[Reader-list] Bizarre Pakistani Cult Seeks Presence in India

[Yogi Sikand]

Bizarre Pakistani Cult Seeks Presence in India

By Yoginder Sikand


A fortnight ago, the walls of my locality in New Delhi were plastered
over with posters depicting a bearded man bearing a ponderous turban,
below which were etched slogans fiercely denouncing Pakistan.
'Pakistan Promotes Islamic Terrorism', 'Islamic Terrorists Rule
Pakistan', 'Declare Pakistan a Terrorist State' and so on the posters
proclaimed. They were issued by The Mehdi Foundation International
(MFI), a little-known outfit with a rather bombastic name.

Curious to learn more, I dialed the cell number mentioned at the
bottom of the posters. A man (who, I later learnt, was the General
Secretary of the MFI) answered in broken English in a jarring
pseudo-American twang, and informed me about the demonstration against
Pakistan that a group of Pakistani citizens associated with the MFI
was organizing the next day outside the Jantar Mantar in the heart of
New Delhi.

I got to the venue a short while before the demonstration got over. A
group of some sixty-odd young men and women, who claimed to be
Pakistani citizens, were raising full-throated slogans against
Pakistan, accusing it of fomenting 'Islamic terrorism'. Intriguingly,
with equal gusto they chanted slogans hailing India. 'Bharat Mata Ki
Jai', 'Hindustan Zindabad', they screamed. The placards they carried
announced various other messages: that true Islam did not sanction
violence against innocent people, that some Hindu deities and saints
were also truly men of God, and, most curiously, that a certain Riaz
Ahmed Gohar Shahi was the saviour of the entire world.

Draped on the fence behind where the demonstrators stood were banners
depicting the same face that I had seen on the posters pasted on the
walls in my locality. That figure was of Riaz Ahmad Gohar Shahi, who,
the banners announced, was considered by MFI followers as the Imam
Mehdi of the Muslims, the Kalki Avatar of the Hindus, the Promised
Messiah of the Jews and the Christians and the Buddha himself.

The slogan-shouting crowd then gathered in a circle and set alight an
effigy of the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and of Maulana
Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani cleric and politician, who happened to be
in Delhi at that time. And, surrounded by a bevy of media persons whom
they had specially invited, they set ablaze their Pakistani passports
in a fit of fury.

'We refuse to return to Pakistan', said a demonstrator, a young woman
from Karachi. Burning her passport was illegal, I informed her. 'Our
Imam', she shot back, 'has told us that India will help us, so we are
not worried. Nothing will happen to us'. 'False cases of blasphemy
have been lodged against our people and we are being harassed for our
religious beliefs', claimed another angry demonstrator, a man from
Lahore.

Predictably, the Indian papers and television channels that covered
the dramatic event presented it, as the demonstrators themselves had
wished, as a case of a religious minority in Pakistan being allegedly
persecuted by the state and Islamic groups. The demonstrators'
virulent demand that Pakistan be declared as a 'terrorist state' was
music to the ears of the reporters who covered the event, and whose
selective reporting of it further reinforced the stereotypical image
of Pakistan being a hot-bed of religious bigots.

But that, as I was to discover, did not really reflect the reality of
the MFI. None of the newspapers and television channels that covered
the event had examined the MFI's beliefs and doctrines. Had they cared
to do so, they would probably not have enthusiastically endorsed the
claims that the demonstrators had so passionately made.

Over the next two days I scanned the Internet for whatever I could
access on the MFI. I also met with Mir Lali, the MFI's General
Secretary, who is based in North America and who was the key organizer
of the Delhi demonstration. In his missionary enthusiasm, Lali
arranged for me to speak through the Internet with the head of the
MFI, the London-based Yunous Al-Gohar, who is styled as the outfit's
'Chief Executive Officer'.

What emerged from my reading and the conversations that I had with
these people was that the MFI hardly appeared to be the benign
inter-faith group committed to universal peace and harmony that its
activists claimed it to be. Rather, it struck me as a completely
bizarre cult that made such outrageous claims for its cult-figure,
Riyaz Ahmad Gohar Shahi, that no sensible Christian, Hindu and
Buddhist, in addition, of course, to Muslim, would ever make. In other
words, the demonstrating MFI activists' protestations that the group
was being 'falsely' and 'unfairly' accused of anti-Islamic beliefs by
the Pakistani state and Muslim groups in Pakistan were not quite true.

Briefly put, the MFI cult is centred on the figure of Gohar Shahi, who
was born in a village in 1941 in the Gujaranwala district in
Pakistan's Punjab province. In 1980, he began publicly preaching,
presenting himself as a sort of Sufi, although several of his
followers began considering him the Imam Mahdi, the Promised Saviour
who, according to Muslim tradition, would arrive in the world just
prior to the Last Days. In the late 1990s, a number of criminal cases
were instituted against Gohar Shahi, forcing him to flee to Britain.
There, he set up his centre, making a fairly significant number of
followers, particularly among expatriate Pakistanis. According to the
MFI, Gohar Shahi went into occultation in November 2001. MFI activists
believe that he is omnipresent, although visible only to his
followers, and that he will again reveal himself in his physical form
shortly before a grand apocalyptic battle that he will wage, along
with Jesus, against the Dajjal or Anti-Christ that will herald the Day
of Judgment.

