Khaksar
imam.60
The inherently militaristic bent of Ahrar politics caused tensions to spiral in the province.
Public demonstrations became violent, and Ghulam Ghaus invoked the tragedy of Karbala,
asking all Muslims to wear red badges to commemorate the historic martyrdom of the
Prophet's grandson, and to prepare for jihad against British.61 Jamiyatul Ulama members
influenced by Ahrar rhetoric called for the public denunciation of and removal of Ahmedis in
the tribal belt, and for an armed tribal uprising to punish the government for its involvement
in the Islam Bibi case.62 The awareness of the central committee of the JUH and influential
Deobandis, such as Maulana Madni and Mufti Kifyatullah, of what was going on remains
a matter for speculation. It was however argued that Mufti Kifayatullah had communicated
with members of the JUS over anti-government action while Madni was reported to hold
meetings and consultations with members of the JUS into the 1940s, including one occasion
on which Madni and Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi gave sermons together at a mosque in Hazara.63
It seems fair to estimate that the JUH central leadership kept ties with the JUS s district ulama
in place and did not try to contain their increasingly militant sectarian bent, but it is without
doubt that they had little control over the nature of religious interpretation, social directive
and the political programme issued by the NWFP ulama.
JUS politics became confused by the venomous opposition between the Khaksars and
Ahrars over the Ahmedi issue, and further masked by the rise of Muslim League-Congress
opposition and the demand for the creation of a Muslim state of Pakistan. Some JUS members
chose to join the Frontier Province Muslim League when it was established in 1937, won
over by Jinnah and Allama Iqbal's descriptions of Muslim nationhood and the popularisation
of sectarian and communalist politics by the Ahrars.64 The fragmentation of a definitively
'Deobandi' political position was furthered when the Muslim League supported a breakaway
faction of the JUH into creation as the Jamiyatul Ulama Islam in 1945. Involvement of the
Deobandi ulama in public political activity and in the negotiation of a Muslim identity in the
NWFP appeared in no way to rely upon a wider consensus of Indian Deobandis. The NWFP
Deobandi position was rather determined by local political affiliations to the Muslim League
and Ahrars, social tensions, and individual personalities such as Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi. By

59Ibid., p. 736.
60 From provincial police reports, 1940. Quoted in Jalal, Self and Sovereingty, pp. 401, 448; Jalal states that the
Khaksars and Ahrars came together in support of the Muslim League by 1945, but statements by the Ahrars suggest
that this alliance did not mitigate the tensions between the two groups.
61Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi to meeting of Jamiyatul Ulama Bannu, 1942, poster printed and circulated by
Jamiaytul Ulama Bannu, 1943. National Documentation Centre [hereafter NDC] 432.
^Superintendent CID NWFP to Superintendent Police, Bannu, 10 June 1933, in 'Jamiyatul Ulama Bannu',
Special Branch Peshawar.
6*Ibid; See CID report, 5 January, 1942, in 'Deoband Arabic School', Special Branch Peshawar.
64 Highly regarded Deobandi scholars in the United Provinces tried to prevent such an accord developing in
the NWFP. Madni was critical of the Muslim League, accusing its members of undermining the anti-colonial cause
by accepting favours from, and working with, the British administration. Anwar Shah Kashmiri, a prominent Ahrar
party member who ultimately left the Darul Ulum Deoband and then died in 1933, was a strong proponent of
the Congress non-cooperation and civil disobedience method in the NWFP. See Madni to unknown, Jamadi-ul
Awal 1366, in Naziuddin Islahi (ed.) Maktubat-i Sheikhul Islam, vol. II (Saharanpur, 1950); and Kashmiri, Khutba-yi
Sadarat, 1927.

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 58 Sana Haroon

1947 the majority of NWFP ulama supported the Muslim League idea of Pakistan. Because of
the now long-standing relations between JUS ulama and the Muslim League, and the strong
communalist tone in the NWFP, the move away from the pro-Congress and anti-Pakistan
party line of the central JUH to interest and participation in the creation of Pakistan by the
NWFP Deobandis was not a dramatic one. Early in 1947, when the Ahrar party publicly
severed ties with the AINC and cast its lot with the Muslim League, this merely assuaged
the collective conscience of the NWFP ulama for not opposing the Muslim League rise to
prominence in the NWFP
Through the 1930s and 1940s, the activities of the NWFP ulama were generally focused on
the consolidation of the Muslim community, if not of India, then at least of the NWFP, on
stringent lines. Not only did they seek to define Muslim interests as opposed to Hindu ones,
they sought to narrow the sources of moral and religious authority the Muslim community
could access. More and more the organised Deobandi scholars in the NWFP refined their
hold on Islamic politics; through control of the mosques and application of principles of
shari'a in community-level arbitrations and through creation of the JUS and alliances with
other political groups. From these positions they also emphasised their own understanding
of Islam to be the only legitimate one. All AINC affiliation was naturally terminated with
the inclusion of the NWFP in Pakistan in 1947 and many ulama who remained in Pakistan
effortlessly turned to the project of Pakistani nation building. They were now presented
with an opportunity to rationalise a place for Islam not only within legislation, but as the
constitutional basis for the very existence of the state.

Deoband in the Pakistani NWFP: Maulana Abdul Haq, Mufti Mahmud and the
national project

There is an argument to be made that the 'Deobandi' religious politics inherited by Pakistan
in 1947 were not Deobandi at all. Many politically active ulama professing to be Deobandi
had only trained at Deoband for a short time, and some not at all.65 On the other hand, while
the Darul Ulum Deoband had remained a significant draw for young Pakhtun students of
religion, not all of these alumni became involved in NWFP politics. Scrutiny of'Deobandis'
and their politics establishes that, in the NWFP at least, the title 'Deobandi' was not reserved
for full alumni of the institution. It was rather a transferable and inheritable title, conferred
and assumed on and by any scholar or would-be scholar that aligned himself with another
Deobandi, or, after 1920, with the JUH.66 By 1947 the Deobandi platform was occupied
by ulama now some steps removed from the actual pedagogy of the institution. Moreover
the title of 'Deobandi' did not denote a fixed religious and political position. Rather it
conferred membership in a developing consortium of religious-nationalist authorities whose
political agenda changed to keep up with issues of the day. Hence 'Deobandi' did not refer
to a pedagogy but to a system of allies mutually descended from an increasingly distant
institution with which they maintained as close a relationship as they could.

