KARACHI/ISLAMABAD, 12 December 2003 — The head of Pakistan’s powerful Islamist alliance Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani died yesterday, aged 78, of a severe heart attack. The president of the six-party Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, or United Action Forum, (alliance) passed away at home during a severe cardiac seizure. His assistants rushed his body to Islamabad’s Polyclinic Hospital but doctors were unable to revive him.
“Maulana Noorani was brought to the hospital a lifeless state at 12:35 (0735 GMT) and we struggled for 45 minutes to revive him,” doctor Inamul Haq told reporters in Islamabad.
Noorani, who headed the Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan, won a seat in the upper house in elections last year, when the MMA shocked observers with their massive vote surge. The alliance won power in two provincial parliaments and dominates the opposition in the federal legislature.
The MMA recently announced it would hold a nationwide protest movement unless President Pervez Musharraf reduces his powers as the country’s leader and its military commander. Musharraf also can dismiss Parliament and the prime minister if he chooses.
Noorani had been suffering from a heart ailment and complained of chest pain during a meeting of his coalition in Islamabad on Tuesday, said Liaqat Baluch, an official with the MMA. Musharraf and Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali both issued statements expressing shock and grief over Noorani’s sudden death, and offered their sympathy to his family.
“Noorani always worked with honesty and sincerity, and devoted his life to nation building. In his death, the country has lost a renowned scholar and a sagacious parliamentarian,” said Jamali.
Musharraf praised the maulana for devoting his life to religious learning and teaching. Noorani was survived by his wife and his two sons and two daughters, said his spokesman, Hasnat Qadri.
The powerful opposition in the Parliament, has been involved in a seesaw battle with the government on the Legal Framework Order, introduced in 2002 under which the strength of the assemblies was raised at national and provincial levels.
The maulana suffered a massive stroke shortly before addressing a press conference in the parliament’s cafeteria.
He had attended the Senate session of which he was a member, and had hardly reached his chamber when felt gripping pain and called for help. He was rushed to the Islamabad Polyclinic, but was pronounced dead by the doctors before any medical aid could be provided.
The government has arranged a C-130 aircraft for his body to be taken to Karachi where he lived since coming to Pakistan soon after partition. He is most likely to be buried today.
The family said it was waiting for his son Anas to return home from abroad. One of his daughters also was in Dubai.
Noorani’s sudden death is likely to deal a tough blow to the Islamist parties as they battle with President Pervez Musharraf’s government over his sweeping self-appointed powers and the army’s political power.
A migrant from Meerut in India’s northern Uttar Pradesh state, breathed his last at the peak of his career, for, as JUP president, he had managed to bring the diametrically opposed figures like Qazi Hussain Ahmad of the Jamaat-e-Islami, and Maulana Fazlur Rehman of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam on one platform, and made them realize the importance of fighting the elections as a single entity.
His efforts reached its zenith when the MMA, which has three other smaller groups on its roll, recorded a stunning success in last year’s parliamentary elections. The maulana, a graduate from the well-known National Arabic College of India, had always been in the opposition camp, pursuing a policy of principled politics.
He was one of the few politicians to refuse endorsing the 1973 constitution, and had preferred to oppose the then Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in the 1977 elections. Apart from being an eminent religious scholar and a preacher, he was a linguist, and had tremendous control on English, Urdu and French, besides Arabic and ten other languages.
Whether the MMA will be able to sustain the pressure it had exerted since the induction of the National Assembly and the Senate about a year ago remains to be seen. Noorani was a known hard-liner, while a general impression about Qazi Hussain Ahmad, and Fazlur Rehman, two other key figures in the opposition, was that they were soft on Musharraf.
— Additional input from agencies