In the meanwhile, MFI followers believe, Gohar Shahi is in touch with
Yunous al-Gohar, said by some Pakistani newspapers to be a
London-based billionaire and hypnotist, who claims to be his deputy.
On the other hand, a rival group of Gohar Shahi's followers, led by
his own son, members of the Pakistan-based Anjuman-e Sarfaroshan-e
Islam, believe that Gohar Shahi is dead and they have built a grave
over what they say is his tomb in the town of Kotri, in the Pakistani
province of Sindh.

As appears from its name, the Anjuman-e Sarfaroshan-e Islam presents
itself as somewhat closer to mainline Islam, while the MFI appears as
a completely new cult, having little or no relation with Islam,
although almost all of its followers are of South Asian Muslim,
particularly Pakistani, origin. The MFI claims to have several hundred
thousand followers in Pakistan, Europe, North America and South-East
Asia, although these numbers are probably grossly exaggerated.
Presently, there are said to be a few dozen followers of the cult in
India, and the MFI has a small centre in Mumbai. The MFI appears to be
using the publicity that it received for the demonstration that it
recently organized in Delhi to establish a more salient presence for
itself in India.

The MFI makes such preposterous claims on behalf of Gohar Shahi that
even the Anjumjan-e Sarfaroshan-e Islam insists that these are
blasphemous, arguing that Yunous and his group are engaged in a
'conspiracy' to destroy the movement from within. Gohar Shahi,
announces an issue of the Hatif-e Mehdi, the MFI's Urdu-cum-English
tabloid, is, in fact, God himself! The cover page displays a picture
of Riyaz Ahmad Gohar Shahi along with a slogan announcing, 'There is
no god but Riyaz', and inside an article that seeks to claim Gohar
Shahi as the 'God of all gods' announces, 'When the age of God the
Merciful and Compassionate gets over, the age of the God of all Gods
will begin'. In place of Khuda Hafiz or Allah Hafiz, the standard
South Asian Muslim way of saying farewell, MFI activists use the
phrase Gohar Hafiz. Similarly, Inshallah ('God willing') is replaced
by Insha Gohar, and the place of the Qur'an is taken by the Din-e
Ilahi, a tract said to have been penned by Gohar Shahi. Those who do
not believe in Gohar Shahi or oppose him, the MFI insists, are in
league with the Devil and would be consigned to hell.

"As humanity awakens", Yunous writes in clumsy English an article
hosted on the MFI's official website, "every nation will claim 'Gohar
is ours'. True saviour of humankind is the one who turn the humanity
into Divinity. And that is Gohar Shahi. Gohar Shahi is already turning
humanity into Divinity. No wonder he is the Promised Messiah, Awaited
Mehdi and Predicted Kalki Avatar. Yunous says so. Prophets came for
nations, saints for groups, but Gohar is for all humanity".

Needless to say, these absurd beliefs and monopolistic claims that
would offend not just Muslims, but equally so Christians and Hindus,
too, were left cleverly concealed by the MFI's activists demonstrating
in Delhi, who sought to present themselves as a harmless group of
mystics, committed to universal love, peace and harmony transcending
the narrow boundaries of religion.

'We are not Muslims', insisted Yunous as I spoke to him online. 'We
are Goharians and follow the Goharian philosophy. And this philosophy
is for all people, irrespective of religion'. 'The Lord Gohar Shahi',
he went on, had appeared in the world and had, he claimed, met with
Jesus. Together, they had planned a grand scheme to herald the End of
Times. Mir Lali, Yunous said, had been present at that alleged
meeting. I could ask him more about if I wanted to, he advised.

Suppressing a laugh with difficulty, I asked Lali to tell me more. As
if he expected me to believe his fanciful tale, Lali told me about how
Jesus had allegedly met Gohar Shahi in 1997 in a hotel in New Mexico
in the United States, where they had a detailed discussion about
global politics. After that, so he said, Jesus traveled to Sri Lanka,
where he still is, while Gohar Shahi had gone into occultation or
concealment.

'I was there myself in the hotel and I saw it all', Lali insisted,
visibly disappointed when I bluntly announced that this was obviously
hogwash. I could barely conceal my horror listening to him, especially
because Lali claimed to have been working as an engineer in America
for almost four decades.


'Jesus will become the Imam Mahdi's disciple, so you can see what a
great stature our Lord Gohar Shahi possesses', Lali exclaimed,
undeterred by my obvious complete disbelief.

Yunous then came back online to carry on with the story. As he talked,
I watched him on the web-camera that Lali had attached to his laptop.
Half-bald, corpulent and stern, he hardly seemed the saintly figure
that his followers believed him to be.

I asked Yunous about a statement carried on his outfit's website that
announced that Gohar Shahi had prophesied that America had been
specially blessed by God to lead the world. 'O America', the site
quotes Gohar Shahi as having said, 'God has chosen you. You will be
the leader of humanity […] I want to inform you that God has chosen
you for deliverance of humanity'.

