Sufi Muhammad

Sufi Muhammad bin Alhazrat Hassan, born in Maidan, Lower Dir District, is the founder of Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM), a Pakistani militant organisation (declared a terrorist outfit and banned in 2002) vying for implementation of Sharia in Pakistan. It operates mainly in the Dir region, Swat, and Malakand districts of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. Sufi Muhammad was jailed for sending thousands of volunteers to Afghanistan to fight the U.S. intervention in 2001. However, he was freed in 2008 after he renounced violence. He is the father-in-law of Maulana Fazlullah, who assumed the leadership of TNSM during Sufi's imprisonment. He is described by BBC as a "follower" of Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi Islamic school of thought, and by the Jamestown Foundation as one of the "active leaders" of Jamaat-e-Islami in the 1980s.

Sufi Muhammad, born in Maidan, Lower Dir District, received religious education at Panj Pir, Swabi.

During the 1980s Sufi Muhammad actively participated in Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist political party of Pakistan. In 1992 he split from the group to form TNSM. From its "stronghold" of Malakand Division Districts in northwestern Pakistan, Sufi Muhammad and his group engaged in violent agitation for the enforcement of Sharia law.

In October 2001, following the 9/11 attacks, Sufi Mohammad crossed into Afghanistan with thousands of his followers to help the Taliban fight the US-led forces. After the Taliban was ousted from power in 2001, he returned to Pakistan, he was arrested.

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