Mufti Mehmood ( ur, ; 1919–1980) was a Pakistani politician and Islamic scholar who was one of the founding members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI).Profile of Mufti Mahmud on storyofpakistan.com website
Updated 5 January 2009, Retrieved 9 April 2019

Early life and career

Born in January 1919, he was an ethnic

Marwat The Marwat ( ps, مروت) is a Pashtun tribe, a branch of the Lohani tribe and belong to Lodi section, located primarily in Lakki Marwat District, parts of Dera Ismail Khan District, some villages of Tank district in Pakistan and in the Kataw ...

Pashtun Pashtuns (, , ; ps, پښتانه, ), also known as Pakhtuns or Pathans, are an Iranian ethnic group who are native to the geographic region of Pashtunistan in the present-day countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They were historically r ...

from Abdul Khel,

Dera Ismail Khan District Dera Ismail Khan District ( ps, ډېره اسماعیل خان ولسوالي, bal, ڈیرہ عِسمائیل خان, ur, , skr, ; often abbreviated as D.I. Khan) is a district in Dera Ismail Khan Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in ...

colonial India Colonial India was the part of the Indian subcontinent that was occupied by European colonial powers during the Age of Discovery. European power was exerted both by conquest and trade, especially in spices. The search for the wealth and prospe ...

(now Pakistan). He received his religious education at Madrasa Shahi, Moradabad, UP and graduated from the

Darul Uloom Deoband The Darul Uloom Deoband is an Islamic seminary ( darul uloom) in India at which the Sunni Deobandi Islamic movement began. It is located in Deoband, a town in Saharanpur district, Uttar Pradesh. The seminary was established by Muhammad Qas ...

. In 1941, he worked as a teacher in Isakhel, Mianwali. At the time of the

Indian independence movement The Indian independence movement was a series of historic events with the ultimate aim of ending British rule in India. It lasted from 1857 to 1947. The first nationalistic revolutionary movement for Indian independence emerged from Bengal ...

Mufti Mahmud opposed the partition of colonial India and opposed the creation of Pakistan. In 1971, he infamously said “Thank God we were not part of the sin of making Pakistan.”

In Pakistan

He served as a '' Muhtamim'' at Jamia Qasim-ul-Uloom in

Multan Multan (; ) is a city in Punjab, Pakistan, on the bank of the Chenab River. Multan is Pakistan's seventh largest city as per the 2017 census, and the major cultural, religious and economic centre of southern Punjab. Multan is one of the ol ...

and later in his career, he also held the positions of '' Chief Mudarras'' in charge of Education, ''

Chief Mufti A Mufti (; ar, مفتي) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion (''fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatwas'' played an important role ...

'', and ''

Sheikh Sheikh (pronounced or ; ar, شيخ ' , mostly pronounced , plural ' )—also transliterated sheekh, sheyikh, shaykh, shayk, shekh, shaik and Shaikh, shak—is an honorific title in the Arabic language. It commonly designates a chief of a ...

al-Hadith''. He issued at least 25,000

Fatwa A fatwā ( ; ar, فتوى; plural ''fatāwā'' ) is a legal ruling on a point of Islamic law (''sharia'') given by a qualified '' Faqih'' (Islamic jurist) in response to a question posed by a private individual, judge or government. A jurist ...

s in his lifetime and his students included Maulana Abdullah Ghazi,

Abdul Majeed Ludhianvi Maulana Abdul Majeed Ludhianvi (born; 5 June 1934 – 1 February 2015) ( Urdu: مولانا عبدالمجید لدھیانوی) was a Pakistani Islamic scholar and writer who served as 7th Emir of Aalmi Majlis Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat and a s ...

and

Noor Muhammad Maulana Noor Muhammad (1936 – 23 August 2010) ( Urdu: ) was a Pakistani Islamic scholar, writer and politician, who served as a member of the 11th National Assembly of Pakistan from 1997 to 1999. Early life and education Noor Muhammad was ...

. Mufti Mahmud was a critic of family planning programme of

Ayub Khan Ayub Khan is a compound masculine name; Ayub is the Arabic version of the name of the Biblical figure Job, while Khan or Khaan is taken from the title used first by the Mongol rulers and then, in particular, their Islamic and Persian-influenced s ...

's government. He participated in the elections for the National Assembly for the first time under Ayub Khan's 'Basic Democracy Program' and defeated all his opponents in 1962. He also opposed the ' One Unit Scheme'.On 8 January 1968, in

Dacca Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city i ...

, then in

East Pakistan East Pakistan was a Pakistani province established in 1955 by the One Unit Policy, renaming the province as such from East Bengal, which, in modern times, is split between India and Bangladesh. Its land borders were with India and Myanmar, wit ...

, Mufti Mahmud was one of the key leaders of ''Jamhoori Majlis-e-Amal'' that opposed Ayub Khan's regime. In the 1970 General Elections, Mufti Mahmud had a landslide victory against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the

Dera Ismail Khan Dera Ismail Khan (; bal, , Urdu and skr, , ps, ډېره اسماعيل خان), abbreviated as D.I. Khan, is a city and capital of Dera Ismail Khan District, located in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. It is the 37th largest city of Pakista ...

constituency. After the 1970 General Elections in Pakistan, he became the president of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam founded by Maulana Shabir Ahmed Usmani. His party went into a coalition with the

National Awami Party The National Awami Party (NAP), translated from Urdu to English as National People's Party, was the major left-wing political party in East and West Pakistan. It was founded in 1957 in Dhaka, erstwhile East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), by A ...

