Sufi Muhammad bin Alhazrat Hussein (1933-11 July 2019) was a Pakistani pro-Taliban cleric who founded Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM) with the goal of implementing sharia law in his country.
Biography[]
Sufi Muhammad was born in Maidan in what is now the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan in 1933 to a Sunni Pashtun family. During the 1980s, he actively participated in Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan, and, in 1992, he split from the group to form Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi in Malakand. He and his group engaged in violent agitation for the enforcement of sharia law, and, in October 2001, he crossed into Afghanistan with thousands of his followers to help the Taliban fight against the US invasion of Afghanistan. After he returned to Pakistan following the fall of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, he was arrested, and his group was banned in 2002. He remained in prison until 2008, when he renounced violence, and he was sent to the Swat Valley in 2009 to negotiate a ceasefire between the Pakistani government and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, led by his son-in-law, Mullah Fazlullah. On 26 July 2009, he was arrested for encouraging violence and terrorism after he stated that democracy was un-Islamic.In 2011 he was convicted for having links with TTP and on 8 January 2018 Muhammad was released from prison. He died in 2019 at the age of 86.