Bennett, Clinton & Charles M. Ramsey (Eds.) - South Asian Sufis - Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny (2012)

South Asian Sufis
Also available from Continuum

In Search of Muhammad, Clinton Bennett
Studying Islam, Clinton Bennett
Sufism, Mahdism and Nationalism, Douglas H. Thomas
South Asian Sufis
Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny
Edited by
Clinton Bennett and Charles M. Ramsey
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Clinton Bennett, Charles M. Ramsey and Contributors 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
Clinton Bennett, Charles M. Ramsey and Contributors have asserted their right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of
this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
e-ISBN:
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

South Asian sufis : devotion, deviation and destiny / edited by Clinton Bennett and
Charles M. Ramsey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-5127-8 (hardcover)
1. Sufism–South Asia. 2. Sufis–South Asia. 3. Islam–South Asia.
I. Bennett, Clinton. II. Ramsey, Charles M. III. Title.
BP188.8.S64S68 2011
297.40954–dc23 2011036221
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

In memory of Professor Syed Hasan Askari (1932–2008), philosopher,
mystic and bridge-builder, Clinton’s Muslim teacher at the Centre for the
Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Birmingham 1978–9.
To my father, John T. Ramsey, ever my guide, example, hero, and friend.
In you we hear Hafiz: I am a hole in a flute that the Christ’s breath moves
through—Listen to this music.
Contents
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: South Asian Sufis, Continuity, Complexity, and Change 1

Clinton Bennett
Chapter 1: Iran’s Role in Stimulating South Asian Islam 15

Clinton Bennett
Chapter 2: A Model of Sufi Training in the Twenty-First Century:

A Case Study of the Qādiriyya in Hyderabad 31
Mauro Valdinoci
Chapter 3: Understanding the Philosophy of Spirituality

at Shrines in Pakistan 43
Dr Hafeez-ur-Rehman Chaudhry
Chapter 4: Spiritual Power and ‘Threshold’ Identities:

The Mazārs of Sayyid Pīr Waris Shāh Abdul Latīf Bhitāi 61
Uzma Rehman
Chapter 5: Du’a: Popular Culture and Powerful Blessing at the ‘Urs 83

Pnina Werbner
Chapter 6: The Sufi Center of Jhok Sharif in Sindh (Pakistan):

Questioning the Ziyārat as a Social Process 95
Michel Boivin
Chapter 7: When Sufi Tradition Reinvents Islamic Modernity.

The Minhāj-ul Qur’ān, a Neo-Sufi order in Pakistan 111
Alix Philippon
viii Contents
Chapter 8: Making the Case for Sainthood in Modern

Bangladesh: Narrative Strategies and the
Presentation of Holiness in the Life
of Zia ul-Haqq Maizbhandari 123
Sarwar Alam
Chapter 9: Ahmad Sirhindī: Nationalist Hero,

Good Sufi, or Bad Sufi? 141
Arthur Buehler
Chapter 10: Encountering the Unholy: The Establishment

of Political Parties by Sufi Masters in
Modern Bangladesh 163
Sarwar Alam
Chapter 11: The Transformation and Development

of South Asian Sufis in Britain 181
Ron Geaves
Chapter 12: Rishīwaer: Kashmir, the Garden of the Saints 197

Charles M. Ramsey
Chapter 13: Bangladeshi Sufism – An Interfaith Bridge 211

Clinton Bennett
Chapter 14: A Garden Amidst the Flames:

The Categorical Imperative of Sufi Wisdom 233
Hugh van Skyhawk
Chapter 15: South Asian Sufism in America 247

Marcia Hermansen
Chapter 16: Sufis and Social Activism: A Chīshtī

Response to Communal Strife in India Today 269
Kelly Pemberton
Conclusion: South Asian Sufis, Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny 285

Charles M. Ramsey
Bibliography 293
Index 313
Notes on Contributors
Dr. Sarwar Alam teaches at the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic
Studies of University of Arkansas. He received his doctorate in Public Policy
from the same university in 2006. He graduated from Chittagong University in
Political Science and has an MA in Human Resource Development from Pitts-
burg State University. Before moving to the United States, he served in the Civil
Service of Bangladesh, working as an assistant secretary in the Ministries of Pri-
mary and Mass education, Women’s and Children’s Affairs and Textiles and
Jute. He also served as a magistrate in several rural areas. He was a postdoctoral
fellow in the department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory
University, Atlanta, Georgia between 2007 and 2010. He is currently preparing
a manuscript for publication entitled Jewels of Honor: the Perception of Power, Pow-
erlessness, and Gender Among Rural Muslim Women of Bangladesh. His two chapters
in this book are expanded from synopsis presented at annual meetings of the
American Academy of Religion, respectively at Montreal, Canada (2009) and
Atlanta, Georgia (2010).
Dr. Clinton Bennett divides his teaching between SUNY New Paltz, Marist Col-
lege, Poughkeepsie, NY and Cambridge, UK. He completed his MA at Birming-
ham University in 1985, his PhD in 1989, both in Islamic Studies. A Fellow of
the Royal Asiatic Society and the Royal Anthropological Institute, he also
received the MEd from Oxford and a BA in Theology from Manchester, where
he trained for ordination. A Baptist missionary in Bangladesh 1979–82, he
maintains close personal and professional ties with South Asia. Director of
interfaith relations for the British Council of Churches 1986–92, he has served
on not-for-profit management committees, local, national and international
ecumenical agencies, chaired a school governing body and represented an
NGO at the UN. As associate professor of Islam and South Asian Studies at Bay-
lor University, TX (1998–2001) he mentored Charles Ramsey’s MA. Special
interests include post-colonial theory, use of film and literature in teaching,
issues surrounding objectivity and subjectivity in religious studies, religion’s
role in conflict resolution, contemporary Muslim thought, identity and belong-
ing in multi-cultural contexts. He has written ten books, numerous articles,
x Notes on Contributors
reviews, chapters, editorials, and encyclopedia and dictionary entries. He is

editor of the Continuum Studying World Religions series. Home Page www.
clintonbennett.net Email bennettc@newpaltz.edu
Dr. Michel Boivin is research fellow at the Centre for Indian and South Asian
Studies (CNRS-EHESS) in Paris and he teaches Contemporary History of South
Asia. After training in contemporary History and Islamic Studies, he specialized
on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Muslim societies of South Asia. He
devoted a number of years to the study of Ismaili communities of this area, from
which four books were published and numerous academic papers. Later on, he
shifted to Sufism as expressed in the “Sindhi world”. The “Sindhi world”
includes the Pakistan province of Sindh, as well as part of Western India and
also the Sindhi diaspora (See M. Boivin and M.C. Cook (ed.), 2010, Interpreting
the Sindhi World: Essays on Society and History (Karachi: OUP,). His last book in
English is Artefacts of Devotion: A Sufi Repertoire of the Qalandariyya in Sehwan Sharif,
Sindh, Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press), while in French, it is Le sou-
fisme antinomien dans le sous-continent indien. Lal Shahbaz Qalandar et la tradition de
la Qalandariyya (Paris, Les Editions du Cerf), both published in 2011.
Dr. Arthur F. Buehler spent five years studying in the Arab world, including
teaching for the British Council in Yemen for three years, before doing gradu-
ate work under the tutelage of Annemarie Schimmel. His PhD thesis submitted
at Harvard University was Charisma and Exemplar: Naqshbandi Spiritual Authority
in the Panjab, 1857-1947 (1993). He wrote Sufi Heirs of the Prophet (1998) after
three years of fieldwork in the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent. His third book, a
selected translation of the collected Persian letters of Ahmad Sirhindi will be
published in 2012 (Paulist Press). Presently he is a senior lecturer at Victoria
University, Wellington, New Zealand and an editor of the Journal of the History of
Sufism (Paris/Istanbul). His current project is to write an introduction to Sufism
that speaks directly to a general twenty first-century audience including Sufi
practitioners to be published by I.B.Tauris.
Dr. Ron Geaves holds a chair in the Comparative Study of Religion in the The-
ology and Religious Studies of Liverpool Hope University. His research inter-
ests focus upon the transmigration of Hinduism, Sikhism, and Islam into the
UK. He began his work on the study of contemporary Islam and its diverse reli-
gious groups in 1990 when he embarked upon postgraduate research at the
University of Leeds focusing on the newly created Community Religions Proj-
ect. His PhD (The Sectarian Influences within Islam in Britain with special reference to
community) was published in 1996 as a Community Religions Project and remains
in publication and is essential reading for postgraduates researching British
Islam. It was during the fieldwork for the thesis that he developed his interest
in contemporary manifestations of Islam with an emphasis on lived religions.
Notes on Contributors xi
From then until now his publications are numerous, including student texts on
the study of religion. In recent works he has been arguing for the revival of
Sufism globally (see 2007, 2008, 2009 2009c) and hopes to build upon this work
with new research projects in the Levant region. In addition to his prolific pub-
lishing record, he is the editor of the Journal, Fieldwork in Religion, and the
Director of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Muslims in Britain and the
previous chair of the Muslims in Britain Research Network.
Dr. Marcia Hermansen is Director of the Islamic World Studies program at Loy-
ola University Chicago where she teaches courses in Islamic Studies and Reli-
gious Studies in the Theology Department. She received her PhD from the
University of Chicago in Arabic and Islamic Studies. In the course of her
research and language training she lived for extended periods in Egypt, Jordan,
India, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan and she conducts research in Arabic, Persian,
Urdu, and Turkish as well as the major European languages. Her books include
Shah Wali Allah’s Treatises on Islamic Law (Fons Vitae 2010) and The Conclusive
Argument from God, a study and translation (from Arabic) of Shah Wali Allah of
Delhi’s, Hujjat Allah al-Baligha (Brill 1996). She was a co-editor of the Encyclope-
dia of Islam and the Muslim World (2003). Dr. Hermansen has contributed numer-
ous academic articles in the fields of Islamic Thought, Sufism, Islam, and
Muslims in South Asia, Muslims in America, and Women and Gender in Islam.
Her studies of the American Muslim community have included articles on con-
version, Muslim youth and girls, and American Sufi movements.
Dr. Kelly Pemberton is assistant professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at

the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and director of gradu-
ate studies in the department of religion. Her research has covered Sufi mysti-
cism, reform, and revival, and Islamic networks in South Asia and the Middle
East, especially as these relate to women’s increased entry into market
economies, educational institutions, civil society organizations, and positions of
religious leadership. Recent publications include a co-edited volume of col-
lected essays, titled Shared Idioms Sacred Symbols and the Articulation of Identities in
South Asia, (Routledge 2009), a monograph titled Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines
in India (University of South Carolina Press 2010), and “An Islamic Discursive
Tradition on Reform as Seen in the Writing of Deoband’s Maulana Taqi
‘Usmani,” Muslim World Vol 99, no. 3 (July 2009). Aside from teaching, she also
consults on projects focusing on women in the Middle East and Asia for non-
profit organizations and government agencies.
Dr. Alix Philippon received her PhD from the Institute of Political Science,
Aix-en-Provence, France, where she is currently teaching. Her geographical
specialty is Pakistan, where she lived for many years in the course of her research.
Her work focuses on the political dimensions of Sufism in Pakistan. She has
xii Notes on Contributors
notably analyzed the re-composition and mobilization of (neo) Sufi orders,

especially those belonging to the Barelvi theological school. Her first book
(Sufism and Politics in Pakistan. The Barelwi movement in the shadow of the “War on
Terror”) was published in French by Karthala Publishing House in 2011. She has
authored articles in The Muslim World, ISIM Review, Chronos: revue d’histoire de
l’Université de Balamand and chapters in upcoming books, and has also directed
a documentary on dance in Pakistan with Faizaan Peerzada (Laatoo, 2002).
Charles M. Ramsey has lived and worked in India since 2000. He directs the
Center for Islamic Studies at University Institute in New Delhi, and is a visiting
faculty at University of Kashmir, Srinagar. He is an active member of the Com-
mon Word Movement and an advisor to the National Peace Committee for
Interfaith Harmony in Pakistan. He is working on PhD research under Dr. David
Thomas at Birmingham University, and previously studied Asian Studies and
Religion at Baylor University, where Dr. Clinton Bennett mentored his MA the-
sis. He also attended graduate studies in the Centre for Development, Environ-
ment, and Policy at University of London (SOAS).
Dr. Uzma Rehman is an Associate at Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Univer-

sity of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her PhD thesis was a study of how religious
identities are constructed at the shrines of Sufi saints Saiyid Pir Waris Shah and
Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh, Pakistan. In fall
2009, she taught a course titled “Contrasting Trends in Islam and Muslim Iden-
tity in Pakistan: Case of Sufi Shrines” to the students at the Master’s Program for
Peace, Development and Conflict Studies, University of Jaume I, Castellon,
Spain. She also taught a PhD course during January–April 2011 titled “Sufism
and Muslim Identity in Pakistan: History, Politics and Practices” at the Govern-
ment College University Lahore, Pakistan. She is currently working on a new
research project titled “Social Support and Counseling: Organization and Func-
tions of a Sufi Lodge in Contemporary Pakistan” that explores how institutions
associated with popular forms of Islam help fill the vacuum in terms of social
service provision left by the Pakistani state in the early twenty-first century.
Dr. Hafeez-ur-Rehman is tenured track professor of Cultural Anthropology at

the Department of Anthropology, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. Since
2003 he is also the Chairman of Department of Anthropology. He has pub-
lished more than 50 research articles in scholarly journals and several book
reviews. His work on Saints and Shrines in Pakistan from anthropological per-
spective distinguishes him from other contemporary scholars of this discipline.
He has also participated in a number of conferences organized at National
and International level and shared his findings. Besides teaching, he is also
involved in applied anthropology and has conducted several research studies
Notes on Contributors xiii
(63 research projects) with various international organizations. His area of

specialization in applied anthropology is Education, Health, Migration, Women
and Child trafficking etc. He worked as link coordinator with the University of
Sussex, UK, under the Higher Education Link Program. The Project was spon-
sored by British Council, Islamabad and Higher Education Commission,
Government of Pakistan.
Dr. Hugh van Skyhawk is professor of comparative religion in the Taxila Insti-
tute of Asian Civilizations of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and asso-
ciate professor of Indology (Privatdozent) at the Institute of Indology of the
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. From 1978 to 1992, van Skyhawk stud-
ied the History of South Asian Religions and Indology with Günther-Dietz
Sontheimer (1933–92) and Hermann Berger (1926–2005). He published a
monograph (Bhakti und Bhakta. Religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zum Gottes-
begriff und zur religiöesen Umwelt des Śri Sant Ekanāth, Stuttgart 1990) and numer-
ous articles on devotional religion in the Indian Deccan and the cults of
Hindu-Muslim holy men. From 1992 to 2002 and 2005, respectively, van Sky-
hawk worked with Hermann Berger and Karl Jettmar (1918–2002) on the lan-
guages, cultures, and religious history of the Burushos of Hunza and Nager
(Karakoram). This period of collaboration yielded two monographs Libi Kisar.
Ein Volksepos im Burushaski von Nager (Wiesbaden 1996) and Burushaski-Texte aus
Hispar. Materialien zum Verständnis einer archaischen Bergkultur in Nordpakistan
(Wiesbaden 2003) as well as numerous related articles. From 2000 to 2005
van Skyhawk worked on the languages and cultures of the Hindu Kush and
Karakoram with Georg Buddruss (Mainz), especially on the Domaaki language
of the ironsmiths and musicians of Hunza and Nager. In 2008, van Skyhawk
co-edited (with Soren Lassen) Sufi Traditions and New Departures and, in 2009,
edited a tribute volume to the first generation of modern German researchers
in the Hindu Kush and Karakoram (Masters of Understanding: German
Scholars in the Hindu Kush and Karakoram, 1955–2005). In 2008, van Skyhawk
received the Peace Award of the Belgian-Pakistani Non-Governmental Organi-
zation (NGO) Institute of Peace and Development (INSPAD). Since 2008, the
promotion of inter-faith and peace dialogues has been the focal point of van
Skyhawk’s work.
Mauro Valdinoci obtained his MA in Anthropology from the University of

Modena and Reggio Emilia in 2007. His thesis was an ethnographical study of
the dargāh of Sayyid Baba Sharf al-din Suhrawardi (d. 1286) in Hyderabad
(A. P.), a popular pilgrimage centre visited by both Muslims and Hindus. The
thesis addressed issues of ritual and spiritual authority. At present he is attend-
ing a PhD in Anthropology at the same university. During the period 2008–10
he carried out his fieldwork in Hyderabad for a total of twelve months, studying
xiv Notes on Contributors
different branches of the Qadiria Sufi order. His dissertation deals with strategies
of identity making and of adaptation of Sufism to the complexities of twenty-first
century life. Furthermore, it explores the responses of the Qadiri Sufis to the
attacks of the Ahl-i Hadīth and other Salafi-oriented Muslims.
Dr Pnina Werber is professor emita of social anthropology at Keele University,

UK. An urban anthropologist, she has studied Muslim South Asians in Britain
and Pakistan and, more recently, the women’s movement and the Manual Work-
ers Union in Botswana as part of the ESRC programme on Non-Governmental
Public Action. Since 2008, she has been principal investigator of two major proj-
ects: ‘New African Migrants in the Gateway City: Ethnicity, Religion, Citizenship’
(ESRC) and ‘In the Footsteps of Jesus and the Prophet: Sociality, Caring and the
Religious Imagination in the Filipino Diaspora’ (AHRC). In 2006, she convened
the Association of Social Anthropologists diamond jubilee conference on Cos-
mopolitanism and Anthropology. Her published articles and collected volumes
engage with the challenges presented by the rise of Islamic radicalism, the Rush-
die affair, cultural hybridity, migration and culture, religious identity, women,
citizenship and difference. She has presented plenary addresses to the Austra-
lian, Swiss and American Associations and been invited to give keynote addresses
throughout Europe, the USA, Australia, Israel, Pakistan, and Indonesia. She has
been co-editor of the prestigious ‘Postcolonial Encounters’ series published by
Zed Books (distributed by Palgrave in the US). In addition, she organizes the
annual Pakistan Workshop at Satterthwaite. Her monographs, Imagined Diaspo-
ras among Manchester Muslims (2002) Pilgrims of Love (2003) and The Migration
Process (1990; new ed 2002) make up the Manchester Migration Trilogy, a series
of single-authored books tracing the processes of Pakistani migration, commu-
nity formation, religious transnationalism and diaspora over a period of fifty
years. Her website is http://www.pninawerbner.co.uk
Acknowledgments
Many people, libraries, friends, and colleagues made this book possible. The
idea began with Charles Ramsey in conversation with Clinton Bennett. It quickly
developed into a proposal for Continuum’s consideration. We wish to acknowl-
edge the participation and helpful recommendations from Ron Geaves, John
Renard, Carl Ernst, and Syed Hossein Nasr, along with that of all our authors,
whose expertise and knowledge were indispensable in turning an idea into a
book. Contributors represent many nations and academic fields, making this an
international, multi-disciplinary project. Charles Ramsey recruited some
through his large network of contacts in the Indian subcontinent. Clinton Ben-
nett recruited some, mainly through membership of the American Academy of
Religion’s Islam section. All brought enthusiasm, experience, and suggestions
for improving the book, to the project.
Our commissioning editor at Continuum was Kirsty Schaper, now succeeded
by Lalle Pursglove. We are grateful to both for their unstinting commitment at
each stage of the process, from initial enquiry through to completion. We also
thank Tom Crick and Rachel Eisenhauer of Continuum and other team mem-
bers for past and current involvement. It was a pleasure for Clinton Bennett to
collaborate with Charles Ramsey on this project. The former had the privilege
of mentoring the latter’s MA research at Baylor University, Texas. Off and on,
they maintained contact over the years. Clinton had started his career working
in Bangladesh; Charles moved to India soon after receiving his Masters. We
both believe that this book represents a valuable addition to literature on con-
temporary Sufism, especially with its focus on South Asia, still a relatively
neglected area of scholarly enquiry. Our best efforts to standardize use of dia-
critics and transliterations may have been confounded by technology, for which
we apologize. We are responsible for errors, not individual contributors. Finally,
Charles and Clinton are grateful to their families for the much needed moral
support, especially from their respective wives, Brooke Ramsey and Rekha Ben-
nett. This book is dedicated to the memory of Clinton’s Muslim teacher at Bir-
mingham, Professor Syed Hasan Askari, philosopher, mystic, and bridge-builder
and to Charles’ father, John Ramsey, his “guide, example, hero, and friend”.
Clinton Bennett and Charles M. Ramsey

July 2011
Introduction: South Asian Sufis—Continuity,
Complexity, and Change
Clinton Bennett
Often described as the soul of Islam, Sufism is one of the most interesting yet
least studied facets of this global religion. Sufism is the softer, more inclusive,
and mystical form of Islam. Although militant Islamists dominate the headlines,
the Sufi ideal has captured the imagination of many. Rumi—a thirteenth-
century sage— continues to be a best selling poet in America. As new versions
of Western Sufism emerge, some academics are observing the role of Sufism in
making Islam more palatable to Europeans. In his prize-winning Islam’s Fateful
Path, Zidane Meriboute describes Sufi Islam as “liberal, rational, enlightened
and tolerant” and as the “only way in which Islam will be able to co-exist in the
West.”1 On the other hand, Sufi Muslims have a reputation for nonparticipation
in politics. There are exceptions, though. Arguably, Sufi Islam is an alternative
to the form of Islam that media representation depicts as dominant. Some Sufi
engagement in politics is described in this book. Although Sufism’s potential
for changing the political landscape across Muslim space is not labored, this
exploration of Sufi Islam does challenge popular distortions and writing that
focuses on a limited, narrow aspect of the Muslim reality.
While medieval Sufi philosophy and poetry have received scholarly attention,
study of the applied—rather lived—contemporary practice of Sufism has been
quite limited. There is a body of literature related to historic personalities, clas-
sical texts, and even specific communities but little has been done to observe
and describe the current practice of the orders.2 Ethnographic compilations
have presented research carried out in Europe and North America while the
Sufi heartlands have attracted less attention.3
Consequently, there is a gap in the literature regarding ethnographical stud-
ies of Sufism in South Asia.
Yet nowhere in the world is the handprint of Sufism more observable than
South Asia. Not only does the largest Muslim population of the world reside
there but also the greatest concentration of Sufis. The heritage of shrines pro-
vides a golden thread to guide the study of contemporary orders (turuk). This
book sets out to follow the thread, to gather studies of active Sufi communities
in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh that shed light on the devotion, and devia-
tion, and destiny of Sufism in South Asia. It examines Sufism as a complex phe-
nomenon, which includes continuities with past tradition and processes of
2 South Asian Sufis
change in response to new contexts and circumstances. The book aims to

provide a composite of contemporary Sufi orders in Pakistan, India, and Ban-
gladesh. A few chapters, such as Buehler’s, van Skyhawk’s, and to some degree
my own, are more historical but these create links between analysis and current
realities or contexts. The text draws from the extensive work of indigenous and
international scholars to provide an in-depth study of the subject. Sufi Islam also
has a significant presence in Africa. The focus on South Asia represents an
attempt to make the project manageable, leaving other geographical contexts
for those with relevant expertise to cover in another volume. One book cannot
adequately survey the whole Sufi world. I was recently asked why no Arab contri-
butions were included, to which my response was “that is another book.” Books
on Sufism in Arab space, in Africa and elsewhere, would be equally viable and
valuable. Due to the influence of currents from Iran that flowed into South
Asian Islam, the first chapter explores Iran’s impact on the development of Sufi
thought and practice further east. Migration, too, has carried South Asians to all
parts of the globe, so South Asian Sufism has a significant presence in such con-
texts as the United Kingdom and North America. Partly to attract wider interest
in the book, partly because contact between Sufis in Diaspora and South Asia
has an impact of its own, chapters discuss Sufis in Britain and Sufis in North
America. While South Asia, as Hermansen points out in her chapter, stretches
“beyond Pakistan and India to include Sufi trends from Sri Lanka and even Fiji,”
we have limited our focus to what was historically the Indian subcontinent.
Research questions
Several questions informed the research behind this book: “Which of the his-
toric turuk (singular tariqa) continue to thrive? Is the current devotion consistent
with the founders’ teachings—is the link still strong?” How have they impacted
society, particularly as related to religious coexistence and gender relations, and
what potential is there for future impact?” How will the global dialogue within
schools of thought in Islam impact Sufism? Will it endure?” Does Sufi Islam, of
which the Saudi state disapproves, with its openness and bridge-building capac-
ity, sit more comfortable with multiparty democracy? These questions were used
to create consistency across chapters, which were circulated for comment and
cross-referencing by editors. The concept was for chapters to flow into each
other, creating a cohesive study, not a collection of disparate, independent
articles.
Given that Islam in Asia constitutes 60% of all Muslims and that several
increasingly stable democracies exist, three of which have elected women lead-
ers, there may be lessons that South Asian Islam can offer to Muslims elsewhere.
For example, the Arab states are the second lowest region in terms of women’s
parliamentary participation and are weaker democratically. Interest in South
Introduction: South Asian Sufis—Continuity, Complexity, and Change 3
Asian Islam as possibly offering an alternative model to Arab Islam (20% of the
world’s Muslims) is increasing, as is interest in this version of Islam as an alter-
native to more militant expressions, not least of all in the Muslim Diaspora.
However, while there are a number of studies looking at the growth of funda-
mentalist Islam and the possibility of fragmentation of existing states in the
region, Sufi Islam remains relatively neglected. This work aims to help to shift
the focus back to what may be regarded as a positive phenomenon. The stron-
ger and healthier this tendency within Islam is, the less likely it is that counter
trends, less embracing of diversity, gender equality, and democratic governance
will flourish. The distinctive feature of this work is that it surveys the whole
region, rather than focusing on one context.
Contributors and methodology
Contributors represent a range of disciples. The majority work broadly within

Religious Studies, either with a specialty in Islam or with Islam as an exclusive
focus. At least one contributor has training in two disciplines, history and Islamic
studies. Three hold formal qualifications in anthropology. Almost all use ethnog-
raphy or social scientific research methods, observation and interview alongside
historical and text-based study. Every contributor has close ties with the Subcon-
tinent. Some are from there, some live there, and all have spent time researching
or working there. One contributor holds a doctorate in Political Science and
another in the related field of Public Policy. At least two contributors have back-
grounds that combine Religious Studies and Theology. This indicates the breadth
of interest and expertise that the authors bring to the book. The contributors
represent four continents, a wealth of experience, and years of combined inter-
est in and research on South Asian Sufism. Several of our authors reference
other contributors’ published work, indicating the value of their research.
Recognizing that different writers have developed their own methodological
approaches, they were allowed a degree of flexibility. The editors did not want
to place too many limitations on authors’ methodologies and work processes.
Nonetheless, an underlying goal is to listen to authentic voices, speaking on
behalf of actual Sufi practice, resisting where possible the imposition of exter-
nal notions. Contributors draw on various analytical tools, such as Victor Turn-
er’s concept of communitas and Hippolyte Delehaye on the purpose of
hagiography and Asef Bayet on “imagined solidarities.” These are described in
relevant chapters. Few academics, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, who choose
to research Sufi Islam lack sympathy toward their subject, even though they may
claim to be value-free, or neutral. However, there is no single, preconceived
concept of what is or is not true or pure Islam, deviant or orthodox behind this
book. When these terms and distinctions are used, meaning is specific to par-
ticular contexts and discourses as described and analyzed by individual
4 South Asian Sufis
c ontributors. Contributors were free, if they wished, to declare their presence

in the text (through use of first person, for example) or to avoid the first per-
son. They were free to indicate changes in perception, reflecting on the research
process, or to refrain from doing so.
One change in this book, between conception and birth, relates to how chap-
ters are structured. Initially, editors planned to order chapters geographically,
moving neutrally vis-à-vis content from Pakistan in the North, south through
India, and then East into Bangladesh. However, anxious to ensure coherency,
which can be problematic in a collected volume such as this, as contributors
submitted chapters and common themes emerged, it made better sense to
structure by theme. There is some overlap between chapters. This could have
been avoided, through the editorial process. However, while—as stated above—
the hope was to produce as cohesive a volume as possible, chapters may be read
out of sequence, so each also needs to stand alone in terms of argumentation,
analysis, and historical background. The editors decided to retain the chapters’
flow and integrity as much as possible, so they applied a light cutting hand.
Where possible, conversation has been created between chapters, usually in
footnotes but sometimes within the main text. The license extended to authors
included how they use footnotes, although citation style is standardized. The
composite bibliography cites main sources, leaving most internet references to
footnotes. Internet addresses were correct at time of writing.
The themes
The themes that emerged are spiritual practice; community bonds, and social
relationships; politics; the issue of what is “traditional Islam” as opposed to
innovation or bid’a; and interfaith openness. Bid’a is traditionally proscribed in
Islam; taqlid (imitation or following the example of the prophet and Muslims
who base their conduct solely on the Qur’an and Sunnah) is encouraged.
Clearly, what some denounce as innovation others regard as acceptable, often
contextual, adaptation. Issues about the acceptability of saint veneration, visit-
ing tombs, praying through saints, represent bid’a for some critics of Sufi Islam.
Debate on all these issues surfaces several times in this book. Islah (reform, to
repair or reshape) has a long pedigree, however, and is wholly legitimate.
Reform can take a revivalist form, aiming to reestablish what is perceived to be
more authentic Islam from its earliest period, or progressive, suggesting that an
application of Islam’s spirit can evolve better, equal, or even more legitimate
expressions of Islam. In the subcontinent, Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938),
referred to and cited in this book, and Syed Ameer ‘Alī (1849–1928) (see my
second chapter) both championed this approach. Iqbal was critical of some
aspects of Sufism, as were revivalist reformers in India. However, he can be said
to “belong to the history of Sufism, to which he made both scientific and
ractical contributions.”4 This is yet another example of how reform in South

p
Asia has rarely set itself in complete opposition to Sufism.
My chapter on Iran’s influence remains Chapter 1, as originally conceived,
since Iran’s role in influencing Indian Islam is widely recognized. This provides
a gateway from one important space where Sufism flourished into another. This
chapter traces cultural and religious exchange across the Iran–India border
back to pre-Islamic times. Ideas and objects flowed both ways. An ancient tradi-
tion of religious tolerance existed in both spaces. Indian rulers adapted Iranian
court etiquette before Muslims arrived as conquerors and rulers. Conquerors
and dynasties were of Turkic and Turkic-Mongol origin, not Iranian. However,
they spoke Farsi and more often than not sponsored Farsi culture. Even in Ben-
gal, at a distance from much direct Iranian influence, the upper or Ashraf class
preferred Farsi over the local language. Over time, that was itself influenced by
Farsi. Sufi ideas about the unity of truth (wahdat al haqq) and the unity of being
(wahdat al-wujud) impacted Indian Islam, which developed strategies for build-
ing on and blending with preexisting beliefs and concepts, instead of replacing
them. Iranian Rumi (d. 1273) became the most cited of any poet across the
Subcontinent. Six chapters in this book (Rehman, Phillipon, Ramsey, Alam,
Van Skyhawk, and Hermansen as well as my first chapter) refer to Rumi. Rumi
attracted Christian as well as Muslim disciples, continuing an ancient tradition
of inclusive spirituality. I use Iran (from Middle Persian) for the state and Farsi
for the language, rather than Persia and Persian, since this is closer to indige-
nous practice. Iran was always used internally, never Persia, at least for the past
three thousand years. Persia (derived from Old Persian) comes to us from
Greek custom. It did refer to a region, Pars, in South Iran; it did not designate
the whole territory.5 Next, chapters by Valdinoci, H. Rehman, and U. Rehman
are clustered under the common theme of spiritual practice. All demonstrate
the continued vibrancy and vitality of this aspect of South Asian Sufism.
Spiritual practice
Valdinoci takes us to Hyderabad, India. There, we learn that a branch of the

Qādiriyya tradition is creative, adaptive, and popular. The teacher’s message
(like that of Naqshbandi Zindapir, researched by Werbner) balances spiritual
nurture with recognition that most disciples pursue careers in a secular world
and that they are involved in that world. Interested in whether the traditional
role of the lodge or retreat center is changing, Valdinoci concludes that this
particular case study represents an example of creative change in how Sufi
teaching is conducted. Important material in this chapter on how disciples, at a
distance, visualize the Pīr is presented. Visualization, itself a traditional Sufi
practice, and shorter pīr–mur īd meetings substitute for longer and more fre-
quent meetings. This new method, used in other Qādiriyya branches in
6 South Asian Sufis
yderabad, is evidence that Sufism is successfully responding to contemporary

H
challenges. Incidentally, while the book does not pretend to be a handbook on
or an introduction to Sufism, readers will find it a rich source of information on
Sufi origins, beliefs, practices, and theology.
Almost every chapter points to how Sufi shrines and lodges still play important
roles within South Asian Sufi Islam. Hafeez-ur-Rehman’s chapter examines the
continued significance of the bai'at (oath) and of the master–disciple relation-
ship, focusing on the shrine of Golra Sharif, Islamabad, where Pīr Meher Ali
(1859–1937) of the Chīshtī order is buried. Here more traditional modes are
practiced than those described elsewhere in this book; for example, within the
Minhāj-ul Quran (MUQ), members are not required to take an oath. At Golra
Sharif, only Muslims are admitted as members; a non-Muslim must first convert
to Islam. There is only a slight variation in how women and men are admitted.
This contrasts with the order described by Alam that does admit non-Muslims and
with universalist Sufism described by Hermansen. Toward the end of his chapter,
Hafeez-ur-Rehman raises a point that surfaced in my fieldwork, that Sufis link
their shaikhs’ nearness to God with Muhammad’s, so the pīr does not displace
Muhammad’s role or marginalize his Sunnah, which disciples are required to fol-
low. Alam, on the same point, uses the term imitatio Muhammadi.
Uzma Rehman’s research takes us to two shrines in south and central Punjab;
these are, respectively, the tombs of Shah Latif (1689–1752) and Waris Shāh
(1722–98). With others in this book, Rehman stresses how shrines and Sufi
teachers historically aided positive interaction between Muslims and Hindus,
analyzing some of the processes involved in making this possible. The chapter
includes discussion of the baraka, and how both academic and Sufi discourse
understands this. Rehman refers to an interesting parallel with how some Chris-
tians understand the spiritual power of the reserved sacrament vis-à-vis under-
standing how Sufis view the Saints’ “power residing in the tomb.” Rehman also
discusses access to the blessing of the saint mediated through ritual and poetry.
We read that one of the two masters discussed, Shah Latif, traveled with Hindu
yogis. These shrines appeal to non-Muslims as well as to Muslims, linking this
theme with that of interreligious openness. This is another example of how
ideas about rigid, closed religious identity are subject to challenge. Shared
notions of what is sacred cross religious, racial, linguistic, and other differences,
even creating a “common frame of” spiritual reference. Shah Latif was probably
a Qādiriyya; Waris Shah was Chishti. These traditional orders’ current vibrancy
is attested throughout the book.
Community bonds and social relations
The next cluster of chapters, by Werbner, Boivin, Phillipon, and Alam, relate
to community bonds and social relations. The fact that seven contributors
(Bennett, Boivin, Geaves, Hermansen, Hafiz Rehman, Uzma Rehman, and

Valdicini), cite Werbner indicates her research’s significance. She is one of
several professional anthropologists whom Islamic Studies specialists admire
and whose work impacts their own. Her chapter takes us into the heartland of
Barelvi Islam in Pakistan, to the Sufi lodge at Ghamkol Sharif shrine, Kohat,
Pakistan, founded by a Naqshbandi saint, Zindapir, who died in 1999. She
focuses on the annual ’urs or birthday celebration, on how this functions to
nurture a somewhat ambivalent relationship between Sufi Islam and the more
legally trained Ulamā, to a degree reducing tension with popular and legalistic,
including Islamist, Islam. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, for example in much
Arab space, legal Islam and reformist Islam totally reject Sufism. In the Subcon-
tinent, the relationship between Sufism and reformist Islam is complex, compli-
cated, even confusing, but they are not completely polarized. Such reformist
movements as Deoband and Tabligh are more critical of Sufi practices; MUQ is
less critical. Migration outside the Subcontinent, too, has transplanted this
“symbiotic relationship” between pīr and lodge, Álim and mosque, into the
wider South Asian Diaspora. Werbner emphasizes the inclusive, bridge-building
aspect of these celebrations. People from different social classes as well as from
other Sufi orders attend. The same applies at the ’urs celebration organized by
Birmingham’s Ghamkol Sharif mosque. While writing this Introduction, I vis-
ited this thriving complex with an international group of young Christian, Mus-
lim, and Jewish leaders; all remarked on how the buildings blend into the
neighborhood. The range of educational and welfare services provided to the
local community also impressed us. Barelvi Islam is vibrant in Pakistan today, as
it is in the British (see Geaves) and North American (see Hermansen) Diasporas.
Other chapters in this book refer the role of ’urs celebrations.
With Boivin, we visit the Naqshbandi shrine of Shah Inayat (1655–1718),
known as Shah Shaheed at Jhok, Sindh. Bovin applies Turner’s concept of com-
munitas to discuss the social processes involved in activities that take place at the
shrine and with reference to relations between teacher and disciples. Shah
Inayat’s life was influenced by the “Naqshbandi restoration following” Sirhindi
(1564–1624), thus Boivin’s chapter links with Buehler’s on Sirhindi. Sirhindi
wanted to rid Islam of alleged Hindu elements. However, reaction against
Hindu and pantheistic elements in Sufism does not preclude the contemporary
Pīr from openness toward non-Muslims, since at the shrine there is no expecta-
tion that devotees are Muslims and Hindus, although non-Muslims do not take
part in the “main rituals.” Again, this links with the theme of interreligious
openness. However, at this shrine, unlike for some shaikhs in Hyderabad, their
authority, which extends from the religious into other spheres, rests on more
traditional P rīri–mur īdi relationships. On the one hand, the shrine helps to
merge “different segments of local society”; on the other hand, it reinforces
social exclusion. For example, participation in rituals by a low caste of musi-
cians is limited. The pīr, who is Shi’a, has Sunni and Shi’a disciples. This is
8 South Asian Sufis
unusual in the Naqshbandi tradition, which uniquely traces its silsilah through
Abu Bakr (not Ali) and so has less appeal for Shi’a.
Phillipon’s chapter demonstrates both the continued vitality of the tradi-
tional Qādiriyya order and how some “neo-Sufi” or “sufi-based reform move-
ments” create distance between themselves and Sufi practice. However, they do
not make a complete break either. Focusing on the MUQ, founded in 1981 by
Tāhir-ul Qādri, this movement combines elements of traditional Sufism with
aspects of Islamic reform. As I point out in my chapter, reform Islam in the
Subcontinent has had a somewhat different relationship with Sufism than coun-
terparts elsewhere in the Muslim world. MUQ, alongside such “neo-Sufi” move-
ments as Tablighi-i-Jammat (TJ) and even Deobandi, is a case in point. Unlike
TJ, MUQ also founded a political party (Pakistan Awami Tehreek, PAT). Politi-
cally, both MUQ and PAT stand for “love, tolerance, harmony, and respect” and
have challenged and condemned the Talibanization of Pakistan and the tactics
of Osama bin Laden. Vis-à-vis the West, in sharp contrast to the Muslim Brother-
hood elsewhere in the Muslim World and Islamists in general, the movement is
conciliatory but not uncritical. In a 600-word fatwa (March 2, 2011), Qādri
unequivocally repudiated terrorism. Terrorists, he says, are infidels. He praised
the West’s freedom of religion and international law, suggesting that the old
category of House of War no longer properly describes this sphere. Islam as
“love and tolerance” is the preferred image. Reportedly, he was a friend of
Benazir Bhutto. Members of MUQ do not take an oath, yet within the move-
ment the P īr–mur īd relationship is the main source of authority. However, in
formally joining MUQ, members are automatically considered disciples in the
spiritual lineage of the tariqa Qādiriyya. Dhikr (remembrance) is practiced,
while some members visit Sufi shrines. Tāhir-ul Qādri, who now mainly resides
in Canada, does not act in every respect as a traditional P īr. However, his follow-
ers love and honor him as if he did. Several other similar movements, also
founded by Qādiriyya Sufis, suggest that this order remains active and relevant.
MUQ has spread to the British South Asian Diaspora (see Geave’s chapter) and
in North America (see Hermansen).
Alam’s first chapter in this book, on the life of Zia ul-Haqq Maizbhandari
(d. 1928–88), shows how this popular saint in Bangladesh drew on the spiritual
heritage of three Sufi orders in his teaching and practice. Examining three
hagiographies of the saint, we see on the one hand that hagiographers do not
always distinguish legend from historically verifiable fact. On the other hand,
analysis of their work helps us understand the context of the saint’s life, includ-
ing the need to apologize for Sufism against anti-Sufi criticism. They were most
interested in the saint’s “piety, virtue, and charity,” in his message of tolerance
and in depicting his work as a continuation of that of Muslim pioneers in Ben-
gal, thus the order and its shaikhs stand in continuity with “an early and hence
orthodox, Islamic tradition.” Again there is a link with interreligious openness;
the order accepts non-Muslim disciples.
Politics
Buehler’s chapter, together with Alam’s second contribution, share a political

focus, not absent from Phillipon’s chapter either. Shah Inayat, too, described by
Boivin was a social activist dubbed by some the “socialist Sufi.”6 Buehler’s
research on Sirhindi, a Naqshbandi shaikh, is more textual and historical but
his interest is on how Sirhindi’s ambivalent legacy informs contemporary atti-
tudes and beliefs. Sirhindi transformed and revived Naqshbandi practice across
the world. Today, the order is active in Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, and else-
where, as it is across the Indian Subcontinent. Sirhindi crossed the bridge
between Sufi teacher and reformist Islam. As the latter, he attracts a great deal
of criticism focused on alleged anti-Hindu attitudes. Muhammad Iqbal, who
first formally proposed a separate state for India’s Muslims, admired Sirhindi,
who is known in Pakistan today as a champion, if not of a separate state, then at
least of Muslim identity against the dangers of a “unity of Being” influenced
slide into Hinduism. He has been depicted as fomenting Hindu–Muslim and
Shi’a–Sunni hostility. Buehler cites material that can definitely support this case.
Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762), who also set out to de-Hinduize Islam in India, saw
him as the renewer for the seventeenth century. Muhammad is said to have
predicted that every century would see a renewer of the faith, a Mujaddid. Bue-
hler argues that some of Sirhindi’s harsh language about Hindus, who should
not be employed by the Emperor, was motivated by his Ashr āf heritage and
conviction that only Muslim nobles should hold high office. The lower classes,
Hindu and Muslim, are subject to animal appetites. Yet he “recognized different
religions with different ways of living” and there is no evidence that he ever
attempted to convert non-Muslims.7 He thought that mixing low- and high-born
Hindus and Muslims caused strife, that harmony was best achieved when Mus-
lims and Hindus lived in their own religio-cultural worlds. Sirhindi also must be
understood against the background of Emperor Akbar’s eclecticism, which for
some took interreligious openness too far. Al-Ghazali (d. 1111), widely recog-
nized as the Renewer for his age and one of Islam’s most revered scholars, had
also striven to reconcile external with esoteric Sufi Islam. He was critical of each
for neglecting the other (legalists neglected the inner aspects, mystics the
external).
Alam’s chapter on three Sufi-based political parties in Bangladesh challenges
a general perception of Sufi political quietism or political disengagement.
Actually, as I show in Chapter 1, Sufis have historically played a role in
legitimizing and sometime delegitimizing political authority in the Subconti-
nent. Alam argues that these parties in Bangladesh, as does the PAT, the Sufi-
based party in Pakistan described by Phillipon, oppose Islamism in favor of
tolerance, a more inclusive national identity, and strong democratic institu-
tions. None of these parties has enjoyed electoral success. However, Alam sug-
gests that by damaging the image of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led
10 South Asian Sufis
alliance of more extreme Islamic parties, they “helped people stand against
militancy,” thus assisting the 2008 more secular, nationally inclusive Awami
League’s victory. Sufi shaikhs have had some success, then, in creatively extend-
ing their moral leadership from the religious into the political sphere. This
chapter supplements Bennett on the current political context in Bangladesh,
especially the tension between competing notions of national identity. Alam
notes that while politicians with Sufi affiliations have held power in Turkey,
they have not chosen to form Sufi-based parties.
What is traditional Islam? Who is doing ‘bid’a’ (innovation?) Chapters by
Geaves, who describes South Asian Sufism in Britain, and Ramsey on the Rishis
of Kashmir raise issues related to innovative practice vis-à-vis ideas about tradi-
tional Islam. Geaves describes how different South Asian Sufi movements have
taken root in Britain. Both traditional turuk and reformist versions such as MUQ
are now popular and active there. He identifies a number of innovations,
including the practice of learning from several shaikhs from various orders
without choosing to identify exclusively with any, producing a post-tariqa spiritu-
ality in which oaths and traditional p īr–mur īd relations are absent. Thus, Sufism
in the West is adapting, to some degree “repackaging,” Sufi Islam. At least in
part, this responds to modernity and to life in a secular context. Geaves also
identifies a tendency of some Sufis to express solidarity with the Western alli-
ance against “Islamic extremism” as an alternative, tolerant, peaceful expres-
sion of Islam. His contribution includes an important discussion of the
etymology of the word Sufi. This is probably not from the Arabic for “wool”,
which has tended to minimize Sufism’s theological and spiritual origins, some-
how distancing it from Islam’s so-called mainstream. It is most likely from the
word for “pure.”
Ramsey’s chapter explores the contribution of the Rishis of Kashmir, who car-
ried a variety of Hindu practices and ideas into a Kashmiri expression of Islam
that some Muslims call syncretistic. This has an obvious parallel in how I describe
the acculturation process that rooted Islam in the soil of Bangladesh. Numer-
ous saints and shrines are associated with this Sufi movement. Rishis are less
active today and fewer in number. Yet even their reduced number reminds us of
a “shared heritage and universal message” that unites Hindus, Muslims, and
others across religious divides especially through what can be called a “nature-
appreciating spirituality.” The shrine at Bamuddin retains a lingam. Ramsey sug-
gests that the harmonizing, reconciling bias of the Rishis extends to minimizing
Sunni–Shia conflict, which can result in violence in Kashmir and elsewhere. To
some degree, the Rishi expression of Islam is under attack from those, includ-
ing Ahlu-i-Had īth (imported) and the indigenous Allah-Walle, who denounce
this as heterodox, calling for an alleged purer or more authentic Islam, one rid
of “Hindu” elements. Ramsey raises questions about what is and what is not
“orthodox,” positing that claims to adjudicate are subjective and that power,
politics, and control are involved in this rivalry. Rishis still preach an inclusive,
not polarizing message, respond creatively to modern challenges, and are qui-
etly equipping youth to perpetuate their “distinctly indigenous tradition” in the
face of opposing currents.
Interreligious openness
Finally, although this theme also appears in Alam, Buehler, Uzma Rehman,
and Ramsey, it emerges as a major motif in four chapters: my second, van Von
Skyhawk’s, Hermansen’s, and Pemberton’s. This theme focuses on Sufism’s ten-
dency to form interreligious bridges but it should not be forgotten that it also
builds bridges within Islam, crossing different schools not least of all Shi’a and
Sunni. References to “legalistic Islam” are descriptive not evaluative vis-à-vis
Sufism. Stress on openness as a common Sufi characteristic does not mean that
all non-Sufi Muslims lack this. Supporters of the Common Word initiative, for
example, include Sufis and non-Sufis.8 Rather, it suggests that Sufism nourishes
this. My second chapter examines how Islam spread in Bengal, especially in East
Bengal, remote from centers of Muslim power and independently of any gov-
ernment proselytizing program or sword-point conversion. Islam spread
through the teaching of Sufi saints, who chose to acculturate Islam into the soil
of the land, which, loved by Bengalis, reduced the gap between preexisting
spiritual traditions and Islam, which challenges notions of religions as self-con-
tained systems. The compartmentalization of religions into separate, rival com-
munities was a later development. I argue that inclusive currents in contemporary
Sufi Islam, in Bengali culture and literature, represent continuity with an
ancient stream that has yet to run dry, despite opposition from critics and from
an alternative, more exclusive idea of national belonging. Sufi Islam in Bangla-
desh still builds interfaith bridges. I speculate that Bangladeshi Islam might
resonate with potentialities in the Qur’an on gender equality and interreligious
openness, so could have potential to transmit alternative understandings of
Islam back to Arab space, from where Islam spread throughout the world.
Van Skyhawk’s chapter, beginning with Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in 2007,
describes some recent acts of violence in Pakistan between political and some-
times religious rivals. He reminds us that Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s original
vision was for a state where all citizens, regardless of religion, would be equal
stakeholders. Referring to some distorted, ill-informed, and sceptical reporting
on whether “hashish-smoking” Sufis might feasibly “counter the Taliban,” van
Van Skyhawk sets out to suggest that resources within Sufi Islam may indeed
offer something of an antidote to mindless violence. He takes us to the shrine
of Nathar Walī in Tamil Nadu, India, where for over one thousand years Hin-
dus, Muslims, and Christians have worshipped side by side. I have observed
Christians and Hindus visiting a Sufi shrine in Hyderabad, India, where I spent
several successive summers. Visiting the teaching of Ibn Arabi (1165–1240) and
others, he argues that Sufis are compelled to love, cherish, and honor the
Other, for all are children of the One. Allah lives in every heart; therefore all
religions contain truths and command respect. Faith is God’s gift to us, not a
human work dependent on adopting a specific, exclusive religious identity.
Hermansen’s chapter on South Asian Sufism in North America again shows
the vibrancy of some traditional orders, including Naqshbandis and Chīshtī,
which she calls “transplants.” Transplants include, alongside Sufi orders, some
movements that can be described as Sufi-reformist, including the Deobandis
and TJ (also discussed in my second chapter) and MUQ. She identifies two
types of Sufi-related movements that began in North America, rather than out-
side, namely organizations with a distinctly universalist outlook and hybrids that
combine more legalistic Islam with Sufi spirituality. Her paper explores exam-
ples of these three, with a lot of material on Hazrat Ināyat Khan’s movement.
His teachings “explored the common spiritual themes of various world reli-
gions” without requiring “followers to formally accept Islam or to practice the
Islamic shari’at.” She concludes with interesting speculation on why different
expressions of Sufism have found Canada more congenial than the United
States and vice versa, which may relate to Canada belonging to the wider British
sphere in which more people remember an India where Muslims and Hindus
sometimes lived in harmony. She also roots universalist Sufism’s shift toward
gender equality and equal male–female participation in the Sufi heritage, as
I do in my second chapter.
Pemberton’s chapter begins with the 2007 attack on the Sufi shrine at Ajmeer,
India, “which draws pilgrims from all faiths.” The attack was almost certainly
intended to “stir up communal strife.” Subsequently, members of the Chīsthī
order have “stepped up efforts to foster intercommunal harmony” drawing on
a long and rich legacy. This move includes a stress on the universal aspect of
narratives and shared faith in the divine. Pemberton describes this as a form of
social activism that goes beyond merely conveying the message of Mu’in ud-din
Chīshtī (d. 1230) into a conscious attempt to shape public identity. Her chapter
bridges the themes of social relations, politics, and interfaith openness, suggest-
ing that these often flow into each other. She suggests that Sufis can assist in
repairing the broken relationship between India and Pakistan, emphasizing
that this is not an independent or solitary effort but includes mobilizing multi-
ple partners in attempting to bring about lasting social change.
Conclusion
Ramsey concludes this book, using the questions framed above to interrogate
each chapter. Summarizing what has been said about devotion, deviancy, and
destiny, as well as change, complexity, and continuity, he draws attention to how
Sufis are adapting to new contexts. Alongside the survival of historical orders
and many traditional practices, innovation and creative change are being
channeled into reformist Sufi movements, some revivalist, others progressive.
On the one hand, several chapters, not least of all Pemberton’s, could suggest
an optimistic view of Sufism’s potential to challenge less inclusive, less demo-
cratic-friendly expressions of Islam. On the other hand, Ramsey expresses cau-
tion here, suggesting that it is overoptimistic and too sanguine to rely on Sufis
to counter alternative currents. Sufism’s tendency to build bridges across divides
is undeniably positive, at least for those who value human solidarity. Sufi activ-
ism in providing social and welfare services to communities is also positive.
However, others—non-Sufi Muslims, non-Muslims, civil society partners, and
strong democratic institutions—are necessary allies in any effort to challenge
antidemocratic, communitarian forces. In fact, Pemberton refers to such col-
laboration as a major aspect of Sufi activism. Sufi Islam remains vibrant because
it meets the devotional and spiritual needs of practitioners: it nourishes their
souls; it deepens their relationship with God. It will survive and thrive for these
reasons, regardless of any additional—arguably ancillary—social or political
benefit. It will survive, too, because it can accommodate change.
Notes
1
Zidane Meriboute, Islam’s Fateful Path. (London: I. B Taurus, 2009), 13. The
French version won Special Mention in the category of spirituality, Mediterranean
Centre for Literature, Perpignan (the Jury was chaired by André Chouraqui)
in 2005.
2
Claudia Liebeskind, Piety on Its Knees: Three Sufi Traditions in South Asia in Modern
Times. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998) Rozehnal, Robert. Islamic Sufism
Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-first Century Pakistan. (NY: PalgraveMacmillan,
2009).
3
D. Westerlund (ed), Living Sufism in Europe and North America, (London: Curzon
RKP, 2004). A. Zhelyazkova and J.S. Nielsen (eds), Ethnology of Sufi Orders: Theory
and Practice, (Sofia: IMIR & CSICMR, 2001).
4
A. J Arberry, An Introduction to the History of Sufism (London: Longmans, Green &
Company, 1942), 47.
5
See for example the discussion in John W Garver, China and Iran: ancient partners
in a post-imperial world (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006), 327, Foot-
note 1.
6
Sebte Hasan Naveed-e-Fikr (Urdu) (Karachi: Daneyal, 1982), 180.
7
Based on the idea that it is natural to be Muslim, many Muslims prefer to speak
of people “reverting” rather than “converting” to Islam, see Q 30: 30.
8
Launched on October 13, 2007, a Common Word invites Christians and Muslims
to enter into dialogue around such shared values as love, mercy, and compassion;
see Lejla Demiri (ed), A Common Word: Text and Reflections (Cambridge: Muslim
Academic Trust, 2011). Signatories include Shi’a (various branches), Sunni (all
legal schools), and Ibadi.
Chapter 1
Iran’s Role in Stimulating South Asian Islam

Clinton Bennett
The history of contact and cultural exchange between India and Iran is as old
as both civilizations. Discussion involves cultural war, especially with reference
to pre-Islamic contact. This chapter begins with the pre-Islamic period. Next, it
summarizes contact after Iran’s conversion to Islam. The third and main seg-
ment focuses on the role of Farsi within Islamic India, on Sufi ideas formulated
and popularized in Iran, and on notions of authority derived from Iranian
thought. The chapter shows that Iran’s impact on Islam in India spread much
further than might be expected in terms of proximity to Iran. Few if any Muslim
rulers in India were Iranian but the Turkic and Turkic-Mongol peoples who
established sultanates there all practiced an Iranian-flavored Islam.1 Iran’s influ-
ence, perhaps surprisingly, is not restricted to Shi’a Islam in India, although the
number of Shi’a Muslims in India (approximately 30% the total Muslim popu-
lation2) results from Iran’s influence. One tendency is to see Islam in India as
essentially foreign. This contributed to the decision to partition Muslim major-
ity from Hindu majority areas in 1947, separating Pakistan from India. How-
ever, this analysis suggests that Iranian-nurtured Sufi Islam helped produce a
form of Islam that took root in India’s soil, transforming Islam into an Indian
religion, blurring the distinction between Hinduism (largely, in this writer’s
opinion, a Western scholarly abstraction) and Islam in a cultural context where
rigid boundaries between religions did not exist. Imposition of boundaries
under colonial rule, based on assumptions that people belong exclusively to
one religion and oppose followers of others, pitted Muslim against Hindu as
distinct and incompatible communities.3
Ancient Iran–India contact
Discussion of ancient contact across the Iran–India border involves the “Aryan
invasion theory” (AIT), which many European writers accept as historical fact.
This argues that the Aryans of North India and those of Central and Northern
Europe have descended from a single people. From “some cold climate in Cen-
tral Asia” they migrated in various directions. Some settled in Iran, some in
India, and some in Europe.4 This theory is based on linguistic similarities
between European and Indian languages, giving us the Indo-European family.

Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit are members. It also draws on parallels between the
Vedas and other stories, thus a text such as the Rg-Veda “does not have an indig-
enous origin . . . but an Indo-European one.”5 Invented by Europeans in the
nineteenth century, some Indian scholars dismiss AIT as cultural imperialism.
Representing India’s culture as an import from outside, what was thought best
in that culture was actually quasi-European; Indians’ contribution was to cor-
rupt and degrade this. India’s glory lay in her past, “which had declined and
had to be rescued through the agency of British colonialism.”6 The theory pos-
its that the darker-skinned inhabitants of the Indus Valley civilization, them-
selves possibly earlier migrants, were pushed South around about 1500 BCE by
lighter-skinned Aryans. They became the Dravidian people of the south, whose
languages appear to be unrelated to the Indo-European family. The Indus Val-
ley civilization flourished from 3000 to 1500 BCE. The archeological record
suggests that it was abandoned rather than destroyed, perhaps due to climatic
change or some type of “systems failure.”7 Critics of AIT argue that the Aryan or
Vedic civilization in India was indigenous, and not an import.
Whether or not peoples of ancient Iran and ancient India were related, cul-
tural exchange occurred. Sagar claims that “the ancient Aryan culture of Iran
was indistinguishable from the ancient Aryan culture of India.” He comments
that regardless of the question of origins, there was “cultural, social and com-
mercial links” between the two.8 What is to be challenged is the idea that traffic
was in one direction. India probably gave chess to the world via Iran, for exam-
ple. Some tales in the Arabian Nights are of Indian origin, alongside others from
Iran and China. All entered the Arab world through Iran. Successive Iranian
Kings tried to extend their rule into India; Cyrus (658–520 BC), Darius I (522–
486), and Xerxes (486–465) invaded but none reached “beyond the Punjab.”
We know from Herodotus that Iran ruled Sindh from the sixth century BCE.9
India was the most “populous satraphy” of Darius’s empire.10 Roads were con-
structed across the border, with “stations and inns” every twenty kilometers.11
Xerxes army had a strong Indian contingent. Sagar says that Iran “left certain
marks on Indian culture particularly in the field of language, administration,
religion, architecture,” and “coinage.”12 Although he accepts that traffic went
both ways, he thinks that India’s impact on Iran was weaker because Iran was
the “more aggressive power.” He identifies identical words in ancient Iranian
and Sanskrit. He argues, however, that Indian literature may have been much
richer than Iranian at this time, thus “there was no appreciable Persian influ-
ence worth mentioning.”13 We may know more about Iran’s influence on India
than vice versa because sources and evidence of the latter were lost.14
Alexander’s invasion in 325 BCE ended Iran’s rule in North West India but in
many respects strengthened Iranian influence. The formation of the Mauryan
Empire (321–185 BCE) as a centralized power, replacing tiny city-states,
responded to the need for defense against attack from the west. Yet the Mauryans
Iran’s Role in Stimulating South Asian Islam 17
adopted much that was Iranian, including titles, love of monumental buildings,
and “Courtly customs,” which were “purely Persian.” Like the shahs, the kings
“lived in seclusion, only appearing for religious festivals and on solemn
occasions.”15 Some Iranian festivals and customs were also observed. In Iran
and India, the “king’s will was law.”16 A similar system of justice operated on
both sides of the border, in which below the emperor seven justices or lesser
kings formed a court to oversee lower courts “scattered throughout the realm.”
Mauryan road building imitated the Iranian system.17 Linked to commerce
overland through Iran, this infrastructure, for example, introduced the Indian
domestic chicken into Europe.18
Finally, well before Islam entered India, a tradition of religious tolerance
developed on both sides of the border. In Iran, this is credited to King Cyrus,
who allowed Jews to return to Jerusalem. Kings Darius I and Artazerxes also
“made a point of respecting and patronizing their subjects’ religions.” Their
Sassanid successors abandoned this policy.19 India early adopted an understand-
ing of religion that embraced many paths, beliefs, and practices, later subsumed
under the label “Hinduism” (an English term coined in the early nineteenth
century, derived from the Farsi for Sindhu). Although Buddhism emerged as a
distinct tradition, perceived as a rival, Hinduism still accommodated the his-
torical Buddha within itself as an Avatar of Vishnu.20 Throughout history, India
has challenged the idea that religions are “closed, self-contained essences, and
mutually exclusive.”21 In fact, what has been called “multiple religious participa-
tion” characterizes Indian religion – a phenomenon that extends to China and
Japan.22 This bias may be indigenous to India or an adaptation from Iran. What
can be said is that Iran’s pre-Sassanid history of religious tolerance helped
strengthen India’s similar legacy. Turning to Iran’s influence on Indian Islam,
several continuities from this first segment can be identified. One of these is a
tendency toward religious inclusiveness rather than exclusivity. Another is that
Muslim rulers continued to draw on Iranian notions of authority. Through the
agency of Iranian inspired Sufism, this aided an indigenization or acculturation
process. This challenges the notion that Islam in India remained an imported,
exotic, foreign religion. In this book, this writer’s chapter on “Sufi Shrines as an
interfaith bridge” in Bangladesh, drawing on Eaton’s work, shows how “Islam in
Bengal . . . during the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries . . . appropriated
and was appropriated by “Bengali civilization.”23
Islam’s entry into India
Islam’s entry into the subcontinent began when the Umayyad caliphate, having
completed Iran’s conquest (started by Umar, the second Sunni caliph, who lost
his life to an Iranian assassin in 644 CE), pushed into Sindh. This took place
in 711 under Muhammad ibn Qasim (695–715). Sindh, historically the bridge
between Iran and India, now Pakistan’s southern most province, became the
caliphate’s eastern border. Some early Muslims also settled in more southerly
areas of India due to cross-sea trade from Arabia and North East Africa. There
were three routes for Muslim passage into India: across the India–Iran border,
across the Arabian Sea, and through the Hindu Kush. The latter was the usual
route for successive Turkic and Turkic-Mongol invaders, beginning with the
Ghaznavids, who “first carried Persian-Islamic civilization to India.”24 Although
Sunni and of Turkish descent, the Ghaznavids “promoted the revival of Persian
language and culture,” “used Persian . . . for public purposes, adopted Persian
court etiquette, and enthusiastically promoted the Persian aesthetic vision in
art, calligraphy, architecture, and handicrafts.” This set a pattern continued by
subsequent Muslim rulers in India.25 From 1021 until their defeat at the hands
of the Ghurids in 1186, Lahore was the Ghaznavid capital. In 1204, a Ghurid
general, Muhammad Bakhtiyar, took his army east as far as Bengal.
According to Eaton, Muhammad Bakhtiyar also took with him “a revised the-
ory of kingship” that originated in Iran.26 From 1206, Delhi became the capital
of a Muslim Sultanate. This ended in 1526, when the Mughals took over. The
first Sultan of Delhi was, like Bakhtiyar, a Ghurid general. By then, the “unitary
caliphal state” under the first four caliphs (632–61CE), the Umayyads (661–
750CE), and the early Abbasids had fragmented into numerous de facto inde-
pendent sultanates. From 945 to 1055CE, effective power in Baghdad itself, the
Abbasid capital, was exercised by a Shi’a dynasty, the Buyids, who maintained
the Sunni caliph as a symbolic figure. It was in Iran that Muslim jurists “strug-
gled to reconcile the classical theory” of a unified Muslim polity “with the reality
of upstart Turkish groups that had seized control over the declining Abbasid
empire.”27 In articulating a new theory of authority, these Iranian Muslim think-
ers drew on “pre-Islamic Persian ideals of kingship,” especially on the need for
a “strong monarch” who would also rule justly.28 In India, this theory allowed
Muslim rulers to locate their authority or right to rule in “naked power,” which
itself justified their rule.29 After the Mongol conquest of Iraq in 1258 CE,
although a surviving Abbasid took refuge in Egypt, where his successors contin-
ued as caliphs, the idea took root that “Islam could have multiple caliphs and
that they could reside even outside the Arab world.”30 Also originating in Iran,
another idea regarding political authority flowered in India. This developed in
Sufi Islam, which, by the tenth century, was firmly established in Iran. Indeed,
the history of Iranian Sufism cannot be separated from that of Sufism itself or
from the “origins of Sufism.”31 Many scholars label Sufism an “essentially Per-
sian product,” drawing on ancient Iranian mystical traditions.32 For Sufis, God’s
friends (possessors of authority), the saints, “govern the universe.” They form a
hierarchy; all earthly rulers depend on their favor. Iranian “courtly traditions”
began to overlap Sufi ideas, so that a term such as “wilayat” meant both a “ter-
ritorially defined region” and “saint.” Saints as well as rulers used the title “shah”
and held court in a darg āh. The “royal crown (taj) used in the coronation
c eremony of kings closely paralleled the Sufi’s turban (dastar), used in rituals of
succession to Sufi leadership,” which suggests that sultans “did not exercise
sole, or even ultimate authority.”33 At the very least, they shared authority with
the saints. Or, they exercised authority on behalf of the saints, who could dele-
gitimize their rule. While Sufis are often said to be indifferent toward political
power, this understanding of authority enabled some Sufis to wield consider-
able influence in the temporal sphere, where “their authority sometimes paral-
leled and sometimes opposed, that of . . . kings.”34 In India, where the Chīshtī
order’s saints and shrines became “thoroughly indigenized,” Muslims no longer
looked to a distant Arab caliph to legitimize their rule.35 Almost all Mughal rul-
ers patronized the Chīsthī order, as did many rulers in Bengal and several ear-
lier sultans of Delhi.
Iranian Islam’s influence and impact on Indian Islam
Through language, ideas about authority, Sufism, and literature, Iranian Islam’s
primary impact on Indian Islam aided its acculturation. In many respects, this
mirrored a process that had already occurred in Iran itself. This analysis begins
with language. It then discusses ideas about authority, followed by the role of
Iranian-flavored Sufi Islam in India. Special reference is made to Bengal, due to
this writer’s interest and field experience. Before reaching India, invading Mus-
lims had adopted Farsi as their preferred language. This begs the question, why
did Turkic and Mongol people choose Farsi? Having embraced Islam, why did
they not prefer Arabic? Of course, they did use Arabic for their prayers and for
reading the Qur’an. However, their cultural exposure to Islam was mediated by
Iran, not Arabia. Iran’s rich literary, artistic, and linguistic heritage undoubt-
edly impressed them. They may also have found Iranian culture attractive
because it was not Arab.
Despite Islam’s teaching of racial equality, non-Arabs could feel marginal in a
religion and society that elevated Arabic above all other languages, which
reserved holiness for certain Arab places (plus Jerusalem).36 Islam has been
described as denying non-Arabs their history and culture, so that everything
non-Arab must be replaced. In this view, Islam and “Arab” are synonyms, to the
exclusion of Indian or Indonesian cultures. Non-Arabs must “strip themselves
of their past” to become “empty vessels.” Their territories must become “cul-
tural deserts . . . with glory of every kind elsewhere” and the sacred limited to
Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem.37 When Arab Muslims conquered Iran, they
overthrew a proud and ancient civilization. The tendency of some caliphs to
prefer Arabs to non-Arabs for high posts could not prevent Iranians perform-
ing many important administrative and scholarly tasks from a very early period.
Given centuries of learning – unparalleled at the time in Arab space – pioneer
Muslim scholars were often Iranian. Very quickly, Iranians took the lead in
developing and propagating Islamic civilization. Compilers of the “six canonical

Sunnite collections of Traditions . . . were, to a man, of Persian stock.”38 Even
before the Buyids sponsored Iranian culture, it was “the focus of creative vitality
within Islamic civilization.”39 The early Abbasids adopted Iranian court eti-
quette, Iranian notions about the ruler’s role as “protectors of the faith” and
such functions as the vizier (chief minister) and qadi (judge).40 Harun al-Rashid
(768–803) admired everything Iranian.41
Shi’a Islam, which looked to descendants of Muhammad as leaders rather
than to a caliph chosen from among all Muslims, attracted a strong following in
Iran.42 By adopting this form of Islam, Iranians asserted autonomy from Sunni
Arab Islam. Of course, the earliest Shi’a were Arabs. However, it did not take
long before Shi’ism adopted an Iranian flavor. Some see Zoroastrian influence
in Shi’a ideas on Imamology, as well as behind Iranian mystical thought.43 As
descendants of Muhammad – known as Imams – married Iranian royalty,
Twelver Shi’a became increasingly identified as Iranian.44 This was less so for
other forms of Shi’a: Zaidi flourished in the Yemen; Ismailis controlled Egypt
from 908 to 1171 CE. However, an Ismaili Imam later married an Iranian prin-
cess.45 By making Shi’a Islam their own, Iranians found a way to “recover their
national identity,” creating and developing a “new mode of Islamic culture with
deep roots in the Iranian consciousness.”46 Places associated with the Imams
and their suffering became sacred – none are in Arabia. While Arabs gave Iran
Islam, it was largely Iranians who led the intellectual flowering that followed,
alongside others who also enjoyed “longer and more advanced traditions of
culture,” such as Egyptians, Syrians, Turks, and Indians.47 Turkic people, who
had either invaded Iran or encountered Iranian culture at its fringes (for exam-
ple, in Afghanistan or Tajikistan), spread Iranian-flavored Islam over a vast ter-
ritory, including “India, Anatolia, and the Turkic regions of central Asia.”48 In
most cases, these rulers chose Sunni Islam but Iranian culture, although Shi’a
dynasties ruled several Indian states.49 Interestingly, these were geographically
distant from the Iranian border. Adopting Farsi provided a vehicle for poetic
expression that could not be criticized for attempting to emulate or surpass the
Qur’an’s inimitable linguistic excellence. Turkic-Mongols, rulers of the Mughal
Empire, raised Iranian-Islamic culture to new heights. As had earlier Muslim
rulers in India, the Mughals sponsored Iranian art and poetry. Iranian poets
were attracted to India, where Indians themselves excelled in the Farsi lan-
guage, later combining this with Hindi in a new language, Urdu. Urdu poetry
fused traditional Farsi styles and “themes of traditional Indian love stories,”
creating a cultural blend that helped ground Islam in India’s soil.50 The poetry
of Iran’s Sufi masters became universally popular in Muslim India, where Rumi’s
Mathnavi “permeated all levels of poetry and literature both in the high Indo-
Persian literature and in that of the regional languages.”51 Bengali developed its
own Islamic literature and poetry, over time displacing Farsi. Yet Bengali is also
indebted to Farsi, the official court language until 1837. It adapted many Farsi
terms related to court procedures. “Persian themes and songs,” too, were
“appropriated into Bengali literature and composed into Bengali meters.”52
Shi’a influence emerged due to Iranian traders settling in Bengal; thus in medi-
eval Bengali literature, “Muslim characters who battle the snake goddess Manasā
in Hindu epic poems . . . are named Hasan and Husayn” and the locality in
“which Muslims live is called Husainhāti.”53 Under British rule, the last dynasty
of Bengali nawabs was Shi’a. In the nineteenth century, some Hindu national-
ists set out to purge Bengali of “Arabic-Persian content.” 54
Iranian ideas about kingship and political authority profoundly impacted
Indian Islam. Sufi ideas were especially significant. As noted, Delhi Sultans,
Mughal Emperors, and various Muslim rulers in Bengal looked to members of
the Chishti order to validate their authority. This established legitimacy, inde-
pendent of any Arab caliph’s validation.55 Sufis could also chastise rulers for
their failings. Rulers built lodges and mausoleums for the saints, and visited and
patronized them.56 In Bengal, from 1415, when Jalal al-Din Muhammad, the
son of a former Hindu Rajah became sultan, until 1532, twelve sultans “of vari-
ous ethnic backgrounds ascended the Bengali throne.” All “were disciples of
the line of Chīshtī shaikhs established in Pandua by Shaikh ‘Ala al-Haq.”57 Sultan
Jalal al-Din did much to ground Islam in the soil of what is now Bangladesh,
“portraying himself” to Muslim subjects as “the model of a pious sultan” with
Chīshtī blessings, and to Hindus as “son of a Hindu king.” As did subsequent
Muslim rulers in Bengal, he was happy to fund Sanskrit scholarship and made
space for Hindus in his administration.58 This launched a process by which Mus-
lims governing Bengal “sought to ground” their ruling houses “in local
culture.”59 Increasingly, symbols linked with Bengali culture, many borrowed
from Hinduism, were employed. Instead of building mosques in Arab style,
these began to reflect “Bengali conceptions of form and medium.” Having
attempted to possess the land, the land “now possessed them.”60
As Sufi shrines proliferated across India, an Iranian inspired, open, inclusive
form of Islam gained popularity among India’s Muslims. The Sufi masters or
pīrs who spread this form of Islam were less interested in conversion than in
teaching a spiritual message, attracting disciples who may or may not call them-
selves “Muslim.”61 P īr, Farsi for guide, is universally used in India for Sufi mas-
ters rather than the Arabic term, shaikh. In some places today, Sufi shrines still
attract non-Muslim visitors. During their lives, many masters had “Hindu” and
“Muslim” disciples. “Hindus of both sexes” would “seek favor from the tombs of
Muslim saints,” while “it was common for the Muslim ruler to celebrate” Hindu
religious festivals.62 A misconception that research challenges is the idea that
Islam was spread, in India and elsewhere, mainly through conquest. Conquest
did aid Islam’s spread. However, subjects were rarely forced to convert, although
point-of-sword persuasion did take place. Muslim rulers and their entourages
settled in newly won territories, where other Muslims joined them, taking
advantage of pioneer opportunities. Numbers were quite small. Such settlement
and migration centered on capital cities and important urban centers. Yet the
majority of converts to Islam lived in rural, not urban areas, where Muslim rule
did not exert much power, at least initially. Eaton argues that comparatively
small numbers of Muslims, confined to urban centers, governed mainly non-
Muslim subjects until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Neither the
early Muslim Arab conquerors nor their successors in India made much effort
to convert subject people, contrary to popular ideas about Islam as spread by
the sword. In fact, in India it was mainly spread by the plough.”63
Sufi pioneers, acting as “cultural mediators” combined a civilizing role with
evangelism.64 Under the land grant system, Sufi masters mobilized men and
women, who tamed the forests and cultivated the land. Sometimes they acted as
agents of Muslim rulers. Sometimes it was after becoming “men of local influ-
ence” that they entered into “relations with the . . . authorities.”65 In Bengal and
elsewhere, such as Punjab, masters happily identified with spirits and powers
already honored by local populations, adapting a “Hindu conceptual frame-
work” to fit Muslim beliefs.66 For example, by connecting with the supernatural
world,” where they “were believed to wield continuing influence” and with the
forest, “a wild and dangerous domain that they were believed to have subdued,”
they rooted Islam in the local soil.67 Subsequently, Islam was perceived to be a
“civilization-building ideology associated both with settling and populating the
land and with constructing a transcendent reality consistent with that process.”68
One Sufi saint in Bengal, instead of competing with the local tiger-God, maneu-
vered for recognition as a supplementary holy man, opting for peaceful coexis-
tence.69 Several saints managed to recruit sacred trees to aid them, either sitting
under one – like Hindu teachers – or using a twig in their rituals. The stories of
some Sufi masters in Bangladesh are so intertwined with those of earlier holy
men or spirits that they are almost entirely mythical; “pirs were made of local
non-Muslim divinities or objects of worship.”70 In fact, both Bengal and Punjab
had a reputation for devotion to “magic and witchcraft.”71 Through reputations
for performing miracles, Sufi saints appropriated local loyalties and devotion.
Ibn Battuta (1304–68) spent three days in a cave with a Sufi master near Sylhet,
who was renowned for his miracles. Yogic practices were “partly integrated with
Sufism.”72 Sufis appreciated the Yogic aim of controlling appetites and desires
that prevent god-consciousness (taqwa). Yoga was also attractive because its
practice is “unmediated by priests or other worldly institutions.”73 Some forest-
clearing, pioneer Sufi saints were subsequently transformed into ghazi warriors,
waging war against infidels and destroying Hindu temples. This conformed to
later ideals about Muslim heroes. However, there are no contemporary records
of Sufis acting in this way or making such a “decisive break between Bengal’s
Hindu past and its Muslim future.”74 In Punjab, which, like Bengal, was on the
fringe of Islam’s economic and political reach, a p īr “might legitimize an
ancient, pre-Islamic practice simply by calling it Islamic, and that would be
that.”75
For Bengalis and people elsewhere in India, where rivers and streams, trees
and flowers, mountains and valleys, rocks and stones are sacred, this approach
was wholly compatible with Hindu beliefs. Over time, too, as local Indian lan-
guages became acceptable vehicles for Islamic thought, Islam became less
exotic, and more Indian. In Bengal, this replicated a process that had already
taken place within Hinduism. As Bhakti-marga (the devotional form of Hindu-
ism) attracted more devotees, use of Bengali for singing praise to the gods
(especially to the feminine divine) helped greatly, since non-elites did not know
Sanskrit.76 The building of Sufi shrines aided the process. It also provided local
sacred places that could substitute for distant Arab ones. These remained holy,
yet need not necessarily be visited. Stories could be transplanted to India, where
the Nile became the Ganges. Adam, appearing on an island off the Bengal
coast, planted seeds, harvested the crop, baked bread and established the para-
digm that “farming the earth successfully is the fundamental task of all
mankind.”77 Today, to be a good Muslim is still “closely associated with being a
good farmer.78 Islam was no longer foreign.
Rajmohun Gandhi wrote that Muslims might lose their hearts to India but fall
short, for Hindus, because Islam forbids them from worshipping India.79 Argu-
ably, some Muslims all but cross the line between love and worship. Sufi notions
of the unity of all being (wahdat al-Wujud) and unity of creator and created
(ittihad-i Khaliq wa Makhluq), developed in Iran, found a ready home in India.
In Hindu thought, there is no ultimate distinction between Brahman, the Abso-
lute (which is ineffable), and existence itself. The atman, within all beings, links
everything with Brahman. Technically, there is neither creator nor creature in
Hindu thought. The latter is an extension or projection of the former, “made
by Brahman from within itself.” Existence flows from Brahman’s self- conscious
expansion of being, of existence. Only Brahman’s existence is self-sustaining,
non-contingent.80 Normative Islam posits distinction between Allah as creator
and the created world; it also defines Allah as non-contingent being, the uni-
verse as contingent. Yet the Qur’an 21: 104 might open up the possibility that
the universe is a projection, not an ex nihilo creation. Here, God says that God
will roll the universe up like a scroll before “producing a new creation.” This
also lends itself to the Hindu idea of cyclical universes; universes are born,
decay, die, then begin again. The goal of Sufi Islam is to achieve the state of
fanā, the passing away of selfishness, of the ego (the nafs) into pure God-con-
sciousness, so that the Self ceases to exist (baqa) correct diactricial. The Sufi
retains only a sense of the divine, within and without. This is almost identical to
the Hindu goal of samadhi, a state of bliss in which the atman’s identity with
Brahman is realized at the deepest level of being.81 Sufis teach unity of truth
(wahdat al Haqq) as well as unity of being. They are less interested in the reli-
gious label worn by truly spiritually aware people than in their inner experi-
ence. Sufis have expounded perennial philosophy, regarding themselves as
guardians of all revelations. Rumi, who had some “Christian and Jewish
isciples,” constantly referenced the “universality of tradition” in his Mathnavi,

d
one of the most popular books among India’s Muslims. For the Sufi, all “forms
become transparent, including religious forms, thus revealing . . . their unique
origin.”82 In India, Sufis saw Hindu forms as different expressions of the same
Truth, perhaps emphasizing a specific aspect or correcting an overemphasis in
some interpretations of Islam. Literature could substitute the Arabic Allah with
Sanskrit names for God, such as Niranjan, so that instead of presenting Allah as
a rival God, Allah was identified as another name for the same divine reality.
Sometimes, Sufis were initially content with planting the idea that Allah could
coexist with other “superhuman agencies.” Over time, these names “merged,”
enabling their interchangeable use. Finally, “the names of Islamic superhuman
agencies displaced” Hindu, now rooted in the minds of the people, as was Islam
in the land’s soil.83 Muhammad was described as an avatar, as were all proph-
ets.84 Language was adapted to “introduce Islam to local residents in terms they
could comprehend.85 Fatimah, Muhammad’s daughter, found a role as a mani-
festation of Kali,86 and even as “mother of the world.” Yet her virtue exceeded
that of the Hindu deity. She was also depicted as a beautiful Bengali woman.87
Conclusion
From Sindh, where Iran and India–Pakistan meet, to Bengal in the East where
India borders Indo-China, Iranian Islam stimulated Indian Islam. It influenced
poetry, art, and literature. It provided ideas about the need for governance to
be just. Iranian-inspired Sufis held rulers to account, legitimizing or challeng-
ing their authority. Sufis provided a way for Islam to build religious and cultural
bridges with Indian thought, concepts, and religions. Although Muslims and
Hindus in India have chosen to create separate states – with strained relations
between them – there are many examples of Hindus and Muslims coexisting
and cooperating. They see themselves as co-seekers following different but
complimentary paths toward life’s end-goal, the drowning of self in ecstatic,
blissful awareness of total dependence on God, the annihilation of
“subject” –“object” duality.
Notes
1
See Richard M Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, (Berkeley, CA: The
University of California Press, 1993), 27–8.
2
Nadeem Hasnain and Sheikh Abrar Husain, Shias and Shia Islam in India: a study
in society and culture (New Delhi: Harnam Publications, 1988), 36.
3
See Vrajendra Raj Mehta and Thomas Pantham, Political ideas in modern India:
thematic explorations (Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006), 171. They
argue that communitarian rivalry in India was largely stimulated by European

assumptions that there were “two great civilizations” in India, the “Hindu, which
at times was also described as Indian” and “the Islamic.” This “understanding of
difference and diversity . . . came from outside” and provided “fertile ground
for harboring the politics of identity and, at times, even of difference.” Deal-
ing separately with different communities, allocating resources and later seats
in legislatures, suited the British who represented their rule as necessary to
prevent violence between rival and incompatible religions. Yet even when the
demand for partition gained popularity, some Muslims supported Hindu–Mus-
lim unity. Within the Muslim community, Shi’a and Sunni collaborated in the
independence struggle. Aga Khan III (1877–1957), leader of the Ismaili Shi’a,
was President of the Muslim League from 1906 (when it was founded) until 1913.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876–1948) also Shi’a, led the League from 1934. He was
Pakistan’s first Governor General.
4
S. C. Mittal, India distorted: a study of British historians on India (New Delhi: M.D.
Publications, 1995), 171. The Gods are said to have revealed (“breathed out”)
the Vedas, India’s most ancient scriptures. They probably started as oral tradition,
which, according to AIT, was outside India. About 1200 BCE, they were written
down, and most scholars think this occurred in North India. Division into four
books is attributed to Vyasa, who later narrates the Mahabharrta (between 500
and 300 BCE), a Puranic scripture that includes the Bhagavad-Gita. The Upani-
shads (commentary on the Vedas), written between 800 and 400 BCE, and the
Gita are the main sources of the philosophy and ideas about the Brahman–Atman
continuum.
5
Sharada Sugirtharaj, Imagining Hinduism: a postcolonial perspective (London: Rout-
ledge, 2003), 52.
6
Peter van der Veer, Imperial encounters: religion and modernity in India and Britain
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 2001), 143.
7
Pamela Kyle Crossley, The Earth and its peoples: a global history. Volume 1. (Belmont,
CA: Wadsworth, 2011), 115.
8
Krisha Chanda Sagar. Foreign influence on ancient India (New Delhi: Northern
Book Centre, 1992), 17.
9
Sagar, 22.
10
Sagar, 23.
11
Sagar, 24.
12
Sagar, 25.
13
Sagar, 26.
14
Sagar, 32.
15
Sagar, 29.
16
Sargar, 31.
17
Sagar, 30.
18
Sagar, 31.
19
Sagar, 35.
20
Sagar, 182. An Avatar is a physical manifestation of Vishnu, the preserver and
defender of dharma (order, truth). An Avatar appears when chaos and evil
threaten universal order. Vishnu is one of the three gods (Brahma –who “creates”,
Vishnu – who “preserves”, Shiva –who “destroys, the Trimurti – three images)
who, with their complimentary consorts (Saraswati, Lakshmi, and Parvarti), were
popularized in the Puranas.
21
Eaton, 129.
22
Chenyang Li, The Tao encounters the West: explorations in comparative philosophy
(Albany, NY: State University. of New York Press, 1999), 151.
23
Eaton, 303.
24
Eaton, 28.
25
Eaton, 28.
26
Eaton, 28.
27
Eaton, 28.
28
Eaton, 29.
29
Eaton, 35.
30
Eaton, 40. The Abbasids caliphate, maintained as a symbolic office by the Mam-
luk Sultans, continued until 1517, when the Ottomans conquered Egypt. A surviv-
ing Abbasid took refuge in Egypt after Baghdad fell. Subsequently, the Ottoman
sultans styled themselves as caliphs. This caliphate ended in 1924, abolished by
the new Turkish Republic. In India, some Shi’a intellectuals supported the move-
ment for the caliphates’ retention and restoration.
31
William Bayne Fisher, Ilya Gershevitch, and Ehsan Yar Shater, The Cambridge His-
tory of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 442.
32
Ehsan Yarshatter, “The Persian presence in the Islamic World,” in Richard G Hov-
annisian and Georges Sabagh (editors) The Persian presence in the Islamic World,
4–125 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 84. Pointing out that not
all early Sufis were Persian, Yarshatter writes: “However, “Persia . . . took the lead
in developing, expanding and propagating Sufi thought” as it did in “intimately”
wedding Sufism to poetry.
33
Eaton, 31.
34
Eaton, 30.
35
Eaton, 84.
36
The first two of Islam’s three haram or sacred cities – Makkah, Madinah, and Jeru-
salem – are in Arabia. The list’s order indicates declining sanctity, with Makkah,
the location of the pilgrimage, the reference point for Muslim prayer, home of
the Ka’ba, in first place. Although sacred, the third, outside Arabia, is downscale
from both Arab cities.
37
V. S Naipaul, Among the Unbelievers (London: Peter Smith, 1998), 311, 318.
38
Yarshatter, 93.
39
Yarshatter, 75.
40
Yarshatter, 13, 73. The Umayyads appointed qadis but these did not function
within a religious framework.
41
Yarshatter, 72.
42
Technically Sunnis regard all Muslims as equal. They believe that the caliph
(deputy) should be selected from appropriately qualified and pious candidates.
In fact, only the first four were selected. After Ali’s assassination in 661, the first
of three dynastic caliphates began, under the Umayyads. Succession was never
strictly hereditary. However, it was confined to and controlled by a dynasty. Shi’a
recognized Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, as the legitimate leader.

Unlike Sunni caliphs, as Imam, Ali (“he who stands first”), was preordained to
rule, sinless, infallible, and inspired as were those who succeeded him in lineal
succession. Caliphs could err and had to share the task of interpreting Islam with
the community, in practice with fuqara (scholars of Islam).
43
For example, Henry Corbin saw the ancient Iranian concept of the “philoso-
phy of light” behind Shi’a Imamology – each Imam inherits the light (nur) that
inspired Muhammad and created the world (see Yarshatter, 84). Sufis also sub-
scribe to the concept of a light that illuminates seekers, conveying esoteric (batin)
knowledge.
44
Twelvers recognize a succession of 12 infallible Imāms. The twelfth was mysti-
cally “hidden” by God for his protection – only the first Imām, Ali (also fourth
Sunni caliph) exercised actual political power. The identities of most were
kept secret. The real break with Sunni was in 680, when Husayn (Muham-
mad’s grandson) challenged Yazid I for the leadership and lost. Almost the
entire House of the Prophet was slaughtered at the Battle of Karbala. Sub-
sequently, martyrdom, suffering, and the struggle against injustice became
major Shi’a motives. After the twelfth Imām’s occultation, scholars speak for
him. All Shi’a owe loyalty to the mujtahid (senior scholar) of their choice. Iran
became officially Shi’a with the rise of the Safavids (1501). Since scholars
represent the Hidden Imām, there was often tension between the Shahs and
the mujtahidun. The 1979 Islamic revolution ended this, when jurists took
power, abolishing the monarchy. Zaidis (Fivers) separated after the death of
the fourth Imām; Ismailis (Seveners) did so after the death of the sixth in the
twelver’s lineage.
45
The main branch of Ismailis recognizes the Aga Khan as their living Imām. Since
the early nineteenth century, the Imāms use the titles “Prince” and “Highness”
due to their marriage into the Qajar dynasty. The title “Aga Khan” was awarded
by the shah of Iran in 1818. It means “Lord.” In British India, the Aga Khan was
recognized as a prince and a community leader. Aga Khan III chaired the League
of Nations from 1938 to 1939, where he represented India.
46
Yarshater, 96.
47
Yarshatter, 96.
48
Yarshatter, 98.
49
The main Shi’a kingdoms were Ahmadnagar, Bijapur, and Golconda. In Hydera-
bad, which replaced Golconda, a Sunni ruled a majority Shi’a population. The
Nijafi nawabs of Bengal (1757–1880) were Shi’a. Under the British, they exer-
cised little power. However, this is evidence of how influential Iran was even at
India’s opposite extremity, furthest from Sindh.
50
Annemarie Schimmel “The West-Eastern Diwan,” in Richard G Hovannisian
and Georges Sabagh (editors) The Persian presence in the Islamic World, 147–71
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 156.
51
Schimmel, 150.
52
Sufia M Uddin, Constructing Bangladesh: religion, ethnicity, and language in an Islamic
nation (New Delhi: Vistaar, 2006), 31.
53
Uddin, 194.
54
Sandra Bermann, Nation, language, and the ethics of translation (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2005), 98.
55
Indian Muslim rulers also claimed to be caliphs in their own realm, or his right
hand, his shadow; see Eaton, 39–40.
56
Eaton, 94.
57
Eaton, 56.
58
Eaton, 60.
59
Eaton, 58.
60
Percy Brown, Indian Architecture, Islamic Period (Bombay: D. B Taraporevala,
1968), 38.
61
Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1983) argues that, at this point, people did not necessarily or
usually experience spiritual illumination or conversion. They began a slow jour-
ney that initially involved a “change of fellowship,” entry into a different com-
munity, a move from one community into another. This begs questions about
what it means to be Muslim and whether “Islamization” and “conversion” are
coterminous, 41; 252.
62
Rajmohan Gandhi, Eight lives: a study of the Hindu-Muslim encounter (Albany, N.Y.:
State University of New York Press. 1986), 9.
63
Richard Eaton, “Approaches to the Study of Conversion to Islam in India,” in
Richard M Martin (ed) Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, 106–24 (Tucson,
AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1985), 119. Sufia Uddin says that early Muslim
rulers showed little interest in proselytizing non-Muslims, whose taxes paid for
their armies; Sufia M Uddin, Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity, and Lan-
guage in an Islamic Nation (New Delhi: Vistaar, 2006), 190.
64
I am indebted to Asim Roy for his work on Bengal’s Muslim cultural mediators, a
term he adapted from Arnold J Toynbee’s “cultural brokers”. See Roy, 78, 253.
65
Eaton, 224.
66
Eaton, 218,
67
Earton, 218.
68
Eaton, 226.
69
Eaton, 270.
70
Roy, 210.
71
Eaton, 76 citing Ibn Battuta.
72
Eaton, 79.
73
Eaton, 78.
74
Eaton, 73.
75
Eaton 1985, 123.
76
Roy, 78-9.
77
Eaton, 203, 308.
78
Eaton 1985,
79
Gandhi, 14.
80
Nagendra Kumar Singh, Encyclopaedia of Hinduism (New Delhi: Centre for
International Religious Studies: Anmol Publications, 1997) 818. Bengali Mus-
lim writers repeatedly stressed Allah’s formlessness and indivisibility, adapting
Hindu vocabulary; Allah as “the unqualified absolute” contained the “potency of

creation,” 122.
81
Singh, 673.
82
Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Sufi essays (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1972), 146.
83
Eaton, 269.
84
Roy, 95–6; Uddin, 33.
85
Uddin, 33.
86
Shiva’s consort, Parvarti (patron of art), also has a ferocious form, Kali (or
Shakti), in which she destroys ignorance, protecting Shiva when he enters into
a deep meditative state. All manifest the One, so any of the Three can fulfill all
responsibilities. Shiva’s meditations help preserve the Universe (Vishnu’s task);
his dance of destruction to end a cycle of existence morphs into Brahma’s task of
starting the next one. Yet when he meditates, Shiva becomes vulnerable to attack,
so his consort transforms herself into a powerful being to defend him, destroying
ignorance.
87
Roy, 94–5.
Chapter 2
A Model of Sufi Training in the Twenty-First

Century: A Case Study of the Qādiriyya in
Hyderabad
Mauro Valdinoci
Introduction
This chapter deals with some aspects of the contemporary training in a branch
of the Qādiriyya in Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh, India). My purpose is not to
analyse the topic in depth, but also to focus on what I think is a most striking
feature of present-day spiritual training in the Sufi orders which I studied: the
physical separation between master and disciple. Both masters and disciples
have daily engagements and busy schedules. The mashaikh (sing. shaikh) of the
order promote a view of Sufism that urges individuals to avoid ascetic seclusion
and to maintain a balance between religion (din) and the world (dunya). Most
of them combine the role of spiritual guides with a secular job, so they cannot
always be readily available to their disciples. As a result, the time they spend
instructing their disciples is limited. My first aim is to provide an answer to the
following question: is the present situation leading to a decline of the khānqāh-
based model of training? Toward that end this chapter researches how these
masters carry out the training of disciples. I will not get into the details of spiri-
tual training; I am rather interested in highlighting the contexts in which the
disciples are trained. I argue that in this branch of the Qādiriyya the model of
training is not shaped according to the historical characteristics of the Sufi
khānqāh, but is based mainly on brief occasional meetings between the master
and his disciple and on recurrent gatherings. The second question I seek to
answer is: if the master spends less time with his disciples, does separation affect
the master–disciple relationship significantly? Is this spiritual bond, which is a
crucial element in Sufism, at risk? I contend that it is not at risk; indeed this
silsila applies particular techniques and exercises which allow disciples to
strengthen their connection with their shaikh and to advance on the spiritual
path, even if they are not able to spend extended periods of time with their
shaikh. To this regard, I focus on the tasāwwur-i shaikh (visualization of the
shaikh), a spiritual exercise common not only among the Qādiriyyas, but also
among other Sufis. By providing an ethnographical description of how this

exercise is performed and imagined by the members of this silsila, I aim at
understanding its significance in the process of spiritual training. Besides the
reasons cited by the mashaikh and the murīds themselves, I claim that the
tasāwwur-i shaikh is an effective and extremely suitable tool for the modern age.
Even if the disciples live far away from their shaikh, through the tasāwwur-i
shaikh they can strengthen the bond with him and establish an esoteric connec-
tion with him, which enable them to receive his spiritual blessings and
support.
AQ1: We
have fix the The contemporary Qādirī shaikh: Spirituality and
unnumbered
heading style. involvement in the world
Please clarify.
It is important to have a brief overview of the biographical sketches of some of
the most influential mashaikh of this silsila, by highlighting their occupations.
The silsila was founded by Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qādir Siddīqī (1871–1962), born
in Hyderabad and initiated to Sufism by his maternal uncle, Muhammad Siddīq
Husaynī (1847–95), who gave him the khilafat at the age of 16.1 At the age of 15
he started his career as a mufti and at the same time he began teaching fiqh at
the Dār al-‘Ulūm a college established in 1856, whose curriculum included a
combination of Islamic traditional sciences and modern subjects, such as sci-
ences, physics and chemistry. Later on he also taught Arabic literature, tafsīr and
Had īth.2 When Osmania University, a secular university, was established in 1918,
he was appointed professor of Had īth and the first Head of the Department of
Theology.3 Besides teaching, he was also a prolific writer, both in prose and
poetry: he published books in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu on theology, Sufism,
Islamic jurisprudence, philosophy, and logic.4 Long before his own death he
appointed his son ‘Abd al-Rahim Siddīqī (1891–1968) as his successor. ‘Abd al-
Rahim taught Persian, Urdu, and theology at the Medak High School (Siddīqī
2004, 219). After him the most charismatic shaikh of the silsila up to the present
day has been ‘Abd al-Rahīm’s elder son, ‘Abd al-Alim Siddīqī (1928–2008). He
received his MBBS degree at Osmania University and practiced as a medical doc-
tor at his own clinic in the area of King Kothi. Most of the time he was busy with
his patients and when he was at home, often people thronged outside his door
waiting to meet him, as he was noted for his healing powers and his elevated
spiritual level.5 After his father’s demise, he declined the offer of the place of
sajjāda nishīn and the elders of the silsila appointed another son of ‘Abd al-Qādir
Siddīqī, Abu Turab Alī Siddīqī (1905–88). He graduated from Osmania Univer-
sity6 and become employed as a primary school teacher in Marialgudah. Then
he was posted in Mahbubnagar as school administrator and was later promoted
as high school principal. A few years before his retirement he requested his
department for a transfer to Hyderabad, so that he could attend to his elderly
AQ2: Please A Case Study of the Qādiriyya in Hyderabad 33
check the
Shortened
Running father.7 After him his brother Abul-Qasim Muhammad Siddīqī (1908–89) was
Head. made the sajjāda nishīn, but he died just the following year. He was a science
teacher at the Nampally High School.8 After him his brother Husain Shujah
al-Dīn Siddīqī (1909–98) was appointed as the fourth sajjāda nishīn. He worked
first as accountant-general, then he was transferred to Gulbarga as treasurer,
then he was appointed director of awqaf in the town of Zillaperbhani, and finally
was promoted to the post of revenue officer in the town of Hoshanagar.9 The
present sajjāda nishīn is Ghawth Muhī al-Dīn Siddīqī who, along with his younger
brother, is the only living son of ‘Abd al-Qādir. He has now retired from his scrap
metal business. He lives at his residence and only comes to the dargāh to preside
over the rituals of the monthly or annual gatherings. His elder son, Ahmad, is
also a teaching shaikh and at the same time carries on a clothing business. At the
darg āh the elder son of the previous sajjāda nishīn, ‘Abd al-Qādir, has been
appointed by Ghaus Mohi al-Dīn to practice spiritual healing and to look after
the people who come seeking a solution for all sorts of problems. However, since
he also holds a secular job, he receives people only from 5.00 to 9.00 in the eve-
nings. At present all the mashaikh of the Siddīqī family and the khalifas I met,
besides being involved in religious activities as spiritual guides, healers, or teach-
ers of the religious sciences, work in secular fields as well. In this regard, they are
following in the footsteps of ‘Abd al-Qādir, who maintained that a Sufi should be
concerned mainly with God and with ways to reach Him, but at the same time
he is supposed to earn his living and to take care of his family. In this view, the
ideal Sufi has to be detached from the world, yet he has to live in the world,
among the people, serving the people. In ‘Abdullāh , the monumental biogra-
phy of ‘Abd al-Qādir by his grandson and khalifa Anwār al-Dīn (1891–1969),
there are many passages stating that though the saint was deeply involved in
religious and spiritual issues, he did not neglect worldly matters such as the
welfare of his large family. As an instance: “He was living among the creatures of
God and used to respect their rights, at the same time he was performing his
spiritual exercises and devotions.”10 One of his teachings, which his descendents
still stress, was to respect everyone’s rights. He dealt with this topic in many
works. The following quotation is from his Usul-i Islam (Principles of Islam):
Human being is besieged with rights and duties. There are rights of Allah and
His Apostle. Rights of the king and his subjects. Rights of the people living
in the house. Rights of friends and rights of our own self. There is even the
right of the enemy.11
The members of this silsila emphasize that our life is guided by rights and obli-
gations. We have rights (huquq, sing. haq), but other people also have a right on
us: our wife or husband has a right on us, as our parents or children do, or even
the beggars. This view of spirituality is in line with the sermons and teachings of
the founder saint of the Qādiriyya, ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jilani (d. 1166).12
Decline of the khānqāh-based model of training?
The mashaikh of this silsila have to carry on secular jobs besides their spiritual
activities and have to look after quite large families.13 Similarly the disciples
have their own school, family, and job engagements. At present it is unlikely
that disciples have the chance to spend extended periods of time with their
shaikh, while he watches over their training closely. Does this mean that the
model of spiritual training based on the institution of the Sufi khānqāh is bound
to decline? Undoubtedly we need more research to state that the khānqāh sys-
tem is declining and it is quite risky to make such a generalization when multi-
ple factors are involved. It is very important, I believe, to take account of the
context; for example, things may change if we move from the city to the coun-
tryside, or if we consider a shaikh who does not need to carry on a secular job
and can focus totally on religious and spiritual issues. However, here I don’t
deal with the issue of the alleged decline of the khānqāh system, which requires
a more extensive discussion, but I’m concerned just with a shift which may have
occurred from the way the religious and esoteric education was provided within
the khānqāh system. The medieval Indian khānqāh used to be a place where the
disciples lived under the supervision and guidance of a shaikh. Not only did
they receive spiritual training and learned the Islamic sciences, but ate, slept,
and worked together as a small community. Maybe one of the most outstanding
features of the khānqāh was the support provided to the poor and the needy,
who were given shelter, food, and money.14 Below is a passage in which ‘Abd
al-Qādir deals with the institution of the khānqāh:
Some mashaikh maintained, by their own earnings, not only their murīdin but
the murīdin’s wives and children as well. . . . Out [of their homes] there were
a madrasa and a khanqah. Board and lodging were provided by the khanqah.
If there were female murīdīn, they used to live in the house, however the
khānqāh used to attend to their food and needs. The expenses of the pīr
and his family were managed separately from those of the khānqāh. Social
activities were separated from family matters. Within the house they used to
eat ordinary food (bread and lentils), while outside [in the khānqāh] more
tasteful food was made, such as pulao, anniversaries (‘urs) were organized
and people were invited. . . . The pīr besides supplying religious, moral and
spiritual education, used to look after the orphans, took on the responsibil-
ity of their marriage, education, helped them to find a job and took care of
all their needs. In those times there was no need of neither any community
donations, nor of orphanages.15
The author describes the khānqāh with a sense of nostalgia and laments that it
is not a common institution anymore among his contemporaries. With a light
argumentative mood he claims that in his times, the institution is not carried
out according to the old rules: there is no concern for the poor and often the
mashaikh use the income ensuing from grants, endowments, gifts, donations,
etc. for their own family’s needs. ‘Abd al-Qādir’s successors never established
any khānqāh at Siddiq Ghulshan. Within the dargāh precincts there are neither
any cells nor any dormitories. Though there is a langar, food is not distributed
on a daily basis, but only during the monthly and annual gatherings. The
teaching of the traditional religious sciences is not carried out systematically.
Since the establishment of the dargāh, regular Hadīth classes were held by ‘Ali
Siddīqī, the second sajjāda nishīn, and he appointed one of his sons to continue
the teaching after him. Today his son still carries on the job, though he moved
the classes to his residence, which is quite far from the dargāh. The traditional
classes of Arabic grammar and tafsīr, held on Fridays and Sundays, respectively,
are still carried on by another grandson of the founder, ‘Abd al-Razzāq. The
instruction of the disciples in the recollection of God (dhikr) in a collective
form is not carried out on a daily basis. Two weekly sessions of dhikr are held,
one at the sajjāda nishīn’s residence on Sundays led by Ghawth Muhī al-Dīn, and
one at the dargāh on Thursdays led by ‘Abd al-Razzāq. During these sessions,
the murīds get to know the different azkar (sing. dhikr) of the silsila and learn
how to practice them correctly. Apart from these occasions, the murīds practice
their spiritual exercises mostly on their own and not under the supervision of
their shaikh. If the murīds want to meet their shaikh, they can go to his house
during his free time, or to the dargāh during the monthly or annual gatherings.
This means that the disciples get their spiritual education mostly in the course
of private and individual meetings with their shaikh. However, during public
gatherings also the murīds have a chance to learn something and to get spiri-
tual blessings. As the members of the silsila stress, the mashaikh provide a great
deal of teachings indirectly, for example through their behavior. During these
events not only can the disciples observe carefully the behavior of the elders of
the silsila, but also benefit from the company of their shaikh. On a monthly
basis, three events are held, which include recitation of the Qur’ān and of the
Qasīdat al-burda (The Poem of the Mantle), a dhikr session, a collective ziyārat
(visit) to the graves of ‘Abd al-Qādir and of the main masters of the silsila, a
communitarian meal (langar), and a musical assembly (mehfil-i sama). Annually
the chief event is the death anniversary (‘urs) of ‘Abd al-Qādir, which is held
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth of shawwal. On a smaller scale the mem-
bers of the silsila celebrate also the anniversaries of the other influential
mashaikh of the order. The celebrations of the ‘urs include all the aforemen-
tioned ritual elements in addition to the ceremony of the sandal mali16 and to
the display of the holy relics owned by the Siddiqi family.17 Other gatherings
are organized on the tenth day of muharram, on the birthday of Prophet
Muhammad (twelfth of rabi’ al-awwal), and on the death anniversary of ‘Abd
al-Qādir al-Jīlānī (eleventh of rabī’ al-thānī).18
The ritual events of the dargāh are quite numerous; however, the dargāh is
not managed according to the principles of the khānqāh system. The training of
the disciples does not entail a constant and extended closeness of the disciple
to his master; the disciple gets his spiritual education in the course of brief
meetings with his shaikh, both private and public. The frequency of the meet-
ings depends on various factors, such as the distance between the disciple’s
home and his shaikh’s residence, the disciple’s availability of spare time, and
the disciple’s determination to progress on the spiritual path. If a disciple lives
far away from his shaikh, or if he has no spare time, it is unlikely that he will
meet his shaikh often. If a disciple is at a basic level of the spiritual path and is
not interested on advancing further – most disciples tend to have this attitude –
he will be satisfied with the small amount of exercises he was given by his shaikh
and with meeting him during the gatherings at the dargāh. Such disciples pay a
visit to their shaikh mainly if they have some problem they want to solve with his
help. Considering all this, maybe at present the spiritual training has to be orga-
nized in such a way that the religious and esoteric knowledge can be passed on
also in the course of brief meetings and even without the constant presence of
the shaikh. If this is true, I would suggest that historical and social contingen-
cies contribute to remodeling and rethinking, to a certain extent, the Sufi
methods of teaching.
Strengthening the connection with the shaikh from afar:

The tasāwwur-i shaikh
As members of the silsila have stressed, the exercise known as tasāwwur-i shaikh
or visualization of the shaikh plays a crucial role in the master–disciple relation-
ship. It is the beginning stage of the mur qaba (contemplation), which is one of
the most advanced spiritual exercises in Sufism. As I observed during my field-
work, at present it is a common exercise in the Qādiriyya, and the literature tell
us that it is practiced also in the Chishtia-Sabiriyya (cf. Rozehnal 2007, 198) and
the Naqshbandiyya (cf. Buehler 1998, 134–40; Werbner 2003, 141–2, 204–5).
However, as other Sufi practices and beliefs, it is not universally recognized
within the Muslim community. Some Muslim theologians and scholars openly
criticize it and condemn it as shirk (polytheism) (cf. Gaborieau 1999, 460–1).
Attacks against the practice of the tasāwwur-i shaikh came even from within the
Sufi community.19 ‘Abd al-Qādir Siddiqi wrote in this regard:
The Imām Hasan went to Hanad Ibn Hālah and asked him: “Uncle, please
tell me how the Messenger of God was, so that I can imagine him.” These
are the Imām’s words. . . . The shaikh [mashaikh] make great play about the
tasāwwur-i shaikh. . . .Some among the ignorant say that the tasāwwur-i shaikh
is shirk and kufr, what a statement! Those ignorant ones don’t even know
the meaning of worship (‘ibadat); worship is of God, [while] the reverence
(ta’zim) for the saints, which is obligatory [wajib] according to the law, is just
reverence, not worship (Siddiqi 2004, 199).
The shaikh justifies the legitimacy of this exercise by relating it to an outstand-

ing personality of the Muslim tradition and to the established tradition of the
Sufi leaders, furthermore stressing the difference between worship and rever-
ence, which is a recurrent argument of the contemporary defence of the Sufi
devotion. According to Buehler the tasāwwur-i shaikh “involves both an emo-
tional tie of love and a specific psychological tie of modelling” (1998, 140).20
The same is true for these Qādiriyyas. In ‘Abdullāh, ‘Abd al-Qādir Siddīqī is
reported to have said:
We have a great method of visualization of the shaikh, which involves a jour-

ney (sair) to the Messenger of God and then to Allah. I become the shaikh,
the shaikh reaches the figure (shakal) of the Messenger of Allah, the Mes-
senger of Allah becomes the image (surāt) of Allah, then Allah reaches the
figure of the Messenger of Allah, the Messenger of Allah reaches the figure of
the shaikh and the shaikh reaches my figure. This is called ascent and descent
(sa’ud wa nazul) (Siddiqi 2004, 199).
In this statement the imagination of the shaikh is pictured as a journey of the

mind. He wrote on the tasāwwur-i shaikh in his Nizam al-’aml-i fuqara’ (Order of
the Spiritual Practices of the Derwishes). He stresses the power of thought and
its effect on the human body.21 According to him the aim of this exercise is to
focus the thought on a single point, in order to make it stable and strong.22 In
the following passage he outlines two different methods of imagination:
When you imagine you should think that there is a sharp beam of light going
from Allah toward the heart of the Prophet. Then it goes from the shaikh’s
heart to your heart. You should pull this light with full concentration towards
your heart, don’t think it is just mere thoughts, [because] this practice means
success. As it develops, it shows you amazing things. The form of the form-
less appears right in front of you and the ‘alam-i mithal [the world of simile]
opens up. When the thought gets more powerful, one should start thinking
that his face is that of the shaikh. A time will come when he thinks that and
the shaikh’s face appears. Even externally the effect is such that the shaikh’s
brightness appears on the murīd’s face and body. The other people also will
feel that he [the murīd] is changing and taking some of the qualities of the
shaikh. Even the voice becomes similar to that of the shaikh (Siddiqi 1959,
26–7).
According to the author, the exercise has remarkable effect on the disciple:
inwardly it contributes to expand and refine his/her spiritual vision, and out-
wardly it affects the disciple’s body and personality in such a way that eventu-
ally he/she starts to resemble his/her shaikh. The regular and intense practice
of this exercise can lead also to the fanā fi’l-shaikh (annihilation in the shaikh),
which is a crucial goal of the spiritual path and the prelude to the fanā fi’l-rasūl
(annihilation in the Prophet) and to the fanā fi’llah (annihilation in Allah)23.
During the interviews, the members of the silsila agreed that it does not matter
if one is not able, due to lack of spare time, to carry out lengthy sessions of
tasāwwur-i shaikh; however, one should try to practice it daily. As the masters of the
silsila say, this exercise does not call for plenty of time, since even sessions of five
to ten minutes are enough, but it requires consistency. This daily effort of visual
focus on the shaikh undoubtedly contributes to strengthening the disciple’s tie
with the shaikh, even if they live far from each other and cannot meet frequently.
Thus, in spite of the physical separation, the shaikh gradually becomes a familiar
figure for his disciples, a point of reference in their daily life.
Constantly available at the subtle level
Among the various positive aspects of the tasāwwur-i shaikh, the members of the
silsila emphasized two factors: the first is the chance to get the shaikh’s aid in
critical times; the second is the possibility of communication with the shaikh in
his absence. Below I quote a few examples from the interviews:
1. The murīd has to start focusing on the pīr. Then his vision is focused on one
point, then it expands and he can experience wajd. With time he can reach
fanā. [. . .] Once I had a serious pain in my neck. I am a doctor, so I treated
myself in all the ways I knew, I tried different methods and medicines, but
none of them worked, I was not able to get rid of this pain. So I contacted
Hazrat Bahr al-'Ulūm [who was dead at that time], I called him and told him
about my pain. I asked him to relieve me from it, “I am your murīd, why don’t
you help me?” I was still absorbed in contemplation, and I saw his hand com-
ing out of his grave and extending along the road which leads from Siddiq
Ghulshan to my office. I saw a long arm and a hand stretching out up to my
office, then entering my room, and then I felt that Hazrat was pressing his
thumb and first finger on my neck. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up my
pain was gone (khalifa, 6/10/2010).
2. The tasāwwur-i shaikh requires fantasy, imagination, and sheer concentra-
tion. It is very important, many people do it. You just need to imagine the
shaikh with full concentration, ask for his help, and it will come insha’llah
(murīd, 7/02/2010).
3. The tasāwwur-i shaikh is an exercise which has to be developed and refined,

and it takes time. You have to imagine the shaikh, focus your thought and
concentrate on his image. Sometimes help comes immediately or just at
the proper time. This connection is very important and it depends on love,
because the more intense the love is, the easier it is to contact him. Once I
was at an important meeting, many managers and engineers were present.
At some point I blamed someone for a mistake, which I soon realized he had
not committed. I knew I was in the wrong and within two to three seconds I
asked my shaikh for help while visualizing his face. Fortunately the person,
while replying, chose a completely wrong example and I avoided losing my
face (murīd, 9/02/2010).
Disciples who used to perform this exercise regularly stressed that they were
able to come out from critical situations by recollecting the shaikh’s image.24
Many of them claimed that just by imagining their shaikh they were able to
face every kind of problem. Their unshakable belief in the potential support
provided by their shaikh is apparently based on the trust in the shaikh’s spiri-
tual powers and on the persuasion of having established a solid connection
with him. With regard to the second factor, many murīds claimed that being
far away from their shaikh, by the tasāwwur-i shaikh, they could ask him ques-
tions and clear some doubts on important matters. Intriguingly enough, some
of them said that by the regular and prolonged practice of this exercise they
were able to communicate with their dead shaikh. According to my sources,
this continues to happen even today, especially among the disciples of ‘Abd
al-Qādir Siddīqī and his grandson ‘Abd al-’Alim Siddīqī. This ability is devel-
oped gradually. At an early stage the disciple is not able to communicate with
his dead shaikh, but the latter can visit him and talk to him during dreams. At
a more advanced stage the disciple, sitting with his eyes closed and fully con-
centrated, is able to ask questions and hear answers, while at an even more
advanced stage he can talk to his shaikh and see him with his eyes open. This
third stage is rarely achieved; however, some particular mashaikh and khulafa’
of the silsila have a reputation for such an ability. As far as I am told, some
members of the silsila completed their own spiritual education with ‘Abd
al-Qādir long after the latter’s death. They did that by performing contempla-
tion at his grave.
Such statements suggest that even though the shaikh and the murīds for most
of the time live far away from each other, the Sufi training includes spiritual
exercises and psychological bonds by which the shaikh becomes a stable figure
in the disciple’s daily life. Among these exercises, the tasāwwur-i shaikh plays a
crucial role. Thus, the master–-disciple relationship does not seem to be suffer-
ing from the physical distance between the former and the latter, since both are
able to establish a solid connection at a subtle level, even without spending
extended periods of time together. I would like to suggest that this visual focus
on the shaikh may involve also another type of tie besides those pointed out by
other authors, namely an esoteric tie which enables the disciples to communi-
cate with their shaikh in his absence, to ask for his help in critical times, and to
obtain it. Furthermore, this esoteric tie may enable the shaikh to look after his
disciples and meet their needs even by being far away from them. Thus even
though the shaikh is less present in the daily life of his disciples on the physical
level, he is somehow constantly available at the subtle level, and the disciples
know that they can rely on his support.25
Conclusion
The spiritual masters of this silsila were considered models of piety and were all
involved in worldly activities. They were renowned spiritual guides and healers
and at the same time they carried out secular jobs. Their descendents adopt the
same approach to spirituality. They teach their followers to pursue their spiri-
tual aims without neglecting their social and familiar obligations. Disciples are
urged to earn their living and look after their family’s needs. However, the con-
cern for material well-being has to be balanced by a deep involvement in spiri-
tuality. At present, the daily engagements and busy schedules of masters and
disciples make it difficult to carry on spiritual training based on community life
and close supervision of the master, as it used to happen in the khānqāh. The
disciples perform their spiritual exercises mostly by themselves. This chapter
highlights a model of training based on sporadic meetings between master and
disciple: private and individual meetings at the masters’ residences and public
gatherings at the dargāh during the weekly, monthly, and annual events. The
same model of training is quite common in other branches of the Qādiriyya of
Hyderabad. In spite of the distance between masters and disciples, the disciples
are able to internalize the relationship with their masters and establish a solid
connection with them, thanks to specific exercises and psychological paradigms
involved in the Sufi training. Among these methods, the visualization of the
shaikh plays a crucial role. As it has been stated, the tasāwwur-i shaikh undoubt-
edly involves emotional and psychological ties, but it may be argued that it
involves also an esoteric tie, which works at the subtle level. Such a tie seems to
enable the disciples to communicate with their shaikh in his absence, to ask for
his help in critical times, and to obtain it. This departs from some more tradi-
tional practices and pīri–murīdi systems described elsewhere in this book. How-
ever, it may be considered one of the various ways by which Sufism successfully
faces the challenges of the contemporary age. This links with other chapters in
this book, such as Ramsey’s on the Rishis in Kashmir and Philippon’s on “sufi-
based reform movements.”
Notes
1
Sayyid Murād ‘Alī Tāli’, Tazkira-i awliyā’-i Hayderābād (Hyderabad: Minar Book
Depot, 1975), 143. Muhammad Anwār al-dīn Siddīqī, ‘Abdullāh. Siwākh-i hayāt
Bahr al-‘Ulūm Hazrat ‘Allāma Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qadīr Siddīqī ‘Hasrat’ (Hyderabad:
Hasrat Academy, 2004), 86.
2
Siddīqī (2004, 256–356).
3
Beside ḥadīth he also taught tafsīr and fiqh. His service was extended for over ten
years beyond the usual age limits; then, in 1932, he retired and continued to
teach at his home in Malakpet. During this period he was appointed as Honorary
Rector (Shaikh-al-Jāmi’a) of the Jami’a Nizamia University. Siddiqi 2004, 104.
4
Tali’ reports 26 titles (1975, 144); for a comprehensive list see Siddiqi (2004,
357–84). He is famous especially for his Urdu translation and commentary of the
Qur’an, tafsīr-i Siddiqi, and for his Urdu translation and commentary of Muhī
al-dīn Ibn ‘Arabī’s Fusūs al-hikam, which was included in the academic syllabus of
the Dār al-’Ulūm and of the Punjab University. He was also a renowned poet, and
his poems are gathered in the collection Kulliat-i Hasrat and include almost all
the poetic styles. On his poetic production see Siddiqi (2004, 437–52).
5
Siddīqī (2004, 247–8).
6
Later on he obtained also a Master’s degree (Ibid., 226).
7
Ibid.
8
Ibid., 229.
9
Ibid., 231.
10
Ibid., 137.
11
Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qadīr Siddīqī, Usul-i Islam, trans. by Mir Asedullah Shah
Quadri, Principles of Islam (Hyderabad: Hasrat Academy, 1996) 37-41. He sup-
ports his statement by quoting four times from the Qurān (51:19; 2:215; 6:151;
59:9) and by citing eleven Ahādīth.
AQ3: It is
12
Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India. Vol. I, Early Sufism and Its
1975 in
History in India to 1600 A.D. (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1975). Bibliography
13
‘Abd al-Qādir Siddīqī had four wives (one at a time), ten sons, and twelve
daughters.
14
On the institution of the khānqāh in medieval India see Khaliq Ahmad Nizami,
“Some Aspects of Khānqāh Life in Medieval India,” Studia Islamica 8. 1957, 51–9.
Arthur F. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of
the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Coulmbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988),
44–54.
15
Siddīqī (n. d., 9–10).
16
During the sandal mālī, some sandalwood powder is mixed to some rose water
and spread on the saint’s grave. This is an important ritual in the ‘urs celebra-
tions of the dargāhs of the Deccan.
17
Namely a hair of Muhammad and a hair of ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī.
18
The anniversary of ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Jīlānī is a major event in Hyderabad, not only
within the dargāhs of the Qādiriyya, but also in many neighborhoods and pri-
vate houses of the city. Processions with flags are carried out, countless fatiha are
recited, large quantities of food are distributed, and various events, including
religious speeches and poetry gatherings, are held. Intriguingly many Hindus as
well attend the celebrations.
19
Regarding the criticism of Sufi devotion by other Sufis in Hyderabad see for
example the highly polemical book Dīn-i tasawwuf-o tarīqat by Sayyid Muham-
mad ‘Alī Husaynī. As an instance: “Through the above teachings we have learnt
that to keep pictures, drawings or paintings of spiritual leaders is strictly prohib-
ited in Islam. This amount to awliyā’ paresti (worship of saints), which is equiva-
lent to buth paresti (idol worship). Sufism is strongly in favor of keeping pictures
of the pīr and encourages people to focus on the face of the pīr at the time of
prayer” (Husaini 2003, 149).
20
The statement is confirmed also by Rozehnal (2007, 198).
21
“The imagination of a tiger generates fear, the imagination of a woman love.
By the imagination of a woman the man gets a nocturnal emission. Look! How
much effect the thought has on the human body. When imagination of the šaīkh
is practiced, it will bring [feelings of] respect and contentment and [it will bring]
the secrets which are present in the muršid. By it [one] will achieve the highest
profit” (Siddīqī 1959, 25).
22
Siddīqī (1959, 26).
23
Muhammad ‘Abd al-Qādir Siddīqī, Nizam al-’aml-i fuqara’ (Hyderabad: Hasrat
Academy,1959), 27–8.
24
Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: the Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2003), 141–2, 204–5. Werbner also mentions this factor
in her description of a contemporary branch of the Naqshbandiyya in Pakistan.
25
Unfortunately it is difficult to understand how this process works, since so far
I have not found an explicit explanation within the texts of the silsila and we have
to rely on oral narratives.
Chapter 3
Understanding the Philosophy of Spirituality

at Shrines in Pakistan
Dr Hafeez-ur-Rehman Chaudhry
Introduction
The spiritual system of the shrine owes its origin to, and is drawn from, the Sufi
orders of Islam. According to Sufism, the universe is divided into two spheres,
namely, majaz and haqiqat. Both spheres are believed to be the creation of a
Supreme Being. As such, both operate under His absolute power and control.
Nothing moves in both the worlds without His command and will. Majaz is the
world of reality that one can see, observe, and feel through sensory perceptions.
However, the ultimate objective of a man is not to immerse himself completely
into majaz for it is purely temporary in its existence. The reality is to be found
in the realm of haqiqat, which is sublime, unalloyed, and everlasting. It is the
ultimate truth and ideal beauty. While Sufism is considered a separate system,
the Islamic orthodox view does not deny a connection between the two. On the
contrary, it is believed that majaz is the first step toward haqiqat, as is expressed
in the Arabic proverb “Al-majaz-o-qantaraht-ul-Haqiqat” (majaz is the ladder of
haqiqat). Majaz may, therefore, be taken as a reflection of haqiqat, and one can
achieve the true experience of haqiqat only when one has passed through the
stage of majaz. Thus majaz and haqiqat are parts of the continuum intercon-
nected as well as complementary to each other. For instance, beauty is to be
seen and observed in majaz, and eventually it is to be experienced in haqiqat.
This concept of majaz and haqiqat is not a new one. It is found, in one form or
another, in ancient Greek thought, and there have been such schools as those of
Orpheus and Pythagoras (sixth century BCE). Plato (429–347 BCE) also
describes it in his doctrine of ideas (or forms) in which he holds that the forms
(haqiqat) have a real existence outside the world of sense (majaz): it is the
unchanging reality behind the changing appearance. As the forms are abso-
lutely distinct from things, so our apprehension of them (which is knowledge) is
absolutely distinct from opinion, which is faculty set over things. There can be
no true knowledge of the changing. Opinion is changeable, fallible, irrational,
and the result of persuasion; knowledge is enduring, infallible, rational, exact,
clear. Knowledge comes from teaching rather than persuasion, but from
r ecollection rather than teaching; it is our recollection of the forms we saw with
the mind’s eye before the body imprisoned and confused us. The things we see
now remind us of the forms they imitate; and the love of a beautiful person can
lead us to the love of wisdom and of the form of beauty itself. The supreme form
is that of the Good, on which all the others are ultimately founded (Republic).
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822 CE) has voiced the concept of haqiqat (One)
and majaz (many) in his famous elegy on the death of John Keats, Adonais:
The One remains, the many change and pass;

