17. The British Raj

British East India Company

To this day, Muslims of India, probably more than any other Muslim community in the world, are the most unfortunate victims of a British strategy of Divide and Conquer, where, because of the continuing controversies brewed by the dysfunctional children of the British-sponsored Salafi and Wahhabi movements—mainly the Deobandi, Barelvi and Ahl-i Hadith movements—they are continually mired in incessant bickering and petty acrimony, providing the despicable stereotype of the Muslim fanatic that so virulently feeds Islamophobic prejudices.[1] The chaos is a direct consequence the British rule of India, beginning with the British East India Company, which was dominated by Freemasons, and which opened the way for the British Raj. After the founding of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, Freemasonry spread quickly throughout Europe, and a mere two decades later, European masons and lodges are known to have been active in several regions of the Middle East and North Africa: in Aleppo, Smyrna and Corfu in 1738, in Alexandretta in early 1749, in Eastern Turkey in 1762, in Constantinople in 1769; in 1784-85 in Tunisia and Algeria, in 1794 in Egypt.[2] Accompanying this expansion was a particularly pronounced impact of the Divide and Conquer strategy in the Islamic world, India under British rule, resulting in rampant internecine strife that remains rife to this day. As explained by Yoginder Sikand, an Indian writer and academic who did his MPhil in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and his PhD in history from the University of London:

 

The establishment of British rule in India had momentous consequences for notions of Muslim and Islamic identity. The widely shared perception of Islam being under threat helped promote a feeling of Muslim unity transcending sectarian and ethnic boundaries. Yet, at the same time, British rule opened up new spaces for intra-Muslim rivalry. It was in this period that serious differences emerged within the broader Sunni Muslim fold, leading to the development of neatly-defined, and, on numerous issues, mutually opposed, sect-like groups, the principal being the Deobandis, the Barelvis and the Ahl-i Hadith. Each of these groups claimed a monopoly of representing the “authentic” Sunni tradition, or the Ahl al- Sunnah wa‘l Jama‘ah, branding rival claimants as aberrant and, in some cases, even as apostates. This brought to the fore the deeply fractured and fiercely contested nature of Sunni “orthodoxy.”[3]

 

It was in India, under the rule of the British East India Company (EIC), known as Company rule in India, or the Company Raj, where British influence was most heavily focused, that the Revivalism inspired by Wahhabism contributed to numerous seething sectarian controversies, including the Barelvi, Deobandi and Ahl-i Hadith. The East India Company, founded in 1600, established their first trading post in India in 1612, and gradually expanded their presence in the region over the following decades. During the Seven Years’ War, (1756–1763)—a global conflict involving most of the European great powers, fought primarily in Europe and the Americas—the East India Company began a process of rapid expansion in India which resulted in most of the subcontinent falling under its rule by 1857, when the Indian Rebellion, also known as the Sepoy Rebellion, broke out against Company rule. After the rebellion was suppressed, the Government of India Act 1858 resulted in the East India Company’s territories in India being administered by the Crown instead. The India Office managed the East India Company’s former territories, which became known as the British Raj.

Prior to the British occupation, much of India had been under the rule of the Mughal Empire, which was effectively a province of the Ottomans. The Mughal emperors were descendants of the Mongols, through Genghis Khan. The Mughal Empire, which began in 1526, at the height of their power in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, controlled most of the Indian Subcontinent. The Mughals created an impressive civilization, whose most memorable legacies are its architecture, especially that of the reign of Shah Jahan (1592-1666) who created the Taj Mahal. The Mughal Empire reached the zenith of its territorial expansion during the reign of Aurangzeb (1618-1707), who may have been the richest and most powerful man alive.

The Mughal Empire was one the wealthiest empires in history, and certainly the wealthiest in the world at that time. India, under Mughal rule, produced about 28% of the world’s industrial output up until the eighteenth century, with significant exports in textiles, shipbuilding, and steel.[4] But, the splendor of the Mughals attracted the envy of the British, who in 1600 established the East India Company, which would open the door to their colonization of the country, and so robbed it of its wealth that India is now ranked among the poorer countries of the world.[5] New research drawing on nearly two centuries of detailed data on tax and trade, the renowned economist Utsa Patna, and published by Columbia University Press, concluded that Britain drained a total of nearly $45 trillion from India during the period 1765 to 1938.[6]

The East India Company, which benefited from the imperial patronage, soon expanded its commercial trading operations. It eclipsed the Portuguese Estado da India, which had established bases in Goa, Chittagong, and Bombay. Portugal later ceded Bombay to England as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza on her marriage to the “Mason King” Charles II of England, brother of Elizabeth Stuart of the Alchemical Wedding of the Rosicrucians.[7] Catherine of Braganza was the daughter of John IV of Portugal (1604 – 1656), whose accession established the House of Braganza on the Portuguese throne. Her mother was Luisa de Guzmán, who was from the ducal house of Medina-Sidonia of allegedly crypto-Jewish background.[8]

