Zabihullah Mujahid, the central spokesman of the Afghan government, said on Friday that Maulvi Mohammad Omar Jan, the country’s leading religious scholar and the head of the Kandahar Jihadi Madrassa, was killed.
Zabihullah Mujahid said in his condolence statement that “the enemies of Islam have killed the great religious scholar of Afghanistan, the head of the Kandahari Jihadi Madrasa and a member of the Islamic Emirate of Dar al-Iftada, which is a great crime.”
According to him, the Afghanistan government “strongly condemns this crime of the enemies of Islam.”
However, the statement does not contain any further details regarding the incident, where, why and how Maulvi Umar was killed.
Who was Maulvi Muhammad Umar Jan?
Maulvi Muhammad Omar was considered one of Afghanistan’s leading scholars and was a member of the Afghan Taliban’s Dar al-Iftada (where Fatwas are issued on Sharia issues).
He also used to represent Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Hibatullah Akhunzada in various functions.
In October 2022, Maulvi Muhammad Umar Jan represented the delegation sent by Mullah Hibatullah Akhunzada at an introductory ceremony on the appointment of Sheikh Noorullah Munir, the new head of the Afghan Taliban’s Dar al-Iftada.
Maulvi Umar Jan was born in a religious family in the village of Ghabargi in Zabul Province and his father Maulana Inayatullah was also a religious scholar in Afghanistan.
In an interview given to Emirate Islami, the official website of the Afghan government, in 2021, he said that after the Afghan Jihad, he migrated to Pakistan with his father in 1983 and completed his education in religious schools there in 1991.
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In the same interview, he said that his father was among the founding leaders of the Islamic Movement against the Soviet Union and the movement also started from his village and then the movement spread to Kandahar, Helmand and Ghazni.
Maulvi Muhammad Umar Jan’s father Maulvi Inayatullah also held important positions during the first period of the Afghan Taliban regime.
According to some Afghan Taliban-backed social media accounts, Maulvi Muhammad Umar Jan was killed in Quetta, Pakistan, but this has not been officially confirmed.
Quetta Police Control Room told Independent Urdu that they do not have any information regarding this incident yet.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the central spokesman of the Afghan Taliban, also did not say in his ongoing statement where the killing took place.