Heaven’s light for ever shine, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
‘Allama Iqbal also gives vent to his desire to see haqiqat in majaz in the following
couplet: “Kabhi ay Haqiqat-i-muntazir, nazar aa libaas-i-majaz main, Keh hazarone
sujdey tarap rahay hain miri jabeen-i-niaz main.” Plato has also stated that God is
the fountainhead of three virtues in the extreme degree: Beauty, Truth, and
Goodness. Philosophers and poets tend to identify the three virtues in various
combinations For example, Edmund Spencer (1552–99 CE) identified Beauty
with Goodness when he said: “All that fair is, is by nature good.” John Keats
(1795–1821 CE), however, identified Beauty with Truth when he said in the Ode
on a Grecian Urn that “Beauty is truth, truth beauty — That is all. Ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know.”
It is believed that a person seeking haqiqat should take a guide who will lead
him to the “right path.” This guide is p īr or murshid, who has himself found the
path through penance, self-mortification, meditation, and complete submis-
sion to the will of God. Having gone through all these stages leading to haqiqat,
he is capable of holding the hand of a truth seeker and become his guide.
The bai'at
Bai'at means to give one’s hand in the hand of another and make a vow1 (to
abide by his commands), a vow of spiritual allegiance to a p īr, usually accompa-
nied by a simple ceremony. It binds the follower to the p īr as a mur īd and, in a
formal sense, inducts him into the institutional structure of Sufism.2 It is, in
other words, a system of accepting an intermediary for attaining spiritual guid-
ance. There is almost a universal practice in all esoteric disciplines that the
coming together of the hands of two persons symbolizes an initiation rite of
self-realization. In all love, perhaps, the coming together of hands signifies a
bond, a promise that is necessary and desirable because of its psychological
significance. It also signifies (especially in modern times when people are
Understanding the Philosophy of Spirituality at Shrines in Pakistan 45
haunted by a multiplicity of desires) that one is prepared to impose on oneself

a limitation, and is ready to see that one is finite. Once he limits himself thus,
through the agency of bai'at, it is only then that infinity will be revealed to him.
The bai'at thus symbolizes the first break with the vicious circle of thought.
The authority for taking bai'at is derived from A1-Qur’an:
1. Lo! those who swear allegiance unto thee (Muhammad), swear allegiance
only unto Allah. The Hand of Allah is above their hands. So whosoever brea-
keth his oath, breaketh it only to his soul’s hurt; while whosoever keepeth his
covenant with Allah, on him will He bestow immense reward (68:10).
2. Allah was well pleased with the believers when they swore allegiance unto
thee beneath the tree, and He knew what was in their hearts, and He sent
down peace of re-assurance on them, and hath rewarded them with a near
victory (68:18).
3. 0 Prophet! If the believing women come unto thee, taking oath of allegiance
unto thee that they will ascribe nothing as partner unto Allah, and will nei-
ther steal nor commit adultery nor kill their children, nor produce any lie
that they have devised between their hands and feet, nor disobey thee in
what is right, then accept their allegiance and ask Allah to forgive them. Lo!
Allah is Forgiving, Merciful (60: 12).
Furthermore, the Prophet in his lifetime received bai'at for a variety of purposes
including for jihad, flight to another land, adherence to the tenets of Islam, not
to indulge in the lamentations from the women of Madina, and to fight for the
blood of Hazrat Usman (known as Bai'at al-Rizwan), and many others.
The Sufis, therefore, say that similarly they could receive bai'at for the par-
ticular purpose of abandoning sins and adopting taqwa3 from their followers.4
Al-Ghaza1i says that if anybody could not reach God it is because he did not
travel on the path of finding God,5 and because he did not find a p īr. Sayyid
Abdul Qadir Jilani says that as God made Adam a teacher of the angels, and
prophets teachers of men, and the Prophet made Abu Bakr his successor, in the
same way the murshid is a link between God and man.6 Ali Hajwiri says, in Kashf-
al-Mahjub, that without the company of an accomplished p īr no person can
become a Sufi or understand Allah.7 Imdad Ullah Muhajir Makki says that it is
not possible to abide by tauhid (unity or oneness) without a shaikh, and a person
who does not have a p īr, his p īr is Iblees (satan).8 In his writings Mu’in ud Din
Chishti has placed great emphasis on the need for a shaikh. The Sufis have
waxed eloquent in describing the need for a p īr or murshid.9 Even Rumi, a highly
regarded scholar, recognized the need for a p īr as he states with the couplet
“Rumi did not become maulvi himself until he became a slave to Shams of
Tabriz.” It is narrated that once he was teaching students in his hospice when
Shams Tabriz appeared and consigned all the books to the water tank (hauz).
When Rumi showed signs of offence, Shams dipped his hand in the tank and
brought out all the books as dry as before. This incident made Rumi his mur īd
(follower or disciple).
If a person has no p īr, he is nicknamed as be pira (without a p īr) or be murshi-
da.10 Both terms are derogatory and degrade a person’s status in society; for it is
believed that he does not have a source of spiritual guidance and his sins will not
be forgiven on the Day of Judgment. He may also be treated with distrust as the
be pira are apart from the relational structure of contacts in the community.11
Once the bai'at is done, the mur īd enters into a fraternity, a sort of thiasus, of
which all the followers of the p īr are members. Other mur īds treat him like their
own brother. The mur īds of the same p īr are known as p īr bhai, a fictive kinship
term indicating sibling relationship. However, it has been noted that the rela-
tions between the real brothers can be strained if either of them has no p īr of
his own. Hence normal social community relationships such as intermarriage
or the exchange of vartan bhaji (social dealings) is not entered upon with be
pira/be murshida persons. This behavior is explained in the sense that religious
relationship is stronger than the blood relationship. Therefore, a person who
does not have religious relationship cannot be accepted in other types of social
relationship. Numerous cases are known where persons have been ostracized
from their baradari (brotherhood) for not having a p īr/murshid. One of the
most common practices is that the parents who are mur īds of a particular p īr
lead their children to also become the mur īd of a p īr, preferably their own. In
case they do not listen to their advice, they are threatened first by such admoni-
tions as “God will never forgive you for your sins”; and if they persist in their
own course, they are even asked to leave the house. Such parents feel embar-
rassed before the members of their fraternity that their children have not lis-
tened to their advice, and conclude that there is something mentally wrong
with the son/daughter.
Generally, a person only follows one p īr at a time. If there are reasons for him
to believe that his p īr is not effective, or that his personal character is not above
board, he can select another p īr. However, such cases are rare because tradition-
ally the mur īd is supposed to justify the actions of the p īr under some pretext or
other. In case he decides to change his p īr and accepts some other person as his
spiritual guide, membership of this fraternity terminates automatically. How-
ever, if the p īr with whom he has taken bai'at dies, he need not choose another
p īr because the spiritual relationship once established continues even after the
p īr’s death. This was clearly noted among the devotees at Golra Sharif, an impor-
tant shrine in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, where a number of persons were inter-
viewed. Some of them were the mur īds of Babuji, the father of the present p īr,
and they did not have to take bai'at on the hands of the present p īr, and they
had the status of his mur īd all the same. They attend the shrine as in the past
and ask for the du’a (blessings) of the present p īr just as they had done before
from Babuji. This is due to a belief that the son of a p īr is also a p īr. Thus the
spirituality of the p īr is believed to be a hereditary trait transferred lineally from
father to son. Strictly speaking, the idea of inheritance of khilafat is not

hereditary, as is evident from innumerable recorded examples. Abdul Qadir
Jilani, Mu’in ud Din Chishti, Bakhtiyar Kaki, Farid ud Din Mas’ud, and Nizam
ud Din Awliya, to name a prominent few, were not followed by their sons, as all
of them gave their isle to their disciples who were the best in learning and piety.
There is no bar, however, to the son of a p īr becoming his khal īfa if he fulfills the
requisite standard of learning and piety.
The relationship of p īri–mur īdi is formalized through the medium of bai'at.
When a person makes bai'at to another person by giving his hand into the oth-
er’s, he accepts him as his spiritual guide or mentor, and makes a firm commit-
ment with him to follow his dictates without questioning.12 It also means that
the p īr has accepted him as his mur īd and would henceforth assist him to resolve
problems, so that he can concentrate on attaining his objective, the experience
of haqiqat.
The functions of the spiritual master have been described in various ways. As
previously stated, the first step for the mur īd is bai'at, through which the divine
light passes from the hand of the p īr into the hand of the mur īd. It is only with
his help that shari’a assumes a more intense and deeper tone.13 There is yet
another aspect of the bai'at. When a novice comes to the p īr he is often afflicted
with many conflicts between opposing desires. These desires compete with one
another, persistently and relentlessly, each seeking immediate gratification.
The bond of bai'at imposes a finitude on his desires, and the domain of his
wishes becomes narrowed and constricted.
Spiritual transformation demands the elimination of vanity, which is equiva-
lent to ego or nafs inflation or glorification. The assumption is that unless vanity
or kibr is eliminated, one cannot be surrendered to God. Vanity is associated
with Satan,14 and no one can reach God without true humility. The opposite of
vanity is surrender, and it is needed to attain nearness to God.15 Surrender is
like negating the very basis of one’s being.16 For the beginner it is necessary
that, in the first instance, he should surrender to some person who has already
attained unity with the Godhead. The process of surrender may be irksome and
painful in the beginning — this is the vicious circle of thought, meaningless
memories of a meaningless past, vain and empty dreams of the ever-desiring,
ever-unfulfilled future. But the benign influence of the p īr shatters the mask
and creates a protective, healing image, the image of the p īr, which breaks this
circle. It is an image which does not consciously direct, but it moves and devel-
ops dramatically in accordance with its own dynamics, and becomes an answer
to the mur īd’s question and a fulfillment of his prayers. The point is that it is
only through the image of the p īr that one can break through the coils of vanity
and begin to experience love.
According to Pnina Werbner (a contributor to this book), the challenge in
Sufism is to overcome the arrogance of the soul, gharur takabar, which is equiva-
lent to thinking that the soul, the self, is God. The nafs is where all evil things
grow.17 The heart [qalb] is where all good things grow. It is the first to reach out
to God. The nafs is pride, arrogance, vanity. A person who comes into the world
thinks he is everything. According to Mujaddid Alif Thani, the nafs is a curtain
between the person and God’s attributes. The ruh is related to air, sirr to water,
khafi to fire, and akhfa to clay. The four elements are the curtains between a
human being and God (zat). When this curtain is removed then everything is
done for the sake of Allah. After that what remains are not human curtains but
only curtains of divine light, as God Himself can never be seen.
Firthof Schuon, in a contemporary analysis of the role, has suggested that the
spiritual master “represents and transmits first the reality of ‘being’, second, a
reality of intelligence or ‘truth,’ and third a reality of ‘love,’ union or happi-
ness.” The function of the p īr is to give back to fallen man his primordial being.
The first condition, then, of spirituality is to be virtually reborn and thus to real-
ize the quasi-ontological basis of two constituent elements of the way, namely,
discernment or doctrine on the one hand, and concentration or method on
the other. Thus the p īr imparts “being” to the disciple in a particular religious
context and lifts him from dissipation, first by creating consciousness of the
supreme doctrine, and second by instructing him in the mode of concentration
that is intended to lead him to a state of beatitude. The p īr may, through words
or nonverbal symbols, create a gash in the mur īd’s heart through intuitive knowl-
edge of his character and temperament. He may also induce in him a state of
ecstasy and later stabilize him by his peace.
Institution of piri–mur īdi
The p īr–mur īd relationship is eternally kindled by a discourse of divine love

(ishq-i-haqiqi).18 It is only through unqualified and unconditional love for the p īr
that a mur īd passes through various stages in a meandering journey that culmi-
nates in the eventual merging of the mur īd’s identity with that of the p īr’s.19 The
divine love sharply contrasts with the kind of love generally practiced by ordi-
nary mortals. For the believer, mundane love is seldom sustained, as a captive of
its own mundane love gradually isolates the self, thereby distracting the self
from divine destiny. Satan’s sin was that he did not love God, but loved himself,
and in the process became less than what he was.
In Sufi discourse the substance of ishq is both an expression and an imagina-
tion. While it passes through the subsequent biographical stages, it requires of
the mur īd an intense imagination of the p īr to realize itself. Ishq as imagination
invokes the p īr within the mur īd’s own body. As an indissoluble imagination it
resists any fragmentation of the mental image.20
Through the Sufi spiritual vision, the p īr’s ears not only mingle with but
become the mur īd’s ears, the p īr’s eyes the mur īd’s eyes, the p īr’s tongue the
mur īd’s tongue, the p īr’s hands become the mur īd’s hands, and thus the intense
imagination converts the communion into a union.21 ‘Ishq as imagination

prompts all of the mur īd’s actions but with the p īr’s permission. The p īr’s wish
turns into a divine command guiding the mur īd’s actions. The mur īd thus pos-
sessed by imagination neither acts nor reacts without referring the situation to
the p īr. It is not only that the p īr’s words become the mur īd’s words, but what is
indeed striking is that the mur īd’s words are the p īr’s words. Yet the mur īd strives
to bring into sharper relief the p īr’s image. Through sustained imagination of
the p īr the mur īd concentrates on the p īr’s toe, and gradually such a focus moves
right up through the p īr’s torso to the head. An accurate imagination alone acts
as a source of power that can establish the control of the soul over other peo-
ple’s bodies. It enables the mur īd’s soul to cleanse others of chronic ailments
and spiritual contamination. Of course, this process of imagination must have,
at every stage, the p īr’s concurrence.
The tolerance of differences is a distinct characteristic of modern times. This
tolerance has entered the p īr–mur īd relationship. Today the mur īd is far freer in
the expression of his doubts and the articulation of his questions than he was in
medieval times. For example, it is reported by Maulana Zain ud Din Barni, who
was once present in Nizam ud Din Auliya’s darbar, that he saw that day a large
number of people enter into bai'at with the shaikh. When he saw this he won-
dered at how the ancient Sufis used to exercise great care and caution in the
selection of their followers. But Sultan al-Masha’ikh in his generosity had made
his blessings accessible to all. He writes:
I wanted to ask him about it, the shaikh became aware of my thoughts through
kashf. He said, “Maulana Zain-din, you ask me many questions but you do not
ask me why I give bai'at to everyone without seeking the credentials.” Hearing
this I started trembling. I fell at his feet, and said: I had this problem with me
for a long time and today also I had this doubt. God has made you aware of
my thoughts.
The shaikh said: “God in His great wisdom has given individuality to every
age. The result is that people in every age have different habits and customs,
and then temperament and mentality do not resemble the temperament and
ethics of the people of an earlier age. Some people, however, are exceptional.
The essence of iradat is that the follower should break his relations with other
than God and become absorbed with God, as it has been described in detail
in the books of tasawwuf. The early shaikhs would not offer their hand for
bai'at, unless they were convinced that the seeker had already completely
broken with the world. But from Sultan Abu Said Abul-Khair, Shaikh Saif ud
Din Bakhaizi, and Shaiykhush Shaiyukh Shahab ud din Suhrawardi to Shaikh
Farid ul Haq’s time, the masses thronged their doors and people of all classes
assembled to receive their blessings.
Now I answer your question. One of the reasons is that I have been hear-
ing for a long time that many novitiates change their sinful mode of life,
offer their prayers in Mosques, and take to invocations and nawafil. I also see
that a Muslim comes to me in all humility and helplessness, and says: I have
repented of all my sins. Trusting him I hold out my hand to him — especially
as I have heard from reliable people that quite a few followers abstain from
evil doings after bai'at.”22
This is the example par excellence of ijtihad (innovation) in Tibb-i-Ruhani of how a

circle which was narrow in the beginning became wider and wider in view of the
demands of time.
Coming down to more recent times, the Sufi-poet of Punjab, Bulleh Shah,
developed some differences with his murshid, Shah Inayat. As a consequence,
he lost his spiritual power. After a great deal of restless wandering he again
started pining for his p īr. His p īr was fond of mujra (dancing).23 In order to
regain his favor, Bulleh Shah learned the art of dancing, appeared in his pres-
ence incognito, and performed the dance.24 After some time, the p īr recog-
nized him and asked him: “Oay, tu Bulleh ain?” (Are you Bulleh?). Bulleh Shah
replied: “Ji, main ee bhullah” (Yes, I erred).25 Thus there was reconciliation
between the p īr (Shah Inayat) and the mur īd (Bulleh Shah). His own expres-
sions of love for his p īr needed a deeper appreciation than it had already
received.
P īri–mur īdi at Golra Sharif
The village Golra Sharif is well known throughout Pakistan because of the
shrine of Pir Meher Ali Shah. It is a medium-size village situated at a distance of
about 18 kilometres in the North East of Rawalpindi city and currently consti-
tutes E-11 Sector of the Federal Capital, Islamabad, Pakistan. Thousands of fol-
lowers of Pir Meher Ali Shah visit the shrine daily to quench their thirst for
manifest and latent desires.
The system of p īri–mur īdi, as stated above, is deep-seated in the village of
Golra Sharif, and also in other shrines of Pakistan. It is regarded as a heart-to-
heart relationship. It is transferred from one generation to another.26 That is
why, if the son of a p īr is not found to be of the same high integrity and charac-
ter as his father, the relationship is not broken. Some of the known sons of the
p īrs having questionable integrity enjoyed the same esteem from mur īds as did
the others who were more pious and nobler. Thus what is actually important is
the affiliation with the line of the p īr.
In an interview with the present p īr of Golra Sharif, it was explained to the
investigator that when a person makes a bai'at, he is required to self-evaluate
himself with regard to his life in the past and recollect all the sins that he had
committed previously. This process, according to the p īr, leads him to a realiza-
tion that he should henceforth change his mode of life and spend the rest of it
in complete submission to the will of God and follow the path of truth and
righteousness. The p īr keeps the mur īd in his determination and assures him
that if he repents and corrects himself in his conduct, God will forgive him and
he will have the opportunity to start life all over again.27 The p īr, through the
application of his spiritual powers, would see that he is protected from the
influences of the evil forces, and that the usual worldly problems do not distract
him from his determinations to achieve the new goal.28 Thus the system of bai'at
infuses a new hope and provides a strong faith to the mur īd. It awakens his inner
conscience and works as a mechanism for self-restraint, self-discipline, and a
motivation for leading a pious life. The p īr’s account describes an ideal function
of bai'at and in certain cases might yield the intended results of the ritual. How-
ever, it is widely reported that despite the best intentions at the time of the
bai'at, many subsequently try to use the influence of the p īr and other bhais for
worldly gains.
The principal reason for which so many people visit the shrine at Golra Sharif
is devotion to the present p īr as well as his father (Babuji) and Grandfather (Pir
Meher Ali Shah). The other reason is that they believe that through their inter-
cession God will fulfill their wishes and desires. In a study of 250 respondents
belonging to Peshawar University in different localities of Rawalpindi, com-
prised of 143 males and 107 females, it was revealed that
People in distress, whether they are highly educated or illiterate, irrespective

of their income group, believe in the supremacy of God and therefore seek
the company of pious people.29
In conversation with the mur īds I asked them why they thronged the shrine so
frequently. Their answer was that the p īr acted as an intermediary between them
and God. “This holy man who is very close to God and still deeply concerned
for us and for our welfare understands our plight, for he was a man like us.
Therefore, he is able to take our case to God, intercede on our behalf and make
us more acceptable to him.”30
They illustrated their point by saying that if a person wanted to see a high
official, he needed someone who knew him or had an access to him; otherwise
he would not have an easy admittance. Such analogies make a lot of sense; in a
society where access to influential people is only possible through the recom-
mendation (sifarish) from a well-placed person or one of his relatives. The pil-
grims are very fond of saying
Of course, one can approach the King directly. But when one looks at one-
self and sees one’s own unworthiness, one knows that there is a far greater
possibility of being rejected and condemned, than accepted. Therefore, it is
much better to approach the King through the courtier, especially this one,
for besides being loved by the King, he loves us.
Generally, the response evoked is one of love, gratitude, and reverence, often
expressed by the distribution of alms. Their regular visits to the shrine are an
expression of this love they bear for him. One said: “I make it a point to come
here as often as I can because I love this saint who loves me so much.” Another
said: “I come to give my attendance to the saint. I want him to know that I have
not forgotten his love or taken it for granted.” Many have said: “I feel a deep
sense of happiness and peace whenever I am here, close to the saint.” One
woman remarked: “I feel the supporting presence of the saint wherever I am.
But all the same, I just have to come here to visit him and express my thanks-
and love for him.” Very important to these people is the ‘Urs (feast day of the
saint), for that is his big day and keeping away from him on that day would be
the most unpardonable of offences.
Once in the shrine, the pilgrims kiss the steps leading to the saint’s shrine,
and the thresholds of its doorways. On entering the shrines they spread rose
petals on the tombs and, after greeting the saints, walk around the tomb, at the
end of which they kiss the chadar (cloth covering the grave) and the small mar-
ble fence surrounding the tomb, sometimes touching their eyes and cheeks to
these. Once outside the shrine they light incense sticks, explaining all these
actions as manifestations of their love for the saint. Finally, they go to the side
of the shrine where the head of the saint is supposed to lie and recite a part of
the Qur’an saying that the saint loves to hear it recited to him, for it is the word
of God. Explaining their actions further, they say:
When someone loves another, for example a child, he wants to touch him
and kiss him and be with him all the time doing him services that he likes.
So it is between us and the saint. We do not worship the saint knowing that
worship is due to God alone, but we love him deeply and are ready to do
anything for him.
The pilgrims also manifest their love for the saint by putting into the collection
box whatever they can afford. They know that this money is not only for the
maintenance of the shrine but also for the upkeep of the sajjada nashin, who
maintain the shrine and intercede on their behalf.
When I asked an educated young businessman from Sargodha why he had
travelled so far to see the p īr when he could go to any number of shrines closer
to him, he replied that if an ailing person wanted to consult a physician, he
would naturally go to the best, if he could afford his fees, and not any and every
doctor who was locally available. One mur īd said that once his mother was seri-
ously ill. In spite of all sorts of treatment for a period of six months or so there
was no improvement in her condition. While he was utterly confused and com-
pletely desperate, a mur īd advised him to visit Golra Sharif and approach the p īr
for his blessings and du’a (prayers). During his meeting with the p īr he narrated
the story of his mother’s illness. The p īr listened to him patiently, prayed for her
recovery, and gave him a taveez (amulet) to be given to her after dipping it in
water. He acted accordingly and his mother was cured of her prolonged illness.
Ever since he had developed a strong faith in the spiritual powers of the p īr and
believed that he could resolve problems which otherwise might appear impos-
sible to handle.
Some people are brought to the shrine to have evil djinns (spirits) exorcized.
I was told of a woman, who was possessed by a djinn, and had withdrawn com-
pletely into herself. She was brought by force to the shrine of Pir Meher ‘A1i
Shah, where she began to wail and hit her head on the marble wall of the
shrine. After much prayer and supplication to the saint by the people who had
brought her, the djinn left and she returned to her normal self. Another woman
reported that after repeated prayers to Pir Meher Ali Shah at his shrine, she was
freed from a djinn who had haunted her house and troubled their family.
Continued interviews with those who visit the shrine regularly revealed their
unshakable faith that Pir Meher ‘A1i is alive. They often said: “He is not dead.
He has only put a veil between himself and us, ordinary mortals. That is why we
cannot see him.” But sometimes he is believed to appear to some people. These
appearances are taken as a mark of special favor and love.
Because of the saint’s personal holiness and association with God, the shrine,
the place where he is “most certainly present,” is considered holy ground. Pil-
grims stress the holiness of the place by pointing to the behavior of all who
enter the shrine, contrasting it with the behavior of people who visit the tombs
of other famous and powerful Muslims. They say that at the tomb of a powerful
emperor, people walk around with their shoes on and their heads uncovered.
But here the atmosphere is different. Everyone who enters, even tourists, come
in removing their shoes, covering their heads and talking in low tones without
being told. They walk around the shrine with respect, and most pray, instinc-
tively feeling the presence of the saint.31
Very often, cures from various illnesses and solutions to problems are taken
as proofs of the saint’s deep love for those who visit him. Usually the saint waits
for persons to approach him first. Even then, some do not have their petitions
granted. Such persons console themselves by saying that the saint is testing
them, and assure themselves of the saint’s love for them by repeating to them-
selves the good things the saint has done for others. But in some rare instances
the saint approaches persons even before they know of his existence.
Method of taking bai'at
The method of accepting bai'at is highly ritualistic. Whenever a person seeks

bai'at at the hands of the p īr, he approaches the p īr in his chamber. The p īr takes
his hand in his own hand and recites verses from the Holy Qur’an for a few
minutes. Following this he directs the man to rub the hand on his face and
exhorts him to pray regularly, five times a day, with the congregation in the
mosque. After each prayer he should recite Darood Sharif and Kalima-i-Tauhid
ten times on the beads of a rosary from Makkah. During this period he should
concentrate on the benevolence of God the merciful and make a firm commit-
ment to himself that he will follow the path of Islam. Toward the end of these
rituals, the p īr raises his hands for du’a and the mur īd is asked to follow him in
his prayers and the person is declared as a mur īd.
When the seeker of bai'at is a woman, the same procedure is followed except
that the p īr does not take her hand in his own hand (for holding the hand of a
na-mehram32 in Islam is considered sacrilegious), and asks her to hold a piece of
cloth on one end, and he himself holds the other end, and the whole ritual is
followed in the same way as in the case of a man.
During the period of the ritual for bai'at both male and female are asked to
keep their heads covered with a cap, or a piece of cloth. This is done to intensify
the purity of the ritual.
It is interesting that no record of names and addresses of mur īds is generally
kept at Golra Sharif either by the p īr or in the shrine’s secretariat. It is also not
recorded how many persons have been accepted as mur īds on a single day. On
certain occasions the rush of the seekers is so high that the p īr holds the hands
of two or three persons at a time and accepts them in the fold. Similarly, some-
times many women hold the other end of the piece of cloth at the same time for
accepting bai'at.
No qualifications are laid down for becoming a mur īd. Any living person can
take bai'at provided he or she is in a proper frame of mind.33 Young and old are
treated alike. The only condition which seems prevalent is that the seeker
should not be a child or a non-Muslim. If a non-Muslim wants to be accepted as
a mur īd, he or she must first convert to Islam.
Characteristics of mur īds
Pir Meher Ali Shah enjoined upon his mur īds the strict following of the Qur’an,
Sunnah, fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence), and ethics. These include the following:
Obedience, adab (good behavior), night vigil, persistence, suspecting the

nafs or lower nature (being careful not to allow it to mislead), visiting, self-
control, conformity, blessedness, passionate devotion, dignity, dependence
(on God), brotherhood, submission, endeavour, truth, dedication,
self-effacement, shunning of vanity, a friendly disposition, contentment,
excellence of thoughts, endurance, compassion for all created things,
humility, forgiveness, purity, beneficence, altruism, magnanimity, the
keeping of the ‘ahd (the covenant to the Shaikh), dhikr (remembrance of
God), repentance, good deeds, contemplation, asceticism, trust in God,
gentleness in the heart, fear of God, control, the keeping of the divine
ordinances, the proper qualities of religion.34
Pir Meher Ali Shah also isolated five requirements for those walking in the way:
trusting in God in what is secret and what is open or revealed; following the
Sunnah in word and deed; avoiding vain people’s company; being content with
God in both little and great; and returning to Him in happiness and misfor-
tune. The mur īd must lose his own volition (irada) and in a searching for God
become one who wishes only for the Beloved. He must be totally directed to
God and perpetually lodge Him in his heart,35 resting always under His com-
mand; for he taught that tasawwuf meant the purification of the souls from
blameworthy characteristics; that its subject is the deeds of hearts in a pure way,
and of the inner essence so that they may be cleansed; that its fruit is coming to
eternal happiness and spiritual victory in the pleasure of God; its excellence lies
in its being the highest of the sciences, since it is connected with deeds leading
to God; its link with the other sciences is like that of the fruit to the tree. It is
God Himself who is its author, for He has revealed His signs to teach praisewor-
thy qualities. The mur īd, therefore, need only follow the Prophet and those
devoted to him, the Sufis.
The mur īd is thus responsible for his material condition, and has a duty to strive
to accomplish the daily task that the maintenance of life demands, for the disci-
plining of the soul and the good of his religion (d īn). For if the member is lacking
in material wealth, if he is a faqir in the literal sense of being poor, he must work
with his hands to preserve his dignity; and he must give alms from what he law-
fully earns; and he must show mercy (raham) to the weak and the needy. He must
help those in distress, comfort the oppressed, and take the blind by the hand on
the way. In short, in all things good he must offer full cooperation.
This world is not therefore, to be totally ignored or rejected since it is an
integral part of the divine scheme of things. But its true significance resides
only insofar as it relates to the next, and it is awareness of this “reflected” mean-
ing that the mur īd must attain. It is only a preparation for what is to come, and
though by no means intrinsically evil or a place of darkness, one must realize
that its function is to serve as a prolegomenon to the ultimate reality. As the
heart must be freed from vices and passions (shahwat), so it must be cleansed of
love of the world by the agency of the spiritual physician to whose authority one
is unreservedly committed. For hubb al dunya (love of the world) distorts the
understanding of experience. It is only action whose root is directed to what
comes after the dunya that is of inherent worth. Mundane achievement per se
is therefore, at best, of neutral concern and, at worst, a spiritual danger in that
it clouds the worshipper’s understanding and infects his heart. The mur īd is not
opposed to the world and its social system; he does not protest against it, but
rather moves within it, so qualitatively informing his personal relations with
men as to enter into the contentment of God. To its economic and political
institutions he is indifferent, since they have no relevance for his (individual)
faith. He therefore neither withdraws from, nor interferes with, the social order
and social action, but his evaluative analysis of it, and of his own experience, is
drawn from spiritual criteria whose nature his shaikh has put before him.
It follows from this attitude to the world that riches may be a negative ele-
ment, while poverty is a passive one, since to be judged poor in the world’s
terms indicates a right view of the essential lack of value that attaches to any-
thing that exceeds necessity. To be a faqir means both to be needy in material
terms and to be one of those who recognize their need of God and devote
themselves to it. The mur īds are thus fuqara (poor) in the interior meaning,36
whatever their exterior wealth. Nothing prevents the rich man, however, from
belonging to this group of mur īds, but before the shaikh he will sit with them,
and in the process he will learn that the increase of means in this world is a
danger to the soul, and of the saint’s dislike for one who did not use his money
for the well-being of his fellow-mur īds or p īr-bhais.
Clearly, however, we do not find here a radical transvaluation of poverty
whereby it is exalted as a social condition of God’s elect. Wealth is lawful, and
its possession, though potentially a danger, does not necessarily impinge on the
interior quality of the believer’s essence.37 While it is meritorious to give to the
poor, there is no Franciscan-like stress on the special grace of their state as con-
trasted with that of the rich.
The mur īd is clearly directed inward to his soul and upward to his God, for
therein lies his true path. The mur īd should therefore observe restraint and
moderation in his life, and should follow the ascetic practices recommended to
him by his murshid and suitable to his particular level of advancement, remem-
bering that these are only praiseworthy means to an end, and do not constitute
the end in itself. Other chapters in this book explore how some reform Sufi
movements adjust the traditional p īri–mur īdi system, some (see Philippon) do
not practice bai'at, and others do but have experimented with new ways that
disciples can relate to their p īr (see Boivin).
Notes
1
Mir Abdul Wahid Bilgrami, Saba’ Sanabil (Cawnpur: Nizami Press A.H 1299), 36;
quoted in K.A. Nizami, Tareekh Mashaikh-i-Chisht, 238.
2
Richard Maxwell Eaton, Sufis of Bijapur: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India
(Princeton: Princeton University, 1978).
3
ShahWaliullah Dehlvi, Qaul-al-Jameel, with annotations by Shah ‘Abdul Aziz and
Urdu translation by Khurram Ali, (Cawnpur: Nizami Press A. H. 1291), 13, quoted
in Tareekh Masha’ikh-i-Chisht, 240.
4
In Islam bai'at was done at the hand of the ruler or khal īfa. In the lifetime of the
Prophet, or of Hazrat Abu Bakr Siddique, or Umar Farooq no bai'at was taken
in the name of any other person. If some other person took bai'at from certain
persons in the absence of the khal īfa, it was also either in the name of the latter or
in a time of conflict or jihad such as Akrama Abu Jehi in the field of Yermuk (634
B.C.), A1i and Amir Mo’aviyah, or when Imām Hussain took bai'at concurrently
with Yazid.
5
Allama Iqbal also says: “Reach unto the Prophet, for he is whole religion; and if
you do not reach him, then all is un-Islamic.”
6
Ghunyat-al-Talibeen, quoted by P īr Abdul Lateef Khan in Bai'at Ki Tushkeen aur
Turbiyyet (Lahore: Jung Publications, 1994), 73.
7
Ibid.
8
The P īr’s shadow is better than praying to God.
9
Waris Shah says in Heer: “Without a murshid one cannot find the way [in the same
way] that without milk one cannot cook the pudding.”
10
According to Mujaddid Alif Thani (quoted in the Urdu Daily Nawa-i- Waqt, Rawal-
pindi, dated December 4, 1995, in the column entitled Noor-i-Baseerat by Mian-
Abdul Rashid), there are two types of persons, Mur īds (disciples), for whom a P īr
is essential, or Murads (selectees), who are fortunate people as they will them-
selves be able to find their way.
11
In Sindh (A Province of Pakistan), the p īrs are looked upon as spiritual leaders
without whose intervention no one can succeed either in this world or in the one
hereafter. As such, p īrs are believed to be the “Binin jahanan jo bor pulao” (best of
both the worlds). To be be-pir (without a p īr) is unthinkable. “Bey-pirio kutto bhi
chango na ahe,” say Sindh’s elderly (it is no good for even a dog to be without a p īr).
Massoud Ansari, “The Daily News”, Special Friday Report, February 16, 1996.
12
Hafiz of Shiraz says: “If the p īr tells you to dip your prayer mat in wine, do it; for
the guide is not unaware of the way of the destination.”
13
Bulleh Shah Said: “When I learnt the lesson of love, I dived into the River of
Unity. I was caught up in its whirlpools. Shah Inayet (my murshid) helped me
to cross it. Whirlpools symbolize difficulties, hardships and torturous problems
confronted by a salik on the way to unification with Allah.”
14
Cf.Had īth-i-Qudsi “Pride is my raiment.” Also cf. Sa’adi of Shiraz in his mathnavi,
“Pride ruined Azazel; and imprisoned him in disgrace.”
15
There are many stations in the tariqah, as Nawwab Mirza Dagh Dehelavi says:
“These stations are tawakkul (complete trust in God), raza (acceptance of God’s
will), and tark-i-khudi (elimination of ego). The biggest hurdle is the last one. Cf.
Ghalib: “Although we have been very prompt in breaking idols, iconoclasm, but
so long as We [ego] remain there are many a heavy stone in the way.”
16
Cf. Iqbal: Rumi said: “Whenever every old building is to be re-built, don’t you
know it has first to be demolished?”
17
The sinful soul is known as nafs ammara, quoted from the book Pilgrims of Love, the
anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult by Pnina Werbner (London: Hurst, 2003).
18
For a detailed discussion of adab as a code of behavior and values as well as of
methods of personal formation in the p īr–mur īd relationship, see Muhammad
Ajmal’s “A Note on Adab in the Murshid–Mur īd Relationship” in Barbara Metcalf

ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, 241-151
(California: University of California Press, 1984). Also, see C. F. Farah, “Rules
Governing the Shaikh–Murshid Conduct,” Numen. Vol. 21, 81–96.
19
Bulleh Shah said: “Shah Inayet brought me to the door (exit). His love clothed
me in green and red robes. As soon as I flew, I achieved union with the almighty”
(another version of this line is “as soon as I fly I am caught by the bird of prey”).
20
Mian Muhammad Baksh said: “Dogs are better than the heart in which ishq (true
love/sincerity) is not immersed. They (dogs) guard their master’s door patiently
and faithfully even if they are eagerly desirous of food. It is a common observa-
tion that most of the people (employees, servants, or even selfish wives) do not
remain faithful when their employer is in a poor condition, which shows that
they work or pass their lives for their own worldly gains. They behave selfishly and
care for their own interests, whereas dogs have one very unique quality that they
remain faithful to their masters in all circumstances. They do not leave them in
adverse conditions.” In the couplet Mian Sahib admired the sincerity, patience,
and faithfulness of dogs. He says that one should remain faithful to the Lord in
any condition. It does not matter whether the conditions are good or bad.
21
In the common lore it is narrated that when the teacher of Qais (Mujnoon)
caned him, the signs of the lashes appeared on the palm of Laila. People think
that if there is real ishq between two persons, such things are possible.
22
Muhammad Ajmal, Muslim Contributions Psychotherapy and Other Essays, (Islam-
abad: National Institute of Psychology, Center of Excellence, Quaid-i-A’zam Uni-
versity), “Psychological Research Monograph” No. 5, p. 40.
23
Dancing was a part of ancient worship, and it still survives in the ceremonies of
Hindu temples. Rumi also mentions it in his Mathnavi. The dance in his tariqah is
a process of ecstasy with the accompaniment of nay (aulum or flute).
24
Mian Muhammad Baksh said: “You turned thieves into Qutb, I too have a bad
character. Wherever I go I am kicked from their doorsteps except from your door
(where I have a hope). Qutb: The highest cadre in the spiritual world.”
25
A famous line of Bulleh Shah: “In becoming a dancer there is no disrespect for
me. I have to win over my beloved.”
26
Amongst the unlettered, and even in tribal societies, if the head of family or vil-
lage or tribe becomes the mur īd of a p īr, then the whole family or tribe or village
becomes his mur īd. It is not always so with educated families, because every mem-
ber is free to accept the same p īr, or some other p īr, or may not do so at all.
27
Roman Catholics have the institution of confession, in which a Christian admits
his sins before a priest, a pardoner, who writes them off after prescribing some
penance and taking a promise from him that he would not commit them again.
28
According to Mian Muhammad Baksh: “I am blind (I know nothing/I am vision-
less) and the (worldly) path is slippery. How can I remain stable? Many are push-
ing me from behind, it is only you who can support me.” Here Mian Muhammad
Baksh is showing the relationship between a p īr and a mur īd. He is pointing out
that the world is a slippery place; it diverts attention toward itself so easily that
an ordinary man slips and falls into it. He is demanding a supporting hand from
his mentor (spiritual guide) so that he could easily pass through this worldly but
slippery courtyard. It is the wish of that disciple who wants to pass his life without
indulging in any sin or misdeed.
29
Sayyedah Farhana Jehangir and Farah Naz Qasmi, “Attitude of People towards
Religious Mentors,” presented at the 8th International Conference organized by
the Pakistan Psychological Association held at Lahore in 1995.
30
Mian Muhammad Baksh said: “My spiritual guide is DamRee waalaa peeraa Shah
Qalandar who helps me in each and every trouble in both the worlds (in this
world as well as in the next world).”
31
Desiderio Pinto, S.J. “The Mystery of the Nizam ud Din Dargāh: The Accounts of
Pilgrims,” in Christian W. Troll, ed. Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History,
and Significance, 112–24 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 118.
32
Four persons are included in the category of mehrum — husband, real father, son,
and brother.
33
In the initial stages of Sufism any and every person who came to a khānqāh was
not made a mur īd. The p īr would interview all new comers, especially to elicit
their basic education in Islam, and only if he thought a person fit for becoming
a mur īd, he would give him bai'at. Sometimes a p īr would advise the intending
mur īds to go to some other p īr instead.
34
Extracted from Meher-e-Munir (1969).
35
Cf. the following couplet of Hafiz of Shiraz.
36
Cf. Al-Qur’an: “Allah-o-Ghhaniyyun wa untum foqara” (God is Ghani, and all of you
are fuqra).
37
Cf. The Prophet’s (PBUH) ḥad īth: “Every nation has had a fitna, and the fitna of
my ummah is wealth.”
Chapter 4
Spiritual Power and ‘Threshold’ Identities:

The Mazārs of Sayyid Pīr Waris Shāh
Abdul Latīf Bhitāi
Uzma Rehman
Introduction
Sainthood in Islam has invited considerable attention in Western scholarship.1

There are certain characteristics and merits that set the saints in the Muslim tra-
dition apart from the saints in other religious traditions such as Christianity.
While miracles and other spiritual and metaphysical traits are associated with
saints in several traditions, the spiritual baraka (spiritual power, blessing) is often
found more prominent among Muslim saints.2 What is the spiritual power that is
perceived to reside in the saints and how is it accessed? Does this spiritual power
have boundaries? Who can and who cannot access this spiritual power? How do
perceptions of the sacred and spiritual baraka influence the processes of identity
construction? This chapter seeks to find answers to the above questions.
Drawing on Dominique-Sila Khan’s idea that belief in a ‘common single
power’ recognizes no religious boundaries,3 this chapter examines how identi-
ties are constructed through shared perceptions of the sacred character of nat-
ural phenomena and various ways of accessing the saints’ spiritual baraka. This
happens by physical proximity to the tomb, through contact with physical
objects, by seeking refuge in the peaceful space of the Mazārs, through inter-
preting the saints’ poetry, and by devotees engaging in various rituals. All these
ways of accessing the spiritual baraka illustrate how visitors and devotees at the
shrines share belief in a common saintly figure which cuts across religious dis-
tinctions such as Muslim, Christian, and Hindu. In fact, the devotees share the
belief that the saints’ spiritual baraka can help them attain spiritual or mundane
benefits such as healing, fertility, physical protection, prosperity, and mental
peace.
The ethnographic research for this study is based on interviews and partici-
pant observation at the shrines (Mazārs) of the Sufi saints Saiyid Pīr Waris Shāh
(hereafter Waris Shāh) and Shāh ‘Abdu’l Latīf Bhitai (hereafter, Shāh Latīf).
The majority of these respondents included the devotees of the two saints as
well as visitors to the shrines. However, descendants of the saints, members of
the Auqāf Department, university scholars, government officials, literary per-
sons, and journalists were also interviewed.
The first section gives an introduction to the legendary history of the two
eighteenth-century Sufi saints. The next section discusses the connections
between the South Asian shrines and the natural phenomena across various
religious traditions in this region. The third section presents definitions of the
spiritual baraka within the framework of Islamic Sufi tradition and discusses its
links with the sacred space of the shrines. The chapter then analyzes the modes
of access to baraka at these shrines.
References to the legendary history
Shāh Latīf (1689–1752) was born of a Sayyid family in the Hala Haveli about 80
miles from Bhit Shāh. His great grandfather Shāh ‘Abdu’l Karīm Bulri was
thought to be a great Sindhi saint and poet. His father, Shāh Habīb, claimed
much respect among the people of the area and was thought to have received
education in spiritual matters. His poetry known as Shāh-jo-Risalo (the book of
Shāh) is popular among the Sindhis – be they educated or illiterate. According
to popular narratives, Shāh Latīf spent a few years of his youth traveling in the
company of Hindu yogis. Compelled by his spiritual ordeals, he came to a solitary
place covered by sand and sat on a bhit (literally, sand dune) – a place where he
settled and spent the remaining days of his life and where he is thought to have
composed his poetry and where the dargāh of Shāh Latīf is now situated. Although
there are no authentic sources regarding Shāh Latīf’s association with a particu-
lar Sufi Silsilah, his descendants and close devotees believe that he belonged to
the Qādiri.
Waris Shāh (1722–98) was also born of a Sayyid family that followed the tradi-
tion of Pīri–murīdi.5 Waris Shāh never married, nor did he have any children. As
a young man, Waris Shāh is thought to have travelled to southern Punjab, set-
tling for some time in a town called Malka Hans. There he wrote his famous Hīr
based on the fifteenth-century Punjabi legendary story of Hīr–Ranjha from a
mosque in 1766. The descendants and the close devotees believe that Waris Shāh
belonged to the Chīshtī Silsilah. The mazhar of Waris Shāh is situated in Jandiala
Sher Khan, a small village near Sheikhupura in central Punjab.
South Asian Mazārs and natural phenomena

Dominique Sila-Khan highlights the importance of historical and cultural pro-
cesses in the construction of religious identities. She argues that in order to
AQ: Please The Mazārs of Sayyid Pīr Waris Shāh Abdul Latīf Bhitāi 63
check the
Shorthand
Running understand the religious identities of South Asia one must study the ways in
Head. which Hindu–Muslim interaction took place throughout history.6 She also
argues that interaction between Hindus and Muslims could be classified in
terms of three modes: alliances, sharing, and borrowing. She argues that devo-
tees strike alliances with the saintly figures in terms of taking care of sacred sites
(shrines) of another religious tradition, for example, guarding a Muslim shrine
in a non-Muslim sacred complex.7 In South Asia, several Sufi Mazārs are associ-
ated with different kinds of natural phenomena such as ponds, lakes, or springs
of water, and legendary animals8 that acquire a sacred character. While such
associations are aligned with Hindu beliefs related to natural objects as manifes-
tations of transcendent reality, connections can be found between the pre-
Islamic sacred sites and shrines of Muslim saints. For example, some Sufi saints
are said to have settled on the sites of former Hindu temples.9 Bennett’s second
chapter discusses this in the context of Bangladesh. One can also witness a
fusion of architectural elements among the buildings of South Asian mosques
and Hindu temples, to which Bennett also refers.10 Being “places of veneration
for all religious faiths,” several South Asian Sufi Mazārs “not only fuse architec-
tural styles and motifs, but create a fusion of local customary rituals as well.”11
Although after the arrival of Islam the preexisting religious traditions in Sindh
underwent enormous change, some of the older practices were retained by
converts to Islam. Thus, legends associated with the worship of water-gods are
also found among Sindhi Muslims.12 Similarly, in Punjab, Sufi Mazārs and their
surroundings consist of elements related to pre-Islamic beliefs. These historical
connections between the shrines and older religious sites point to similarities
among cross-religious perceptions of the sacred. However, given the role of
movements of religious reform, which were an important feature of the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, one may have to dig deep to find these
similarities.
Although there may be similar perceptions held by Muslim and non-Muslim
devotees in terms of the sanctity of the Mazārs and their surroundings as
imbued with a sacred power, there are clear differences in terms of the con-
centration of this power. Outwardly, various natural phenomena or objects
such as trees, wells, lakes, and animals found near Shāh Latīf’s dargāh are
revered both by Hindus and Muslims, though their perceptions about these
phenomena may be quite different. While Hindu beliefs related to the natural
phenomena point to the origin of the world or acts of gods, conscious Muslim
devotees revere these phenomena primarily due to their association with the
saints. Unlike Hindus, Muslims are forbidden to worship animate or inani-
mate objects. However, they may attempt to establish contact with this divine
power by visiting the tombs of holy men and women. The greater link an
object may have with the saint or his tradition, the more importance it would
acquire. Thus, the place Shāh Latīf occupied on a sand dune acquired its
sanctity through the power that was perceived to be revealed in the saint
imself. It was this power that attracted people from far and wide, thus with
h
time converting a sandy desert into a thriving town.
From a phenomenological point of view, a pilgrim’s motive or goal of visiting
a shrine is based on an archaic belief that there he/she will come in contact
with the Divine. The ‘sacred’ is said to be, in a fundamental sense, ineffable.13
The ineffability or the ambiguity of the sacred is due to an unseen spiritual
power that resides in it. Given that the sacred is ineffable and ambiguous, it
lends a liminal identity to the place where it is revealed. Werbner and Basu
argue that there is a sense of liminality in shrines that makes them sacred local-
ities.14 Contact with the divine believed on the part of a pilgrim takes him/her
out of purely earthly structures and commutes him/her across to a more
unearthly plane and lends individuals’ identities a threshold character. They
are no longer pure earthly beings, even though they may function well in their
worldly lives.
Keyes argues that the major sign of a saint’s charisma or spiritual power is his
capacity of “miraculous cure.” Several miracles associated with the saints have
similar structures to those found in the Hindu tradition.15 This is similar to the
process in what is now Bangladesh by which Hindu sacred objects and deities
were incorporated in the narratives of Muslim saints, described by Bennett and
others from whose work he draws. In the following section, I will explore how
the devotees perceive the spiritual power associated with the Mazārs of Waris
Shāh and Shāh Latīf. This discussion about the spiritual baraka also focuses on
how the devotees achieve access to it and what the criteria for accessing this
power are. This section also examines how devotees construct or transcend
their identities through these perceptions. However, first we will try to explore
the definition of spiritual power.
Spiritual power and liminal space

The concept of spiritual baraka is universally attached with Muslim saints all
over the world.16 The Encyclopaedia of Islam defines it as “beneficent force, of
divine origin, which causes superabundance in the physical sphere and pros-
perity and happiness in the psychic order” that can be implanted by God in the
person of his prophets and saints.17 Based on her study of the Sufi shrines in the
context of a West African mountain region in Niger, Rasmussen18 describes Al
baraka as the “ritual power of Islamic blessing, benediction, and dynamic life
force.” Spiritual power is also said to have an ambiguous character. Pemberton
argues that spiritual power possessed by a saintly person is “ambiguous, unpre-
dictable, and indeterminate, which makes its characterization problematic, its
explanation fraught with contradictions.”19 She also contends that sometimes
the spiritual power lends authority to individuals (or women as ritual specialists
in this case). With the help of this authority, individuals can challenge established
norms. Schimmel argues that the spiritual baraka infects even inanimate and
animate phenomena, stones, earth, trees, plants, animals, persons, and all man-
made objects and relics that have come into contact with the holy beings. Not
only do such objects contain baraka, they also transmit it to other persons who
achieve contact with them.20 However, in her study of the Sufi cult of Zinadapir,
Werbner (a contributor to this book) defines the baraka possessed by Sufi saints
as “an absolutely localized, focused rather than dispersed sort of power.”21
Devotees and pilgrims at the Mazārs of Waris Shāh and Shāh Latīf share the
views that the saints possess a special power that was bestowed on them as divine
favor. However, there is no single meaning attached to it. Some refer to it as an
ineffable spiritual bliss. Others relate it with a sense of mental peace. Yet others
interpret it as an unseen power by dint of which the saints provide the devotees
with cure to their diseases and solutions to their mundane problems. Denny
remarks that “in connection with Sufism especially and in all cases in which the
saint is also a descendant of the Prophet, the baraka of Muhammad continues
to reach down to the local level and extend itself into common life at many
levels.”22 Several channels of spiritual power are associated with the Sufi Mazārs
including the saints’ tombs, biographies, and poetry. However, in the conscious-
ness of devotees, it is especially the tomb of the saint that contains the power
that makes the space sacred. The question is how does one gain access to the
spiritual power? The following sections will attempt to explore this
phenomenon.
Modes of access to spiritual baraka

The tomb that is imbued with the spiritual power is perceived to lend the Mazārs
a sacred character. A saint, like a prophet, is a source of communication with
God.23 Once deceased, his/her tomb provides the link with the world beyond.24
This link between the deceased saints and the Divine resides in the transcen-
dence of death. The graves of saintly men
define a particular point in space associated with a saint, and hence sacral-
ized. Such sacred points attract worshippers, who travel on pilgrimage (if
they cover longer distances) through space in order to reach out to God. But
since God is everywhere, it is the plurality of saints that makes this ubiquitous
God concrete. It turns the macrocosm into an extension of the microcosm by
attaching it to a certain locality.25
Devotees and pilgrims express devotion toward a saint’s tomb since they believe
that it emits a special unseen power. The majority of devotees and pilgrims to
the Sufi Mazārs, especially among the Muslims, seem to be conscious that the
objects are not important in themselves but acquire special meanings due to
contact with the tomb and the emanating baraka. In the Islamic tradition, it is
“not the place that gives sanctity to the tomb, but the saint whose remains sacral-
ize the place, enduring it with power and prestige, which are then available to
the people round about who come for blessing and comfort.”26 Although
embedded in the Christian tradition, the following definition of devotional
prayer provides an insight into how devotees perceive the power residing in the
saints’ tombs:
When the blessed sacrament is kept on the altar in church, we know that
when we open the door to the church we shall see Jesus Christ, both God and
man, in his body, as if sitting on a throne over the altar. And as Jesus himself is
there, it is our instinct to come full of reverence, giving ourselves to him. We
see before us a concrete manifestation of the divine reality towards which we
can direct our devotion. We look beyond the mere object of the sacrament.
To know that Christ is present in his sacrament is to experience both his
grace and his judgement. To be placed in Christ’s presence is to be found by
him and sustained by him. The sacrament calls us into the unseen mystery of
God. Through faith in the sacrament seen we set a new value on the material
world as a vehicle for unseen divine grace and truth.27
The above description of the Blessed Sacrament and the altar in a Christian
church share a remarkable similarity with the devotional expressions of pil-
grims and devotees at the tomb of a Sufi saint.28 Even though the feeling of
presence may be comparable in the two contexts, the actual devotional expres-
sions may differ. The tomb is the object of devotion insofar as devotees perceive
in it the saints’ living presence. Pilgrims touch the threshold of the tomb-
chamber or kiss it before entering the tomb-chamber, with both palms joined
together, prostrate before the tomb and whisper their hearts’ desires to it. Some
devotees and pilgrims sing odes in glorification of the saints. While departing,
they often walk backwards, always facing the tomb. The scene not only reminds
one of the etiquette shown by the Christian devotees at the Blessed Sacrament
in a church, but it also shows that the pilgrims and devotees at a Sufi shrine
perceive an unseen power ever present in and beyond the tomb. The tomb, to
them, contains the essence of that power and a part of the Divine. In this sense,
the tomb is a living tomb.29 It is the tomb where the person who became one
with the Divine lies. He lives in God.
Perceptions about Sufi saints’ powers are also linked with the status of mar-
tyrs or the Shi’a imāms30 who too are considered alive even after their physical
death. Beliefs about the connection after death between the body and the soul
vary among Muslim groups. According to some, when the soul leaves the body,
it renders it lifeless and thus there remains no connection between the soul and
the body. Thus Muslims with such beliefs (especially the followers of the Ahl-i
Hadīth school of thought) usually do not venerate the graves of the deceased.31
Mostly the Sunni (especially the Barelvis) and the Shi’a Muslims consider the
graves of the deceased as the earthly symbols of their departed and look after
them and pray for them on a regular basis. Here, the difference between the
graves of common people and saints is revealed in that the latter are, due to the
spiritual power they possess, considered alive even after their physical death.
There are common expressions among devotees of diverse religious back-
grounds that due to the annihilation of their lower selves and their union with
the divine, the saints achieve an eternal life although their existence is veiled
from the physical world. After the saints pass away, their tombs serve as a mark
of their presence also in the physical world. As a devotee said: “Sarkar is present
among us. Just as he was in this world in his apparent form, he exists in a veiled
form in the spiritual world and continues guiding us every moment through his
kalam (poetry).32
Such perceptions may be controversial especially among those who claim
knowledge of legal and theological aspects of Islam. Muslim groups adhering to
the Ahl-i Hadīth and the Deobandi traditions altogether reject devotional
expressions directed toward the tomb. Although the saints’ descendants
(sajjada-nishin) are often well-versed in the Islamic tradition and know the lim-
its of the shari’a, which separates human beings from Allah – the latter being a
transcendent God and the former being His ‘ibad (servants) – they seldom
exert their authority in matters of shari’a. This may be in part due to the saints’
Chīshtī and Qādiri backgrounds since these Sufi orders have a reputation for
liberal attitudes and emphasis on the spirit, rather than the letter of shari’a.
Bearing a different approach from that of the Chīshtī and the Qādiri orders, the
Naqshbandi Sufis would deny such perceptions related to the visitation of the
Mazārs, considering them heresy. Nevertheless, there are hierarchies of pilgrim-
age in Islam.33 While the Hajj to Ka’ba points to the axis mundi for the Muslims,
a saint’s tomb is the ultimate focus of the shrine as his body is said never to rot
and he ‘hears’ and ‘acts’ from within the grave. There is a widespread feeling
among pilgrims and devotees that the saints are present in the spiritual realm.
On the second, third, and final day of ‘urs at Shāh Latīf’s dargāh in March 2006,
hoards of pilgrims tried to enter through the door of the tomb-chamber with an
extraordinary zeal, all at the same time. While the pilgrims queued up before the
chamber door, they constantly whispered the name of the saint and expressed
their petitions, said words of praise for him, and expressed their awe and their
gratitude for being “invited” by the saint to his abode. Some of them stopped for
a couple of seconds before entering the chamber and kissed the walls or tried to
get hold of whatever part of the entrance wall they could reach and touching it
passed their hands over their bodies, especially their faces and chests, while the
sick and handicapped passed their hands over the inflicted parts of their bodies.
Despite standing amidst an enormous crowd, some even managed to bend the
upper half of their bodies to touch the threshold. Women tried to transfer the
power through their hands to their children. Inside the tomb-chamber, pilgrims
circumambulated the tomb, desperately trying to touch the wooden screen sur-
rounding the tomb or kissing it. At the end of their ritual walking around the
tomb at the southern end, they sometimes splashed rose petals in through the
screen or just placed them on the outer shelf. Men and women seemed to be
elevated and consumed by the saint’s charm and his spiritual baraka. As one devo-
tee noted: “Tell me one thing. We are sitting here and all of us are mesmerised;
lost. How can then conflict [between us] emerge here? Maybe when we leave the
Mazār, it will return. Until then, we are all lost [in ecstasy].34
Khan argues that devotees also strike alliances with a healing expert or a
saintly figure in order to gain access to their powers related to protection and
healing.35 In this regard, devotees seek help of the saintly figures without regard
of their outward religious affiliation.36 This takes place in Sufi Mazārs where
both Muslim and non-Muslim devotees seek a cure from possession by evil spir-
its, regardless of the healer’s outward religious affiliation. This mostly occurs in
the Sindhi context where local customs and beliefs continue to reflect Hindu
practices.
Some scholars argue that even though the sacred is always connected with
charisma, it is impossible to imagine that the charisma has an underlying char-
acteristic that is universal.37 Keyes argues that the sacred is subjected to cultural
perceptions.38 Thus, although, the tomb occupies a central position in the
Mazārs, it may not represent, as phenomenologists like Mircea Eliade would
propose, the axis mundi or “the central pole.” The tomb has a history behind it,
the biography of the saint, the ancestral links that go back to the Prophet and a
special power and miracles associated with the saint.
Yet, despite having varied perceptions of the Mazārs, pilgrims of diverse social
and religious backgrounds are linked together by the tomb. The tomb is the
center of their focus. Pilgrims relate to the transcendent reality that exists
beyond the tomb in their respective manners. While there may be several inter-
pretations of this transcendent phenomenon, in reality, they are one, since they
are focused on one object – the tomb. Although the tomb is the point where the
saints’ spiritual power concentrates, other channels of spiritual power become
available to the devotees and pilgrims, such as physical objects, performance of
the saints’ poetry, and rituals.
Access through physical objects

Devotees and pilgrims at the Mazārs of Waris Shāh and Shāh Latīf believe that
the saints’ spiritual blessings prevail within their territories. In most cases refer-
ence is made to the area of the shrine but also the town or the city where it is
situated. The blessing of the saint envelops everything that comes in contact
with him including objects and persons.
Upon visiting the Mazārs, pilgrims try to achieve contact with all the objects
placed near the tomb. Anything which is brought in contact with the saint, his
tomb, and his prevailing spiritual power, especially in the area inside or around
the tomb-chamber, is believed to contain blessings. They eat the dried flowers
from the tombs laid or offered by other pilgrims since they are taken as “a spe-
cial sweet gift touched by the sacred tomb.”39 They also suck on the salt that is
found in a clay pot right in front of the door to the tomb-chamber at Waris
Shāh’s shrine. Pilgrims, both Muslim and non-Muslim, at the dargāh of Shāh
Latīf suck on the sacred soil imported from Karbala in Iraq, the place where the
great tragedy happened with the grandsons of the Prophet and their families in
the seventh century. Others take a few pinches of the soil along, saving it in
pieces of paper or their pockets. Others take a bit of oil placed in a niche along
the western door of the tomb-chamber. It is observed that often acts like con-
summation of dried flowers, holy dust, and other sacred objects, which to a
non-devotee may sound unhygienic, are considered to be not only safe, but also
with blessed effects.
There are common perceptions among the devotees that the power that
resides in the shrines can heal them physically, mentally, and spiritually. There
are shared views that this power can both help them through their worldly
problems and ensure their salvation after they die. When achieved, the spiritual
power gets converted in multiple shapes such as spiritual and physical healing,
protection, prosperity, fertility, mental peace, social acceptance, and even polit-
ical interests. As one devotee responded: “I was very poor but then I found the
source success of income because Shāh Sahib (Shāh Latīf) gave me everything.
All my needs are fulfilled.40
Mazārs’ roles as sanctuaries

The Mazārs of Waris Shāh and Shāh Latīf are perceived by the devotees to pro-
vide them financial as well as physical security. Khan argues that devotees who
share beliefs in a common saintly figure also strike “alliances” with the saint for
protection.41 Sheldrake argues that an individual’s identity is often attached
with being geographically placed as opposed to travelling, which involves ambi-
guity.42 People’s need to be associated with a place seems to have a lot to do with
their sense of security. Thus, places are sources of security and identity. Such
security and safety is linked to the spiritual power residing in the saints’ tombs.43
However, the term ‘sanctuary’ has specific connotations. Here, I use the term as
refuge in two senses of the word: (a) as sanctuaries from the troubles of their
mundane lives, violence, fear, and a sense of powerlessness; and (b) as physical
security against persecution due to generational enmities.
In the first case, the power contained in the saint’s tomb safeguards the weak
and the sorrowful against “the natural anxiety generated by the necessary
ambiguity of the sacred word” and the transcendence of God.44 When asked
why they visit the shrine frequently, most responded that they find sukun (peace
of mind) there. In her book, Werbner terms the notion of sukun as “a basic Sufi
conception” and links it with the healing powers associated with a living saint or
his tomb.45 Literally ‘to inhabit’, this Arabic/Urdu word denotes “calmness,
tranquillity, a Sufi state of mind which emanates from the mystic and imbues all
his surroundings.”46 Devotees consider it necessary to physically travel to the
Mazār in order to have close contact with the saint. It is considered to be an
honor or a blessing to visit a saint’s mazar47 even though such an opportunity
may come only once in a lifetime.48
There are shared views among devotees that the mazār emits a mysterious
sense of quiet and peace which makes them forget the frets of life or even the
world itself. With regard to the healing effects at a saint’s abode, Werbner’s
discussion is quite close to my own analysis. She writes: “Just by being in the
lodge the anxieties and fears of supplicants may be transformed into ‘peace of
mind.’ To come within the ambience of the saint, like eating from his langar, is
in itself healing.”49 An illiterate male pilgrim from a nearby town and a local
devotee from Bhit Shāh describe their feelings about the atmosphere of Shāh
Latīf’s dargāh:
There are neither bedsteads (char-pa’i) nor beddings (bistar) [in the court-
yard of the dargāh] but they (pilgrims) are sitting and lying down peacefully
without any restlessness (bai-chaini) or wrangling (jhanjhat). This is what a
peaceful life is like. They come to seek peace (sukun or rahat), love (mahab-
bat), brotherhood (bhaichara) as human beings seek peace. . . . Just look at
the way people are sitting, lying down here.50
Some devotees consider the mazhar a refuge for those who are persecuted. The
devotees consider the town of Bhit Shāh a sacred place where physical security
is ensured. Several individuals and families have migrated to Bhit Shāh from
other parts of Sindh in search of security since they had been involved in gen-
erational enmities or conflicts over money or land. They believe that they would
not be harmed in the saint’s town. Others with poor economic background
have settled there to improve their livelihood. Pilgrims claim that they find
mental peace and love in the Mazārs:51 As a middle-aged male pilgrim said: “There
is nothing (no fear). We are just sitting here out of love for this lover [of God
and His Prophet]. God will have mercy on us for the sake of him (the saint).52
Or as another one said:
Latīf Sarkar (form of address for Shāh Latīf) is everyone’s. Those who come
here are happy and those who live here are also happy. People receive
peace here. Where such beings are found, there is noor (light) all around
and there are blessings around . . . anyone can get will power because of his
presence. . . . Latīf Sai’n is not there. He is buried in the earth. Yet, because
of him here in the city at least 30,000 people are getting livelihood. Do you
understand what I am saying? It is because of him through him [they get the
livelihood] because people visit here because of him.53
Access through the saints’ poetry

Devotees also gain access to the saints’ spiritual baraka through their poetry
recited or sung at the Mazārs. Rasmussen remarks that “albaraka may also be
conveyed through prayer calls and songs.”54 Just as the spiritual powers of the
saints are considered to make no discrimination between religious backgrounds
of the devotees, the power contained in their poetry and musical traditions
knows no limitations either. More so, it binds devotees and pilgrims together as
inheritors and believers of a shared legacy left by the saints. Devotees believe they
achieve mental peace and spiritual satisfaction by rendering and listening to the
poetry. This is also portrayed in the views expressed by a senior male raagi faqir:
When the Sindhis listen to the rag, they know that they would forget all mun-
dane things and would focus on spiritual things. They would pray for their
spiritual satisfaction. . . . Just as the body needs food (roti) and nourishment,
the soul (ruh) too may need food. Shāh’s kalam (the saint’s poetry) is food
for the soul.55
While pilgrims listen to the Hīr Waris Shāh (the Punjabi epic poem written by
Waris Shāh), they call out, with excitement, words of praise to the verses that
are being recited or to the manner in which a particular Hīr-Khwan is perform-
ing those verses. Others listen to it quietly. But all who listen to the poetry seem
to be drawn to its melody and the depth of its words. The Bhairavi raga56 used
for singing Hīr has melodious and soothing effects. Pilgrims believe that the
poetry has a magical, inspirational, and mesmerising effect.57 Both elderly peo-
ple with a traditional approach to life and youngsters belonging to twenty-first
century Punjab find the poetry appealing. While talking about the spiritual
power in the poetry, a young devotee from Jandiala Sher Khan, who himself
sings the saint’s poetry, says: “Poets like Waris Shāh have the power to transport
people to the [spiritual] planes where they themselves are.”58 This is reflected
in the view of one pilgrim who said: “Here, in Asia, Islam was introduced by the
saints (Auliya Allah). The saints tried to find a way in which they could intro-
duce Islam to the people. . . . Poetry is the best mode of conveying subtle emo-
tions (Latīf jazbat). Sufi saints understood this need of the people. Prose cannot
match the eagerness (tarhap) or attraction of the poetry.”59
The power of blessing can be achieved by the means of ritual, prayer, pilgrim-
age to shrines (ziyārat), and offerings,60 and through contact with living pīrs.61
Keyes explains that the miraculous healing powers associated with a person or a
being are understood as an “expectation that the practitioner will be fused in

some sense with the sacred and that from this fusion will flow the power to
cure.”62 All the above means of getting access to the saints’ spiritual power (i.e.,
the tomb, physical objects, and the saints’ poetry) require devotees and pilgrims
to physically travel to the Mazārs. However, the efficacy of these means increases
the devotees’ participation in the rituals, both individual and collective.
Access through rituals

Rituals performed at the Mazārs are another means of accessing the saints’ spir-
itual power. Devotees attempt to achieve contact with the spiritual baraka
through, for instance, a communal prayer performed by the sajjada-nishin on
the third day of the ‘urs,63 the singing/listening of the saints’ poetry, in Shāh
Latīf’s case accompanied by music, and the muharram mourning rituals64 that
include the sharing of food distributed twice a day and the mach (sacred fire).
Some devotees also claim to have access to the effective power of the saint
even though they are physically not present in the Mazārs. This, they claim,
occurs whenever they are in difficulty and call out to the saint for help. The
saint obliges them and gets them safely out of a difficult situation.65 Just as
Mills66 remarks that darshan67 is where Pīr (preceptor) and disciple belong to
each other, by entering the shrine’s premises and by catching a glimpse of the
tomb, devotees become eligible candidates for the access to the saints’ power.
Eligibility for access to spiritual baraka

Criteria of inclusion and exclusion are intrinsic to group identities. Here, we
will attempt to examine what are the criteria – albeit informal – of eligibility for
access to the saints’ spiritual baraka. Conditions for the imbuing of the blessing
are generally twofold: (a) pure intention (niyat) and (b) strong faith (‘aqida).
According to common expressions, in order to get their requests granted by the
saint, devotees must have a pure, clean heart which does not bear any negative
or evil feelings against anyone and they must have unflinching trust and faith in
the saints’ powers.68 As a male devotee exclaimed:
What can people give me? It is Latīf who gives. People cannot be expected
to give. We are sitting at the doorway of the one who gives. What can people
give? If they give, then they expect something in return. We only beg him
(the saint). . . . God willing, he will give. We have faith in Latīf Pak (respectful
mode of address used for Shāh Latīf).69
The argument presented by Dominique-Sila Khan that shared beliefs in a com-

mon saintly figure often cause devotees to transcend religious barriers is espe-
cially relevant to devotees’ perceptions about eligibility of access to the saints’

spiritual power. Devotees enter the Mazārs with the aim of achieving access to
the tomb. They perceive a mysterious power emanating from the tomb. To dev-
otees, this power comes from God. It knows no boundaries. It does not dis-
criminate between those who enter its sphere. More so, it touches devotees
both in the ways they expect it and in ways unknown to them.
Devotees often emphasize the transcendent character of the saints and their
“deviation above ordinary mortals.”70 In order to benefit from the miraculous
powers of the saints, it is important that the devotees consider themselves as
powerless or weak. Keyes71 points out that people are motivated to look to char-
ismatic persons for access to the sacred. This, he argues, happens when people
find themselves in “marginal situations” (a term derived from Peter Berger)
that impel individuals confronted with difficulties of life to resort to charismatic
persons. They draw a line that separates what is mortal and ephemeral from
what is supernatural, other-worldly. Saints are considered to possess authority
that is above the authority of temporal rulers insofar as it “recognises no tempo-
ral political, ethnic or religious boundaries.”72 Largely human and mundane
motives for getting access to the power break down boundaries based on social,
economic, or religious differences. Even physical imperfections are accepted
and respected due to the desired effects that may be achieved through the
power. For example, due to the consoling effects, the needy and the deprived,
including the crippled and the sick, find their way to the Mazārs in search of a
blessed encounter with the sacred. This is reflected in the way a young male
devotee explains why people may visit:
This is a rule of the universe that every inferior thing (adna chiz) sacrifices
itself for a superior one (a’la). We being inferior and good-for-nothing
(nikamme) have no choice but to come to these superior ones in order to
share our sorrows and pain (dukh-dard) [with them]. We human beings are
dependent. . . . Allah is quite far. No one has seen Him, no one recognized
Him. We come here because outwardly . . . these [saints] are representations
of God (Khuda de rup).73
Another devotee noted:
The fact is that not all tombs may be prostrated to. There are some specific
tombs where one may prostrate. . . . There are specific places that are worthy
of prostration . . . otherwise there are many who die. When they die [physi-
cally], they die. Persons like these saints are revered because they are alive
[even after their physical death].74
There are common perceptions that all those who revere the saints and enter
their territories receive their spiritual power, even though they may not know
much about their biographies. Devotees share views about the saints’ all-em-
bracing blessings and their unconditional love that does not discriminate
between people. Instead, each person can tap into this power according to his/
her own perceptions.
The criteria or eligibility for achieving contact with the spiritual power differs
according to devotees’ perceptions. A Muslim devotee who emphasizes his reli-
gious or sectarian identity may therefore perceive that all those who believe in
the Prophet Muhammad, and the Ahl-i Bait (members of his family), are blessed
by the saints. Others may consider reverence for the saints as a requisite for
achieving the baraka. Others yet believe that those in difficulty, in need, or in
trouble receive the saints’ blessings upon entering their abodes, disregarding
their religious backgrounds. These blessings are achieved by those who have
strong faith in the saints’ powers. A young male devotee observed:
Yes, I would like to stay here all my life. As long as the Sakhi (the generous;
meaning the saint) approves, no one can get me out of here. ... I am here as
long as it is his will and God’s mercy. When he wills me to leave here, even
the president (of Pakistan) would not be able to keep me here. This is my
belief.75
Devotees of both Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds share perceptions that

human beings commit mistakes, and even grave sins, but once they repent and
ask for divine forgiveness, their sins become a thing of the past. They are puri-
fied. Such perceptions are described by those who go on a pilgrimage for the
first time. For example, in the Muslim tradition, upon their return from the
Ka’ba on the annual Hajj, the pilgrims are said to believe that the sins commit-
ted during their previous lives have been annulled and they have gone through
a process of rebirth by performing the pilgrimage.76 Similarly, for devotees a
visit to the shrine of an important saint symbolizes the annual Hajj.
Some pilgrims of Muslim and non-Muslim backgrounds believe that the act
of visiting the Mazārs is not determined by their own will or intention, rather
the saint calls people to come. A Sikh pilgrim from India admitted that he was
not really aware of what actually brought him to Pakistan until he reached Waris
Shāh’s mazār. Here the Sikh pilgrim seems to refer to a common expression
among the devotees of the saints that they are sometimes pulled toward the
mazārs of saints through an unseen power which they can neither see nor
explain. The Sikh pilgrim also said that it was not his own but rather the saint’s
decision that he visited the mazārs: “Baba Waris Shāh’s fragrance has brought
me here.”77 Similarly, another devotee of Waris Shāh and a Hīr-Khwan believes
that it is the saint’s will to invite people to his mazārs. As one man said:
It depends on one’s devotion and faith. Sarkar is not only for Muslims. Those
who have devotion and reverence for him, fear of God and belief that he
is a wali, Allah’s servant, they can get their troubles solved by visiting him,
so they come here. It is not that a Muslim saint cannot be visited by a non-
Muslim (here meaning Christian). Because he also belongs to the people of
the book.78
A female pilgrim to Waris Shāh’s Mazhar told me that what brought her there
was a prior meeting with the saint in her dream:
Female devotee: I had a dream and so I came to greet [the saint].

