Babar Awan

Zaheer-ud-din Babar Awan
File:BabarAwan12.jpg
Federal Minister for Law, Justice, and Parliamentary Affairs
Incumbent
Assumed office 2008
Prime Minister	Yousaf Raza Gillani
Personal details
Born	January 27, 1959 Rawalpindi, Punjab, Pakistan
Political party	Pakistan Peoples Party
Profession	Lawyer

Zaheer-ud-din Babar Awan (born 27 January 1957) is the present Federal Minister for Law, Justice and Paliamentary Affairs of Pakistan. He is also a senator in Pakistan's upper House of the Parliament , he is a practicing lawyer and a member of Pakistan Peoples Party Central Executive Committee. Babar Awan won the Senate election in 2006 unopposed on the ticket of PPPP which was a parliamentary name of Benazir's PPP. He is married with three daughters and two sons.

Early life

Born in a Village called Hothla near Kahuta(Rawalpindi). Belonged to a middle class landowning family.He spent some time in the Middle East ( Saudi Arabia , Qatar and Kuwait ) and is a fluent Arabic speaker, with good grounding in principles of Saudi orientated religious education known as the Salafi or Ahl-e-Hadees ( in Pakistan ) despite being liberal in outlook personally ( which makes him acceptable to the PPP ). Dr.Babar Awan was a student activist in his younger days and was also president of his college party.

Education

He has done a 4 year long Sharia Law course in Islamic University of Medina, Saudi Arabia. He has also done B.A. and LLB from Punjab University. He is also a senior advocate of Supreme Court. He claims to have earned his PhD from University of Monticelo in United States through its distance learning program. Olamba! See [Controversies]

Popularity

Mr. Babar Awan first come to limelight in 1990's when soon after second Benazir government was ousted, several leading Pakistan Peoples Party figures were implicated in corruption cases by their then rivals Nawaz Sharif Government. Many of the former used Babar Awan as their legal advocate . It was an uneasy time to side with PPP and several lawyers avoided protecting PPP leaders or civil servants associated with them.Being an eloquent speaker and possessing a good command of English language he is, perhaps, the best orator in the PPP top leadership. He is a criminal lawyer but he also deals with politically-inspired corruption, corporate and financial cases.

Loyal PPP activist

Babar Awan was Benazir's speech writer and her negotiating link while she was in Dubai. She dubbed him as a younger brother.He was tipped to be senior minister had she been alive and in power. He was in the van of late Benazir Bhutto in Karachi when major bomb blast deformed it and he was also not too far from site of second Bhutto blast which was fatal for Benazir.

Babar Awan as an Islamic scholar

Lately, Dr.Babar Awan has taken to media in another form that is teaching Islamic law (Sharia) as per the "Quran and Sunnat". Thus he is a proponent of the Ahl-e-Hadees sect which is opposed to the Hanafi Deobandi and Barelwi Sunni scholars who are behind parties like Jamaat-e-Islami and JUI. As a student of the Islamic University of Madinah Munawwarah , he proposes imposition of Sharia in Pakistan but not on the basis of the Deobandi scholars. This has clicked so much that leading Islamic scholars of Pakistan like Dr.Israr Ahmed and the disciples of the late Allama Ehsan Elahi Zaheer showed his inclination towards him in no uncertain terms in his magazine . It is thought that his pro-Islamic stance was tolerated by Benazir Bhutto but it might be a burden in politics in pro-western Asif Ali Zardari Government , who are un-Islamic in their personal behaviour.

Links with other political parties

Dr. Babar has a varied political base. He is supported by a wider range of political groups from ultra-right Fazal-ur Rahman of JUI, middle lane Wattoo and Chatta of former ruling PML(Q) and even some sections of Sipah-e-Sahaba and MQM . His strongest power base is Kahuta and in support of other leading Awan Tribes which is strong in some parts of Punjab. Thus he also gets a strong support among Army personnel. However , the Shia lobby is opposed to him because of his pro-Saudi inclination.

Controversies

Haris Steel case

In November 2009 National Accountability Bureau of Pakistan summoned Babar Awan for getting bribes from the owners of the Haris Steel Mills, Lahore, for getting a favourable verdict from the court in the Rs 9 billion loan scam in the Bank of Punjab[1] [2]. On November 24, Sheikh Afzal, owner of Haris Steel Industries and the main accused in financial scam of Rs9 billion at the Bank of Punjab (BoP) had revealed before the bench of the Pakistan's Supreme Court to have given Rs35 million to Babar Awan, then Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, for winning the case in the apex court. On November 26, 2009 Babar Awan, in his press statement, attacked a religious minority and said that the whole issue is bieng created to malign him by the so-called "Qadiani lobby".[3]

Fake degree case

In November 2008, Mr. Ansar Abbasi, who is editor investigations of the Jang Group of Newspapers and heads its Islamabad bureau, released a story in The News about Mr. Babar Awan in which it was reported that Mr. Awan earned his PhD from Monticelo University in the United States which actually was a diploma mill and was never accredited as a degree awarding institution. [4]

Senator Babar contended that his qualification was granted by distance learning programme as a mature student. The subject matter of this thesis was similar to his work and study in Saudi Arabian institutions. But the Higher Education Commission of Pakistan and United States Education Foundation in Islamabad both publicly stated that the said institution was not an accredited university in the US.[5]

References

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=146175