afghanistanthemselves as the Taliban, for all of them had been students, or talibs,
of various madrasas in southern Afghanistan, Karachi or the Northwest
Frontier Province. One madrasa in particular, the Darul Uloom Haqqania
in Akora Khattak on the Peshawar–Attock road, played a significant part
in forming the Taliban’s view of Islam and the Islamic state. Its founder,
Maulana ‘Abd al-Haq (c. 1914–1988), 1 trained at the Darul Uloom at
Deoband and was a murid of the Hajji Sahib of Turangzai, the pir who
in 1897 and 1915 led two major Frontier revolts against British rule and
was a key supporter of ‘Abd al-Ghaffar Khan’s Khudai Khimatgar move-
ment. Prior to Partition ‘Abd al-Haq became a founder member of the
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (jui).
In 1947, after Partition, ‘Abd al-Haq returned to his home town of
Akora Khattak where he founded the Pakistani branch of the Darul
Uloom. In 1970 ‘Abd al-Haq was elected to Pakistan’s National Assembly.
After the Soviet occupation he issued a fatwa legitimizing the Peshawar
Sunni Islamists’ jihad, and also actively raised funds for the mujahidin and
provided free religious tuition for war orphans and the children of impov-
erished refugees. As a leading member of the jui, ‘Abd al-Haq played a
major role in supporting General Zia-ul-Haq’s military coup and was one of
the driving forces behind Zia’s project to Islamize Pakistan’s Constitution.
‘Abd al-Haq died in 1988 and was succeeded by his son, Sami al-Haq,
who promoted an even more militant vision of Islam and Islamization
constructed on the concept of perpetual and obligatory jihad. Sami too
played a leading role in Pakistan’s political life as head of a splinter faction
of the jui (jui-s) and was the principal sponsor of the bill that led to the
shari‘aization of Pakistan’s Constitution and the passing of the controversial
blasphemy law. Sami’s publications include virulent attacks on the Western
world order, the State of Israel, Communism and coeducation. He was
responsible for a fatwa that condemned Shi‘as, Isma‘ilis and Qadiyanis as
non-Muslims, and called for all adult Muslims in Pakistan to be trained for
jihad. After the Taliban’s successful conquest of Afghanistan, Sami boasted
that Mullah ‘Omar consulted him regularly, a claim that led the Western
press to misleadingly refer to him as ‘The Father of the Taliban’. 2
Many of the leaders of the Taliban had studied at ‘Abd al-Haq’s madrasa
in Akora Khattak but the movement was always very much its own master.
Furthermore, despite subsequent attempts by the usa and nato to tar the
Afghan Taliban with the brush of international terrorism, the movement
was always a religio-nationalist movement, unlike al-Qa‘ida or Daesh/
isis. The Taliban were essentially the latest avatar of a long-standing trad-
ition of Pushtun resistance to domination by the state and the movement