The prominent Pakistani cleric Maulana Samiul Haq, known as the \u201cfather of the Taliban\u201d, has been killed in a knife attack at his home in Rawalpindi.<\/p>\n
Haq\u2019s son, Hamidul Haq, said his father was alone in his bedroom when he was attacked by an assailant, who escaped undetected.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy father has been martyred. He was alone at his home. His guard had gone out minutes before the attack and upon his return, he saw my father in critical condition,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
Police said Haq, 81, was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died.<\/p>\n
Yousaf Shah, Haq\u2019s spokesman, said neither the attacker nor their motive was yet known.<\/p>\n
Soon after his death, scores of Haq\u2019s supporters rioted, damaging shops and vehicles in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Haq\u2019s family appealed to his followers to remain peaceful.<\/p>\n
Haq, a well-known religious scholar with a large following among radical Islamists, was the head of his faction of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) party.<\/p>\n
His Haqqani seminary taught many of Afghanistan\u2019s\u00a0Taliban<\/a>\u00a0and thousands of other students a strict interpretation of Islam.<\/p>\n Sirajuddin Haqqani, the leader of the Haqqani network, a\u00a0US-designated terrorist\u00a0<\/a>organisation<\/a>, was one of dozens of Taliban leaders who graduated from Haq\u2019s seminary, located in the conservative Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, dozens of Afghan clerics appealed to Haq to use his influence with Afghanistan\u2019s Taliban to plot a path to peace that would\u00a0end the 17-year<\/a>\u00a0war<\/a>\u00a0there.<\/p>\n Pakistan\u2019s president, Arif Alvi, and the prime minister, Imran Khan, condemned Haq\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe lost a great scholar and religious leader today,\u201d said Khan in a statement from China, where he is on an official visit.<\/p>\n Khan was widely criticised for embracing Haq ahead of the elections in July that brought the\u00a0cricketer-turned-politician\u00a0<\/a>to power<\/a>.<\/p>\n The provincial government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa donated millions of dollars to Haq\u2019s hardline seminary. Khan defended the move, saying he wanted to see Pakistan\u2019s thousands of religious schools broaden their curriculum.<\/p>\n Haq\u2019s funeral is expected to be held on Saturday in Akora Khattak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The prominent Pakistani cleric Maulana Samiul Haq, known as the \u201cfather of the Taliban\u201d, has been killed in a knife attack at his home in Rawalpindi. Haq\u2019s son, Hamidul Haq, said his father was alone in his bedroom when he was attacked by an assailant, who escaped undetected. \u201cMy father has been martyred. He was alone at his home. His… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-2347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-post","tag-the-guardian"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2347"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2348,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2347\/revisions\/2348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/southandcentralasiablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}