65Popalzai, for example, was only in Deoband for four years, Maulana Abdul Haq for five years, Mufti Mahmud
for one year.
66 It is worth noting that Deoband recognised madrasas that were modelled upon it. Deoband, on its centenary
in 1967, claimed to have had over 8,000 madrasas set up after its image.

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 Tlie Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 59

As the debates over the constitutional identity of Pakistan began in 1948, the Deobandi
ulama across the country began working to strengthen the interior domain of Islam and
that from which their authority derived - the madrasas and mosques. They began to assert
a jealous guard over the interpretation of religion, demanding that religious commentators
should not only have received a course of religious study, but should have been educated
in the particular dars-i nizami of Deoband. At this early stage however, directed by certain
influential personalities in Karachi and Lahore, the ulama expressed themselves in a closely
guarded domain that did little to access the state controlled organs of public opinion and
national organisation ? the newspapers, universities and governmental institutions. Ulama
authority retreated back within mosques and madrasas to consolidate a political position and
produce individuals and organisations who could claim part of the new Pakistani political
sphere.
By 1953, the Pakistani Deobandi ulama had emerged as a closely-organised group seeking
to influence the writing of the constitution and the definition of the Pakistani citizen. They
cut their teeth on a nationwide movement called the 'Tehrik-i Khatam-i Nabuwwat' - the
'movement to assert the finality of the Prophet'. The Karachi-based Deobandi Muhammad
Yusuf Banori was the primary scholarly commentator on the 'heresy' of Ghulam Ahmed
Qadiyan's claim to be a prophet, and wrote interpretative tracts establishing this point,
while members of the old pre-partition Ahrar party, re-invented and newly inspired in
Pakistan, led a public movement in support of his theological position.67 The Ahmedi issue
transformed from occupying a relatively minor position in the larger schemes of pre-partition
Muslim politics to becoming the central point of definition of Islam in Pakistan.68 A large
scale movement of public agitation was launched against the government to force the legal
categorisation of Ahmedis as non-Muslim.69
The 'Direct Action' began on 27 February 1953, and led to wide-scale rioting and strike
calls, primarily in Lahore and Sialkot, but also in Karachi, Multan and Rawalpindi.70 By 5
March, the army had been called out to control the situation in Sialkot.71 Prominent religious
personalities in the NWFP openly supported the objectives of the movement in sermons at
mosques to try to put pressure on the government to declare the Ahmediyya community
heretical, despite stringent government measures to curb the movement including pre
emptive arrests and strict press censorship.72 Abdul Haq, who will be discussed in greater
detail below, publicly condemned Ahmedis at a Friday khutba73 while Mufti Mahmud, who
will also be discussed in greater detail, Muhammad Sarfaraz Khan Safdar of the Jamiyatul
Ulama Islam, and Abdul Qayyum Popalzai, descended from Abdur Rahim Popalzai, called

67 See Shorosh Kashmiri, Tehrik-i Khatam-i Nabuwwat (Lahore, 1976), and Nawaz Deobandi, Svanay Ulama~yi
Deoband (Deoband, 2000), p. 109.
68 Ataullah Shah Bukhari, leader of the Ahrar party, established the All Muslim Parties Conference in Lahore
in July 1952. This organisation, including the Jamiyatul Ulama Islam, Jamaat-i Islami, and Tanzim Ahl-i Sunnat wa
Jamaat, amongst others, was to be the nexus of support for the Tehrik-i Khatam-i Nabuwwat. Kashmiri, Tehrik, p. 91.
69Kashmiri, Tehrik, pp. 131-156.
70See Dawn, 27 February 1953-8 March 1953.
71 Dawn, 5 March 1953.
72Nomani, Suba-yi Sarhad, p. 163; Letter Haq to Popalzai, Peshawar, 1373?, Al Haq p. 799.
73Related by Samiul Haq in his Zati Dairi, reproduced, Al Haq, Abdul Haq Number, p. 61. This criticism was
reiterated in 1959 as part of Abdul Haq's general appraisal of the moral and spiritual obligations of the Muslim.
See Abdul Haq, 'Din ka khulasa' [The quintessence of religion] speech given at Gujranwala, 3 Safar 1388 [1959],
printed in Hafiz Momin Khan Usmani, Khutbat-i Jamiyat (Lahore, 2004).

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6o Sana Haroon

for public demonstrations and nation-wide strikes. But, as the government conveyed in
a communique, it was "not to be coerced",74 and the anti-Ahmediyya agitation was
denounced in the findings of a Supreme Court enquiry.75 It was not until the 1960s that
a more circumspect Pakistani ulama became visible and a political force with which to be
contended at a national level. This process was played out in the NWFP through the careers
of the two Deobandis who had already risen to national prominence during the anti-Ahmedi
movement: Maulana Abdul Haq and Mufti Mahmud.
Abdul Haq was a Pakhtun from the Peshawar region, son of a village mulla descended
within a piri-muridi line influenced by the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya tariqa, who had
participated in the Tribal Areas-based movement of 1914-16.76 He spent five years at the
Darul Ulum studying the dars-i nizami, then began to teach there, and only returned to
his home town of Akora Khattak when the security situation deteriorated in Delhi at the
time of partition and his father insisted that he came back.77 Despite many exhortations that
he return to Deoband after partition, Abdul Haq decisively separated his fortune from that
of the Darul Ulum Deoband and became committed to a teaching and practice of Islam
confined, by needs, within the new borders of Pakistan.
Abdul Haq established a madrasa called Darul Ulum Haqqaniyya in his fathers mosque
in Akora Khattak to make it possible for local students to receive a Deoband-style religious
education as it was no longer possible for them to attend any of the established madras as
in India. Abdul Haq said he was following in the footsteps of Maulana Nanotwi who had
established the Darul Ulum Deoband in the aftermath of 1857 when the British had destroyed
many of the centres of religious learning fostered by the old Muslim nobility.78 Financially,
Haqqaniyya was made possible by the generosity of patrons from greater Nowshera and
Peshawar, inspired, organised and motivated by Abdul Haq.79 Haq's letter to a local soap
merchant who made a donation to the madrasa suggests that while his madrasa and mosque
were established in service to the local community, he felt from the outset that he was
contributing to the politics and religion of Pakistan.

