Modi government consulted Muslim outfits before action on PFI

The Muslim outfits were were equivocal in their opinion that PFI was following an Wahhabi-Salafi agenda of pan-Islamist organisations with their extremist campaign to exploit the communal fault-lines in India.

Published on: Sep 28, 2022, 15:06:42 IST

By Shishir Gupta

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah took the decision to ban the PFI and its affiliates after national security planners had prominent Muslim organization on board against proposed action on Sunni Wahhabi outfit.

The Centre's decision to ban the Popular Front of India and its associates has been welcomed by the Sufi and Barelvi clerics

It is understood that National Security Advisor Ajit Doval met the prominent Muslim organization leaders on September 17 to understand their views before NIA, ED and State Police raids were conducted on September 22.

The NSA and Intelligence Bureau officers took the opinion of country’s biggest Muslim organisations including those representing Deobandi, Barelvi and Sufi sects of Islam. All these organizations were equivocal in their opinion that PFI was following an Wahhabi-Salafi agenda of pan-Islamist organisations with their extremist campaign to exploit the communal fault-lines in India.

The Centre's decision to ban the Popular Front of India and its associates has been welcomed by the Sufi and Barelvi clerics. The All India Sufi Sajjadanashin Council chairman said that everyone should show patience if an action has been taken to curb extremism.

“The All India Sufi Sajjadanashin Council believes that if this action has been taken for compliance with the law and the prevention of terrorism, then everyone should work patiently on it, this step of the government and investigative agencies should be welcomed,” the statement read.

Zainul Abedin Ali Khan, the spiritual head of the Ajmer Dargah welcomed the move and said the action taken as per law to prevent terrorism should be welcomed by all.

"If the country is safe then we are safe, the country is bigger than any institution or idea and if someone talks about breaking this country, breaking the unity and sovereignty here, talks about spoiling the peace of the country, then he has no right to live here," the Dewan said.

Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Barelvi, the president of All India Muslim Jamaat, also issued a video statement, calling the decision the right step to curb extremism.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
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.Read More

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