According to David Katz, Benjamin Levy, the “uncrowned king” of the Ashkenazi community in London, who came to the city with other members of his family from Hamburg, the Ashkenazi equivalent of Amsterdam for the Sephardic community, was an original Subscriber to the Bank of England, and the only Jew on the list, and it was also said that he had been responsible for procuring the new Charter for the East India Company in 1698, with the result that his name was the second on its registers.[9] In fact, explains Samir Abed-Rabbo, “European Jews were not strangers to colonization by means of chartered companies. The infamous Dutch East India Company, VOC (1602), the Dutch West India Company, GWC (1621) and the Levant Company (1811) were increasingly owned and managed by Jews.”[10] Charles Boxer had noted, ”Although Iberian Writers said that crypto-Jews or Marranos played an important role in the formation of both the VOC and the GWC, research has shown that initially they played a minor role, but expanded during the period of the Dutch in Brazil.”[11] The total population of Jews in Amsterdam in 1674 was 7,500 out of 215,000 people. In comparison, “In 1656, when the Company had already been deeply committed to the slave trade for at least twenty years, 7 out of 167 of the stockholders, or 4 percent, were Jewish, rising to 11 out of 169, or 6.5 percent, in 1958. In 1671, Jewish investors numbered 10, or 5 percent of the Company’s 192 shareholders. Three years later, 11 of the Company’s ‘main participants,’ or 10 percent of all such shareholders, were Jewish.”[12]  Both companies were deeply involved in European colonial projects, as well as the slave and opium trade.[13]

The British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown, exercised military power and assumed administrative functions, supported by the fraternal ties of Freemasonry. According to Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs:

 

In India, for example, Freemasonry was for all purposes, if not for all intents, an exclusively European institution that flourished among East India Company servants, government officials, the merchant and professional classes, and army officers.[14]

 

“Freemasonry, it appears,” states Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs, in Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, “was central to the building and cohesion of the empire.”[15] During the mid-eighteenth century, Freemasonry became a global institution, taking root throughout the British Isles, Europe, Britain’s Atlantic empire, and wherever the British extended their colonial power: the Caribbean, British North America, and South Asia. In whichever part of the world they happened to be, British Freemasons called on what one nineteenth-century member rightly described as Masonry’s “vast chain extending round the whole globe.”[16] So effective was Freemasonry’s spread that by the late 1880s the Grand Master of Scotland would boast: “Wherever our flag has gone, we are able to say there has Masonry gone, and we have been able to found lodges for those who have left our shores to found fresh empires.[17] Acknowledging the reciprocal relationship between Freemasonry and imperialism, former Secretary of State for the Colonies and high-ranking Masonic official Lord Carnarvon (1866 – 1923)—who was married to Almina Victoria Maria Alexandra Wombwell, alleged to be the illegitimate daughter of millionaire banker Alfred de Rothschild—proclaimed:

 

Following closely in the wake of colonisation, wherever the hut of the settler has been built, or the flag of con­ quest waved, there Masonry has soon equal dominion… It has reflected… and consolidated the British Empire.[18]

 

Freemasonry was brought to India by members of the East India Company with the first lodge established under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of England, consecrated in 1728 at Fort William in Calcutta. The following year, 1729, Captain Ralph Farwinter was appointed Provisional Grand Master for East India. A Provincial Grand Lodge was established in Madras in 1752 and a Provincial Grand Lodge in Bombay in 1758. Other countries and Masonic jurisdictions also established lodges in India. Lodge Solomon was founded in 1758 at Tandelga, Bengal, under the Dutch Constitution by the Commander-of-the-Fleet of the Netherlands East India Company. A French Constitution lodge, Sincere Amité, was chartered at Pondicherry in 1787. In 1807, de l’amour Fraternelle was founded at Tranquebar in Tamil Nadu with a warrant granted by the National Grand Lodge of Denmark. The first recorded Indian Freemason was a Muslim, Umdat-ul-Umara (1748 – 1801), the Nawab of the Carnatic state in the Mughal Empire from 1795 to 1801.[19] His father Mohammed Ali Khan Wallajah (1717 – 1795) a close ally of the British East India Company.[20]

