For decades, Pakistan's Barelvis had a fairly predictable set of religious rivals: Deobandis, Ahl-e-Hadith and, at times, Shias. Their sermons, debates and political gatherings were as much about defending their own interpretation of Islam as they were about attacking those of their sectarian rivals.

Today, that is no longer the defining battlefield.

The biggest political force to emerge from Pakistan's Barelvi tradition, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP), has built its politics around a very different question: who is willing to defend the honour of the Prophet?

It has transformed the political possibilities available to Barelvi clerics, allowing an essentially sectarian religious identity to claim a much broader constituency around the politics of blasphemy and Khatm-e-Nabuwat.

The transformation can be traced through the careers of clerics such as Dr Muhammad Ashraf Asif Jalali and Khadim Hussain Rizvi, the political mobilisation around Mumtaz Qadri after the assassination of Salmaan Taseer in 2011, and eventually the emergence of TLP.

Jalali launched his “Tehreek Sirate Mustaqeem Pakistan” in the late 2000s, and his focus at the time seemed to be countering the Deobandi and Ahl-e-Hadith onslaught that the Barelvis were under. It was a time when Pakistani Taliban were gaining ground at a rapid pace not just in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but also in parts of Punjab. By the late 2000s, Pakistan was experiencing levels of militant violence that had become almost unimaginable in peacetime. The country was among the world's worst-affected by terrorism, while neighbouring Afghanistan and Iraq were engulfed in wars and insurgencies.

Barelvis were under attack too. Taliban, after having decimated Sufi shrines of Rahman Baba, Mian Umar Baba, Panj Peer and Pir Baba among others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had turned their attention to Punjab and Sindh, the two provinces with largest Barelvi populations.

I still remember how after the Data Darbar bomb blast in 2010, a firebrand Barelvi cleric had taken oath from his listeners during a speech at Lahore’s Mall Road that they’d each kill at least one Deobandi. I still remember a friend of mine asking himself why couldn’t Barelvis produce suicide bombers.

It was a tough time for Barelvis. Barelvis accused Deobandi groups of forcibly taking over their mosques and police were often reluctant to intervene in what they regarded as a sectarian turf war.

Ashraf Asif Jalali would deliver long sermons condemning Shias, Deobandis, Ahle-Hadith, with the latter two being on the receiving end most of the time. He’d hold annual public........

© The Friday Times