by C. M. NAIM
Another, similarly beleaguered minority within Islam in Pakistan are the Zikris, an off-shoot of a fifteenth-century millenarian movement. It was launched by Miran Syed Muhammad of Jaunpur (India), who claimed to be the promised mahdi and whose tomb is in Farah (Afghanistan.) His followers in India, mainly in Hyderabad, are known as the Mahdavis. The Zikris in Pakistan, currently estimated to be half a million in number, are mostly in the coastal areas of Sindh and parts of Baluchistan. Turbat (Baluchistan) is considered a sacred place by them because the mahdi is said to have prayed and meditated there. The followers of the mahdi suffered some persecution in the fifteenth century, but since then have lived in peace with other Muslims. Evidently, having tasted success against the Ahmadis, the Jamiat-ul-Ulama-e-Islam felt encouraged to launch an attack against the Zikris — just as other similar groups increased their polemics against the Shi’a Muslims. In March 1992, at Turbat, armed zealots of the Jamiat tried to disrupt the annual pilgrimage of the Zikris. Since then they have been demanding that the Zikris should also be declared “non-Muslims.” To my knowledge, no Muslim religious leader in Pakistan — or, for that matter, in the rest of South Asia — has yet challenged that demand.
Columbia for more