Who Is Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, Father Of Pakistan ISPR Chief With al-Qaeda & Taliban Links?
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Bashiruddin Mahmood, father of Pakistan's ISPR chief Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhary, is a nuclear scientist who was sanctioned by UN for providing chemical information to al-Qaeda
The father of Pakistan's Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhary is a nuclear scientist, who has been sanctioned by the United Nations for providing the Taliban and al-Qaeda with information about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood is known for his eccentric views on science, as he had once claimed that djinns could be used to generate electricity.
As per the UN, Bashiruddin had met with slain al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and 'provided information about the infrastructure needed for a nuclear weapons programme and the effects of nuclear weapons".
Bashiruddin also founded the Ummah Tameer-e-Nau (UTN) in 1999 – a right-wing organisation that was banned and sanctioned by the United States in 2001. He was among those who were listed and sanctioned by the Al-Qaida Sanctions Committee in December 2001.
He was also sanctioned as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the United States' Office of Foreign Assets Control, with an address listing of the Al-Qaeda Wazir Akbar Khan safe house, Kabul.
His Projects
Bashiruddin is believed to have studied engineering in the United Kingdom and Germany. He was honoured with Pakistan's third-highest civilian honour, Sitara-e-Imtiaz, by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. Later, however, Bashiruddin became a critic of the politician, and supportive of jihadists in Afghanistan.
He subscribes to a brand called 'Islamic science", which holds that the Quran is a fount of scientific knowledge. Bashiruddin has also published papers concerning djinni, which are described in the Quran as beings made of fire. He has proposed that these entities could be tapped to solve the energy crisis, and he has written on how to understand the mechanics of life after death.
'I think that if we develop our souls, we can develop communication with them," Bashiruddin Mahmood said about djinni in The Wall Street Journal in an interview in 1998. 'Every new idea has its opponents," he added. 'But there is no reason for this controversy over Islam and science because there is no conflict between Islam and science."
Bashiruddin came to prominence as an engineer in the 1970's when he worked out a technique for detecting leaks in steam pipes at a Canadian-built reactor, the Karachi nuclear power plant, in Pakistan.
Bashiruddin also spearheaded the development of the Kahuta plant near Islamabad, which, according to a 1992 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has the capacity to produce about 100 kg of enriched uranium a year, enough for half a dozen bombs.
In an interview with The Financial Times, Bashiruddin said he opposed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty on the ground that Pakistan needed to carry out test explosions to develop peaceful uses of atomic energy.
After his arrest in 2001, Bashiruddin had admitted to meeting with Osama bin Laden. But he stressed that he only discussed raising funds for a technical college in Afghanistan. The ISI released him after it concluded that Bashiruddin did not possess the technical knowledge to pass on nuclear weapons secrets to al-Qaeda.
His Prophecies
Following his retirement from the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Bashiruddin wrote books on doomsday, seeking to merge religious scripture with science. In 'Mechanics of the Doomsday and Life after Death', he warned that the Last Hour is not very far off. 'A few hundred years, this way or that, is of little significance. The end is imminent," he wrote, as quoted by ThePrint.
First Published:
May 10, 2025, 11:10 IST
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