UR: Was the dream about Baba Ji Waris Shāh?
Female devotee: No. He (Waris Shāh) first met me in the form of an old woman,
and embraced me with a lot of love. Then he took the form of a man. But
a sign was made that he is calling to go and meet him. So, I came to meet
him.79
Devotees’ perceptions about the saints’ wish to invite them determine their per-
ceptions of fellow pilgrims and devotees. All those who visit the Mazārs are the
saints’ guests and thus deserve respect from fellow pilgrims. Such beliefs seem
to dispel distinctions of pilgrims’ backgrounds. Being the saints’ guests, pilgrims
share an identity that is constructed by their devotion for the saints and tran-
scends social and religious identities that exist outside the shrine’s domain.
Amidst anxiety and expectations related to the saints’ intercessory powers,
some recognize the presence of other devotees and pilgrims. Although devo-
tees may compete for opportunities such as a glimpse of the tomb, or physical
contact with the objects near the tomb, they recognize each other as equal can-
didates for the saints’ blessings. Religious or social differences matter the least
while pilgrims are near the tomb. They either sit on the floor, stand, or perform
circles around the tomb side by side. Here, pilgrims enter as individuals since
they believe that they have the chance to directly receive the saints’ blessings.
All in all, inside the Mazārs, formal social or religious backgrounds become
irrelevant as mediating structures.
Conclusion
As religious or sacred institutions, Sufi shrines are difficult to locate in an exclu-

sive Islamic tradition. Their appeal to Muslims and non-Muslims alike poses
challenges to standard perceptions of religious identities. Given that devotees
of diverse religious backgrounds consider the mazhar as sacred and imbued
with a mysterious power, one is inclined to ponder over the concept of the
sacred. Other contributors to this book explore how Sufi Islam builds interfaith
bridges, linking with this chapter. Does this concept recognize no religious
boundaries? Or is it that in certain cultural contexts, the sacred is thought to be
a universal category? Owing to the fact that South Asian religious identities
often converge at several junctures, such as cultural, linguistic, and ethnic, and
sharp distinctions drawn between religious traditions and practices become
irrelevant.
The notion of sacred is shared by Muslim and non-Muslim pilgrims. Some-
times non-Muslim, especially Hindu, pilgrims find the Mazārs’ structures and
related objects similar to their own notions of sacred phenomena. Similarly, the
stories of miracles associated with the saints are often shared among Muslim
and non-Muslim devotees.
For her ideas of ‘threshold’ identities, Dominique-Sila Khan80 uses the meta-
phor of the Greek deity Janus-Bifrons, who is one but has two faces pointing to
opposite directions. She argues that through alliances, sharing, and borrowing,
communities belonging to various religious traditions are brought together on
a threshold. This, she argues, “is the point where universality prevails over sec-
tarianism, although devotees may preserve their distinct religious affiliations.”81
The sacred space of the Mazārs is permanently imbued with the saints’ power,
thus having a liminal character. Those who enter the liminal space adopt
‘threshold’ identities which are situated at the open doorways.
Perceptions about the saints’ spiritual baraka may have implications for the
processes of identity construction. First, shared perceptions about the saints’
unlimited spiritual power often bring people into a common frame of refer-
ence. The ambiguous and mysterious sense prevailing due to the belief in the
saints’ spiritual power creates a liminal atmosphere in the Mazārs where devo-
tees’ diverse motives for coming are implicitly recognized and accepted. Sec-
ond, the devotees consider the Mazārs to be sanctuaries and physical refuges.
Pilgrims’ focus on the tomb of the saint binds them together and transports
them to a ‘liminal’ territory where their identities outside the shrines become
irrelevant. However, as Khan argues, devotees may still retain their original reli-
gious identities outside the shrines – these are just not emphasized inside the
shrine. Since the Mazārs are considered sanctuaries where all are welcome and
where all are protected against the threatening circumstances of life, demarca-
tions of identities separating people on the basis of their religious affiliations as
Hindu, Muslim, and Christian, and social backgrounds become irrelevant. Even
if this differs between the two shrines and it is more obvious in the case of
Sindh, this chapter paints a picture of religious practice in rural Pakistan that
seems more complex than most of the mainstream media’s focus on religiously
inspired acts of violence would lead one to believe.
Notes
1
Frederick M. Denny, “Prophet and Wali: Sainthood in Islam”, in Richard Kieck-
hefer and George D. Bond, eds., Sainthood: Its Manifestations in World Religions,
69–97 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); Katherine Pratt Ewing,

“The Politics of Sufism: Redefining the Saints of Pakistan”, Journal of Asian Stud-
ies, Vol. XLII, No. 2: 251–68. February 1983; Jurgen Wasim Frembgen, “From
Dervish to Saint: Constructing Charisma in Contemporary Pakistani Sufism”,
The Muslim World, 2004, Vol. 92, Issue 2 (April) 245–57; M. Geijbels, “Aspects of
the Veneration of Saints in Islam: With Special Reference to Pakistan”, Muslim
World, 68, 3: 176–86, 1978; Nicholaas H. Biegman, Egypt: Moulids, Saints, Sufis.
The Hague: Gary Schwartz/SDU. (London: Kegan Paul International, 1990).
2
Camilla C. T. Gibb, “Baraka without Borders” Integrating Communities in the
City of Saints”, Journal of Religion in Africa, 1999, Vol. 29, Fasc. 1 (February),
88-108; Rasmussen, Susan J. (2005). “’These are Dirty Times’: Transformations
of Gendered Spaces and Islamic Rituals Protection in Tuareg Herbalists’ and
Marabouts’ Albaraka Blessings Powers”, in Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strath-
ern (eds.) Contesting Rituals: Islam and Practices of Identity-Making, 73–100. (Dur-
ham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005).
3
Dominique-Sila Khan, Crossing the Threshold: Understanding Religious Identi-
ties in South Asia. (New York: I.B.Tauris, 2004), 34.
4
I use the term ‘dargāh’ for the shrine of Shāh Latīf and the term ‘mazār’ for the
shrine of Waris Shāh because these terms are the ones used locally to describe the
shrines. However, I use the plural term ‘Mazārs’ when referring to both shrines as
well as Sufi shrines in general.
5
Master–disciple relationship. For a detailed discussion on pīri–murīdi tradition in
the dargāh of the thirteenth-century saint Nizām ud-Dīn Auliya in New Delhi, see
Pinto 1995.
6
Khan 2004, 32.
7
Khan 2004, 33.
8
According to popular narratives animals were tamed by the saints during their
lifetime and have ever since been found there. For example, the Mazārs of Man-
ghu Pīr near Karachi has crocodiles in its adjacent pond, the shrine associated
with Bayazid Bistami in Bangladesh has giant turtles in a nearby pond, and the
shrine in Kallar Kahar in northern Punjab (Pakistan) is also known for its pea-
cocks. Usually a large number of pigeons settle on the domes of most Mazārs. In
some cases, popular beliefs explain that these animals guard the saints’ shrines.
See A.B. Rajput, “Crocodiles guard saint’s shrine” in The Nation, 4 November
2000. Also see, Annemarie Schimmel, Islam in India and Pakistan, in Th. P. van
Baaren, LP van den Bosch, L. Leertouwer, F. Leemhuis (eds.) Iconography of Reli-
gions series (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1982a).
9
Annemarie Schimmel, “Reflections on Popular Muslim Poetry.” in K. Ishwaran
and Bardwell L. Smith (eds.). Contributions to Asian Studies, 17–26, Richard C.
Martin (ed.) Islam in Local Contexts, Vol. 17 (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1982b); Aubrey
O’Brien, “The Mohammaedan Saints of the Western Punjab”, The Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute of Greet Britain and Ireland, 1911, Vol. 41, (July-
December), 509-20.
10
See Schimmel 1982b), 18 and Bennett’s second chapter in this book.
11
S.A.A. Saheb, “A ‘Festival of Flags’: Hindu Muslim devotion and the sacralising of
localism at the shrine of Nagore-e-Sharif in Tamil Nadu,” in Pnina Werbner and
Helene Basu (eds.) Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of
Emotion in Sufi Cults, 55-76 (London: Routledge, 1998).
12
Khwaja Khizr, an immortal mystical figure known among South Asian Muslims, is
believed to reign over water and vegetation, and protects castes such as washer-
men, water carriers, boatmen, and fishermen.. See Marc Gaboreíeau, “The cult
of saints among the Muslims of Nepal and northern India”, in Wilson, Stephen
(ed.). Saints and their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, 289-
318 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 301-2. )
13
Charles F. Keyes, “Charisma: From Social Life to Sacred Biography”, 1-22 in
Michael A. Williams (ed.) Charisma and Sacred Biography. Journal of the American
Academy of Religion Studies, 1-22, Vol. XLVIII, Numbers 3 and 4, American Acad-
emy of Religion, 1. 1982.
14
Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu, “The Embodiment of Charisma”, in Pnina
Werbner and Helene Basu (eds.) Embodying Charisma: Modernity, Locality and the
Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, 3-27 (London: Routledge, 1998).
15
Miracles are especially associated with Shah Latīf. For example, legends telling
about the saint’s ability to plunge in the well and emerge from rivers or lakes
at different places in the Indian Subcontinent are similar to myths associated
with Hindu deities. There is a legend about Shah Latīf’s visit to the shrine of the
Hindu deity Kali Mata. The saint is said to have offered milk to the statue of the
Hindu deity which the latter drank. However, this legend is popular among a
limited number of devotees.
16
The term baraka (in Punjabi/Sindhi/Urdu, barkat) is used in scholarly literature
for describing a special spiritual power or divine grace that, as devotees believe,
resides in a saintly person or his/her tomb after he/she passes away. But in fact,
the term is rarely used by the devotees. Instead, they use various expressions
for describing the spiritual power that, they believe, emanates from the saints’
tombs. Here, the term baraka is defined by contextualizing the word.
17
Encyclopaedia of Islam 1979 Vol I., 1032.
18
Rasmussen 2005, 74.
19
Kelly Pemberton, “A House of Miracles for One and All: Sufi Shrines, Islamic
Identity, and the Synthesis of (Sub-) Cultures in India Today”. Paper presented
at Annual Association for Asian Studies Conference, (Washington D.C., April,
(2002), 26.
20
Annemarie Schimmel, Deciphering the Signs of God: A Phenomenological Approach to
Islam. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994).
21
Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult. (Karachi:
Oxford University Press 2003), 285.
22
Denny 1988, 91.
23
Lukas Werth, “’The Saint Who Disappeared’: Saints of the wilderness in Pakistani
village shrines”, in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds.) Embodying Charisma:
Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, 77-92 (London:
Routledge 1998), 78.
24
Werth 1998, 80.
25
Ibid.
26
Denny 1998, 76.
27
Ralph Townsend, Faith, Prayer and Devotion. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 85.
28
This is also similar to the manner that Hindus worship deities and goddesses in
their temples or shrines or Sikhs show reverence for their sacred book, Guru
Granth Sahib, placed on a high platform in gurdwaras.
29
There are references to “living tombs” in Punjabi Sufi poetry as tombs of persons
who, through spiritual struggle and the Divine favors, have achieved the status of
eternal life. Thus their tombs too are alive.
30
For a detailed study on the spiritual Baraka of a deceased Imām, see Liakat Takim,
“Charismatic Appeal of Communitas? Visitation to the Shrines of the Imams,” in
Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern (eds.) Contesting Rituals: Islam and Prac-
tices of Identity-Making, 181-204 (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2005).
31
Interview with Syed Sibtul Hasan Zaigham, a Punjabi writer and journalist from
Lahore. March 16, 2005.
32
A middle-aged Hīr-Khwan at Waris Shah’s mazhar. March 10, 2005.
33
Surinder M. Bharadvaj, “Non-Hajj Pilgrimage in Islam: A Neglected Dimension
of Religious Circulation”, Journal of Cultural Geography, Vol. 17, Issue 2, 1998
(Spring/Summer), 69-87.
34
A Sikh pilgrim from India at Waris Shah’s mazhar (Punjab). March 8, 2005.
35
Khan 2004, 34.
36
Ibid., 33.
37
Keyes 1982, 2.
38
Ibid., 9.
39
Qamar-ul Huda, “Khwaja Mu’in ud-Din Chīshtī’s death festival: competing
authorities over sacred space”, Journal of Ritual Studies, Vol. 17, No. 1: 61–75, 70,
2003.
40
A male pilgrim (aged between 40 and 45) from Khairpur (a town in Sindh). April
7, 2005.
41
Khan 2004, 33.
42
Philip Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity. (London: SCM
Press, 2001), 11.
43
See G. van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Manifestation (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986), 395.
44
Charles Lindholm, “Prophets and Pirs: Charismatic Islam in the Middle East
and South Asia”, in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds.) Embodying Charisma:
Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, 209–33 (London:
Routledge 1998), 211.
45
Werbner 2003, 217.
46
Ibid.
47
Talk with some pilgrims of the large group of families, neighbors, and friends
visiting Waris Shāh’s mazhar from Shahdara (Lahore). March 17, 2005.
48
Talk with male college students from Lahore at Waris Shāh’s mazhar. March 8,
2005.
49
Werbner 2003, 218.
50
A male pilgrim from Nasarpur visiting Shah Latīf’s dargāh. April 8, 2005.
51
A middle-aged male pilgrim in Shah Latīf’s dargāh. April 7, 2005.
52
A middle-aged male pilgrim from Shikarpur visiting the dargāh of Shah Latīf.
April 6, 2005.
53
A pilgrim and a former nazim of Thatta visiting Shah Latīf’s dargāh during the
annual ‘urs. March 15, 2006.
54
Rasmussen 2005, 81.
55
A senior ragi faqir (aged 50–55) during a gathering of ragi faqirs. April 10, 2005.
56
A classical South Asian music genre in which the saint is said to have written his
poetry.
57
Talk with male college students visiting Waris Shāh’s mazhar from Lahore. March
8, 2005.
58
A male devotee of Waris Shāh’s mazhar with an MA in Punjabi literature, a murīd
of a well-known modern Sufi poet from a village near Jandiala Sher Khan. March
18, 2005.
59
A male devotee of Waris Shāh’s mazhar from a nearby village and a university
student. March 18, 2005.
60
Gibb 1999, 94.
61
Samuel Landell Mills, “The Hardware of Sanctity: Anthropomorphic objects in
Bangladesh Sufism”, in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds.) Embodying Cha-
risma: Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, 31-54 (London:
Routledge, 1998).
62
Keyes 1982, 7.
63
This ritual is performed by the sajjada-nishin when he wears the saint’s personal
cloak, puts his cap on, holds his rosary, and walks from the quarter of the sajjada-
nishin to the door of the tomb-chamber and back.
64
One can also observe moments of intense mutual experience during the time
when the Shi’a members among the local and traveling pilgrims perform mourn-
ing rituals during the first ten days of muharram and during the annual ‘urs at
Shah Latīf’s dargāh.
65
Interview with the female members of the Tamrani faqirs’ families. March 2,
2005.
66
Mills 1998, 40.
67
Mostly the term darshan is used in the Hindu context. But one often hears the
term at the mazhars when the devotees refer to their wish to have a glimpse of
the saints’ tombs. In the context of Hindu devotional practices, the term darshan
is sometimes translated as the “‘auspicious sight’ of the divine”. For a detailed
discussion on darshan, see Diana L. Eck, Darsan: Seeing the Divine Image in India.
(Banaras: American Institute of Indian Studies, 1996).
68
Jeddy, B.A. “And faith heals them” in The Dawn, 23 July 2000.
69
A male devotee and a non-professional musician who plays an instrument like the
bagpipes at Shah Latīf’s dargāh. March 2, 2005.
70
Werbner 2003, 98.
71
Keyes 1982, 8.
72
Werbner 2003, 92.
73
A male devotee (in his twenties) and a resident of a nearby village visiting Waris
Shāh’s mazhar. March 18, 2005.
74
A male Hīr-Khwan at Waris Shāh’s mazhar. March 10, 2005.
75
A male devotee (in his twenties) and employee at the management of Waris
Shāh’s mazhar who is in charge of opening the mazhar (Punjab). March 9, 2006.
76
Werbner and Basu 1998, 5; 2003, 106.
77
A Sikh pilgrim from India and wife visiting Waris Shāh’s mazhar. March 8, 2005.
78
A male devotee (in his twenties) and employee at the management of Waris
Shāh’s mazhar who is in charge of opening the mazhar (Punjab). March 9, 2006.
79
A female middle-aged pilgrim from Gujranwala at Waris Shāh’s mazhar. March 8,
2005.
80
Khan 2004, 6.
81
Ibid., 44.
Chapter 5
Du’a: Popular Culture and Powerful Blessing

at The ‘Urs
Pnina Werbner
Much has been written about the Barelvi movement in South Asia, a movement
that arose in the nineteenth century to defend popular Islam and the venera-
tion of saints from Islamic reformist attacks.1 Yet there has been little apprecia-
tion of how the Barelvi movement is interpolated into the saintly shrine system
in South Asia, or how the connection between saints and the ‘ulama, chief
spokesmen and leaders of the movement, is sustained. The key to this relation-
ship, I want to suggest here, is the ‘urs, seen as an open, inclusive popular festi-
val. It is through the many thousands of annual ‘urs festivals held every year at
shrines and lodges throughout the length and breadth of Pakistan that Sufi
regional cults link into and sustain the wider Barelvi movement. With the global
extension of Pakistani centers of migration the provenance of this symbiotic
relationship has also extended. Yet while the ‘urs provides a platform for the
‘ulama, it is also an indexical occasion which reinforces the supremacy and
autonomy of saints and reenacts the ambivalent relations of interdependency
between saint and maulvi, shrine and mosque.
The ‘urs is both a ritual and a giant popular religious festival. It is also the hub
of the organizational power of a Sufi regional cult, underpinning its reproduc-
tion and enabling its continued geographical extension. These three aspects of
the ‘urs: ritual, popular cultural, and organizational, are all essentially inter-
twined. In the first part of this chapter, I analyze the embeddedness of the ‘urs
in the broader Barelvi movement and folk popular culture. The chapter then
considers the ‘urs as a performative ritual moved by the power of blessing to its
final dramatic moment. The different phases of the ‘urs are shown to be part of
a single structured ritual. Finally, I review the centrality of the ‘urs as the organi-
zational nexus of a particular Sufi trans/regional cult founded by Zindapir, a
saint who died in 1999.2
Poets, singers, and orators
During the ‘urs at Ghamkol Sharif, the space of the lodge, usually so tranquil
and pastoral, is filled with blaring and often discordant sounds transmitted
through a powerful sound system, and reaching into every nook and cranny of
the lodge. At any hour of the day or night, festival participants volunteer to sing
na’ts, songs of praise to the Prophet, or qasidas, odes to the pīrs (saints). Learned
scholars volunteer to give religious lectures or sermons. Anyone may volunteer,
even nondisciples, the moderator explained to me. He first tests the performers
before allowing them to perform live.
The popular cultural success of the ‘urs depends largely on improvisation and
public voluntary participation, and it is these that help make it a successful cul-
tural and intellectual performance, just as voluntary contributions, donations,
and labor enable it to be a giant feast or a logistically complex three-day meet-
ing. Such voluntarism is crucial to the success of the festival. It is truly the prod-
uct of communal effort and none, with the possible exception of the invited
speakers in the final session, gets paid for performing. What performers get is
publicity and a growing reputation. The ‘urs is a genuinely open meeting of
amateurs and semiprofessionals. Over time, amateur na’t singers and ‘ulama on
the ‘urs circuit may acquire a name and as their fame grows, the na’t singers may
turn semiprofessional while the ‘ulama may secure good posts in Barelvi
mosques. Some performers, however, just enjoy appearing at their favorite‘urs.
Hajji Ibrahim, for example, my attendant at the lodge, had a very good singing
voice and was fond of a certain Punjabi poet. He sometimes sang his na’ts at
Zindapir’s‘urs or at another ‘urs, at Bohra Jangal. Twice he was invited to sing on
Radio Pakistan, he told me, but on both occasions he declined.
During the ‘urs in March 2000, I interviewed some of the prominent maulvis
and na’t singers who performed in the final prestigious session of the ‘urs. Their
careers highlight how the openness and inclusiveness of the Barelvis as a move-
ment is sustained through a circuit of such public festivals. The movement has,
of course, gained much strength since the founding of Pakistan, especially
through its network of Islamic schools and colleges.3 Its thousands of mosques,
located in towns and villages especially in the Punjab, have always been inde-
pendent. Malik hints at the political strategies deployed by the leaders of the
Barelvi political organization, the Jam’iyyat-e ‘Ulama-Pakistan (JUP) and its mysti-
cal association, the Ham’iyyat al Mash’ikh Pakistan. On the whole, these organiza-
tions’ tendency has been to cooperate with Pakistan’s successive regimes.
Measured in electoral terms the political power of the movement has remained
negligible, but it retains its cultural-cum-political influence among its large
Barelvi constituency.
Given the surplus of Barelvi ‘ulama, a reputation as an acute and persuasive
speaker is an important step on the ladder to a post as imām of a major mosque.
The giant audience at an ‘urs enables aspiring clerics to display their intellec-
tual profundity and oratorical skills. Na’t singers can gain a reputation leading
to further invitations to perform on the ‘urs and na’tmahfil circuit and, if they
are lucky, to a recorded cassette and a slot on a radio or TV show. The ‘urs of
Ghamkol Sharif is widely publicized in the press and through posters plastered
Du’a: Popular Culture and Powerful Blessing at The ‘Urs 85
on walls throughout the major cities and towns of Pakistan. In addition, personal
invitations are sent out to murīds and to ‘ulama or na’t singers who have previ-
ously participated in it. A detailed register which includes names and addresses
is updated from time to time and tens of thousands of invitations are sent out
annually before each ‘urs.
I interviewed the leading ‘ulama and na’t singers at the ‘urs in March 2000. All
three men had been invited especially to perform at the final and most presti-
gious session of the ‘urs. It emerged that they had been selected in advance, but
through chance encounters. The na’t singer was a large man with a trimmed
beard. One of the maulvis was a plump man, spilling out of his clothes. The
other was well groomed and sported a small beard.
The na’t singer’s name translates, he said, as ‘Pride of Performance.’ He is
well known, he told me, and has produced cassettes of his songs and received
many prizes. He is both a na’t singer and a QariQur’an, one who has received
some formal Qur’anic teaching. He began by explaining that saints and ‘ulama
are connected to one another. The ‘ulama are responsible for conveying reli-
gious knowledge; they help the pīrs by propagating their messages, while the
pīrs lead by example, through their way of life, actions, and preaching. He him-
self is a member of a family of ‘ulamas. He is the only one in the family blessed
with a melodious voice, bestowed upon him by Allah.
When I asked about his performances in the past three months he laughed
and said there was not a night vacant, believe me. Could he give an example of
where he had appeared in the past week? He had performed, he said, in Mul-
tan, at Fateh Jang, at Waqant, and at a seminar in Islamabad. Apart from this
last event, all the others were mahfilna’ts, meetings of na’t singers. When I asked
if he had been invited he laughed once again and said: “there is a saying in
Islam – don’t go to God until He calls you.” For a living he works in a Pakistan
Ordinance factory. He is thus a semiprofessional. How did he come to be invited
here? He has been here 28 times before, he said. Also, he met Chotta Pīr, the
grandson of Zindapir, at a mahfil at the shrine of Bahauddin Zakoria, a Suha-
wardi saint. On the sixth of January he had attended an ‘urs at Idgah Sharif. The
pīr there is a Naqshbandi, as he is himself.
By contrast to the na’t singer, this was the first time that Mufti Muhammad
Iqbal Chishti had attended the ‘urs at Ghamkol Sharif. He began by saying that
the ‘ulama’s role at the ‘urs was to teach people to respect the auliya (the Sufi
saints) and follow in their footsteps. Last month, he said, he had attended three
‘urs. The first was for Hazrat Nur Muhammad Moharvi Chishtiya at Nawarnagar,
and the second at Sial Sharif, District Sarghoda. This was for a Chishtiya shaikh,
Khwaja Shams Uddin Siarwari Chishtiya. The third was for Khwaja Ghulam
Kamal Uddin at Mianwala. He himself is the grandson of Nur Muhammad
Moharvi in the tariqa, and he is also a khalīfa in this Chishti order.
He is the maulvi of the Jami’a Masjad Rizviya in central Lahore. He leads the
prayers at this mosque and delivers taqrirs (lectures) at three other mosques in
Lahore every Friday. Being a Chishtiya, I asked, how did he come to know about
Ghamkol Sharif? “There are posters everywhere,” he said. He met Chotta Pīr in
District Bahawalpur in the Jami’a mosque. He was giving a khutba (Friday ser-
mon) there. Chotta Pīr had come there with a group of disciples. He invited
him to speak at the ‘urs. Why did he agree? “The darbar is famous everywhere.”
Many people had told him of Pir Sahib, how he had done chilla, and had a rev-
elation in Madina telling him to come to this place. The Pir Sahib’s faiz goes on
in his life and after his death. Does it matter that he is a Chishti while Zindapir
was a Naqshbandi? “All the auliyas are the same, he said, but they reach God
through different paths.”
The final maulvi interviewed, Tāhir-ul (see Philippon below, p. 112) Qadiri,
is a founder and leader of a political party or movement. He told me that he had
ceased giving sermons at ‘urses fifteen years ago, but because he knew Zindapir
and had missed his funeral, he decided to respond to Chotta Pīr’s invitation.
Zindapir loved him, he said, and supported his movement. Qadiri is a sophisti-
cated scholar with a good command of English and a comparative perspective
on Islamic mysticism. He repeated to me some of the basic tenets of Sufism in
a lucid and coherent manner, stressing that anyone could become a saint
through ethical and ascetic practice (and by implication, that this was not
hereditary and reserved for Sayyids only). He gave a detailed account of the
beliefs surrounding death in Islam and in Sufi eschatology. This was also the
theme of his sermon at the ‘urs. Although his presentation was very clear, it
nevertheless reflected standard Barelvi views on the soul after death.
Above all, what the three interviews indicate is that there are no strict separa-
tions between Sufi regional cults, saints, or orders; they are not exclusive sects. On
the contrary, the ‘urs shows and enacts the fact that they are embedded in a wider
social and religious movement. This is true in the order’s Birmingham ‘urs as well,
which gathers na’t singers and ‘ulama from many different parts of Britain.
Popular culture
In many ways the ‘urs is just sheer fun: the colorful tents, the streams of people,
the smell of wood burning and meat cooking in the large langar pots, the qafilas,
convoys, arriving with their banners, animals, and sacks of grain; the noise, the
feeling of being on holiday. There is a buzz in the air, an underlying current of
excitement. Friends and acquaintances run into each other. Khalifas and old
army mates embrace. In the ‘urs of 2000, I wandered around the market and
camping grounds with a young British Pakistani, licking ice cream while we
bought small mementos and cassettes of prior ‘urses, and watched men carry
chaddars (ornamented ceremonial grave cloths) in procession to the saint’s
tomb. My companion had come from Derby to spend some months with his
family in Kashmir.
Many activities go on simultaneously at the ‘urs. Women dye their hands with
henna and hold miladmahfil recitations in honor of the Prophet. Some gather
together to sing na’ts and qasidas from special books, printed or written out by
hand. Plump ladies and middle-aged men climb up the steep hill to the saint’s
cave, showing surprising agility. From down below they look like ants as they
follow each other single file up the hill. Once there, they pause a minute to gaze
down in wonder and pride at the lodge below. Children get underfoot or climb
the surrounding hills.
Even wealthy, middle class women sleep on quilts spread on the floor,
squashed together like sardines. The Pakistani square tents which hold the men
are cozy, but for those women sleeping on the verandas of the women’s quar-
ters it can get very cold at night, while the loudspeaker sound at times is quite
deafening. The all-night dhikr is transmitted over the sound system in loud mil-
itary staccato. People eat together in large groups or wander into the langar
area as individuals for a bowl of meat and roti. It is all very casual and good-
humored.
The spontaneity of the ‘urs at Ghamkol Sharif is a key to the enjoyment and
attraction of the event. Although the ‘urs is a ritual, it is not a tightly organized
affair. It also lacks some of the ritual elaboration characterizing‘urs festivals at
older shrines in South Asia such as Ajmer, Bahraich, or Nagor Sharif, which
have developed over hundreds of years.4 Even the laying of chaddars on the
saint’s grave – a common custom at saints’ shrines in South Asia – only began
for the first time at ‘urs after Zindapir’s death, in 1999. But despite this apparent
lack of structure, I want to suggest that the ‘urs is nevertheless a structured ritual
moved forward by the power of blessing.
The symbolic complex of blessing

The key to the ‘urs as ritual can be found in the fact that no one leaves before
the final du’a of the shaikh. Once the du’a is over there is a mad rush to the buses
and trucks. In less than an hour no trace is left of the city of tents which had
covered the valley, except the billowing dust raised by the departing vehicles’
wheels. The dust takes several hours to settle. Then it is all over.
The progression of the ‘urs at Ghamkol Sharif may be traced from its first
moment, the julus (procession) or qafila, the movement through space, which
inscribes the earth with the name of Allah; second, the karamat: once they reach
their destination pilgrims retrace the mythology of the lodge by visiting its
sacred sites; third, the langar, sharing in the communal food through which the
saint nurtures the congregation; fourth, the mulaqat, the meeting of groups
with the shaikh to take bai'at (vow of allegiance), receive ta’wiz (an amulet), or
simply bask in his light. This is when he gives his special disciples or khalifas gifts
of caps, scarves, or gowns, the latter worn by him over the year and imbued with
his charisma. Like a thread running through the whole ‘urs, from the moment
pilgrims leave their home, is the fifth key ritual act of the ‘urs, the dhikr (remem-
brance of Allah), recited throughout the three nights of the program. Along
with dhikr are the na’ts, poems of praise to the Prophet. Sixth is the shajara, the
reciting of the sacred genealogy of the order. This is read out in the final session
after all the khalifas, dressed in black on white, approach the stage along with
the pīr himself. Seventh is the taqrir, the exegetic speech by a learned scholar.
Finally, we reach the du’a.
In different senses all these ritual acts are ways of reaching out materially to
the saint’s grace. I use the word grace here deliberately because too much
weight has been put by scholars of Sufism, including anthropologists, on baraka,
as though this one term could sum up the complex ideas about charisma and
blessing held by Sufi followers. In reality, there is a whole lexicon of terms refer-
ring to subtle differences in modes of saintly blessing. These terms together
form a symbolic complex of blessing. The subtle variations between the terms are
important because they allow us insight into the way Sufi cosmology is embod-
ied and embedded in more usual ways of Islamic ritual blessing.
Perhaps the most central Sufi term for saintly blessing, at least in South Asia,
is not barkat but faiz (Persian, fayd in Arabic), a word which I have translated as
divine grace and which followers use to refer to the divine light flowing through
the saint and from him to his disciples. It is a light that both illuminates and
feeds or nurtures. It reaches into the hearts of men and women even over great
distances, whenever they pray a prescribed liturgy or evoke the image of the
saint in front of their inner eye. The saint literally glows with faiz. He can proj-
ect it at will, transferring it at a glance to a trusted khalīfa. It shines with his
munificence and beneficence, an inner quality which his appearance and facial
expression reveal.
On the day after the 1991 ‘urs I dropped by the women’s quarters to meet the
volunteers who were washing up the thousands of dishes left over from the lan-
gar. An educated woman from Lahore, a freelance writer in Urdu, told me:
“The pīr’s light is responsible for everything you see, it all comes from his light.
He has a tenth sense to see into people’s feelings and emotions.” She had been
seeking someone (i.e., a pīr) but all the pīrs in Pakistan are frauds and thieves,
she said. “He (Zindapir) is the only one in the whole world. I will obey his
orders whatever he tells me because he thinks only of the good of a person. He
is concerned about all the people’s good, even these poor people” (pointing to
the women washing dishes). “What benefit does he give?” I asked.
“He gives spiritual satisfaction through the light emanating from him,” she
replied. When she is in difficulty she brings his tasawwar (image) in front of her
eyes and she immediately gets help. Standing helplessly on the road, a vehicle
appears to give her a lift. This has happened a thousand times.
In ethical terms, then, faiz is the light of generosity, kindness, and concern
emanating from the saint and communicated to his followers. Through faiz a
pīr creates the tie, rabta, binding him to his followers. Faiz is the embodiment of
his spiritual power, ruhaniyat, another key term which is used to express the
pīr’s spirituality as a powerful force. Barkat is the third term in this symbolic
complex. In Islam barkat (baraka in Arabic) may come directly from God with-
out the intercession of a pīr. It may be mediated by the community or the poor.
When people hold a sacrifice or give part of an offering to the poor, they regard
the commensal food following their prayers as imbued with barkat. In this sense
it is a general Islamic term for divine blessing. Barkat imbues objects, such as the
salt given out by the pīr, or the langar, with the power of procreation, prolifera-
tion, fecundity, expansion, life, fertility, and growth (of children, crops, wealth,
job prospects, health, and so forth). Barkat is magical and contagious. The very
touch of a pīr can imbue an object with barkat. This means that the pīr himself
is charged physically with barkat, which explains why he is constantly mobbed by
devout followers, endangering his life in their attempts to touch him. Linked to
all these terms is a further term, ruhanikhorakh, spiritual food. The pīr is said to
nurture his followers spiritually.
Finally, there is du’a and the blessings, fazl, received through the du’a in
accordance with God’s own judgment of what is best for his followers. Du’a
means both supplication and benediction. It also means blessing. Any person
can say du’a on behalf of a congregation. In this sense du’a, like baraka, is a gen-
eral Islamic term. But the du’a of a pīr, said on the final day of the ‘urs after all
the dhikr recitations and langar feedings of the masses, is enormously powerful.
It is believed that at that moment the soul of the dead saint which the ‘urs com-
memorates, and the souls of all the auliya and the prophets, gather over the
congregation. Their combined spirituality is directed toward the saint’s appeal
to God for blessing and healing. That is why no one goes home before the final
du’a. It is the point of the whole ‘urs ritual.
The ‘urs, of course, is also a wedding. That is why the women dye the palms of
their hands with mehndi (henna paintings). While Zindapir was alive this wed-
ding motif was not expressed in the ritual itself. It merely existed at the concep-
tual level. Since his death, however, the wedding theme has come to be enacted
in practice very clearly through the placing of chaddars on the grave. The men
approach the grave carrying the chaddar by its four corners so that it is raised
horizontally above the ground, much as the chaddar is carried to be placed over
the bride’s head during the mehndi ritual.5 As they proceed through the darbar,
people throw rupee notes intended as nazrana (tribute) or sadqat (alms) on to
the horizontally held cloth, just as they do at mehndis. The procession arrives at
the grave, singing, before the men jointly cover the raised mound, much as a
bride would be covered. Rose petals and other garlands of flowers or bank notes
are also thrown on the grave, just as they are at weddings. I watched a top PIA
manager from Karachi throw two whole baskets of fragrant rose petals onto the
grave. Maulana Qadri, the ‘alim who gave the sermon on the final day of the ‘urs
in 2000, explained:
‘urs means the spiritual marriage of the wali. … Whenever a person gets mar-
ried he has mehndi on the hands and beads on the neck and a garland of
leaves. The last thing (you do at the wedding) is, you throw on them rose
petals. Whenever the flowers go on the grave of the wali, that is his shadi
(marriage). People ... [ask: if] someone is sleeping, what can he do? What are
you going there (to the grave) for? The explanation of the sleep (of a pīr) is
exactly the same as when a woman gets married. … She is sleeping but she is
not unconscious. Similarly the wali is sleeping but he is still awake. When the
wali is lying in the grave and the people go to visit him and pay respects, he
listens to them and replies to them and fulfils their wishes. It is not the end of
his life – the only thing is that he has transferred from one place to another.
This was due to … ‘amal, (his asceticism and piety), and now is the time to
be rewarded. Whatever he sowed here he will reap there. Whatever his work,
his reward is not exactly as in this world – he is looking at the Prophet’s face,
at the rehemat (blessing) of God, and is [basking] in the full light. This is the
reason why we say that the grave of the wali is always alive. And then you are
rewarded from his grave with faiz.
The ‘Urs as the organizational

nexus of Sufi regional cults
In the final session of the ‘urs at Ghamkol Sharif the master of ceremonies
always announces to the ‘ijtima, the congregation gathered, the tally of accumu-
lated prayers dedicated to Zindapir which have been performed by all the dif-
ferent branches of his cult worldwide over the past year. In 2000, this tally was:
50,000 kalam e pak

7 crore and 30 lakh darud sharif
SuratYassin 12 lakh and 18,000
The first kalimah 11 crore and 60 lakh
The pir-bhai of Chakwal, for the sake of Pīr ‘Alam, performed a special
Umra
Kalimah taiba 150 crore and 7000;
The MC concluded by saying: “We hand over all these to Qibla Badshah
Sahib” (Zindapir’s son and successor).
These fantastic numbers, adding up to millions of prayers dedicated to the

saint, are performed daily, weekly, or monthly in many different localities of his
Sufi order/cult, and are endlessly repeated. A khalīfa from Lahore, for exam-
ple, was very proud of the number of prayers his branch had accumulated that
year. He used one of the murīds, an accountant, to add up the numbers, he told
me. We may say that in a sense the prayers form a unity in their very multiplicity,
just as the regional cult that Zindapir founded is based on moments of separate-
ness and moments of togetherness.
Every organization needs events that bring together its key administrative
staff. The ‘urs, held annually, doubles up at such a moment, in which represen-
tatives of all the main branches and many minor ones come together, while it is
also the pretext for mobilizing voluntary labor needed for new building works
at the central lodge. Virtually everything one sees at the lodge was built over the
years in the weeks before the ‘urs. The festival presents difficult logistical chal-
lenges because of the vast numbers sleeping and eating at such a remote place
for three days and nights. On several visits I was proudly shown the new toilets
being built either for the women or for the men. Such mundane concerns are
very important in making the ‘urs a success.
Elsewhere I have argued that voluntary giving is a key to understanding the
lodge as a good faith economy.6 Both the voluntary labor and the langar embody
this economy and are dialectically related. This is because the langar creates
very real logistical challenges. Unlike many other shrines in South Asia, the
langar at Ghamkol Sharif is entirely controlled by the saint and his family. Both
the cooking and the distribution of the food are centrally organized. At most
older shrines like Bari Imam, for example, or Data Ganj Baksh, the langar is
mediated by commercial cooking. Crucially at Ghamkol Sharif, the source of
the langar is the pīr himself. He personally controls the giving of the langar and
it is thus he who directly nurtures the multitudes.
Like the need to provide lodgings for all pilgrims to the ‘urs, feeding vast
numbers requires complex planning, from the utensils to be cleaned, the wood
to be gathered, the animals to be slaughtered, to the food to be cooked, all in
large in quantities. The voluntary labor mobilized for all these activities under-
lines the good faith economy and creates the connections, forged in action,
between a saint and his close followers. The ethics of feeding and providing
shelter and the labor devoted to preparing the decorations and sound system
for the cultural performance consolidate the moral relations between saint and
disciple, and among disciples themselves. They are crucibles on the path to
God which create and foster ties between men and women. Many of the volun-
teers work day and night without pause, claiming, if asked, that they do not
even feel tired. This, they say, is the miracle of the lodge and the pīr. The volun-
tary labor underpins the distributive and redistributive economies that main-
tain the lodge as an ongoing concern. It ensures that a remote place, away from
major centers of population, can stage a large-scale, three-day event such as the
‘urs. The same system is replicated on a minor scale in most of the major
branches of the regional cult and its global extensions.
Ambivalences of authority in the Barelvi movement
The ‘urs is based on many different sorts of interdependencies between saint

and follower. Zindapir’s khalifas devote their spare time and work on holidays to
help with the building of the lodge and the preparations for the ‘urs. They do
so selflessly, for the sake of their pīr. This obscures the dependence of the pīr
and his family upon them. There are murīds who serve at the lodge as volun-
teers and some who work on the fields of the saint near Shekhupura. The pīr on
his part gives his followers the privilege and opportunity to participate in the
good faith economy and draw religious merit and Sufi boons from it.
Unlike other Sufi followers, Barelvi ‘ulama occupy a far more ambivalent posi-
tion within this good faith economy, and particularly so in the case of living
saints like Zindapir. Despite their disclaimers, the ‘ulamas’ religious expertise,
their learning, and the authority of the scriptures they command are inevitably
pitched against the charismatic authority of the pīr. While they may be con-
sulted on matters of law and asked to officiate at weddings and funerals, the pīr
is deeply loved by his followers who come to him for advice and support, and
for succor in times of need. While the maulvi preaches, the pīr blesses. Perhaps
for this reason the ‘ulama may well prefer saints who are safely interred in their
graves.
There is also a difference in tone and ideology between saint and maulvi.
While Barelvi ‘ulama are strident, militant, and populist, saints are soft-spoken
and peace-promoting. At the ‘urs it is almost impossible even for a native Urdu
speaker to understand parts of the ‘ulamas’ speeches, once they take off in
flight. The thunder and passion of their sermons contrast sharply with the
wavering voice of Zindapir, telling the same tale year after year, which is never-
theless heard in hushed silence by the congregation.
Despite this, the ‘ulama do support strongly the continued veneration of
saints in South Asia. They endow the ritual practices and Sufi beliefs associ-
ated with saints and shrines with wider political and public legitimacy. Unlike
other parts of the Islamic world, the existence of Barelvi ‘ulama in South Asia
has meant that the belief in saints and shrines and in Islamic mystical ideas
more generally has continued to flourish. Followers have not been compelled
to choose between saint and ‘ulama, shrine and mosque; these apparent oppo-
sitions exist in symbiotic relation within the same movement. This has been
extremely important for the continued vitality of Islam as a mystical move-
ment on the subcontinent.
Notes
1
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 18601900 (Princ-
eton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).
2
Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: the Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (London:
Hurst, 2003).
3
Jamal Malik, Colonisation of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan.
(Delhi: Manohar, 1998).
4
Syed Liyaqat Hussain Moini, “Rituals and Customary Practices at the Dargāh of
Ajmer.” in Christian W. Troll (ed.) Muslim Shrines in India: Their Character, History
and Significance (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 60–75. Edward B. Reeves,
The Hidden Government: Ritual, Clientelism, and Legitimation in Northern Egypt (Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990). S.A.A. Saheb, “A Festival of Flags: Hin-
du-Muslim Devotion and the Sacralising of Localism at the Shrine of Nagore-e-
Sharif,” in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds) Embodying Charisma: Modernity,
Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults (London: Routledge, 1998),
55–76. Tahir Mahmood, “The Dargāh of Sayyid Salar Mas’ud Ghazi in Bahra-
ich: Legend, Tradition and Reality,” in Christian W. Troll (ed.) Muslim Shrines
in India: Their Character, History and Significance (Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1989), 24–47.
5
On the Pakistani wedding ritual see Pnina Werbner The Migration Process: Capital,
Gifts and Offerings among Manchester Pakistanis (Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1990),
Chapter 9.
6
Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: the Anthropology of a Global Sufi Cult (London:
Hurst, 2003).
Chapter 6
The Sufi Center of Jhok Sharif in Sindh

(Pakistan): Questioning the Ziyārat as a S
ocial
Process
Michel Boivin
This chapter wishes to explore the processes by which a communitas is at work in

a Sufi center of Southern Sindh.1 In using Turner’s concept of communitas, it
intends to highlight a number of clues by which people identify themselves in
such solidarity. According to Turner’s typology, one has to distinguish between
three categories of communitas.2 First is the existential or spontaneous communitas.
Second is the transient personal experience of togetherness or normative com-
munitas. Third is a communitas organized into a permanent social system or the
ideological communitas, which can be applied to many utopian social models.
As Turner himself claims, the experience achieved by the pilgrims, in Jhok
Sharif and elsewhere, refers to the second type of communitas.3 The final aim of
this chapter is not to give a detailed analysis of communitas as a social antistruc-
ture, to use Turner’s idiom. Although of course it wishes to investigate how this
specific communitas comes to birth, and how it is sustained, it will rather focus
on the process by which the equality provided through the belonging to com-
munitas is based on two dynamics. First is the sharing of cultural items and sec-
ond is the exclusion of some categories of the local society. While the pilgrimage
to saints’ tombs, known as ziyārat, is usually understood as a provider of equality
through the communitas, it is well known that in the South Asian context the
pilgrimage does not imply the end of caste distinctions.4 I shall try to show here
that the ziyārat is mainly a process by which cultural production and social dis-
crimination are instrumentalized for maintaining the feudal domination of the
sayyids.
Inventing a tradition
Among the numerous Sufi centers of Southern Sindh, Jhok Sharif is located
seventy kilometers south of Hyderabad, and thirty kilometers east of Thatta.
Previously named Miranpur, the place reached some fame due to the figure of
the local Sufi saint, Shah Inayat, who was killed in 1718, after rousing a revolt
with his murīds and peasants against the king and the local sayyids. This Sufi
center is an interesting case study for evaluating Sufi involvement in local soci-
ety in present-day Sindh, the south-eastern province of Pakistan.
In seventeenth-century Sindh, the Naqshbandi restoration following Ahmad
Sirhindi (d. 1624) was at work. (On Sirhindi, see Buehler’s chapter in this
book.) Makhdum Muhammad Hashim (1692–1762) composed his works in
Arabic, Persian, and Sindhi. He fought the pantheistic inclinations of Sufism
and also what he coined as Hindu features like musical parties. After the
death of Aurangzeb, four rulers occupied the throne between 1707 and 1712,
and under the fifth, Aurangzeb’s great grandson Farrukh Siyar (1712–19), the
insecurity was felt over all the country. In the context of Sindh, Shah Abd
al-Latif was twenty-nine years old when Shah Inayat died. Shah Abd al-Latif
is still the most popular Sufi writer. He composed the most famous piece of
Sindhi literature: a poem known as Shah-jo risalo.5
Among the Sindhi writers, Shah Inayat (1655–1718) is known as the “Hallaj
of Sindh.” He was probably born in 1655, so he was four when Dara Shikoh was
executed by his brother Aurangzeb. Shah Inayat’s family was attached to the
Sohrawardi tariqa.6 Despite this, he went to look for a spiritual master by himself
and he finally found him in Burhanpur in the Deccan. Shah Inayat was initiated
in the Qadiriyya order before staying in Bijapur, then in Delhi. When he went
back to Sindh, Shah Inayat was beyond the stage of fana fi’l shaykh: he has obvi-
ously reached the stage of unity with the haqiqat muhammadiyya, the Prophet’s
essence.
However, it is not clear whether Shah Inayat was a beshar` Sufi.7 In spite of this,
it is well attested that some of his companions were. A companion he had
brought back from Delhi, Shah Ghulam Muhammad, was so impressed that he
bowed down before him, although this practise was forbidden before human
beings. The ‘ulama from Thatta wanted this blasphemy to be punished. They
condemned Shah Ghulam Muhammad to flagellation. He was nevertheless
supported by Muhammad Muìn, a “deviant” Sufi who has been expelled from
the Naqshbandiyya because of his taste for music and dance, and also his atten-
dance to the celebrations of muharram with the Shias.
Shah Inayat finally stayed at Jhok where he was the owner of some lands.
There is not so much data on the community he founded then. It is neverthe-
less well known that his generosity (fayz) quickly attracted many peasants and
followers of other local Sufi masters (faqirs). In this matter, the nearest neigh-
bors were the sayyids of Bulri, the village where the sanctuary of Shah
Abd al-Karîm was located, himself the great great grandfather of Shah
Abd al-Latif. With the agreement of the governor of Thatta, the sayyids of Bulri
and their zamindar (landlords) allies first attacked Jhok in 1715. So many der-
vishes were killed that their families lodged a complaint with the central gov-
ernment in Delhi. The governor decided that the lands of the assailants were to
be given to the faqirs and to their families as compensation.
Questioning The Ziyārat as a Social Process 97
This happy outcome caused a rush of peasants and faqirs to Jhok. Shah Inayat
had sought to create a small egalitarist community sharing its time between
works and prayers. His opponents took advantage of the naming of a new gov-
ernor and they made him understand that Shah Inayat was gathering troops for
challenging the Moghul Empire. The governor ordered the sayyids and the
zamindars to rise up in arms again. A real army with elephants and cannons laid
siege to Jhok. Yar Muhammad Kalhoro, from the powerful clan of the Kalhoras
who were dominating the north of Sindh, was the chief of the army. After a vain
attempt at attack, during which a great number of faqirs were killed, Shah
Inayat, who tried to resist his enemy for more than two months, was finally
obliged to surrender. He was beheaded and his head was sent to Delhi.
The mystic thought of Shah Inayat is not easy to discover. Annemarie Schim-
mel, who stayed a week in Jhok in 1965 with Pir Muhammad Rashdi, states he
didn’t compose anything while Sufi Àta’ Allah Sattari, the present sajjada nashin,8
claims to own hundred pages from the hand of the martyr. According to him,
every time the pages were to be published, a miracle occurred: the ink disap-
peared in the night. For the sajjada nashin, this is obviously a miracle with the
meaning that Shah Inayat does not want his elevated mystic thought to be
divulged to everybody. It is said that when it was brought to Delhi, Shah Inayat’s
head uttered verses in Persian. It is probably related to the legend recorded in
the Besarnama (The Poetry of the Decapitated Head).
Later on, Shah Inayat’s martyrdom became a literary motif in Sufi poetry, for
example in Sachal Sarmast’s verse. His martyrdom was also a symbol of freedom
against zamindars, sayyids, and the ‘ulama. Finally, some Sufis saw him as the
perfect master, like Mir Janullah Shah (d. 1754) who was said to be at Jhok
when Shah Inayat was put to death. Bedil called the day of Shah Inayat’s execu-
tion qiyamat-e sughra, or the Minor Judgment Day.9 It is interesting to note here
the role played by the Hindus. Born in Sehwan, Bhai Dalpatram (d. 1841) was
a disciple of Bhai Asardas, himself a disciple of Shah Inayat’s son Salamullah
Shah Sufi. He composed a Persian mathnawi he called Jangnama (Book of War)
where he depicted martyrdom as man’s struggle with his nafs ammara (lower
soul).10 In other works, Shah Inayat’s martyrdom was compared with Hussein’s
sacrifice and some authors composed marthiyas in his honor. He was also associ-
ated with the famous Sufi al-Hallaj for the same reasons.
The genealogy of Shah Inayat leads directly to Hazrat Ali. His son Makhdum
Faqir Izzatullah Shah was the first sajjada nashin11. The second was Faqir
Muhammad Zahid Shah, a grandson of Shah Inayat’s brother, Naley Chaughon
Shah, since Makhdum Faqir Izzat Allah Shah had no son. The third was sup-
posed to be his own son Sufi Fazlullah Shah, but he opted not to take the
turban (pagri). He was nevertheless a great spiritual guide who was said to
have reached the stage of unity. He was given the name of Shah Qalandar
Data Pīr. Interestingly, the word qalandar is here the name of a grade in the
spiritual hierarchy of Sufism. In the first centuries of Sufism, the qalandars
were be shar` or Without Law, in the sense they didn’t pay respect to the
sharià.12 Nowadays, a Qalandar is said to be a Sufi who has reached a high
spiritual level.
After the sixth sajjada nashin, there was a break in the transmission. Shah
Qalandar’s daughter Sahab Pak managed the dargāh with the help of Sufi Sadiq
Faqir. The seventh one was Khawaja Àbdul Sattar, a descendant of Shah Inayat’s
brother, Naley Chaughon Shah, through another lineage. The present sajjada
nashin, Sufi Àta Allah Sattari, is the eleventh sajjada nashin in direct line from
Khawaja Àbdul Sattar. The sajjada nashins are the bearers of what Max Weber
called “hereditary charisma.” They invented a tradition while transforming the
fountainhead, who was a rebel and a martyr fighting the feudal order, into the
origin of an orthodox tradition which now legitimizes a feudal system which is
totally under their control.
Mapping a sacred territory

A mapped territory is an essential condition for a communitas to be birthed.
While the territory is most of the time restricted to the dargāh, the sanctuary of
Jhok Sharif encompasses a variety of buildings and places. The town of Jhok
Sharif, with a population of about 10,000 inhabitants, is on the eastern bank of
the Indus River. The river is about five kilometers from the dargāh. The sanctu-
ary is located two or three kilometers from the main road between Tando
Muhammad Khan and Mirpur Bathoro, just after the mohallah inhabited by the
Shidis, the descendants of African slaves. Other populations of Jhok Sharif are
Kashkelis, Somras, Samas, Jatois, Mirbahars, Hindus, and Kutchis.13
Main Sufi places in South Sindh
Although the delta of the Indus River is now very limited, Jhok Sharif is located
in the historical deltaic Sindh, south of Hyderabad. The excavations of local
Hindu temples give evidence that before the advent of Islam, Shaivism was
widespread. In the Middle Age, the local dynasty of the Somras founded several
capitals which were all in deltaic Sindh. Later on, under the Samas, the city of
Thatta was the capital for many centuries. Thatta was controlling the maritime
trade, and also the trade roads to Gujarat and to India. But deltaic Sindh was
also on the road of important pilgrimage centers like the Hindu pilgrimage of
Hinglaj. Facing Makkli Hill, the temple of Ashapuri Devi, also known as Singh
Bhawani, is still an important place of Hindu worship. It is said that the Kan-
phata yogis used to stop here before reaching Hinglaj. Other tales and legends
intermingle saintly figures from both Muslim and Hindu persuasions. For
example, Shah Jamil Shah Datar is said to be Gorakhnath himself.14
Figure 6.1 © Juliette Boivin
In Jhok Sharif, Shah Inayat’s sanctuary is enclosed by a wall. The enclosed

garden is like a mirror of Paradise, with the green grass, the singing of the birds,
and the sweet music of running water. This stands in stark contrast to the vil-
lage, which is dry, littered, and dusty. The space devoted to the sanctuary can be
divided into two main areas: the part where devotion is performed for the dead,
and the part where devotion is performed for the living. The main part is the
space devoted to the sacred dead: Shah Inayat, of course, who is the source of
devotion, and also to a lesser extent Imām Hussein. The other side is the king-
dom of the living saints, the present sajjada nashin and his family. The transition
between both is made by the chaukundis, the previous sajjada nashins’ tombs,
and by the nagarakhana, which symbolizes the role music plays in devotion.
The main mausoleum devoted to Shah Inayat is all white. Before entering the
mausoleum, it is compulsory to ring the bell, thus informing the saint that
somebody is coming to pay him homage. The external decoration is very

limited. Here again, other Sindhi dargāhs, like Bhit Shah or Sehwan Sharif, are
quite different. They are very brightly colored and coated in gold, like Lal Shah-
baz’s cupola. The internal decoration of Shah Inayat’s tomb is well balanced to
the extent that there are kashi ceramics near the main gate. The colors are tra-
ditional Sindhi hues and the motifs symbolize the paths to devotion. Inside the
tomb, one can note the fine paintings in the cupola that symbolize heaven, a
metaphor for God, and the ultimate goal of devotion.
The faqirs and pilgrims stay in buildings locally known as a bari, built with the
donations of generous devotees.15 They can host hundreds of pilgrims. The
other buildings correspond to different rituals or ceremonies performed
through the year. The heart of the sanctuary is the dargāh devoted to Shah
Inayat. It is located opposite the main entrance of the enclosed sanctuary. Near
the dargāh is a mosque. It is not certain whether it is regularly used. Behind the
dargāh, they are two important places in the life of the sanctuary. First are the
chawkundis, or the tombs of the sajjada nashin’s predecessors. Second is ganj
shahid, the kabirstan (graveyard) where the shahids (martyrs) who died in 1718
with Shah Inayat are buried.
Chaukundi Shah
Qasr-e Inayat’s mosque
Qalandar dargah
4 2
1
b
a
3 r
i
bari
bari
Main entrance Entrance
1 chatri N
2 àlam
3 bell
E +
S
W
4 nagara khana
5 ganj shahid
Figure 6.2 The sanctuary of Jhok Sharif16

Between the entrance and the dargāh stands the àlam. Not many ceremonies
are performed here. In Jhok Sharif, the Shidis played drums when the àlam is
raised for muharram. They first play in the àlam place in the town, then come
to the sanctuary. They also play drums when the sajjada nashin arrives in the
sanctuary. But they never sing or play another instrument. The drums they play
are placed in a small house located in the center of the sanctuary, the nagara-
khana (the place of the drums).
The eastern part of the sanctuary is devoted to the performance of rituals
attached to the person of the sajjada nashin. There are two main buildings
here: the Qasr-e Qalandar, and the chatri. As we shall see, these places play an
important role in the melo. Moreover, the sajjada nashin can walk from his
house, located in a walled compound where he stays with his extended
family.
Framing the adab

Local tradition claims that Shah Inayat enhanced a new system of codes, a new
etiquette (adab), which is still in use today. The first innovation was to give the
name of Sufi to all his followers: it showed they were all equal before God, and
that the caste and class barriers were removed. Shah Inayat himself gave up the
laqab of Sayyid. The adab he gave was like a synthesis between the Qadriyya and
the Sufiyya, the latter term meaning the innovations brought by him. The adab
of Jhok Sharif is somewhat purged. The transvestites (khadras) and the dancer
prostitutes (munjrahs) one can see in other places like Sehwan Sharif are not
allowed to visit the sanctuary. Moreover, dance is forbidden and female voices
are equally prohibited. But surprisingly, music, vocal as well as instrumental,
plays a leading role in the spiritual life of the sanctuary.
The sajjada nashin claims there are seven stages in the Sufi path in Jhok. The
faqir who has reached the last one is allowed to wear the same pagri as the sajjada
nashin. Another sign of spiritual attainment is the saffron pagri, which is, accord-
ing to him, the color of the rising sun, a metaphor for the unveiling of mystical
knowledge. The spiritual hierarchy among the Sufis encompasses titles such as
ghawth, qutub, and darvish or qalandar. The tradition of devotional poetry was
first perpetuated by several sajjada nashins. Abdal-Sattar II, the present sajjada
nashin’s grandfather, was a prolific author although his poetry is not currently
available. Sufi Àta’ Allah Sattari, the present sajjada nashin, is himself a poet.
The Manghanârs sing his kafis written in Sindhi, as well as his ghazals composed
in Urdu. In Jhok Sharif, two authors nevertheless played a leading role in the
field of devotional literature: Sufi Sadiq Faqir (d. 1848) and Sayyid Rakhyal
Shah Sufi al-Qadri (d. 1940).
The most important poet of Jhok Sharif is Sufi Sadiq Faqir. His poetry plays a
key role in the different rituals involved in the sama`, under its different shapes
including private performances or the performances during the melo. Born in

