Minhaj-ul-Quran


Minhaj-ul-Quran International is an international non-governmental organization founded by Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri in 1980 in Lahore, Pakistan.

International network

Minhaj-ul-Quran Pakistan

Minhaj-ul-Quran organised the World Islamic Banking and Finance Conference to find solutions to banking, finance and sociopolitical issues faced by Muslims.

Minhaj-ul-Quran UK

Minhaj-ul-Quran UK organised a three-day anti-terrorism camp at Warwick University to tackle extremist ideology with expected attendance of over 1,000 young Muslims. Al Hidayah is a part of Minhaj-ul-Quran
Minhaj-ul-Quran runs a radio station from its mosque in Forest Gate London, it operates Minhaj Welfare Foundation from the mosque and organised a candle lit vigil for people who died in all sorts of terrible ways.

Minhaj-ul-Quran in Denmark

The Danish branch of the Minhaj-ul-Quran International organization was founded in 1987. It consists of four departments, in which three are located in the Copenhagen area and one in Odense.
In 2003 about 130 Danish Pakistanis canceled their memberships in Minhaj-ul-Quran in a mass protest against what they described as a closed and undemocratic organization run as a one-man-show by Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri.
In 2006 newspaper Jyllands-Posten revealed how the Danish imam and member of Minhaj-ul-Quran Naveed Baig urged the murder of apostates from Islam in a video recording from a gathering held in Minhaj-ul-Quran’s mosque in Valby in 1994. Baig was translating to Danish a speech held in Urdu by a guest imam from Pakistan.

Minhaj-ul-Quran in Norway

Having established in Copenhagen during the late 1980s, Ul-Qadri's cassettes and videotapes started spreading throughout much of the Pakistani diaspora community in Norway. In 1990 the Norwegian branch of the Minhaj-ul-Quran International organization was founded in Oslo in 1990. It was started out by 20-30 people renting two small rooms in Tøyengata at Tøyen in central Oslo. Its number of memberships quickly increased. In February 1999 a department of Minhaj-ul-Quran was founded in Stavanger. In 2006 the Oslo department had close to 4 000 members, and was the third largest mosque in Oslo after Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat and World Islamic Mission. Drammen Moské, founded in 1987, was affiliated with Minhaj-ul-Quran for some time, but chose to cut their ties.
MQI has various community related projects which are supported by the Norwegian Government. One of the main projects is the Minhaj conflict resolution or Minhaj Konfliktråd.
Minhaj-ul-Quran differs from other mosques in Oslo by openly endorsing the Pakistani political party Pakistan Awami Tehreek, while other mosques either do not participate in similar political activities or claim not be involved in politics. Their engagement in this specific political party is due to both organizations sharing the same founder in Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri.
When Tahir-ul-Qadri backed Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa of 1989 demanding the execution of Salman Rushdie for writing a book perceived as blasphemous towards Islam, he received support from the leader of the Norwegian branch of Minhaj-ul-Quran, who also criticized the Norwegian authorities for even communicating with Rushdie.
A conflict erupted in the Kristiansand department after an imam sent to Norway in 1995 from the organizations headquarters in Lahore discovered that the leadership of the congregation showed unwilling to subordinate themselves to the governing body in Pakistan. The imam had a new, loyal board elected, and statuted new regulations that reaffirms that the congregation at any given time was to be subordinate to the headquarters in Lahore and Tahir-ul-Qadri. This act in turn lead to a dispute over whether power was to lie with Tahir ul-Qadri in Pakistan or the local faction which wanted a locally rooted mosque. After lawsuits and police reports filed back and forth, the conflict reached its climax in court in March 1998 when the fraction supporting Ul-Qadri came out on the losing end. The imam sent from Pakistan had his residence permit revoked and was expelled back home to Lahore. The newly elected leader Akmal Ali expressed that his congregation in Kristiansand does not want to be associated with Ul-Qadri whatsoever. Ali claimed Ul-Qadri insisted that everything was to belong to Pakistan, while the congregation in Kristiansand wished to remain independent.
In 2000 the Oslo department deposed its imam Syed Ikram Jillani on the grounds that the board asserted his teachings were contrary to that of Tahir ul-Qadris. Leader of Minhaj Ungdom, Faiz Alam, justified the dismissal by pointing out that the congregation is following the philosophy of its religious head Tahir ul-Qadri in Pakistan, using his books and videos, and cannot accept that an imam runs a different scheme. Syed Ikram Jillani was later hired as an imam at World Islamic Mission.
Making use of undercover journalism newspaper Dagens Næringsliv in October 2004 revealed how Minhaj-ul-Quran in Oslo will assist Pakistani Norwegian parents looking to send their children off to Quranic schools in Pakistan in order to rid them of what they perceive to be excessive influence from the modern Western environment they live in. The president of Minhaj-ul-Quran Oslo, who otherwise speaks the importance of integration and active participation in Norwegian society, showed willing to provide a place among a selection of Quranic schools he recommended. Confronted a few days later, he denied the statements he had made, until he was informed the conversation had been recorded.

Minhaj-ul-Quran India

Achievements

Minhaj-ul-Quran holds one of the largest annual Itikaf gatherings during the month of Ramadan with approximately 37,000 people sitting congregational Itikaf in 2007. It holds the largest Laylat ul Qadr night event on the 27th Ramadan with millions of attendees.
On 3 December 2005 Minhaj-ul-Quran established a full-time institution called Gosha-e-Durood where any individual can apply to sit for reciting salutations on Muhammad. A building dedicated to this purpose with Mawlana Rumi style minarets is under construction.
Minhaj-ul-Quran International is the first organisation of its kind that has initiated interfaith dialogues with religious minorities in Pakistan. Its founder is the Chairman of the 'Muslim Christian Dialogue Forum' to highlight and promote their citizen rights.
The United Nations Economic and Social Council has formally recognised and granted a 'Special Consultative Status' to Minhaj-ul-Quran International for its work.
In September 2011, Minhaj-ul-Quran organised a major "Peace for Humanity" conference at Wembley Arena in London at which, under the auspices of Tahir-ul-Qadri, its 12,000 attendees announced a global declaration denouncing racism, interfaith intolerance, extremism and terrorism. Minhaj-ul-Quran strategist Joel Hayward wrote the declaration text for Qadri and was its second formal signatory after Qadri himself. Notably, senior Al-Azhar University leaders and dignitaries then signed it before Minhaj-ul-Quran opened it up via the internet for public signing. They aim to get one million signatures within a year. The London Declaration for Global Peace and Resistance against Extremism is intended as an interfaith document which unequivocally condemns all extremism and terrorism, ”because at the heart of all religions is a belief in the sanctity of the lives of the innocent.” The Declaration adds: “The indiscriminate nature of terrorism, which has in recent years killed far more civilians and other non-combatants than it has combatants, is un-Islamic, un-Judaic, un-Christian and it is indeed incompatible with the true teachings of all faiths.” The London Declaration also “unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and all other forms of racism and xenophobia.” Some extremists have already tried to prevent the success of the Declaration via cyber-attacks on the website hosting it.
Tahir-ul Qadri announced the largest March in modern times in Pakistan; a march to take place on 14th Jan 2013 at 'Tahrir Square' Islamabad. The agenda of long march is to voice elimination of feudalism, introduction of real democracy, rule of law and implementation of constitution.

Forums and sub-organisations