In May 2009, exactly five years before the current chief of Sunni Ittehad Council (SIC) Sahibzada Hamid Raza declared watching Geo network’s TV channel haraam (forbidden), almost 40 Barelvi political parties, apolitical groups and individuals joined to form a non-political alliance with a one-point agenda -- countering religious extremism and safeguarding the interests of Barelvis in the country in the wake of continuous attacks on sufi shrines.

They ended up naming it SIC (without a K!) and late Sahibzada Fazle Karim, father of Sahibzada Hamid Raza, was nominated its chief while a 40-member executive council was also made. The council included almost all major Barelvi organisations and groups sans Minhaj-ul-Quran led by Dr Tahirul Qadri and Dawat-e-Islami led by Ilyas Ataar Qadri. It had the potential to unite the unorganised and under threat majority sect of the country.

The first major activity of the council was a Peace March in Rawalpindi in August 14, 2009, condemning religious extremism and terrorism and expressing support and solidarity with the Pakistan Army battling against terrorists in Swat at the time. It was a well-attended event with over 10,000 participants. The SIC leadership claimed credit for openly condemning Taliban and voicing for peace in the country.

It was a great start for a newly formed umbrella organisation of Barelvi groups but only in January 2012 it was ‘revealed’ that the United States gave money to SIC to organise anti-Taliban rallies in 2009. The peace march in Rawalpindi on August 14 too was said to be part of that ‘American agenda’.

The then chief of the council, Fazle Karim, denied the allegations and responded that the propaganda was being unleashed against them because they were strongly opposed to Western democracies and American policies in the region and in the world.

In March 2012, central leader of SIC Haji Hanif Tayyab, while addressing Estahkam-e-Pakistan convention organised by the council (this time without the US support), said that the US had apologised to the SIC for hurling the baseless allegation of giving USD 36,000. He also waved a paper to the participants as proof of his statement which he said was the letter received from the US authorities. (His speech is available on internet.)

The letter was never made available to the media.

Differences in the council came to the fore within a year of its formation. In 2010, several groups and individuals in SIC started raising objections over Fazle Karim’s intentions of using the platform to emerge as a national leader of the Barelvis.

The allegations were not baseless as Fazle Karim started saying in 2010 that SIC would be used as a political platform. He made his first such public statement during a conference of the Barelvi leaders in October 2010 which raised many eyebrows. Peer Riaz Hussain Shah, a senior member of SIC, criticised other SIC leaders in the same conference, accusing them of taking money from the US. Several SIC members did not participate in the November 2010 Long March as well, despite the fact that the decision had been endorsed by them during the October 2010 conference.

"He (Fazle Karim) wanted to become Maulana Fazlur Rehman of the Barelvis," says one pioneer member of SIC’s executive council. The council according to him has become a faction of Jamiat Ulema-e Pakistan (JUP) that was led by Fazle Karim and now by his son.

Salmaan Taseer’s murder by his official security guard Mumtaz Qadri in January 2011 created more rifts in the council. While majority of the leaders including Fazle Karim openly supported Qadri, some sane voices advised them to let the law take its course on the issue. This advice was not heard and SIC held several rallies in favour of Mumtaz Qadri.

Only 10 months before Salmaan Taseer’s assassination, on February 28 in 2010, a major clash occurred between the Barelvis and Deobandis in Faisalabad, the city of late Fazle Karim, over the Eide Miladun Nabi procession. Both sides blamed each other for initiating the rift which resulted in firing on the Barelvi procession, injuring at least four participants.

The Barelvis responded by setting a police station on fire and ransacking the house of Maulana Zahid Qasmi, son of the late leader of SSP Ziaul Qasmi.

Qasmi claimed that the protestors burnt some 750 copies of the holy Quran and several books of Hadith and Tafseer. The footage of the house of Maulana Zahid Qasmi of that day is also available on the internet with a commentary in which Sahibzada Fazle Karim is blamed for instigating the attack.

After the incident, the Barelvis, led by Fazle Karim, and Deobandis sought registration of cases against each other under 295-C (blasphemy laws) along with other sections of PPC. Interestingly, the issue was resolved out of court as both parties reached an agreement.

It is interesting that in the press conference where he gave a fatwa against Geo, issued with the signatures of 500 muftis, Sahibzada Hamid Raza said in so many words that one could only be forgiven for blasphemy if one instantly apologised after committing it. "Geo sought apology for its action after 24 (long) hours; it committed blasphemy and it cannot be forgiven," he said. One may respectfully ask Hamid Raza the Islamic point of view on settling the issue of blasphemy out of court months after the incident.

Of late, the council has become only a platform to use the blasphemy issue for its political interests. It has been promoting Mumtaz Qadri as a hero to an extent that in January 2012, during a gathering at Data Darbar in Lahore to ‘celebrate’ one year of Mumtaz Qadri’s act of assassination of Governor Salmaan Taseer, one leader of SIC asked the government to auction the gun which Qadri had used to murder Salmaan Taseer. He announced that SIC was ready to pay Rs100 million for that ‘holy gun’.

It is interesting to note that SIC was supposed to be a non-political platform to counter terrorism and safeguard the interests of Barelvis in Pakistan. Now it has become a fatwa-issuing organisation. It issues fatwas almost on every political issue under the sun with the signatures of 500 muftis to toe the line of the establishment. In September 2011, SIC declared that jihad against the US would be obligatory for the entire nation in case of aggression against the country. The fatwa also declared calling US a "superpower" as haraam (illegitimate) and said only Allah Almighty deserved the title.

The fatwa also asked the government to end the country’s role as front-line state in the so-called US war on terror and try to establish a new bloc comprising China, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In November 2011, a SIC conference chaired by Fazle Karim asked for the constitution of "United Nations of Islamic countries" on the pattern of the UN and a military force of Islamic countries in line with Nato forces. The conference also demanded putting Hussain Haqqani’s name on the Exit Control List and an independent probe into the memo scandal.

The council has also issued fatwas against suicide bombing, Taliban and on several other issues. The list is long but according to senior member of SIC majority of these fatwas were issued by some individuals like a press release. "Issuing fatwas is a very complex and tedious process. First, to be honest, we do not have 500 muftis among Barelvis in Pakistan; second, I do not think that SIC would have copies of all those fatwas which it issued as a majority of them were never issued and endorsed by muftis," one of them says. He says that Fazle Karim’s decision to form an election alliance with PML-Q before last general elections was the last nail in the coffin of the council.

"Majority of parties and individuals in SIC were pro-Nawaz Sharif and PML-N also accepted all our demands in the wake of the Long March of 2011 except the deposition of Rana Sanaullah as law minister of Punjab. But Fazle Karim had developed strong differences with PML-N and was not ready to sit with them," he says.

Majority of SIC’s actions and fatwas are confusing. In June 2011, its leadership demanded a crackdown on all seminaries in southern Punjab for their connections with Taliban. A month later, the council vowed to strongly react to any move to alter the syllabus in the country. "The government is conspiring against jihad. We will not allow this," said a statement from SIC central leadership.

The leaders of the council later developed a connection with former PPP senator Faisal Raza Abidi and a non-political alliance with some Shia political parties. In a press release, the SIC chief read the fatwa against Geo TV sitting with Faisal Raza Abidi. Both have been trying to use the issue of blasphemy for political mileage which would create more problems for the followers of Barelvi and Shia Islam. The Barelvi leaders see no future of the council among their circles as not one major Barelvi madrassa, shrine or astana is ready to host even an event of SIC.