PESHAWAR: Returning home in an unusual manner after more than a month of forced disappearance, Mufti Shahabuddin Popalzai renewed his commitment to continue his struggle for reconstitution of the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee in line with the Constitution and thus resolve the issue of moon-sighting once and for all in accordance with the teachings of Quran and Sunnah.
He made it clear that he had neither gone abroad nor returned on his own free will. “I had been taken away by force and was brought back home in the same manner,” he said while talking to The News. Asked as to who had taken him, he said: “The state.”
Mufti Popalzai, who is chief imam of the historic Masjid Qasim Ali Khan in Peshawar and heads the popular private Ruet-e-Hilal Committee in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, went missing just a few days before Eidul Fitr in June last. Later, his photos and air tickets went viral on the social media showing him in a lounge in Dubai airport. Those tickets showed his return date as August 2. However, he flew back to Islamabad on July 31 – two days before the given date. Astonishingly, he was taken straight to Abbottabad and stayed there for some time before coming to his hometown Peshawar.
He delivered the Friday sermon at his mosque wherein he avoided discussing issues pertaining to his disappearance and moon-sighting. He only made an indirect reference to his travel to Dubai, saying that he would continue to suffer hardships in the way of Allah like his predecessors.
This correspondent talked exclusively to Mufti Shahabuddin Popalzai after his return. He didn’t share details of his shifting to Dubai and his stay there. However, sources close to Masjid Qasim Ali Khan informed that he was kept under watch throughout his stay abroad. They said that for three weeks certain officials remained with him. Later, he was freed, but still kept under watch. He had been asked to remain ready for return to Pakistan all the time. The sources said he was told that he would be informed just two hours prior to his flight home.
Mufti Popalzai said that they would continue their struggle in a legal and constitutional manner. He said that they had sensed the possible action against him before Eidul Fitr. Therefore, he and his colleagues had evolved an alternative strategy in case of the action against him and other leading members of the private moon-sighting committee.
“We had asked the members of the committee and the religious scholars to stay calm in case of the government action and perform their religious obligations. We had stopped them from staging protests as this would have provided the government an opportunity to take major action against us and harm our cause,” he explained.
He termed the action against him and Maulana Khairul Bashar and the subsequent propaganda against them as state oppression. “The propaganda campaign against us had been launched by the people sitting at the dining table of the rulers,” he alleged.
He said that even the previous year when he had gone for Umrah in the last 10 days of Ramazan on his own expenses, it had been propagated that the state had sponsored his trip. “This was not true,” he maintained.
“This year too baseless reports were circulated to malign me and weaken our struggle, but the opponents would not succeed in their designs,” Mufti Popalzai argued. “We would never use indecent language against anyone. We would continue our struggle in a legal and constitutional manner,” he said.
He termed the Central Ruet-e-Hilal Committee as an unconstitutional entity and said that they have already submitted proposals to this effect in the Senate. “The previous government had acknowledged our concerns and had started work on the reconstitution of the committee, but the process stopped after the change in the government,” he recalled.
“During a meeting with the federal minister for religious affairs and other government functionaries in 2016, assurances had been given to us that our proposals would be considered. But this year, instead of taking sincere steps, the government resorted to non-serious and extra-constitutional measures. However, the religious circles played a tremendous role by the grace of Allah to foil all the nefarious designs,” Mufti Popalzai argued.
