Barelvi Muslims call for ban on PFI, support govt action against radical outfit
The president of All India Muslim Jamaat issued two-minute-long video statement demanding a ban on PFI, an extremist organisation under scanner for terror-related activities across the country.
The Barelvi Ulema has called for a ban on the Popular Front of India (PFI) for its alleged terror-related activities which prompted nationwide raids by NIA, ED and state police at premises linked to its leaders. Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Barelvi, the president of All India Muslim Jamaat, issued a recorded statement in which he stressed that the raids have made it clear that the Islamist fundamentalist organization has been “involved in communal riots in various states across the country.” (Also Read | Meticulous NIA raid execution leaves Islamist PFI in disarray)
NIA accused PFI of having links with several left-wing extremist organisations that run fake campaigns on police atrocities, encounters, imprisonment in terror cases, and UAPA. (PTI)
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“That's why, I urge all Sunni, Sufi, and Barelvi Muslims to not keep any relation with this organisation,” he said.
The Barelvi sect from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly demanded the central government to impose an immediate ban on such organizations to protect the unity and integrity of the country. Maulana Barelvi also supported the action taken by the government to tighten the noose around terror activities across India.
“It is important to ban such organisations,” he said, adding that the actions taken by the government of India have his “full support.”
The statement came after NIA arrested scores of PFI leaders following simultaneous raids on the PFI-SDPI network in 15 states. A total of 106 people, including PFI chairman OMS Salam, were held in a massive exercise with coordination between NIA, 86 platoons of para-military forces, intelligence agencies and the state police.
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The raids followed a meeting chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah with the concerned enforcement and security chiefs to review the evidence collected and mull over the future course of action. The government is likely to take a strong decision on the status of the outfit as the clamour for a blanket ban grows.
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The raids followed a meeting chaired by Union home minister Amit Shah with the concerned enforcement and security chiefs to review the evidence collected and mull over the future course of action. The government is likely to take a strong decision on the status of the outfit as the clamour for a blanket ban grows.
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The PFI may call itself a socio-religious organization but the Islamist group’s larger aim is no different from the Islamic State—to establish an Islamic Caliphate in India. With a cadre of banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) at its core, the PFI has meticulously spread all over India from Kerala with funds from West Asian countries where the Muslim Brotherhood is a dominant force like Qatar, Kuwait, and Turkey.
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.
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Home/India News/Barelvi Muslims call for ban on PFI, support govt action against radical outfit
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