Umarkot, Faqir Muhammad Sadiq Sumro was a follower (murīd) of Faiz Allah
Shah Qalandar al-Qadri. His poetry is still mainly oral, although N.B. Baloch
quotes some of his kafis in his anthology of Sindhi poetry.17 Moreover, Sufi Sadiq
Faqir was his master’s interlocutor in the dialogue on the stages of Sufi knowl-
edge composed in Persian under the title of Dard Namo (The Book of Pain).18 An
abstract was translated in Sindhi under the direction of N.B. Baloch, but the
present sajjada nashin considers it to fall short of the original.19 Although devo-
tional poetry composed by other authors is performed, Sufi Sadiq Faqir is obvi-
ously the emblematic poet of Jhok Sharif.
The other reference in the field of devotional poetry is Sayyid Rakhyal Shah
Sufi al-Qadri (d. 1940). He was a Baluchi from a place called Fatehpur. In 1923,
he published a voluminous work under the title of Bahar al-ìshq (The Ocean of
Mystic Love), which was republished five times. The book is divided into three
parts: 729 kafis, 284 bayts, and 2 Si Harfiyyun composed according to the Arabic
alphabet. While being a follower of the sajjada nashins of Jhok, Sayyid Rakhyal
Shah became himself the fountainhead of a new cult. After his death, a dargāh
was built in Fatehpur and his grandson, Sayyid Sadiq Ali Shah, is currently the
second sajjada nashin of this new sacred place.
While having Sunnis and also Hindus among their followers, the sayyids of
Jhok are fervent Shias. It is nevertheless to be noted that they do not use or
write marsiyas, nor other Shia devotional literature, although this tradition is
widespread among other leading Sufi families of Sindh. The Makhdums of
Hala for example developed an old tradition of composing marsiyas in Sindhi.
Makhdum Ghulam Muhammad “Gul Sa’in” published an anthology under the
title of Shan-e Hussein (The Glory of Hussein) written by his father Makhdum
Muhammad Zaman Taleb al-Mawla (1919–93), who was also the father of the
present Makhdum of Hala.20
Interestingly, the faqirs are not involved in the celebration of muharram. The
musicians who play during the different rituals are Shidis, whose status is very
low. They are descendants of African slaves who were liberated only a few years
after the coming of the British. The nineteenth-century British officers noticed
that they delighted in music and dance, and also that many of the Shidi women
make their living by prostitution.21 According to my informants in Jhok, the
Shidis tend to be poor and illiterate. Although they are the local group special-
ized in music, the Shidis do not attend any performance related to the Sufi cult.
They perform for weddings and other rites of passage, as well as for the ceremo-
nies of muharram. Especially on the day of Ashura, they perform devotional
poetry like marsiyas, nohas, or even qasidas. They sing inside the sanctuary but
the sajjada nashin of Jhok does not have a private imambargah like the Makh-
dums of Hala. Obviously their duty is attributed by the sajjada nashin. As agents,
the Shidis are thus excluded from the process that gives birth to the communitas
in the sanctuary.22
The commemorations surrounding the death of different spiritual masters

mark the year. Although the most important celebration is the seventeenth of
the Islamic month of Safar, the day of Shah Shahid, when Shah Inayat’s martyr-
dom is commemorated, a sama` is organized on the seventeenth of every month.
This is only a vocal sama`, without instruments, and it is performed by the faqirs.
According to local tradition, instrumental music is forbidden among the Qadris,
and that is why this performance is called sama` qadriyya. It is performed in a
place called the mehla (from mohala, area or neighborhood), which is the kacheri,
a hall just before Shah Inayat’s sanctuary. Four or five faqirs come from different
places in Sindh for this special occasion. At Jhok, the name of ragi is given to the
faqirs who sing without instruments. Their repertoire is composed by vais and
bai'at of Sufi Sadiq Faqir.
The melo is performed every year on the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eigh-
teenth day of Safar. Thousands of pilgrims come to pay homage to Shah Inayat.
Different rituals are performed by the sajjada nashin, the faqirs, and the ziyāratis,
but the celebration is dominated by two musical performances. The first one
occurs in a place called the Qasr-e Qalandar. This building, named in honor of
Faiz Allah Shah Qalandar al-Qadri, is made of two spaces. The first is half open
while the second is totally closed. The latter, with a hexagonal shape, is deco-
rated with the portraits of the five last sajjada nashins hanging on the wall. This
is the place where the sama` is performed. Everybody can attend. The musicians
are sung faqirs who sing different kinds of devotional poetry. I will return to them
later. For this sama’, they are directed by Ìmad al-Din Faqir, a Somro from
Shikarpur,23 who himself writes devotional poetry. The literary form used is the
kafi. This preliminary step of the melo does not require the presence of the sajjada
nashin. For the melo of 2004, he sent in his place his eldest son and heir, Sufi
Zubayr al-Din. The sama` is performed with the following progression: du’a, vai,
bai'at, dhikr, and du’a. The dhikr is limited to the utterance of Allah hu in which
the last part (hu) is silent. The last du’a is an invocation of Prophet Muhammad,
Abd al-Qadir Jilani, and finally Shah Inayat. The basic structure is the same in all
these elements: the soloist sings a verse that is later echoed by the choir.
The most important moment of the melo is undoubtedly the sama` organized
near the chatri. The sajjada nashin adorns his ceremonial dress before taking his
place under the stone estrade where his followers gather around him. The sama`
is performed by two different bands of selected musicians: the Manghanars and
the faqirs. This year the band of Ustad Shafi Muhammad Faqir from among the
Manghanars was selected to perform.
Building a local identity

The Manghanârs are a caste of musicians.24 Unlike the Shidis whose occupation
is not restricted to the performance of music and dance, the Manghanars are
the only professional musicians that perform in Jhok. The status of the Mang-
hanars is not easy to identify. While the role they play as bards is essential, espe-
cially in the Sufi rituals, a Manghanar will never eat with a sayyid, not even sit at
the same level. According to Burton, the low status of the Manghanar is due to
their mythical ancestor who condescended to eat with a Shikari, a sweeper.25
The females of many castes of musicians are dancers and occasional prostitutes.
But as previously noted, this category of performer is forbidden at Jhok, while
in Sehwan their dancing is included in important ceremonies patronized by a
number of sajjada nashins. This is not the case with the Manghanars of Jhok.
The performance of the Manghanars is not limited to the celebrations, or to
the repertoire of Sufism. All the musicians of this band are family members.
The most common instrumental band is the harmonium, the tabla, the benjo,
the dholak, the yektaro, and the kharal. Regarding the singing, there is the lead-
ing singer, and two backup vocalists. The well-known tabla is a recent innova-
tion. This instrument was not used in Sindhi music. One could believe its use is
due to the fame, and then influence, of the qawwali, in which it has a central
place.26 The benjo is also a recent addition. Despite its name, it looks like a lap
guitar. The strings are attached to keys which are moved by other keys. The
sound is very metallic. Ustad Shafi, the main singer and leader, plays the harmo-
nium, although this too is a recent innovation among the Manghanars. It
replaces the traditional kamatch which is a six-stringed (plus nine as a drone)
instrument played with a bow and carved out of mulberry wood. The harmo-
nium is obviously easier to play, less fragile, but it is limited to the reproduction
of the sung melody, and its tone is more monotone than that of the kamatch.
The ustad and his musicians performed four different pieces composed by Sufi
Sadiq Faqir, on each of the three days of the melo.
The use of new instruments by the Manghanars is evidence that the musical
tradition is very alive. The Manghanars are in touch with the musical scene in
Pakistan and abroad. Ustad Shafi performs for other patrons at occasions like
wedding ceremonies, but also during two other melas. The first one is that of Shah
Latif at Bhit Shah, and the second one is Misri Shah at Naserpur. In Jhok Sharif,
another band performed after Ustad Shafi. They were the faqirs of Raqil Shah. As
previously noted, Raqil Shah was a Shirazi sayyid from the region of Quetta in
Baluchistan. They also play pieces of poetry composed by Sufi Sadiq Faqir.
Devotion at Jhok Sharif is characteristically expressed by the sama’ perfor-
mance of sung faqirs. In Sindhi, the word sung means companionship. Despite
its pre-Islamic usage, the term has a somewhat spiritual connotation when
applied to a group of pilgrims. The word sung was first used in this context at
the end of the nineteenth century by Sulayman Shah, a follower of Pir Ali Gohar
Shah (d. 1896).27 Here again, the sung faqirs’ kafis describe the longing for
union with the murshid and with God.
The repertoire is nevertheless not sufficient for defining the sung faqirs.
They can be identified by their dress, their instruments, and their behavior.
The sung faqirs are dressed in saffron-colored shalwar camise. They wear a tur-
ban with the same color. They arrive dancing and singing musical pieces
which are usually in a fast rhythm. The performance is obviously choreo-
graphed although the sung faqîrs are not professional dancers or singers.
Dances are performed and there is no room for improvization. For all these
reasons, the performance of the sung faqirs can be traced to other regional
performances like the bhagat.28 Finally, a group of sung faqirs is characterized
by the use of two instruments: the yektaro and the chapar, although there is also
a harmonium. Contrary to other devotional musical bands, the harmonium
does not play a leading role, and the harmonium player is seated at the back
of the stage.
Each of the faqirs simultaneously plays the yektaro and the chapar. The yektaro
is made from a hollow gourd or pumpkin that is shaped as a sound box and
covered with an animal skin. A long wooden piece is fixed on which two strings
are attached. The strings are tuned with two wooden keys. The yektaro is a modal
instrument since it has to be tuned before every song according to the rag in
which the song is performed. The chapar is a percussion instrument made up of
two wooden rectangular pieces, about twelve centimeters long, which are struck
one against the other. A sung faqir plays both the instruments while he sings.
There is no fixed number of performers but there are usually a dozen or so
present. In the sama’ the harmonium draws the melodic line for the faqirs,
though it is barely audible to the audience, accompanied by dhols (small drums)
and small cymbals (tahlyun).
Regarding the devotional and mystical songs, the repertoire of the sung faqirs
is not greatly different from that of the Manghanhars. On the other side, they
don’t perform wedding songs or for other ceremonies linked to the rites of pas-
sage. Even when they might sing the same songs, the interpretation is neverthe-
less quite different. The composition of the band and the instruments used are
quite different. Nevertheless, the occasions for the performances are similar,
such as the annual urs celebrations at dargāhs, or the birthday of the living
sajjada nashin, or at the major Islamic holiday, the eids. Furthermore, the sung
faqirs and the Manghanhars perform upon invitation from a patron, most often
a pīr, who might gather a sama’ in his house for a special occasion or to honor
important guests. Whatever the occasion, the patron decides the songs which
are to be performed. The performance will begin by the patron’s compositions,
or his ancestors’ compositions, knowing that most of them were poets. Three
other categories of poetical pieces will follow: abstracts from the Shah-jorisalo or
kafis by Shah Abd al-Latif, abstracts of well-known poets from the northwest of
the Indian subcontinent like Sachal Sarmast or Bulhe Shah, and finally regional
poets unrecognized beyond the Sindh. The sung faqirs can also perform other
devotional songs like marsiyas, the dirges devoted to the Shia imams who died as
martyrs. Despite their valuable traditional significance, nowadays only about
half a dozen bands of sung faqirs exist.
Conclusion
It is necessary to recall that the Sufi center of Jhok Sharif is located in the Sindh
delta, along the present main branch of the Indus River. For centuries, pilgrim-
age centers were scattered in the delta area and there are still many Jain, Bud-
dhist, and above all Shaivite remains yet to be excavated and studied. In the
Islamic period, the Ismailis controlled the Sindh and there are many places
relevant to Ismaili tradition.
The Jhok Sharif ziyārat works as a social process to the extent that it allows the
merging of different segments of local society. For instance, there is no restric-
tion regarding the religion of participants: the present sajjada nashin has many
Hindu followers. Despite this and contrary to other Sufi centers, there is no real
blending with the local Hindu population. There is no active participation by
Hindus in the main rituals like that found in Sehwan Sharif. One can neverthe-
less see the spread of the communitas during the performance of the most
important rituals under the master’s spiritual leadership.
Moreover, the ziyārat of Jhok allows the creation of a local identity that
achieves two social processes: (1) the dominance of the sujjada nashin and of his
family, and (2) the discrimination of marginalized groups. But while the sajjada
nashin is himself the main mediator, between the pilgrims and God, nothing
can be achieved without the performance of music. Thus this is obviously the
more significant tool for understanding the social process at work. The sajjada
nashin further exerts control through the roles he attributes to the musicians
according two criteria: (1) the status they have in the local society, and (2) the
extent to which they reinforce his own domination of this local society. This is
the main explanation why the Shidis, a low caste of musicians, play a marginal
role in the celebrations of the dargāh.
Another feature to be noted is that although the founder of the Sufi center
of Jhok Sharif was a martyr (shahid), and there is the kabirstan of the faqirs who
died with Shah Inayat, there is nothing special related to the martyr in the ritu-
als. The sajjada nashins’ lineage was Shia from the oldest times. It is also to be
noted that the muharram celebrations are rather reduced, in comparison with
other Sufi places, knowing that in southern Sindh, the sajjada nashins are mainly
Shia. Although the sajjada nashin leads some ceremonies inside the sanctuary,
he takes no part in the organization of the procession in the village of Jhok
Sharif, unlike those of Sehwan Sharif.
Finally, all the agents and rituals involved in the ziyārat of Jhok Sharif contrib-
ute to the implementation of identity markers. The tools of this process are very
common: devotional poetry and devotional music, which cannot be separated.
What I want to stress here is that the sajjada nashins have succeeded in acquiring
a given local identity through these media. The local identity first appears
through a mapping of the sacred. The sanctuary is composed of specific buildings
which are reminders of their lineage, like Qasr-e Qalandar for example. Other
identity markers are the poetry composed by the sajjada nashins, and specific
Sufi music performance styles like that of the sung faqîrs. Finally, the Sufi center
of Jhok Sharif appears as a combination of a regional identity, sindhiyat, with a
local identity embodied by the sujjada nashins’ charisma, which spread through
their mediation in the rituals and the sama’. The Piri–murīdi relation follows a
more traditional pattern than that at the shrine in Hyderabad described in
Valdinoci’s chapter.
Notes
1
In the South Asian Muslim environment, the reference studies were often
devoted to the “social roles” of the Sufis, such as Richard Eaton’s master study
(Eaton 1978). In the context of Pakistan, one has to mention the book devoted
by Sarah Ansari to the pîrs of Sindh (Ansari 1992), Katherine Ewing’s work on the
malangs (Ewing 1997), and the recent study by Pnina Werbner of a Sufi global
cult in the North West Frontier Province (Werbner 2003). See also her chapter in
this book.
2
Victor Turner, The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure (Chicago: Aldine Pub-
lishing Company, 1969), 132.
3
Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields and Metaphors. Symbolic Action in Human Society
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 169.
4
Ibid., 171.
5
Michel, Boivin, “Le shah et le qalandar. Les savoirs faqirs et leur impact sur
la société du sud Pakistan, Archives des Sciences Sociales des Religions, L1, 4: 41–
2011a.
6
See Annemarie Schimmel, Pearls from the Indus: Studies in Sindhi Culture (Jam-
shoro/Hyderabad: Sindhi Adabi Board, 1986), 151–74. Schimmel mainly uses
the Tuhfat al-kiram, a work by Mir ‘Ali Sher Qani’ composed at the end of the
eighteenth century.
7
On the beshar` Sufis in the context of Pakistan, see Katherine Ewing, Arguing
Sainthood: Modernity, Psychoanalysis and Islam (Durham: Duke University Press,
1997) & also Boivin 2011b.
8
Literally «the one who sits on the prayer rug», namely the head of the sanctu-
ary who is most of the time a descendant of the buried saint, or of one of his
companions.
9
Schimmel, 1986, 165.
10
Ibid., 169.
11
Interestingly, there is a website on Jhok Sharif created by a follower from the USA
(www.sufisattari.com).
12
In Sindh, the famous Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz of Sehwan was himself a qalandar
(Boivin 2005). In the historical sources, he is described as a mystic who was fond
of music and dance. In his Baburnama, Babur coined him as a heretic. See Boivin
2011b.
13
I give here the categories as the local people represent them. The Shidis are
the descendants of the African slaves, while the Kashkelis are mulattos. Somras,
Samas, Jatois, and Mirbahars are Muslim Sindhi tribes. Hindus are Sindhis whose
religion is Hinduism and Kutchis are people who migrated from Kutch, a neigh-
boring area in present-day Indian Gujarat. They are mostly Muslims from the
Memon community.
14
In addition, deltaic Sindh was a crucial historical area for the Ismailis. The main
Ismaili dargāh is that of Pir Tajuddin, known here as Shah Torrel. The last Ismaili
pīr of the Indian subcontinent is the only one to be buried in Sindh, near Badin.
He is said to be married to a Sodha Rajput lady. Not far from Pir Tajuddin’s
dargāh, one can find traces of Pir Dadu’s story. Two dargāhs are devoted to his
brothers who could not flee with Pir Dadu and were executed by Muslim bigots.
Between Jhok Sharif and Hyderabad, there are other Ismaili dargāhs that are like
marks of the activities of Ismaili predicators.
15
Usually, the words khanaqah, jamaàtkhana, or musafarkhana are used. But in some
places of Sindh, local expressions are in use, like kafis in Sehwan Sharif.
16
The map shows the different elements linked to the cult.
17
N. B. Baloch, Kâfîyûn. vol. 1 (Hyderabad/Jamshoro: Sindhi Âdâbi Board, 1985).
18
A short abstract was published in Sindhî translation under the leadership of N.B.
Baloch; see Faiz Allâh Shâh Qalandar 2003. Surprisingly, Annemarie Schimmel
does not quote this author (Schimmel 1974).
19
Personal interview with the sajjada nashin, Jhok Sharif, October 2005.
20
The name of Makhdum is at the same time the family name, and the title only
used by the religious head of the place.
21
Richard Burton, Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus (Karachi:
Indus Publications, 1851).
22
The Shidis have got their own worship, a topic which is beyond the scope of
this chapter. See also Helen Basu, “Theatre for Memory: Ritual Kinship Perfor-
mances of the African Diaspora in Pakistan,” in Monika Böck and AparnaRao
AQ: It is Basu (Ed.), Culture, Creation, and Procreation: Concepts of Kinship in South Asian Practice,
2002 in the
Bibliography. 243–70 (New York: Berghahm Books, 2000).
23
The Somras (plural of Somro) ruled Sindh from the eleventh to the fourteenth
century. Their descendents are one of the most numerous communities of
present-day Sindh. Somras also settled in Panjab and Gujarat. Shikarpur is a
city located in the north of Sindh, not far from the border with Punjab. Various
sources claimed that the Somras were Ismaili in the Middle Age, before turning
to Sunnism and Twelver Shi’ism.
24
In Sindh, other terms are used like Mirasi, Doms, or Langas. Burton understood
Manghanar to be the polite name (see Burton 1851, 417). Ustad Shafi Muham-
mad Faqir’s band comes from Umarkot, and he is in touch with his cousins
staying in Rajasthan, India. He has himself visited India. On the Manghanars
of Rajasthan, see Laurent Maheux, Moumal-Mahendra: Contextes et variations d’un
cycle légendaire du Thar, unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, 2 vols. (Paris: INALCO,
2004). For the Manghanar of Sindh, see Abdul Haq Chang, “Sufi, Mirasi and
Orthopraxy: Spirituality, Music and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Sindh,” in
Fahmida Hussain ed., Sindh: Past, Present and Future, 129–46 (Karachi/Jamshoro:
University of Sindh, 2006).
25
Burton, 1851, 303.
26
Ustâdh Shâfî’ Muhammad was probably influenced by the style of Nusrat Fateh
Ali Khan. The latter himself innovated Sufi singing while introducing a perfor-
mance borrowed from khayal, another musical style in use among the South Asian
Muslims.
27
Pîr Àlî Gohar Shâh belonged to the lineage of the powerful Pîr Pagaros, who
raised several revolts against the colonial power; see Ansari 1992, especially
pp. 69–72.
28
Performance realized by Hindu bands of Sindh, in which are mixed epical and
folklore narratives, devotional and mystical songs, comic sketches, and prayers.
See Garin 2005. The sung faqîrs’ repertoire is nevertheless limited to singing and
dancing.
Chapter 7
When Sufi Tradition Reinvents Islamic

Modernity. The Minhāj-ul Qur’ān, a Neo-Sufi
Order in Pakistan
Alix Philippon
In the trumpeted “War against Terror” Pakistan is today commonly depicted as

being among the most prolific hotbeds of international “jihadism” and at the
epicenter of extremist activities.1 The insurrection in the northern valley of
Swat and the dramatic increase in suicide attacks claimed by the Taliban Move-
ment of Pakistan as early as 2007, interfaced with rising sectarian and interreli-
gious tensions, have captured the attention of international media. For the past
few decades, reformist theological schools such as the Deobandi and the Ahl-i
Hadīth have indeed spawned, among other such offspring, sectarian and jihadi
groups whose agendas and modes of action continue to be abundantly dis-
cussed in both journalistic coverage and academic research. However, less pub-
licized and less known is the fact that the reformist trend of Islamization in
Pakistan offers multiple facets. This is notably, yet not exclusively, the case
within Sufi-based organizations.
In Pakistan’s complex politico-religious landscape, it is undeniably the
Barelvi movement (also known as Ahl-i Sunnat wal Jama‘at) that has most loudly
proclaimed its affiliation to a Sufi identity. Often overlooked by scholars, this
theological school was founded in the nineteenth century in colonial India in
reaction to “orthodox” assaults of reformist movements such as the Deobandi
and Ahl-i Hadīth. Usually presented merely as a counter-crusade against the
repeated attacks against pīrs and shrines, or as a passionate defense of the Sufi
status quo, this phenomenon can also be considered a reform movement in its
own right. As the historian Usha Sanyal has pointed out in one of the few
monographs devoted to the Barelvis to date, the founder Ahmed Reza Khan
“promoted reformist religious methods in order to enable his disciples to
become better traditionalists, more individualistic.”2 This movement has played
a largely ignored role in Pakistan, whether in party politics, social movements,
or through the islamization of society.3 Meanwhile, it has been the focus of very
few academic contributions,4 even though most Pakistanis are known to be
Barelvis in an extensive sense, that is to say basically that they practice the cult
of the saints in the numerous shrines dotting the country, venerate the Prophet
Muhammad, and often belong to a Sufi order.
One phenomenon that has hardly attracted much attention from academia
has been the emergence since the 1980s of multiple organizations hailing from
the Barelvi school of thought, such as Minhāj-ul Quran, Da‘wa-i Islami, Sunni
Tehreek, or Almi Tanzeem Ahl-i Sunnat. The founders of these organizations all
belong to the Qādiri, one of the main four Sufi orders present in Pakistan (the
others being the Surhawardi, the Chīshtī, and the Naqshbandi). However, the
names of these groups by no means allude to their Sufi identity. And as a matter
of fact, they do not always recruit on the basis of the Qādiri identity only; nor do
they systematically impose the oath of allegiance to the Sufi master, which is
compulsory in most orders. Furthermore, mystical initiation is not the main
objective of these groups. They might be called, following Olivier Roy’s con-
cept, “neo-Sufi orders.”5 They share many common features, despite some
marked differences: they are associations recently created and whose founders
are mostly still alive; they recruit along modern lines; they are preaching move-
ments; the form of authority exercised by these leaders is mostly charismatic,
that is to say, their devotees often believe the latter to be living representatives
of the Prophet, endowed with baraka and the capability to help win their salva-
tion on the Day of Judgment. Most of them are involved in intensive social
activities and also at times participate in political life even though their degree
of politicization, protestation, and radicalization has been markedly variable.
They have evolved different strategies to defend their version of Islam and at
times advocate the struggle for an Islamic State, an endeavor which they call the
system of the prophet (Nizam-e Mustafa). The organizational form they have
adopted is in fact a blend of a Sufi order, a social movement, and for some a
militant association or even a political party. As defenders of a Sufi identity,
their enemy is thus clearly identified as the “Wahhabi” trend, which tends to
promote a purified Islam rejecting traditions and customs associated with
Sufism and to “monopolize the rhetoric of religious legitimacy.”6 One of the
most relevant organizations that best illustrates this Barelvi resurgence is the
Minhāj-ul Quran (MUQ), even though in many respects its founder has out-
grown the doctrine of Ahmed Reza Khan Barelwi.
An original Sufi-based reform movement
Minhāj-ul Quran is an original Pakistani religious movement, as is manifest in its

institutional framework, its ideology, its multiple activities, and the scope of its
recruitment. Through the implementation of a Sufi repertoire, the aim of this
spiritual revivalist movement was to invent a new modernity for Islam. Founded
in 1981 in Jhang, Pakistan, by the Sufi and scholar Tāhir-ul Qādri, it has suc-
ceeded over a span of thirty years in attracting many members, generally (but
When Sufi Tradition Reinvents Islamic Modernity 113
not always) affiliated to a traditional Sufi order, and who have found in this
new movement an ideology and an interpretation of Islam that is remarkably
contrasted with what the religious and political arena of the country offered
during that period. Indeed, the tactics of the state toward religion at the time
rather favored the rise of sectarian jihadists. The military regime of Zia-ul Haq
(1977–88) gave rise to a phase of unprecedented Islamist mobilization that
gradually became sectarian under the impulse of the purportedly infamous
Inter Services Intelligence (ISI). This gave the cue for the powers that were to
patronize Deobandi and Ahl-i Hadīth groups and to strengthen legitimizing
institutional ties.7 The more Sufi-oriented Barelvi groups were henceforth
somewhat marginalized by the regime.
The MUQ describes itself as a “revolutionary movement of revivalism.” Its
organizational model, characterized by a strict hierarchy, partly replicated the
structure of the most successful Islamist movement in Pakistan, the Jama‘at-e
Islami founded by Abul A’la Mawdudi in the 1940s. Its specificity lies in the
effort to create institutions in which the spiritual energy and the values associ-
ated with Sufism can be channelled into socializing sets. Tāhir-ul Qādri has
reclaimed spirituality as the specific stamp of Islam and as the true representa-
tive of the subcontinent’s cultural ethos. Mahfil-e sama (spiritual recitations)
including qawwālī (a form of Sufi music popular in the subcontinent) and dhikr
(remembrance of God’s name) are regularly held in the headquarters in Lahore
and abroad. Every year, a huge ceremony is held in Minar-e Pakistan in Lahore
to celebrate the birth of the Prophet, milad-e Mustafa (or milad-ul nabi). The
concept of intermediation, which is at stake in the debate among Islamic groups
(Barelvis and Sufis being deemed notably by some other theological schools to
be “polytheists”), is indeed defended as a legitimate practice in Islam.8 Although
critical of some ritualistic aspects of the cult of the saints, the members of MUQ
do perform ziyārat (tomb visitation), which, to them, is the “granite founda-
tion” of the beliefs of the Ahl-i Sunnat. MUQ has also been active in re-islamiz-
ing Pakistani society from below through a chain of educational institutions,
active preaching campaigns, and the diffusion of the thought of Tāhir-ul Qādri
through hundreds of titles ranging from religion to science in print, audio, and
the Internet.9 The same tools are used to spread the message abroad. As in the
case of other Islamic organizations, the recourse to Internet usage aims at
spreading their “ideological sphere of influence” to a global level and to reach
a “global cohesion.”10 There are approximately half a million members in Paki-
stan and 25,000 abroad. Muslim diasporas have enabled the MUQ to go inter-
national and its network currently ramifies through several dozen countries.
Most of the centers in the West have been set up as spontaneous initiatives by
Muslims of Pakistani origin won over by the message and the interpretation of
Islam provided by Tāhir-ul Qādri and feeling the need to organize community
centers in order to consort and practice their faith together according to these
guidelines.
Inscribed in a context of globalization and tense national debate, the ideology

of MUQ has indeed worked successfully at conquering new religious markets.
Tāhir-ul Qādri equates humanism, Islamic awakening, and reform and claims
to have understood very early on the reasons and stakes of the Muslim decline
in the face of Western advancement, as well as the means to remedy the latter.
Thus, he has above all attempted to materialize his first visions within the frame-
work of an organization of “total reform.”11 Indeed, the aim of MUQ is clearly
to awaken the Islamic community, to arouse feelings of moral and spiritual
uplifting within it, and to fight against all the forms of “extremism” prevalent in
Pakistan. As a matter of fact, Tāhir-ul Qādri has been one of the most vocal
‘ulamas in denouncing Osama Ben Laden and Al Qaeda’s modes of action and
he has recently published a very long fatwa against suicide attacks. Opposed to
any sectarian position, MUQ has made an effort toward inclusiveness in con-
ceptualizing an ideology based on universal values and is also in interaction
with Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians.
Tired of often more radical versions of their religion, many Pakistanis and
Muslims around the world have therefore expressed their support for a move-
ment which, while defending the mystical tradition of Islam, also promotes a
coherent project of Islamic awakening turned toward modernity. Geaves and
Hermansen on the British and North American South Asian Diasporas both
refer to MUQ. Tāhir-ul Qādri openly claims MUQ is rooted in a great histori-
cal Sufi brotherhood in which he was initiated, the Qādiri, but also draws
inspiration from the reformist tradition. He has recourse to ijtihad, the lati-
tude granted for individual initiative in interpretation, which is not the case
of other Barelvi thinkers who favor taqlid, imitation. He basically wants to
avoid the pitfalls of Islamism as well of “popular” Sufism, be they intolerance,
violence, moral corruption, or stagnancy, and yet promotes the brotherhood
form and mysticism as recombined models for collective action. Deeming the
‘ummah to be mainly responsible for its own decline, this organization does
not condone sporadic and violent responses, but rather advocates for a global
solution. Thus, its targets are not primarily external ones, as is often the case
in the more radical politico-religious groups imbued with the discourse of
antiimperialism. The greater jihad, the process of self-purification, is seen as
the prerequisite for the lesser, whose aim is to purify social and political evils.
The mystical approach is a tool to be used for the ethical reformation of
people.
Hence, MUQ differentiates itself from many other religious groups in Paki-
stan by a conciliatory (yet at times critical) discourse toward the West and by the
promotion of a peaceful image of Islam as a religion of love, tolerance, har-
mony, and respect. The Sufi teachings appear to its leader to be the only weapon
with a view to successfully putting an end to terrorism, subsumed under the
term “Wahhabism.”
Social and political activism
Invested in educational, social, and spiritual activities, MUQ claims to be a

nongovernmental organization (NGO). Its funding is mainly assured by the
donations of its members, both in Pakistan and abroad. According to some
sources, it might also have been financed by Iran.12 Registrations also provide a
substantial income.13 Other sources of revenue include contributions from
zakat and kurbani (the sacrifice of animals for the religious feast of ‘eid) and
from the sales of Qādri’s publications that are gathered by their registered char-
ity known as The Society for Human Rights and Welfare (founded in 1989). As
far as the health sector is concerned, MUQ has built a hospital in Lahore and
opened dispensaries throughout the country, as well as blood banks. MUQ also
disposes of ambulances, free eye camps, and medical assistance. It has also
invested time and money in water pump projects and is actively involved in
helping the victims of natural disasters.
In its educational activities, MUQ has adopted a modernist posture by estab-
lishing a system that is both modern and Islamic, which is an unusual feature in
Pakistan, shared only by a Deobandi neo-Sufi order, the Naqshbandiyya Owaisia
headed by Maulana Akram Awan, and two jihadi groups, Lashkar-e Janghvi and
Dawat-ul Irshad.14 Tāhir-ul Qādri has clearly integrated education into his proj-
ect for the moral and spiritual uplifting of Pakistan but he has tried to evade the
traditional madrāssah model. MUQ’s Welfare Society sponsors the educational
system and, as early as 1993, launched a massive program throughout the coun-
try. Kindergartens, public schools, colleges, a university, and an Institute of
Qur’anic and Islamic Studies for foreign students have notably been created.15
In 1989, MUQ turned political and a party was also created, called Pakistan
Awami Tehreek (PAT, the National movement of Pakistan), whose aim is the
establishment of a modern Islamic state. If Qādri does have recourse to the
lexicon, the symbolism, the values, and the practices of Sufism, he nevertheless
appropriates some of the Islamist structures of meaning and the capacity of
mobilization. But PAT has in a way secularized the Islamic principles to make
them compatible with the conceptual framework of political modernity. The
entire argument of one of Qādri’s essays, “The Islamic State,” is based on estab-
lishing that all the concepts of democracy are rooted in Islamic history.16 In the
framework of the debate about whether Islam is compatible with democracy,
the leader of PAT has thus made the point that the Islamic paradigm is convert-
ible into the modern political idiom evolved in the West. His will to reduce
antagonism with Western thought has led him to claim, like the early reformer
Muhammad Abduh, that even though there might be differences in interpreta-
tion and definition, an “Islamic State means a pure democratic State.”17 Accord-
ing to Qādri, there is a common set of institutions and values shared by both
systems: pluralism, human rights, equality, and social justice that were all present
in the Nizam-e Mustafa, the political system built on the model of the Prophet’s
community. “All things which West wants are already in Qu’ran,” says Tāhir-ul
Qādri.18 PAT promotes an “Islamic democracy” innervated by principles per-
ceived as “Sufi” ones (peace, tolerance, freedom).
But while Tāhir-ul Qādri was indeed elected a Member of the National Assem-
bly in the 2002 elections, PAT has so far failed to mobilize the masses. Further-
more, it has not really been active since Qādri’s resignation in 2004 from
Parliament, seemingly in strong protest against the Musharraf regime’s corrup-
tion, institutional instability, and “undemocratic democracy.” Since then, PAT
has boycotted all elections. Qādri has refocused on religious activities, but his
organization has remained an active pressure group in the ongoing political
crisis in Pakistan. Many conferences aiming both at denouncing the “talibaniza-
tion” of Pakistan and at reasserting the role of Sufis in the promotion of an
Islam of “peace, love, and tolerance” in contemporary Pakistan have been orga-
nized by MUQ. In March 2009, a conference organized at its headquarters in
Lahore gathered 300 Sufis from across Pakistan and tried to elaborate measures
in order to fight those actors who want to “discredit the peaceful message of the
Sufis” and want to promote “anti-mysticism ideologies.”19 In May 2009, the
MUQ organized yet another convention for the “protection of Pakistan” (Tahaf-
fuz-e Pakistan) in which more than 200 Barelvi Sufis and scholars participated.
They adopted a highly informative communiqué highlighting the positions of
Barelvi representatives concerning the most recent developments of the “War
against Terror.” They once again emphasized the “key role” of Sufis in “the
construction of a peaceful society,” in the promotion of “peace and harmony,”
and more generally in the propagation of Islam throughout history. Sufi shrines
have been celebrated as “cultural symbols” whose recent profanation by
extremist groups is only the expression of “un-Islamic actions.” The “violations”
of the Constitution carried out by these groups have also been condemned in
the harshest terms, as well as their attacks on schools for girls. According to the
communiqué, gaining knowledge is compulsory for every Muslim without any
gender discrimination. Islam guarantees the “respect and dignity” of women
and their “practical role” in society. Suicide attacks are also strictly forbidden in
Islam and are likened to “barbarian acts.” The Taliban’s practices, such as
declaring war on the army, the security forces, and the police, or eliminating
the voices of opposition, were also irrevocably condemned. 20
A charismatic leader
Shaikh, leader, murshid (Sufi Master), guide are among the numerous expres-
sions used by the members of MUQ to designate Tāhir-ul Qādri. His work has
consisted in composing a complex partition of competences and registers of
legitimization where the religious, political, academic, and spiritual domains
have together composed a unique symphony of power. A prolific author, a

respected religious leader, a leader of a (dormant) political party and of a trans-
national organization, a lawyer, a poet, a Sufi venerated by his devotees, Tāhir-ul
Qādri shows his followers the countenance of an absolute guide endowed with
great authority. He is one of the few Pakistani popular leaders to have suc-
ceeded in combining a religious and political leadership with a Sufi charisma,
in a way quite similar to Shah Ahmed Nurani, the defunct leader of the Barelvi
party Jamiyyat-i ‘Ulama-i Pakistan.21 But if he refuses to take any formal disciple
through the traditional oath of allegiance (bai'at), he nevertheless does behave
as a pīr, sometimes with the authoritarian tendencies accruing to Sufi masters
who exercise a complete domination on their followers. Even if not actualized
for the sake of modernization, the pīr/murīd scheme remains the prevalent
form of authority within the movement. The procedures for membership have
indeed been modernized: filling in a form is the only requirement, along with
a fee. In a way, the traditional authority of the Sufi has been converted into a
modern form of leadership. Notwithstanding, Tāhir-ul Qādri makes it clear to
his followers that a faithful and active commitment within the organization
makes them automatically disciples of the tariqa Qādiriyya and that they become
the disciples of ‘Abd al-Qādir Gīlanī. Therefore, if the members are not Tāhir-ul
Qādri’s “disciples” per se, his own initiation within the Qādiri brotherhood oper-
ates as a spiritual channel providing a relay back with the original founder of
the order. However, most members consider Qādri to be their true spiritual
leader, who can help and guide them, very often through dreams. Furthermore,
the leader keeps promising his devotees a place in paradise. As such, he does
claim the power of intermediation of a Walī-Allah, a friend of God. This spiritual
bond is a strong incentive for activism: the members deploy their energies often
voluntarily to keep the organization working, especially in the MUQ centers
abroad, and donate their money to finance its numerous activities.
Tāhir-ul Qādri’s wish was not simply to aspire to be a pīr, but rather to be an
“all rounder,” the best player in all disciplines. The figure of the composite
leadership (at once a Sufi and an ‘alim, a mufti and a healer, a thinker and a
politician) does indeed to a high degree inform the construction of person-
hood and society in Pakistan. For Muslims, the real leader is simultaneously
down to earth and spiritual, both a man of power and a religious leader.22 In the
case of Tāhir-ul Qādri, a real marketing policy has been implemented to legiti-
mize his authority and make public his “exceptional” status as the contemporary
mujaddid (revivalist) of the century, through the massive use of media. The
Internet site and the publication department thus actively participate in the
construction of a real hagiographic corpus on the shaikh. In one booklet enti-
tled «What to say about him», written by three of his followers from Pakistan,
Denmark, and South Africa, one can observe a construction of Qādri’s image as
a complete leader, couched in hyperbolic terms of human perfection, which
draw the profile of a superman. He is presented as having the ability to get
people closer to God, to remind them of the prophet and also as being able to
transform the heart of people, qualities that make him a saint, an insan-al kamil,
a perfect man in the Sufi tradition.
According to his official biography, widely broadcasted on the web site,
Tāhir-ul Qādri’s birth was announced to his father, a physician, Sufi, and intel-
lectual, in a dream.23 Qādri was thus educated in the only perspective that his
life would be entirely devoted to the “renaissance of Islam.” Very early on, he
was educated in Islamic as well as secular sciences. And if there is one thing
vigorously claimed by Qādri himself, it is his spiritual “expertise,” both formal
and informal. He dates back to 1962 the very beginning of his “formal academic
religious education”24 and of his “spiritual education in Sufism in theory and
practice.”25 At the age of 12, in 1963, he spent a year in Madina, Saudi Arabia,
where he commenced his classical religious education. From 1963 to 1969, he
underwent immersion in a traditional syllabus in dars-e nizami in a madrāssah in
Jhang. His father was his first professor and informal spiritual shaikh under
whose guidance he studied Sufi texts for 12 years and was initiated into the
Qādiri order. Later he was further initiated by his father’s shaikh who settled in
Quetta after leaving Baghdad, Seyyedna Tāhir Allah ud-Dīn al-Gīlanī al-Bagh-
dadi, and from whom he received the status of khalīfa. Besides his titles as an
‘alim, Qādri is also the recipient of an MA degree in Islamic studies, and a doc-
torate in Islamic law from the University of Punjab (Lahore) following his
research on “punishments in Islam, their classification and their philosophy.”
He worked as a lawyer in the District Court in his native town, Jhang, in south-
ern Punjab. He is considered as an “authority in Islamic law and jurisprudence,
but also in the rational and scientific interpretation of Islamic teachings,” as is
indicated in a eulogistic booklet.26 He is omnipresent on Qur’an TV, where he
gives a slew of speeches and he is invited each year to give conferences during
the death anniversary of the patron saint of Lahore, ‘Ali Hujweri, a ceremony
organized by the ministry of pious works (awqaf), yet another sign that he is
deemed to be a respectable scholar in Pakistan.
One of the privileged ways in which Qādri has attempted to legitimize his
authority as a religious scholar as well as a Sufi is the 150 “chains of authority”
in Sufism as well as in Islamic sciences from which he received baraka (divine
knowledge or grace).27 “Authorized” by the “greatest scholars” of his time, in his
turn he has delivered permissions and authorizations to other contemporary
Muslims. Furthermore, the title of shaikh-ul islam was endowed upon him by
Arab shaikhs in 2004, among which were the imām of the Umayyad Mosque in
Syria, Shaikh Assad Mohammad Sayyid As-Saghar, thus being acknowledged as
none less than the leading religious authority in the present era. This title was
bestowed on the basis of his spiritual qualities, his achievements in the fields of
education, and preaching, as well as his religious and intellectual productions.
This validation by Arab religious leaders has considerably enhanced his pres-
tige among his followers and worked as a tool of legitimization both in Pakistan
and abroad. This distinction is indeed regularly interpreted by official texts as

the sign that he is one of the persons “elected and blessed by God” and part of
the community of the lieutenants (khalīfas) of the prophet, comprising mujad-
didin (revivalists), aulia (saints), and ‘ulama. He is thus promoted as the great
revivalist of the present century. One piece of evidence often cited is the fact
that he began his work in 1981, a date which corresponds to the beginning of
the fifteenth Islamic century. As such, blessings flowing directly from the
Prophet are bestowed upon him, besides all his other purported chains of eso-
teric and exoteric transmission of knowledge. This highly mediatory and hier-
archic conception of authority is traditionalist and serves to justify his followers
placing their salvation, their interpretation of texts, and also their votes into his
hands.
A globalized Sufi cult? In the private life of an

emotional community
In the summer of 2005, I had the opportunity to join a “spiritual tour” where
250 members of MUQ from the Pakistani Diaspora accompanied Tāhir-ul Qādri
to Syria and Turkey for two weeks. The tour consisted partly in socializing with
local Sufis: two meetings were organized with Syrian members of the Shadhili-
yya while in Damascus, where dhikr as well as musical spiritual sessions were
held. We also frequently visited the tombs of great sufis (such as Ibn al-‘Arabī
and Rumi), pre-Islamic prophets (such as Yahya and Zacharia), and illustrious
characters of Islamic history (companions, family members of the Prophet, and
Umayyad Caliphs). The practice of tomb visitation is often deemed to be “pop-
ular” piety and is generally attributed in Pakistan to Barelvis. It has persisted
even among the MUQ members of the Diaspora, who mainly belong to the
middle class. For this transnational emotional community organized around
the charismatic shaikh, the tour also favored both a mundane and a mystical
sociability among the devotees, strengthening the esprit de corps on a clearly Sufi
mode, but also galvanizing the members’ commitment to the MUQ and their
devotion to the beloved leader.
Through the thought of Tāhir-ul Qādri and affiliation to MUQ, these born-
again Muslims have rediscovered their Islamic identity, once diffused by their
insertion in the fabric of Western society. For the transnational structure of the
organization to keep working properly, it remains somewhat necessary to main-
tain his charisma, as it is a catalyst for faith and a great management device.
Indeed, the whole trip could be seen as an exercise in spiritual legitimization
for Tāhir-ul Qādri. Labeled as “the true representative of the Holy Prophet” in
the present age during a speech delivered by a senior MUQ officer from Eng-
land, Tāhir-ul Qādri was presented as an intermediary bringing people closer to
the Prophet, representing all the Sufi orders, and showering the grace of past
Muslim scholars onto all those following his “mission.” For example, Tāhir-ul
Qādri granted all the present members of the congregation the status of “intel-
lectual disciples” of Ibn al-‘Arabī during a ceremony held at his shrine in the
Syrian capital city. From my point of view, one of the greatest interests of the
tour was thus the opportunity to observe the concomitance of two cults of saints:
that in the shrines we visited, always punctuated with emotional speeches and
prayers (du’a) by the shaikh, and that of the leader of MUQ himself. The powers
and virtues that are granted to him by his followers, as well as the blessings
expected from his intercession, do evoke a form of sainthood (walayat).
As I witnessed, the devotion, love, and adab the members displayed toward
their guide recalled those traditionally owed to a Sufi master. That was most
obvious during the qawwālī sessions organized in Damascus, Konya, and Istan-
bul. Qawwālī is a poetical and musical form formalized by the Sufi and scholar
Amir Khusrau in the thirteenth century from different musical traditions. A
qawwālī session, a rite of spiritual hearing called mahfil-e sama, is traditionally
directed by a shaikh. It has recently been popularized by the great Pakistani
singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and it can become profane listening material.
But its initial aim was to transmit a mystical message and help devotees to attain
trance in the framework of a communal assembly. The shaikh’s position is piv-
otal both in space and in the ritual. He is traditionally a center (markaz), an
intermediary locus between the message of the qawwals and the audience, and
between the latter and God. In the MUQ’s sessions, Tāhir-ul Qādri was indeed
performing that specific duty of a traditional shaikh. He regularly interrupted a
song to explain a verse by referring to the Qur’an or Hadīth, and the audience
expressed the emotion and joy of being initiated to the mystical meaning of
traditional Punjabi poems which are difficult to translate and can be interpreted
in a nonsacred sense. He continually disserted on the key concepts of Sufism,
such as nafs (ego or lower soul), or ruh (the spirit), and narrated personal sto-
ries or malfuzat, short didactic tales, to inculcate the values and doctrine associ-
ated to Sufism. For instance, he told the story of Rumi’s cook who had burnt his
legs to make fire as wood was lacking and some unexpected visitors had arrived.
Impressed by such devotion and sacrifice by his cook, Rumi decided to endow
him with the status of khalīfa. “One has to burn in order to become light, that is
the secret,” the shaikh declared as a form of exegesis.
During one of these qawwālī sessions, the female participants expressed their
state of bliss by rhythmically pounding their thighs. The men, on the other
hand, stood up and danced before the shaikh with a savage joy more reminis-
cent of bhangra (folk Punjabi dance and music) than of the ethereal style of the
whirling dervishes. Some dancers wore small bells around their ankles, the tra-
ditional adornments of Indian dancers, as a form of self-abasement before their
murshid and to demonstrate their unfailing devotion. Some of them fell at his
feet to shower kisses, and at times outside assistance was required to extricate
the overzealous devotee from this passionate embrace. In the meantime, others
collapsed breathless on the spot. Here lies the ultimate goal of qawwālī:
projecting the devotee into the states of trance and ecstasy and allowing him or
her to reach the much-desired state of extinction in God (fanā).
Conclusion
The ideological system of MUQ displays an awareness of the fact that Sufism has
been excluded from the symbolic resources of Islam by many contemporary
Islamic actors. It also acknowledges the corruption within some Sufi practices
and the necessity to supersede traditional institutions and evolve a modern
form of organization. It is critical of the doctrines and actions of “Wahhabis”
and has taken into account the way this category of Islamists has shaped West-
ern opinion on Islam. In other words, it is an exceptionally self-conscious move-
ment that has rationalized the terms of the heated ongoing debate around
Islam, modernity, and the West, and tried to evolve a suitable alternative evolv-
ing Sufism into a cultural, ethical, intellectual, and political resource for the
modern Muslim world.
Notes
1
I am most grateful to Patrick Hutchinson for helping me edit this chapter.
2
Usha Sanyal, Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi: In the path of the Prophet (Oxford: One-
world, 2006), xii.
3
See Philippon, L’Inconnue Barelwie. Soufisme et politique au Pakistan à l’heure de la
“guerre contre le terrorisme”, Paris, Karthala, collection science politique compare
de Science Po Aix, 2011.
4
Jamal Malik, “The Luminous Nurani: Charisma and political mobilization among
the Barelwis in Pakistan”, in Pnina Werbner (ed.), special issue on ‘Person, Myth
and Society in South Asian Islam’, Social analysis, 28: 38–50, 1990.
5
Olivier Roy, L’islam mondialisé, Seuil, Paris, 2002, p. 51.
6
Carl Ernst, Shambala guide to Sufism, (Boston: Shambala publications, 1997).
7
Saeed Shafqat, “From Official Islam to Islamism: The Rise of Dawat-ul-Irshad and
Lashkar-e-Taiba”, in Christophe Jaffrelot (dir.), Pakistan, Nationalism without a
Nation, 138–48 (Delhi, Manohar et Londres/ New York, Zed Books, 2002), 134.
8
Tahir-ul Qadri, Islamic concept of intermediation (tawassul), Lahore, Minhāj-ul-Quran
Publications, 2001.
9
http://www.minhāj.org.
10
Thomas Pierret, “Internet in a Sectarian Islamic Context”, ISIM Review 15, Spring
2005.
11
Interview with Tahir-ul Qadri, Lahore, April 2004.
12
Interview with Pir Afzal Qadri, amir of Almi Tanzeem Ahl-i Sunnat, May 2008,
Mararian Sharif.
13
When I started my fieldwork in 2004, becoming a MUQ member implied paying
a monthly fee of 25 rupees for Pakistan and 50 rupees for abroad. Life member-
ship implied paying 5000 rupees for Pakistan, 10,000 thousand for Arab coun-
tries and 15,000 for those living in the West.
14
Shafqat, 141.
15
In 2004, the official figure mentioned that more than 70,000 youth were being
educated in one of these institutions.
16
Tahir-ul Qadri, The Islamic State (Lahore: Minhāj-ul Quran Publications, 2006), 4.
17
Interview with Tahir-ul Qadri, April 2004, Lahore.
18
Ibid.
19
See http://www.minhaj.org/english/tid/7742/ retrieved August 3, 2011.
20
See http://www.minhaj.org/english/tid/8462/Tahaffuz-e-Pakistan-Ulama-o-
Mashaykh-Convention.html, retrieved August 3, 2011.
21
See Malik, 1990.
22
Pnina Werbner, “Introduction”, in Pnina Werbner (ed.), special issue on ‘Person,
Myth and Society in South Asian Islam’, Social Analysis, 28: 3–10, 1990, 4.
23
« shayk-ul-islam. Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, A profile » at http://www.islam-
tune.com/Shaykh_ul_islam_profile.pdf, retrieved August 3, 2011, 1.
24
Interview with Tahir-ul Qadri, May 2004, Lahore.
25
Ibid.
26
This brochure is entitled «Doctor Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, the torch-bearer of
peace, tolerance and socio-economic justice».
27
See «shayk-ul-islam. Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, A profile.», 9.
Chapter 8
Making the Case for Sainthood in Modern

Bangladesh: Narrative Strategies and the
Presentation of Holiness in the Life of Zia
ul-Haqq Maizbhandari*
Sarwar Alam
Bangladesh is the third largest Muslim country in the world. Most scholars
believe that the majority of the population embraced Islam through the influ-
ence of the Sufis (mystics, holy men).1 In fact, a large majority of Bangladeshi
Muslims perceive Sufis and their tariqas as sources of their spiritual wisdom and
guidance. The Maizbhandariyya Tariqa is one of the major reformist Sufi tariqas
of Bangladesh, “to which an unknown, but undoubtedly myriad number, of
Bangladeshis claim some measure of adherence.”2 Maulana Sayyid Ahmadullah
(1826–1906) was the founder of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa. The Maizbhanda-
riyya shaikhs are descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, and are followers of
the Qādiriyya Sufi lineage.3 Their forefathers arrived in Bengal from Delhi in
the sixteenth century and settled in the region of Chittagong. Sayyid Ahmadul-
lah’s father, Maulana Sayyid Matiullah, moved to Maizbhandar, a village of
Fatikchhari subdistrict.4 The Maizbhandari Order takes its name from this
village.
The Maizbhandariyya Sufi Order transgresses the common standard of exo-
teric Islam established by the ‘ulama (theologians) at least in two ways: (a) it
admits as members not only Muslims, but also people from other faiths; (b) it
gives precedence to ethics over rituals. The aims and objectives of this order are
as follows: (1) achieving nearness to God by abandoning mundane self-inter-
ests, (2) establishing universal ideals of religious equality by minimizing reli-
gious conflicts in the world, (3) motivating humankind toward a true and just
life, (4) encouraging humane attributes, (5) ensuring mundane and spiritual
well-being, (6) attaining God through love, and (7) establishing personal and
social peace by restraining all kinds of moral erosion. To achieve these objec-
tives, one should observe the following rules: (1) to believe in the unity of God
and complete submission to God, (2) to restrain from activities that are con-
trary to the Qur’ān and Sunna, (3) to follow all the directives of the Qur’ān and
Hadīth, (4) to depend on God’s sovereignty completely, (5) to follow the lights
of knowledge of the saints or holy men, (6) to abandon superstitions and blind
beliefs, and (7) to attain a good character.
The Maizbhandariyya Tariqa combines three spiritual streams: the Qādiriyya,
the Chīshtīyya, and the Khidhiriyya.5 The first stream requires performing dhikr
(invocation) to purify the soul. The second stream requires the performance of
samā’ (devotional song) as a form of prayer. The third or Khidhiriyya stream is
named after the Prophet Khidhir and focuses on the secret and mysterious laws
of nature. Officially part of the Qādiriyya order, the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa
integrates talāwat-e-ozud or seven kinds of dhikr from the Qādiriyya order with
usūl-e-sab‘a or Seven Fundamentals of restraint. To achieve one’s objectives, the
salik or wayfarer is recommended to observe both of these practices, in addition
to fasting and regular prayer.
Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq Maizbhandari was the fourth shaikh of the Maizbhandari-
yya Order. To date, three authors have attempted to write the sacred biography
of this holy man. Jamal Ahmad Sikder wrote the first biography of the shaikh
in 1982. This biography was written before the shaikh’s death. The other two
biographers, Sayyid Muhammad Amir ul-Islam and Md. Ghulam Rasul, two
high-ranking government officials, wrote their accounts of the shaikh’s life soon
after the shaikh’s death in 1988. This chapter will examine historiographically
the genre of modern Muslim hagiography based on these three works and the
Maizbhandari Sufi journal Alokdhara, which is being published since 1995.
Through these narratives, we shall see how the vita of a Muslim saint is con-
structed in contemporary South Asia and how the construction of sainthood in
hagiography intersects with or differs from the more widely acknowledged
genre of biography.
All three hagiographers combine both facts and legends in their discourses.
For example, they provide an accurate record of the shaikh’s birth, his stages of
education with relevant dates, and other life events. However, along with these
they also provide information about the shaikh’s ability to perform miracles, his
extraordinary charisma, and his power of conveying messages through dreams.
The primary concern of all three writers is not only to convey historical facts but
also to convey the religiously motivated ethical message of the shaikh. Their
accounts are styled after other Sufi discourses that are popular in other regions
of South Asia.6 Unlike the hagiographical genres of other South and Southeast
Asian holy persons, these narratives do not portray the shaikh as a human
fetish.7 Rather, most devotees, including these hagiographers, were originally
attracted to him because of his reputation as a pious Muslim. Shaikh Zia ul-
Haqq was neither interested in recruiting adepts nor did he make any efforts to
develop any conventional pīr–murīdi (teacher–disciple) relationships with his
followers.
In general, the three biographical works about the Shaikh convey a religious
message, similar to the model proposed by the Bollandist theorist of hagio-
graphic studies, Hippolyte Delehaye. Delehaye argued that hagiographic works
Making the Case for Sainthood in Modern Bangladesh 125
should be inspired by devotion and that they should maintain a primarily

religious character.8 Concurring with Delehaye, Thomas J. Heffernan9 observed
that sacred biographies tend to be didactic rather than historiographic in
nature. Alexander H. Olsen adds that in order to edify the religious message of
a saint miraculous and fictitious stories are incorporated in the vita of a holy
man. Since hagiographers share a common experience with the audience of
their works, they are “aware of the expectations of their audiences and try to
fulfill them.”10 In contrast, I argue that in the case of Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq the
hagiographers were most moved by the piety and meditational practices of the
Shaikh as well as by his tolerant and accommodative views toward other reli-
gious traditions. However, like other hagiographers their aim is didactic, and an
important secondary purpose of their works is to defend the orthodoxy of Sufi
piety. Their contributions to this genre were negotiated and contested in public
discourse before they were written down as hagiography.
Jamal Ahmad Sikder’s account of Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq
Jamal Ahmad Sikder published the book Shahanshah Zia ul-Haqq Maizbhandari
in 1982. He begins by discussing the family tree of the Maizbhandariyya shaikhs
and sets the birth event of Zia ul-Haqq within a broad spectrum of creation
stories across religious, philosophical, and scientific traditions. He briefly dis-
cusses the Christian notion of the Logos, the doctrines of Plotinus (d. 270 CE),
the Vedas and Bhagavad Gita, the Muslim philosophical notion of “aql-e-awal” or
First Intellect, Ibn Arabi’s (d. 1240 CE) concept of “wahdat al-wazud,” and even
the Big Bang theory. He also compares the parallelisms between Vedic theology
and Ibn Arabi’s monotheism. According to Ibn Arabi, claims Sikder, God does
not create anything but rather manifests Himself in creation. He quotes a hadīth
qudsi (word of God repeated by Prophet Muhammad) that says that God was
hidden but manifests Himself out of love. He discusses the Prophet Muham-
mad’s Sufi orientation, the importance of the fourth caliph of Islam, Ali ibn Abi
Talib, and his descendants, and how the Maizbhandari shaikhs are related to
them. He spends the first three chapters of the book narrating the life stories of
the first three shaikhs of Maizbhandariyya and the doctrines of the Tariqa.
Zia ul-Haqq was born on Tuesday, the tenth day of the tenth month (Poush)
of the Bengali year 1335, which corresponds to the twelfth day of the seventh
month (Rajab) of the Islamic calendar; this corresponds to the twenty-fifth day
of the twelfth month (December) of the Common Era year, 1928. Sikder nar-
rates several great events that occurred during that month. These include the
building of Noah’s ark before the Great Flood, the first revelation brought to
the Prophet Muhammad from God by the angel Gabriel, and the ascension
(miraj) of Muhammad to Heaven to meet God. In addition, Jesus was born on
the same day, which for the Christians is Christmas.
Early years and education: JAS narrates that Zia ul-Haqq was named Sayyid
Badiur Rahman during his naming ceremony (akika), on the seventh day of his
birth, but that on the next day he was renamed as Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq because of
instructions his father received in a dream from the founding shaikh of the
order, Sayyid Ahmadullah. On the twenty-first day after his birth Zia ul-Haqq fell
prey to an incurable disease and was near death. His mother asked her husband,
Sayyid Delaor Husayn, to take the child to Sayyid Gholamur Rahman, the sec-
ond shaikh of the Maizbhandariyya, for his blessings. Delaor refused to take the
boy to the shaikh, saying, “I cannot go to him for a simple thing like begging for
the life of my son. You can go if you wish.” So the helpless mother took the sense-
less baby to Gholamur Rahman and begged him to restore the life of her son.
Shaikh Gholamur Rahman asked someone to pour water on the ailing child.
Nothing happened even after seven containers of water were poured on him. At
this stage the shaikh poured two or three drops of water into the mouth of the
child with his own hand. A miracle happened. The child opened his eyes.
At the age of four Zia ul-Haqq took his first Arabic lesson from his father.
Soon afterward, he was admitted to a local madrasa. After completing the third
grade he transferred to a nearby secular elementary school. He moved from
Fatikchhari to the city of Chittagong in order to complete his high school edu-
cation. He passed the Matriculation examination in 1948. In 1951 he passed the
Intermediate of Arts examination in Chittagong Government College. He was
then admitted at Kanungo Para Sir Ashutosh College in order to pursue a B.A.
degree. But on the third day of his final examination he left the examination
hall for an unknown reason. However, he continued his religious education
from Sufi scholars and from his father, the third shaikh of the tariqa. He took
the oath of allegiance into the Maizbhandariyya from Maulana Shafiur Rah-
man, a close associate of his father.
Ascetic practices: There was a change of mode and everyday behavior of Zia ul-
Haqq after the day he left the examination hall. He kept himself aloof from
others. He spent most of his time either in his room or at the mausoleum of
Hazrat Ahmadullah. Some unusual patterns in his behavior also appeared dur-
ing that time. He would immerse himself up to his neck in a pond and spend
hours and sometimes whole nights there, even during the coldest month of the
year. He would commonly disappear from home for days at a time. He would
spend hours looking at the sweltering sun during the day and at the stars at
night. After observing his odd behaviors, his parents decided that he needed to
get married. However, his marriage did not bring about much change.
He remained indifferent to his conjugal and family life for the first couple of
years; he even spent his wedding night at the salt warehouse close to the dargāh
of his great grandfather, Sayyid Ahmadullah. His family members and acquain-
tances observed that he did not change after his marriage. Zia ul-Haqq now
spent most of his time at the salt warehouse, gazing at the mausoleum of his
great grandfather for hours. At times he would stare continuously in the same
direction for three or four days at a time, without eating or drinking. Sometimes
he spent hours standing on one foot or on his head. On one occasion he spent
18 days alone in his closed room without taking any food or water. At one point
he developed a habit of burning everything. He set quilts, blankets, pillows, and
books on fire as if he enjoyed watching the flames. He would violently resist
anyone who tried to prevent him from doing such things. Finally, he got rid of
his clothes and remained naked in his room. Because he was in such an advanced
stage of intoxication, his father and his disciples put him in chains. But the situ-
ation did not improve. How could people calm down a person who had drunk
the wine of God’s love? His mother, his wife, and other close relatives became
worried about his condition. In desperation, they sent him to a psychiatric treat-
ment center and asylum. There, he underwent a therapeutic treatment and
received at least ten sessions of electric shocks. After a while he returned home,
but his habit of gazing at the mausoleum of his great grandfather remained
unchanged. He used to spend the whole night in meditation and dhikr (invoca-
tion), sleeping only briefly at dawn. In this way he passed through one stage
(hal) after another of Sufi practices and eventually realized the consciousness
of God in himself (fanā fil-haqiqa). This ultimately led him to reach baqā or the
stage of residing in God’s presence.
Zia ul-Haqq, the shaikh: On the morning of April 6, 1974, Sayyid Delaor Husayn
expressed his desire to select a successor. Accordingly, the followers with special
ranks met all of the children of their master except Zia ul-Haqq. However, none
of them expressed any interest in becoming the successor of their father. The
next day, Sayyid Delaor Husayn declared his eldest son Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq as his
successor in front of his children and other followers. In fact, he had received
an instruction from his deceased grandfather, Shaikh Ahmadullah, in a dream
as early as 1966 to select Zia ul-Haqq as his successor. That is how the intoxi-
cated Zia ul-Haqq became the fourth shaikh of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa.
Shaikh Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq spent the remainder of his life guiding his follow-
ers. He used to insist that his devotees perform prayers and fast. He told them
to purify their character, which was the essence of religion. He spent his time
eliminating lust and fear from the hearts of his followers so that they could love
God. Observing the people’s indifference toward God, he once made the fol-
lowing comment: “People come to me to solve their mundane problems, such
as to bless their barren wives to have children, to remove obstacles for promo-
tion in their professional careers, to make their trades and businesses prosper,
or to heal the sick. Nobody comes to me for the sake of God. I am hiding in the
city because of this.”
Prophecy and miracles: Sikder also narrates the state of national and interna-
tional politics and diplomacy and describes how Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq predicted
certain events. For example, he foresaw the devastating effect of the imposition
of the one-party system by the founding father of the country, Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman, three years after the independence. He predicted that such a system
would not last long. Sheikh Mujib was killed on August 15, 1975 during a mili-
tary coup d’état. The military-backed government revived the multiparty
olitical system later. He foretold the triumph of Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini

p
and the fall of Reza Shah Pahlavi of Iran. He kept himself locked in his room
on the night the Sabra and Shatila camps of Palestinian refugees were attacked
by the Lebanese Christian Falangist militia. He foretold such events mostly dur-
ing his ecstatic states. Less than a week before Sheikh Mujib was killed, one of
the shaikh’s devotees and a leader of the ruling party in Chittagong met with
the shaikh for a blessing before he left for the capital city, Dhaka. The shaikh
told the devotee that he should not stay near Sheikh Mujib. The devotee under-
stood the meaning of the suggestion after the brutal killing of Mujib and most
of his family members a week later.
Sikder also records other accounts that narrated miraculous events related to
Zia ul-Haqq, such as how the remembrance of his name helped rescue a sinking
fishing trawler from a storm in the Bay of Bengal; how his counsel helped a
person overcome economic hardships; how he stopped tidal bores, storms, and
rains; how his blessings helped ailing people get cured; how his blessings helped
a sexually impotent person regain his strength; how his presence helped a
chauffeur drive a car without gasoline; and how his blessings helped people
find jobs. Some of the original narrators of these stories were lay devotees; some
were professionals, such as medical doctors, college and university professors,
journalists, technocrats, and political activists. Sikder narrates that the people
who benefited from the shaikh’s miraculous power and blessings were not only
Muslims but also adherents of other religious traditions. Thus, in addition to
piety, Sikder pays equal attention to popular beliefs, beliefs in the shaikh’s cha-
risma, and supernatural power.
Traditional tensions between exoteric Islamic tradition and Sufi practices are
also reflected in Sikder’s narratives. Traditional ‘ulama are critical of the popu-
lar belief in the special powers of the Sufis and also the popular practice of
venerating tombs. One of the common purposes of the Islamic reform move-
ments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as Faraidi, Tayuni, and
Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyya, was to discourage common people in venerating sufi
shrines. The contemporary fundamentalist political organizations, such as the
Bangladesh Jama’at-e-Isami, are also against these popular beliefs and practices.
Sikder attempts to defend the practice of veneration of Sufi shaikhs and their
tombs. He asserts that most of the Sufi shaikhs in Bengal were exemplifications
of communal harmony not only during their lifetime but also after their death.
Their shrines are still viewed as symbols of communal harmony in Bangladesh.
The Maizbhandari Sufis and their shrines are a continuation of this tradition.
The hagiography of Sayyid Muhammad Amir ul-Islam
Sayyid Muhammad Amir ul-Islam, a civil servant of the central government of

