For many South African Muslims, the outrage that met Ebrahim Adam’s lecture was minor compared with the second major event. On 7 March 1987, a group of Tablighis stormed into a mawlud assembly in the Johannesburg suburb of Azaadville and attacked the congregants. One man was killed, and at least six others were critically injured. A week prior to the attack, madrasa students had issued pamphlets calling for Muslims to “unite against Bid‘a” and not attend the upcoming mawlud assembly. After the event, police remained on high alert to the continued potential for violence among mosques in the Transvaal. In Lenasia, the Barelvi-affiliated Saabrie Mosque retained a police presence in the weeks following the attack.47
The immediate response was fierce. After news of the Azaadville incident, the Muslim Youth Movement stated:
The latest outbreak of violence between the Sunni [Barelvi] and the Tablighi Jamaats, has done violence to Islam, which stands for peace and tolerance. What can be more damaging to the spread of Islam in this country than the bad example of Muslims killing Muslims? In a country where inter-group violence has become rife, one would expect Muslims, by virtue of their faith which places great stress on brotherhood and unity, to set the example. Can we really afford to quibble while the country is burdened with greater problems which need the energies of the whole country, including Muslims? . . . The dispute between the Tablighi Jamaat and the Sunni Jamaat is more emotional than rational. . . . The theological debate which grips the two groups has been imported from the Indian subcontinent. It has nothing to do with real Islamic issues and the dynamics of the South African situation. The sooner we export this divisive theological nitpicking back to the Indian subcontinent, the better our chances of getting on with the task of building our country into a land where all the children of Adam will be honoured and their rights upheld.48
Other groups used the fiasco to call attention to the broader struggle against apartheid. Ebrahim Rasool spoke on behalf of the Call of Islam, decrying that the attacks came “at a time when the Muslims were able to galvanize themselves into a force to take on even the apartheid state,” while a community meeting at the Habibia Masjid in Cape Town ended with a resolution demanding that “Darul Ulooms, organizations and institutions of the Deobandi-Tablighi Movement that are responsible for such aggression must be exposed.”49
Beyond organizations like the MYM and Call of Islam, Muslim newspapers published scores of angry letters from Muslims around the country. One Muslim in Overport blamed both Deobandis and Barelvis:
The highly politicized youth see no future in this sectarian and ideologically bankrupt Islam. The process of dawah [proselytization] to non-Muslims has been retarded considerably as nobody is attracted to this “Indian” version of Islam. It is truly amazing that both these groups claim to be practicing the “sunna” and yet none has challenged the illegal “kufr” regime of Botha but each has declared Jihad on fellow Muslims. The Deobandi/Barelvi “schools of thought” have so emasculated Islam that only an impotent shell remains. . . . Ultimately the ulema of both factions are to blame.”50
The Muslim Digest likewise called for a resolution to “differences that have plagued for too long the Muslim community, especially the Deobandi and Bareilly groups.”51 A Sufi organization, the Saberie-Chisty Youth Society of Lenasia, took out a full-page banner in Muslim Views. “We condemn the mindless, barbaric atrocities perpetrated against fellow Muslims who were praising Nabi Muhammad (SAW) on 7 March in Azaadville,” it read, calling for the administration of mosques in the Transvaal to be transferred to committees tolerant of non-Deobandi viewpoints.52
DEVOTIONS OF LIBERATION: THE MAWLUD AND THE ZIKR HALQA
Finally, throughout the 1980s, the very devotional practices that Deobandis had critiqued became platforms for opposing apartheid locally and engaging struggles of Muslims globally. The decade began with angry reactions to a 1981 fatwa condemning the mawlud from the Saudi ‘alim ‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Baz, who later became grand mufti of Saudi Arabia.53 The Jamiatul Ulama Transvaal allegedly reprinted this fatwa in South Africa, and the Imam Ahmed Raza Academy promptly issued its own rebuttal.54 In 1982, the Muslim Digest censured Ibn Baz’s fatwa and called instead for “a united observance by the Muslims of the world of the birth anniversary of the holy Prophet Muhammad.”55 The Barelvi Ahl-e Sunnat wal Jammat responded to the fatwa by organizing the “Meelad-e-Mustapha Conference” at the Soofie Saheb tomb near Durban, which, it claimed, was attended by over ten thousand people.56
There were other respects in which the global politics of the mawlud intersected with local concerns. In November 1986, just a few months before the Azaadville mawlud assault, the Habibia Soofie Saheb Mosque in Cape Town held a mawlud calling for global Islamic revolution against oppression in South Africa and abroad, referencing Ayatollah Hussein ‘Ali Montazeri’s (d. 2009) call to use the Prophet’s birthday as an occasion to draw the worldwide Muslim community into a common mission. It beseeched South African Muslims to express solidarity with Muslims in Sudan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Afghanistan; with African-American Muslims in the United States; and with Muslims elsewhere. “Are not those who are languishing in detention without trial in apartheid South Africa, your and my brothers?” it asked of the mawlud’s supporters.57
