Unholy Alliance: Communists and Mullahs on Iran — Two Sides of the Same Coin

The Khilafat Movement was led by Mohammad Ali Johar, a distinguished journalist, writer, poet, and orator. He died in London in 1931 while attending the First Round Table Conference. He was later buried in Jerusalem, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, at the request of the then Grand Mufti of Palestine, Amin al-Husseini.

“We feel happy when bombs fall over Tel Aviv,” said Amar Ali Jan, a prominent Pakistani leftist leader and president of the Pakistan Workers Party, in his recent interview. “I do not trust the American people,” he added—ironically, he has done his PHD from an American University. “Israel has attacked Muslims. Iran is on the frontline against imperialist forces.” Amar Ali Jan is not alone in expressing such views.

During the Khilafat Movement, Gandhi and Deobandi clerics found themselves aligned, creating widespread religious and political fervor among Muslims in South Asia. The Indian National Congress, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, and even segments of the Communist Party of India.

Another leftist figure, musician Taimur Rehman of the band Laal, in a video on social media, linked Zionists to the Epstein files and alleged global conspiracies involving child exploitation networks. Such narratives are not isolated. Across ideological divides—leftists and mullahs, Shias and Sunnis—there exists a striking convergence in Pakistan when it comes to Israel. The reaction is often visceral: furrowed brows, clenched fists, raised voices, and deeply emotional rhetoric.

A popular joke about communists in South Asia goes: they would wear overcoats in Karachi or Delhi upon hearing that it is snowing in Moscow—as if their ideological center of gravity lay far away. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many leftists in Pakistan began citing the Communist Party of Israel, which has criticized Israeli and American policies, even while they themselves refuse to recognize Israel as a legitimate state.

Historically, communists in Pakistan were the extension  to the Communist Party of India (CPI). The CPI  advised its Muslim members in Muslim-majority regions to support the creation of Pakistan and even to cooperate with the All-India Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Sajjad Zaheer, an elite Muslim intellectual from North India and a noted writer, became the first Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Pakistan. He was secretly dispatched to the newly formed country after Partition.

Zaheer worked underground until he was arrested in connection with the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case, which allegedly involved a planned military coup against Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan. The accused included military officers such as General Akbar Khan and prominent figures like the poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. The case became one of the most famous political trials in Pakistan’s history.

Another key intellectual was Syed Sibte Hasan, a Columbia University graduate and author of works such as Musa se Marx Tak (“From Moses to Marx”) and Inqilab-e-Iran (“Iranian Revolution”). Like many others, he migrated from North India to Pakistan during Partition on the direction of the Communist Party.

A saying in South Asia goes, somewhat sarcastically: “It is easy to turn a Syed into a Shia, and a Shia into a communist.” Sobho Gianchandani, a veteran communist in Pakistan, once visited the headquarters of the Communist Party of India and remarked humorously that, judging by the names, it felt more like a Shia imambargah than a party head office.

Several prominent communists in Pakistan—including Sajjad Zaheer and Hasan Nasir—came from Shia backgrounds. Hasan Nasir, who served as an office secretary of the Communist Party of Pakistan, was later arrested and allegedly tortured to death in Lahore’s Fort in 1960 after the party was banned following the Rawalpindi Conspiracy Case.

There are, indeed, some cultural and political overlaps between Shia traditions and communist activism: collective mourning, organized gatherings, protest culture, and nocturnal vigils. Although Faiz Ahmed Faiz was not a Shia, he often recited poetry during Muharram processions in Lahore commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Hussain at Karbala.

Personal anecdotes reinforce this overlap. A communist acquaintance, Ghulam Rasool Sahito, who came from a Shia family, wouldn’t resist himself to join mourning processions, removing his shirt and participating in chest-beating ‘Matam (lamentation).

When the Iranian Revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew Shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979, Shias, Sunnis, and leftists in Pakistan all reacted with similar enthusiasm. Pakistani communists admired Iranian communist figures such as Noureddin Kianouri and others, even as many of them were later suppressed or executed by the new regime.

Delegations of Pakistani Sunnis, Shias, and leftists frequently traveled to Iran, some meeting Khomeini in Qom. Young Pakistanis were sent to religious seminaries there with financial support, and some reportedly received ideological and even paramilitary training from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

During this period, Western institutions like the American Center and the British Council in Pakistan were frequently targeted and shut down in some cities due to repeated attacks by protestors.

One of the most catastrophic  incidents occurred in November 1979, when a violent mob stormed and burned the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, following false rumors linking the United States to the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The attack coincided with the Iran hostage crisis. Several people were killed, including a U.S. Marine, and many were trapped inside. The attackers included individuals from across ideological lines—leftists, right-wing activists, Shias, and Sunnis.

As one old-timer narrates a story , “ I had heard that bearded members of Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba—the student wing of the religious political party Jamaat-e-Islami—looted bottles of whisky during the attack on the embassy, and later sold the American liquor to liberals and leftists at 50 rupees a bottle.”

This history echoes in more recent incidents, where protests linked to U.S. or Israeli actions in Iran have turned violent in Pakistan, targeting diplomatic missions and public property. In Skardu, for instance, violent mobs reportedly killed Pakistani soldiers during unrest.

In response to such incidents, Pakistan’s Army Chief, Field Marshal General Asim Munir, has warned Shia clergy leaders that violent reactions to international developments will not be tolerated. He has stated that those involved in such incidents would be tried in military courts.

“Go to Iran and live there if you love Iran,” he is reported to have said to Shia clergymen.