Freemasons often served as governors and governor-general across the Empire, including Lord William Hastings, Lord Dalhousie, Prince Edward, General Amherst, Lord Clive, General Wolfe, Captain Cook, Lord Cornwallis and Warren Hastings.[21] Governor William Pitt Amherst (1717 – 1797) was a British Army officer and Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in the British Army. Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira (1754 – 1826), who was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland from 1806 to 1808, served as Governor-General of India from 1813, the Company Charter Act of 1813 ended the East India Company’s monopoly, to 1823. Moira would act as “Acting Grand Master of the Most Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons in and over the whole of India […].” Under his rule, large amounts of territory were conquered from the Ghurkhas (1814-1816) and the Marathas (1816), and the immigration of Britons increased, causing Masonic membership to proliferate throughout India.[22]

Bernard S. Cohn noted that the British were convinced that the Indians were particularly responsive to pomp and pageantry.[23] Therefore, explains Simon Deschamps, “Freemasonry in India was ostentatious. It organized public processions, banquets and cornerstone-laying ceremonies on an unprecedented scale.”[24] In 1813, for instance, 120 Masons walked in procession from Government House in Calcutta so as to greet Lord Moira, who had just been appointed as Governor-General of India and Provincial Grand Master of Bengal. Moira expressed his gratitude for showy welcome, “here, where, above all other parts of the world, attachment to ceremonies appears the most rooted.”[25] Similarly, his successor Amherst also expressly asked the Freemasons of Calcutta to lay the foundation stone of the Hindu College, in 1824. In the words of the Calcutta Gazette, the foundation stone of the college was laid “with the usual imposing ceremonies of Masonry.”[26] And indeed, Freemasonry was involved in laying the cornerstones of most colonial buildings in India.[27]

Apart from General Amherst, there hadn’t been a Masonic Governor-General after Moira until Lord Dalhousie (1812 – 1860), former Scottish Grand Master, who served as Governor-General of India from 1848 to 1856, and whose reforms arguably caused the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion.[28] Under Lord Dalhousie, British power was increasingly centralized. He annexed the Sikh state (1849) and part of Burma (1852). He introduced the telegraph, railways, postal system, and irrigation works. He also focused on anglicizing Indian society and was committed to mass education and missionary Christianity. Following the 1857 rebellion, the Company’s remaining powers were transferred to the Crown, initiating the direct rule by the British Empire, assuming direct control of present-day Bangladesh, Pakistan and India, known as the British Raj.

 

Indian Wahhabi Movement 

As detailed by Allen Charles, prior to British rule, the Muslim community in India had historically been dependent on the political leadership to a Muslim aristocracy, headed by the Mughal emperor in Delhi, who ruled India through a number of regional viceroys. As Mughal power declined, these governors had established themselves as local rulers, as either Muslim Nawabs or Hindu or Sikh Maharajas. Eventually, the British Government in India replaced this political leadership with a modern administration. As a consequence, a further divide in the Muslim community in India ensued as to how to respond to it. A minority held the view that Muslims should embrace the example of the West and work for the advancement of the Muslim community within the power of the British Raj, until such time as they were able to stand alone.[29]

The first reformer identified as a Revivalist in India was Shah Waliullah (1703 – 1762), born during the Mughal reign of Aurangzeb. During a time of waning Muslim power, Shah Waliullah worked for the revival of Muslim rule and intellectual learning in South Asia. Waliullah travelled for Mecca for the Hajj pilgrimage in 1730, and studied under Shaykh al Madani, a renowned teacher of Hadith, in whose library he discovered the works of Ibn Taymiyyah. Abdul Wahhab also studied Hadith in Medina in his late twenties under the Indian Mohammed Hayat al-Sindi, a Naqshbandi Sufi and a Shafi jurist who was an admirer of Ibn Taymiyyah and a student of Ibrahim al Kurani, the teacher who taught Hadith to Shah Waliullah and introduced him to the ideas of Ibn Taymiyyah. On his return to India, Waliullah, much like Abdul Wahhab, preached the supposed purification of Islamic monotheism, and as Ibn Taymiyyah had done, he defied Sunni tradition by setting himself up as a Mujtahid.[30]

The man credited with bringing Wahhabism to India is Syed Ahmad Barelvi (1786 – 1831)—a disciple Shah Abdul Aziz (1746 – 1824), an Islamic scholar who was the son of Shah Waliullah. In about 1819, Shah Ismail Dehlvi (1779 – 1831) set down his master Syed Ahmad’s theology in Sirat’ul Mustaqim. Shah Ismail was a contemporary of Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, and they studied in Medina under some of the same teachers.[31] In 1821, Shah Ismail left for Hajj along with Syed Ahmad and a group of his devotees. Shah Ismail reported that, after visiting Mecca and Medina, he and Syed Ahmad travelled northwards together as far as Constantinople before returning to Arabia, taking six years in all.[32] Shah Ismail drew extensively from the writings of Ibn Taymiyah, his student Ibn al Qayyim, Abdul Wahhab, and Shawkani. According to him, the predecessors, or the Salaf, was a perfect model of moral conduct. However, Shah Ismail did not perceive a conflict between the Salafism and Sufism, and sought to bridge the two traditions, seeing Salafism as communicating the ritualism of Islam into an organized program of social mobilization, as reflected in his military campaign, while Sufism transformed the moral energy of human beings into spiritual awakening.[33]