The Claremont Main Road Mosque, which had by this point become a major center of anti-apartheid activism in Cape Town, issued a booklet on the political ramifications of the mawlud celebration. Under the leadership first of Hassan Solomon (d. 2009), a towering figure in the anti-apartheid movement and the African National Congress (ANC), and later Abdul Rashied Omar of the Muslim Youth Movement, the Claremont Main Road Mosque was the locus of several intersecting strands of Muslim anti-apartheid activism.58 The booklet introduced the mawlud liturgy by rejecting criticism of mawlud as an illicit innovation, while acknowledging the effect of Deobandi critiques:
Despite the attacks on such a customary practice as bid‘a sayyi-a (evil innovation) by conservative puritanical movements, mauled [sic] celebrations continue to be a popular activity all over the Muslim world. Our position vis-à-vis the debate has been a pragmatic one. . . . We concur that neither the Prophet Muhammad nor his companions ever celebrated his birthday, and that it was an innovation which was introduced centuries after his demise. . . . It is our considered view that mauled celebrations has [sic] been and continues to be a revitalizing institution for our local community, and as such can be classified as a good innovation (bid‘a hasana). We need to be clear however that it is not an obligation, and that its format is pliable (subject to change and reform).59
During the same period in which the mawlud took on a political hue, activists called for organizing local halqas (“circles”) to engage in collective zikr (“remembrance”), to support those held in detention by the government, and to discuss and coordinate activist strategies. While these “circles” did not always have explicit Sufi inflections, historically the halqa has been closely associated with Sufism.60 These calls came from a wide array of activists and leaders, even those with very different political perspectives, including Achmad Cassiem of Qibla, Shaykh Nazeem Mohammed of the Muslim Judicial Council, and Ebrahim Moosa, then director of the Muslim Youth Movement.61 The Muslim Youth Movement also recognized the power of the halqa in organizing against apartheid, calling for students to form activist circles (halaqat). For the MYM, the halqa was both the “epicenter of the Islamic Movement’s programme” and “the base for ideological training.” Like the Call of Islam, the MYM linked disciplines of the self to personal transformation and, by extension, social transformation: “Effectively the Halqah is the base from which a change in the individual should lead to a change in society and the reconstruction of the entire social order in accordance with the Islamic system of life.”62
The Call of Islam mobilized Muslims through a similar strategy. The organization’s pamphlet The Struggle encouraged self-reflection and purification, and the formation of activist halqas in the struggle against apartheid. The Call of Islam invok
ed Sufi concepts of purifying the self (tazkiyat al-nafs) to link self and social transformation; what distinguishes its approach from Deobandis’ is the entirely different attitude toward political engagement: “We must understand that this participation does not take place in an ideal environment or in a vacuum, but in a situation of conflict; a situation which has been reinforced by division, corruption, selfishness and hunger for power. Challenging this whilst struggling on the road to tazkiyyah (self-transformation) will enable us to become subjects in history and not merely objects.”63 They saw the halqa as a means of translating individual theological reflection into concrete social action: the “halqah can help individuals to live the values of solidarity, co-operation and brother/sisterhood. . . . The halqah helps each person base his/her choice on the discoveries the group has made in its analysis of reality. As Muslims, we . . . respond to this reality in terms of a total Islam.”64
INTERLUDE: THANVI’S POLITICS
Amid the chaos of 1970s and ’80s South Africa, and against the backdrop of the pamphlet wars and public clashes between Tablighis and Barelvis we have just examined, the Port Elizabeth–based Deobandi scholar Ahmed Sadiq Desai published a periodical, The Majlis, vehemently criticizing anti-apartheid activists and other Muslims, and crafting highly polemical arguments with reference to Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi’s writings about Sufism, Islamic law, and Muslim politics. Desai approached South Africa in this period in much the same way, and on the same terms, that Thanvi approached India in the 1920s. Indeed, Indian Muslims had asked then the same questions that South Africans were asking. What role or roles should the ‘ulama play in the struggle for independence? Should Muslims mobilize alongside other religious communities toward common political goals? Can they engage in civil disobedience? What forms of resistance does Islamic tradition authorize? Is jihad possible outside of the context of a Muslim polity? We cannot understand Desai’s politics without understanding Thanvi’s. For this reason, we must briefly return to Thanvi’s era to grasp how he formulated his politics at the intersection of Islamic law and Sufi ethics.
