Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi

Who was Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi?

Inayatullah Khan Mashriqi, also known as Allama Mashriqi, was a Pakistani mathematician, logician, political theorist, Islamic scholar and the founder of the Khaksar movement.

Mashriqi was a noted mathematical intellectual who became a college Principal at the age of 25, and then became an Under Secretary, at the age of 29, in the Education Department of the Government of India. He wrote an exegesis of the Qur'an which was nominated for the 1925 Nobel Prize. He was offered an ambassadorship to Afghanistan at age 32, but he declined all honours.

He subsequently resigned government service and in 1930 founded the Khaksar Movement, aiming to advance the condition of the masses irrespective of any faith, sect, or religion. As its leader, he was imprisoned several times. Through his philosophical writings, he asserted that the science of religions was essentially the science of collective evolution of mankind.