Was Maulana Naeemi Silenced?

JUN 12 - Was Maulana Naeemi, a renowned Ahle Sunnat Barelvi anti-Taliban and anti-US cleric silenced?

The News reported today that only 48 hours before his death, while addressing “Save Pakistan Ulema Convention” in Lahore, Dr Naeemi warned that if Pakistan did not stop fighting the US war and plug the money and arms supply to the Taliban from the US, India and other countries, the country’s nuclear assets and integrity would be at stake.

Did he know too much that he needed to be silenced by the dark forces and the murky pinheads? Baitullah Mehsud's TTP (Tehrik-i-Taliban) claimed today the responsibility for the suicide bombing attack in Naeem's mosque-office after Juma prayers.

Maulana Naeemi suspected American and Indian hands behind the present Taliban insurgency and till his last breath was demanding exposing the elements responsible for directly supplying arms and money to the Taliban.

He has been a critic of the US presence in the region and opposed Gen Musharraf’s decision to shoulder the US war on terror in Afghanistan, and had to pay the price for his opposition by serving terms in prison.

Naeemi's attacker was clean-shaven, not bearded like many religious Pakistanis, reported the New York times citing the police and mosque officials who saw the attacker’s head after the blast. He appeared to be about 18 to 20 years old, the police said. They said the bomber was a resident of southern Punjab.

Naeemi followed a school of thought within Sunni Islam, the Barelvi, which is at odds with the more fundamentalist Deobandi school observed by the Taliban. In 2007, he and other clerics issued an edict against suicide bombing, saying that only the state can wage jihad, not individuals or groups such as the Taliban.

He had supported the military offensive in Swat and had termed Taliban a “stigma on Islam.” This month, he and other leading clerics led a rally in Lahore condemning the Taliban as “enemies of Islam and traitors.”