In the 1920s and ’30s, Thanvi saw an Indian Muslim community in a state of crisis. His works from that era describe it in terms of multiple “fitnas”—crises that tested the moral underpinnings of the Muslim community.65 India’s Muslims were, in his view, succumbing to the temptations of mass politics in aligning themselves against the British alongside Hindus. Thanvi was, of course, no fan of the British, but he did not support what he saw as ultimately misguided and even dangerous efforts to overthrow British rule, particularly if they entailed groveling at the feet of the Hindu majority. In his assessment, he singled out the Khilafat Movement of 1919–1924 for particular criticism. As the most influential, though ultimately abortive, attempt to organize Muslims against the British in the wake of the First World War, the Khilafat Movement aimed to prevent the victorious Allied forces from carving up the Ottoman Empire—a symbolically resonant vestige of Muslim political power.66
As a number of scholars have noted, several prominent Deobandis supported taking direct action against the British.67 Two in particular, Mahmud Hasan and Husain Ahmad Madani, were famously at the forefront of Muslim participation in anticolonial politics. As I mention in the introduction, Madani is the only Deobandi whose status rivals Thanvi’s as the most important and influential figure in the history of the movement, known for his political activism rather than, as is the case with Thanvi, his written work, which was comparatively thin. Suffice it to say, the following discussion touches only upon the contours of his thought.
In 1920, soon before his death, Mahmud Hasan issued a fatwa in support of Gandhi’s new doctrine of “noncooperation” (tark-i muwalat), drawing on the Qur’an and Hadith to legitimate Muslims withdrawing from government schools, colleges, and employment, and using only Indian goods.68 Gandhi himself had worked out this new tactic in collaboration with Khilafat Movement leaders in 1919.69 Madani, who had been Mahmud Hasan’s student at Deoband, took up the anticolonial activist mantle after his teacher’s death in 1920.70 In the ensuing years, based on his collaboration with Hindu leaders in the Indian Congress, he would develop a notion of a shared Hindu-Muslim polity, a doctrine he called “composite nationalism” (muttahida qaumiyyat). Madani argued that the British stoked Turkish nationalism in order to undermine the Ottoman Empire, and that Indian Muslims could turn the ideology of nationalism against their colonial overlords precisely by joining non-Muslims in a pragmatic unity.71
Thanvi decisively rejected these arguments. The differences of opinion between Thanvi and Madani remain an abiding tension within Deobandi thought, to the extent that other Deobandi scholars have devoted substantial work to mitigating this rift.72 We must be careful not to overstate these differences. For one, Madani was, in many ways, as fiercely and proudly “Deobandi” as Thanvi. He defended Deobandis from the attacks of Ahmad Raza Khan, for instance, writing a book-length rebuttal of Khan’s Husam al-haramayn.73 But their political differences were not insignificant. Thanvi was deeply critical of Madani’s theory of “composite nationalism.”74 Thanvi rejected some prominent Khilafatists’ calls for migration (hijrat) to Afghanistan, premised on the notion that India was the “Mecca” to Afghanistan’s “Medina”—in other words, a hostile domain that Muslims should leave in order to regroup elsewhere and, ultimately, reclaim. In response to Abdul Kalam Azad’s fatwa calling for Muslims to do just this (which some eighteen thousand Muslims took seriously enough to migrate), Thanvi argued there was absolutely no Shari‘a basis for doing so, and, in any case, so long as Muslims had freedom to practice their faith openly in India, there was no reason to leave.75
But this points at a larger anxiety Thanvi had about the ‘ulama in politics. The fundamental role of the ‘ulama was, for Thanvi, to guide the masses, especially when political movements (siyasi tahrik) were such a threat to Islam; instead, as he puts it, they let the masses lead them.76 But he was also wary of how much Indian politics was dominated by “Hindu” interests. We have already noted how Thanvi insisted on the maintenance of Muslim public distinction as a means of shoring up an Islamic identity under siege, and how he sought to regulate the visual, behavioral, and performative dimensions of Muslim life within a broader Indian public that, he believed, was increasingly dominated by Hinduism.77 Thanvi was especially vexed by certain ‘ulama attempting to placate Hindus by declaring the slaughter of cows to be forbidden. These scholars found it “permissible to abandon the outward marks of Islam [shi‘ar-i islam] for the sake of peace.” It was especially abhorrent when they invoked the Qur’an in doing so, as when a certain scholar invoked Qur’an 6:108—“Do not insult those they call upon other than God.”78 He was notoriously critical of ‘ulama who collaborated with Gandhi, whom Thanvi called an “idol” (taghut), a “Satan” (shaitan), a “false messiah/impostor” (dajjal), and an “enemy of Islam” (‘adu al-islam).79
