Mufti Mahmud
Mufti Mehmood (1919 – 1980) was a Pakistani politician and Islamic scholar who was one of the founding members of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI). Early life and career. Born in January 1919, he was an ethnic Marwat Pashtun from Abdul Khel, Dera Ismail Khan District, colonial India (now Pakistan). He received his religious education at Madrasa Shahi, Moradabad, UP and graduated from the Darul Uloom Deoband. In 1941, he worked as a teacher in Isakhel, Mianwali. At the time of the Indian independence movement, Mufti Mahmud opposed the partition of colonial India.In 1971 Mufti Mahmood uttered  that famous sentenceThank God we were not part of the sin of making Pakistan. In Pakistan. He worked as a teacher in Madrassa Qasim-ul-Uloom in Multan, Punjab in 1950. Later in his career, he held positions of "Chief Mudarras" in charge of Education, "Chief Mufti", "Sheikh-ul-Hadith" and "Muhtamim". He issued at least 25,000 Fatwas in his lifetime. Mufti Mahmud was a critic of family planning programme of Ayub Khan's government. He participated in the elections for the National Assembly for the first time under Ayub Khan's 'Basic Democracy Program' and defeated all his opponents  in 1962. He also opposed the 'One Unit Scheme'.On 8 January 1968, in Dacca, then in East Pakistan, Mufti Mahmud was one of the key leaders of "Jamhoori Majlis-e-Amal" that opposed Ayub Khan's regime. In the 1970 General Elections, Mufti Mahmud had a landslide victory against Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto in the Dera Ismail Khan constituency. After the 1970 General Elections in Pakistan, he became the president of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam founded by Maulana Shabir Ahmed Usmani. His party went into a coalition with the National Awami Party & Pakistan Peoples Party for the 1970 Pakistani general  election. In the 1970s, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam received significant funding from Saudi Arabia. On 1 March 1972, he was elected as the Chief Minister of the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa during the Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto regime in Pakistan. He, along with his cabinet, resigned in protest at the dismissal of the NAP–JUI (F) coalition government in Balochistan on 14 February 1973. During his tenure as Chief Minister, he introduced many reforms, such as forbidding the use of alcohol, announcing Urdu as the official language in Government offices, ban on interest in financial transactions and declared Friday as the  official holiday in his province. Mufti Mahmud played a vital role in Tehreek-e-Khatme Nabuwwat, a religious movement which has highlighted the beliefs of the followers of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad in Pakistan, in 1953 and again in 1974. He led a team of Islamic scholars which worked for the declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims in 1974. He supported Afghan-Jihad against USSR in 1979 (see also Soviet–Afghan War). Death and legacy. He died on 14 October 1980 in Karachi, Sindh at the age of 61. He was buried in his hometown Abdul Khel, Paniala, Dera Ismail Khan  District. His son Fazal-ur-Rehman is a politician who leads the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party in Pakistan.