PeshawarGunmen killed Maulana Idrees, a Pakistan peace cleric and provincial assembly member.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly unanimously condemned the killing; his attackers remain unidentified.
His Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) colleagues have threatened to halt assembly proceedings unless arrests are made by Thursday.
Sources: Dawn
WHO JUI-F IS
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (Fazl) is Pakistan's largest Deobandi religious-political party, descended from the same scholarly tradition that produced Darul Uloom Deoband in colonial India. Led by Fazl-ur-Rehman since 1980, it has spent decades inside parliament — coalition partner, opposition, kingmaker — while maintaining a madrassa network across KP and Balochistan that no rival party can match.
THE PARADOX OF THE PEACE CLERIC
JUI-F clerics in KP frequently broker tribal jirgas, mediate between the state and militant remnants, and preach against suicide bombing from Deobandi pulpits. This shared theological vocabulary makes them more dangerous to the TTP than any soldier — because they can deny militants the religious cover the group needs to recruit.
THE TTP'S HIT LIST
Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has killed Deobandi scholars who publicly condemn its tactics for over a decade — Hassan Jan in 2007, Sarfraz Naeemi in 2009, Hamid-ul-Haq in 2025. The pattern is consistent: the louder a cleric denounces militant violence on theological grounds, the higher he moves on the list.
WHY KP
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa borders Afghanistan along the Durand Line — the contested 1893 colonial boundary that splits Pashtun lands. After the 2021 Taliban return in Kabul, TTP fighters who had sheltered across the border returned to former tribal districts now merged into KP, and attacks on security forces, police, and political figures climbed back to mid-2010s levels.
THE ASSEMBLY-FLOOR LEVER
Threatening to halt proceedings is JUI-F's standard pressure tactic in provincial politics. It works because KP's coalition arithmetic is tight and the party's bench-strength is large enough that a walkout paralyzes business — a structural lever religious parties rarely have at the federal level.