The texture of Thanvi’s politics was laid bare in an extended conversation in 1932, one worth examining in detail, between Thanvi and an unnamed scholar (maulvi) during a gathering of ‘ulama at Thana Bhawan. The maulvi sought Islamic legal justification for helping to liberate Kashmir from its Hindu rulers by sending bands of Muslim volunteers to engage in various forms of passive resistance and noncooperation. In Thanvi’s era, Kashmir had a sizable Muslim majority, but had been ruled by the Hindu Dogra dynasty since 1846. In the decades prior to the 1930s, Kashmiri Muslims were increasingly marginalized both economically and politically, and tensions hit a boiling point with widespread riots in 1931—most notably, one precipitated by an alleged defamation of the Qur’an by a Hindu constable at Jammu Central Jail.80 Prominent Muslims, among them Muhammad Iqbal, sought to assist the Muslims of Kashmir by forming the All-India Kashmir Committee in July 1930. But many were deeply disturbed by the appointment of an Ahmadi to the presidency of the committee and put their support behind another new group, the Majlis-i Ahrar-i Islam, spearheaded largely by Deobandi ‘ulama. By October 1931, the Maj
lis-i Ahrar had adopted the tactic of sending bands of volunteers (jathas) to Kashmir from neighboring provinces and from as far away as Delhi. Using a variety of strategies—mass protests, hunger strikes, mass incarceration, tax evasion—the Ahrar movement targeted not just the Hindu Dogra dynasty, but its British supporters and the Ahmadis that were said to be in collusion with them. At the height of their agitation, some thirty-four thousand Ahrar volunteers filled the jails of Jammu and Kashmir as well as the Punjab.81 While the discussion between Thanvi and the unnamed maulvi does not mention the Ahrar by name, it was recorded shortly after the Ahrar began their agitations, and it seems reasonable to infer that the unnamed maulvi was a member of this group. Why wouldn’t Thanvi have thrown his support behind a movement led by Deobandi ‘ulama, one aligned not with but against Hindus, and one focused, among other things, on combatting the Ahmadi presence in Kashmir, a sect that Thanvi was elsewhere always quick to condemn?
The maulvi begins the conversation by asking Thanvi a simple question: “Bands of Muslims are going to Kashmir, but not with the intention of fighting. Rather, they are going in order to put pressure on the government. What is the Shari‘a status of this?” Thanvi notes, first of all, that the Shari‘a legitimates only fighting (qital), not other tactics, and even then, only under certain conditions and in specified forms. Moreover, either one has the strength (qudrat) to fight or one does not. In the latter case, one must exercise patience (sabr). “There is no middle ground between these two choices,” Thanvi explains.82 The maulvi counters with an entirely different premise. If we consider the conditions of modern politics, he says, we will see that “the public” (pablik) is an entity capable of force and resistance in and of itself, using means that fall outside of the Shari‘a-authorized fighting. Thanvi responds by stating that a validation of such resistance would require, at minimum, independent reasoning (ijtihad) from the Qur’an and Sunna to substantiate it from clear textual precedents (nusus). As Thanvi states, “This [proposed action] is an ijtihad in opposition to the textual sources [nusus], and it is not our right [haqq] to exercise ijtihad. The two situations I explained earlier [fighting or exercising restraint] are textually authenticated [mansus], whereas your plan and method are not.”83 Thanvi describes himself as a “dyed-in-the-wool muqallid,” someone who engages in the taqlid of Imam Abu Hanifa exclusively—or if he absolutely must, Thanvi states, he will follow Abu Hanifa’s students Imam Muhammad and Abu Yusuf. But “nowadays everyone considers himself qualified to do ijtihad.”84 The means by which these bands of volunteers are pursuing their goal—hunger strikes, mass protests, and so on—are what he derisively calls “taqlid of other nations.” In other words, not only is the unnamed maulvi failing to remain within the parameters of legal taqlid, but he is effectively replacing that taqlid with the slavish imitation of non-Muslims. Thanvi adds that these various strategies are not “transmitted from the pious predecessors [salaf].”85
Revival From Below Page 27