On the morning of May 9, as he sat down with about three dozen students, a bomb that had been planted under his cushion went off. His brother, Mawlawi Jawed Hanafi, succeeded him as head of the seminary at Togh-Bairdi. He said that the young man who had planted the bomb — and who was later arrested — was a student from the class, and that he had been seen peeking through the window to make sure his instructor had taken his seat. He then walked away and detonated the bomb.

The book in front of Mawlawi Hanafi was ripped and covered in blood. The scholar did not make it to a hospital.

“I saw the Mawlawi lying on his back — when he saw me, he moved his lips to say something, but he couldn’t,” said Aziz Agha, his bodyguard, who rushed into the room after the explosion. “His turban wasn’t on his head. His clothes were torn. I held him to help him stand up, but I saw pieces of flesh dropping from his back.”

The room where the bombing happened remains sealed.

Mawlawi Hanafi’s fellow scholars say they find peace in the fact that this is nothing new — that their leader was among the latest killed in the long history of the fight over whose beliefs are true. That fight dates back to the early days of Islam.

“These are not new enemies,” said Mawlawi Abdul Hafiz Mowahed, one of Mawlawi Hanafi’s former students and an instructor now. “Who killed Caliph Osman? Who killed Caliph Ali? Who killed Caliph Omar? The killers were people in the garb of Islam.” He noted that Caliph Osman had also been assassinated after dawn prayer, hunched over as he was reading from the Quran.

“The Prophet Muhammad predicted that once the sword bleeds innocent blood, this blood will run until the Day of Judgment,” he said.