Bangladesh, published his hagiographical narrative, Shahanshah Ziaul Huq
Maijbhandari (King of Kings Ziaul Haquue Maizbhandari), in English in 1992.11

In the narrative, he attempts to stress the importance of a walī Allah or Muslim
saint. Somewhat like a prophet, a walī is a moral guide who helps people lead
an ethical life. Islam describes a hierarchized list or order of twenty-five groups
of people in which the Prophet tops the list and the general masses are at the
bottom. The category Ghausul Azam (Greatest Benefit to Humanity) is ranked
fourteenth on the list, after the Companions of the Prophet and the generation
that followed them.12 The adherents of the Maizbhandariyya use the term
Ghausul Azam to signify Shaikh Ahmadullah, the founder of the tariqa. This
term was originally used for Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (d. 1166 CE), the founder of
the Qādiriyya order to which the Maizbhandariyya is affiliated. Islam describes
Shaikh Zia ul-Haqq as Mojadded-e-Zaman (Renewer of the Age), meaning the
most distinguished guide of the era who brings about reform in society and
saves the Muslim community from moral degradation and erosion. This is an
important term because it has quasi-messianic connotations that go beyond the
limitations of Sufism.
Like Sikder, Islam informs readers that Shaikh Zia ul-Haqq was born at subeh
sadek (dawn) on Tuesday, on the tenth of Pous, 1335 (December 25, 1928 or 12
Rajab, 1347). He states that this day “will go down in history as a red letter day.
For this day of the days gave rise to such a sun which has already brightened the
globe by its shining sparkle” (p. 8). The Prophet Jesus was also born on the
same day. On the seventh day of his birth, during the naming ceremony, his
parents named the baby boy Sayyid Badiur Rahman. But on the very same day
the baby’s great grandfather directed his father in a dream to name the baby
Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq. To celebrate the new name another festival was arranged
the following day. The latter part of Islam’s biographical narrative, such as the
illness of Zia, his father’s reply to his mother’s request to take him to Shaikh
Gholamur Rahman, and the subsequent events are identical to the narratives of
Sikder.
Islam describes the topographical and geographical location of the village
Maijbhandar (Middle Store) of Fatikchhari (Crystal Fountain) as a village that
was known for producing a number of famous religious figures with the bless-
ings of Shaikh Ahmadullah. The author draws attention to the Sajara or lineage
of the Maizbhandariyya path and of Shaikh Zia ul-Haqq with other Sufi shaikhs.
Prominent in this lineage are Abd al-Qadir Jilani, Shihabuddin Suhrawardi,
Junaid of Baghdad, the Shiite Imam Jafar Sadeq, and Ali ibn Abi Talīb, all of
whom are related to Prophet Mohammed. The forefathers of the Maizbhanda-
riyya shaikhs were residents of Arabia. During Muslim rule in South Asia, they
moved to Delhi and later to Gour, the then capital of Bengal, during the reign
of Sultan Ghiasuddin Azam Shah (1389–1409 CE). The Sultan appointed many
members of this family to distinguished positions. Sayyid Nur Kutub-e-Alam, a
prominent religious figure of his day and a member of the Sayyid family, played
a pivotal role in overthrowing a treacherous Hindu king, Raja Ganesha
(d. 1418CE) who had persecuted several Muslim preachers. When the Sultan of
Gaur Daud Khan was engaged in conflicts with the Mughal emperor Akbar (d.
1605) and an epidemic of smallpox spread through the region, some members
of the Sayyid family left Gaur and moved to the village Haola of the present-day
Boalkhali subdistrict of Chittagong. Because of the reputation of some mem-
bers of this family, Haola was later renamed Sayyidpur (p. 19). One of the
branches of the Sayyid family led by Sayyid Hamiduddin Shah settled in the
Patiya subdistrict of Chittagong. His descendant, Sayyid Abdul Qadir Shah,
moved to Azimnagar of the Fatikchhari subdistrict, and his grandson Sayyid
Matiullah Shah moved to the village of Maizbhandar where his son Sayyid Ahm-
adullah established the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa.
Early years and education: Islam’s description of the early days and stages of
Shaikh Zia’s education are similar to those of Sikder. However, he adds that
after returning home to his native village the shaikh asked his father, Sayyid
Delaor Husayn, to take advanced lessons in religion. Accordingly, his father
asked Maulana Shafiur Rahman, the Imam of the Shahi Jam-e-Mosque of Chit-
tagong, to give Zia lessons. At this the Imam became very timid; how could he
impart lessons to the son of such a great man? Shaikh Delaor asked Maulana
Shafiur to impart the basics of religion to Zia and said that he himself would
take care of the rest. Through this means, Zia ul-Haqq started another journey
into the unknown, as God says in sūra al-Ma’ida: “Oh ye faithful, you continue
to fear Allah, search out a means to know Allah and do war in the Allah’s
path.”
Ascetic practices: Unlike Sikder, who stressed asceticism, Islam stresses the
ecstatic elements in Shaikh Zia’s spiritual life. He reports that the shaikh
immersed himself up to his nose in a pond or canal and would pass hours or
even days this way, even during the chilly month of December. On several occa-
sions, he traveled back and forth to Chittagong on foot, a trek of 22 miles from
the dargāh premises. It was a common practice of Zia to find a solitary place and
to stare at the stars at night and at the sun during the day. He used to meditate
by staring at the mausoleum of his great grandfather; sometimes he spent three
or four days in the same position without food and water. The rest of Islam’s
narrative, such as those of Zia’s abnormal behaviors, psychiatric treatment, trav-
els, and habits of fasting, is similar to the narratives of Sikder. Islam also men-
tions that the shaikh passed through the stages of fanā and baqā, but this time
they are compared with the states of Husayn b. Monsur al-Hallaj (d. 922 CE),
the famous ecstatic and Sufi martyr.
Ziaul Huq, the shaikh: Unlike Sikder, Islam notes that Shaikh Sayyid Zia ul-
Haqq sometimes threatened people, demanded money from his followers
beyond their capacities, and drove people away without giving them the chance
to make a salutation. However, we are told that the object of these behaviors was
to arouse in people a love for God in preference to greed, temptation, and fear.
The shaikh advised people not to become bored or exhausted, but rather to
have patience in times of danger and to rely on God. He was a living example
of kindness to the poor and the downtrodden.
Prophecy and miracles: Islam narrates some of his personal experiences as a
companion of Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq. On one occasion he was traveling by jeep
along with the shaikh in the coldest month of the year in nearly freezing tem-
perature. But he did not feel cold at all. The shaikh wore a thin garment on the
upper part of his body and he was absorbed in a deep meditational mood. He
also described how his mother was cured of illness by eating “tabarruk” (blessed
food of the free kitchen of the dargāh), instead of having a surgery.
Islam also describes justifications for the samā’ and the tradition of sajida or
prostration before a shaikh or his tomb. He argues that samā’ creates inspira-
tion in people to love God. He argues that sajida is nothing but showing respect
in its deepest form in lieu of the general Muslim greeting or salam. He informs
the reader that sajida is of two kinds: sajida-e-ibadat and sajida-e-tehiya or sajida-e-
tajim. The first form of prostration is meant for God alone, whereas the second
is meant for prophets and saints. The Prophet Joseph was offered sajida by his
father, mother, and brothers, and the Prophet Adam was offered sajida by the
angels. He claims that the Prophet Muhammad also approved of this practice
(p. 67). He also claims that the shaikh knew his exact moment of death, and
that he died while invoking God’s name. According to Islam, at least a million
people attended the shaikh’s zanaza (ritual prayer offered before burial).
The hagiography of Md. Ghulam Rasul
Md. Ghulam Rasul, a senior government employee, published his hagiographi-

cal account in English, The Divine Spark: Shahanshah Ziaul Hoque (K.), in 1994.
He sets his tone within the Sufi literary tradition of Islam. He argues that the
seed of Sufism is dormant in the Qur’ān. In framing his argument he quotes
some verses from the Qur’ān, such as “Allah is the light of the heavens and the
earth” (verse 24:35), “He is the first and the last and the outward and the
inward” (verse 57:3), “There is no God but He; everything perishes except His
face” (verse 15:29), “I have breathed into him (man) of My spirit” (verse 15:29),
“Verily, We have created man and We know what his soul suggests to him, for We
are nearer unto him than his jugular vein” (verse 50:16), “Wheresoever ye turn,
there is the face of Allah” (verse 2:109), and “He to whom Allah giveth not light
hath no light at all” (verse 24:40). In addition, he makes references to the pro-
phetic Sunna, such as the Prophet Muhammad’s practice of meditation in the
cave of the mountain Hira, his night journey or miraj, and his prayer and abso-
lute dependence on God. He notes that God endows two kinds of mercy upon
Prophet Muhammad: prophethood (nabūwat) and sainthood (vilāyat); the
Prophet was the Beloved of God (Mahbub-Khoda). He notes that after the demise
of the Prophet, the sainthood or vilāyat passed to ‘Ali ibn Abu Talīb. He also
contends that the Maizbhandari shaikhs inherited the velayet through Abd
al-Qādir Jīlanī (d. 1166 CE) and Muīn ud-Dīn Chīshtī (d. 1135 CE). He observes
that the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa is part and parcel of the Chīshtīyya Tariqa. He
also briefly narrates the contributions of Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya (d. 801 CE), Harith
ibn Asad ‘Anazi Muhasibi (d. 847 CE), Dhu’l-Nun Misrī (d. 856 CE), Abu Yazid
Bistami (d. 874 CE), Husayn b. Mansur al-Hallāj (d. 922 CE), Imam Abu Hamid
al-Ghazalī (d. 1111 CE), Ibn Arabī (d. 1240 CE), and Maulana Jalal ud-Dīn
Rumi (d. 1273 CE) in developing the mystical dimension of Islam.
Rasul notes that some of the descendants of the Prophet traveled and immi-
grated to South Asia; one such descendant was the ancestor of the founding
shaikh of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa, who settled in Chittagong in 1575. He
very briefly describes the sevenfold method of the Maizbhandariyya path, and
the life sketches of the first three shaikhs, Ahmadullah, Ghulam ur-Rahman,
and Delaor Husayn. From chapter IV on he narrates hagiographic accounts of
Zia ul-Haqq, the fourth shaikh of the tariqa.
Like the previous hagiographers, Rasul discusses the birth date of Zia ul-
Haqq, which was Wednesday (according to Sikder and Islam, it was Tuesday),
the tenth day of the tenth month of the Bengali year 1335, which corresponds
to the twelfth day of the seventh month of the Islamic calendar and the twenty-
fifth day of the twelfth month of the Common Era year, 1928. Rasul narrates:
“On his birth the mild breeze blew, trees danced and the whole universe wel-
comed him with overwhelming joy” (p. 49).
Early years and education: Rasul’s description of the naming ceremonies of Zia
ul-Haqq, his illness, his healing by Maulana Sayyid Gholamur Rahman Maizb-
handari, and other events related to the early life of the shaikh are identical
with those of Sikder and Islam. However, he elaborates the previous accounts by
adding that after relinquishing his formal education Zia ul-Haqq returned
home, threw out his books, and got himself involved in the spiritual learning of
the Maizbhandariyya Path. Rasul narrates this event with an analogy of Maulana
Jalaluddin Rumi who said, “Burn the pages of your books; bloom your heart
with real truth” (p. 51).
Ascetic practices: Because of his strange style of meditation and prayer Zia ul-
Haqq came to be known as a madman. Rasul’s description of the shaikh’s life of
this stage (such as fasting, meditation, gazing, burning books, psychiatric treat-
ment, and marriage) is identical to the descriptions of Sikder and Islam. How-
ever, in addition to these descriptions, Rasul informs his readers that after
returning from the asylum the shaikh developed the habit of traveling at night.
He traveled among hills, woods, towns, and ocean beaches during this stage of
his life. Through extreme perseverance as well as absolute trust in God he
ascended to the heights of glory. Rasul observes that the shaikh achieved com-
plete perfection by practicing four very important things, namely (i) having the
minimum of sleep, (ii) eating the minimum of food, (iii) speaking little or not
at all, and (iv) having no association with others in society (p. 70). Through
constant remembrance of God he caused his self to pass away in God (fanā) and
attained the ability to abide continuously in God (baqā).
Zia ul-Haqq, the shaikh: On January 16, 1966 Shaikh Delaor Husayn received
an instruction from Shaikh Sayyid Ahmadullah in a dream to “place the deposit
(i.e. amanat) in the custody of Zia ul-Haqq Mia.” Accordingly, Shaikh Delaor
Husayn arranged a ceremony and delegated the trust of Shaikh Sayyid Ahm-
adullah, of which he was the custodian, to Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq. In this way, Sayyid
Zia ul-Haqq became the fourth shaikh of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa.
Shaikh Zia ul-Haqq insisted that his followers observe daily prayers and fasts.
He encouraged people to purify their hearts. Rasul states that the shaikh “used
to remove all dirt from the hearts of the people and purify them” (p. 78). Rasul
narrates how Zia ul-Haqq gave money to the needy and encouraged people to
lead a righteous life.
Prophecy and miracles: Rasul describes several miraculous events related to
Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq. With very few exceptions, all of them are identical to those
described by Sikder. Among the exceptions are descriptions of a female college
teacher who was cured of amebic dysentery, a senior journalist who was cured
of paralysis, and a female devotee who was cured of cancer by Sayyid Zia ul-
Haqq’s blessings. Rasul describes how he got a promotion with Shaikh Zia’s
blessings. He also records how he fed more than a hundred men with the
amount of food prepared for only thirty or forty people on one occasion when
the shaikh stayed at his residence. The last chapter of Rasul’s book describes the
final days of the shaikh, which he himself had witnessed. He narrates how the
shaikh performed dhikr every day and night, even immediately before his death.
Rasul observes: “Without any common organization Shahanshah Zia ul-Haqq
(K) lived a life of poverty and self-discipline, devoting himself to meditation
and prayer, and trusting all things to the providential care of Allah. His (K)
meditation took the form of the continuous chanting of such words as, Allah!
Allah! Allah!” Rasul contends in conclusion: “Shahanshah Zia ul-Haqq (K) is a
man of outstanding personality, reputed to be blessed with the gift of miracu-
lous powers or even of creation exnihilio, and found disciples crowding to him”
(p. 141). Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq died on October 13, 1988 at 12:27 AM. Rasul
attended the funeral prayer offered before burial and observed that about half
a million people attended that prayer.
In addition to these three sacred biographies, other individuals have pub-
lished biographical accounts of the shaikh in newspapers and magazines, espe-
cially in the monthly Alokdhara. It may be mentioned here that Sayyid Muhammad
Hasan, son of the late Shaikh Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq, is the publisher of Alokdhara.
The primary goal of this magazine is to preach Maizbhandari Sufi ideals to the
mass, especially students and youngsters. Its regular contributors are men of
modern education. Among these writers are Professor Abdul Mannan Chowd-
hury, Muhammad Husain Chowdhury, Farūk Chowdhury, Professor Ranjit
Kumer Chakravarty, Abser Mahfuz, M. Ali Sikder, Balai Kumer Acharya, Md.
Mahbub-ul Alam, Hafiz Abul Kalām, and Principal Maulana Mahmudul Haque
Talukder. All these writers are employed in modern professions. Their main
points of focus in these narratives are on the shaikh’s rigorous method of med-
itation, his piety, his firm belief in the unity of God, his noncommunal and
inclusivist outlook, and his stress on leading an honest and ethical way of life.
None of these writers engages in theological polemics; rather, their primary
interest is practical, such as in the communal harmony and peaceful coexis-
tence of different traditions. Shaikh Zia ul-Haqq preached against the religious
formalism and literalism advocated by the conservative ‘ulama; he asked his
devotees to follow the Qur’ānic spirit of tolerance and peaceful coexistence
with other religious communities.
Discussion and analysis
All three sacred biographies are devotional in character with slight variations.
Jamal Ahmad Sikder is speculative in tone. The author sometimes expresses
his curiosity as to why a person becomes involved in the search of God and
indifferent to worldly affairs or why a person engages himself on behalf of
public welfare. He attempts to historicize the shaikh by setting his narrative
within a broader politico-historical framework, in which the shaikh emerges as
a guide and as a manifestation of personified virtues and ethics. By contrast,
Sayyid Muhammad Amir ul-Islam expresses his devotion in a more personal
way. He refers to Zia ul-Haqq as “my lord,” “my master,” “my guide,” and “my
philosopher” whenever possible. On the other hand, Md. Ghulam Rasul sets
his narrative more broadly and impersonally within the context of classic
Islamic Sufi discourses. His tone is more assertive and didactic than that of the
other two. However, all three hagiographers attempt to historicize as well as
contextualize their sacred biographies13 by noting that through the shaikh’s
rigorous meditations and spiritual practices, he embodied the teachings and
the baraka (charisma) of the three preceding shaikhs of the Maizbhandariyya,
as well as the spiritual legacies of the Qādiriyya, Chīshtīyya, and Khidiriyya
traditions.
These three authors also share another emphasis: they react defensively
against the propaganda and opposition of anti-Sufi Islamists in Bangladesh.
They attempt to defend Sufism by highlighting the practices of the shaikh that
are most related to piety, virtue, and charity. They often quote Qur’ānic verses
and Prophetic traditions in defense of their arguments. In justifying their posi-
tion, they refer to people who are popularly perceived as the most conservative
members of the exoteric Islamic tradition. An example of this is the citation of
the Imam of the Shahi Mosque, who gave religious lessons to Shaikh Sayyid Zia
ul-Haqq. Islam mentions how the principal of a liberal arts college once
defended the goals of the Maizbhandariyya in a large public gathering. In
a ddition, all three hagiographers are defensive about the practice of samā’ and
prostration before the shaikh.
Comparison of the narratives of Sikder, Islam, and Rasul with others in the
issues of the monthly Alokdhara shows that they are consistent with other popu-
lar stories about the shaikh. The readers of this magazine as well as of the books
just mentioned comprise of three categories of people: followers of the tariqa,
those who are suspicious of Sufi practices, and the general public. For the fol-
lowers of the tariqa there are devotional writings, for those who are suspicious
of Sufi practices there are polemical counterarguments in favor of Sufism, and
for the general public there are didactic stories. Yet there is also a subtle differ-
ence between the biographical accounts published in Alokdhara and the three
hagiographies. Although all three hagiographers attempt to portray Shaikh Zia
ul-Haqq as a historical figure, they also at the same time attempt to mythicize
him. On the other hand, biographical accounts in Alokdhara tend to focus on
more practical issues, such as the ethical aspects of the shaikh’s life or his
teachings.
In attempting to portray Zia ul-Haqq as a holy man and a saint, the three
hagiographers narrate several of his miracles; they ascribed miracles to him.
When the owner of the sinking fishing trawler recalled the face of his shaikh
and sought his help, the trawler and its crew were rescued. The devotees also
viewed Shaikh Zia’a prophetic utterances about nationally and internationally
important events as miracles, because they predicted actual occurrences. Why
do devotees ascribe miracles to a holy man? Is the capacity to perform miracles
a necessary part of sainthood? According to Stanley Tambiah: “Considered as a
literary device and work of art, a hagiographical work is not complete without
anecdotes of supra-mundane and transcendental powers, for without such signs
of achievement a saint is not a saint but merely a virtuous man.”14 Similarly,
Thomas Heffernan holds that biographer seeks to maintain a difficult balance
between the narrative depiction of a legendary figure and a moral everyman. If
this biographical dualism is weighted too far toward the supernatural, we lose
the man, while if the exemplary is underemphasized, we end up without our
saint.15 Heffernan’s assertion appears to be partially true for our three modern
hagiographers, as they equally emphasize the supernatural powers of the shaikh
with his acts of piety and virtue. However, Heffernan’s observation also appears
to be too reductive, as he does not take the living aspect of sainthood seriously
enough.
Apart from the abovementioned hagiographical accounts, the articles pub-
lished in Alokdhara focus almost entirely on the existential and utilitarian appeal
of the shaikh’s life. A few of them assess the importance of Sufism in Bangla-
desh. They contend that from the very beginning, it was the Sufis who intro-
duced Islam in Bengal.16 In this sense, the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa and its
shaikhs are the continuation of an early, and hence orthodox, Islamic tradition.
In light of the trend toward religious extremism in Bangladesh in recent
decades,17 they hold that Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq, who, like his predecessors,
preferred religious pluralism and accommodation over conflict, was a model
for national integration and that his example might resolve the tension between
the secular and the religious in modern Bangladesh. In fact, the writers of
Alokdhara show the greatest interests in those aspects of the shaikh’s life that
inspired people to be tolerant of one another. In this sense, their purpose is not
to sacralize the shaikh, but rather to contextualize the life of the shaikh in a
political context. It appears that these two categories of narrative, one that
emphasizes piety and virtue, and the other that is utilitarian in character, blur
the boundaries between what Peter Brown has called “elite” and “popular” cat-
egories of religious practice.18
It has been argued that a hagiographer is not a historian, but rather an agent
or a publicist, who prefers legends to facts and portrays myth as history; as Don-
ald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell have observed, the work of the hagiogra-
pher reflects the collective mentality of his or her audience.19 Similar to
Heffernan, Pierre Delooz asserts that “one is never a saint except for other
people”; in other words, sainthood is an ascribed phenomenon.20 Delooz fur-
ther argues that sainthood depends on a community’s recollection of a dead
person’s past existence; thus, sainthood is situated in the act of recollection (Ar.
dhikr). He also contends that regardless of the actualities of the saint’s real exis-
tence, sainthood is a constructed phenomenon, a product of collective repre-
sentation (1983: 195). Vincent J. Cornell has elaborated Delooz’s observation
by contending that sainthood is a matter of discourse; that the legitimacy of
sainthood involves negotiation, and that the prospective saint must manifest
outwardly visible signs of saintly status, such as exceptional piety, intercession,
evidentiary miracles or unusual modes of behavior.21 The authors of the three
book-length hagiographies were close companions of the deceased shaikh; they
witnessed and experienced his piety, miracles, and behavior. In addition, they
also recorded similar experiences and perceptions of other people about the
shaikh, which were consistent with one another. To portray Shaikh Zia ul-Haqq
as a holy man they incorporated not only popular stories about the shaikh, but
also their personal experience of the shaikh’s miraculous performances in their
discourses. Together they reflect a general trend of expectation of qualities of a
holy man and a general portrayal of a holy man.
Conventional positivistic historiography, which looks for the “proof” of events,
differs in many respects from oral traditions or hagiographical narratives, which
look for messages consistent with collective memories and expectations. Hagio-
graphic narratives may not reflect real events objectively, but they do convey
traces of collective memories consistent with the “ideal type” of virtues expected
from holy people. If we agree with the argument that hagiography reflects col-
lective memories as well as socially constituted mentalities, and that, as Hip-
polyte Delehaye had contended, the purpose of hagiography is to promote
devotion as well as to teach religious doctrines, we may conclude that hagiography
or sacred biography reflects both social and personal concerns. In his book
Islamic Sufism Unbound, Robert Rozehnal (2007) contends that hagiographic
narratives blur the boundaries between history and mythology. He argues that
sainthood is simultaneously paradigmatic, protean, and socially constructed,
and as a public marker of personal piety, sainthood is an ascribed status.22
Similar to Rozehnal’s observations, the intentions of Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq’s hagi-
ographers are paradigmatic and protean, but at the same time, they are also
didactic and most importantly defensive in upholding Sufi orthodoxies.
When reviewing multiple hagiographic sources about a Hindu saint from
India, Robin Rinehart (1999)23 has described the ways in which the followers of
Swami Rama Tirtha constructed and preserved their memories about him. She
draws our attention to the fact that hagiographers serve as mediators between
the saints and their followers through their texts, especially when the saint is no
longer living.24 Similar to Delehaye, she notes that “the hagiographies them-
selves serve as evidence of the hagiographers’ rhetorical strategies” and that
“their strategies are governed by their first and foremost goal of inspiring devo-
tion to the saint (and often institutions in the saint’s name) who is their sub-
ject.” 25 She also contends that hagiographies are accounts of experiential
reflections; the first generation of hagiographers in particular describes the
effects the saint had had on them and on others. In this sense, hagiography dif-
fers from biography because biographies focus on writing about the life (bios)
whereas hagiographies emphasize those aspects of the saint’s life that lead to
one’s recognition as a saint. She also describes the ways later hagiographers
attempted to make the person a mythical figure. In the case of Swami Rama
Tirtha, later hagiographers described him as an avatar, an incarnation of the
god Vishnu or Krishna.26 Contrary to this mythologizing trend, the later bio-
graphical accounts of Shaikh Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq published in the monthly
Alokdhara portray him as a holy person who embodied ideal virtues during his
lifetime. Unlike Rinehart’s Hindu holy man, Zia ul-Haqq was not made into a
mythical character.
Conclusion
A review of the sacred biographies of shaikh Sayyid Zia ul-Haqq Maizbhandari

shows that in terms of narrative style, theme, and depiction of personal experi-
ence, the three earliest works on his life are, to all intents and purposes, almost
identical with one another. They include descriptions of dreams, miracles, and
extraordinary acts of the shaikh in their sacred biographies. All three hagiogra-
phers were personally acquainted with the shaikh. They not only attempt to
describe how Zia ul-Haqq embodies sainthood but also analyze what sainthood
is meant to be in Bengali Islam. They sketch the vita of Zia ul-Haqq within the
broader paradigm of Islamic sainthood, which requires attributes such as piety,
spiritual insight, prophecy, miracles, and the power of healing, among others,
in order to become a saint and support their argument by quoting those people
who experienced such qualities in Zia ul-Haqq. By juxtaposing their own per-
sonal experience with those of others, they attempt to communicate with their
audience the way they want the saint to be perceived. The authors are attracted
to him mostly because of his reputation for piety and meditation. The more
recent narratives, published in the journal Alokdhara, are focused primarily on
the shaikh’s Sufi ideals of pluralism and tolerance. In general, the three hio-
graphical works about the shaikh tend to convey a religious message, as Dele-
haye contended, more than the social message described by later scholars.
However, they also tend to sanctify the performances of the shaikh, a common
trend among the hagiographers of Muslim holy men.
Notes
*
The synopsis of this chapter was presented at the annual conference of American
Academy of Religion on November 10, 2009 in Montreal, Canada. I am grateful
to Professor Ahmet T. Karamutafa of Washington University for his comments
after the presentation, and Professor Vincent J. Cornell, Asa Griggs Candler Pro-
fessor of Middle East and South Asian Studies of Emory University, for reading
the first draft of this chapter.
1
Anisuzzaman. Muslim-manash o Bangla Shahitya [Muslim-intellect and Bengali Lit-
erature], third edition (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Muktadhara, 1983), 25; Muhammad
Enamul Haq A History of Sufi-ism in Bengal (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Asiatic Society of
Bangladesh, 1975), 260; Abdul Karim Social History of the Muslims in Bengal (Down
to A. D. 1538) (second edition. Chittagong, Bangladesh: Baitush Sharaf Islamic
Research Institute, 1985), 185.
2
Bertrocci, Peter J. (2002). “Form and Variation in Maizbhandari Sufism.” Paper
presented at the conference, “The Work of the Imaginaire in South Asian Islam,”
North Carolina State University, April 12–14, 2002 available at http://www.doc-
stoc.com/docs/18727779/form-and-variation-in-maijbhandari-sufism, retrieved
July 23, 2011.
3
Sayyid Delaor Husayn Maizbhandari, Velayet-e-Mutlaka, eighth edition (Chit-
tagong, Bangladesh: Anjuman-e-Mottabe’in-e-Gaus-e-Maizbhandari, 2001), 40.
4
Jamal Ahmad Sikder, Shahanshah Zia ul-Haqq Maizbhandari (K.), (Chittagong,
Bangladesh: Gausia Haque Manzil, 6th ed, 2005), 44; Rasul, Md Gholam, The Divine
Spark: Shahansha Zia-ul-Haqq (Chittagong: Gausia Haque Mansil, 1990), 40–1.
5
For details, see http://www.sufimaizbhandar.org/maizbhandari_school_of_
thought.htm (accessed April 29, 2007).
6
See for Riazul Islam, Sufism in South Asia: Impact on Fourteenth Century Mus-
lim Society (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Bruce Lawrence Nizam
Ad-din Awliya: Morals for the Heart: Conversation of Shaykh Nizam Ad-din Awl-
iya Recorded by Amir Hasan Siji. (New York: Paulist Press, 1992).
7
For details, see Katherine Pratt Ewing, Arguing Sainthood. Modernity, Psychoanaly-
sis and Islam (Durham, NC and London, Duke University Press, 1997); Joyce B
Flueckiger, Joyce B. In Amma’s Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South
India (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006) and Diana L. Eck, Dar-
san: Seeing the Divine Image in India, third edition (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1998).
8.
Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints: An Introduction to Hagiography, trans.
V. M. Crawford (London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1961), 2.
9
Thomas J Hefferman, Thomas J. Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in
the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 38–72.
10
Alexandra H. Olsen, Guthlac of Croyland: A Study of Heroic Hagiography (Washing-
ton, D. C.: University Press of America, 1981), 7.
11
Islam, 1992.
12
The order of precedence the author described is as follows: 1. Mustafa Alaihis
Salam, 2. Habib, 3. Rahmatul-lil-Alamin, 4. Khalil, 5. Ulul Azam, 6. Khatamun
Nabiin, 7. Rasul (SM), 8. Habib, 9. Siddique, 10. Mohajir, 11. Ansar, 12. Sahabi,
13. Tabai, 14. Ghausul Azam, 15. Ghaus, 16. Kutubul Aktab, 17. Kutub, 18. Abdal,
19. Autad, 20. Majtahid, 21. Muttaki, 22. Shaheed, 23. Saleh, 24. Momin, and 25.
general man (p. 5).
13
For a detailed discussion on historicized biography, see, Gustaaf Houtman, “The
Biography of Modern Burmese Buddhist Meditation Master U Ba Khin: Life
Before the Cradle and Past the Grave,” in Juliane Schober, ed., Sacred Biography in
the BuddhistTraditions of South and Southeast Asia, 310–44 (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1997), 322.
14
Stanley J Tambiah, The Buddhist Saints of the Forest and the Cult of Amulets (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 124.
15
Heffernan 1988, 30.
16
For details, see Richard M. Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204-
1760 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).
17
Ali Riaz, Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh: A Complex Web (New York: Routledge,
2008).
18
Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chi-
cago: The University of Chicago Press, 1981), 19–20.
19
Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints & Society: The Two Worlds of Western
Christendom, 1000-1700. (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press,
1982), 13.
20
Pierre Delooz, “Towards a Sociological Study of Canonized Sainthood in the
Catholic Church,” in Stephan Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Reli-
gious Sociology, Folklore and History, 189–215 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1983), 194. For a review of Delooz’s position, see Vincent J. Cornell, Realm
of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (Austin, TX: University of Texas
Press, 1998), xxxi–xxxii.
21
Cornell 1998, 63.
22
Robert Rozehnal, Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First
Century Pakistan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 41.
23
Robin Rinehart. One Lifetime, Many Lives: The Experience of Modern Hindu
Hagiography (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1999).
24
Rinehart, 11–12.
25
Rinehart, 12.
26
Rinehart, 15.
Chapter 9
Ahmad Sirhindī: Nationalist Hero,

Good Sufi, or Bad Sufi?
Arthur Buehler
Introduction
This article seeks to address Ahmad Farūqī Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624 Sirhind) in
a larger context, revising the prevalent scholarly consensus. For those unac-
quainted with Ahmad Sirhindī, his best-known writings are his Collected Letters
(Maktūbāt), the vast majority of which (roughly 85%) discuss contemplative
practice and related sufi concerns. Using the contemplative exercises outlined
in these letters, Naqshbandī-Mujaddidī shaikhs spread quickly throughout the
eastern Islamic world,1 supplanting almost all prior Naqshbandi practices world-
wide within two generations. The Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya continues to be
vibrantly active today.
At the same time, this dynamic Naqshbandī Sufi made his mark as a contro-
versial figure. As a person who saw his mission in life as to renew Islam and who
spoke out against the prevailing lot of jurists, rulers, and Sufis, Sirhindī would
have lost the seventeenth-century popularity contest by a large margin. His hav-
ing the title “Renewer of the Second Millennium” did not help raise his public
relations image. In fact, Sirhindī’s lack of popularity reached such heights that
toward the end of his life, Jahangir accused Sirhindī of being an arrogant impos-
ter who compiled a book of idle tales called Collected Letters that led people to
heresy.2 Jahangir called Sirhindī to Agra and imprisoned him from 1028/1619
to 1029/1620. Sirhindī was obliged to accompany the army for at least two more
years before retiring in solitude to his home in Sirhind. Shortly afterward, he
passed away in 1034/1624 at the age of 63 lunar years, apparently the same age
as Muhammad had passed away a little over one thousand years earlier.
After his death, many jurists, both in India and in the Hijaz, declared Sirhindī
to be outside the fold of Islam. Jahangir’s grandson and Mughal ruler, Aurang-
zeb (r. 1068/1658–1118/1707), even proscribed the reading of Sirhindī’s Col-
lected Letters. There has been no shortage of detractors since the seventeenth
century given that there has been at least one book written per decade since
1022/1613 defending Sirhindī or one of his controversial ideas.3 Until the twen-
tieth century if one wanted to know more about Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindī, there
were either hagiographical works and apologetics, or tracts against him and his
ideas. In the twentieth century, however, Ahmad Sirhindī became the

seventeenth-century de facto “founder figure” of Pakistan after being extolled
by Abu’l Kalam Azad and later by Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938), the first person
publicly to advocate the formation of an independent Islamic state in the sub-
continent at a presidential address to the Muslim League on December 29,
1930.4 This identification of Sirhindī with modern political agendas in the guise
of implementing sharī‘a and diminishing the role of non-Muslims in gover-
nance has only continued to distort his image.5
Yohanan Friedmann wrote a balanced study in 1971 stating the obvious (but
then the obvious was not so obvious), namely that Sirhindī was primarily a Sufi and
concerned with the accurate interpretation of religious experience (in Fried-
mann’s words “the exploration of Sufi mysteries”).6 Ter Haar, in a comprehensive
study of Sirhindī’s ideas two decades later, concurs with Friedmann, but in a quali-
fied manner. He reminds us that Sirhindī, although first and foremost a Sufi, also
wrote letters to influential Mughal elite and on occasion did insist that Mughal
India be made a more “Islamic friendly” place.7 In this chapter, I follow in Ter
Haar’s footsteps by seeking to represent Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindī as fully and accu-
rately as possible. This means directly addressing the issues that Sirhindī’s modern
scholarly detractors have considered his most alarming statements, for example,
his comparing the common people to cattle, suggesting that one treat Hindus like
dogs, or his allegedly “self-inflating” and “smugly self-righteous” claims. The most
balanced scholarship has sidestepped these issues, glossing them over because
Sirhindī was basically a Sufi (that means he was a good guy), or because these kinds
of utterances occurred very infrequently in letters written to influential Mughal
officials. Nonetheless, Sirhindī, and even his Naqshbandi shaikh Baqibillah (d.
1012/1603 Delhi), continue to draw a disproportionate share of off-the-cuff criti-
cism in the recent scholarly literature from twenty-first-century scholars of Sufism.
I invite the reader to bracket any prior assumptions about Sirhindī and con-
sider looking at him in a fresh manner, warts and all. The first section briefly
outlines how Ahmad Sirhindī has become the political grandfather for the
modern nation-state of Pakistan and the arch-villain of an independent India.
The second section views Sirhindī’s image in late twentieth and early twenty-
first-century academic narratives. It provides sociocultural and contemplative
contexts that heretofore have not been considered in the scholarly literature,
which will enable us to explore the extent to which Sirhindī and his shaikh
Baqibillah warrant this kind of academic attention in a larger context.
How did Ahmad Sirhindī become the

national hero of P
akistan?
It is generally recognized in Pakistan that Muhammad Jinnah (d. 1948) is the
father of Pakistan because he was the nation’s first president. Poet-philosopher
Ahmad Sirhindī: Nationalist Hero, Good Sufi, or Bad Sufi? 143
Muhammad Iqbal became the spiritual father of Pakistan due to the powerful
ideas communicated in his Persian and Urdu verses. Iqbal also was the first to
step up in a Muslim League meeting and advocate a separate Islamic state in
northwest India. In addition, Iqbal’s stature as the de facto poet-laureate of his
time among Indian Muslims has established him in historical memory. How-
ever, for contemporary official Pakistani historians (and many Pakistani aca-
demics), it is not Iqbal who founded the two-nation theory.8 Instead Ahmad
Sirhindī is declared to be the “real” founder of the two-nation theory.9 This
arguably makes Ahmad Sirhindī the political grandfather of Pakistan. What a
sudden shift in perception! For the previous three centuries Sirhindī’s oppo-
nents had largely portrayed him as an extravagant Sufi very disrespectful of the
Prophet with illusions of grandeur.10 What happened?
In his 1919 Tadhkira, Abu’l Kalam Azad (d. 1958) portrayed Sirhindī as the
hero who selflessly opposed the religious innovations of the Emperor Akbar (r.
963/1556–1014/1605). In an environment of greedy religious scholars and
worldly Sufis with an emperor who was himself supporting these activities in
addition to his own religious innovations, it was only Shaikh Sirhindī as a
renewer of religion who confronted the religio-social corruption of the times,
just as prophets had done before. Instead of simply opposing ignorant Sufi
practices, exploring inner realms of consciousness, and announcing his
insights of contemplative witnessing, Sirhindī now was portrayed as a political
activist.11
This image transformation of Sirhindī is not evidenced in Iqbal’s writing until
a few years before his death. In the few times Iqbal mentions Ahmad Sirhindī in
his writing, he usually stresses the spiritual aspects of Sirhindī and his own per-
sonal experience. In 1916, Iqbal had a copy of Sirhindī’s Collected Letters, which
had just been edited by Nur Ahmad.12 Soon afterwards, in 1917, in a letter to
Sulayman Nadwi, Iqbal mentions how Khwāja Naqshband [Baha’ud-Dīn Naqsh-
band (d. 1389) the eponymous founder figure of the Naqshbandīyyā] and
Ahmad Sirhindī (in the letter, Mujaddid-i Sirhind) were dear to his heart.13 He
mentions, in a letter to Akbar Allahabadī (d. 1921) how Ahmad Sirhindī tried
to revitalize Islamic society.14In 1928/29 he gave his well-known seven lectures
later published as The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, where he men-
tions “Shaikh Ahmad of Sarhand [sic] – whose fearless analytical criticism of
contemporary Sufism resulted in the development of a new technique [of con-
temporary practice].”15Iqbal went to visit Sirhindī’s grave with his 10-year-old
son Javed in 1934 and said: “The visit had a great effect on me.”16 That same
year he completed Gabriel’s Wing (Bal-i Jibrīl), his Urdu masterpiece, where he
mentions Ahmad Sirhindī as the “cupbearer” (saqi), often a metaphor in Per-
sian poetry for the sufi shaikh:
O saqi! Bring the wine and goblet here once again.

O saqi! I am reaching my station.
The wine tavern of India closed three hundred years ago.

O saqi! Now is the time for all to have some divine effulgence (fayd).17
Later in Gabriel’s Wing he mentions “Shaikh Mujaddid” as
The one who did not bow down to Jahangir.

Whose warm breath comforts people of freedom.
In India he is the guardian of the Muslims’ [religious] assets.
The one whom God informed at the suitable time.18
It is unlikely that we can attribute the dramatic makeover of Sirhindī as a

twentieth-century political reformer to these eight verses of Iqbal’s poetry. But
the new ideas of Abu’l Kalam Azad had already been in circulation for fifteen
years. In contemporary Pakistan, Ahmad Sirhindī becomes the national hero by
his having “continued his efforts for the establishment of [an] Islamic state (in
India). . . . He also worked tirelessly for the establishment of Muslim India.19
[T]he ideological concept [!] (Wahda [sic] al-Shuhūd) interpreted and pro-
pounded by Hazrat Mujaddid Alf-i-Thāni (rahmat Allah ‘alayhi) which attracted
and influenced the ideological [!] outlook of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal. . . . It is,
therefore not wrong to say that had there been no Mujaddid there would have
been no Iqbal.”20
In 1940, Burhan Ahmad Farūqī, mimicking the Naqshbandī hagiographical
tradition, detailed how Jahangir was “converted” to Sirhindī’s version of Islam
during Sirhindī’s year of imprisonment.21 He added a twist into the saga that
ends up having an unexpected academic trajectory. First, the perspective of
“the unity of being” (wahdat al-wujud) associated with Ibn al-‘Arabī’s school is
(inaccurately) asserted to be un-Islamic.22 Thus Sirhindī’s supposed fight
against the perspective of “the unity of being” has Farūqi implying that Sirhindī
declared Ibn al-‘Arabi an unbeliever (which Sirhindī never even came close to
doing).23 This distorted information was then incorporated uncritically by
Mujeeb and ended up being popularized in the West by Esposito saying
“Sirhindī. . . enthusiastically declared Ibn ‘Arabī a kafir.”24 The next step is
equating the “unity of being” with “Hindu monism,” such that Sirhindī’s sup-
posed fight against a now-reified “unity of being” becomes a battle to save the
Muslims from being subsumed into Hinduism via the sliding slope of “unity of
being.”
The importance of the Mujaddid’s campaign [!] against monism was recog-
nized by those circles in the subcontinent who were believers in the essential
unity of Islam and Vedānta like Dārā Shikoh.25
Subsequent works depict Sirhindī as a leader of a religio-political “movement”

who rejects any possibility that Muslims and Hindus can become reconciled
and live together.26 This so-called movement finally brought Jahangir to

Sirhindī’s point of view while Sirhindī was imprisoned, supposedly demon-
strated by the sacrifice of a cow after the conquest of the Hindu fortress of
Kangra. Subsequently Islamic orthodoxy/orthopraxy was reestablished fully in
Aurangzeb’s reign, thanks to Sirhindī. The heroes are Sirhindī and Aurangzeb
while the villains are Akbar and Dara Shikoh.27
Likewise, if Sirhindī is a Pakistani national hero, then it would be expected
that he would be portrayed in post-independence India as a villain. Rizvi, and
some historians in Aligarh Muslim University, have taken up the task in the
scholarly literature to depict him as an instigator of violence.28 Rizvi argues that
Sirhindī’s primary mission was to foment hatred between Muslims and Hindus
and between Sunnis and Shi‘is. In modern Indian terminology this is called
“communalism,” which is ethnic-religious sectarianism leading to communal
violence.29 Thus, in a discussion of Sirhindī’s letters to Khwāja Jahan, Jahangir’s
chief finance officer (diwan), Rizvi says, that Sirhindī “did not, surprisingly
enough, consider it necessary to inject the communal virus in him.”30 As for
Jahangir himself, Rizvi asserts that Sirhindī had the “wrong notion that Jahangir
would set everything right and restore Islam to its pristine purity if he were to
wield his sword on the Hindus and Shias.”31 In another passage Rizvi says:
“‘Sharī‘a can be fostered through the sword,’ was the slogan he [Sirhindī] raised
for his contemporaries.”32 Sirhindī had such an allegedly vehement hatred
against Hindus that in Rizvi’s words (without citation):
He [Sirhindī] stood for an outright condemnation and destruction of the

non-Muslims. . . . He did not attach any importance to the motive with which
the Hindus were killed. He was satisfied with their mere destruction.33
Rizvi’s aforementioned ad hominem comments indicate his own personal prej-

udices more than his careful scholarship. However, Sirhindī did make some
very outspoken and unambiguous comments in some of his letters to Mughal offi-
cials, for example, anyone who honors infidels (ahl-i kufr) disgraces Muslims –
they should be kept away like dogs.34
“The object of collecting a special tax (jizya) from them is to humiliate them
to the point that they will be afraid to wear nice clothing.”35 Rizvi had some
definite material to make his case against Sirhindī, but his personal extrapola-
tions from this material distorted Sirhindī beyond historical recognition. We
will revisit these and other quotes by Sirhindī later.
Rizvi does not stop there. According to Rizvi (himself a Shi‘i), “Shaikh Ahmad
Sirhindī [was] the inveterate enemy of the Shias.”36 He cites for evidence an
epistle Sirhindī wrote before becoming initiated into the Naqshbandiyya, Epistle
Refuting Shi‘ism (Risala-yi radd-i madhhab-i shi‘a or Radd- rawafid), that defended
the first three caliphs and ‘Aisha. Sirhindī explains that he wrote it in response
to a letter written by the Shi‘i jurists of Mashhad to the jurists of Central Asia,37
after the Uzbek leader ‘Abdullah Khan Shaybani had conquered Mashhad in
the second year of Shah ‘Abbas Safawi’s reign (997/1588–9).38
In this epistle Sirhindī cites the evidence that the Shi‘is are unbelievers
because they have called Abu Bakr, ‘Umar, and ‘Uthman unbelievers and have
slandered ‘Aisha. Therefore he declares that Shi‘is should be killed and their
possessions confiscated.39
Once Sirhindī becomes a recognized sufi shaikh, he writes a letter to Shaikh
Farīd Bukharī, a lineal descendant of Muhammad and paymaster general (mir
bakhskī) in the Mughal government who generously supplied funds for Baqibil-
lah’s and Sirhindī’s sufi lodges, saying: “It is certain that harm from the treach-
ery of a heretic (mubtadi‘) is more than that one who covers up the truth of God
(kafir). The worst of all the groups (sing. firqa) is the one who bears malice
toward the companions of the Prophet.” Here Sirhindī is referring to the Shi‘i
who insult the first three caliphs.40
Later, Sirhindī backs off a little. “We do not judge those who deny the prefer-
ence of ‘Uthman [over ‘Ali] [or] even those who deny the preference of Abu
Bakr and ‘Umar [over ‘Alī] with covering up the truth of God (kufr).”41 In
another letter, he says:
Jurists have said that in those wars [the Battle of the Camel and the Battle of Sif-
fin] ‘Alī b Abi Talīb was in the right. God almighty bless his face. His opponents’
striving was not proper and correct. In spite of this, there is nothing to find fault
with. They did not have the capacity to be apparently blameworthy because that
is a place that is related to infidelity or sinfulness. ‘Alī said that our brothers
who rebel against us are not infidels or sinners because there is an explanation
that prevents infidelity and sinfulness. The Prophet has said “Avoid discussing
the differences occurring between my companions.”42 God bless him and his
family and give them peace. So all of the companions of the Prophet must be
honored and remembered for their virtue. Not any one of these notables was
bad and one must not suppose this.43 Their disagreement must be considered
better than the reconciliation of others. This is the way of happiness and salva-
tion because the love of the blessed Companions is on account of the love of
the Prophet. Hating them becomes hating the Prophet.44
Later in the same letter, Sirhindī goes on to remark:
There are also two groups, the Kharijiyya and Shi‘i, who distort the [history
of the] Companions and who think badly of religious notables. They imagine
themselves to be each other’s enemies and accuse each other with hidden
hatred. God spoke [Q. 48:29] about the companions of the Prophet. These
two groups distorted God’s word, and stirred up enmity and hatred between
the Companions. God almighty grant them a happy outcome and have them
return to the straight path.45
The difference in tone speaks for itself.

Ahmad Sirhindī’s Collected Letters comprise 536 letters in three volumes and
ideally one would contextualize comments in one letter with those in other let-
ters, keeping in mind the addressee. We are not in a position to know whether
Sirhindī’s later letters abrogated his earlier pre-Naqshbandi views, but there is a
clear pattern in Collected Letters of his becoming more conciliatory over time.
Hopefully, 350-odd years from now, someone will not retrieve 536 of my selected
emails and start making judgments about me like people have jumped to con-
clusions about Shaikh A hmad Sirhindī.
From villain to good Sufi: The hagiographic and

academic revision of Sirhindī
As mentioned earlier, Friedmann was the first to give a balanced account of
Sirhindī’s image over time. During Sirhindī’s lifetime there were those, like
‘Abdulhaqq Dihlawi (d. 1052/1642) who were upset by what they perceived to
be Sirhindī’s arrogance, extreme statements, and supposed negative statements
concerning the Prophet. Others, whom Sirhindī called wujudīs, thought that
the experience of oneness with God transcended any need for formal religious
observances. Thus they denigrated Sirhindī, who continually underlined the
need for following the sunnat of the Prophet and assiduous performance of
religious duties, as he reminded them that they were only beginners on the Sufi
path. In contrast, the hagiographic accounts rewrite history (that is, run coun-
ter to extant historical documents). In this hagiographic revision, many promi-
nent Sufis predict Sirhindī’s birth, and his adult life is filled with miracles that
happen around him.46 Jahangir imprisons Sirhindī because Sirhindī refused to
do the necessary royal prostration. After a year, Jahangir realized the error of
imprisoning Sirhindī, repented, and honored Sirhindī. Subsequently, accord-
ing to the hagiographies, the next two Mughal emperors and the high-ranking
government ministers and religious scholars became Naqshbandī-Mujaddidī
disciples. According to Friedmann’s research, Sirhindī was not considered to be
a major scholar in the seventeenth century except by his disciples and the reli-
gious scholars who defended and refuted him.47
In the eighteenth century, Shāh Walīullah (d. 1176/1762) recognizes Sirhindī
as the renewer of the eleventh/seventeenth century, not the second millenni-
um.48 In light of Sirhindī’s subsequent twentieth-century portrayal, the seventh
item of proof of Sirhindī’s being a renewer is: “He was able to withstand the
cruelty of the Sultan [Jahangir] and bear the damage of opponents while still
standing up for God and declaring the truth.”49 As in the previous centuries, the
nineteenth-century tracts supporting/disputing Sirhindī, like the previous two
centuries, deal with Sirhindī as a sufi and religious scholar, not as a political
figure. In response to the dramatic changes in Sirhindī’s image in the twentieth
century, whether asserted by his supporters or his detractors, Friedmann says:

“Sirhindī was primarily a Sufi and must be assessed as such.”50
Ter Haar confirms Friedmann’s conclusion with minor qualifications. Before
Sirhindī met his Naqshbandi Shaikh Baqibillah, that is, during his pre-Naqsh-
bandi period, Sirhindī was a religious scholar (‘alim) with an expertise in creedal
doctrine and sharī‘a. Afterwards, “his entire way of thinking is dominated and
determined by mysticism.”51 Ter Haar does not discuss the controversial state-
ments made by Sirhindī outside of a sufi context because Sirhindī only shows
marginal interest in “his Indian environment.”52 It is these controversial state-
ments, whether marginal or not, that we now turn to.
Sirhindī’s sociological context: ashrāf/ajlāf
This section focuses on Sirhindī’s sociocultural and contemplative contexts

that heretofore have not been considered in the scholarly literature. Sirhindī
made a big deal out of religious affiliation. Not only was he a very self-conscious
Muslim, but he was a Hanafī-Maturidī Muslim. In the eyes of others, particu-
larly his seventeenth-century South Asian contemporaries, it is of the utmost
importance that Sirhindī came from a family with ancestry outside of India.
Thus, they appended Kabuli and/or Farūqī to the names of Shaikh Ahmad
Sirhindī and his father. The first appellation shows that Sirhindī’s ancestors
came from outside of India, specifically Kabul. The second indicates that he is
a descendent of ‘Umar b. Khattab al-Farūq, the second Sunni caliph after Abu
Bakr. In the social milieu of Mughal India (and many centuries earlier), this
kind of information was critical, even though modern accounts typically
ignore this sociological dimension in analyses of Indo-Muslim life.53 These
nisbats signal the social distinction between foreign-born Muslims who are
“the noble” (ashrāf), and indigenous Indian Muslim converts who are “the
commoners” (ajlāf). It is this very distinction that provides a lens to under-
stand some of Sirhindī’s statements, particularly those that have been inter-
preted negatively by modern readers.54 But first let’s explore this sociological
dimension.
Muslim ashrāf, as early as the fourteenth century (at least from the texts we
have available), coalesced into roughly four social substrata: sayyids, putative
descendants of the Prophet; shaikhs, putative descendants of the Companions;
mughals, putative descendants of Turkic origin; and Pathans, putative descen-
dants of Afghans.55 Shaikh includes those of pure Arab descent. There are
names ending in Siddiqī from Abu Bakr as-Siddiq the first successor to Muham-
mad, Rizwi from ‛Ali ibn Musa al-Rida, the eighth Shi‘i Imam buried in Mash-
had, or ‘Abbasi from ‘Abbas, Muhammad’s paternal uncle. Mughals usually
have Persian or Chaghatai descent, adding Mirza or Amirzada to their names.
The commoners were tradesmen and farmers, the lowest of whom were
utchers, weavers, barbers, and leather workers. The ashrāf were those who had
b
prestigious jobs in government service.
Al-Barani, a fourteenth-century chronicler, noted that Iltutmish (r. 607/1211–
633/1236) dismissed thirty-three persons from government service on account
of their low birth.56 In the same way, Balban (r. 664/1266–686/1287) removed
low-born persons (ajlāf) from all important offices and sharply reprimanded
the courtiers who had given Kamal Mohiyar, an Indian Muslim, a post as a tax
collector (mutasarrif) of Amroha. Muhammad Tughluq (r. 725/1325–752/1351)
consciously initiated the policy of giving preference to foreign-born Muslims in
administration and government, and systematically ignored the claims of Indian
Muslims.57 Being among the ashrāf was an important consideration for sufi
authority also, at least if one wanted to attract ashrāfī disciples. In addition,
ashrāfī sufis had greater status because they were perceived to be more sharī‘a-
minded and more pious in their formal Islamic practices, which were presumed
to have taken the place of indigenous customs.
By definition, all of those who Sirhindī corresponded with were among the
ashrāf because they could read Persian (except the one letter written to a
Hindu). In Indo-Muslim Mughal culture ancestry was a big deal, and this in
turn affected sufi practice. South Asian sufis almost always avoided any identifi-
cation with the trades or attaching professional attributions (nisbats) to their
names because tradesmen were considered to be at the lower rungs of Muslim
social strata. In ashrāfī terms, the translation for ajlāf is “course rabble.” Riazul
Islam notes in his perusal of prominent hagiographical compendia of South
Asia that almost all of the major hagiographic works make a point of mention-
ing the high pedigree of the leading shaikhs.58 From the textual evidence, there
seems to be no doubt that this ashrāf/ajlāf social stratification permeated Indo-
Muslim life, politically, socially, and even spiritually.
Shaikh Sirhindī was born into a scholarly, respected ashrāfī family. He grew
up expecting that it was the normal course of things for the ashrāf to be the
privileged upper crust of Muslim society, with the ajlāf below, and non-Muslims
somewhere beyond the pale. In a letter addressed to Shaikh Farīd, Akbar
(r. 963/1556–1012/1605) and Jahangir’s (r. 1013/1605–1036/1627) paymaster
general, he says that anyone who honors infidels (ahl-i kufr) disgraces Muslims.
This is not only Hindus being employed in the ranks of the Mughal elite, but
also means keeping company with non-Muslims and talking with them, which
implies a larger context than government service. They should be kept away
like dogs. He says that the least harm from associating with these non-Muslim
enemies is the weakening of the sharī‘a injunctions and a strengthening of non-
Muslim customs. “The object of collecting a special tax (jizya) from them is to
humiliate them to the point that they will be afraid to wear nice clothing.”59
In this letter to one of the Mughal elite, Sirhindī invoked the primary prin-
ciple of social order. Muslims (and those in many other cultures) have sacri-
ficed individual freedoms and rights for what they have considered the greater
good of social order. Opponents of Mughal rule chronicled their complaints in

religious terms. The most obvious example is ‘Abdulqadir Bada’uni’s Mun-
takhab al-Tawarikh.60 His views against Akbar’s way of governing were shared by
most ashrafī Muslims. Right after Akbar died, ‘Abdulhaqq Dihlawī, who spent
approximately five years in the Mughal court, sent a letter to the aforemen-
tioned Shaikh Farīd Bukhari, a lineal descendant of Muhammad. The letter
uses religious terms to strongly censure Akbar for acting as if he were greater
than the Prophet, making reference to the Egyptian Pharoah (who claimed to
be God in the Qur’an). ‘Abdulhaqq then performs a “Sufi diagnosis” linking
Akbar’s actions with his ego-self (nafs), which has not separated from the spirit’s
subtle center (like the relationship of a man and a woman).61 It is noteworthy
how he ends the letter.
It has been said that the conduct of each group is according to its occupa-
tion. What that means is that each person in each occupation or job proceeds
according to the manner of doing things [appropriate to the occupation].
Being summoned to the noble sharī‘a is the most important manner of doing
something. Likewise, the Prophet, God bless him and give him peace, never
elevated anyone up from a person’s business [in life] (harfat). He left farmers
to agriculture, traders to their commerce, family men to keep care of the fam-
ily and children, the unmarried to be apart, the rich to their riches, and the
poor ones to their poverty and fasting. Each group had its well-established,
regulated way of doing things so that they could do their work and not veer
from the well-trodden, straight path. To deviate from this is covering up the
truth of God (kufr often translated as infidelity) and disobedience.62
‘Abdulhaqq is complaining about Akbar mixing up the social order by putting

ajlaf (the common Indian-origin Muslims) and even classes that are beyond the
pale (the Rajput Hindus) into elite positions in the government. This com-
plaint is based upon ‘Abdulhaqq’s interpretation of Prophetic precedent, the
sunnat, which Akbar has disregarded.
Like ‘Abdulhaqq’s plea to Jahangir via Shaikh Farid, Sirhindī expected the
government to maintain the existing social order. In other words, everyone was
supposed to be in his “proper place” according to prior precedent. These two
learned Sufis were conservatives in that they preferred to preserve what they
thought had worked in the past. Akbar’s fiscal reforms and laws did not dis-
criminate between Hindu, native Indian Muslim (the ajlāf), and the privileged
foreign-born Muslim nobility (the ashrāf). The ashrāf did not appreciate Akbar’s
policies because they lost their monopoly on lucrative landownership entitle-
ments and government posts. This precedent dictated taxing young non-Muslim
men who did not join the military, and generally humiliating non-Muslims. The
ashrāfī Sirhindī talking about how he feels toward Hindus was almost identical
to Brahmin attitudes toward untouchable, outcaste mleccha Muslims. All of this,
with its derogatory and discriminatory black-and-white pageant of blatant

inequality, was intended to preserve a stable social order. Much of this, if not all,
is unpalatable to modern sensibilities.
It is very rare for Sirhindī to talk like this in Maktūbāt, but there probably was
more going on than simply a bad mood that day. There are echos of al-Barani’s
rhetoric almost four centuries earlier, whose “principles of governance revolves
[sic] around sharī‘a, kufr, jihād, and jizya; all that is good originates from Islam
and a non-Muslim is nothing but evil embodied.”63 ‘Abdulquddus Gangohi, the
paramount Chishti-Sabiri shaikh who Sirhindī’s father met as a youth, declared
that only Muslims “of pure and zealous faith” should have posts in the govern-
ment and non-Muslims (kuffār) should not be employed in government posi-
tions. Forced to pay jizya, they should not be allowed to dress like Muslims; nor
should they be allowed to practice their faith openly and publicly. There is a
clear four-century consensus of the Indo-Muslim religious elite on how to treat
and govern the Hindu majority. Sirhindī’s attitudes often fit the ashrāfī profile,
as one would expect.
Not all harsh language can be attributed to ashrāfī attitudes. Friedmann says
that Sirhindī “frequently speaks of the common people with undisguised con-
tempt. . . [using] expressions such as ‘common people who are like cattle’.”64
Most of the references to common people in Maktūbāt refer to common Mus-
lims who follow the sharī‘a to distinguish them from the contemplative elite
(khawāss). In the few instances Sirhindī compares common people to cattle, it
is a description of common people’s unawareness (maqām-i ‘awāmm ka’l-an‘ām)
or of common people being ruled by their stomachs.65 This does not appear to
be a typical ashrāfī attitude or “undisguised contempt.” An ashrāfī attitude
toward native-born Indian Muslims would be more like saying that they are
“unworthy, disgusting and importunate, most of them being showy, superficial,
and disagreeable.”66 Sirhindī’s statement, on the contrary, is an example of
Sirhindī’s very high standards for what it means to be a real human being. He
says: “The common people are outside this shared human reality since they are
ruled by their animal natures.”67 From this perspective, Sirhindī is just saying it
like it is, since few people tame their ego-selves, then or now. Here he is talking
as a Sufi shaikh.
There are also Central Asian Naqshbandi precedents. When we hear Sirhindī
and other ashrāfī Muslims in India complain about the non-Islamic nature of
Akbar’s government, one of their frames of reference is prior precedent in
Transoxiana where Naqshbandīs and jurists had more influence in the political
realm. The Naqshbandī shaikh, ‘Ubaydullah Ahrar (d. 895/1490), is often
mentioned in Ahmad Sirhindī’s letters (33 times). While Ahrar was alive, he was
the largest landholder in Transoxiana and the political patron of Timurid rul-
ers and the Transoxiana elite. Ahrar had a clear visionary message that he was
“divinely ordained to protect the Muslims from the evil of oppressors.”68 On a
practical political level, he strongly encouraged rulers to implement the sharī‘a.
In India, the ashrāf expected their comfort and welfare as ashrāfī Muslims to be
the first and foremost priority. From this frame of reference, the government’s
job was to discourage and abolish customs of non-Muslims.
From the perspective of Mughal political reality, Khwaja Ahrar’s Central Asia
is another time and place, as are most other prior Islamic principles of gover-
nance. ‘Abdulhaqq, like Sirhindī, complained about Akbar mixing up the social
order by putting ajlāf (the common Indian-origin Muslims) and even non-Mus-
lims (the Rajput Hindus) into elite positions in the government. This complaint
is based upon an interpretation of Prophetic precedent, the sunnat, which
Akbar had disregarded. From Akbar’s point of view, an expanding Mughal
empire required a leadership unfettered by a special ashrāfī interest group tout-
ing their interests in the name of Islamic legalism. It did not make political,
economic, or military sense just to think of the ashrāf when ashrāfī Muslims were
at most three percent of the population.69 With very few exceptions, rulers of all
times have put political expediency and maintaining political power before any-
thing else. The Mughal emperors were no exception.
Sirhindī’s concept of a stable social order was not a “Muslim-only” affair. His
worldview recognized different religions with different ways of living one’s life
(sharī‘as).70 It was a “live and let live” perspective exemplified by the Qur’anic
verse he cites: “to you, your way of living (dīn) and for me, my way of living
(dīn)” [Q. 109:6].71 There is no evidence that he ever concerned himself with
trying to “convert” non-Muslims to Islam or preventing non-Muslims from prac-
ticing their religions or living their way of life.
Modern versus premodern notions of societal order
Sirhindī’s incendiary comments about commoners or Hindus, in their poten-

