PESHAWAR: Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the imprisoned chief of the banned Tehreek Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM), has issued an informal decree against Mulla Fazlullah-led Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), declaring that members of the banned outfit lack the traits essential for a Muslim.

“They [TTP] do not come up to the definition of Momin and Muslim set by the Holy Prophet (PBUH),” he stated in a written ‘will’, a copy of which is available with Dawn.

Maulana Sufi’s ‘will’ is his first statement since his arrest in Peshawar by law-enforcement agencies in July 2009 when the military operation was in its final stages in Malakand.

The computer-written will, having both Pashto and Urdu versions with his signature placed in the end, was written in December — four days after the Dec 16 Army Public School carnage which left over 150 people, mostly schoolchildren, dead.

The octogenarian cleric accused Mullah Fazlulla, his son-in-law, of bringing a bad name to the TNSM, killing a number of its leaders, and inflicting colossal loss on seminaries.

It also made mention of a 34-page pamphlet the banned TNSM had issued in 2006, calling for boycott of the Swat chapter of TTP. “But once again we endorse it [boycott] because quantum of the loss they inflicted on Islam is much larger than the one done to Islam by non-believers.”

The will went on to say: “They are also thoroughly bereft of the qualities of humanity, which is why it is my advice to followers, in general, and relatives in particular, to continue the boycott of Taliban till doomsday.”

Sufi Muhammad was jailed in July 2009 for, besides other charges, a speech he delivered in Swat. He had declared the judiciary and the democratic order in the country against the injunctions of Islam.

Published in Dawn, May 2nd, 2015

On a mobile phone? Get the Dawn Mobile App: Apple Store | Google Play