Frontline Pakistan : The Struggle With Militant Islam - Arz-e-Pak

Frontline Pakistan
clerics. After returning to Pakistan, Hafiz Saeed took up a teaching
job at the Department of Islamic Studies at the Lahore University of
Engineering and Technology. His two brothers lived in America. One
was head of an Islamic centre and the other pursued an academic
career. Hafiz Saeed himself had never travelled to the USA or any
other western country. 9
In the early 1980s, Hafiz Saeed joined the mujahidin war in
Afghanistan which also brought him into close contact with Abdullah
Azzam and Osama bin Laden. Their ‘dedication to jihad’ inspired
him immensely. ‘Osama was a man of extraordinary qualities,’ he
recalled. 10 Azzam, a Palestinian who had worked as a professor of
Islamic jurisprudence at the University of Jordan in Amman had a huge
influence on Hafiz Saeed. The Palestinian scholar arrived in Pakistan
soon after the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet forces and took up a
teaching position at the Islamic University of Islamabad. But his stint
was short. He shifted to Peshawar and emerged as the main jihadist
ideologue. With Saudi finance he recruited volunteers for the Afghan
jihad from all over the Arab world. He was assassinated in a bomb
attack in Peshawar in 1989.
Azzam helped Hafiz Saeed establish Markaz Dawal al-Irshad
(MDI), an organization for Islamic preaching and guidance which was
ideologically affiliated with Wahabi Ahle Hadith. In the tradition of
the reformist Sunni movements, the MDI sought to purify society and
Islam of ‘outside influences’. Its sprawling headquarters in Muridke on
the outskirts of Lahore housed a university, a farm, a clothing factory
and a carpentry workshop. The objective was to create a model
Islamic environment removed from any state interference. 11 In 1994,
the movement set up a network of schools across the country with the
objectives of promoting the Wahabi version of Islam and preparing the
students for jihad. The MDI observed a strict educational philosophy
that was directed towards developing a jihadist culture and to produce
a reformed individual, who would be well versed not only in Islamic
moral principles, but also in science and technology. The teaching
was aimed at producing an alternative model of governance and
development. 12 These schools, located in the poorer urban and rural
neighbourhoods, attracted children of families who could not afford a
better education. The organization encouraged its supporters to have
large families, so that more volunteers were available for jihad.
Hafiz Saeed founded LeT in 1990, soon after the withdrawal of
Soviet forces from Afghanistan, as a military wing of the MDI to wage