tial to increase strife between people, contrast sharply with the larger perspec-
tive advocating Sulḥ-i-kull (peace to all) that held Akbar and his Mughal
successors in good stead.72 From a modern perspective, one could accuse Shaikh
Sirhindī, in spite of his documented spiritual insights, of expressing perspec-
tives that disrupt social harmony. To a large extent, the contrast of hard bound-
aries between religious communities and relatively fluid or nonexistent
boundaries between others on the basis of religious identity exemplify the
qualitative differences between premodern and modern worldviews. In the
modern world there is a rational notion of being a citizen among other equally
legally, morally, and politically free citizens regardless of ethnicity, color, reli-
gion, or gender. In Sirhindī’s world one is a believer who, by embracing certain
beliefs and practices, will be saved in the Hereafter. For the former, not having
these freedoms is painfully inconceivable, and for the latter, to be an infidel is
to be cast out of one’s family and community and forever doomed to punish-
ment in the Hereafter. These are drastically different worldviews. In Sirhindī’s
orldview, there would be no strife if Hindus lived in their world and Muslims
w
lived in their world, with the ashrāfī Muslims authoritatively presiding over the
Hindus politically. There was no place in his worldview for mutual under-
standing, shared meanings, and much less mutual resonance between these two
religio-cultural worlds.73
Sufi contemplative practice (or any other premodern contemplative prac-
tice), focusing on subjective individual experience and development, was struc-
turally incapable of making an interreligious space for this to happen. Subjective
contemplative development is independent of this dimension of intersubjective
interreligious development. Just because someone is contemplatively gifted
and can facilitate others to have similar experiences does not mean that cultur-
ally determined prejudices and proclivities automatically disappear. It is only
with the advent of modernity that a critical mass of people could rationally view
the cultural ignorance that had perpetuated slavery, caste, ethnocentricity, and
sexism. With their collectively combined and increased intersubjective social
awareness, moderns have made irreversible changes to human societies across
the globe, which are still in process. This is a long-winded way of saying that
Sirhindī had a worldview quite different from most of us in the modern world
who read English.74 His way of ordering society to achieve what he considered
social harmony contrasts sharply with modern notions of what multicultural
harmony entails in functioning democracies.
Exaggerated claims
In the western academic world over the last decades, Sirhindī does not get many
compliments. This is nothing new. From ‘Abdulhaqq Dihlawi and Jahangir to
the present day, the most common critique of Sirhindī has been his apparently
exaggerated claims.75 Sirhindī claimed that he was the first to receive certain
spiritual knowledge, that he was at a higher station than Abu Bakr (who as
Muhammad’s first successor Sirhindī had declared to be the most exalted non-
prophet human being), and that he was on par with the Prophet Muhammad.76
Sirhindī also declared himself to be the unique one (fard), having absolute
authority from the empyrean to earth and implied that he was the renewer of
the second millennium.77 What can scholars make of this and similar kinds of
claims made by Sufis before Sirhindī? Ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 1240 Damascus) had
multiple visions showing him to be the Seal of God’s Friends, the eternal source
of being a Friend of God (walāyat).78 Ruzbihan Baqli (d. 1209 Shiraz) had an
experience of God declaring him to be God’s vice-regent on earth and all other
worlds. These are some of the better-known examples.
Let’s just deal with Sirhindī’s situation, which will suffice for sufis’ apparently
exaggerated claims in general. There are basically three possibilities here. The
first possibility is that these claims were made in an altered state of ecstatic
c onsciousness and deserve to be put in the category of what Carl Ernst calls
“ecstatic utterances.”79 Sirhindī understands that non-realized Sufis can have
altered states of consciousness (ahwal) where they mistakenly perceive them-
selves to be closer to God than they actually are. Sirhindī apologizes for some of
his own claims, explaining that he was mistaken.80 Here we have the rare case of
the Sufi himself recognizing some claims as inappropriate and abrogating
them. But that leaves the question open because most of Sirhindī’s seemingly
grandiose claims still remain.81 The second and third possibilities are that these
claims are either true or false (or both). The vexing problem is that scholars
qua scholars have no way of verifying these claims. If the intersubjective consen-
sus of the Sufi community agrees or disagrees with a claim over time, then that
has some weight. But that seldom turns up in the literature. In Sirhindī’s case,
his implying that he was the renewer of the second millennium was revised by
the Naqshbandī Walīullah community over time. By the eighteenth century,
Naqshbandīs who came after him, including Shāh Walīullah (d. 1762 Delhi)
and ‘Abdulghani Nabulusi (d. 1731 Damascus), recognized him as the renewer
of the first century of the second millennium.82
My point is simple. When evaluating “Sufi utterances” one needs to have post-
rational criteria and data before one can evaluate post-rational claims as
“boasts,” “self-inflating,” or “true.” The realm of the mind can allude to the
realm of the post-mind (spiritual if you will) but without the post-rational data,
the mind is not qualified to evaluate what happens in post-rational states any-
more than a person not trained in calculus is qualified to verify a differential
equation. There are ecstatic utterances and there is ego inflation, but scholars
do not yet have the means to explore the realm of spiritual hierarchy to discern
between these two or to discern truth claims. Scholars have not yet even picked
up the “telescope of contemplative practice” to investigate these phenomena.
This is why I have qualified my description of “exaggerated claims” with “appar-
ently” or “seemingly” because of a lack of knowledge and the lack of standard
criteria to measure spiritual development. I yearn for the day that the study of
contemplative practice will have advanced to the point where scholars are
trained experientially in consciousness exploration like anthropologists are
now required to be trained in actual experiential field work. Then academics
can begin to evaluate such claims and decide to what extent they are authentic
or simply ego-based boasting. An evaluation will rest solidly on the basis of the
proved consensus of an appropriately experienced scholarly community. It is
this lack of contemplative expertise that also distorts scholarly evaluations of
Sirhindī vis-à-vis Ibn al-‘Arabī.
Not considering the contemplative context is particularly evident in “Aligarh
School” scholars’ one-dimensional analysis of not only Sirhindī,83 but also his
Shaikh Baqibillah. Muzaffar Alam, the only scholar who has taken the time to
look closely at Baqibillah’s writings, finds them to have “a rather combative
overtone.” Defending his position, he accuses Baqibillah of “making a bid to
extend the domain of his own order, even if it meant violation of generally
accepted Sufi practice.”84 Then he accurately quotes Baqibillah saying: “But if I
find some of the seekers in two minds, I advise them to concentrate on one
path.”85 What Alam omits is Baqibillah’s sufi training justification: “He who is in
one place is in all places but he who is in all places is nowhere,” and “Unity of
purpose is a condition of the [Sufi] path.”86 Alam goes on to say that “it was
legitimate to allure the followers of other silsilas, [and] he did not allow the
murīd of a Naqshbandi to seek guidance from any other pīr in India.” Again, he
quotes Baqibillah admonishing one of his senior teaching disciples, Shaikh
Tajuddin, never to mix up his teaching with methods of other lineages: “Who-
ever is your murīd is your murīd only. Train and teach him according to the
Naqshbandi path only (. . .). Of what interest is the person who receives the
light from you and then attends upon a Shattari [shaikh]?”87
There is a sufi training context for this situation also. In the previous letter to
Tajuddin, Baqibillah complains, ever so gently, about how the connection
between them is internally blocked, preventing the flow of divine effulgence
(fayd). He very directly tells Tajuddin not to practice the methods of any other
lineages.88 Tajuddīn, formerly in the Shattari lineage, had to wait four or five
months before Baqibillah could teach him the Naqshbandi practices.89 In a Sufi
training context, I read the above passage as follows: “What kind of flavor is
there from Shattari [practices] for a person who receives the light of the Naqsh-
bandiyya from you?”90 Professor Alam goes on throughout the rest of his article
seeking to demonstrate “the competition between various orders of Sufis for
influence over the Mughals,”91 as if Sufi practice involving subtle centers and
subduing the ego-self were just a cover for another political lobbying group
jockeying for power. Alam’s article makes the valid and significant point that
Baqibillah’s Sufi activities had a political dimension. However, Baqibillah’s
sphere of activity, like that of Shaikh Sirhindī after him, was overwhelmingly
that of Sufi training.
Conclusion
This chapter has been about shifting perspectives, in particular perspectives of

who Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindī was. If there is one theme that continues through-
out the variegated viewpoints and worldviews examined, it is to be careful about
jumping to conclusions. Even for scholars (or should I say especially for
scholars?), it is all too easy to forget that perspectives depend on levels of aware-
ness, expressed succinctly by the adage “a hammer only sees nails.” For many
seventeenth-century literalists Sirhindī was at best an arrogant person and at
worst, outside the fold of Islam. Four centuries later, Sirhindī is still taken liter-
ally, which either makes him a hero or a villain. In this latter case, there is often
the “screen” of a modern nationalist agenda, with Sirhindī being projected
according to the agenda of the viewer. In a scholarly context, it is always useful

to be reminded that perspectives are embedded in larger worldviews. It is diffi-
cult to impossible to remove ourselves from our conditioned environment, that
is, our physical, lived conventional cultural worldview. Given that Bennett and
Alam cite somewhat contradictory comments about a Naqshbandi-related polit-
ical party in contemporary Bangladesh, it is not surprising that the task of deci-
phering what is and what is not true of a sixteenth-century personality is
daunting and complex.
Imagine seeking to extend a relatively straightforward historical and cultural
understanding of Sirhindī outlined in this article to the realm about which
Shaikh Sirhindī wrote the remaining 85% of his letters. Those of us who have
grown up being educated and acculturated in a cultural matrix of scientific-
materialist assumptions have a worldview that makes it extremely difficult to
really acknowledge this vast formless realm that Sirhindī has experienced (more
than as simply an interesting intellectual idea). This cultural programming
runs very deep. Sirhindī lived, breathed, and experienced a God-centered world.
This is an Absolute-Truth world that includes many relative truths. Moderns
acculturated in the scientific-materialist worldview live in a world of multiple
relative truths. They acknowledge science of the outer world of form but not
that of the inner realms beyond form. What is taken for “real” in modern con-
sensus reality would be for Sirhindī the equivalent of sitting in the darkness of
Plato’s cave with one’s hands over one’s eyes. Even though this article has
touched upon multiple perspectives/relative truths about Ahmad Sirhindī, I
hope the reader can appreciate that Sirhindī’s lived context was qualitatively
beyond the sum of these perspectives. Boivin’s chapter refers to Sirhindi’s influ-
ence in the wider context of Naqshbandi restoration.92 This chapter also links
with the discussion of Sufi political activism in this book by Alam and
Philippon.
Notes
1
The retransmission of the Naqshbandiyya to Central Asia occurred under two
Mujaddidi leaders, Shah Murad (r. 1785–1800) and Amir Haydar (r. 1800–26),
who both emphasized their Muslim identity to rule the Bukhara Khanate,
thereby ending their predecessors’ use of Chingizid connections for legitimacy.
Both of these rulers were disciples of Mujaddidi shaikh, Miyan Fadl Ahmad (d.
1231/1815 Peshawar), who was a descendant of Ahmad Sirhindi. The first wave
of Mujaddidis who arrived in Central Asia during the first half of the eighteenth
century were disciples of Habibullah Sufi Allahyar (d. 1110/1700) who learned
from Ahmad Sirhindi’s son Muhammad Masum (d. 1079/1668) in Mecca or
India. See Bakhtiyor M Babajanov, “On the History of the Naqshbandiya Mujad-
didiya in Central Mawara’annahr in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries,” in
Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries,
eds., by Michael Kemper, Anke von Kügelgen and Dmitruy Yermankov, Vol 1,
(Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1996), 385–413. “Die Entfaltung der Naqbandīya
muǧaddidıya im mittleren Transoxanien vom 18. bis zum Beginn des 19. Jahr-
hunderts: Ein Stück Detektivarbeit,” in Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia
from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, eds., Anke von Kügelgen, Michael Kemper,
Allen J. Frank (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1998), 101–51.
2
See Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi Sirhindi: An Outline of His Thought and a
Study of His Image in the Eyes of Posterity (Montreal: McGill Queen’s University Press,
1971), 83. All translations are mine unless cited from English texts or otherwise
noted. We do not know the specifics about those who opposed Sirhindi. Perhaps
Dara Shikuh was one of those who informed Jahangir about the opposition. See
Hamid Algar, “Imâm-ı Rabbânî,” Islâm Ansiklopedisi 35 vols. (Istanbul: Türkiye
Diyanet Vakfı, 1988), 22:194–9.
3
Not all of these treatises are extant. The first in 1022/1613 was by ‘Abdulhakim
Sialkoti defending Sirhindi as the renewer of the second millennium and the
latest (though not explicitly written to defend Sirhindi or his ideas) is the mas-
sive eleven-volume encyclopedia (almost 7500 pages) of the Indian Mujaddidiyya
(Muhammad Mas‘sud Ahmad, ed., Jahan-i Imam-i Rabbani: Mujaddid-i Alf-i Thani
Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 11 vols. Karachi: Imam Rabbani Foundation, 2005–7). See
Muhammad Iqbal Mujaddidi, “Hadrat Mujaddad Alf- Thani quddus sirrahu ke
dafa‘ men likhi jane wali kitaben” in Nur al-Islam 33 (Jan./Feb. 1988), 45–72. Aug-
menting Yohanan Friedmann’s work, some of these controversies and the sources
thereof are briefly discussed in Arthur Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: The Indian
Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Shaykh (Columbia, SC: University of
South Carolina Press, 1998), 246–7.
4
Source: Speeches, Writings, and Statements of Iqbal, compiled and edited by Latif
Ahmed Sherwani (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 1977 [1944], 2nd ed., revised and
enlarged), 3–26.
5
A few of these distortions, under the guise of scholarship, are exposed by Yohanan
Friedmann. This article continues beyond Friedmann’s and ter Haar’s discus-
sion. See J.G.J. ter Haar, Follower and Heir of the Prophet: Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi
(1564–1624) as Mystic (Leiden: Het Oosters Instituut, 1992).
6
Yohanan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 115.
7
Ter Haar lists the government officials with whom Sirhindi corresponded and
which letters were written to them. By his calculation there are about 66 letters.
See ter Haar, Follower and Heir, 16–17.
8
The two-nation theory is a political ideology that posits religion as the primary
identity of Indo-Muslims, thereby making Muslims and Hindus two separate
nationalities and justifying the formation of the nation-state of Pakistan.
9
On the basis of four years’ living in Pakistan, my impression is that the average
Pakistani on the street has never heard of Ahmad Sirhindi. However, on the web-
site of the Pakistani Civil Service, civil servants when asked “Who was the real
founder to the two-nation theory?” only get a right answer if they check the box
by Ahmad Sirhindi (the other choices are Sir Sayyid and ‘Allama Iqbal). http://
www.cssforum.com.pk/provincial-public-service-commission-examinations/
ppcs-pms/35485-paper-subject-specialist-pakistan-studies-2010-a.html (accessed
February 22, 2011).
10
I have paraphrased Friedmann’s description, Yohanan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad
Sirhindi, 101.
11
See Abu’l-Kalam Azad, Tadhkira, ed., Malik Ram (New Delhi: Sahitya Academy,
1990), 263–4.
12
One of Sirhindi’s letters was mentioned in a letter to Shah Sulayman Pulvari,
February 24, 1916 in Bashir Ahmad Dar, ed., Anwar-i Iqbal (Karachi: n.p., 1967),
9. Cited in Mas‘ud Ahmad, Mujaddid-i alf-i thani aur Daktar ‘Allama Iqbal (Lahore:
Students’ Welfare Organization, n.d.), 3 fn1.
13
Shaykh ‘Ata’ullah, Iqbalnamah, 2 vols. (Lahore: Sheikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1951),
Vol. 1, letter 35. Cited in Muhammad Mas‘ud Ahmad, “‘Allama Iqbal aur Hadrat
Mujaddid- i Alf-i Thani,” Iqbal Review 5 (April 1964), 114.
14
Shaykh ‘Ata’ullah, Iqbalnamah, Vol. 2, letter 19. Cited in Muhammad Mas‘ud
Ahmad, “Shar‘iat wa tariqat: afkar Iqbal ki rawshani men,” in Iqbal Review
6 (January 1965), 89.
15
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Sh.
Muhammad Ashraf, 1986), 193.
16
Nadhir Niyazi, Maktubat-i Iqbal (Karachi: Iqbal Academy, 1957), 161 cited in
Mas‘ud Ahmad, Mujaddid- alf- thani aur Daktar ‘Allama Iqbal, 6.
17
Muhammad Iqbal, Bal-i Jibril, in Kulliyat-i Iqbal Urdu (Lahore: Iqbal Academy,
1990), 351. The wine tavern has been used as a metaphor for the sufi lodge, wine
for love, and the station (maqam) could easily refer to one of unitary awareness
in love. Miyan Bashir Ahmad asked Iqbal about this verse and Iqbal replied that
the saqi referred to Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi. See Mahmud Nizami, Malfuzat-i Iqbal
(Lahore: Lahore Isha‘at Manzil, 1949), 28–9.
18
Ibid., 488–9. In his memoirs, Iqbal mentions that further studies on Ahmad
Sirhindi should be done. See Shaykh ‘Ata’ullah, Iqbalnamah, 2:48.
19
Mas‘ud Ahmad, Mujaddid- alf- thani aur Daktar ‘Allama Iqbal, 12.
20
Ibid., 14.
21
Burhan Ahmad Faruqi, The Mujaddid’s Conception of Tawhid (Delhi: Idarah-i
Adabiyat-i Delhi, 1977), 26–7.
22
“It is heresy of the worst kind” Ibid., 107. Ibn al-‘Arabi’s ideas are “against religion
and against Revelation” Ibid., 113.
23
For the record, Sirhindi had difficulties with beginning Sufis who had experi-
ences that convinced them of the unity of being because these “wujudis” thought
they had finished their sufi training. Second, Sirhindi disagreed with some of
Ibn al-‘Arabi’s perspectives but deeply respected him. It is absurd to think that
he would ever call Ibn al-‘Arabi a heretic. For a fuller exposition see “Ahmad
Sirhindi: A 21st-century update, “Der Islam 86 forthcoming, 2011 and Sirhindi
(Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, forthcoming 2012).
24
M. Mujeeb, The Indian Muslims (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1967),
245; John Esposito, Islam, The Straight Path (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988), 124.
25
Ishtiaq Husain Qureshi, The Muslim Community of the Indo-Pakistan Subcontinent
(Karachi: Ma‘aref Ltd., 1977), 175.
26
Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 107.
27
Ibid., 108.
28
In Aligarh’s history department, Rizvi is joined ideologically with Muhammad
Habib (d. 1971) and his son, Irfan Habib. See Muhammad Habib’s scathing
treatment of Ahmad Sirhindi in his Foreword to Athar Abbas Rizvi, Muslim Reviv-
alist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1993), xi–xix. See also, Irfan Habib, “The
Political Role of Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi and Shah Waliullah,” Enquiry 5 (1961),
36–55 and in Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Session of the Indian History Congress,
1960 (Calcutta, np, 1961), Part I, 209–23.
29
Yet another scholar unversed in Islam in the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent has
accused Sirhindi’s enterprise of “leading to communalism and ultimately to sepa-
ratism.” See Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World (London: Penguin, 1984), 280.
30
Athar Abbas Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1993), 237.
31
Ibid., 247.
32
Ibid.
33
Ibid., 249.
34
There is an implication here of non-Muslims being impure since dogs’ saliva is
considered to be impure and requires washing of garments before prayer accord-
ing to Hanafi jurisprudence.
35
See Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktūbāt, 1.163.43–4. (volume.letter.pages) Hereafter
Maktūbāt. Where there are no quotation marks, I have summarized previous parts
of the letter using Sirhindi’s language faithfully.
36
Ibid., 326.
37
See Ahmad Sirhindi, Radd-i madhhab-i Shi‘i, ed. With Urdu translation by Ghulam
Mustafa Khan (Karachi: Anjuman Press, 1974), 3–4. The translator renamed this
“Ta’id-i ahl-i sunnat” as a chronogramic title. Ter Haar discusses the context and
content of this epistle, correcting Friedmann’s remarks that Sirhindi wrote this
epistle as a “rite of passage.” See ter Haar, Follower and Heir, 25–6.
38
See Muhammad Ikram, “Hadrat-i Mujaddid-i Alf-i Thani Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi qud-
dus sirrahu” in Muhammad Ikram Chaghata’i, ed., Hadrat Mujaddid-i Alf-i Thani
(Lahore: Sang-e Meel Publications, 2009), 234.
39
Ahmad Sirhindi, Radd-i madhhab-i Shi‘i, 5th section. Cited by ter Haar in Follower
and Heir, 26.
40
See Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktūbāt, 1.54.28.
41
See Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktūbāt, 1.266.130.
42
This ḥadīth found in the collection of Ibn Athir, is cited twice in Collected Letters.
43
For the historically minded such a statement is problematic at best. The murders
of three out of four of the first four caliphs are just the cover story for all the
other self-serving behavior that mushroomed out of control after the Prophet
died. Power struggles bring out people’s dark sides. Sirhindi is reminding the
reader that dwelling on negative past events is counterproductive.
44
Ibid., 2.67.49.
45
Ibid., 2.67.54.
46
Sirhindi’s father’s shaikh, Shah Kamal Kayt’hali Qadiri (d. 981/1573), senses
Sirhindi’s greatness as a small child. See Kishmi, Zubdat al-maqamat, 127, 134.
The stories mentioned here that foreshadow Sirhindi’s birth involve Muhammad
(d. 10/632), Ahmad Jam (d. 536/1141), and Ahmad Jam’s son, Zahiruddin,
Khalilullah Badakhshani, and Baqibillah. See Badruddin Sirhindi, Hadarat al-
quds, 42–4. These stories are further embellished and additional shaikhs fore-
shadow Sirhindi’s birth including ‘Abdulqadir Jilani (561/1166), ‘Abdulquddus
Gangohi (d. 944/1537), and Salim Chishti (d. 979/1572). See Muhammad Ihsan
Sirhindi, Rawdat al-qayyumiyya, translated by Iqbal Ahmad Faruqi, 4 vols. (Lahore:
Maktaba-yi Nabawiyya, 1989), 1.101–10.
47
Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 91–102.
48
See ‘Abdulahad Wahdat Sirhindi, Sabil al-rashad, Urdu translation by Ghulam
Mustafa Khan (N.p., 1979), 4–8. This is not Sialkoti’s, Dala’il al-tajdid as indicated
by Iqbal Mujaddidi in “Hadarat Mujaddid-i Alf-i Thani ke dafa‘ men lik’hi jani
wali kitaben,” Nur al-Islam 33/1 (Jan–Feb, 1988), 47.
49
‘Abdulahad Wahdat Sirhindi, Sabil al-rashad, 7. Shah Waliullah outlined eleven
“proofs” in this untitled tract.
50
Yohanan Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 111.
51
Ter Haar, Follower and Heir, x. It would be more correct to say that sufi practice
and experience predominated the subjects of Sirhindi’s letters after meeting Baqi-
billah. Many of Sirhindi’s letters on the subject of doctrine and sharī‘a were writ-
ten in the mode and language of a religious scholar.
52
Ibid., xii. In this statement, ter Haar is quoting what Friedmann had said in his
Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 69–87.
53
David Damrel aptly notes that Sirhindi’s antagonism toward non-Muslim partici-
pation in government and overall antagonism toward Indian non-Muslims “more
likely comes from his background in Indian Islam rather than from his mem-
bership in the imported Central Asian Naqshbandi order.” However, there is no
further elaboration in his article, “The ‘Naqshbandî Reaction’ Reconsidered,” in
Gilmartin, Beyond Turk and Hindu, 188.
54
See Arthur Buehler, “Trends of Ashrafization in India” in The Prophet’s Family in
Islamic Societies, ed. by Kazuo Morimoto, New Horizons in Islamic Studies Series
(London: Routledge, forthcoming, 2012). Some of the introductory material in
that article is duplicated here.
55
See Ja‘far Sharif, Islam in India: The Customs of the Muslamans of India, translated
by G. A. Herklots, edited by William Crooke (Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Cor-
poration, 1972), 10–11.
56
See also Zia’uddin Barani’s Tarīkh-i Fīrōz Shāhī, trans. Henry Miers Elliot The History
of India Vol. 14, 2nd Edition (Calcutta: Susil Gupta Ltd., 1953), 178, for his con-
tempt toward “low-born men.”
57
See Imtiaz Ahmad, “The Ashrāf-Ajlāf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in
India,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 3 (1966) 270. Indian in this con-
text means people from families who did not trace their lineage to non-Indian
Muslim regions.
58
See Riazul Islam, “Stories of Saintly Wrath,” in Riazul Islam, Sufism in South Asia:
Impact on Fourteenth Century Muslim Society (Karachi: Oxford University Press,
2002), 204.
59
See Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktūbāt, 1.163.43–4.
60
See ‘Abdulqadir Bada’uni, Muntakhab al-tawarikh, 3 vols., trans. by Wolseley Haig
(Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1925).
61
This situation between the spirit and ego-self is explained in much more detail in
Sirhindi, Maktūbāt, letter 1.287. This letter is translated in Buehler, Sirhindi in a
forthcoming Paulist Press edition.
62
See Khaliq Ahmad Nizami, Akbar and Religion (Delhi, Jayyed Press, 1989), 409.
This is my translation from the original Persian letter written by ‘Abdulhaqq.
See Abu’l-Majd ‘Abdulhaqq Muhaddith Dihlawi, Kitab al-makatib wa-rasa’il ila
arbab al-kamal wa’l-fada’il (Delhi, Matba‘-i Mujtaba’i 1867), 84–91 (letter 17). I
have read ahammtarin for ahammbarin. Nizami Sahib has interpreted the mes-
sage of the selection that I have translated to mean “The sphere of religion is
not for the rulers.” Nizami, Akbar and Religion, 404. I translate it differently. The
rest of the letter goes on to explain that deeds in this life have their fruits in the
afterlife.
63
See Muzaffar Alam, “Shari‘a and Governance in the Indo-Islamic Context,” in
David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence, Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Reli-
gious Identities in Islamicate South Asia (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida,
2000), 225. Parts of the rest of this section and parts of the next two sections are
also found in “Ahmad Sirhindi: A 21st century update,” Der Islam 86 forthcoming,
2011.
64
See Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 50. Although my Fiharis-i tahlili-yi hasht-
gana-yi maktubat-i Ahmad Sirhindi (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 2000) is not a set of
concordances, of the ten entries for “common people” only two refer to them as
cattle. Ajlāf is not a term used to refer to them.
65
See Maktūbāt 1.313.168 and 3.49.114.
66
See Richard C. Foltz, Mughal India and Central Asia (Karachi: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 107.
67
See Maktūbāt letter 2.67.
68
See Muzaffar Alam, “The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs, and the Formation of the
Akbari Dispensation,” Modern Asian Studies 43/1 (2009), 144.
69
Urban population was 15% of the estimated 110 million population of the
Mughal Empire, that is, 16.5 million. Even if one inflates the population of ashrāfī
Muslims by counting them as 20% of the urban population, that is only 3.1 mil-
lion out of 110 million.
70
See Sirhindi, Maktūbāt letter 2.55.
71
See Sirhindi, Maktūbāt 1.47.18.
72
Nasiruddin Tusi’s books were read regularly to Akbar. Muzaffar Alam explains
the differences between “the sharī‘a-model and the Nasirean model of gover-
nance in his “Sharī‘a and Governance,” 216–45.
73
See Sirhindi, Maktūbāt letter 1.167.
74
There are those individuals who transcended aspects of the predominant culture
like Dara Shikuh (d. 1069/1659) and Miyan Mir (d. 1045/1635).
75
According to Aziz Ahmad, Sirhindi had “an element of mystical egoism.” See
Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1964), 183. Niles Green uncritically comments on Sirhindi’s “abstract and
self-aggrandizing speculation” in his Indian Sufism Since the Seventeenth Century:

Saints, books and empires in the MuslimDeccan (New York: Routledge, 2006), 19.
76
See Friedmann, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 87–9.
77
See Ahmad Sirhindi, Mabdā’ wa-maūād, ed. Zawwar Husayn with Urdu translation
(Karachi: Ahmad Brothers Printers, 1984), 9–11.
78
It is ironic when the doyen of Ibn al-‘Arabi studies, William Chittick, finds Sirhin-
di’s claims to be exaggerated but never questions Ibn al-‘Arabi’s equally exalted
claims. Note, for example, the statement of how Sirhindi’s criticisms of Ibn al-
‘Arabi are “superficial and self-inflating.” See William C. Chittick, “On Sufi Psy-
chology: A Debate between the Soul and the Spirit,” in Jalal al-Din Ashtiyani
et. al., eds., Consciousness and Reality: Studies in Memory of Toshihiko Izutsu (Leiden:
Brill, 2000), 343.
79
See Carl Ernst, Words of Ecstasy (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press,
1985), 3.
80
In Sirhindi, Maktūbāt letter 1.220, which apologizes for claims made in Maktūbāt
letter 1.11.
81
Using primary textual translations, I demonstrate many of Sirhindi’s claims in
“Tales of Renewal: Establishing Ahmad Sirhindi as the Reformer of the Second
Millennium,” in Jack Renard, Tales of God’s Friends: Islamic Hagiography in Trans-
lation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 234–48.These claims are
discussed analytically by Friedman, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi, 28, 60–8, 87–91.
82
See Shah Waliullah’s “proofs” of renewal in ‘Abdulahad Wahdat Sirhindi, Sabīl
al-rashād, Urdu translation by Ghulam Mustafa Khan (N.p., 1979), 4–8; Samuela
Pagani, Il Rinnovamento Mistico Dell’Islam: Un commento di ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi
a Ahmad Sirhindi (Naples: Universita Degli studi Di Napoli “L’Orientali,” 2003),
254 referrring to a passage in Sirhindi, Maktūbāt letter 1.260.
83
This includes Muhammad Habib, Irfan Habib, and Athar Abbas Rizvi mentioned
earlier.
84
See Muzaffar Alam, “The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs, and the Formation of the
Akbari Dispensation,” Modern Asian Studies 43/1 (2009), 168 [135–74].
85
See ibid., 169.
86
See Baqibillah, Kulliyat-i Baqibillah, eds., Abu’l-Hasan Zayd Faruqi and Burhan
Ahmad Faruqi (Lahore: Din Muhammadi Press, ca. 1967), 35.
AQ: Ghulam 87
See Alam, “The Mughals,” 169. Italics in original.
Mustafa Khan 88
See Baqibillah, Kulliyat, 75–6; and Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Baqiyat-i baqi (N.p,
1989 is miss-
ing in the 1989), 38.
Bibliography. 89
See Ghulam Mustafa Khan, Baqiyat-i baqi, 27.
90
See Baqibillah, Kulliyat, 77.
91
See Alam, “The Mughals,” 173.
92
The term “Naqshbandi restoration” is used to refer to how Sirhindi’s legacy
helped to attract more legalistic Muslims to the order because it distanced itself
from what was perceived as Hindu elements; see Annemarie Schimmel, ‘Shah
Inayat of Jhok, A Sindhi Mystic,’ in Liber Amicorum: Studies in Honor of Professor Dr
CJ Bleeker, 151–70 (Leiden, 1969; Sindhi Literature, Wiesbaden, 1974), 152.
Chapter 10
Encountering the Unholy: The Establishment

of Political Parties by Sufi Masters in
Modern Bangladesh*
Sarwar Alam
The generally held belief among Muslims about a Sufi (holy man) is that he is
a walī Allah (guardian, protector, or intercessor). The Qur’ān depicts him as
follows: “Verily for the auliya Allah there is no fear, nor shall they grieve” (verse
10:62). Because of his extraordinary piety and perceived miraculous power, a
Sufi or holy man is usually viewed by the general masses as God’s vicegerent; he
is believed to protect and intercede for others as God’s deputy. A Sufi is viewed
as the heir to, as well as mimesis of, the Prophet (imitatio Muhammadi)1; he is
perceived to have authority to mediate between God and humans. For many, a
Sufi shaikh is the living pointer to God, the embodied Ka‘ba showing the Way,
and the primary approach to God.2 Thus the obedience of a disciple to his Sufi
shaikh is viewed as the first step of his obedience to God. By virtue of such obe-
dience, among others, a Sufi shaikh receives necessary authority, and thus legit-
imacy of his command upon his followers, to paraphrase Weber.3 In general, by
dint of his perceived power, a Sufi becomes an alternative source of authority.4
Consequently, Sufis exert two realms of authority: spiritual (religious) and tem-
poral (political), which, argues Paul L. Heck (2007), “should be viewed not as a
separation but rather as a complementary relation between the two forces that
have shaped traditional Muslim society.”5 Because of their reputation of piety,
renunciation of or indifference to worldly affairs, and mass support, Sufi mas-
ters have exerted their authority over the ruling elites throughout premodern
Muslim history. There is evidence that Sufis protest against, as well as remind,
the caliphs publicly of their duty in the premodern era.6
But how does a holy man exercise his power and authority in a modern state?
It has been argued that fundamentalist and modernist movements have margin-
alized the Sufis and their authorities upon the ruling elites, and to some extent,
the general masses. Heck observes that, “notwithstanding the significant chal-
lenge of Wahhabism, it has been modernizing reformism in the Muslim world,
both rationalist and fundamentalist, that has pushed Sufism to reconfigure itself
today” (2007:12). In this regard, Charles Lindholm (1998) holds that Sufi
preachers have accepted the realities of subordination under unprecedentedly

omnipotent central states, and he argues that, in doing so, Sufis “have lost what
remained of their popular authority, and have been succeeded by Islamist zeal-
ots, who now take the forefront in contemporary religious struggles against gov-
ernment domination.”7 After observing the rise of Islamists in Bangladesh,
Maneeza Hossain (2007) argues, “there is no counter-program in effect to
address the comprehensive character of the Islamists’ agenda, notably in the
area of cultural radicalization.”8 Contrary to the above observations, I argue that
Sufi masters and the brotherhood they have established still exert their author-
ity and power over the ruling elites as well as the masses, and they do so by adapt-
ing themselves with modern political institutions, such as political parties. I
support my argument by analyzing three Sufi-oriented political parties of Ban-
gladesh: the Islamic Constitution Movement of Bangladesh, the Bangladesh
Zaker Party, and the Bangladesh Tariqat Federation.
Historical roots of Sufism in Bangladesh
Bangladesh is the third largest Muslim country in the world. Most scholars
believe that the majority of the population embraced Islam through the influ-
ence of the Sufis (mystics, holy men), and also through the influence of non-
Sufi preachers. Nevertheless, both the urban and rural societies of Bangladesh
contain four overlapping Islamic traditions: (i) an accommodationist and toler-
ant tradition of coexistence of different faiths that influence one another on a
religio-cultural basis under the influence of Sufis and pīrs (spiritual preceptor);
(ii) a scripturally literalist and socially active Islamic tradition derived from the
influence of revivalist reform movements in the nineteenth and twentieth cen-
turies; (iii) a modern Islamist tradition mostly derived from radical and militant
Islamist political parties and organizations; and (iv) a secularized and modern-
ist tradition of Islam derived from the European education introduced by Brit-
ish colonial rulers.9 Alongside the non-Sufi Sunni Islamic tradition, Sufi
ideologies of different traditions have a great influence upon the daily lives of
most Bangladeshi Muslims. Like in the early days of Islam on the Bengal fron-
tier, Sufis still maintain important connections between Islam and the masses.
In fact, a large majority of Bangladeshi Muslims perceive Sufis as sources of
their spiritual wisdom and guidance10 and their khanqahs and dargāhs as the
nerve centers of Muslim society.11
Present-day Bangladesh officially came under Muslim rule in the early thir-
teenth century CE, after the invasion of Bengal in 1204 by the Turkish general
Ikhtyar ud-Dīn Muhammad bin Bakhtyar Khalji.12 Available historical artifacts
show that the people of Bengal, especially those in the coastal areas of the region,
were introduced to Islamic traditions before the Turkish invasion.13 Arabic names
of some localities of Chittagong have led some scholars to speculate that people of
The Establishment of Political Parties by Sufi Masters in Modern Bangladesh 165
the coastal regions of Bengal were familiar with Islamic traditions long before the
arrival of Bakhtyar Khalji. Arab traders had visited the coastal areas as early as the
eighth century CE.14 In addition, historical evidence shows that some Sufis visited
and settled in other parts of Bengal before the Muslim invasion. Shaikh Ahmad
(or Abbas) Ibn Hamza Nishapuri (ninth century CE), Shah Sultan Rumi (elev-
enth century CE), Shah Sultan Balkhi (eleventh century CE), Baba Adam Shahid
(twelfth century CE), and Shah Makhdum (twelfth century CE) are some of the
said Sufi settlers.15 Shah Sultan Rumi settled in Netrakona district of present-day
Bangladesh, Shāh Sultan Balkhī settled in the district of Bogra, Shah Makhdūm
settled in Rajshahi district, and Baba Adam Shahid (the Martyr) preached Islam
in Vikrampur. He was killed on the battlefield in 1119 CE. It is argued that Shaikh
Jalal ud-Dīn Tabrizi, one of the Sufis of the Suhrawardiyyā order, came to Bengal
before 1200 CE, and subsequently settled and died in the Maldah district of pres-
ent-day West Bengal, India.16 People embraced Islam following the examples of
simplicity, egalitarianism, and notions of brotherhood these holy men estab-
lished.17 In this book, Bennett’s account of the conversion process in Bangladesh
differs slightly from the one in this chapter. However, both accounts credit activi-
ties of peaceful Sufi pioneers, not sword-wielding conquerors or zealots.
Prior to the coming of Islam, Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma), Jainism, and Bud-
dhism dominated the socio-religious and cultural milieu of Bengal.18 In describ-
ing the authority of the Sufis, Richard Eaton argues that between the sixteenth
and twentieth centuries, the authority of the charismatic Sufis in Bengal rested
on three overlapping bases: their connection with the forest, their connection
with the supernatural world, and their connection with mosques by which they
were believed to have institutionalized the cult of Islam. Eaton (1993) also
observes that it was the Sufis who played vital roles in mass conversion by engag-
ing themselves in forest clearing and land reclamation as well as by their reputa-
tion for charisma. However, in contrast to other parts of South Asia, Sufis of
Bengal did not emerge as landed gentry.19 Instead, some Sufis stood against the
oppression of landlords and fought against colonial rulers. Some of them
emerged themselves as a bridge between the ruling elites and the masses
because of their reputation for piety and social engagement. However, during
the Pakistan period (1947–71), we hardly find any Sufis of East Pakistan who
actively participated in the national or provincial party politics.
Introduction of Islam in Bangladesh politics
Bangladesh became an independent country in 1971 on the basis of secular

issues. Because of the abuse of religion during the Pakistan era and also during
the war of liberation, the new Constitution of the country adopted a principle
of religious neutrality (dharma nirapeksata) that banned religion-based political
parties. After the coup d’état of 1975, General Ziaur Rahman paved the way for
religion-based political parties by repealing Article 38 of the Constitution,

which upholds religious neutrality. He helped rehabilitate antiliberation politi-
cal parties, such as the Muslim League and the Jama’at-e-Islami, among others,
during his regime. A new era of the relationship with Middle Eastern Muslim
countries developed during his military regime. This new diplomatic relation-
ship opened new opportunities for employment for Bangladeshi workers in
Middle Eastern countries, especially in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries.
Some of these workers later brought Wahhabi ideology back home from Arabia
and created a social ground and support base for future fundamentalists in the
country.20 In 1988, Husain Ershad, another military dictator, declared Islam the
state religion of Bangladesh by amending the Constitution. Both military
regimes tried to overcome their legitimacy crises by manipulating the Islamic
identity of the majority population. However, one of the differences between
these two juntas was that the former attempted to woo the support of the Isla-
mist parties while the latter the Sufi masters, among others, for legitimacy.
Sufis in politics
Despite major differences in ideology, the Islamically motivated political orga-

nizations of Bangladesh can be divided into three broad categories21: those who
participate in the existing political system, those who operate within the demo-
cratic political system despite reservations, and those who refuse to take part in
constitutional politics. The Bangladesh Jama’at-i-Islami, the Bangladesh Tariqat
Federation, the Bangladesh Zaker Party, and the Islamic Constitutional Move-
ment are the major Islamic political organizations that belong to the first cate-
gory. The Hizbut Tahrir Bangladesh belonged to the second category. It used to
operate within the democratic system of the country but did not participate in
the electoral process. The Harkatul Jihad al-Islam Bangladesh and the Jama’atul
Mujahideen Bangladesh belonged to the third category that chose violence as
the only strategy to establish an Islamic state in Bangladesh.
It was Maulana Muhammad Ullah Hafijzi Huzur, a reformist Deobandi ‘alim
of Chīshtī-Sabiri tradition, who paved the way for traditional ‘ulama (theologians)
to get themselves involved in national politics. He formed a political party called
the Khelfat Andolon (The Khelafat Movement), in 1981. He was probably
inspired by the Iranian Revolution of 1979 led by Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomei-
ni.22 It is also likely that he was alarmed by the increasing strength of the Jama’at-
e-Islami that encouraged him to form a political party. However, his example
inspired others to participate in the national politics. Hafijzi Huzur contested
the presidential election in 1981 in which he received 388,741 or 1.80 percent
of the votes cast.23 He urged the entire nation to perform tauba or repentance,
as both the rulers and the ruled, he stated, are sinners. The rulers committed
sins by breaking promises and the ruled committed sins by casting their votes in
favor of them, he asserted. In a fatwa (edict) issued in 1984, Hafijzi Huzur
declared General Ershad’s rule as un-Islamic since he did not uphold the
Shari‘a. In the same fatwa he also declared Ershad an illegitimate ruler as he did
not come to power with the consent of the people.24 Hafijzi Huzur contested
the presidential election again in 1986 against General Ershad, the dictator of
the country.
After Hafijzi Huzur’s death, one of his deputies named Maulana Syed Fazlul
Karīm, Pīr Sahib Charmonai, a Chīshtī-Sabiri ‘alim, along with Maulana Fazlul
Haque Aminee (the son in-law of Hafijzi Huzur) launched the Islamic Constitu-
tion Movement (ICM) in March 1987 in order to establish God’s law in
Bangladesh. In 1991, the ICM joined the Islami Oikkya Jote (IOJ, Islamic United
Front), an alliance of seven small Islamic parties that contested the general
election in the same year. In 1996, the ICM contested in 11 constituencies and
bagged 11,159 or 0.0263 percent of the votes cast.25 The ICM left the IOJ in 2001
and joined General Ershad’s Jatiya Party and formed a new alliance called the
Islamic National United Front. The alliance secured 14 seats in the 2001 elec-
tion. It later quit the alliance and attempted to align itself with both the
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-led 4-party alliance and the Awami League
(AL)-led 14-party alliance. Finally, it contested in 166 constituencies in the gen-
eral election of 2008 (but bagged only 733,969, or 1.05 percent of the total
votes cast).26 Pir Sahib Charmonai took a clear stand against militancy. He orga-
nized countrywide antiterrorism rallies. He once stated that “we hate bomb
culture” in response to the growing militancy in the country27; he blamed the
BNP-led coalition government for supporting militant organizations. Sayyid
Rezaul Karīm, the son of the deceased Pīr of Charmonai is currently the leader of
the party, which portrays itself as the representative of mainstream Islam,
denounces female leadership, advocates the implementation of the Shari‘a, and
opposes secularism. The party also stands against the nongovernmental organi-
zations (NGOs) and their programs of women’s emancipation, Indian hege-
mony in the region, the West’s hegemony on the Muslim lands, and the
corruption of political elites. It viewed the Ahmadiyyā sect as non-Muslim and
was in opposition to Jama’at-e-Islami. Interestingly, Pīr Sahib Charmonai Maulana
Fazlul Karīm made alliances with Ershad and the radical Islamists. He served on
the advisory committee of the extremist Islamist Harkatul Jihad al-Islami Ban-
gladesh, a banned militant organization.28 However, it has an uncompromising
attitude toward any deviations from the ideals it perceives as Islamic. The ICM
has been opposing the initiative of introducing secularism in the Constitution
by the ruling AL as it contravenes the ideals of Islam.29 In fact, the ICM has
established itself as the defender of normative Islam and as the great challenger
to the ruling AL.
Another Sufi-laden political party known as the Bangladesh Zaker Party
(BZP) was launched in 1989 by a prominent Naqshabandi-Mujaddedi shaikh,
Maulana Hashmat Ullah (d. 2001) of Atrashi. The ousted junta General Ershad
was one of his murīds during the 1980s. It was probably his ambition of associating
himself with the core players of power that motivated the shaikh to organize a
political party. It is also believed that General Ershad inspired him to launch a
political party that would oppose the Jama’at-e-Islami. “A source close to the pīr
describes him as ‘staunch supporter of democracy’,” stated S. Kamaluddin, the
reporter of the Far Eastern Economic Review in April 1983, a time when the
country was under martial law. He also reports that “the pīr, unlike most preach-
ers in this country, favors modern education and enjoys the company of intel-
lectuals. He firmly believes that without a modern, science-oriented educational
system, the nation will never prosper.”30 After the death of the founding shaikh,
his son Pirzadeh Mustafa Ameer Faisal Mujaddesdi took over the leadership of
the party in 2001. He was one of the critics of the BNP-led four-party alliance
government and especially of its partner, the Bangladesh Jama’at-e-Islami, for
supporting Islamic militancy in the country. He once stated that there was no
conflict between secularism and Islam, and that in order to rescue the country
from the threats of religious extremists the principle of secularism should be
restored.31 He used to publish a daily newspaper known as the Daily al-Mujaddid,
and the magazine Weekly Meghna, to disseminate his ideals. The party contested
in 251 constituencies and bagged 417,737, or 1.22 percent of the votes cast
in 1991. In the 1996 election, it nominated 241 candidates that went on to
receive 167,597, or 0.395 percent of the votes.32 On the eve of the general elec-
tion of 2007, the BZP joined the grand alliance led by the AL. However, after
the establishment of the military-backed Care Taker Government in January
2007 that arrangement was changed and his party contested the 2008 election
by itself in 36 constituencies (but bagged only 129,289, or 0.19 percent of the
total votes cast).33
The Bangladesh Tariqat Federation (BTF) was launched in 2005. Syed Najibul
Bashar Maizbhandari was a member of the leading Chīstī-Qādiri sufi family of
Bangladesh. The Maizbhandari Sufi tariqa is mainly popular for its pluralistic
views. The founding shaikhs of the tariqa were famous for their piety as well as
their social engagement. The tariqa preaches for communal harmony and
interfaith dialogue. It does not believe that Muslims are the only believers of a
true religion and encourages its followers to recognize and respect others’
faiths. It gives preference to the morality of religion in general over the Shari‘a.34
The Masik Tauhid, Jiban Bati, Nur-e-Rahman, and Alokdhara are journals of the
tariqa that regularly publish articles on these issues. Najibul Bashar Maizbhan-
dari upholds these ideals, and also the spirit of the liberation war of 1971, in the
BTF. His engagement in politics is related to General Ershad’s government
attempt to take control over the dargāhs (shrines) of the Sufis. In protest of this
attempt, Najibul Bashar organized the Dargāh-Mazār Federation, which success-
fully blocked the governmental attempt of nationalizing dargāh premises of the
Sufi shaikhs of the country. Sayyid Najibul Bashar later joined the AL in 1991
and was elected as an MP (Member of Parliament) in the same year. He later
quit the AL and joined the BNP and became its international affairs secretary.
Upon observing the growing militancy and the attacks on the dargāhs and sufi
figures by the militants, he resigned the BNP and alleged that the unholy alli-
ance of the BNP–Jama’at had been patronizing militancy in the country. He
later organized the BTF. He was a member of the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddhist
Unity Council. The main goal of the BTF is to establish sufi ideal-based Islamic
rule in the country. The BTF joined the former president, Dr. Badruduzza
Chowdhury, and the framer of the Constitution of the country, Dr. Kamal
Husain’s National Unity Front that joined the AL-led Grand Alliance in 2006.
Later his party contested in 31 constituencies in the 2008 election (but bagged
only 19,750, or 0.03 percent of the votes cast).35 The BTF maintains a strategic
relationship with ruling AL. It helped the arrest of Jama’at-chief Matiur Rah-
man Nizami, former minister of the coalition government during 2001 and
2006, and also an alleged war criminal, by filing a case in a court of law for a
blasphemous comment of the latter about Prophet Muhammad.36
Analysis and discussion
Since Bangladesh is a country with a population that is made up of mostly Mus-

lims, Islam has always been an issue in its politics. As discussed earlier, sufis or
mystics played a vital role in preaching Islam in the region, especially in the
rural areas of the country. At the same time, legalists or ‘ulama (sing. ‘alim) also
played a vital role in consolidating as well as establishing the cultural heritage
of Islamic tradition in the region, especially in the urban areas. The mystics
maintained a dominant role as intermediaries among the political elites and
the masses in the early days of Islam in Bengal. But the situation had changed
after the consolidation of Muslim rule in the region when the ‘ulama estab-
lished their dominance in the urban areas and in the centers of political power.
Eventually, like in many other Muslim countries, Sufism became a contested
phenomenon in the region. It has been argued that one of the oldest stereo-
types in Islam is the eternal conflict between the legalist and mystic.37 This is
partly because the core idea of Sufism, “ma‘rifa” (gnosis or mystical knowledge),
does not appear in the Qur’an or in any prominent prophetic report or Hadīth.38
Especially revivalist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen-
turies propagated against popular and so-called Sufi practices in order to estab-
lish “normative” Islam in South Asia. Ironically, some of the reformists themselves
were linked with Sufi orders.
During the colonial era, the ‘ulama remained dominant in the society as a
whole, as some of them became an integral part of the colonial judiciary as
interpreters of the Islamic legal traditions. In most cases, the mystics main-
tained a distance with the ruling elites, and in other cases they actively partici-
pated in revolts against them. The revolts of Fakīr Majnu Shāh (d. 1788) and
Pagal Bidroho of the mid nineteenth century are still considered legends in
Bangladesh. After the so-called Sepoy Mutiny of 1857, mystics of South Asia
became marginalized in politics mostly because of two reasons: colonial rulers’
suspicions upon Muslim religious authorities, and the revivalist and reform
movements led by the ‘ulama. During this period, Dar’ul Ulūm Deoband (estab-
lished in 1866) became the model of traditional Islamic heritage on the one
hand, while the Mohammedan Anglo-Oriental College (established in 1875
and subsequently developed into the Aligarh Muslim University) established an
image of Islamic modernism in most parts of South Asia on the other. Muslims’
politics of the last few years of colonial rule was mostly dominated by the schol-
ars or students of either of these two institutions.39 A number of reformers of
this period emphasized the performance of Islamic rituals and religious educa-
tion, while others tried to adapt the Muslim community to the changing situa-
tion through modern education. In either case, Islamic reform remained a
central issue until the partition of India in 1947. Interestingly, Sufis did not
participate in either issue. In fact, we did not see any prominent Sufi figures of
this region active in politics during this period.
However, alongside these two educational reform movements, both of which
were mostly centered in urban areas, a number of religious reform movements
also became a challenge to Sufi rituals and practices that were mostly concen-
trated in the rural areas as the traditional bases of Sufi-adherents. Prominent
among the religious reform movements were the Farai’di, the Tayuni, and the
Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyya. The Farai’di and Tayuni movements were exclusively
puritanical in nature, but the Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyya movement, on the other
hand, was radical and militant.40 Another movement similar to the latter was the
Ahl-i Hadīth movement. The adherents of the Tariqa-i-Muhammadiyya and
Ahl-i Hadīth movements were also loosely known as the Wahhabis in India (the
Deobandis were also branded by some Islamic scholars as Wahhabis).41 How-
ever, it has been argued that there was no apparent relationship between the
Wahhabism of Arabia and the so-called Wahhabism in India.42 The only mean-
ingful similarity among all of these groups was that they denied the authority of
taqlid (acceptance of traditional interpretation of a single school of Islamic
law). Among these reform movements, the Fara’idi and Tayuni were the most
active in East Bengal. After the demise of these movements, another movement
known as Tabligh-i Jamaat began in the 1920s. This movement, which also
aimed at purifying Islamic practices, was created as a response to the aggressive
campaign of the fundamentalist Hindu Arya Samaj.43 Bangladesh has the larg-
est organization of Tabligh-i Jamaat in the Muslim world and its annual iztema
(congregation) is the second largest gathering after the annual hajj (pilgrim-
age) in Mecca. These revivalist as well as the reformist movements have deep-
ened Islamic consciousness and shaped present-day Bengali Muslim customs
and institutions.44 All of these movements had differences with one another, but
they had one characteristic in common: all of them were against Sufism.
British India was divided into two independent states in 1947. The basis of
this separation was the desire of some Muslim leaders for a separate political
identity as they envisioned Muslims of India as a separate nation with a distinct
cultural and religious heritage. In contrast to the western region of British
India,45 Sufis of the eastern region maintained a safe distance from political
engagement during the heydays of the Pakistan movement. The doctrines of
the Sufis deeply influenced the masses, and their dargāhs were venerated not
only by Muslims but also by the followers of other religious traditions.46 It has
been argued that the development of coexistence and tolerance, especially
between Hindus and Muslims, is one of the greatest achievements of the Sufis
in Bengal.47 This tradition was in conflict with the ideological basis of the Paki-
stan movement, known as the “Two Nations Theory” (Hindus and Muslims are
two different nations). The problem with this doctrine was that it defined
Islamic identity in the context of communal tensions.48 Furthermore, it was
grounded in the British policies that polarized the distinction between Muslims
and Hindus and popularized the idea of an India with a Hindu majority and a
Muslim minority.49 This ideological basis was in conflict with the hitherto prac-
ticed Sufi traditions of eastern regions, as the premises of the Sufis were viewed
as melting pots of any communal differences. As a result, no prominent Sufi
figure or brotherhood got involved in any political debates, especially in the
eastern region of British India during the Pakistan movement of the early 1940s.
It appears that it was neither the political elites nor the ‘ulama who marginal-
ized the Sufis, but rather the Sufis who withdrew themselves from politics.
However, the notion of a separate Muslim identity remained a central theme
until the partition of India in 1947 (East Bengal became a part of Pakistan
in 1947 and independent in 1971). Interestingly, it was not Muslim identity, but
rather Bengali nationalism based upon the Bengali language and culture that
dominated the political domain in the eastern part of Pakistan between the
period of 1947 and 1971. During this period, ethnicity and language subsumed
religion in Bengali nationalism.50 But Muslim identity was once again made an
issue after the independence of the country in 1971. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
(d. 1975), the founding father of the country, established an Islamic institution
known as the Islamic Foundation and attended the summit of the Organization
of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in 1974 to demonstrate his commitment to Islam.
However, the Constitution he and his party adopted for the new country
included clauses that distanced the state from establishing any particular faith,
adopted religious neutrality (Article 12) as one of the basic principles of the
country, and prohibited the formation of political parties or organizations
based on communal issues or religious traditions (Article 38).
It appears that the Sufis of the eastern region of South Asia remained politi-
cally alienated since the middle of the nineteenth century. After remaining
aloof from political activities for more than a century, what motivated some Sufi
figures of this region to step forward to participate in the mainstream political
process is a mystery. It can be argued that the first military junta General Ziaur
Rhaman’s attempts of amending the Constitution and renewing the relationship
with oil-rich Middle Eastern countries especially benefited the Jama’at-e-Islami,
which in turn alerted some traditional Deobandi ‘ulama to move forward to
participate in politics. An example of this kind is the participation of Maulana
Muhammadullah Hafizi Huzur in politics.
The second military junta, General Hussain Ershad, encountered two chal-
lenges brought on by the AL, and the BNP established by his predecessor Gen-
eral Ziaur Rahman. To encounter the challenges from both parties, Ershad
attempted to create an image that could potentially woo the support of the
masses for his regime. He performed the pilgrimage in Mecca, publicly dis-
played his religiosity by attending Friday prayers and visiting shrines, and
attempted to develop relationships with prominent Sufi masters such as the Pīr
of Atrashi, a Naksbandi-Mujaddedi Sufi master, and Pīr Sahib Charmonai, a Chīshtī-
Saberi Sufi master, and a prominent collaborator of the Pakistan army during
the war of liberation in 1971. In order to legitimize his regime, General Ershad
tried to present himself as champion of both normative and Sufi traditions. “It
was under Ershad that Islam became a political factor to be reckoned with,”
observed Bertil Lintner.51 He made his affiliation with the Pīr of Atrashi a public
event. This was a qualitative difference with the Pīr of Atrashi with that of Hafijzi
Huzur. Hafijzi Huzur established his image as a moral guide; he was famous for
his piety even after he launched a political party. It has been argued that Gen-
eral Ershad took several important political decisions at the premise of the Pīr
of Atrashi, and fortune-seeking politicians and civil-military bureaucrats became
murīds of the Pīr and used his premise for their personal gains. The Pīr became
an important power-broker during the tenure of General Ershad. A Sufi master
who remained on the periphery of power turned out to be an influential politi-
cal figure by the patronage of a military dictator and thus shifted his authority
from what Arthur Buehler called a “directing shaikh” to a “mediating shaikh.”52
During the restoration of the democratic movement, which was directly
against the regime of General Ershad, Jammat-e-Islami took a stand that later
helped it to achieve an acceptance as a legitimate political force alongside the
anti-Ershad movements led by AL- and BNP-led alliances. The rise of Jama’at-e-
Islami is one of the major factors that stirred some Sufi figures of the country to
launch political organizations. It is also likely that General Ershad inspired the
Pīr of Atrashi and also Pīr Sahib Charmonai to initiate political parties. After the
fall of General Ershad, the BNP formed the government in 1991 with the help
of Jammat-e-Islami. The BNP–Jama’at alliance came to power again in 2001
when two senior Jama’at leaders became ministers of the country. One of the
important changes that occurred in the political arena of Bangladesh during
the BNP rules was the rise of militant Islamic organizations. Some of these orga-
nizations were involved in the bombings at the gatherings of secular cultural
programs and at the rallies of opposition parties, churches, and shrines. Both
BNP and the Jama’at were accused of patronizing some of these militant
organizations. When the country was shocked by the terrorist activities of some
militant organizations, the Prime Minister and other leaders of both parties
denied the existence of such militant organizations.53
When the AL, the major opposition party and known as the champion of
secularism, was directly affected by the attacks of the militant Islamists, it
denounced militancy but ironically attempted to make alliances with funda-
mentalist political organizations (such as Khelafat Majlish). To earn the sup-
port of ordinary voters it took the same strategy the BNP–Jama’at alliance took
earlier by creating alliances with Islamic organizations. It nominated at least
five militant Islamists in the general elections that were scheduled to be held
in 2006 but were later cancelled.54 During this chaotic period, some Sufi mas-
ters took a clear position against militancy, and also against the Jama’at-e-Islami.
They organized mass rallies, press conferences, and social awareness programs
against militancy. The chairman of the Tariqat Federation, a party mainly com-
prised of spiritual leaders, accused the Jama’at of instigating attacks on Sufi
shrines. Pīr Sahib Charmonai publicly criticized the BNP and its ally Jama’at for
supporting the militants; he termed the Jama’at-e-Islami the enemy of Islam.55 As
mentioned earlier, the leader of the BZP criticized BNP and the Jama’at for
manipulating religion in the state affairs and said that there is no conflict
between secularism and religion.
It appears that the Sufis encounter at least four forces: the reformists includ-
ing the Tablighis, the Islamic modernists such as Jama’at-e-Islami, Islamic extrem-
ists such as Harkatul Jihad al-Islam (banned in 2005), and the mainstream
political parties of the country. During the colonial era some popular Sufi fig-
ures led rebellions against the unholy “infidel” British rule while defending
their positions by practicing the Shari‘a-bound rituals. Long before organizing
political organizations, they encountered the first two by their bayans or speeches
and also by extensive publications. But establishing political parties is a new
dimension in Bangladesh.56 To encounter the challenges posed by the Jama’at-
e-Islami and other militant Islamic organizations, the founder of the Islamic
Constitutional Movement upheld the traditional conservative values and
opposed any changes or reforms of those values. The Founder of the BZP
stepped forward to organize a political party to become a part of the main-
stream political culture of the country and to convey the message that the Sufi
masters have the potential to become the key players of power politics. On the
other hand, the founder of the BTF intended to uphold the interests of the
shrines as well as the accommodative and tolerant Sufi traditions of the
country.
We may argue that the participation of the Sufi masters in politics is a result of
three overlapping crises: (1) Ideological: From the very beginning of the incep-
tion of Bangladesh in 1971 as an independent nation on the basis of secular
ideals, the first government skewed to Islamic ideals by participating at the
rganization of Islamic Cooperation (1974) and by establishing the Islamic

O
Foundation, which was apparently in contradiction with the principles laid down
in the Constitution of the country, Secularism (religious neutrality) and Social-
ism. It established a one-party system in 1975, following the models of socialist
countries, and thus abandoned the principle of multiparty liberal democratic
ideals outlined in the Constitution. After a series of coup d’états, General Ziaur
Rahman took over the power and revived the religion-based political establish-
ment by amending the Constitution.57 The ideological dilemma in setting the
state principles helped increase the strength of the Jama’at that alerted the tra-
ditional ulama as well as the Sufi masters of the country. Later, General Ershad
attempted to portray himself as a genuine Muslim and upholder of both exo-
teric Islamic heritage and a follower of esoteric traditions. In all of these phases,
instead of pursuing socio-economic agendas, ruling elites attempted to use Islam
as their political weapon to mobilize mass support. In this way the “political elites
have failed to construct an ideology that on the one hand universalizes their
corporate interests while apparently representing the interests of the masses on
the other.”58 The shifts in ideology, especially the steady and consistent Islamiza-
tion process, inspired Islamists to take advantage of the situation and at the same
time caused Sufi masters to prepare themselves to defend their positions.
(2) Governmentality: There have always been crises of good governance in the
country. Before independence, the country was ruled by the military dictators
for more than a decade. As mentioned earlier, within three years of indepen-
dence the ruling elites abandoned the ideals of liberal democracy and intro-
duced a one-party system. During that period they also deployed a special force
called Jatiyo Rakhsmi Bahini (National Defense Force) mainly to control opposi-
tions. They could not manage the flood and the famine of 1974. With the
exception of very few, most of the power elites became corrupted. The legacy of
corruption still continues. The practice of corruption is not only widespread
among the ruling elites of the country but also among the government officials
that include officials of police departments and the judiciary.59 The power elites
could not develop strong local governments. In fact, the Bangladeshi society is
controlled not by the local self-governments, but rather by the apparatuses of
security that favor the ruling elites. The Sufi masters are aware of the state of
governmentality.60 They took advantage of the lack of will and inability of the
government to ensure “justice” to the people. Their agendas reflect the injus-
tices that were being done to the masses by the government agencies. The Sufi
masters have been trying to portray their agendas as functional alternatives to
the existing system.
(3) Religious extremism: The most important factor that inspired the Sufi mas-
ters to take part in establishing political parties is the rise of religious extrem-
ism. As we have discussed earlier, the first military junta amended the
Constitution in a way that helped religion-based political parties, which were
banned earlier, to reorganize themselves openly. To create an aura of political
legitimacy, military regimes rehabilitated and eventually collaborated with

