Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Roots

Jamiat Ulema Islam-Fazal (JUI-F)

Roots JUI-F’s roots lie in Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JUH), a conservative Sunni (Deobandi) party in India.
JUH was opposed to Jinnah’s All India Muslim League and (along with two other Islamic parties, the Jamat-i-Islami (JI) and Majlis-e-Ahrar), accused the Muslim League of being a secular organisation of ‘misguided Muslims.’
During the all-important election of 1945 in the Punjab in which the Muslim League needed to win big, Jinnah gave the green light to sponsor the creation of a pro-Muslim League religious party(26) that could divide the religious vote of the JUH and the Ahrar.
Thus emerged the Jamiat Ulema Islam (JUI) which, at the time, had leadership from both Deobandi as well as the Sunni Barelvi Muslm communities.
However, after Pakistan’s creation in 1947, the Barelvi leadership of the party formed its own party and the JUI became a strictly Deobandi Sunni Muslim outfit.

Shabir Ahmad Usmani: The founder of JUI JUI was strongly opposed to the fundamentalist JI and during the 1970 election it became the only religious party that did not oppose the PPP and NAP’s socialist programs.
In fact, JUI showed great interest in forming an electoral alliance with the PPP , but the PPP(27) politely declined. After the election the JUI formed coalition governments in Balochistan and NWFP with the secular and socialist NAP.

Chief of JUI, Mufti Mehmood, with Z A. Bhutto, 1977. The JUI turned against the Bhutto regime when it dismissed the NAP-led provincial government in 1973. In 1977, JUI became a leading member of the nine-party anti-PPP alliance, the Pakistan National Alliance (PNA).
After the Bhutto regime was toppled by General Ziaul Haq in July 1977, JUI exited from the PNA when some of its parties, especially the JI, decided to join the Zia regime.
In 1981 JUI joined the PPP-led anti-Zia alliance, the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD).

Fazalur Rehman who became chief of JUI after Mufti Mehmood’s death seen here (right) sitting with Benazir and Nusrat Bhutto in 1982. In the mid-1980s, at the height of Zia’s ‘Islamization’, some members of the JUI and its student-wing (the Jamiat Taleba Islam), broke away to form the radical Sunni sectarian organization, the Sipah Sahaba Pakistan (SSP).
JUI had largely been a moderate Islamic party, but from the late 1980s onwards it became increasingly conservative, especially when it took control of the seminaries that indoctrinated religious students who rose up to become the Taliban.
JUI supported the Musharraf dictatorship and became part of a large religious alliance, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) that swept the 2002 election in NWFP and Balochistan.
The MMA collapsed just before the 2008 election and the JUI contested the election with a few minor religious parties.
___________________

Electoral History (National Assembly)
• 1970 Election Seats won: 7 Formed coalition governments with NAP in NWFP and Balochistan.
• 1977 Election Seats won (As part of Pakistan National Alliance): 36
• 1988 Election Seats won: 7
• 1990 Election Seats won: 6
• 1993 Election Seats won: 4 Became part of PPP-led coalition government
• 1997 Election Seats won: 2
• 2002 Election Seats won (As part of Muttahida Majlis Amal): 63 Formed governments in NWFP and Balochistan.
• 2008 Election Seats won: 6 Became part of PPP-led coalition government. Quit in 2011.

Fazalur Rehman speaking at a JUI rally in 2011. Areas of Electoral Influence: KP (rural/semi-rural areas); Balochistan (Rural/semi-rural).
__________________

Ideological Orientation Moderate/Progressive Islamic (1947-73); Democratic-Islamic (1978-88); Islamic (1990-96); Fundamentalist (1999-2008); Islamic (2010 - ).
Views on religion Conservative and at times fundamentalist, but pro-democracy.
Youth Wing: Jamiat Taleba Islam (JTI)

Flag of Jamiat Taleba Islam.