Explained: Dawat-e-Isami, the Pakistan based Sunni group linked to Udaipur tailor Kanhaiya Lal’s murderer
India Today
Dawat-e-Islami claims to be a non-political and non-violent religious group inspired by Sufi tradition, and so far there's no evidence of its direct involvement as a group in any terror act. But this isn't the first time its name has come up in a terrorism investigation. Read on to find out more about the group linked to Udaipur murder accused.
A day after the brutal murder of the tailor in Udaipur, Rajasthan Police said that Ghouse Mohammad, one of the two accused in the case, had gone to Karachi in Pakistan in 2014 and had links with Dawat-e-Islami.
"One of the accused, Ghouse Mohammad, has links with the Karachi-based Islamist organisation Dawat-e-Islami. He had visited Karachi in 2014. So far, we have detained five people, including the two prime accused," Rajasthan DGP ML Lather was quoted as saying.
Dawat-e-Islami is a Sunni Islamic organisation based in Pakistan which operates several Islamic educational institutions in Pakistan as well in others parts of the world. In addition to charity campaigning locally, Dawat-e-Islami also offers online courses in Islamic studies. The organisation also runs a television station, Madani Channel, which is very popular among followers of Barelvi movement.
Barelvi is a revivalist movement following the Sunni Hanafi school of jurisprudence, with over 200 million followers in South Asia and in parts of Europe, America and Africa.
Dawat-e-Islami was officially founded in Karachi in September 1981 by a group of Sunni scholars, who selected Maulana Ilyas Qadri as its main leader.
Arshadul Qaudri and Islamic scholar Shah Ahmad Noorani, since 1973 head of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan (JUP), along with other Pakistani Sunni scholars, selected Ilyas Qadri, who was the then Punjab president of Anjuman Tulaba-ye Islm, JUP´s youth wing, as the head of Dawat-e-Islami at Dr-ul ´ulm Amjadia.
It was established initially to dilute the influence of Tablighi Jamaat.