Sir: it is you [and others like you] who are fulfilling the obligations of living in the Darul
Islam. In this age of materialism, God has provoked some consciences with the desire to protect
religion ... and to pledge some of their property toward religious work.

Respected sir: the love of religion exists in the heart of every Muslim. But this is being tested by
the lords of [this] country... In Pakistan today, it is required that Muslims spread the religion,
and it is evident that the preaching of faith without an established [institutional] centre of the

74'Government will not be coerced: Ahrars inspired and aided by Pakistan's enemies'. Dawn, 28 February 1963.
75Report of the Court of Inquiry Constituted under Punjab Act II of 1954 to Enquire into the Punjab Disturbances of
1953 (Lahore, 1954).
76Abdul Haq, 'Maulana Abdul Haq ki khud navisht svanay hayat', Al Haq, (Akora Khattak, Abdul Haq Number
1993) pp. 23-27.
77Correspondence between Qari Abdul Tayyib and Maulana Abdul Haq, 1947. Reproduced in Al Haq (1993)
PP. 757-761.
78Haq, 'Maulana Abdul Haq ki khud navisht svanay hayat', p. 27.
79 A number of local land owners, businessmen and religious personalities made contributions of 5,000 rupees
each. One benefactor donated one canal of land for the madrasa. Almost all the benefactors were from the greater
Peshawar-Nowshera districts. See Afzal Raza, 'Darul Ulum Haqqaniyya - mukhtasir tarikhi jaizah', Al Haq (1993),
pp. 464-467.

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 The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 61

faith is difficult... The sincere cooperation of those such as yourself has made it possible for us
to raise our confidence and ambitions and improve our work in God's name.80

Haq's letter, written during a time of overbearing control by an unelected government and
internal dissent over how to write the constitution, indicated the rising concern of the ulama
to create not only a centre for religious thought and study, but for political organisation.
Abdul Haq built on connections with ulama now on the Pakistani side of the border.81 Along
with other ulama of the NWFP, he was drawn into an early nexus of Pakistan ulama which
roughly corresponded to the membership of the All Muslim Parties Conference established
in Lahore in 1952.82 This network was dominated by Deobandis residing in cities across
Pakistan. He also joined the organisation Wafaqul Madaris, which was established to reinforce
the teaching of the dars-i nizami across Pakistan.83 The schools supported by this organisation
included those which taught the complete dars and were referred to as darul ulums, as well
as a large number of institutions, many supported into existence by the Wafaqul Madaris
itself, which offered only part training in the religious sciences and were referred to as
deeni madrasas.84 The utility of the latter institutions which graduated thousands of young
men through the 1970s and 1980s was explained as the founding of a society which would
'safeguard religious education'.85
Mufti Mahmud, a son of a well-known pir in Dera Ismail Khan, received his religious
education from a variety of local and north-Indian sources before spending a year at Deoband.
Like many other 'Deobandis', his intellectual affiliation with the institution was more self
identification than a result of having received the full course of study there. After some
years in the United Provinces, during which time he joined the Jamiyatul Ulama Hind, he
returned to teach in Northern Punjab, then won a prestigious post to teach at the renowned
madrasa Qasimul Ulum in Multan. Mufti Mahmud established the Wafaqul Madaris in 1958
as a consortium of religious scholars of West Pakistan, 'whose way of thinking was affiliated
to the mother of knowledge, Darul Ulum Deoband', and organised annual conventions
to bring these ulama together.86 Occupying the post of General Secretary of the Wafaqul
Madaris in perpetuity, Mufti Mahmud was strongly committed to the consolidation of the
authority of the dominant Deobandi ulama in Pakistan.87 Mufti Mahmud also contested
the 1958 elections to the provincial assembly as an independent candidate from Dera Ismail
Khan. He won a seat in the 1962 elections; and when the Jamiyatul Ulama Islam was
registered as a political party later that year, he assumed presidency of the party as a sitting
member of parliament.88 From his position in parliament, Mufti Mahmud asked that body to

80Abdul Haq to a benefactor, c. 1952 [15 Shawal 1370], reproduced in Al Haq (1993), p. 800.
81 Correspondence between Mufti Siyahuddin and Abdul Haq dating from 1953, reproduced in Al Haq, Abdul
Haq Number, pp. 782-787.
82 Abdul Haq began to attend annual meetings of the Jamiyatul Ulama Islam, and became involved with other
organisations such as the Jamiya Ashrafiya in Lahore and Yusuf Banori s Majlis-i Dawat wa Islah in Karachi. See
extracts from Samiul Haqs Zati Dairi, Al Haq (1993), pp. 68-69.
83See Tariq Rahman, Denizens of Alien Worlds: A Study of Education, Inequality and Polarization in Pakistan
(Karachi, 2004).
84 Abdul Haq, 'Khutba Istaqbaliya', conference of the Wafaqul Madaris, March 1982.
85 Abdul Haq, May 1985, transcribed in Samiul Haq, Davat-i Haq (Akora Khattak, 2000), p. 640.
86See Awan, Maulana Mufti Mahmud, pp. 65?66.
^Correspondence between Mufti Mahmud and Abdul Haq, 1957-1969, Al Haq (1993), PP- 776-779
88Shujaabadi, Khutbat-i Mahmud, p. 37.

