'Sheikh Down': Explaining the cult of Tahir-ul-Qadri.

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Qadri was threatening in posture while announcing his challenge of a “long march” and claimed great following among the masses, which he proved by gathering a mammoth crowd in Lahore on Dec. 23, estimating it to be “one million,”...

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: Newsweek Pakistan
By Khaled Ahmed | From the Feb. 1, 2013, issue.

His four-day, thousands-strong sit-in in Islamabad was impressive, but the aftermath of Tahir-ul-Qadri’s show of strength has been anticlimactic. No one actually believes that the so-called Islamabad Long March Declaration, agreed between him and the ruling coalition on Jan. 17 that helped conclude his “Islamic democratic revolution,” is constitutionally enforceable. Qadri’s unprecedented campout in the capital proved his organizational genius, but why did he fail to achieve his goal of cleansing Pakistan’s political system?

In December, Qadri launched himself at another impressive rally in Lahore as a deliverer against a state almost dismantled by terrorism. Hence his slogan: Save the state before politics. Qadri was in politics in the 1990s and then again in the Musharraf era with his Pakistan Awami Tehreek, but he cut no electoral ice and decided to leave Pakistan. When he was in Europe, his Barelvi-Sunni sect gravitated to him because of their feeling that they had become the “forgotten children of Islam” in the face of the Saudi-backed, dollar-leveraged takeover of their mosques. In 2005, he shifted to Canada and acquired Canadian nationality.
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Qadri was threatening in posture while announcing his challenge of a “long march” and claimed great following among the masses, which he proved by gathering a mammoth crowd in Lahore on Dec. 23, estimating it to be “one million,” but which was big enough nevertheless to convince everyone that he could take his “four million followers” to Islamabad.

The demands or ultimatums which he flung at the government were: immediate dissolution of the incumbent federal and provincial governments; scrapping of the Election Commission of Pakistan because, he claimed, it was powerless and faulty in composition; installation of a caretaker government with the assent of the Army and Supreme Court; and the enforcement of Articles 62 and 63 of the Constitution, which set standards of Muslim piety for officeholders, to clean up the political landscape ahead of elections.

Qadri also made public his dislike of the Pakistan Peoples Party and Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). This sentiment is close to what the Army is supposed to feel too. Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf also embraced this view against the more or less settled bipartisan system familiar under democracy in Pakistan and elsewhere. Like Khan, Qadri sought to delegitimize the system on the basis of a dubious idea and was therefore immediately linked by many to the Army. The two mainstream parties—PPP and PMLN, stabbed in the back by the Army by turns with overthrows—thought Qadri was being prompted by the Army, which in turn made two more putatively Army-supported parties, Khan’s PTI and Muttahida Qaumi Movement, rally behind him. Needless to say, the religious parties linked Qadri to the United States.

“Just before setting off for their ‘long march’ to Islamabad, on Jan. 13,” reports The Economist, “supporters of Tahir-ul-Qadri, a populist cleric who has burst onto Pakistan’s political scene, cut the throat of a bull that lay trussed in the back of a lorry. A quartet of bleating goats was similarly dispatched.”

SHAKING THE TREE

Qadri describes himself as “Shaykh-ul-Islam,” a status probably stemming from a dream he once saw in which the Prophet of Islam “chose” him as his deputy after rejecting all the other schools of thought in Pakistan’s religious hierarchy. Since he was a Barelvi and therefore in the crosshairs of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and since the Sunni Tehreek has gone radical and is no longer a Barelvi adjunct of the MQM, Qadri’s Minhaj-ul-Quran International could be the substitute partner of the Army and a gateway to the Punjab, his treasury.

In Lahore, Barelvi clerics—wedded to the anti-blasphemy laws that victimize non-Muslims—cursed him for having told the West that Pakistan’s Christians should not attract the mischief of these laws under which only Muslims could be punished. They thronged the Governor’s House on the Mall and challenged him to a debate. Qadri did not turn up. And he has impressive external credentials: Qadri founded Minhaj-ul-Quran in October 1981, extended its network to over 90 countries, and has been given a consultative status in the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

His “monumental 600-page fatwa” against terrorism and suicide bombings in 2010 made the West take notice of him; and he soon became an advisor on counter-radicalism to the British government. Pakistanis may be unaware of his scholarship which the West cannot ignore: according to his devotees, 61-year-old Qadri has authored close to 1,000 books—on Sufism, Islamic law, social justice, science, evolution, human rights, philosophy, translations and exegesis of the Quran (in 14 volumes), the science of the sayings of Islam’s Prophet (in 24 volumes), the life of the Prophet (14 volumes), and the history of Islamic constitutional theory.

