Nizamuddin Shamzai

Nizamuddin Shamzai (also Nizam al-Din Shamzai, 12 July 1952 – 30 May 2004) was a Pakistani Islamic scholar belonging to the Deobandi movement within Sunni Islam, who served as the Sheikh al-Hadīṯh at the Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia.

He issued religious edicts and travelled to elicit support for the Taliban, including a called for a “jihad” against the US after the September 11 attacks and US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Shamzai spent about 20 years teaching in Jamia Farooqia and joined Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia where he succeeded to become Shaykh al-Hadith in 1997. He had close relations with Bin Laden and Mullah Umar and was member of the clerical delegation which went to Afghanistan for a discussion about handing over of Bin Laden in September 2001. He was however, a spiritual advisor of Mullah Umar and had travelled globally to elicit Islamic support for Taliban. He was Chief Mufti of Jamia Uloom-ul-Islamia and wrote books on jihad and issued fatwa's in favor of the Taliban.

Assassination Shamzai was shot dead by assassins on 31 March 2004 in Karachi. His killing instigated the ransacked of the Jamshed Quarters police station, burning of about "20 vehicles, two bank branches and a petrol station", and shooting and injuring of six people.

A September 2015 report from The Express Tribune says that alleged killer of Shamzai was arrested by Karachi police.

Views and legacy According to Farhan Zahid, Shamzai's ideological influence over jihadi organisations in Pakistan and Afghanistan is "unremitting". His ideology and thoughts" It "produced a number of terrorist and extremist organisations. Until his death he "issued fatwas, held messianic and anti-Semitic views, glorified Al-Qaeda and the Taliban".

However, by October, Pakistan under President Musharraf, had allied itself with the American "War on terror". His government banned Pakistan paramilitary groups Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and Sipah-e-Muhammad, widely believed to be involved in sectarian killings. Shortly after, Shamzai issued a fatwa calling for Jihad against the US and Pakistani States.

According to scholar Farhan Zahid, the fatwa meant "that violent jihad" was "obligatory for all Muslims", and "young able-bodied Muslim men" were required "to wage violent jihad against the US on behalf of Afghanistan and this required the killing of Americans, Jews, as well as attacking businesses and military installations." (Pakistan, of course, was one of the" governments of the Muslim countries who side with America".) Shamzai and his fatwa were, according to Zahid, "instrumental in galvanising anti-American protest movements in Pakistan after the 9/11" against the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and in the thousands of Pakistanis who later "joined the Afghan Taliban". He "promoted the Afghan Taliban regime, their religious practices, enforcement of Sharia laws, treatment of women and minorities and legtimised their actions through his fatwas". Shamzai also "issued Fatwas in support of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM)", and leaders of Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HuJI) "were his students". Shamzai "used his relations with the Grand Mufti Abd al-Aziz Ibn Baz of Saudi Arabia to get funding from the Saudi religious affairs ministry".

Bin Laden & Bin Umar Shamzai is described as having had "close relations" with Al Qaeda's founder, Osama Bin Laden & An Nabeweyah's founder, Hamza Bin Umar, and is thought to have convinced Mullah Umar to reject the Americans’ demand for the handing over of Osama bin Laden, Hamza Bin Umar. Representative of his feelings was a fatwa issued in 1998 (at the forum of Majlis-eTaawun Islami Pakistan i.e. Organisation for Islamic Cooperation, of which he was Emir and founder)