However, as Allen pointed out, the fact is that Syed Ahmad and Shah Ismail arrived in Mecca predisposed to accept Abdul Wahhab’s vision of Tawhid through their spiritual apprenticeship at Delhi’s Madrassah-i-Rahimiya, which was influenced by Shah Waliullah. When Syed Ahmad returned to India, adds Allen, “he took with him a distinctly more hard-line, less tolerant and more aggressive Islam, directly inspired by the Wahhabi model, than he had imbibed at the feet of his first master Shah Abdul Aziz of Delhi.”[34]

Syed Ahmad’s opponents labeled him a Wahhabi, but he did not consider himself as such.[35] At the core of the reform movement initiated by Syed Ahmad was the advocacy of a puritanical interpretation of Tawhid (monotheism), similar to the Muwahhidun movement in Arabia. The movement fought against local practices and customs related to saint veneration and grave visits, which they regarded as Bid’ah (religious innovations) and shirk (polytheism) that corrupted Islam. Syed Ahmad’s reformist teachings were set down in two prominent treatises: Sirat’ul Mustaqim and Taqwiyatul-Iman (“Strengthening of the Faith”), considered the “gospel of Salafi Islam in Muslim India.”[36] The two works stressed the centrality of Tawhid, advocated that acts of worship—such as dua and sacrifices—belonged solely to God, and denounced all those practices and beliefs that were held in any way to compromise Tawhid. The followers of Syed Ahmad viewed three sources of threat to their beliefs: traditional Sufism, Shiism, and popular cultural customs.[37]

 

Indian Jihad Movement 

Shah Ismail was an active member in the Jihad proclaimed by Syed Ahmad.[38] While other Muslim activist asserted that Muslims had a duty to serve the British government loyally, as India under British rule was a place of safety, Syed Ahmad Barelvi launched the Indian Jihad movement that waged a decades-long Islamic revolt against colonial rule across various provinces of British India. When Syed Ahmad returned from pilgrimage in Mecca in 1824, perceived his immediate enemy to be the Sikh Empire ruled by Ranjit Singh (1780 – 1839), founder and first Maharaja of the Sikh Empire, which was expanding close to Afghanistan. Before his rise, the Punjab was divided by numerous warring misls (confederacies), twelve of which were under Sikh rulers and one Muslim. Singh successfully absorbed and united the Sikh misls and took over other local kingdoms to create the Sikh Empire. He succeeded in repeatedly defeating invasions by outside armies, particularly those from Afghanistan, and established friendly relations with the British.[39]

Syed Ahmad intended to establish an Islamic state on the North-West Frontier region in the Peshawar valley, as a strategic base for the future invasion of India. Syed Ahmad called upon the local Pashtun and Hazarewal tribes to wage Jihad, and demanded that they renounce their tribal customs and adopt the Sharia. On December 21, 1826, Syed Ahmad and his 1,500 followers confronted 4,000 Sikh troops in the battle of Akora Khattak, winning a significant victory. On January 11, 1827, his soldiers swore allegiance to him and he was declared Caliph and Imam. In response, Ranjit Singh ordered his generals to take tougher measures against the rebels, resulting in a brutal war, and sowing the seeds of an enmity between the Sikhs and the frontier tribes that persists to this day. Finally, in October 1830, the new Governor of Peshawar privately concluded a treaty with Syed Ahmad and his rebels that allowed them to withdraw from the city unharmed, leaving Peshawar and the surrounding area in the hands of the Wahhabis and their allies. To mark victory, Syed Ahmad declared himself Padshah, or “Great King,” and had coins struck bearing the inscription “Ahmad the Just, Defender of the Faith; the glitter of whose scimitar scatters destruction among the Infidels.”[40] But, before the end of year, another uprising occurred, and Syed Ahmad’s soldiers in Peshawar and surrounding villages were murdered and the movement was forced to retreat to the hills. In the town of Balakot the following year, Syed Ahmad was killed and beheaded by the Sikh Army.