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 62 Sana Haroon

make a special budgetary allocation for madrasas in East and West Pakistan which taught the
dars-i nizami. This, he said, was in the national interest as it would promote understanding
and codification of Islamic law.89 But Mufti Mahmuds contributions to the national debate
during the 1960s, while of great significance in Pakistani-Deobandi literature, did not appear
to have greatly affected national public opinion. Newspaper reports in the national English
daily Dawn, on the proceedings of the national assembly, barely noted Mufti Mahmuds
eloquent contributions to the debates.90 Ayub Khan's recognition of the ulama and creation
of a Council of Islamic Ideology dominated by Deobandis, and his referral of the question
of interest-based finance to it, appears to have been far more an experiment with eliciting
moral legitimacy than a serious concession to national pressure to involve the ulama in issues
of state and governance.91
It was not until 1970 that the efforts of the Pakistani ulama, and specifically those of
Maulana Mufti Mahmud and Maulana Abdul Haq, were to have real implication on a
national stage. The Jamiyatul Ulama Islam participated in the country's first general election -
an election which sparked Pakistan's gravest national crisis when the military regime and
its political allies refused to accept the East Pakistan party, the Awami League's, national
parliamentary majority. In these elections, in which the Awami League won the vast majority
of the national assembly seats followed distantly by the Pakistan People's Party or PPP with
a vote base in Sindh and Punjab, the JUI won the largest number of national assembly seats
from the NWFP, and the second largest number in Balochistan. (Both Mufti Mahmud and
Abdul Haq had contested the national assembly election and won their seats.)92 After the
election results were announced, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto as chairman of the PPP was asked by
the military president to form government; an act which sparked a civil war between East
and West Pakistan. When East Pakistan separated into Bangladesh and left PPP the majority
party, Mufti Mahmud, as president of the JUI, negotiated and executed a well timed and
important coalition with the Pakhtun nationalist National Awami Party [NAP], led by Wali
Khan, which had a small number of national assembly seats. The alliance made the coalition
group the strongest national opposition party after the PPP, and after the secession of East
Pakistan and the creation of a PPP government, the primary opposition party in the now
reduced Pakistan. It also had the effect of bringing the Jamiyatul Ulama into provincial
government in the NWFP on the back of NAP's overwhelming provincial parliamentary
majority despite the fact that JUI had almost no support from within the provincial electorate.
In 1970, Maulana Abdul Haq participated in and moderated discussions between differing
factions of ulama to resolve a 'religious' position on issues such as socialism and support to
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Mufti Mahmud and Wali Khan entered into talks with Bhutto to discuss
the timetable and plans for the reinstatement of the national and provincial assemblies.93 With
a larger proportion of the national assembly votes, Mufti Mahmud superseded Wali Khan as
the Chief Minister in the NWFP, and took up his responsibilities with the end of martial

89'Pakistan ka budget eik mussalman ki nazar mein', Khutbat-i Mahmud, p. 106.

9()Summaries of National Assembly debates, Dawn, March 1963.
91'Council of Islamic Ideology Asked to Give Opinion', Dawn, 2 March 1963.
92Abdul Qayyum Haqqani, 'Hayat-i Tayyaba par aik nazar', A\ Haq (1993), pp. 34-35.
93'NAP-JUI talks with Bhutto', Dawn, 25 March 1972.

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 63

law in May 1972.94 The passionate and weighty theological discourse of the Deobandis was
now brought to the fore. Preparation began for what would become the 1973 constitution
of Pakistan, with the ulama positioned to contribute their vision in parliament. Abdul Haq
and Mufti Mahmud made grand and eloquent speeches in support of key 'Islamic' issues:
notably, the point that Pakistan was an 'Islamic republic' and a permanent council of ulama
should be constituted within the Senate and all legislation referred to it.
Concurrently with the preparation of the constitution, the anti-Ahmedi campaign was
restarted. Mufti Mahmud made a speech to the annual Katam-i Nabuwwat conference
in Lahore in 1972.95 He highlighted the ambiguity of Pakistan's national principles and
emphasised that the constitution would have to institutionalise Pakistan's Islam in order to
effectively bar non-Muslims from the position of head of state and make 'apostasy', in this
case renunciation of orthodox Sunni principles of the faith, a capital offence. Mahmud also
proposed that the Ahmediyya be declared non-Muslim and that members of the community
be compulsorily registered by the state in order to cut their beliefs out of the mainstream
of Pakistan's Islam.96 Unlike the 1953 agitations during which politicians differentiated the
will of the ulama from the will of the people,97 the movement started afresh in 1972 was
represented by the ulama as a political imperative which Abdul Haq grandiosely referred to
as the consensus of the Muslim umma.9S
From their position of political power, the ulama were finally able to effect lasting and
considerable recognition of ulama authority. Pakistan was declared an Islamic Republic and
a Council of Islamic Ideology was created by constitutional decree. By these provisions,
the laws of state had to be in accordance with religious injunction. Opinion on how to
do this was to be provided by the council of ulama, which itself had no direct control over
legislation, but provided religious interpretation and opinion, both solicited and unsolicited,
to the national assembly.99 In 1974 the anti-Ahmediyya provisions were accommodated and
the constitution was amended to declare the Ahmediyyas non-Muslim and hence a minority
community. These provisions were not only symbols but a recognition by the state of both
the independent authority of Deobandi scholars like Mufti Mahmud and Abdul Haq, and the
relevance of the Deobandi position and authority over the Pakistani state. The constitution
of 1973, unlike those of 1956 and 1962, would remain the basis for the Pakistani state
(although for the greater part in abeyance under military governments).100 Islam became
inextricably bound to affairs of society and state, and hence to politics.101 While cultivation
of this relationship through the promulgation of'Islamic' legislation would not begin until

94'Mufti Mahmud to be NWFP Chief Minister', Dawn, 29 March 1972.