How could a real man of God, I asked Yunous, make such an untenable
claim and unabashedly support America, given that American imperialism
is today such a global scourge?

'America helps people in need with aids', Yunous shot back, in what
was presumably, although not inappropriately, a slip of the tongue. He
brusquely shrugged off my queries about American imperialism. 'America
has liberated Afghanistan and is now liberating Iraq', he thundered.

I butted in to tell Yunous that he had got his politics all wrong, but
he sought to silence me by insisting that I was naive. 'I don't know
what sort of doctorate you have done', he blurted. 'It is clear that
you have little knowledge'.

Although not amused at that accusation, I decided not to contest it.
After all, I was not there to have an argument with Yunous but to know
more about his cult.

The 'Lord Gohar Shahi', Yunous went on, had predicted that America,
Britain, Israel and India would jointly support the army of Jesus
Christ and the Imam Mahdi or Kalki Avatar in a global war that would
herald the Day of Judgment. Saudi Arabia, he added, would be with the
army of the dreaded Dajjal or Anti-Christ, whom he identified as the
Taliban leader, Mullah Umar. Many other Muslims, too, would be, so he
argued, in that camp. And as for Pakistan, his original homeland,
Yunous made the absurd claim that India would soon invade and annex
it. In the global Armageddon that Yunous said was soon to break out,
all those who refused to accept Gohar Shahi as the Imam would rally
behind the Anti-Christ and would, presumably, be consigned to
perdition in hell.

As supposed proof that Gohar Shahi was the Imam Mehdi and the Kalki
Avatar, Yunous claimed that his image had appeared in the sun and the
moon, on Mars, in a Shiva temple in Pakistan and also in the black
stone, the Hijre Aswat, in the Kaaba in Mecca. That weird claim is
also constantly repeated in MFI literature. Indeed, MFI propaganda
material consists of little else than an endless repetition of this
fanciful argument. So far does the MFI go in this regard that it has
even staked ownership of the black stone in the Ka'aba on these
grounds. It tirelessly repeats a bogus tale of the Saudi rulers having
allegedly painted over the image of Gohar Shahi in the Kaaba in order
to conceal it from Muslims. Quite obviously, these arguments appear
carefully crafted to inflame Muslim passions and probably to win cheap
and easy publicity for the group, particularly in anti-Muslim circles.

In short, then, as emerged from what Yunous and Lali told me, the MFI
was hardly the benign interfaith group committed to global peace that
they sought to pass it off as. It was also hardly apolitical, contrary
to what they claimed. After all, their self-styled Imam Mahdi was a
political figure par excellence: he would, they said, lead a global
war and would, in effect, rule the world. In more practical terms, the
MFI has been involved politically in its own way in Pakistan. As its
website reveals, the MFI has organized demonstrations in support of
Musharraf in and outside Pakistan, claiming that he came to power
because of the MFI's 'spiritual power'. However, recently the MFI
appears to have changed its position, as exemplified in the burning of
Musharraf's effigy by its activists in Delhi.

Further evidence of the political agenda of the MFI emerges from the
ongoing conflict between rival camps of followers of Gohar Shahi. The
Pakistan-based Anjuman Sarfoshan-e Islam has accused Yunous of
deliberately distorting the teachings of the founder of the cult.
Yunous, they say, is working as an agent of 'anti-Islamic' and
'anti-Pakistan' forces in order to pursue his own 'worldly interests'.
Yunous' bizarre claims about Gohar Shahi, his unconcealed support for
America, particularly for its so-called 'war on terror', and his own
claim of being Gohar Shahi's deputy, all clearly show that Yunous and
his MFI have a clear political agenda of their own. The MFI's absurd
claims appear to fit perfectly in with the political interests of
American and Israeli establishment. This raises the question of
whether the cult's stated beliefs have been consciously tailored in
order to win the support of certain governments that have a clearly
anti-Muslim agenda.

While the sixty-odd supposed Pakistani MFI activists who burnt their
passports were promptly dispatched to Delhi's Tihar prison, an MFI
activist I met in Delhi spoke about the possibility of another batch
of twenty or so of their followers shortly leaving Pakistan to seek
asylum in India. In this regard, a question that remains unanswered is
how Pakistani MFI activists were able to acquire Indian visas, given
that the visa granting rules for citizens of both countries are so
stringent. When asked about this, Yunous simply replied that it was
easier for Pakistanis to get Indian, as opposed to American, visas.
But that, to many, may not sound convincing enough.

Given its absurd beliefs, which most Muslims, Hindus, Christians and
others would find deeply offensive, the MFI must not be allowed to
establish itself in India, which, as is clear from the dramatic
demonstration that it recently organized and the sympathy that it is
trying to evoke through the Indian media, is precisely what it is
seeking to do. It may be recalled that some years ago the Government
of India had banned another cult with almost identical eccentric views
about the Imam Mehdi and the Kalki Avatar, the Deendar Anjuman, which
has its international headquarters in Karachi, accusing it of being
involved in a series of bomb blasts in the country. The Government
would be well advised to be similarly careful in its approach to this
new bizarre cult as well.