 

Deobandi, Barelvi and Ahl-i Hadith

Wahhabi influence in India resulted most directly in the emergence of groups like the Deobandis and the Ahl-i Hadith. Some Muslims adopted a third strategy, that of noncooperation with the British, centered around the seminary at Deoband, founded in 1866.[41] Syed Ahmad Barelvi is revered as a major scholarly authority in the Ahl-i Hadith and Deobandi movements, which founded the Deobandi school, drawing inspiration from the religious and political doctrines of Shah Ismail Dehlvi.[42] The Deobandi movement was founded in 1866 at Darul Uloom Deoband in Deoband, India. The Deobandis claim to revive the Sunnah as embodied in the Qur’an, literature of traditions (Hadith) and the way of the scholars, as the people had lapsed from the Prophetic traditions. Consequently, scholars took the duty of reminding Muslims to go back to the “ideal” way of Islam. The Ahl-i Hadith emerged in the 1860s, through the influence of two personalities, Nazir Husayn in Delhi and Siddiq Hasan Khan in Bhopal. Like the Wahhabis, they were fiercely opposed to the Sufis and the Shiah, and ardent adherents of Ibn Taymiyyah. The two groups merged following a pilgrimage to Mecca, and some Wahhabi scholars went to Bhopal and Delhi to study with them.

However, the Ahl-i Hadith were more radical with regard to Taqlid, which they rejected entirely, dismissing the value of the Madhhabs, in favor of relying exclusively on the Quran and Sunnah, a position of the medieval Ahl-i Hadith, which the Indian movement tried to identify themselves with.[43] The historical roots of Ahl-i Hadith are traced back to the Jihad movement of Shah Ismail. Although the Islamic state of the Mujahideen was later destroyed by the Sikh Empire, Shah’s followers continued to spread his teachings travelling across the Indian subcontinent; and described themselves as Ahl-i Hadith. This set the stage for the emergence of an organized form of Salafism in the subcontinent.[44] Shah Ismail’s doctrines on Tawhid and fervent condemnations of various practices he regarded as shirk (“polytheism”), denunciations of celebrations like Mawlid as Bid’ah (religious innovation); along with his emphasis on the requirement to directly return to scriptural sources without imitating a Madhab, would deeply influence the Ahl-i Hadith, who also came to be known as the Ghair Muqallid, because they rejected Taqlid in favor of the direct use of Quran and Hadith.[45]

The Barelvi movement is a Sunni revivalist movement that drew inspiration from the Sunni doctrines of Shah Abdur Rahim (1644 – 1719), founder of Madrasah-i Rahimiyah and one of the compilers of Fatawa-e-Alamgiri, and father of Shah Waliullah. The Barelvi movement, also known as Ahl al-Sunnah wa’l Jama’ah (“People of the Prophet’s Way and the Community”), generally adheres to the Hanafi and Shafi’i schools of jurisprudence, and Maturidi and Ash’ari schools of theology with hundreds of millions of followers, and it encompasses a variety of Sufi orders, including the Chistis, Qadiris, Suhrawardis and Naqshbandis as well as many other orders of Sufism. They consider themselves to be the continuation of Sunni Islamic orthodoxy before the rise of Salafi and the Deobandi movement.

Prominent Islamic scholar and theologian, Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi (1796 – 1861), leader of 1857 rebellion, issued Fatwas against Shah Ismail Dehlvi for his doctrine of God’s alleged ability to lie, something they consider blasphemous. Opposition to Wahhabism which emerged in South Asia during the early nineteenth century was led by Khairabadi, one of the early scholars to refute Shah Ismail Dehlvi before Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi (1856 – 1921) a few decades later. By the late nineteenth century, Khan’s movement became known as the Barelvi movement, movement and was defined by rejection of Wahhabi beliefs. Like other Sunni Muslims, the Barelvi base their beliefs on the Quran and Sunnah and believe in monotheism and the prophethood of Mohammed. Although Barelvis may follow any one of the Ash’ari and Maturidi schools of Islamic theology and one of the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i and Hanbali Madhhabs of Fiqh in addition to optionally choosing from one of the Sunni Sufi orders or tariqas, most Barelvis in South Asia follow the Maturidi school of Islamic theology, the Hanafi Madhhab of Fiqh and the Qadiri or Chishti Sufi orders.