Pakistan Peoples Party The Pakistan People's Party ( ur, , ; PPP) is a centre-left, social-democratic political party in Pakistan. It is currently the third largest party in the National Assembly and second largest in the Senate of Pakistan. The party was founded i ...

for the

1970 Pakistani general election General elections were held in Pakistan on 7 December 1970 to elect members of the National Assembly. They were the first general elections since the independence of Pakistan and ultimately the only ones held prior to the independence of Bangla ...

. In the 1970s, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam received significant funding from

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

. On 1 March 1972, he was elected as the Chief Minister of the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa during the

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Zulfikar (or Zulfiqar) Ali Bhutto ( ur, , sd, ذوالفقار علي ڀٽو; 5 January 1928 – 4 April 1979), also known as Quaid-e-Awam ("the People's Leader"), was a Pakistani barrister, politician and statesman who served as the fourth ...

regime in Pakistan. He, along with his cabinet, resigned in protest at the dismissal of the NAP–JUI (F) coalition government in

Balochistan Balochistan ( ; bal, بلۏچستان; also romanised as Baluchistan and Baluchestan) is a historical region in Western and South Asia, located in the Iranian plateau's far southeast and bordering the Indian Plate and the Arabian Sea coastline. ...

on 14 February 1973. During his tenure as Chief Minister, he introduced many reforms, such as forbidding the use of alcohol, announcing Urdu as the official language in Government offices, ban on interest in financial transactions and declared Friday as the official holiday in his province. Mufti Mahmud played a vital role in Tehreek-e-Khatme Nabuwwat, a religious movement which has highlighted the beliefs of the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Pakistan, in 1953 and again in 1974. He led a team of Islamic scholars which worked for the declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims in 1974. He supported Afghan-Jihad against

USSR The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nati ...

in 1979 (see also

Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Soviet ...

Death and legacy

He died on 14 October 1980 in Karachi, Sindh at the age of 61. He was buried in his hometown Abdul Khel, Paniala,

. His son Fazal-ur-Rehman is a politician who leads the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party in Pakistan.In defence of Taliban: Fazl's remarks spark furore in Afghanistan
The Express Tribune (newspaper) Published 17 November 2014, Retrieved 9 April 2019

Literary works

*''Tafsīr-i Maḥmūd'', translation of and commentary on the

Qur'an The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , si ...

, in 3 volumes *''Fatāvʹa Muftī Maḥmūd'', his fatwas, in 11 volumes *''Az̲ān-i saḥar: Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd ke inṭerviyuz aur taqārīr kā majmūʻah'', collected speeches and interviews *''K̲h̲ut̤bāt-i Maḥmūd: majmūʻah-yi taqārīr-i mufakkir-i Islām, Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd'', collection of his speeches

Books about him

*''Savāniḥ-i ḥayāt: Muftī Maḥmūd, vazīr-i aʻlá-yi Sarḥad, janral sekraṭrī Jamʻiyat-i ʻUlamāʼ-yi Islām, Pākistān'' by Z̈iyāʼurraḥmān Fārūqī, 1972 *''Muftī Maḥmūd kī siyāsat'' by Nūrulḥaq Quraishī, 1974 *''Maulānā Mufti Mahmūd'' by Naʻim Āsī, 1977 *''Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd ... kī siyāsī zindagī'' by Gul Nāyāb K̲h̲ān Citrālī, 2002 *''Mufakkir-i Islām, qāʼid-i Islāmī inqilāb Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd ... ek darvesh siyāsatdān'' by Sayyid Anvar Qidvāʼī, 2003 *''Savāniḥ qāʼid-i millat Ḥaẓrat Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd'' by ʻAbdulqayyūm Ḥaqqānī, 2003 *''Muftī Maḥmūd kā daur-i ḥukūmat'' by Ashfāq Hāshmī, 2004 *''Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd ke ḥairat angez vāqiʻāt'' by Momin K̲h̲ān ʻUs̲mānī, 2009 *''Muftī-yi Aʻẓam Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd kī ʻilmī, dīnī aur siyāsī k̲h̲idmāt'' by ʻAbdulḥakīm Akbarī, 2010 *''Afkār-i Maḥmūd : Shaik̲h̲ulhind Maulānā Maḥmūd Ḥasan va mufakkir-i Islām Maulānā Muftī Maḥmūd kī ḥayāt o k̲h̲idmāt kā ḥasīn tazkirah'' by Muḥammad Fārūq Quraishī, 2017

References

Bibliography

* *

External links

, - {{DEFAULTSORT:Mahmud, Mufti 1919 births 1980 deaths Pashtun people Indian National Congress politicians Indian independence activists from Pakistan Chief Ministers of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa People from Dera Ismail Khan District Grand Muftis Deobandis Pakistani MNAs 1962–1965 Pakistani political party founders Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam politicians Presidents of Wifaq ul Madaris Al-Arabia Madrasa Shahi alumni Wifaq ul Madaris Al-Arabia people Students of Muhammad Miyan Deobandi General Secretaries of Wifaq ul Madaris Al-Arabia Jamia Qasim Ul Uloom people