The transport charges alone of the march on Islamabad reportedly soaked up half a billion rupees from Qadri’s purse. He maintains that the “four million”—the most optimistic estimate pegged the Qadri crowd at 50,000—paid their own way to Islamabad and also paid for the food they consumed for four days before the sit-in was called off. The Army and the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad have also denied supporting Qadri, financially or otherwise.

Allegations of support from the Army or the U.S. did not damage Qadri as much as his ever-changing positions. At one moment he wanted the government and President Asif Ali Zardari (Qadri called him the “former president”) to go home, at another he wanted the same government to implement the reforms he was demanding. Then, on Jan. 15, the second day of the protest outside the Presidency and Parliament, the Supreme Court seemed to give a nod to Qadri by ordering, in an unrelated case, the arrest of Prime Minister Raja Pervaiz Ashraf and 21 others. Qadri took credit for the court order, and his crowds went wild. Imran Khan also chimed in with Qadri. He said he preferred change through the ballot box, but that he could be forced into joining Qadri in the street. Khan also announced his own conditionality of Zardari’s dismissal before the elections—a demand once again signaled vaguely in a Lahore High Court notice of contempt previously served on the president.

The solitude of the vatic leader is dangerous for the state. Possessed of godlike powers, such figures are deceived by their own un-consulting wisdom into involving themselves in situations of deadlock that Qadri finally faced in Islamabad as his followers shivered in the cold, experiencing Pakistan’s most severe winter in a quarter century. The charismatic leader brings about his downfall through his “divine isolation,” which attracts friend and foe alike in the beginning, but finally dooms him to failure.

SHARIF ROARS BACK

Former prime minister and PMLN chief Nawaz Sharif was furious with “antidemocratic” Qadri. He announced that Qadri had paid each woman protestor Rs. 2,000 to come to the Islamabad sit-in. According to a column in Urdu-language Jang, there was a time when Sharif thought Qadri was the Imam Mehdi, but after a falling out, mostly attributed to Qadri’s hubris, the Sharif family despised the spiritually self-centered cleric owing his rise to their Model Town residential mosque. The PPP for its part unleashed two federal stalwarts on Qadri, the ministers of interior and information, who lampooned their easy-to-mimic victim.

If Qadri was a firebrand orator, his detractors were almost abusive in their less talented outbursts. A careless reference to Qadri as “Pope” because of his headgear angered Christians. When everyone feared the hot words would unleash violence—which could be followed by an Army clampdown—Zardari stepped in with his familiar political poultice of reconciliation. The Islamabad Declaration, say Qadri detractors, means nothing because it is not constitutionally protected and the government doesn’t have the kind of majority in Parliament to act on what Qadri wants.

In Lahore, Sharif gathered all the extra-parliamentary opposition leaders in a tour de force of strategy against Imran Khan, who was relying on these very leaders earlier to somehow overthrow the bipartisan system which Sharif benefits from. Scared of Qadri because of his acceptable-to-the-West “soft Islam” and financial power, they rallied behind the slogan of “elections on time.” Khan suffered because of the grand entry (but dubious promise) of Qadri which he thought could be the winning card.

An erring Islamic-ideological state, under terminal threat from Al Qaeda’s brand of “Islam,” was now supposed to be challenged by another Islamic prescription offered by a man whose credentials were contested by the radical orthodoxy that embraces jihad and indirectly supports Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The majority population in Pakistan is supposed to be Barelvi, but the state has chosen since 1949 to give its imprimatur to the Deobandi-Wahabi madrassahs which supply cannon fodder to its asymmetrical jihad. This has shifted power to non-Barelvi parties and left the nonaggressive Barelvis at the margins of Pakistan’s political order.

The marginalized Barelvi leader, aware that he had a larger following than the state-patronized jihadi schools of thought, introverted himself and concentrated on organization and accumulation of resources on the basis of rituals connected with the celebration of saints. He had the spiritual power of cure and prediction; he related to the masses more intimately because of his epiphanic encounters with Islam’s Prophet through a chain of Islamic mystics. His power came from organization and his ability to extract wealth from his mass following. There are two kinds of bigwigs in the religious community: those who accumulate wealth on the basis of intimidation through jihad and foreign funding, and those who do it with organizational skill and contact with the masses. The jihad-related leaders are all more or less well-heeled. Money and mobilization among trained youths are the tools they employ to pressure the patron state.

One among them, Hafiz Saeed, is more resourceful, able to spend billions during a natural calamity as a means of projection of power. Because of jihad, he has a $10 million U.S. bounty riding on his head. His wealth comes from the collection and sale of hides of sacrificial animals, and partly from expat Pakistanis living on social security in the EU and in the U.S. Not only does he threaten Pakistan with the dare of jihad, he flings cross-border threats too.

On the non-jihadi Barelvi side, there are two leaders with legendary wealth: Tair-ul-Qadri and Maulana Ilyas Qadri of Dawat-e-Islami.

