Sibghatullah Mojaddedi

Sibghatullah Mojaddedi (died 11 February 2019) was an Afghan politician and mujahideen leader from Kabul's Mojaddedi family of religious scholars. He studied Islamic law at al-Azhar, founded the Afghan National Liberation Front in 1979 and was the first to call for nationwide jihad against the communist regime. After the fall of Mohammad Najibullah's government he served as acting president of Afghanistan from April to June 1992, later chaired the 2003 loya jirga and the upper house of parliament. His birth date is disputed: Wikidata gives 21 April 1925, the English article 27 September 1926. ^{1 2}

He was born in Kabul. His family, the Mojaddedis, are a well-known Pashtun family of religious scholars from Kabul who trace their ancestry to Ahmad Sirhindi, the sixteenth-century Islamic scholar and Naqshbandi Sufi. He studied Islamic law and jurisprudence at al-Azhar University in Cairo, returned to Afghanistan in 1952 and taught in high schools and at Kabul University, where he became known as an advocate of Afghan political independence. In 1959 he was accused of conspiring against the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and imprisoned without trial until 1964; after his release he was forced into exile, spent in Denmark and Pakistan among other countries. ¹

After the Saur Revolution of 1978, the communist Khalq government killed Mojaddedi's brother and several of his relatives. In exile in Peshawar he founded the Jebh-e-Nejat-e Melli (Afghan National Liberation Front), and on 13 March 1979 he was the first person to call for a nationwide jihad against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. His militia was most prominent in Kunar Province. His vision was an Islamic republic, possibly with a restored monarchy; he was opposed to Islamic fundamentalism and well disposed towards the West, and in 1988 he was elected head of the Afghan Interim Government based in Peshawar. ¹

In April 1992 he was elected chair of the Islamic Jihad Council set up to form a post-Soviet government. He entered Kabul on 28 April 1992 amid a large crowd, assumed the presidency of the new Islamic republic and offered a general amnesty to all Afghans except Najibullah. The Ariana plane carrying him to Kabul was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade as it landed, without fatalities. His position lasted about two to three months; in June 1992 he handed power to Burhanuddin Rabbani's new leadership council. ¹

After the fall of the Taliban in 2001 he returned from Pakistan and chaired the 2003 loya jirga that approved Afghanistan's new constitution. In 2005 he became chairman of the Meshrano Jirga, the upper house, and was reappointed as a member in 2011; he also served on the Afghan High Peace Council. On 12 March 2006 two suicide bombers attacked his car in Kabul, killing four pedestrians and slightly injuring him. In August 2015 he launched a new coalition, the Council of Jihad and National Political Parties. He was falsely reported dead in February 2016; he died at Kabul on 11 February 2019, aged 92. ¹

Mojaddedi's family were Naqshbandi Sufi religious scholars, and he stood in that family's inherited religious leadership — but descent, family and hereditary headship are not personal attestations. A cited obituary headline calls him a "Sufi Sheikh", which is one text; the articles' categories file him under Afghan Sufis and Afghan Sunni Muslims, which are filings; the "Sunni Islam" line in the English article belongs to his party's infobox, not his own; and Wikidata gives Islam generically. No two independent sources attest a school or order as his own personal commitment beyond the inherited office, so his faith is recorded as unknown and flagged for the founder, with both readings preserved in the data file. ^{1 3 4 2}

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