Fazlur Rehman 'Holds the Place of a Father for Us,' Captain Safdar Tells Chenab Nagar Conference

By TaazaPulse News Desk · Published: 30 October 2026 · TaazaPulse News Desk

Captain (retd) Muhammad Safdar, a leader of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, has described JUI-F chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman in the warmest terms available in Pakistani public life, telling a religious conference that the maulana "holds the place of a father" for him. Safdar made the remarks while addressing the Khatm-e-Nabuwwat conference in Chenab Nagar, in Punjab's Chiniot district — a speech carried by Discover Pakistan and television channels including 92 News, which headlined its report "Captain Safdar calls Maulana Fazlur Rehman a father figure."

The sentence itself, in the Urdu in which Safdar delivered it, was: "Maulana Fazlur Rehman hamaray liye baap ki jagah hain" — Maulana Fazlur Rehman holds the place of a father for us. It is the kind of phrase Pakistani politicians usually reserve for their own party founders and mentors. What gives it weight here is the week it landed in: on Wednesday and Thursday, as TaazaPulse reported, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif answered Fazlur Rehman sharply in the National Assembly and Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi attacked him in the Senate, in the two most direct government assaults on the JUI-F chief this season. Safdar belongs to the same ruling party as Asif. His tribute, delivered from a conference stage in Chiniot, therefore reads as more than courtesy — though Safdar himself presented it as a simple matter of respect, and said he was answering a question that had been put to him.

What Safdar said, and why he said it

According to Discover Pakistan's report of the address, Safdar told the gathering that he had received a message from a woman in which a question had been raised about his relationship with Maulana Fazlur Rehman. He said that, in reply, he had expressed his views about the respect owed to parents and to teachers. The televised excerpts of the speech show the same framing: the "father figure" line was offered as the answer to that question — a declaration that, whatever the political weather, his personal respect for the JUI-F chief was not in doubt.

The phrasing matters. Safdar did not announce an alliance, endorse a JUI-F position, or comment on any live dispute between the government and Fazlur Rehman. What he did was place his regard for the maulana in the language of family and faith — a register in which disagreement is not supposed to erase reverence. In the same address, according to coverage of the conference, Safdar credited Fazlur Rehman with leading the campaign for the finality of Prophethood, the cause around which the Chenab Nagar gathering is organised every year. No transcript of the full speech has been published, and TaazaPulse is reporting only the remarks carried by Discover Pakistan and television coverage of the event.

The conference: Chenab Nagar's annual Khatm-e-Nabuwwat gathering

The Khatm-e-Nabuwwat conference at Chenab Nagar is one of the largest recurring religious gatherings in Punjab, held in the town in Chiniot district that sits across the Chenab river from Chiniot city. The conference is devoted to the doctrine of the finality of Prophethood — Khatm-e-Nabuwwat — and draws religious scholars and political figures from across the country; preparations for this year's event, including official oversight arrangements, were reported in the days before it opened. Maulana Fazlur Rehman himself was among the speakers at this year's conference, according to coverage of the event, and senior scholars including Mufti Taqi Usmani were reported in attendance.

For a politician of Safdar's background, the stage is familiar ground. He has built much of his public identity on the finality-of-Prophethood cause: in October 2017, as a sitting member of the National Assembly, he made a widely reported speech on the subject in the house, and the theme has recurred in his politics since. The Chenab Nagar conference is the one platform where that strand of his politics and a tribute to Fazlur Rehman — the politician most associated in the public mind with the same cause — naturally meet.

A tribute in a week of attacks

The timing is the story's hard edge. Fazlur Rehman used his National Assembly speech this week to challenge the government — questioning the circumstances of a reported Tehran visit and the handling of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa emergency — and the government answered twice within twenty-four hours. On Thursday, Defence Minister Khawaja Asif replied in the National Assembly, saying no defence pact had been discussed in Tehran and turning the attack back on Fazlur Rehman's own parliamentary record. The same day, Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi answered him in the Senate, in remarks ARY News summarised as leaving "no room for respect" — accusing the maulana of praising the state when he benefited from it and criticising it when denied a share of power. TaazaPulse reported both exchanges in full.

Against that backdrop, a senior figure of the ruling party standing up in Chenab Nagar to call the same man a father figure cannot help but be read politically — as a softening signal, a personal exception, or a reminder that the PML-N's relationship with Fazlur Rehman has layers the week's shouting did not cover. Safdar offered no such gloss himself. He did not mention Asif, Naqvi, Tehran or Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the excerpts broadcast; his stated reason for speaking was the message he had received and the respect he said he owed. Neither the JUI-F nor the PML-N leadership had issued a statement on the remarks in the coverage available on Saturday, and no response from Fazlur Rehman himself had been reported.

The older alliance behind the words

There is also a history that makes the tribute less surprising than the week's headlines suggest. Fazlur Rehman chaired the Pakistan Democratic Movement, the opposition alliance formed in 2020 that brought the PML-N, the PPP and his own JUI-F together against the then government; the alliance's campaign ended with the no-confidence vote that removed that government in April 2022. His 2019 Azadi March on Islamabad — pictured above in a file photograph — was backed by the same parties. The two camps parted ways after the February 2024 elections, when the PML-N formed the federal government and the JUI-F stayed outside it, and Fazlur Rehman has since become one of the government's most persistent critics, most recently over the emergency and governor's rule imposed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on 11 October, which he criticised again this month.

Safdar's own position inside the PML-N is distinctive: he is a former member of the National Assembly from Mansehra, the husband of Punjab Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz and a son-in-law of party founder Nawaz Sharif, but he holds no ministry and speaks, on religious questions especially, in a personal voice that the party neither scripts nor usually corrects. That is the safest way to read the Chenab Nagar remarks on the evidence available: a personal tribute, delivered on a religious stage, by a politician whose bond with the maulana predates the current quarrel — and whose words will nonetheless be weighed in Islamabad precisely because of when he chose to say them.

What happens next

Nothing procedural follows from a conference speech: no meeting has been announced, no delegation scheduled, and no party position changed. What to watch is whether anyone senior in the government repeats Safdar's language or disowns it, and whether Fazlur Rehman acknowledges the tribute when he next speaks — he has a Senate and Assembly week ahead in which the exchanges with Asif and Naqvi are unlikely to be forgotten. Until then, the verified record is a short one: at the Khatm-e-Nabuwwat conference in Chenab Nagar, a leader of the ruling party called the government's most prominent religious critic a father figure, said he was answering a question about respect, and left the politics of the remark for everyone else to argue about.