95Address to the Khatam-i Nabuwwat Conference, Lahore, 4 June 1972. Reproduced in Shujaabadi, Khutbat-i
Mahmud, pp. 189-203.
96'Sheikhul hadis Maulana Abdul Haq aur fitna-yi qadiyaniyat' speech to parliament excerpted in AI Haq
(1993), p- 737
97'People and not the ulama will have the final say: Khan Abdul Qaiyyum Khan, Chief Minister, NWFP',
Dawn, 1 January 1953.
98Abdul Haq, in 'Sheikhul hadis Maulana Abdul Haq aur fitna-yi qadiyaniyat'.
99The Constitution of Pakistan, articles 227?231.
l00For more on the 1956 constitution, see Jalal, The State of Martial Rule, pp. 214-222.
101 Some of the most significant 'Islamic' features of the constitution were that the government was required to
promote national education in 'Islamiyat' and the Quran, and take steps to ensure that laws of state should conform
to 'Islamic' injunction.

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 64 Sana Haroon

General Zia-ul Haq's coup in 1977 and his 'Hudood Ordinance', the relationship between
legislation, national ideology, the Pakistani Muslim (and non-Muslim) and the ulama was
formalised.

While it would take many years for the consequences of the constitutional provisions
to be felt, the ulama party's position in the NWFP allowed it to immediately apply Islamic
legislation. Wali Khan's alliance with the JUI, which had been engineered to give him power
at a national level, had led him to grant the position of chief minister of the province and
dominance over the otherwise Pakhtun nationalist-majority provincial governing body to the
JUI president. Hence the JUI's national ambitions came to have their greatest consequences
for the NWFP where their popularity was, at best, limited.

Mufti Mahmud's religious nationalism and the NWFP

On the anniversary of Pakistan's independence in 1972, the new Chief Minister of the
NWFP, Mufti Mahmud, gave a speech broadcast on Radio Pakistan, articulating his national
objective and the manner in which this applied to the province:

Our objective is national unity and the welfare of the state, and we will pay any price to protect
this_The most important issue at hand is to order our personal lives in accordance with the
code of Islamic conduct. We will not be able to regularise an Islamic way of life throughout the
country until such a time that an Islamic system is instituted... As far as the NWFP is concerned,
we have begun the work of bringing the NWFP's laws in line with Islamic law... We want that
[such an] Islamic system should become prevalent not only in our own province, but throughout
the country.102

The national religious agenda that Mufti Mahmud had articulated over the course of his
political career was first to be applied in the NWFP. Mufti Mahmud sought to make the
province a model of how the nation should be made to adhere to Islamic codes of conduct,
and how to apply Islamic law. The NAP president Wali Khan deferred to his political partner
on the issue of religion and affairs of state. In a response to his more secular-minded Pakhtun
nationalist supporters in 1972, Wali Khan said that 'his party had accepted the leadership
of the Jamiyatul Ulama Islam in the Frontier Province to allow the JUI the opportunity to
introduce an Islamic system'.103
Mufti Mahmud proposed and created a committee of ulama and 'authorities' to review all
existing provincial laws to bring these into line with Quranic principles.104 Its first act was
to propose and oversee the passing of legislation that prohibited the sale and consumption
of liquor in the province.105 In his 14 August speech, Mufti Mahmud outlined all his other
ambitions for religious reform in the province:

Efforts are being made to end the cursed practice of gambling, [the giving of] dowry is being
prohibited, and we have proposed to the central government that government offices be closed
on Fridays instead of Sundays.106

102Mufti Mahmud, Provincial Address, 14 August 1972, in Shujabadi, Khutbat-i Mahmud, pp. 167-171.
103'Wali explains party stand', Dawn, 2 March 1972.
104'Ham apnay khun say', p. 170.
105Kamal, Tarikh, p. 195.
106'Ham apnay khun say', p. 170.

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 65

He subsequently proposed and passed legislation enforcing public observance of the fast
during the holy month of Ramadan and forcing women to be in purdah when appearing
in public. He banned the charging of interest, made knowledge of the Quran and prayer
necessary for entry into college or university, and introduced an initiative to have the Quran
taught in 191 of the provinces schools.107 While no serious arrangements were made for
enforcement of these laws, Mufti Mahmud used concern over public morality and religious
prescription to restrict politics and all public expression in the province. Although a Pakhtun
nationalist lobby, represented politically by the NAP, continued to generate literature, poetry,
music, and a vision of an historic and definable 'Pakhtunistan', it had, in the interests of
representation at national level, conceded its secular position.108 Wali Khan made a public
statement claiming that secularism had failed, and that he would not press for secularism
in the province.109 Under pressure from the ulama faction, the NAP had also conceded its
championing of Pashtu as the official language of the province.110 Further legislation was
passed forbidding music and dancing girls, significant aspects of a Pakhtun cultural scene,
even at private gatherings. Religious texts, some published by Haqqaniyya's own press but
also produced by other presses, dominated the local Urdu literary scene,111 disseminating a
religious message and defining the 'important' and the 'glorious' personalities of the province
? religious authorities, both from local pirimuridi traditions, and from Deoband.112
The course of provincial politics was deeply affected by the start of an armed uprising in
Baluchistan when Mufti Mahmud resigned his position as chief minister in solidarity with the
NAP government of Baluchistan in 1973.113 However the Deobandi ulama remained a force
to be contended with. The ulama of the JUI in the NWFP now had the authority to 'speak'
for the province on a national platform, claiming a religious bent of mind among Pakhtuns
as a whole. When the democratically-elected president Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was removed in
a coup and then executed in 1979, the ulama were hopeful about the possibilities opened up
by the new religiously-inclined military dictator of Pakistan, Zia ul-Haq but, in the absence
of a political process, understood their interests as best being served through their social
and interpretative authority and local leadership. There was a concerted effort to consolidate
interpretative control among those ulama trained in the Deobandi tradition and to strengthen
Deobandi control over the interior domain of Islam and the base of religious authority, the
madrasas and mosques, to amplify the power of these institutions and of the ulama over civil
society. Darul Ulums and deeni madrasas began to induct and train thousands of students from

107Nomani, Suba-yi Sarhad, pp. 151-160.

