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India-Pakistan | ||
The grand Deobandi consensus | ||
2003-12-13 | ||
Since Fred yesterday wondered why members of the Naqshbandi Sufi sect would be assisting Deobandi sectarian outfits I managed to locate this old article (2000) I remember reading, although it is probably of little interest to anyone else. The civil war in Afghanistan and the jehad in Kashmir have gradually veered to a Deobandi consensus. The dominant Hizb e-Islami of Hekmatyar lost favour with the Pakistani establishment in the mid-1990s. In its place, the Taliban of Mullah Umar, trained in the traditional Deobandi jurisprudence, enjoy popularity in Pakistan. In a parallel development, the Wahhabi or Ahle Hadith warriors have gained strength. The most effective jehadi outfit based in Lahore is Lashkar-e-Taiba, functioning as a subordinate branch of Dawat al-Irshad, an organisation with contacts in the Arab world, collecting jehad funds among the expatriate Muslim communities in the West. The third strand of fundamentalist movement which seems attracted to the Wahabi-Deobandi combine in Afghanistan, is the Naqshbandiya. Most of the Muslim-populated North Caucasian region in Russia follows the shrine-worshipping mystical order of the Naqshbandiya. The uprising in Chechnya and its incursion into Dagestan is turning the Naqshbandi followers to the more strict orthodoxy of the Saudi-based Wahhabi order. In Afghanistan, the naqshbandi faith is represented by Sibghatullah Mujadiddi, Afghanistan’s first president chosen by the mujahideen in exile in Peshawar in 1989. Mujaddidi is a descendant of Sheikh Ahmad of Sirhind who led a mystical movement of purification under Emperor Jehangir and was greatly admired by Islamic revivalist movements in India. It is a measure of the greatness of Sheikh Ahmad that the Naqshbandis of Afghanistan, Central Asia, North Caucusus and Turkey are all Mujaddidi today. All three movements, the Deobandi, the Ahle Hadith-Wahhabi, and Naqshbandi-Mudaddidi (in India), are against innovation in Islamic rituals. They oppose the eclecticism that developed among Muslims under the Mughals and wished to separate local accretion from the pure Islamic faith. The founder of the Naqshbandi order, Shaikh Ahmad, compelled the Mughal king Jehangir to persecute the Muslim mystical orders that had developed a spiritual consensus with Hindus and Sikhs. The other preoccupation of the Naqshbandis in India was opposition to the Shiite faith developing in the South of India and in the northern province of Oudh. Shaikh Ahmad had decreed that the Shiites were apostates and had to be put to the sword.
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Posted by:Paul Moloney |