Interview with John Muhammad Butt

A hundred bullets have been set aside for you.

They will murder you today at four o'clock.

This was in 1976. I had gone from Karachi

to my ancestral village, my ancestral region of Tirah. I found out

that a lashkar had come out, and that lashkar had

captured an English youth, and today, 50

years later, that person is with me.

John Mohammad Butt. Assalamualaikum, Mr. John.

Wa alaikum assalam.

How are you?

Thank God, absolutely fine.

Mr. John was born in Trinidad.

He was educated in England,

and then he reached Tirah.

When I became a Muslim, I was very fond of learning, so

we had companions. Those people became angry.

You were in the middle of it.

I was an Englishman among the Pashtuns.

Then they asked that this too was propaganda, that this was a good thing.

How long were you imprisoned in Tirah?

Sixteen months.

Was there anything

that you still remember?

Did they ever raise a hand to slap you?

You pointed a pistol at me and said you had one

bullet reserved for me. So they wanted me to

admit that you pay these people

salaries. If you don't admit it, then today at four

o'clock, they will kill you.

What was the hippie movement?

Bob Dylan is still alive, and I was greatly

influenced by him. He was very spiritual, I mean.

He has a song about the end of the world, “The time will come up when the winds will

stop.” Honestly, when I first read the Quran, I thought

that this thing in Surah Yunus that

you didn't tell us about in Bob Dylan's song, it is exactly what Surah

Yunus says about Pharaoh.

When and where did that turning point come in

that hippie's life, when John Butt became John Muhammad Butt?

Charbagh is a place in Swat. For iftar, the vehicle

stopped. Everyone got off the bus. I stayed. So that man

thought I was poor, and that was why I wasn't fasting.

They don't hold iftar. They gave me dates and pakoras.

They said, "Don't fast." There was no pressure from his side.

There was nothing from his side. There was no force from his side. The question

that was on my mind

I found the answer in the Holy Quran, in the Quran.

He calls himself a Pakhtun or Pashtun and an English

man, meaning an Englishman. How is that possible ?

Being Pashtun is not an ethnic or racial thing.

It is about following certain principles. That is, being Pashtun

is about accepting those principles.

Mr. Jan Mohammad Butt, thank you very much for speaking with BBC Urdu.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.