LAHORE: The death of Jamia Naeemia administrator Dr Sarfaraz Naeemi has deprived the Brelvi school of thought of a sincere leader who always worked for uniting Sunni parties and groups on a single platform.

The son of Mufti Muhammad Husain Naeemi, the founder of Jamia Naeemia, Dr Naeemi never showed any ambitions to secure benefits for himself and was often seen riding his old motorbike.

A humble, moderate and widely respected scholar, Dr Naeemi never cared about protocol or security. He got his early education from Jamia Naeemi and then did PhD from the Punjab University besides a short course from Al-Azhar, Egypt.

A former khateeb of Chowk Dalgaran mosque, he was now running Jamia Naeemia besides an organisation looking after the affairs of Sunni sect seminaries.

Dr Naeemi never directly joined politics. However, like his father he had strong leanings towards Pakistan Muslim League-N chief Nawaz Sharif and for this reason he had been opposed to former army chief Pervez Musharraf.

 Since his return from exile in November 2007, Nawaz had twice visited Jamia Naeemia, the first seminary to introduce information technology for religious students.

PML-N officials say Dr Naeemi along with MNA Haji Fazl Karim and Ittefaq Mosque khateeb Syed Riaz Shah was working to build an alliance of religious scholars against the Taliban to cut their support from amongst the masses. He left behind a son and five daughters.