A political party formed just last year by a firebrand preacher riding support for a hard-line religious movement made significant inroads in Pakistan’s general election last week.

The party, Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan, whose burgeoning popularity centers around passion to protect the Prophet Muhammad’s name against blasphemy, didn’t win any seats in the national Parliament. But it garnered more than two million votes and finished third in Pakistan’s most-populous province, Punjab, and won two seats from the city of Karachi.

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