However, the Barelvi movement is also defined by a set of theological positions that revolve around the persona of Mohammed and his special status with God. Several beliefs and practices differentiate the movement from others, particularly Deobandis and Wahhabis, including beliefs in the intercession of Mohammed, the knowledge of Mohammed, the Nur Muhammadiyya (“Light of Mohammed”), and whether Mohammed witnesses the actions of people. A central doctrine of this movement is that Mohammed is both human and Nur (“light”). Mohammed’s physical birth was preceded by his existence as a light which predates creation. The primordial reality of Mohammed existed before creation, and God created for the sake of Mohammed. Another central doctrine of this movement is that Mohammed is a viewer and witness of the actions of human beings. This concept was interpreted by Shah Abdul Aziz in Tafsir Azizi Dehlavi in the following words: “The Prophet is observing everybody, knows their good and bad deeds, and knows the strength of faith (Iman) of every individual Muslim and what has hindered his spiritual progress.”[46] A fundamental Barelvi belief is that Mohammed has knowledge of the unseen, which is granted him by God and is not equal to God’s knowledge.[47] Mohammed is believed not to have been “illiterate,” but “untaught,” having learned not from humankind, but from God, his knowledge being universal, and encompassing the seen and unseen realms.[48]

 

Takfirism

By the early twentieth century, Ahl-i Hadith had become an important religious movement all across South Asia.[49] Many Deobandi Ulama saw the Ahl-i Hadith as a hidden front of the Wahhabis.[50] Close links between the Ahl-i Hadith and the Saudi state and Wahhabis go back to the early decades of the twentieth century. As explained by Sikand:

 

While some pioneers among the Ahl-i Hadith did not conceal their differences with the Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia on some points, access to Saudi funds led to a gradual erasure of these differences, so much so that the Ahl-i Hadith came to present itself as a carbon copy of Saudi-style ‘Wahhabism’, with nothing to distinguish itself from it and upholding this form of Islam as normative.[51]

 

The mayhem of sectarian division in the Indian Muslim community began in 1905, when Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi (1856 – 1921), an Indian Islamic scholar and poet who is considered as the founder of the Barelvi movement, visited Mecca and Medina for Hajj. Ahmed Raza prepared a draft document entitled Al Motamad Al Mustanad (“The Reliable Proofs”), which included a Fatwa that branded the founders of Darul Uloom Deoband such as Ashraf Ali Thanwi (1863 – 1943), Rashid Ahmad Nanawtawi (1826 – 1905), and Qasim Nanotwi and those who followed them as Murtad (apostates), making them even despised than non-Muslims. To add insult to injury, Ahmad Raza added a ruling into the Fatwa declaring that whoever does not believe in the apostasy of these Ulama would themselves also be considered apostates. Khan collected scholarly opinions in the Hejaz and compiled them in an Arabic language compendium with the title, Hussam al Harmain (“The Sword of Two Sanctuaries”), a work containing 34 verdicts from 33 ulama from Medina and Mecca. However, the Deobandis countered that the evidence provided to the scholars in Arabia were fabricated and, that Ahmed Raza’s Takfir of them was unjust.[52] Nevertheless, and this initiated a reciprocal series of fatwas between Barelvis and Deobandis which has lasted to the present.

Despite their differences with the Deobandis, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century Indian Ulama of the Ahl-i Hadith movement did not go so far as to openly denounce them as Kafirs, though the charge may seem to have been implied as their scholars tended to accuse their rivals of Shirk. Some pioneer Ahl-i Hadith, such as Maulana Sanaullah Amritsari (1870 – 1943), cooperated with the Deobandi Ulama in the formation of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (“The Union of the ‘Ulama of India”) in 1919, though they bitterly critiqued certain Hanafi practices and beliefs. While most early Ahl-i Hadith Ulama admired the efforts of Mohammed bin Abdul Wahhab, they did not necessarily agree entirely with all his views. For example, not all of them approved of his reported claim that Muslims who did not share his beliefs were Kafirs and should be killed.[53]

The All-India Ahl-i Hadith Conference in 1906 brought together Ulama from different parts of India who were devoted a common commitment to the Ahl-i Hadith tradition. Afterwards, a lot of effort was spent by Ahl-i Hadith Ulama in an attempt to prove rival Muslim groups—Sunni as well as Shiah—as deviant. The Ahl-i Hadith stressed their own claim of representing the single “authentic” Islamic tradition and to further fortify the notion of a separate Ahl-i Hadith identity. In response, their rivals fiercely denounced the Ahl- i Hadith. Nevertheless, despite the bitter relations between the Ahl-i Hadith and others, the early Ahl-i Hadith Ulama did not go so far as to explicitly denounce other Sunni groups as Murtad.[54]

As a reflection of the literalist understanding of Saudi Wahhabi Islam, much of the literature produced by the Ahl-i Hadith of India focuses on the minute details of ritual practices and belief.[55] Their books are devoted to intricate discussions of what they regard as the “correct” manner of praying, performing ablutions and offering Dua (“supplications”), as well as rules related to food, dress, marriage, divorce, etc.. A principle object of attack are rival Muslims, including Sunnis, who are condemned as “aberrant” on account of their purportedly faulty performance of these rituals. Discussions also critique Taqlid, which several Ahl-i Hadith scholars absurdly condemn as akin to shirk, which is akin to denouncing their rivals as being effectively outside the pale of the Ahl al- Sunnah wa‘l Jama‘ah, and, hence, ultimately, non-Muslims.[56]

