Investigating Mehdi Foundation's beliefs and claims

By Yoginder Sikand

A fortnight ago, the walls of my locality in New Delhi were plastered over with posters depicting a bearded man bearing a ponderous turban, below which were etched slogans fiercely denouncing Pakistan. 'Pakistan Promotes Islamic Terrorism', 'Islamic Terrorists Rule Pakistan', 'Declare Pakistan a Terrorist State' and so on the posters proclaimed. They were issued by The Mehdi Foundation International (MFI), a little-known outfit with a rather bombastic name.

Curious to learn more, I dialed the cell number mentioned at the bottom of the posters. A man (who, I later learnt, was the General Secretary of the MFI) answered in broken English in a jarring pseudo-American twang, and informed me about the demonstration against Pakistan that a group of Pakistani citizens associated with the MFI was organizing the next day outside the Jantar Mantar in the heart of New Delhi.

I got to the venue a short while before the demonstration got over. A group of some sixty-odd young men and women, who claimed to be Pakistani citizens, were raising full-throated slogans against Pakistan, accusing it of fomenting 'Islamic terrorism'. Intriguingly, with equal gusto they chanted slogans hailing India. 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai', 'Hindustan Zindabad', they screamed. The placards they carried announced various other messages: that true Islam did not sanction violence against innocent people, that some Hindu deities and saints were also truly men of God, and, most curiously, that a certain Riaz Ahmed Gohar Shahi was the saviour of the entire world.

Draped on the fence behind where the demonstrators stood were banners depicting the same face that I had seen on the posters pasted on the walls in my locality. That figure was of Riaz Ahmad Gohar Shahi, who, the banners announced, was considered by MFI followers as the Imam Mehdi of the Muslims, the Kalki Avatar of the Hindus, the Promised Messiah of the Jews and the Christians and the Buddha himself.

The slogan-shouting crowd then gathered in a circle and set alight an effigy of the Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, a Pakistani cleric and politician, who happened to be in Delhi at that time. And, surrounded by a bevy of media persons whom they had specially invited, they set ablaze their Pakistani passports in a fit of fury.

'We refuse to return to Pakistan', said a demonstrator, a young woman from Karachi. Burning her passport was illegal, I informed her. 'Our Imam', she shot back, 'has told us that India will help us, so we are not worried. Nothing will happen to us'. 'False cases of blasphemy have been lodged against our people and we are being harassed for our religious beliefs', claimed another angry demonstrator, a man from Lahore.

Predictably, the Indian papers and television channels that covered the dramatic event presented it, as the demonstrators themselves had wished, as a case of a religious minority in Pakistan being allegedly persecuted by the state and Islamic groups. The demonstrators' virulent demand that Pakistan be declared as a 'terrorist state' was music to the ears of the reporters who covered the event, and whose selective reporting of it further reinforced the stereotypical image of Pakistan being a hot-bed of religious bigots.

But that, as I was to discover, did not really reflect the reality of the MFI. None of the newspapers and television channels that covered the event had examined the MFI's beliefs and doctrines. Had they cared to do so, they would probably not have enthusiastically endorsed the claims that the demonstrators had so passionately made.

Over the next two days I scanned the Internet for whatever I could access on the MFI. I also met with Mir Lali, the MFI's General Secretary, who is based in North America and who was the key organizer of the Delhi demonstration. In his missionary enthusiasm, Lali arranged for me to speak through the Internet with the head of the MFI, the London-based Yunous Al-Gohar, who is styled as the outfit's 'Chief Executive Officer'.

What emerged from my reading and the conversations that I had with these people was that the MFI hardly appeared to be the benign inter-faith group committed to universal peace and harmony that its activists claimed it to be. Rather, it struck me as a completely bizarre cult that made such outrageous claims for its cult-figure, Riyaz Ahmad Gohar Shahi, that no sensible Christian, Hindu and Buddhist, in addition, of course, to Muslim, would ever make. In other words, the demonstrating MFI activists' protestations that the group was being 'falsely' and 'unfairly' accused of anti-Islamic beliefs by the Pakistani state and Muslim groups in Pakistan were not quite true.

Briefly put, the MFI cult is centred on the figure of Gohar Shahi, who was born in a village in 1941 in the Gujaranwala district in Pakistan's Punjab province. In 1980, he began publicly preaching, presenting himself as a sort of Sufi, although several of his followers began considering him the Imam Mahdi, the Promised Saviour who, according to Muslim tradition, would arrive in the world just prior to the Last Days. In the late 1990s, a number of criminal cases were instituted against Gohar Shahi, forcing him to flee to Britain. There, he set up his centre, making a fairly significant number of followers, particularly among expatriate Pakistanis. According to the MFI, Gohar Shahi went into occultation in November 2001. MFI activists believe that he is omnipresent, although visible only to his followers, and that he will again reveal himself in his physical form shortly before a grand apocalyptic battle that he will wage, along with Jesus, against the Dajjal or Anti-Christ that will herald the Day of Judgment.