108Mufti Mahmud made similar concessions for Wali Khan. He was accused by Ghulam Ghaus Hazarvi of
'hobnobbing with NAP and Jamaat-i Islami to the detriment of the religious and national cause, and challenged to
confront Wali Khan with the Pakhtunistan issue. ('Hazarvi accuses Mufti Mahmud of violating manifesto', Dawn,
25 May, 1973).
109'NAP won't press for secularism says Wali Khan', Dawn, 28 March 1972.
110'Language debate in NWFP assembly', 5 May 1972.
111 These presses include Al Jamiyat Academy Press, Peshawar; Al Qasim Academy Press, Nowshera; Maktaba
Shujaat, Peshawar; University Book Agency, Peshawar.
112One of the most important religious texts published was Abdul Haq's Dawat-i Haq (Akora Khattak, 1974), an
'invitation to the truth' reprinted several times, most recently in 2000. The accounts of important figures, modelled
on the classic tazkirah form, include Tazkiray Sarfaroshan-i Sarhad (Peshawar, n.d.), Suba-yi Sarhad kay ulama-yi
Deoband kay siyasi khidmat (Peshawar, 2001), Aqwal-i Mahmud (Peshawar, 1993).
113The NAP dominated government in Balochistan was dismissed in 1973. 'Bhutto removes both NAP
governors and Mengals government: Mufti's government resigns in protest', Dawn, 16 February 1973.

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66 Sana Haroon

around the province. This process was underway in the NWFP (and in Baluchistan) as the
Afghan jihad began, and underlay the involvement of institutions of religious learning and
congregation in anti-Soviet organisation and the post-Soviet reconstruction of Afghanistan.

The Afghan Jihad

At least two religious trends had connected politics, religious thought and practice, and
militarisation amongst the eastern Pakhtuns through the twentieth century without regard
for the Indo-Afghan border intersecting them. These were a reformed Sufi fraternity which
had initiated its mission of the "prevention of vice and the promotion of virtue" (amr bil ma'ruf
wa nahi anal munkir) in the late nineteenth century into the middle of the twentieth century;
and the religious revivalist influences originating from the madrasa darul ulum deoband, which
had been patronised by the Afghan courts of Habibullah Khan, Amanullah Khan, and Zahir
Shah between 1901 and 1950 as they tried to institutionalise Islam into the state system.114
After the creation of Pakistan in 1947, as both influences crystallised within the domain
of institutionalised Islam in the North-West Frontier Province, Afghans became naturally
involved in this domain of organisation and practice.115 Abdul Haq, who was able to invoke
both the Sufi and the reformed religious traditions,116 succeeded in attracting a large number
of eastern Pakhtun students to Haqqaniyya and graduating at least 370 Afghan students
between 1945 and 1978, in addition to local Pakhtuns and non-Pakhtun Pakistanis.117 The
Afghans were mostly from Kandahar, Jalalabad, Ningrahar, Kabul, Khost, Ghazni, Loghman,
and Parwan, the traditional enclaves of mullas of the reformed Sufi line.
As Afghan resistance groups began to patch together a unity in exile in Iran and Pakistan,
using a language of religious purpose and militancy to organise the uprisings within the
country and the politics of the refugees into a jihad, Haqqaniyya Madrasa and its Deobandi
ideology came to play a significant role in organisation of anti-Soviet opposition. Political
exiles and military resistance fighters from among the large number of displaced southern
and eastern Pakhtuns, influenced by the long-standing reputation of Haqqaniyya in their
home towns, gravitated towards Haqqaniyya as a centre in which to meet, solicit funds and
seek counsel.
By 1981, as Pakhtun migrants into Pakistan started to politically organise a resistance,
Abdul Haq encouraged those of his old students involved in the jihad to develop Madrasa
Haqqaniyya as an organisational and networking base,118 and began to publish news and
accounts of the jihad and Haqqaniyya alumni in the madrasa s monthly journal. Abdul Haq's
concern over the progress ofthe jihad was second only to his institutional commitment to the

114See Haroon, Frontier of Faith.

115 Abdul Haq, 'Maulana Abdul Haq ki khud navisht svanay hayat', Al Haq, (Akora Khattak, Abdul Haq number
1993) PP- 23-27.
116Abdul Haq draws attention to his autobiographical note, 'Khud Navishf, p. 26, and Abdul Qaiyyum
Haqqani s detailed biographical notes on the life and sayings of Abdul Haq note the latter's appreciation of the
secret practices of Sufi zikr and his own induction into a Sufi silsila, and the importance of the regional Pakhtun
history of Sufi-organised militancy and resistance to the British. See Sahhatay ha Ahl-i Haq.
117See 'Darul Ulum Haqqaniyya ka aik faizan: fazla-yi Afghanistan' - an incomplete list of Afghan graduates of
Haqqaniyya, in Al Haq (Abdul Haq Number, 1993) pp. 658-681. See also Gilles Dorronsoro, Revolution Unending:
Afghanistan, 197g to the Present (London, 2005).
118Samiul Haq, fihad-i Afghanistan key Haq Parast Baz Haqqani Shuhdai ka Tazkirah\