The Barelvis and the Shiah, who regard Wahhabism as heretical, have received little to no financial support from Saudi sources.[57] While opposition of the early Deobandis to the Ahl-i Hadith and the Saudi Wahhabis stemmed in part from the Wahhabis’ critique of Taqlid and Sufism, Deobandi efforts to distance themselves from the Wahhabis was also attributable to their rivalry with the Barelvi. Husain Ahmad Madani (1879 – 1957), rector of the Deoband madrasa, wrote al-Shahab al-Shaqab against the Wahhabis as a response to a book, Husam al-Harmayn, written by Ahmad Raza Khan, leader of the Barelvis. In the book, Khan collected statements from the writings of numerous Deobandi elders which supposedly “proved” that the Deobandis were Wahhabis, and, therefore, Kafirs (“disbelievers”), adding that those who doubted their being Kafirs were Kafirs themselves.[58]

Although several early Deobandi leaders sought to distance themselves from the Saudi Wahhabis, others tended to be ambiguous in their response to the charge of being Wahhabis themselves. For example, Mohammed Zakariya (1898 – 1982), chief ideologue of the Deobandi-related Tablighi Jamaat, is reported to have openly announced to his followers, “I am a more staunch Wahhabi than all of you.”[59] Zakariya’s father, Yahya Kandhlawi, belonged to a family deeply interested in knowledge and Sufism, and was a student of Rashid Ahmad Gangohi (1826 – 1905), one of the founding scholars of Darul Uloom Deoband, and studied under of his father and his uncle, Ilyas Kandhlawi (1885 – 1944), who founded the Tablighi Jamaat in 1926. Likewise, Ilyas’ son and successor, Yusuf Kandhlawi (1917 – 1965), declared, “We are staunch Wahhabis.”[60]

 


[1] Yoginder Singh Sikand. “Ulema Rivalries and the Saudi Connection.” Retrieved from https://sunninews.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/wahabiahle-hadith-deobandi-and-saudi-connection/

[2] De Poli. Freemansonry and the Orient, p. 15.

[3] Sikand. “Ulema Rivalries and the Saudi Connection.”

[4] Angus Maddison. Development Centre Studies The World Economy Historical Statistics: Historical Statistics (OECD Publishing, 25 September 2003). pp. 256–259.

[5] Sayantan Bera. “India betters its rank in Global Hunger Index.” Mint (October 13, 2014). Retrieved from http://www.livemint.com/Politics/rUGpGL9KeroKGBf0xQw4kK/India-betters-its-rank-in-Global-Hunger-Index.html

[6] Jason Hicke. “How Britain stole $45 trillion from India.” Al Jazeera (December 19, 2018). Retrieved from https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2018/12/19/how-britain-stole-45-trillion-from-india

[7] Sarah Tyacke. “Gabriel Tatton’s Maritime Atlas of the East Indies, 1620–1621: Portsmouth Royal Naval Museum, Admiralty Library Manuscript, MSS 352.” Imago Mundi, 60 :1 (2008), pp. 39–62.

[8] Gelles. The Jewish Journey, p. 154.

[9] Cecil Roth. History of the Great Synagogue (1950). Retrieved from https://www.jewishgen.org/jcr-uk/susser/roth/chone.htm

[10] Samir Abed-Rabbo. “Herzl’s Zionism and Settler Colonialism in Palestine.” Arab Studies Quarterly, 46: (2024), pp. 45.

[11] Charles Boxer. The Dutch in Brazil, 1724–1654 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1957), pp. 10–11; Cited in Samir Abed-Rabbo. “Herzl’s Zionism and Settler Colonialism in Palestine.” Arab Studies Quarterly, 46: (2024), pp. 45.

[12] Eli Faber. Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight (New York: New York University,1988), p. 8; ; Cited in Samir Abed-Rabbo. “Herzl’s Zionism and Settler Colonialism in Palestine.” Arab Studies Quarterly, 46: (2024), pp. 45.

[13] Samir Abed-Rabbo. “Herzl’s Zionism and Settler Colonialism in Palestine.” Arab Studies Quarterly, 46 (2024), pp. 45.

[14] Jessica Harland‐Jacobs. “All in the Family: Freemasonry and the British Empire in the Mid–Nineteenth Century.” Journal of British Studies 42: 4 (2003), p. 467.

[15] Ibid., p. 4.

[16] Ibid., p. 3.

[17] Ibid., p. 3.