The mode of show of strength for Ilyas Qadri is his congregation of “millions” of green-turbaned devotees in Multan in parallel to the annual Deobandi Tableeghi Jamaat gathering in Lahore. Of course, the state inclines to the latter as presidents and sons of chief ministers attend the international event. Ilyas Qadri also has his own TV channel where he addresses his extremely dedicated followers. Looking at the properties he owns in the big cities of Pakistan one marvels at the accumulative patience of the man. He is more careful than Tahir-ul-Qadri when it comes to political expression, but his Mall Road mosque in Lahore clearly manifested signs of support when the other Qadri announced his march on Islamabad.

Tahir-ul-Qadri’s wealth emanates from Islamic charity which pours in not only from his indigenous outreach, but also, according to him, from other countries where Minhaj-ul-Quran has branches. He boasts 600 schools and colleges inside Pakistan and an international university. He can allegedly spend half a billion rupees on hiring buses when he wants to mobilize his disciples. When he spreads his money around it has the same effect as when Ilyas Qadri has the congregation of his Dawat-e-Islami in Multan, uplifting the city’s economy through the demand-push presence of his followers.

CHARITY STATE

Pakistanis gave Rs. 140 billion to charity in 2009, according to one estimate. Most giving is religion-related. Even if you choose to build a liberal charity, like looking after the poor, you have to appear religious-looking to donors. The secular charity of Abdul Sattar Edhi benefits from the clerical look of its founder. He is addressed with the religious prefix of Maulana.

Qadri has built his educational empire with charity. His wealth is fabulous, which he doesn’t hide through pious modesty of any sort. The remarkable phenomenon of Imran Khan, who built Pakistan’s first state-of-the-art cancer hospital, can be explained as a part of his religious transformation. His autobiography, explaining his born-again experiences, stands in for the beard he still doesn’t sport.

It may be an accident but men, like Qadri and Khan, who grow big on charity finally decide to reform the state too. The latest candidate is Aamir Liaquat Hussain who gathers big funds from the pious for his TV shows of pop evangelism; but his increasing reference to political and foreign policy issues points to his possible development as a challenger.

Khan was half tempted to join Qadri but was saved at the last moment by the politicians he had recently taken in as “electables.” Ilyas Qadri, too, kept his peace and did not use his TV channel to challenge the state. He may be chastened by what transpired with his predecessors, Riaz Gohar Shahi of Anjuman Sarfaroshan Islam and Yusuf Ali alias Kazzab, both billionaires of Pakistan’s charity underworld, who died by reason of “power miscalculation.”

Some years ago, another big charity man was Maulana Akram Awan of Chakwal who grew rich on the money and property earned by zikr (chant) madrassahs and by penetrating the rank and file of the Army. A Naqshbandi strongman with a lot of dedicated followers, he was the first charity saint to think of invading Islamabad when it was being ruled by Gen. Pervez Musharraf. That was a mistake: you don’t go against the Army; you come out when it wants you to come out. Another mistaken charity king was Maulana Murtaza Malik, who enjoyed the profitable patronage of Gen. Aziz Khan, once chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who allowed Malik to publish books for Army libraries and run two charities. Imran Khan, then thinking of branching out into education, was attracted to him the same way he was attracted to Tahir-ul-Qadri, but some thought it could be an Army prompting from General Khan. Malik was murdered in Lahore after he fell out with a local property-grabbing mafia.

There are other, different kinds of charity operators in Pakistan. Some profit from a mix of extortion and the dishing out of “empowerment” to those who pay up. By one count there are 116 charity groups wedded to a discourse of religion but engaged in mild or intense forms of terrorism on the side. Their modus operandi: instill fear in the locality in focus and receive what is called bhatta or protection money. Those who offer this “charity” benefit from a feeling of empowerment over fellow citizens when the state is too weak to protect them.

The state of Pakistan has lost its “monopoly of violence” that normally underpins the internal sovereignty of a state. Its past forays into asymmetric and covert jihad outside its borders have produced a large number of armed nonstate actors who now share its writ. The charity pantheon of the country features men grown charismatic because of the funds they can deploy. They however need protection against the menacing presence of jihadi strongmen. They therefore use charisma to challenge the state and demonstrate peaceful muscle needed to defy their more powerful competitors. The unprotected will gravitate to them, as the Hazara being ethnic-cleansed in Quetta did by announcing support for Qadri’s march. Qadri will attract more minority groups—Christians victimized by the blasphemy laws, Hindus haunted by forcible conversion and marriage—in the days ahead because the state is in a phase of shrinkage in the face of the Taliban-Al Qaeda threat.

And political parties, remnants of the state that once operated the democratic order on the basis of internal sovereignty, will be forced to seek terms with these charismatic charity men to make up for the loss of their halo of nonviolent legitimacy.

To comment on this article, email letters@newsweek.pk



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