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 The Rise of Deohandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 67

Wafaqul Madaris, and these commitments came together when the Wafaqul Madaris issued
a public statement committing support to the mujahidin and declaring the Afghan jihad an
issue of concern to the entire Muslim umma.119 Abdul Haq used this opportunity to write
personally to the seven mujahidin leaders in Peshawar, stating that the jihad of Muslim against
the non-believer communists was of great importance to him, and urging a resolution of
differences between the groups.120
Abdul Haq had a significant personal agency in subsequently maintaining Pakistani
Deobandi interest and commitment to the Afghan jihad. He invited an old alim of the
Darul Ulum Deoband in India, Maulana Aziz Gul, who had been involved in the 1914
1917 movement in the Tribal Areas, to the annual conference of the Wafaqul Madaris in
1982, asking him to speak about jihad, its relevance to the congregation, and the significance
of the North-West Frontier as a location for armed organisation in historical defence of
the Muslims of India, and as a fortress set within the mountains of the north-west.121
Over the next six years, he spoke repeatedly about the need for the ulama of Pakistan to
support the mujahidin materially and morally.122 Then, in a speech to the conference of an
anti-Shia organisation, the Tehrik-i Nifaz-i Shariat-i Muhammadi, Abdul Haq suggested that
the simultaneous efforts of Madrasa Haqqaniyya to encourage the establishment of more
religious schools across the region and the waging of jihad by many of his graduates were in
fact a single imperative.123
Haq combined his simultaneous commitments to his old students and to the Wafaqul
Madaris by personally encouraging the establishment of reformist-oriented madrasas, as well
as encouraging the leadership at these madrasas to organise in support of the Afghan jihad. He
invoked traditional Sufi ties to the mulla Badshah Gul and his son Fazal Manan, in Mohmand
to increase their involvement in the jihad.124 In Swat, Maulana Sufi Muhammad began to
organise Pakhtuns, through his pedagogic authority, to participate in the Afghan jihad while
drawing on ideological and institutional connections to the Deobandis. The heads from
a number of Tribal Areas madrasas simultaneously swore their commitment to the Tehrik-i
Nifaz-i Shariat-i Muhammadi (TNSM) and their commitment to the Afghan resistance at the
'hand of Abdul Haq, using the traditional Sufi device of the oath or bait.125 These religious
leaders of the Pakistan-side tribal regions were both influenced by the revivalist ideology of
the Deobandi ulama of Pakistan and deeply invested in the politics and practices of Pakhtun
tribal-living. They mediated in feuds, oversaw the payment of blood money, and directed
religious rituals within communities whose communications, marital ties, intellectual and
social influences and economies were circumscribed by clan and tribe land holding patterns
and the borders which separated them from administered, enfranchised, policed Pakistan.
Abdul Haq encouraged their involvement in the jihad, reinforcing the efforts of the Afghan

119Statement of the Majlis-i Shura of the Wafaqut Madaris, June 1981, in 'Afghan Ittehad', AI Haq, p. 649.
12(,Letter of Abdul Haq to the Mujahidin commanders, Al Haq, p. 649.
121 Abdul Haq, Speech at the annual Wafaqul Madaris Conference at Darul Ulum Haqqaniyya, 29 March 1982.
AlHaq, p. 863.
Haqqani, Svanay, pp. 216, 283.
123 Abdul Haq's speech to the TNSM conference, 1986, Haqqani, Sahbatay, pp. 215-216.
124 Haqqani, Sahbatay, p. 214.
125 Including the Madrasa Darul Ulum Waziristan in Wana; Jamia Muhammadiyya South Waziristan, Madrasa
Manaba-ul Ulum in Miramshah; Madrasa Darul Huda Swabi; Madrasa Mazharul Ulum Dir; Jamia Imam Waliullah
Dehlavi Lahore Sarhad, 'Chand Jalilul Qadar aur Maruf Talamazah', Al Haq, pp. 516-518.

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68 Sana Maroon

mujahidin leaders who used their own connections here to set up forward bases and supply
lines, and recruit amongst the local populations in this crucial border zone.
At first Haqqaniyya served only as informal meeting and networking point for certain of
the mujahidin and the Pakistani mullas and ulama, to communicate news of human losses and
military successes, and to solicit funds.126 When Abdul Haq established the importance of
his '/wj'ra'127 as a meeting space and its potential as a mediating ground, his madrasa was, on
at least one occasion, used to channel funds, provided by both the Pakistani government,
and international donors to the jihad,128 to the mujahidin.129 At the same time Haqqaniyya
developed and extended its own ideological and institutional connections with the Afghan
resistance, inducting and graduating as many new Afghan students in the nine years of the
war as it had trained in the thirty years preceding the war.
Immediately after the Soviet withdrawal, ulama on the Pakistan-side, including those
at Haqqaniyya, sustained and developed ideological links with the emerging regime in
Afghanistan; while many mullas from the more remote madrasas continued to organise
military and logistical support for, and encourage Pakistani youth conscription in, the militias
of those of the mujahidin who had formed connections with them.130 Between 1992 and
1996, a group of Pakhtun Afghan mullas from Kandahar and its surrounds, calling themselves
the Taliban, took control across most of Afghanistan. Many of these mullas were ex-mujahidin,
and the ulama of Haqqaniyya claimed that up to seventy five percent of the religious leaders
who became the Taliban had pedagogic ties with their madrasa. But Abdul Haq had died
in 1988 and Haqqaniyya withdrew from direct involvement in Afghanistan's political affairs
as they garnered support and commitment from a new quarter ? a group of Arab militants
who had come to be based in Afghanistan during the period of the jihad. The Taliban,
under strong influence from these ideological and financial patrons, fashioned their own
political and religious objectives which drew on tribal practices more than on the pedagogy
of Deobandi Islam. The Taliban modelled their government as a basic and replicable system
of Islamic organisation, in which the directives of the ulama and the mullas, rooted in Quranic
precept, were paramount.131 The establishment of the Taliban regime led the direction of
religious ideological patronage across the Pak-Afghan border to be reversed as the Taliban
became sponsors and incubators of a reactionary, militaristic religious imperative in Pakistan.
The Taliban and the Arab-led Islamists in Afghanistan invited madrasa students and religious
idealists from around the world to participate in their spiritual-military programme for the
reorganisation of Afghanistan. As the Pakistan-side Tribal Areas continued to shelter close
to a million Afghan refugees, many local madrasas and ulama felt compelled to choose sides

