Preparations for JUI-F’s centenary celebrations in full swing

For the past two weeks, Muhammad Ilyas, a Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) leader, has been busy visiting printers to get posters and panaflex, besides other materials, printed to publicise his party’s centenary celebration agenda in Karachi, schedule to be held next month.

Established as a separate party in 1947 after defecting from the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind following the partition, the JUI-F is said to be the country’s largest religious party that follows the Deobandi school of thought.

The party has decided to organise a three-day congregation, from April 7 to 9, to celebrate its 100 years of formation in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Azakhel area in district Nowshera.

“Like in the rest of the country, party’s workers in Karachi are also excited about the party’s three-day congregation; they have been running effective publicity campaigns to ensure the event is successful,” Ilyas  told The News as he got back to putting up a banner at the Dawood Chowrangi roundabout.

Posters and banners have been displayed in various areas of the city especially those dominated by a Pashtun population, as well as at gates of mosques and seminaries. The party has also been busy organising gatherings and corner meetings in a number of areas and seminaries to mobilise workers to attend the congregation in large numbers.

According to party leaders, Imam-e-Kaabah Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al-Sudais, Darul Uloom Deoband’s (India) administrator Abul Qasim Nomani, Jamiat Ulema Hind President Maulana Syed Arshad Maadani and secretary general Maulana Syed Mehmood Asad Madani are among the prominent international guests supposed to attend the event.   

JUI-F Sindh’s deputy head, Qari Muhammad Usman, said the party’s leadership as well as the workers in all six districts of the city have been busy preparing for the three-day congregation.

“Besides the publicity campaign, they are now also arranging for transportation for tens of thousands of workers who are to attend the congregation,” Usman told The News.  

He said that only in district Korangi the party’s official have got 16 train bogies booked to bring workers and supporters from their area to Peshawar. “Other districts have been arranging coaches and buses to get people to the venue of the congregation, he added.

Apart from Karachi, there was great enthusiasm among party workers in rural Sindh, especially in Larkana, Shikarpur, Sukkar and Jacobabad, the party’s provincial deputy head stated. “Our target is to bring over a million people from Sindh, and to achieve this aim the party’s leadership has been making efforts to mobilise party workers.”  

JUI-F in Karachi:

The JUI-F has mostly remained active in the city’s Pashtun neighbourhoods. In the 2002’s general polls, the party won three provincial assembly seats from Karachi under the banner of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) – a six-party alliance of religious parties of different sects. All three of its elected parliamentarians were Pashtuns.

The JUI-F had also managed to secure several union council seats from different areas of the city in the 2005 local government polls.

Wakeel Ur Rehman, a journalist covering religious parties, said the party mainly relies on a large network of seminaries and mosques. “Through mobilising workers for the centenary congregation, the party aims to prepare for the upcoming general polls,” Rehman told The News.   

However, the Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), which was declared a proscribed organisation in 2012 owing to his politics of sectarianism, has emerged as a key contender for the JUI-F from the Deobandi group. This happened after Maulana Aurangzeb Farooqi, now the ASWJ’s central president, took charge of its Karachi chapter. 

The JUI-F has never had close ties with the ASWJ and maintains a more realistic approach towards sectarianism. Even in the 2013 general elections, the JUI-F did not bow down to the pressure exerted by clerics of key seminaries to make the party withdraw its candidate for the PS-128 seat in favour of the ASWJ’s Farooqi. Farooqi lost the election with a margin of a mere 202 votes to Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s candidate, Waqar Shah.