In the meanwhile, MFI followers believe, Gohar Shahi is in touch with Yunous al-Gohar, said by some Pakistani newspapers to be a London-based billionaire and hypnotist, who claims to be his deputy. On the other hand, a rival group of Gohar Shahi's followers, led by his own son, members of the Pakistan-based Anjuman-e Sarfaroshan-e Islam, believe that Gohar Shahi is dead and they have built a grave over what they say is his tomb in the town of Kotri, in the Pakistani province of Sindh.

As appears from its name, the Anjuman-e Sarfaroshan-e Islam presents itself as somewhat closer to mainline Islam, while the MFI appears as a completely new cult, having little or no relation with Islam, although almost all of its followers are of South Asian Muslim, particularly Pakistani, origin. The MFI claims to have several hundred thousand followers in Pakistan, Europe, North America and South-East Asia, although these numbers are probably grossly exaggerated. Presently, there are said to be a few dozen followers of the cult in India, and the MFI has a small centre in Mumbai. The MFI appears to be using the publicity that it received for the demonstration that it recently organized in Delhi to establish a more salient presence for itself in India.

The MFI makes such preposterous claims on behalf of Gohar Shahi that even the Anjumjan-e Sarfaroshan-e Islam insists that these are blasphemous, arguing that Yunous and his group are engaged in a 'conspiracy' to destroy the movement from within. Gohar Shahi, announces an issue of the Hatif-e Mehdi, the MFI's Urdu-English tabloid, is, in fact, God himself! The cover page displays a picture of Riyaz Ahmad Gohar Shahi along with a slogan announcing, 'There is no god but Riyaz', and inside an article that seeks to claim Gohar Shahi as the 'God of all gods' announces, 'When the age of God the Merciful and Compassionate gets over, the age of the God of all Gods will begin'. In place of Khuda Hafiz or Allah Hafiz, the standard South Asian Muslim way of saying farewell, MFI activists use the phrase Gohar Hafiz. Similarly, Inshallah ('God willing') is replaced by Insha Gohar, and the place of the Qur'an is taken by the Din-e Ilahi, a tract said to have been penned by Gohar Shahi. Those who do not believe in Gohar Shahi or oppose him, the MFI insists, are in league with the Devil and would be consigned to hell.

"As humanity awakens", Yunous writes in clumsy English an article hosted on the MFI's official website, "every nation will claim 'Gohar is ours'. True saviour of humankind is the one who turn the humanity into Divinity. And that is Gohar Shahi. Gohar Shahi is already turning humanity into Divinity. No wonder he is the Promised Messiah, Awaited Mehdi and Predicted Kalki Avatar. Yunous says so. Prophets came for nations, saints for groups, but Gohar is for all humanity".

Needless to say, these absurd beliefs and monopolistic claims that would offend not just Muslims, but equally so Christians and Hindus, too, were left cleverly concealed by the MFI's activists demonstrating in Delhi, who sought to present themselves as a harmless group of mystics, committed to universal love, peace and harmony transcending the narrow boundaries of religion.

'We are not Muslims', insisted Yunous as I spoke to him online. 'We are Goharians and follow the Goharian philosophy. And this philosophy is for all people, irrespective of religion'. 'The Lord Gohar Shahi', he went on, had appeared in the world and had, he claimed, met with Jesus. Together, they had planned a grand scheme to herald the End of Times. Mir Lali, Yunous said, had been present at that alleged meeting. I could ask him more about if I wanted to, he advised.

Suppressing a laugh with difficulty, I asked Lali to tell me more. As if he expected me to believe his fanciful tale, Lali told me about how Jesus had allegedly met Gohar Shahi in 1997 in a hotel in New Mexico in the United States, where they had a detailed discussion about global politics. After that, so he said, Jesus traveled to Sri Lanka, where he still is, while Gohar Shahi had gone into occultation or concealment.

'I was there myself in the hotel and I saw it all', Lali insisted, visibly disappointed when I bluntly announced that this was obviously hogwash. I could barely conceal my horror listening to him, especially because Lali claimed to have been working as an engineer in America for almost four decades.

'Jesus will become the Imam Mahdi's disciple, so you can see what a great stature our Lord Gohar Shahi possesses', Lali exclaimed, undeterred by my obvious complete disbelief.

Yunous then came back online to carry on with the story. As he talked, I watched him on the web-camera that Lali had attached to his laptop. Half-bald, corpulent and stern, he hardly seemed the saintly figure that his followers believed him to be.

I asked Yunous about a statement carried on his outfit's website that announced that Gohar Shahi had prophesied that America had been specially blessed by God to lead the world. 'O America', the site quotes Gohar Shahi as having said, 'God has chosen you. You will be the leader of humanity […] I want to inform you that God has chosen you for deliverance of humanity'.

