Born in Dera Ismail Khan in 1953, Maulana Fazlur Rehman heads his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam, a party which was initially headed by his father Maulana Mufti Mahmoud, a religious scholar and political leader who was the chief minister of NWFP (now Khyber Pakthunkhwa) in the 1970s. Fazl draws his support from followers of the Deobandi school of thought which is part and parcel of JUI-Fazl’s ideology.