[18] Ibid., p. 4.

[19] “India” 1723 Constitutions (Quator Coronati)

[20] Simon Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.” Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, Spring 93 (2021).

[21] Joseph Golder. “Freemasonry in British India 1728-1888,” p. 7.

[22] Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs. Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism (University of North Caroline Press, 2007), p. 172.

[23] Bernard S. Cohn. “Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge.” The Bernard Cohn Omnibu (New Delhi: OUP, 2004); cited in Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[24] Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[25] Ibid.

[26] Cohn. “Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge,” p. 645; cited in Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[27] Deschamps. “Masonic Ritual and the Display of Empire in 19th-Century India and Beyond.”

[28] Joseph Golder. “Freemasonry in British India 1728-1888,” p. 8.

[29] Allen. God’s Terrorists, p. 204–205.

[30] Allen. God’s Terrorists, p. 88.

[31] Kamran Bokhari. “The Long Shadow of Deobandism in South Asia.” Newslines Magazine (November 23, 2021). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20211123222852/https://newlinesmag.com/essays/the-long-shadow-of-deobandism-in-south-asia/

[32] Allen. God’s Terrorists, p. 72.

[33] Rehan Khan. “Shah Ismail Dehlawi, a Grandson of Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Represented a Fusion of Sufism with Salafism.” New Age Islam (February 3, 2020). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20210509084123/https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/rehan-khan/shah-ismail-dehlawi-grandson-shah-waliullah-dehlawi-represented-fusion-sufism-with-salafism/d/121025

[34] Allen. God’s Terrorists, p. 77.

[35] Juan Eduardo Campo. Encyclopedia of Islam (Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 92.

[36] Rehan Khan. “Shah Ismail Dehlawi, a Grandson of Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Represented a Fusion of Sufism with Salafism.” New Age Islam (February 3, 2020). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20210509084123/https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/rehan-khan/shah-ismail-dehlawi-grandson-shah-waliullah-dehlawi-represented-fusion-sufism-with-salafism/d/121025

[37] Barbara Daly Metcalf. Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 56–57.

[38] Rehan Khan. “Shah Ismail Dehlawi, a Grandson of Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Represented a Fusion of Sufism with Salafism.” New Age Islam (February 3, 2020). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20210509084123/https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/rehan-khan/shah-ismail-dehlawi-grandson-shah-waliullah-dehlawi-represented-fusion-sufism-with-salafism/d/121025

[39] Patwant Singh. Empire of the Sikhs: The Life and Times of Maharaja Ranjit Singh (Peter Owen, 2008), pp. 113–124

[40] Allen. God’s Terrorists, p. 87.

[41] Bennett. “Amir ‘Ali,” p. 62.

[42] Rehan Khan. “Shah Ismail Dehlawi, a Grandson of Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Represented a Fusion of Sufism with Salafism.” New Age Islam (February 3, 2020). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20210509084123/https://www.newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/rehan-khan/shah-ismail-dehlawi-grandson-shah-waliullah-dehlawi-represented-fusion-sufism-with-salafism/d/121025

[43] Stephane Lacroix. Global Salafism: Islam’s New Religious Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), p. 61.

[44] Brannon D. Ingram. “2: Normative Order.” Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam. (Oakland, California, USA: University of California Press, 2018). pp. 58–65; Stanly Johny. “5: The Indian Connection.” The ISIS Caliphate: From Syria to the Doorsteps of India (Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd, 2018), pp. 74–75.

[45] Metcalf. Islamic Revival in British India, p. 141.

[46] Sana Khan. “The Prophet is Hazir o Nazir.” Kanzul Islam (June 29, 2013). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20210301152920/http://www.kanzulislam.com/various-fatwa/mufti-abubaker-siddiq/english-fatwa/the-prophet-is-hazir-o-nazir/

[47] Allama Abul Faiz Muhammad Shareef Qadri Razavi (Akbar Booksellers Lahore).

[48] And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic Piety, translated by A. J. Arberry (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), pp. 72, 257.

[49] Brannon D. Ingram. “2: Normative Order.” Revival from Below: The Deoband Movement and Global Islam. (Oakland, California, USA: University of California Press, 2018). pp. 58–65; Stanly Johny. “5: The Indian Connection.” The ISIS Caliphate: From Syria to the Doorsteps of India (Bloomsbury Publishing India Pvt. Ltd, 2018), pp. 74–75.

[50] Sikand. “Ulema Rivalries and the Saudi Connection.”

[51] Ibid.

[52] Ingram. Revival from Below, pp. 7, 64, 100, 241.

[53] Sikand. “Ulema Rivalries and the Saudi Connection.”

[54] Ibid.

[55] Ibid.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid.

Divide & Conquer