How could a real man of God, I asked Yunous, make such an untenable claim and unabashedly support America, given that American imperialism is today such a global scourge?

'America helps people in need with aids', Yunous shot back, in what was presumably, although not inappropriately, a slip of the tongue. He brusquely shrugged off my queries about American imperialism. 'America has liberated Afghanistan and is now liberating Iraq', he thundered.

I butted in to tell Yunous that he had got his politics all wrong, but he sought to silence me by insisting that I was naive. 'I don't know what sort of doctorate you have done', he blurted. 'It is clear that you have little knowledge'.

Although not amused at that accusation, I decided not to contest it. After all, I was not there to have an argument with Yunous but to know more about his cult.

The 'Lord Gohar Shahi', Yunous went on, had predicted that America, Britain, Israel and India would jointly support the army of Jesus Christ and the Imam Mahdi or Kalki Avatar in a global war that would herald the Day of Judgment. Saudi Arabia, he added, would be with the army of the dreaded Dajjal or Anti-Christ, whom he identified as the Taliban leader, Mullah Umar. Many other Muslims, too, would be, so he argued, in that camp. And as for Pakistan, his original homeland, Yunous made the absurd claim that India would soon invade and annex it. In the global Armageddon that Yunous said was soon to break out, all those who refused to accept Gohar Shahi as the Imam would rally behind the Anti-Christ and would, presumably, be consigned to perdition in hell.

As supposed proof that Gohar Shahi was the Imam Mehdi and the Kalki Avatar, Yunous claimed that his image had appeared in the sun and the moon, on Mars, in a Shiva temple in Pakistan and also in the black stone, the Hijre Aswat, in the Kaaba in Mecca. That weird claim is also constantly repeated in MFI literature. Indeed, MFI propaganda material consists of little else than an endless repetition of this fanciful argument. So far does the MFI go in this regard that it has even staked ownership of the black stone in the Ka'aba on these grounds. It tirelessly repeats a bogus tale of the Saudi rulers having allegedly painted over the image of Gohar Shahi in the Kaaba in order to conceal it from Muslims. Quite obviously, these arguments appear carefully crafted to inflame Muslim passions and probably to win cheap and easy publicity for the group, particularly in anti-Muslim circles.

In short, then, as emerged from what Yunous and Lali told me, the MFI was hardly the benign interfaith group committed to global peace that they sought to pass it off as. It was also hardly apolitical, contrary to what they claimed. After all, their self-styled Imam Mahdi was a political figure par excellence: he would, they said, lead a global war and would, in effect, rule the world. In more practical terms, the MFI has been involved politically in its own way in Pakistan. As its website reveals, the MFI has organized demonstrations in support of Musharraf in and outside Pakistan, claiming that he came to power because of the MFI's 'spiritual power'. However, recently the MFI appears to have changed its position, as exemplified in the burning of Musharraf's effigy by its activists in Delhi.

Further evidence of the political agenda of the MFI emerges from the ongoing conflict between rival camps of followers of Gohar Shahi. The Pakistan-based Anjuman Sarfoshan-e Islam has accused Yunous of deliberately distorting the teachings of the founder of the cult. Yunous, they say, is working as an agent of 'anti-Islamic' and 'anti-Pakistan' forces in order to pursue his own 'worldly interests'.

Yunous' bizarre claims about Gohar Shahi, his unconcealed support for America, particularly for its so-called 'war on terror', and his own claim of being Gohar Shahi's deputy, all clearly show that Yunous and his MFI have a clear political agenda of their own. The MFI's absurd claims appear to fit perfectly in with the political interests of American and Israeli establishment. This raises the question of whether the cult's stated beliefs have been consciously tailored in order to win the support of certain governments that have a clearly anti-Muslim agenda.

While the sixty-odd supposed Pakistani MFI activists who burnt their passports were promptly dispatched to Delhi's Tihar prison, an MFI activist I met in Delhi spoke about the possibility of another batch of twenty or so of their followers shortly leaving Pakistan to seek asylum in India. In this regard, a question that remains unanswered is how Pakistani MFI activists were able to acquire Indian visas, given that the visa granting rules for citizens of both countries are so stringent. When asked about this, Yunous simply replied that it was easier for Pakistanis to get Indian, as opposed to American, visas. But that, to many, may not sound convincing enough.

Given its absurd beliefs, which most Muslims, Hindus, Christians and others would find deeply offensive, the MFI must not be allowed to establish itself in India, which, as is clear from the dramatic demonstration that it recently organized and the sympathy that it is trying to evoke through the Indian media, is precisely what it is seeking to do. It may be recalled that some years ago the Government of India had banned another cult with almost identical eccentric views about the Imam Mehdi and the Kalki Avatar, the Deendar Anjuman, which has its international headquarters in Karachi, accusing it of being involved in a series of bomb blasts in the country. The Government would be well advised to be similarly careful in its approach to this new bizarre cult as well.