Irshad Ahmed Haqqani

Haqqani suffered from heart disease and died on 24 January 2010 at age 81. His funeral was held at Lahore, Pakistan. He was buried at his ancestral graveyard in Daimul Hazoori, Kasur, Punjab, Pakistan. Among his survivors are two sons and two daughters.

Haqqani worked with various newspapers during the course of his career and was associated with the Jang Group of Newspapers starting in 1981 until the time of his death, where he became a senior editor of the national newspaper, Daily Jang. Besides his popular daily column titled ‘Harf-e-Tamanna’, he remained well acclaimed among different schools of thoughts including scholars and politicians. As a senior editor of the Daily Jang, he gave new trends to newspaper column writing in Pakistan.

Irshad Ahmed Haqqani (6 September 1928 – 24 January 2010) was a senior editor, veteran journalist and reputed column writer for the Jang Group of Newspapers. He also served as federal information minister in Malik Meraj Khalid’s caretaker government in 1996–97.

Haqqani was born on 6 September 1928 in Kasur. He started his career as a lecturer in the government college at Kasur, and retired as the principal of the same college. He also served, for several years, as professor of history at the Islamia College, Kasur. He joined Jamaat-i-Islami and served as editor of its organ Tasneem for some time. But he and a group of senior scholars and ideologues led by Maulana Amin Ahsan Islahi left the party after developing differences with the party's founder Maulana Maududi over his policy of bringing about the Islamic revolution through the ballot. The differences erupted at the 1957 Machhi Goth meeting of the Jamaat.