[Reader-list] So now, who's waging war against 'popular Islam'?

[Aditya Raj Baul]

Front Page
***Friday, Oct 12, 2007***


The war against popular Islam

Praveen Swami
Islamist groups have made no secret of their loathing for the Ajmer
Sharif shrine
http://www.hindu.com/2007/10/12/stories/2007101261651600.htm


NEW DELHI: The highest form of worship, wrote saint Khwaja Moinuddin
Chishti, is “to redress the misery of those in distress, to fulfil the
needs of the helpless and to feed the hungry.”

Thursday’s bombing of the saint’s shrine at Ajmer — the third in a
series of attacks on Muslim religious institutions after the 2006
bombing of a Sufi shrine in Malegaon and this summer’s strike at the
Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad — have been characterised as attempts to
provoke a pan-India communal war. But the bombings also reflect
another less-understood project: the war of Islamist neoconservatives
against the syncretic traditions and beliefs that characterise popular
Islam in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti is, almost without dispute, the most
venerated Sufi saint of South Asia. Born in 1141 C.E., Chishti is
believed to have studied at the great seminaries of Samarkand and
Bukhara before travelling to India. Ajmer emerged as an important
centre of pilgrimage during the sixteenth century, after Emperor Akbar
undertook a pilgrimage on foot to the saint’s grave.

Chishti’s order laid stress on seven principles, notably the
renunciation of material goods, financial reliance on farming or alms,
independence from economic patronage from the established political
order, the sharing of wealth, and respect for religious differences.

Chishti’s doctrine on the “highest form of worship” led to the saint
often being described as the Garib Nawaz, or emperor of the poor.
Several of the most famous Sufi shrines in South Asia – notably that
of Fariduddin Ganj-i Shakar at Pakpattan in Pakistan, and that of
Nizamuddin Awliya in New Delhi – were born of Chisti’s teachings.

Over the centuries, they have come to command a massive multi-faith
following, attracting Muslims, Hindus and Christians alike. For that
precise reason, they have long been under attack from religious
neoconservatives.

Islamist critics of Sufism have made no secret of their loathing for
shrines like that at Ajmer, which they claim propagate the heresy of
‘shirk’ – an Arabic term commonly translated to mean polytheism, but
which is also used to refer to the veneration of saints and even
atheism.

South Asian terror groups associated with recent attacks on Muslim
shrines — notably the Lashkar-e-Taiba — draw theological inspiration
from the Salafi sect, a neoconservative tradition also sometimes
referred to as Wahabbism. Salafi theologians are intensely hostile to
Sufi orders like that founded by Chishti, characterising them as
apostasy.

In The General Precepts of the Ahlus-Sunnah wal-Jamaah, a pamphlet
which propounds the Salafi doctrine, theologian Shaykh Naasir al’Aql,
sharply criticises religious practices “where the dead are taken as
intermediaries between a person and Allah, supplicating them and
seeking the fulfilment of one’s needs through them, seeking their
assistance and other similar acts.”

Al’Aql, whose work is often drawn on by Lashkar ideologues, argues
that “every avenue that leads to shirk in the worship of Allah, or
innovations in religion – it is obligatory to forbid it.” Another
pamphlet available on the website of the Lashkar’s parent
organisation, the Pakistan-based Jamaat-ud-Dawa, rails against
shrines, demanding that “Muslim leaders combat and uproot this
phenomenon.” Just how this is to be done, the Jamaat-ud-Dawa does not
say – but Lashkar cadre have left little to the imagination.

Terror groups in Jammu and Kashmir have frequently targeted regional
religious institutions that draw on the same syncretic traditions as
that at Ajmer. In June, 2005, for example, the Lashkar-e-Taiba was
held responsible for the attempted assassination of north Kashmir
mystic Ahad B’ab Sopore. Eyewitnesses said the assassination attempt,
in which one person was killed and nine were injured, was carried out
by Qayoom Nassar, a well-known Sopore-based Lashkar operative.

Lashkar cadre are also thought to be responsible for a May 2005 arson
attack that led to the destruction of the 14th century shrine of the
saint Zainuddin Wali at Ashmuqam in south Kashmir. Ashmuqam was
earlier subjected to several grenade attacks, leading to disruption of
festive days there for several years. A month later, Lashkar operative
Bilal Magray was arrested on charges of having thrown a hand grenade
at a Sufi congregation in Bijbehara, injuring 15 people. Dozens of
similar attacks have taken place over the years.

In 2000, Lashkar terrorists destroyed sacramental tapestries Bafliaz
residents had offered at the shrine of Sayyed Noor, one of the most
venerated Sufi saints in the region. As early as June 1994, Lashkar
terrorists stormed the historic Baba Reshi shrine at Tangmarg and
fired on pilgrims.

Perhaps, the most prominent incident in the campaign was the October
1995 siege of the Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar, which houses a relic
claimed to be a hair of Prophet Mohammad. The terrorists threatened to
blow up the shrine unless troops, who had surrounded them, were
withdrawn. A similar siege at Chrar-e-Sharif in May 1996 led to the
destruction of the town’s famous 700-year-old shrine. Despite these
attacks, popular Islam in Jammu and Kashmir has held its own – as it
is likely to do elsewhere in India, too.