126Most prominent amongst the Haqqaniyya-graduated mujahidin were Maulvi Yunis Khalis, head of a faction
of the group Hizb-i Islami, and his commander Jalaluddin Haqqani but they also included Pakhtun ulama belonging
to other mujahidin factions. Haqqani, Sahbatay, p. 216.
127 An entertaining space attached to a mosque, open to receive and feed any male guests who present themselves.
Most affluent families in the Pakhtun regions also maintain private hujras in their homes ? outside parlours within
which they receive male visitors.
128These were the Saudi government and the United States government, represented by the CIA. See Hussain
Haqqani, Pakistan between Mosque and Military (Lahore, 2005), pp. 85-92.
129Haqqani, Svanay, p. 283.
130Arif Jamal, 'Restart', Tlte News (Karachi) 11 July 2004.
131 In an address to students and visiting ulama at Darul Ulum Haqqaniyya, Maulana Samiul Haq said that
'Afghanistan's human rights model was exemplary in the world'. 'Pakistan in search of new options for Afghan
peace', The Muslim (Lahore?) 9 March 1998.

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 The Rise of Deobandi Islam in the North- West Frontier Province 69

in the ongoing straggle for power in Afghanistan. Madrasa students and mullas, largely from
the Tribal Areas but also from as far away as Karachi, were encouraged to enter full service
as soldiers and then military commanders for the Taliban.132 Connections between the
two sides inspired imitation vigilante Taliban style movements in the deeni madrasas in the
Pakistani Tribal Areas, and many of the Deobandi ulama of Pakistan, themselves hoping
for increased social and judicial authority, touted the Taliban's system of complete religious
leadership and religiously derived law as a model system.133
After the consolidation of control in Afghanistan by the Taliban, the religious militancy
developed and enunciated during the jihad years was a lasting legacy for Pakistan. Separating
the politics of religious and political organisation after twenty years of the shared industry
and leadership of war became impossible.

Conclusion

Politicisation of the Deobandi ulama of the NWFP, effected gradually over the twentieth
century by party-based alliances with the AINC, Ahrars and Muslim League in the pre
paration period, and with the NAP once Pakistan had been created, was reinforced by
increasingly skilful use of print, sermons and religious directives which allowed the Deobandi
ulama to develop their authority beyond that of elaborating scripture and leading prayer.
Because of the particular junctures at which they were able to gain momentum and visibility ?
the communalism of the pre-partition period, the anti-Ahmedi campaign of the 1950s, and
the Afghan jihad - militarism has become an indelible aspect of the NWFP Deobandi
political history and has given these ulama a lasting notoriety. And while the Deobandi ulama
of the NWFP are careful not to threaten future violence, their continued connections to
overtly militaristic groups influenced by Deobandi thought, such as TNSM and Lashkar-i
Tayyaba, and to jihadis in the Tribal Areas, suggest that they remain unconvinced by the
current system of state and are indulgent of those that need to operate outside its laws.
Despite the fact that the politics and philosophy of the Deobandis have come under attack
since 2001 for sustained links to the Taliban and AI Qaeda, the Deobandi ulama of the NWFP
have maintained their authority to articulate and represent the faith. This has been largely
because of the popularity of Mufti Mahmud and Abdul Haq s successors: Fazlur Rahman and
Samiul Haq. These ulama once again executed shrewd and well-timed alliances with other
religious groups and articulated a new Pakistani 'nationalism', based in anti-Americanism
and anti-imperialism, and were able to form a government in the NWFP in the elections of
2002 and once again assume the position of the country's primary national opposition party.
Generations of Deobandi leaders in the NWFP have led the group in political, intellectual
and organisational exercises to present some semblance of unanimity, varied and fragmented
though they have been among themselves. From the position of strength and authority that
such concerted organisation has created, these leaders have, time and again, been able to

132'Profile of Nek Mohammad' Dawn, 19 June, 2004. Also amongst these were Maulana Abdul Khaliq of
Madrasa Gulshanul Ulum in Khaney Khel, North Waziristan, Maulana Sufi Muhammadi, Maulvi Abbas, Maulvi
Abdul Aziz, and 'Khalifa' who established the Khalifa Madrasa near Miranshah, in South Waziristan. See Owais
Tohid, 'The warrior tribes', Newsline April 2004 (Karachi)); 'Militants' den destroyed in Miranshah', Dawn, 16
March 2006).
133Ahmed Rashid, Taliban (London, 2001) pp. 193-194.

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 70 Sana Maroon

create unlikely compacts with political groups and actors motivated by radically different
agendas to their own - from anti-colonial to nationalist, sectarian, cultural and militant
in turn. Shrewdly-executed successive unions of the ulama\ social access and authority
with parliamentary strength have increased their visibility, and their provincial and national
relevance to a level far greater than what would be supposed, given their numbers and
the generally lukewarm reaction that has always met their particular concern with Islamic
governance. Hence, although distance from the Darul Ulum Deoband has increased both
in space and time, Deobandi thought in Pakistan and the NWFP is organic and thriving.
A 'classic' interpretation of Islam has evolved into an energetic and responsive stance, its
proponents deeply concerned with maintaining the relevance of the ulama and Islam within
the national and international politics of the day.

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