"Can Pakistan 

experience 

an Arab Spring?"

The Tahirul Qadri story

 - NFP 

January 2013

Just when everyone was waiting for the current coalition government led by the PPP to complete its 5-year-term and announce fresh elections...

Dr Tahirul Qadri appeared on the scene, waving his fist to lead a ‘long march’ to occupy Islamabad...

His sudden appearance took everyone by surprise...

Thus, it is natural for critics of the military-establishment to once again look at it with suspicion when Dr. Qadri arrives to ‘bring a revolution’ and ‘true democracy’ to Pakistan...

So who is Dr. Qadri, and how did he manage to 

gather thousands of devoted men, women and 

children to stay for almost four days in Islamabad’s 

freezing winter, rain and amidst the ever-present 

threat of suicide bombings by the rabid extremist lot

always lurking in the shadows in Pakistan?

Qadri is a former student activist who in the 1970s

 belonged to the moderate Barelvi youth organisation,

 the Anjuman Taleba Islam, at the Punjab University.

His group usually allied itself with various progressive and leftist student groups during student union elections against the student wing of the fundamentalist Jamat-e-Islami.

After graduating in 1974, Qadri enrolled as a lecturer

 at Punjab University and then went on to get his PhD

 in Islamic sciences...

Details of Dr. Qadri’s political career between 1978 

and 1989 are rather muggy... 

Some of his critics describe Qadri as a political charlatan who in the 1980s was close to PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif, the man whose family in those days were staunch supporters of military dictator, General Ziaul Haq. 

During a 2008 lecture on the Barelvi Islamic TV 

channel, QTV, Qadri claimed that it was he who 

forced General Ziaul Haq to formulate the Blasphemy

Laws... 

He then denied doing this (on a British TV channel),

 and in fact claimed that he doesn’t agree with the law.

Views about what Qadri was up to during Zia era:

1. Qadri opposed the dictatorship’s pro-Deobandi orientation and was dismissed from the faculty of the Punjab University for his opposition to the Zia regime.

2. Qadri became close to the Zia regime and helped it formulate a number of controversial ‘Islamic laws.’

3. Zia offered him many political posts, but he refused to accept them and spent his time on becoming an Islamic scholar.

What is certain though is that Qadri formed his 

Barelvi organisation, Minhajul Quran (MQ),  in 1981.

In 1989 Qadri formed his own party, the Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT). He described it as a party that would strive to bring a ‘spiritual revolution’ (Roohani Inquilaab) in Pakistan.

He allied his party with the left-leaning PPP during the 1990 election, but after facing defeats, he almost vanished from the political scene.

This is when he seriously worked to turn MQ into a 

large Islamic evangelical outfit, preaching Sufism and

 trying to regenerate Barelvi Islam that had 

experienced a tough challenge from the more 

conservative schools of faith in the 1980s.

Qadri (third from right in the third row) was one of first

 civilian politicians to pledge his support to General 

Musharraf after the PML-N government was toppled.

Calling himself an ‘enlightened moderate’, Musharraf

 wanted to bank on Qadri’s MQ to find a middle 

ground for his dictatorship between Zia’s radical 

Islam and secularism.

Qadri had a falling out with Musharraf in 2004 when 

the latter chose a motley crew of anti-PPP and anti-

PML-N politicians over Qadri’s PAT to become his 

regime’s civilian expression. During this period Qadri 

became a Canadian citizen.

In 2010, when suicide bombings against the military, 

police and common civilians grew alarmingly in 

Pakistan, Qadri, who by now had gathered a huge 

following among the more religious minded Barelvi 

Muslims, wrote a 600-page fatwa against suicide 

bombings.

To him and his followers, Qadri had become the 

moderate face of Islam and the defender of the 

peaceful injunctions and spirit of the faith in a world 

reeling from Islamist violence...

In Pakistan, he was mostly forgotten as a politician, 

but among pious Barelvis he became popular as an 

Islamic scholar, and a televangelist on QTV.

Neutral viewers found his style to be rather eccentric, especially when he shared with his followers the many divine visions he’s had and the colorful way he interpreted his followers’ dreams.

Though Qadri, seeming egoistical and at times somewhat maniacal in his attitude during his ‘long march,’ and most probably pushed to the fore by the usual anti-politician ‘establishment,’ did manage to demonstrate a rather refreshing angle in the already multi-angular politics of Pakistan.

In spite of the fact that Qadri launched his rhetoric against the country’s two main democratic parties, he was equally open in his condemnation of those Islamist terrorist outfits that have succeeded in scaring even the most animated and ‘revolutionary’ media personnel and leaders.

June 23, 2014

Tahirul Qadri returns from Canada to Pakistan with plans to form a grand 'opposition alliance'...

His revolution will include support from Sheikh Rasheed and the PML-Q among others. 

Some term his return a move to destabilise the country, while others call it a legitimate movement for "devolution of power"...no one is quite sure what Qadri's return will mean for Pakistan in the coming days.

Read the full article