Islamic political organizations, some of which were radical and fundamentalist
in character. As Tazeen Murshid has observed, “[r]eligion and politics do not
necessarily come together only when political institutions are weak, but also
when dominant authoritarian regimes feel threatened.”61 Both military regimes
tried to overcome their legitimacy crises by manipulating the Islamic identity of
the majority population. In this way, the military regimes not only created the
opportunity for Islamists to be a part of mainstream politics in Bangladesh, but
also made Islamization an agenda of the state and Islam the de facto state ide-
ology.62 One of the consequences of the Islamization strategy was the rise of
anti-Sufi Islamic militancy in the country. On several occasions the ruling elites
defended the militants. During the rule of the BNP-led four-party alliance
between 2001 and 2006, some militant Islamic groups received significant mate-
rial and moral support from Islamists within the alliance.63 The Bangladesh
Jama’at-e-Islami’s inclusion in the alliance is especially perceived to have
emboldened extremists, who were protected from harassment by the authori-
ties.64 In this regard, Ali Riaz has noted, “the presence of the Islamists in govern-
ment has not only helped the militants to operate freely but limited the ability
of the government to act decisively.”65 During this period, alongside the main
opposition party, the AL, Sufi masters took a clear stand against the rise of mili-
tancy. Najibul Bashar Maizbhandari, the then International Affairs Secretary of
the Ruling BNP and founder of BTF, quit his position and accused both BNP
and Jama’at for harboring militancy in the country.
There are differences among these three political organizations on a number
of issues. The ICM is identical with any fundamentalist Islamic political parties
that intend to introduce an ideal-type pristine Islamic state in Bangladesh,
whereas the BZP and the BTF are more accommodationist in that they empha-
sized local heritage along with Islam. Because of its more conservative stand,
the ICM aligned itself with some radical Islamists in recent times that support
the BNP, while the BZP and the BTF, being accommodationist in nature, aligned
themselves with the AL and other secular parties. Yet all three Sufi masters
stood against militancy, and the Jama’at-e-Islami; all of them view the alliance
between the BNP and the Jama’at as unholy.
Nevertheless, by both political and social engagement the leading Sufi mas-
ters of Bangladesh have been responding to the challenges posed by the state
and the Islamists. Especially the period between 2001 and 2006, a period that
represents the zenith of the militant Islamists, all three parties attempted to
defend their traditions by denouncing militancy and by criticizing public poli-
cies pursued by the ruling elites. In contrast to the observations of Charles
Lindholm, it was not only the Islamist zealots but also the Sufi masters who chal-
lenged the government. To encounter the ruling coalition government, they
formed alliances with the mainstream secular political parties. Despite their
lack of a large political support base, they exert influence upon secular political
parties and leaders, especially during the time of general elections. This is most
visible where the estimated voting difference among the candidates of major
political parties is narrow. They transformed themselves from moral guides to
political guides of the masses. It may be mentioned here that the BNP–Jama’at
alliance could not win the general election of 2008. Although it cannot be said
that their failure to win the election was the result of the preaching of the three
Sufi masters, it can be presumed that their preaching damaged the image of the
alliance and helped people stand against militancy.
Conclusion
It was mainly the Sufi masters who introduced the people of Bangladesh to
Islam. Yet the Sufi masters remained marginalized in politics since the middle
of the nineteenth century. Because of some historical reasons some of the Sufi
masters moved forward to establish political parties. In terms of electoral suc-
cess, their achievement is not a very encouraging one but the very participation
in the electoral politics provided them with an acceptance as a force that was
hitherto unknown and unprecedented in Bangladesh. Capitalizing the legiti-
macy crisis of the military junta, the chaotic situation of the power politics, and
the rise of radical Islamic political organizations in Bangladesh, they creatively
expanded their space in the political arena. Despite deliberate attempts of
modernists and Islamists, the Sufi masters transformed the attitudes held by the
ruling elites toward them. The politics of alliance of the big parties gave them
an opportunity to portray themselves as a political force both to the masses and
to political elites. The engagement of the Sufi masters in politics and in organiz-
ing political parties is thus neither a reaction to a modernization process nor a
consequence of diminishing hegemony of the rulers, as some scholars argue.66
Rather, it is a creative initiative of adaptation and also a testimony of pragma-
tism to expand their space in the mainstream political culture as well as estab-
lish their authority among the political elites and the masses. Many Sufis may
well conform to the general perception of Sufism as apolitical. However, this
chapter and Phillipon’s show that some Sufis are entering the political arena.
Geaves, writing about the British South Asian Diaspora, makes it clear that Sufi
expressions of support for the war against terror are calculated to earn political
favor, at the expense of extremist Muslims. Sirhindi and Shah Inayat, discussed
by Buehler and Bovin respectively, also had political goals.
Notes
*
The synopsis of this chapter was presented at the annual conference of American
Academy of Religion in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 1, 2010.
1
For details, Annemarie Schimmel, And Muhammad Is His Messenger: The Veneration
of the Prophet in Islamic Piety (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press,
1985), 32.
2
Arthur F Buehler, Sufi heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the rise of the
mediating sufi shaykh (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 148.
3
Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organizations, trans., A.M. Hender-
son and T. Parsons ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1947), 153.
4
For details, see Vincent J. Cornell, Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroc-
can Sufism (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1998).
5
Paul L. Heck (ed.), Sufism and Politics: The Power of Spirituality (Princeton, NJ:
Markus Wiener, 2007), 3.
6
Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civi-
lization, 3 vols (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 2:207.
7
Charles Lindholm, “Prophets and Pirs: Charismatic Islam in the Middle East
and South Asia,” in Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu (eds.) Embodying Charisma:
Modernity, Locality and the Performance of Emotion in Sufi Cults, 209–33 (London:
Routledge, 1998), 218.
8
Maneeza Hossain, Broken Pendulum: Bangladesh’s Swing to Radicalism (Washington,
D.C.: Hudson Institute, 2007), 19.
9
Sarwar Alam, “Sufi Pluralism in Bangladesh: The Case of Maizbhandariyya
Tariqa.” In Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, vol. xxxiv, no. 1: 28-45,
Fall, 2010, 29.
10
Peter Bertocci, J. (2002). “Form and Variation in Maizbhandari Sufism.” Paper
presented at the conference, “The Work of the Imaginaire in South Asian Islam,”
North Carolina State University, April 12-14, 2002 available at http://www.doc-
stoc.com/docs/18727779/form-and-variation-in-maijbhandari-sufism, retrieved
July 23 2011.
11
Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal (Down to A. D. 1538), second
edition (Chittagong, Bangladesh: Baitush Sharaf Islamic Research Institute,
1985), 185.
12
For details, see Eaton, Richard M. The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204-
1760 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).
13
Syed Murtaza Ali, Saints of East Pakistan (Dacca, East Pakistan: Oxford University
Press, 1971), 1.
14
For detail, see Tofael Ahmed, Jugey Jugey Bangladesh [Bangladesh in Different
Eras] (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Nawroze Kitabistan, 1992), 38–9; Syed Ali Ahsan,
Bangla Sahitter Itihas: Adi Parbo [History of Bengali Literature: Ancient Phase]
(Dhaka, Bangladesh: Shilpataru Prakashani, 1998), 6, 17; Ali 1971, 1.
15
For details, see Muhammad Enamul Haq, A History of Sufi-ism in Bengal (Dhaka,
Bangladesh: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1975, 204–34.
16
Haq, 12, 165; Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal (Down to A. D.
1538), second edition (Chittagong, Bangladesh: Baitush Sharaf Islamic Research
Institute, 1985), 124; Annemarie Schimmel, Mystical dimensions of Islam (Chapel
Hill, NC: The University of California Press, 1975), 351.
17
Karim 1985, 46.
18
Niharranjan Ray, Bangalir Itihas: Adi Parbo [History of Bengalis: Ancient Phase]
(Calcutta, India: Book Emporium, 1949), corresponding Bengali calendar
year was 1356 (corresponding Bengali calendar year was 1356), 288–9, 520–1,
603–5.
19
For example, see Sarah F. D Ansari, Sufi saints and state power. The pīrs of Sind,
1843–1947 (Lahore, Vanguard Books LMT, 1992).
20
For the Wahhabi influence in the countryside, see Kart Gardner, “Women and
Islamic Revivalism in a Bangladeshi Community,” in P. Jeffery and A. Basu, eds.,
Approaching Gender: Women’s Activism and Politicized Religion in South Asia, 203–20
(New York: Routledge, 1998), 203–20.
21
Ali Riaz, Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh: A Complex Web (New York: Routledge,
2008), 103.
22
Bhuian Md. Monoar Kabir, Politics and Development of the Jama’at-e-Islami Bangla-
desh (Delhi: South Asian Publishers, 2006), 37.
23
Ibid, 37.
24
See Ali Riaz, God willing: the politics of Islamism in Bangladesh (Lanham, MD: Row-
man & Littlefield, 2004), 160 (footnote 12).
25
Kabir 2006, 10.
26
The Daily Star, January 2, 2009 (accessed October 8, 2010).
27
The Daily Star, September 1, 2005 (accessed October 10, 2010).
28
Lintner, Bertil. Bangladesh Extremist Islamist Consolidation. New Delhi, Faultlines,
Vol 14, July 2003 available at http://asiapacificms.com/papers/pdf/faultlines_
bangladesh.pdf retrieved July 26 2011.
29
In protest of passing the 15th amendment bill that excludes the phrase “Abso-
lute Faith and Trust in Allah” from the Constitution on June 30, 2011, the ICM
declared a day-long strike in Dhaka on July 3 and across the country on July 10.
For details, see “Twelve parties call hartal for July 10-11” Daily Star July 1, 2011.
http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/print_news.php?nid  192388 (accessed
August 3, 2011).
30
Far Eastern Economic Review, April 7, 1983.
31
The Daily Star, December 1, 2005 (accessed October 8, 2010).
32
Kabir 2006, 10.
33
34
Sayyid Delaor Husayn Maizbhandari, Velayet-e-Mutlaka, eighth edition (Chit-
tagong, Bangladesh: Anjuman-e-Mottabe’in-e-Gaus-e-Maizbhandari, 2001), 81.
35
36
For details, see The Daily Star, June 30, 2010 “Jamaat trio held on court order” avail-
able at http://www.thedailystar.net/newDesign/news-details.php?nid  144739
(accessed August 3, 2011).
37
Cornell 1999, 207.
38
Ahmet T Karamustafa, “Preface.” Knowledge of God in Classical Sufism: Foundations
of Islamic Mystical Theology, trans. & ed. John Renard (New York: Paulist Press,
2004), xi.
39
For details, see, Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Cus-
todians of Change (NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).
40
For details, see, Muinuddin Ahmad Khan, History of the Faraidi Movement in Bengal
(1818–1906) (Karachi: Pakistan Historical Society, 1965).
41
Sufia M. Uddin, Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity and Language in an
Islamic Nation (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press 2006),
54-8. For a general discussion on the difference between Arabian Wahhabis and
Ahl-i Hadīth, see Khaled A. El Fadl, The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extrem-
ist (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 89–91.
42
Fazlur Rahman, Islam (New York: Anchor Books, 1966), 250, and also Khan 1965.
43
For details, see Mohammad Rashiduzzaman, “Islam, Muslim Identity and Nation-
alism in Bangladesh,” Journal of South Asia and Middle Eastern Studies Vol.XVIII,
no.1: 36–48, Fall 1994, 36–60.
44
For details, see Peter J. Bertocci, “Islam and Social Construction of the Bangla-
desh Countryside.” In R. Ahmed (ed.) Understanding the Bengal Muslims: Interpreta-
tive Essays, 71-85 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001).
45
Robert Rozehnal, Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century
Pakistan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and also Ansari 1992.
46
Karim 1985, 160.
47
Haq 1975, 287; see also Bennett’s second chapter in this book.
48
For details, see Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims 1871–1906: A Quest for Iden-
tity, Second Edition (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
49
For details, see Burton S. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other
Essays (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987) and also Peter van der Veer,
Van Der Veer, Peter. Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India (Berkeley
and London: University of California Press, 1994).
50
See Syed S. “Islam in Bangladesh: A Dichotomy of Bengali and Muslim Identi-
ties,” in Islam Quarterly, 4, 3: 221–36, 1997, and also Kabir 1990, 118–36.
51
Bruce Vaughn, Islamist Extremism in Bangladesh (Washington, DC: Library of Con-
gress, 2007) available at http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD  ADA4648
32&Location  U2&doc  GetTRDoc.pdf retrieved July 26 2011.
52
Buehler 1998, xv.
53
For details, see The Daily Star, October 18, 2005 (accessed July 10, 2010). The for-
mer Prime Minister and BNP-leader Begum Khaleda Zia denied the existence of
militancy again at public rally on May 19, 2010 (The Daily Ittefaq May 20, 2010).
54
These included Mufti Shahidul Islam of Narail, Maulana Habibur Rahman of Syl-
het, Muhammad Habibur Rahman of Mymensingh, and Maulana Tafazzal Haque
of Sunamgonj district. For details see The Daily Star (December 27, 2006).
55
http://www.thedailystar.net2005/11/17/d51117011914.htm (accessed July 24,
2011).
56
Turkey is probably an exception where the Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan
(since 2002) and one of his predecessors Necmettin Erbakan (1996–7) are the
followers of the Naqshbandi tradition. But they neither established any political
parties based on Sufi ideals nor were they Sufi masters themselves. For details, see
Buehler 1998, 13.
57
For details, see Kabir 1999.
58
Riaz 2004, 5.
59
For a glimpse, see “Judiciary dwarfs police in TIB graft report: South Asian News
Agency, December 25, 2010 at http://www.sananews.net/english/2010/12/25/
judiciary-dwarfs-police-in-tib-graft-report/ (accessed August 3, 2011).
60
For a detailed discussion on governmentality, see Michel Foucault, Power, ed.,
James D. Faubion, trans., Robert Hurley and others (New York: the New Press,
2000), 201–22.
61
Tazeen M. Murshid, The Sacred and the Secular: Bengal Muslim Discourses,1871–1977
(Calcutta, India: Oxford University Press, 1995), 370.
62
Riaz 2008, 30.
63
Ibid, 45.
64
A.M.M. Shawkat Ali, Forces of Terrorism in Bangladesh (Dhaka, Bangladesh: The
University Press, 2006), 41.
65
Riaz 2008, 61.
66
Riaz 2004, 5.
Chapter 11
The Transformation and Development of

South Asian Sufis in Britain
Ron Geaves
In the British Muslim diaspora, Sufism has always played a significant role, not
only with regard to its numerical significance but also due to its high-profile
participation in the contested narratives that arise out of the Muslim communi-
ties with a focus on what constitutes the normative form of Islam. However,
Sufism itself is difficult to define in the British context. Notions of Sufism range
from Orientalist understandings of Islamic mysticism, more often found among
“New Age” appropriations to varied interpretations of Sufi allegiance found
among Muslim migrants and their descendents where the label “Sufism” itself
is contested and tassawuf’, “traditional Islam,” or “ahl as-Sunna wa Jama’at” is
preferred.1 The former group are not as prominent in Britain as in the USA,
where Marcia Hermansen is able to speak of Sufism as “theirs” and “ours” signi-
fying respectively Muslim penetration of the USA through migration or convert
esoteric appropriations.2 Yet it was Sufi traditions with their sophisticated meta-
physics, ethical disciplines, music, and above all, poetry and mystical experi-
ences that attracted the Romantic vein of Orientalism in the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries and while the Muslim world came to terms with Euro-
pean modernity, Sufism was perceived as the least compatible with modernism
and even to blame for the backwardness found in Muslim nations. In contrast,
some Western orientalists embraced the poetry and mystical experiences as one
of the cultural heights of Eastern achievement and the pinnacle of Muslim civi-
lization. From such orientalist translations of Sufi mystical writings and visits
from prominent Eastern esoterics and Sufis to the West arose an appropriation
that divorced Sufism from Islam and provided the foundations for a form of
universal mysticism associated with Muslim traditions but rarely with Islam.3 In
the late twentieth century such discourses and practices were likely to become
assimilated into the “pick and mix” of spiritual and psychotherapeutic bundles
that form the “New Age.” Significant figures in the historical process of appro-
priating Sufism from the mainstream of Islam and transferring its teachings to
perennial philosophy where elements could then be cherry-picked for the New
Age phenomena in the second half of the twentieth century were Idris Shāh
(1924–96), Hazrat Ināyat Khan (1882–1927), Georges Gurdjieff (1866–1949),
and Irina Tweedie (1907–99).4 A reverse trend in which British “truth-seekers”

return back to Islam after engaging with Sufism in non-Muslim forms can be
found in the conversion processes of the Haqqani Naqshbandis.5
The arrival of Muslim economic migrants after World War II, responding to
Britain’s demands for a manufacturing labor force in certain industries brought
with it a number of prominent South Asian Muslims whose allegiance was to
Sufism and, in addition, large numbers of rural Muslims from Pakistan and
later Bangladesh who originated from either Mirpur or Sylhet, both regional
strongholds of a traditional Islam with close links to Sufism. Prominent among
these are Pīr Marouf, Sufi Abdullah, and Pīr Wahhab Siddiqui. Pīr Marouf of
the Qādiri tariqa and Sufi Abdullah of the Naqshbandiya both arrived in 1961
and went on to establish themselves respectively in Bradford and Birmingham.
Pīr Marouf was to draw upon traditional support for Sufism in the rural districts
of Mirpur and flourished in Bradford where such communities had transmi-
grated. Using this population as a secure base for his activities he created one
of the first national organizations, Jami’at-i Tabligh ul-Islam, to represent the
South Asian allegiance to Sufism. Around eight mosques and six schools repre-
sent the fruits of his activities in Bradford.6 Pīr Wahhab Siddiqi arrived in Brit-
ain in 1972 and established a strong base centerd on a mosque in Coventry. He
also established his own national organization to represent South Asian Sufi
allegiance, the International Muslim Organization. Pīr Wahhab Siddiqui
focused his attention on education and since his death in 1994 his sons have
endeavored to develop the property purchased by their father outside Nunea-
ton and turn it into a thriving dar ul-‘ulūm to produce the future ‘ulama that will
represent the brand of Islam-appropriated Sufis as “traditional.” The grounds
of the school are unique in that they contain the mazār (tomb-shrine) of Pīr
Wahhab Siddiqui, the only such location in Britain. Sufi Abdullah, similar to Pīr
Marouf, was employed for many years as a night shift factory worker alongside
other Pakistani migrant workers. Beginning from a Qur’ān school for children
of his fellow workers based in his home, he went on to establish one of the most
powerful centers of Sufism in Britain with its headquarters in Birmingham.
Such figures as Pīr Wahhab Siddiqi in Coventry, Pīr Marouf in Bradford, and
Sufi Abdullah in Birmingham were to become significant regional leaders with
considerable skills in micro-politics. In addition to building mosques and
schools they represented the Muslim community in local Council issues such as
racism, education, and housing, along with the traditional role expected of a pīr
to lead a tariqa.
In the activities of these three South Asian shaikhs, it is possible to discern a
number of characteristics that were to become central in the relocation of
Sufism to Britain. While creating the various structures to introduce and pre-
serve Sufi beliefs and practices in Britain, it was important to establish Sufism
within the spectrum of Islamic tradition. To a large degree the contestation
over what represents legitimate Islamic belief and practice had been raging for
The Transformation and Development of South Asian Sufis in Britain 183
a century in India and had continued unabated in Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Drawing upon Talal Asad’s theorizing of Islamic notions of tradition, the shai-
khs were involved in an intense struggle to create a “discursive Islamic tradi-
tion,” that is, “a tradition of Muslim discourse that addresses itself to conceptions
of an Islamic past and future, with reference to a particular Islamic practice in
the present.”7 In this struggle, drawing upon interpretations of the Qur’ān and
Hadīth and the behavior of exemplary figures in Islamic history, the shaikhs
engaged in an ongoing polemical contestation to demonstrate that Sufism was
both normative and “correct.” Regardless of their individual narratives for
authenticity that emphasized hagiographical miracle stories and biographies of
illustrious ancestors, chains of authority, and connections to shrine centers in
the place of origin, it became essential to find a common discourse of legiti-
macy. Initially the South Asian shaikhs and their respective ‘ulama gathered
around the common identity of Barelvi. As this failed to convince younger gen-
erations of British Muslims who were either ignorant of historic contestations in
South Asia or considered it an irrelevance, the British Sufis moved to the label
of Ahl as Sunna wa-Jama’at. In more recent years this has been modified to
“traditional Islam.” This chapter will address these transformations and place
them in the wider framework of a protracted struggle to develop “discursive
traditions” that can claim both Islamic legitimacy and authenticity. To this
extent Britain’s Sufism is a microcosm of struggles taking place across the Mus-
lim world, and the strength of Sufism in Britain reflects not only the historic
strength of the tradition in the places where Britain’s Muslims originated but
the reawakening of Muslims to the Sufi option across the Muslim majority
world.
Further migrations, both economic and as a result of political turmoil in parts
of the Muslim world in the last twenty years, have seen the transplantation of
several prominent Sufi turuk including various offshoots of the Naqshbandis,
Chīshtīs, Qādiris, Mevlevis, Alawis, Shadhilis, and Tijanis to join those already
here of South Asian origin. Britain’s Muslim presence has been transformed by
the arrival of these various populations, yet still predominantly remains origi-
nating from Pakistan and Bangladesh, but also today from Malaysia, Turkish
Cyprus, Iran, Yemen, as well as North, West, and East Africa. These are all places
where, either historically or as a living faith tradition, Sufism is significant.
Slow to organize itself in the British Muslim diaspora, this significant pres-
ence of Sufis or Sufi-influenced Muslims remains largely marginalized in the
representation of Islam at all levels. A part of the problem is that Sufism has
been separated from the mainstream of Muslim belief and practice, both by the
orientalist emphasis on mysticism and the critique of Sufi teachings and prac-
tices by both Islamic modernists and the Islamic revivalist movements of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The situation has not been helped by defi-
nitions of the term “Sufism” by Western scholars who tend to focus on suf, the
Arabic for wool, the material of the traditional Sufi garb, and consequently
further remove its moorings at the heart of Islamic spirituality. Muslims who
practice the disciplines associated with Sufism are more likely to refer to safā
meaning purity, or to trace their origins to the Ahl al-Suffa, the People of the
Bench or Porch, picked out in the Qur’ān from among the original Compan-
ions of the Prophet Muhammad as particularly pious and devoted to the remem-
brance of Allah. It is believed that these poor but very devout Companions were
offered shelter in the entrance to Muhammad’s quarters in the first mosque
built in Medina. From this favored position they were said to remember Allah
day and night, remaining in constant prayer. These pious companions of the
Prophet who remembered God day and night constitute the exemplar for
Sufism to the present day. Those who define themselves as Sufis from within
Islam practice tasawwuf, translated as cleansing of the heart or purification of
the ego, through the constant remembrance of Allah, achieved through inward
or spoken repetition of His divine Names. However, the primary reason for the
recollection of Allah’s names is to maintain God as the primary focus of the
individual’s life. The term tasawwuf is derived from the Arabic word safā, and
hence someone who attempts to purify their inner being by following ilm al-ta-
sawwuf (the path of self-purification) is regarded as a Sufi. However, for tens of
thousands involved in such practices, the term Sufi divorces them from their
primary identity as Muslims and they prefer not to be identified as such. There
are also countless millions in the Muslim world who revere the Sufis of the past
and seek the baraka (blessings) and istigraha (intercession) that it is believed
they can bestow on the supplicant. These Muslims will attend the graves of
Allah’s auliya (friends of God) on occasions and have a piety which holds
Muhammad in an especially elevated position in a divine cosmology. The pat-
terns of migration have brought many such Muslims into Britain, where they
have established their own mosque networks and provided the support for Brit-
ain’s living Sufi leaders.
These Muslims are likely to remain angry with a Sufism that has been cut away
from Islam; however, it is also true that Sufism remains one of the main con-
duits for conversion for Westerners in both Europe and North America. There
are a handful of Sufi teachers who have utilized this popularity of Sufism among
British truth-seekers and used it as a bridge to conversion. Foremost among
them is the Haqqani Naqshbandis and their highly charismatic leader, Shaikh
Nazim.8
Muslims who have allegiance to Sufism in Britain are easily recognized with a
discerning eye. They may not necessarily belong to one of the turuk, living
under the guidance of a traditional Sufi master (shaikh, pīr). A mosque that is
sympathetic to Sufism usually has the Arabic inscriptions of ˜Ya Allah’ and ‘Ya
Muhammad’ to the right and left of the qibla. The Muslims who use the mosque
are likely to practice shafaa (intercessionary prayers) or istighatha (spiritual
assistance) in which Muhammad’s name is invoked. Mawlid (the Prophet’s
birthday) is celebrated along with street processions and dhikr (the remembrance
of Allah’s names is acknowledged as central in Muslim devotion even if not

actually practiced. Celebrations of urs (the death day of deceased Sufis) take
place annually and many will visit the graves of well-known Sufis seeking bless-
ings and intercession. Finally Muhammad is perceived as more than the bringer
of revelation and exemplar. The Prophet of Islam is regarded as the ultimate
mystic and unique in creation, the first manifestation of God’s light.9 However,
do not always expect them to identify themselves as Sufis, as they may prefer to
call themselves traditional Muslims or Ahl as-Sunna wa Jama’at, a self-chosen
title that distinguishes them as the authentic or correct Sunni Muslims. This
latter term is highly contested and requires some explanation.
To understand the insistence to label themselves as Ahl as-Sunna wa Jama’at,
it is necessary to go back to the nineteenth century and the origins of the Barelvi
movement in India. It is argued that the Barelvi tradition originating in the
organizational ability of Ahmad Reza Khan Barelvi (1856–1921) to defend and
justify as normative the mediatory custom-laden South Asian Islam that is closely
linked to the inspiration, leadership, and intercession of Sufis, both living and
deceased. It is this movement that remains the dominant group among British
South Asian Muslims.10 The efforts of Ahmad Reza Khan to establish a move-
ment that could counteract the reformers of Deoband and those influenced by
them such as the Muslim missionary movement, Tabligh-i Jamaat and the more
hardline anti-Sufi Ahl-i Hadīth, resulted to some degree in the institutionaliza-
tion of diverse Sufi movements and their allies and gave a common voice to
counter a successful critique.11
The struggle to claim the mantle of being the normative form of Islam, the
Ahl-as Sunna wa-Jama’at, or traditional Sunni Muslims, would lead many of the
pīrs into a political and religious conflict further complicated by the various
positions taken by these competing movements toward the struggle for Indian
Independence and the creation of Pakistan.12
Although not all Sufis of the subcontinent were to affiliate or identify them-
selves as Barelvis, many of the dominant turuk were to do so, especially those
such as the Indian Naqshbandis and others who considered themselves to
belong to the more moderate forms of Sufism that abided by the Hanafi fiqh
(jurisprudence). Not only did these movements relocate themselves in Britain
with the mass migration of South Asians in the 1960s and 1970s, but they also
brought with them existing rivalries, strategies, leadership patterns, worldviews,
beliefs, and practices which were all replicated in British mosques throughout
the second half of the twentieth century. Thus the shaikhs and pīrs entering
Britain among the economic migrants were not only charismatic leaders
renowned for their piety and links to established turuk, accepting bai'at (the
formal vow of allegiance) from individuals in traditional Sufi manner but also
significant leaders of the Barelvi tradition keen to establish powerful centers in
the new location and compete for the hearts and minds of British Muslims,
challenging and fighting their old rivals, all now labeled under the pejorative
label of Wahhabi, a useful counter-strategy as the policy makers and media of

Western Europe and North America came to realize the significance of the
original Saudi Arabian Wahhabi restoration of a puritanical Islam in the nine-
teenth century and its modern revival, the Salafi movement, in anti-Western
discourses and violent religious extremism.13 These various roles of the South
Asian Sufi pīrs in Britain were to complicate the traditional role of the charis-
matic Sufi shaikh based on spiritual authority. The British pīrs were brought into
the arena of community politics, competing claims of leadership, representa-
tion of their respective communities to the civic frameworks of British society,
in addition to their spiritual leadership of the tariqa.14
The dominance of Muslims of South Asian origin in the British context has
perpetuated a custom-laden Sufism with its roots in the subcontinent and con-
tinued historic rivalries between turuk and with other Islamic movements that
have been historical competitors in the highly contested religious environment
of colonial India. The subcontinent Sufis, with their custom-laden version of
Islam focused on the intercession of saints and the Prophet, shrines, baraka (the
power to bless), powers, miracles, and the performance of dhikr maintained
within the pīr/murīd relationship, had never been able to organize themselves
nationally in Britain in spite of their apparent numerical superiority. Even so,
the arrival of a number of charismatic Sufi pīrs and shaikhs from the subconti-
nent provided the impetus for greater cohesion as they formed powerful groups
of Sufis able to construct mosques and produce promotional literature to coun-
ter the reformist movements. However, the traditional loyalty of each group of
murīds to their own shaikh counteracted this push toward a stronger and more
assertive national identity.
The establishment of turuk from around the Muslim world has shifted the
discourses of opposition. The South Asian grouping of ‘barelvi’ became prob-
lematic in the context of global Islamic discourses. It remains open to the criti-
cism of being a South Asian sectarian affiliation and thus loses legitimacy to the
more internationalized voice of the Wahabbi-related opposition. ‘Ahl as Sunna
wa Jama’at’ provided a solution but led into a deeply contested realm where all
Sunnis claimed the title as normative. Young British Muslims with little knowl-
edge of how the contested domains within Islam had arisen historically were
more inclined to be drawn toward the Wahhabi/Salafi voices which benefited
from better organization, more financial resources, and considerably more
articulated expressions of Islamic doctrine (aqida).
In recent years the turuk have provided a series of organizational structures to
Sufi adherents and capitalized on the strong empathy with the teachings of tra-
ditional Islam among British Muslim populations. The term “traditional Islam”
is used to distinguish a brand of Islam that acknowledges 1400 years of tradition
as authoritative alongside the teachings of the Qu’ran and Sunna and recognizes
the contribution of Sufi spirituality, the legal interpretations of the ‘ulama, and
the four schools of law. This label of traditional Islam has been harnessed by
Sufis and Sufi sympathizers in opposition to the neo-orthodoxies that have been
vociferous critics of Sufism. The identification with traditional Islam has turned
the tables on the opposition. Instead of competing for the same label, Sufis and
their sympathizers can now lay claim to be the adherents of a form of Islam that
predates the Wahhabi-style revival by nearly a thousand years. Thus the oppo-
nents of Sufism can be assigned a place in history as neo-orthodoxies that have
tried to usurp the form of Sunni Islam that evolved from the Prophetic period
and the Caliphate. In one stroke it became the turn of the Wahhabi/Salafi reviv-
alists to be accused of introducing bid'a (innovation) into the Muslim religious
arena. Thus, in recent years the representatives of the turuk have been able to
provide a unifying Islamic discourse based on practice and belief and drawing
upon the traditional loyalty of the above populations to the leadership of pīrs and
shaikhs rather than the ‘ulama but also to discover a successful discourse that is
able to recruit from the younger generations of British Muslims.
The main contributory reason for the inability of the Sufi turuk to attract the
young British-born generations, at least, up to the end of the twentieth century,
was that Sufism in Britain remained associated with ethnic identity, a means of
maintaining traditions and customs tightly bound with localities in the place of
origin. Thus Sufism has functioned not so much as a transmission of spirituality
within Islam or a voice for correct aqida, but as a boundary mechanism primar-
ily concerned with the transmission of cultural and religious traditions often
rooted in a specific regional heritage. Sometimes these traditions are dupli-
cated so effectively in the diaspora situation, providing a mirror image of village
customs and practices, that I have preferred to use the term “cultural binary
fission” to describe the process of reproduction. The term “binary fission” is
borrowed from biology and refers to the most basic reproductive method
known to nature, where ameba simply divide their cells and split in two to create
a duplicate of themselves. I am not arguing that the attempt is fully successful
as there will always be transformations that take place in a new environment,
and some of these will be explored, but that the turuk have primarily functioned
as attempts to duplicate the cultural forms of the locality of origin.15
This has been in opposition to the dominant trend in Britain since the 1980s;
to find an Islam that is stripped of cultural baggage and able to find itself living
alongside British cultural norms, where they were not antithetical to Islamic
values. This trend known as British Islam to its supporters was more likely to
draw upon the culture/religion dichotomy more commonly found among
those who drew upon Sayyid Qutb or Maulana Mawdudi for inspiration.
Although far more politically moderate than such advocates of an Islamic state,
these new organizations derived from the narratives of British Islam and able to
work alongside Britain’s government, remained sceptical of the Sufi presence
in Britain.
The turn of the century shows signs of significant change. The British Sufi
scene now demonstrates marked attempts to carve out a new cultural and
r eligious space that creatively interacts with the new environment of Britain.
The turuk have become more aware of the need to draw upon the transnational
and transcultural nature of globalized memberships and to articulate the narra-
tives of tasawwuf and traditional Islamic sciences in an intellectual environment,
addressing both Muslims and non-Muslims. The World Wide Web is an essential
aspect of this globalization. Websites such as www.masud.co.uk and www.deen-
port.com are typical of a genre that represents Sufi-orientated Islam. Others
examples are the Deen-Intensive Foundation at www.deen-intensive.com; The
Nawawi Foundation at www.nawawi.org; The Zaytuna Institute at www.zaytuna.
org; Ibn Abbas Institute at www.ibnabbas.org; and representing prominent indi-
viduals, www.sunnipath.com and www.zaidshakir.com. The online presence of
traditional Muslim tasawwuf does not advertise itself as Sufism or even rally
behind the epithet of ahl as-Sunna wa Jama’at, but rather prefers to speak of
itself as representing traditional Islam.
Sufism in Britain is beginning to go transglobal and escape the confines of
ethnicity and locality. The World Wide Web is an essential aspect of this global-
ization. Epitomizing the new Sufism are websites such as www.masud.co.uk and
www.deenport.com.16 The online presence of traditional Muslim tasawwuf does
not advertise itself as Sufism but rather prefers to speak of itself as representing
traditional Islam and the teachings of the four schools of law (fiqh). The websites
originate in Spain, Britain, and North America and address themselves specifi-
cally to Muslims in the West. There is an implicit but not explicit critique of
Wahhabism and Salafism. For example, Imam Zaid Shakir, born in Berkeley,
California, states on his website that “it is our desire to see Muslims, especially
here in the West, avoid the historical tendencies that have resulted in fragmen-
tation and the loss of influence of our Ummah by benefiting from our wealthy
heritage.”17 The site is advertised as “able to present you with a wealth of infor-
mation mined from classical sources of our enduring tradition.”18 The key to
interpreting the allegiance of the site lies in the acknowledgment of tradition as
an oblique critique of the Wahhabis and Salafis who are often critical of isnaad
and ijaza, preferring direct interpretation of original sacred sources. Tradition
refers to the four founders of the schools of law, Al-Ghazali, and various other
“sober” Sufis acceptable to the wider Muslim world.19
The two websites selected above address themselves to British Muslims and
are the vehicles of dissemination for the views of Shaikh Abdul-Hakim Murad
and Shaikh Nuh Ha Nim Keller. The latter is a high-profile American convert
educated in philosophy and Arabic at the University of California, UCLA, and
a shaikh in the Shadhili tariqa. He describes himself as a specialist in Islamic law,
especially the traditional sciences of Hadīth and Shafi’i and Hanafi fiqh, which
he studied in Syria and Jordan.20 He is the author of books on tasawwuf and
classical jurisprudence.21 Shaikh Abdul-Hakim Murad describes himself as a
commentator on Islam in Britain. The websites function as online information
sources to resolve questions posed by young Muslims that arise from living in a
non-Muslim environment. The answers provide erudite explanations based on

classical fiqh. Most of the websites are owned by educated young Western Mus-
lims with allegiance to traditional Islam and Sufism and skilled in the tradi-
tional Islamic sciences. A common feature of the websites is the emphasis on
fiqh. This “fiqhsation” echoes and competes with the scripturalist approach
used so successfully by the Wahhabi and Salafi groups and manifests a gentler
but nonetheless equally conviction-orientated version of islamicization that
avoids politicization.
In other respects, the websites demonstrate a continuity with the earlier strat-
egies adopted by the traditional turuk and their supporters. The articles on the
website, although written in a style that demonstrates both familiarity with Eng-
lish language and scholarly modes of writing echo well-trodden themes that
could be heard in any sermon delivered by traditional South Asian Sufi-friendly
imams in British mosques or delivered in conferences wherever such groups
and their sympathizers gather. Typical articles in the genre are “Who are the ahl
al-Sunna?”, a direct attack on Al-Albani, the renowned Salafi leader. Other arti-
cles are on tasawwuf and shari’a by Shafiq ur-Rahman22; The Meaning of Tasawwuf
by Shaikh Shahidullah Faridi,23 an article on Abdul Qādir al-Jaylani (Jīlānī) is
considered by most turuk to be the greatest of all Sufis, the Qutb, written by
Abdul Aziz Ahmed.24
As mentioned above, all of these themes are common themes in polemical
writing aimed toward traditional Sufi opponents but on the websites they also
function as pedagogical material for young supporters of tasawwuf and recruit-
ment devices for the uncommitted. The websites provide a means for the tradi-
tional supporters of Sufi-orientated Islam to narrow the gap on their rivals who
have been previously able to more effectively mobilize in Britain and elsewhere
in the Muslim diaspora spaces, but more significantly they demonstrate the
international or global identity now attached to the supporters of such forms of
Muslim tradition. The online shaikhs are not guardians of tomb-shrines, succes-
sors to hereditary lineages descended from long-deceased auliya, first-genera-
tion pīrs and shaikhs who have formed bastions of support around mosques built
in various British cities and commandeered as territory; nor are they those who
visit from places of origin to preach and collect funds and return home.
Although commanding support of young British Muslims attracted to their
teachings and seeking both tradition and spirituality, such support transcends
regional or ethnic loyalties. Most of the online shaikhs are trained and educated
in the Middle East, especially Damascus, and are unlikely to have connections
with Pakistan, Bangladesh, or the cultures of places from which the families of
British Muslims originate.
The influential presence of the online shaikhs may well lead to the demise of
cultural binary fission and to the emergence of a transglobal Sufism that will
differ from historic precedents in that it will not be tariqa-dominated around
the influence of one significant charismatic figure but rather will find tariqa and
shaikh/murīd relations sublimated to serve the cause of “traditional Islam.” Even

where tariqa loyalty is maintained, the opening up of Sufi possibilities through
the increased knowledge of global activities, transglobal Sufi movements, and
their charismatic leaders gleaned through modern communication systems will
have a direct impact on the leadership exerted by South Asian Sufi shaikhs.
Increasingly young British Muslims of South Asian descent have made contact
with several varieties of Islamic discourses prevalent in Britain in the course of
their search for Islamic authenticity. They have heard the Wahhabi/Salafi-in-
spired narratives that condemn Sufism and judged them against the ethnic-
dominated turuk of South Asia. In this context, such forms of Sufism may lose
their traditional extended family-based loyalties.
Figures are appearing who are able to communicate fluently in English and
are sometimes members of academia. They often bypass the world of the
mosque and do not demonstrate their loyalty to tariqa and shaikh even when
they are themselves murīds but nevertheless Sufism influences their worldview.
They are not exponents of an Islam imbedded in local traditions and are often
fluent in their understanding and use of fiqh. The new Sufis are as scriptural as
their old adversaries, able to utilize the Qur’ān and Hadīth to great effect to put
across their message on the issues that matter to them. Ethnicity is transcended
to discover a common cause in either a universal consciousness of ummah or the
ideology belonging to the Ahl as-Sunna wa-Jama’at. For the young British Mus-
lims of South Asian origin the inspiration is as likely to come from their genera-
tion of shaikhs originating in Syria or Yemen who travel a preaching circuit in
Europe and North America or from high-profile Western converts as it is from
the South Asian elders in the turuk who are still perceived to pull up draw-
bridges of isolation in their respective spiritual fiefdoms of Coventry, Birming-
ham, Bradford, or Manchester. Tasawwuf in Britain is beginning to go transglobal
and escape the confines of ethnicity and locality. Today’s South Asian-origin
Sufis are just as likely to belong to turuk that originate elsewhere as their place
of origin, seeking their training in Damascus, Yemen, Cairo, North Africa, or
Granada. Indeed this process of international traveling resonant of historical
journeying for “truth” found historically in Sufism provides an opportunity for
either tariqa-less Sufis to emerge or multiple loyalties in which different spiri-
tual lessons are learned at the feet of several guides.
New Sufis in Britain are not so much adherents of new forms of Sufism but old
Sufism repackaged. If, on the one hand divergence has continued, on the other
hand, there are indications of a shift toward convergence among young British
Muslims and their leaders. Significantly this convergence refocuses awareness
on the spirituality of Sufism as opposed to its role as a carrier of ethnic or cul-
tural identity. The appearance of summer camps demonstrates the ability of
some Sufi movements to imitate the successful strategies of their rivals to recruit
from the second- and third-generation British Muslims. The Idāra Minhaj
ul-Qur’ān, a Qādiri-based movement (see Phillipon and Hermansen in this
book) has developed organizational structures that compare with the tight-knit
movements found among the Wahhabi reformers. These borrowed structures
appearing in a Sufi movement require a reassessment of the traditional organi-
zation of a tariqa and may provide a model for future movements that is more
appealing to young Muslims. In addition, the Idāra Minhaj ul-Qur’ān has not
only borrowed the organizational form but also some of the rhetoric of the
twentieth-century Islamic revivalist movements, yet this has been achieved with-
out compromising traditional Muslim Sufi-influenced belief and practice.25
On the whole, Sufis were not prone to such forms of primitive Islam but they
were open to criticisms of cultural accretion as long as they were unable to dis-
cern where tradition and ethnicity separated. On the other hand, they retained
an inner piety and aura of spirituality that appeared to be absent from the more
politicized reform movements. Recent voices are emerging that appear to take
account of these factors and are prepared to draw upon the new reform rheto-
ric of moderation, citizenship, and participation in Western democracies but
also realize the value of Muslim piety and spirituality.
I have pointed out that Sufism is enjoying new popularity among the Muslim
communities in Britain where it was already a significant part of the South Asian
presence in the country. This results from a combination of conscious strategies
of already existent Sufi groups to regroup against radical reform movements in
the struggle to maintain the loyalty of the younger generations and the realiza-
tion among the leaders of Sufi movements that they can utilize the govern-
ment’s search for allies in the war against religious extremism to reposition
themselves as the historic voice of moderate Islam. However, it should be noted
that it is not only in the West that Sufism is enjoying a renaissance. The revival
of Islam across the Muslim world does not only relate to Islamist radical move-
ments but has also witnessed a regeneration of traditional Islam that includes
the devotional piety of Sufism. It is not safe to analyze these trends as merely
reactions against modernity or secularism represented by Western-influenced
elites or even a searching for Islamic commitment that offers a more acceptable
choice than the discredited jihadists and their allies. John Voll argues that we
need to understand the popularity of Sufism in the Muslim world in the light of
a growing literature on “post-materialist values in late- or post-modern societ-
ies.” He argues that such movements springing up in the Muslim world are not
so much part of resistance to secularization and the processes of modernization
but “reflect a shift in what people really want out of life.”26 Such processes can
also be seen in changes to Western spirituality in the late twentieth and twenty-
first centuries and will include both second- and third-generation Muslims in
Britain while also providing homes for converts to Islam.27 This chapter and
several others in this book show how Sufis adapt and change, often against the
backdrop of criticism from some other Muslims about what is and what is not
acceptable practice and belief. Leaving open the issue of whether this is a reac-
tion against modernity or creative adaptation to deal with the day-to-day
c hallenges of contemporary life (as aspects of Philippon’s and Werbner’s

research suggests), Sufism’s popularity attests to its attraction across some radi-
cally different contexts, ranging from South Asia to Europe, North America,
and beyond.
Notes
1
The terminology used is part of the highly contested intra-Islamic engagement
to claim the mantle of legitimacy. There is a time progression that can be traced
here in the British context. As explained later, since the advent and influence
of prominent British converts drawing upon website resources there has been a
shift to “traditional Islam.” However, it should be noted that the shaikhs of the
high-profile Haqqani Naqshbandis have begun to use “classical Islam” or even
“true Islam” to describe Sufi allegiance; see Simon Stjermholm, Lovers of Muham-
mad. Lund Studies in History of Religions, Volume 29, (Lund: Lund University,
2011), 221ff.
2
Hermansen, Marcia , ‘Global Sufism: Theirs and Ours’ in Sufis in Western Soci-
ety, 26-45 Ron Geaves, Markus Dressler, Gritt Klinkhammer (eds) (London:
Routledge Sufi Series, 2009).
3
For a study of contestation within Islam which demonstrates how Sufis were
blamed for the decline of Muslim civilization, see Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufis and
Anti-Sufis: The Defence, Rethinking and Rejection of Sufism in the Modern World (Rich-
mond: Curzon Press, 2001). For an account of the appropriation of Sufism into
“mysticism that removed it from the heart of Islam,” see Gritt Klinkhammer, The
Emergence of Transethnic Sufism in Germany: From Mysticism to Authenticity’
in Sufis in Western Society,130–46 Ron Geaves, Markus Dressler, Gritt Klinkhammer
(eds) (London: Routledge Sufi Series, 2009).
4
The first three are well known and their lives and teachings have been well docu-
mented (for Khan, see Hermansen’s chapter in this book). Mark Sedgwick has
written extensively on the appropriation of Sufism from the Muslim world to
become part of perennial philosophy and located in European romanticism and
orientalism (see for example Mark Sedgwick, ‘European Neo-Sufi Movements
in the Interwar Period’ in Islam in Interwar Europe: Networks, Status, Challenges,
183–215 in Nathalie Clayer and Eric Germain (eds) (London: Hurst, 2008). Ron
Geaves has written introductions to Hazrat Inayat Khan and Idris Shah in the
context of Britain (see Ron Geaves, Sufis of Britain. Cardiff: Cardiff Academic
Press, 2000). Geaves prefers to call such forms of esoteric Western Sufism “univer-
sal Sufism.” Hermansen, in this book, uses “universalist.” Sedgwick prefers “neo-
Sufism” as he argues that not all Western “neo-Sufis” are universalists. However,
he admits that “neo-Sufism” is also confusing as it is also used for new forms of
Islamic-centerd Sufism that arose in the Arab world in the eighteenth century
(see Sedgwick, ‘The Reception of Sufi and Neo-Sufi Literature’ in Sufis in Western
Society, 180–97 Ron Geaves, Markus Dressler, Gritt Klinkhammer (eds) (London:
Routledge Sufi Series, 2009), 193 Notes 4. Perhaps the least well known is Irina
Tweedie who was born in Russia in 1907. After the death of her husband in 1954
she traveled to India where she met an eclectic Naqshbandi Sufi Master. Her
experiences with him became the book Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Train-
ing with a Sufi Master reprinted by the Golden Sufi Center in 1995. After his death
in 1966, she returned to England and brought his teachings to the West. Irina
Tweedie died in London in August 1999. Her work is continued through The
Golden Sufi Center in California.
5
See Stjermholm, Simon, op.cit.
6
Geaves, 2000, 94–7. Pīr Marouf’s life and activities can be found in more detail
in Philip Lewis, Islamic Britain: Religion, Politics and Identity Among British Muslims
(London: IB Tauris, 2002), 81–9. For an insider view the website of his tariqa can
be found at http://qadri-nausahi.com. Pnina Werbner has written extensively on
Sufi Abdullah in 2003 and 2006 (see Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: The Anthro-
pology of a Global Sufi Cult (London: Hurst, 2003) and “Seekers on the Path: Differ-
ent ways of being a Sufi in Britain” in Sufism in the West, 127–41 Jamal Malik and
John Hinnells (eds) (London: Routledge, 2006). See also Geaves, 2000, 117–25
and also Ron Geaves, ‘Cult, Charisma, Community: The Arrival of Sufi Pīrs and
Their Impact on Muslims in Britain’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Vol. 16:2:
169–92, 1996. Geaves has also written extensively about Pīr Wahhab Siddiqui and
his successors in Geaves, 2000, 125–33; Geaves ‘Continuity and Transformation
in a Naqshbandi tariqa in Britain: The Changing Relationship between mazār
(shrine) and Dār al-'Ulūm (seminary) revisited’ in Sufism Today: Heritage and Tra-
dition in the Global Community, 65–82 Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenburg (eds)
(London: IB Tauris, 2009).
7
Talal Asad, The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam (Washington DC: Georgetown Uni-
versity Press, 1986), 14f.
8
As previously noted, Simon Stjermholm has recently published a monograph
on the Haqqani Naqshbandis. Previous works include Geaves, 2000, 145–56;
Tayfun Atay, Naqshbandi Sufis in a Western Setting. (University of London: School
of Oriental and African Studies, 1994) and ‘The Significance of the Other in
Islam: Reflections on the Discourse of a Naqshbandi Circle of Turkish Origin in
London’. The Muslim World, 89 (3–4: 455–77, 1999; Mustafa Draper, Towards a
Postmodern Sufism: Eclecticism, Appropriation and Adaptation in a Naqshbandiya and a
Qadiriya Tariqa in the UK (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2002); Jørgen
Nielsen, ‘Transnational Islam and the Integration of Islam in Europe’ in Muslim
Networks and Transnational Communities in and across Europe, Stefano Allievi & Jor-
gen Nielsen (eds). Leiden: Brill, 2003); Jørgen Nielsen, Mustafa Draper, Galina
Yemelianova (2006) ‘Transnational Sufism: The Haqqaniya’ in Sufism in the West,
103–14, Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (eds) (London: Routledge, 2006). The
Haqqani presence in the New Age milieu is explored in Mustaf Draper, ‘From
Celts to Kaaba: Sufism in Glastonbury,’ 144–56 in Sufism in Europe and North Amer-
ica, David Westerlund (ed) (London: Routledge, 2004).
9
See Geaves, 2000, 21–48. Other works that provide detailed and fascinating
insights into the beliefs and practices of Sufis as a lived religion are: Annemarie
Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet in Islamic
Piety (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985); Constance Padwick,
Muslim Devotions: A study of Prayer Manuals in Common Use (Oxford: Oneworld,
2nd ed. 1996).
10
The Barelwi movement (also discussed in this book) has been written about by a
number of scholars including, Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India
(1860-1900) (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1982); Jamal Malik (1998)
Colonisation of Islam: Dissolution of Traditional Institutions in Pakistan (Delhi: Mano-
har, 1998); Usha Sanyal, Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005);
Ron Geaves, 2002  Comp: Please tag Author query: Geaves 2002 is missing in the
Bibliography.  ; and Pnina Werbner, 2003.
11
Deoband Dār al-'Ulūm was founded in 1867 in North-East India with the inten-
tion to train ‘ulema who would be dedicated to the cause of reforming Islam
through purifying the faith from cultural accretions along the lines initiated by
Shah Wali-allah (1702–63). The members have never considered themselves as an
educational institution but rather a school of thought within South Asian Islam
representing a form of orthodoxy. In 1967, there were nearly 6,000 Deobandi
schools in the subcontinent. Tabligh-i Jama’at was founded in 1920 by a Deobandi
graduate, Muhammad Ilyas. Unlike Deoband, Ilyas did not feel that it was neces-
sary to belong to the professional ‘ulema to reform Islam and instead created a
grassroots movement that has gone on to become a worldwide Muslim missionary
organization.
12
See Catherina Raudvere, Catharina, and Leif Stenberg, Sufism today: heritage and
tradition in the global community (London: I.B. Tauris. 2009), 3–4.
13
It has to be understood that Sufis will define a host of Islamic revivalist movements
as Wahhabi or Salafi, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Deoband,
Jama’at-Islami, Ahl-i Hadīth, Tabligh-i Jama’at, Hizbi ut-Tahrir, the Muslim Coun-
cil of Britain, and The Islamic Foundation in Leicester. These organizations may
have little to do with each other and arise in diverse circumstances and historic
periods. Some commonality can be found between them as contemporary Islamic
movements or organizations concerned with missionary activity and the reform
of Islam. It has to be understood that such labeling does not necessarily correlate
with the historic Wahhabi movement arising out of the teachings and activities of
Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1699–1792) or modern-day versions of Salafism
that might base themselves on the ideals of al-Wahhab, for example the al-Albani,
Ibn Uthayin, or Mashhur al-Salman.
14
For a detailed ethnographic account of a South Asian first-generation Sufi’s
struggle with micro-politics and regional community leadership, see Pnina Werb-
ner’s study of “Maulana Sahib” in Imagined Diasporas Among Manchester Muslims:
The Public Performance of Pakistani Transnational Identity Politics. World Anthropol-
ogy Series (Oxford: James Currey Publishers, 2002).
15
See Geaves, ‘Tradition, Innovation, and Authenication: Replicating the Ahl as-
Sunna wa-Jama’at in Britain’, Comparative Islamic Studies, 1, 1: 1–20 June, 2005
and ‘Learning the Lessons from the Neo-Revivalist and Wahhabi Movements:
The Counterattack of the new Sufi Movements in the UK’ in Sufism in the West,
142–59 in Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (eds), (London: Routledge, 2006) and
more recently ‘A Case of Cultural Binary Fission or Transglobal Sufism? The
Transmigration of Sufism to Britain’ in Sufis in Western Society, 97–112 Ron Geaves,
Markus Dressler, Gritt Klinkhammer (eds) (London: Routledge Sufi Series,
2009).
16
The two websites used as examples are typical of a genre that represents Sufi-
orientated Islam. Others examples are the Deen-Intensive Foundation at www.
deen-intensive.com; The Nawawi Foundation at www.nawawi.org; The Zaytuna
Institute at www.zaytuna.org; Ibn Abbas Institute at www.ibnabbas.org; and repre-
senting various individuals, www.sunnipath.com and www.zaidshakir.com.
17
At the time of writing, this information was available at www.zaidshakir.com. How-
ever, the site was not available when checked during editing August 4, 2011.
18
Previously available at www.zaidshakir.com.
19
Previously available at www.zaidshakir.com.
20
The biographical information is available at http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/
nuh/, accessed August 4, 2011.
21
His English translation of Umdat al-Salik (the Reliance of the Traveller), 1991, by
Sunna Books was certified by al-Azhar, the first book on Islamic jurisprudence in
a European language to achieve such a distinction. He is also the translator of The
Sunni Path: A Handbook of Islamic Belief and Tariqa Notes (A Handbook of the Sha-
dhilli path of tasawwuf), http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/nuh/, p.1. Accessed
August 4, 2011.
22
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/shafiqur.htm accessed August 4.
23
http://www.masud.co.uk/ISLAM/misc/faridi.htm, accessed August 4, 2011.
24
www.deenport.com/lessons, accessed August 4, 2011.
25
I have described these developments in Geaves, 2005 and Geaves, 2006.
26
John Voll, Contemporary Sufism and Current Social Theory’ in Sufism and the
Modern in Islam, 296–8 in Marin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell (eds), (Lon-
don: IB Tauris, 2007).
27
Indeed the literature on conversion to Islam bears this out. See Kevin Brice, ‘A
Minority within a Minority: Report on Converts to Islam in the United Kingdom’,
FaithMatters.org, 2011 available at http://faith-matters.org/images/stories/fm-
reports/a-minority-within-a-minority-a-report-on-converts-to-islam-in-the-uk.pdf
accessed August 4, 2011; Sophie Gilliat-Ray (2010) points out that studies on
conversion such as Ali Köse, Conversion to Islam: a study of native British converts
(London: Kegan Paul, 1996)) and Kate Zebiri, British Muslim converts: choosing
alternative lives (Oxford: Oneworld, 2008) consistently point out that British con-
verts choose their path to Islam through a process of disillusionment over West-
ern moral and attitudes and careful study of Islamic texts and doctrines, Sophie
Gilliat-Ray, Muslims in Britain: An Introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), 118, a process not dissimilar for Muslim reverts.
Chapter 12
Rishīwaer: Kashmir, the Garden of the Saints

Charles M. Ramsey
Kashmiri Muslims trace their conversion to Islam through a rich tapestry of

Buddhist mercenaries,1 Hindu mendicants,2 and Sufi missionaries. But none of
these compares to the pivotal influence of the indigenous Rishī order. Kashmir’s
mass transition to Islam hinged on Nund Rishī, later sainted as Shaikh Noor
ud-Dīn Walī (from here written as Nooruddīn), and his ability to lead a broad
social movement that consolidated tenth-century Shaivic thought and spiritual
practice3 with the more newly arrived Islam of the rulers. A study of the Rishī
order illuminates the spread of Islam in the Kashmir valley, the social transition
that followed, and the seminal continuance that endures.
Although Muslim merchants and missionaries had plied the valley for centu-
ries, Islam established a lasting foothold when Rinchana (ca. 1320 CE), the
ethnically Ladakhi ruler of Kashmir, converted to Islam under the guidance of
the Suhrawardī saint, Sayyid Sharaf ud-Dīn.4 Pressed between his Buddhist
courtiers and the Hindu populous, the king made a vow that when he awoke the
next morning he would choose a new religious path. At dawn he observed the
saint’s namaz and took this as a divine signpost for his destiny. As historian,
Chitralekha Zutshi succinctly describes the time: “Suffice it to say that this was a
period of social and political turmoil as a new dynasty was established and a new
religion came to be propagated with much fervor, particularly among the ruling
classes.”5
The Constantine shift brought patronage to the Persian-speaking Sufis and
Kashmir embarked on a gradual process of Islamic acculturation.6 Readers will
recognize similarities between this process and that described by Bennett and
Alam elsewhere in this book, writing about what is now Bangladesh. Initially
limited to their mlecchamohalla (outcaste area) in Srinagar, the Muslim influ-
ence expanded in 1384 with the arrival of Shah ‘Alī Muhammad Hamdan and
his seven hundred-member entourage.7 Immortalized in Kashmiri memory as
the founding influence, Amīr-e-Kabīr as he is reverently known, established the
first kanqah (teaching center) and spent much of his time in the valley providing
da’wa to the people and guidance to the politically savvy, yet morally lax, court.8
The Kubravī and Suhrawardī orders grew extensively and their legacy of shrines
became centers for the Central Asian Sufis and their descendents. During this
period a small yet powerful Muslim presence in court had begun to spread its
influence into the deeper reaches of the valley.
However, it would be an insufficient explanation to attribute the broad reli-
gious shift only to the arrival of the Sufi missionaries. There were also stirrings
of dissonance in the predominantly Hindu populace with the Brahmanic tem-
ple system. The sentiment is best read in the cherished verse (vākh) of Kash-
mir’s best-loved Shaivic poetess, Lal Ded, which in the colloquial means
“Grandmother Lal”; more literally “Lal the Womb.”9 In this way, Lal Ded is a
form of the Mother Goddess so prevalent in Indian religion. Unable to pursue
her yogni aspirations within the domestic constraints of her time, Lal Ded
became a wandering semi-nude mendicant along the shores of the Jhelum.10 In
her verse she attacks the “parasitic forms of organised religion that have attached
themselves to the spiritual quest and choked it: arid scholarship, soulless ritual-
ism, fetished austerity, and animal sacrifice.”11 One can hear the free and sub-
versive tones:
It covers you shame, keeps you from shivering

Grass and water are all the food it asks.
Who taught you, priest-man,
To feed this breathing thing to your thing of stone?12
Kashmir Shaivism is about the transmutation of the outward observances into

visualizations through experiments in consciousness and the extinction of lower
appetites. In this observance the idol is replaced by a mental image and sacri-
fice by the extinction of lower appetites, readily translatable as nafs.
Nooruddīn was born (ca. 1378 CE) into this milieu of transition. He was the
son of a poor villager who attended meals (langar) and prayer at the nearby
khānqāh of the Kubravī Simnanī in Anantnag.13 The underlying narrative of the
Kashmiri transition to Islam is that Lal Ded was Nooruddīn’s first nurse, or sur-
rogate mother. Legend aside, it is certain that his understanding of Islam was
nourished from the best of Lal Ded’s Shaivic thought. As Noorudīn remarks in
one of his popular verses: “That Lalla of Padmanpore who had drunk to her fill
the nectar, she was an avatar of ours. O God, grant me the same spiritual
power.”14
Revered as the patron saint of Kashmir, Shaikh Noor ud-Dīn Walī established
the Rishī silsilah, a line quite unlike any other.15 For starters, he did not ascribe
to the spiritual authority of traditional Sufi orders, though he had ample invita-
tion from the leading Kubravī and Suhrawardī saints of the time. Instead of
joining the existing orders, he drew an unexpected lineage:
The first Rishī is Muhammad,

And the second is Uways of Qārna,
The third Rishī is Zalka,
Rishīwaer: Kashmir, the Garden of the Saints 199
Whereas the fourth is Plas Rishī,

Fifth in the order is Miran Rishī,
Sixth the Ruma;
I, the seventh, have been ignored by all.
Who am I, O I, but I, to be Rishī?16
The appeal to authority through Muhammad and Uways is not surprising.

Uways of Qārna held deep devotion and sympathy for the prophet and is sym-
bolic for those who encounter him through spiritual means rather than physi-
cal lineage. The other four names, however, are local and demonstrate
Nooruddīn’s ascription to indigenous Hindu and Buddhist predecessors. Con-
sequently, while embracing Islam the Rishīs circumvent the traditional orders
and their ‘adab (ways or culture) and appeal directly to the original “spirit” of
Islam as personified in the prophet.
The circumvention is further seen in the forms practiced by Nooruddīn’s fol-
lowers. As Kashmiri historian Rafiqi notes, the Rishīs’ spiritual practices were
almost identical to those of the Hindu sanyāsis. “All they (Rishīs) seem to have
added to the Nātha framework was the name of Allah or huwa.”17 Avoiding the
forms, language, and rules of the other orders, the Rishīs established an indige-
nous manner of practicing Islam. Mosques were not built, namaz was not greatly
emphasized, and pilgrimages to Mecca hardly mentioned. The order maintained
most of the pre-Islamic forms including vegetarianism, celibacy, and the relin-
quishing of all property and familial responsibility.18 The initiated adorned a
simple frock and were known for doing voluntary acts of kindness such as plant-
ing fruit trees and community gardens from which the poor could gather food.
Like a lotus nourished in the local waters, Nooruddīn expressed the message
of Islam in a form familiar to his people. Chanted in the vernacular Kashmiri
and steeped in common metaphors—kitchens, fields, and farms—his message
freely employed the terms known to the common man.19 Analogous to Rumi’s
appeal in Persian, Nooruddīn’s verse became revered as the Kosher Quran—the
Kashmiri Quran.20 With the great skill and affection of a potter molding clay, he
worked the meaning of the Quran and the teachings of the prophet into the
Kashmiri consciousness. Nooruddīn explains:
Kneading the kalma with clay and sand,

Revolved the word on the stick,
Struck the stick upon the wheel of time,
I formulated the images of the kalma.21
And again:
I uttered the kalma,

Experienced the kalma,
Converted myself into the kalma,

The kalma permeated into every fiber of my being,
I reached the abode of the abodeless with the kalma.22
By the fifteenth century, the handful of Rishīs had swelled into a traveling band
of teachers, active in service and persuasive in explaining the tenants of Islam.23
The order grew extensively, their shrines too many to count, and Kashmir
became known as Rishīwaer, the garden of the saints.
However, the young order was not without its critics. To the Perso-centric
Muslim community who ruled at court, these forms were aberrant; and many
did not consider the Rishīs to be orthodox.24 Bennett describes a similar atti-
tude toward Bengali language and acculturated Islam by Bengal’s Farsi-speak-
ing aristocracy. This posed a dilemma: because the majority of the Kashmiri
population, rural farmers, revered Rishīs as their spiritual leaders, the courtiers
depended on their support for political gain.25 By the sixteenth century, the
Suhrawardīs succeeded in absorbing much of the Rishī influence. The Nūrnama,
the oldest collection of Nooruddīn’s poems and hagiography compiled by Daud
Kakhi Suhrawardi, narrates the confluence of the orders as a meal hosted by
the exalted pīr, Shaikh Hamza Makhdoom. Although both orders by this time
were quite indigenous, vegetarianism remained a point of contention. Initially,
Harde Rishī refused to partake of the meat, but once he understood the spiri-
tual nourishment gained by submitting to this great master, he ran to the
kitchen and licked the pot.26 From this phase onward, Rishīs constructed
mosques and led communal prayers, while continuing service to the poor.27
The Suhrawardis, on the other hand, authenticated Rishī thought as orthodox.
Khaki writes:
Shaikh Nūr ud-Dīn of Kaimuh,

The Prophet filled his breasts with his light (Nūr-i-Muhammadi),
The Prophet will himself condescend to offer prayers at his grave;
Such news has reached as far as Medina.28
Despite this facile unity, one can trace an uneasy tension between the urban
missionary Suhrawardis and the rural ascetic Rishīs.29 Although the Suhrawardis
(Makhdoomis) did not ignore piety and ethical values, they were avid politi-
cians.30 Perhaps at no time was this more evident than in the Sunni–Shia strug-
gle for hegemony in the sixteenth century during the reign of the last Kashmiri
king, Yusuf Shah Chak. The period of Chak’s rule was a time of flourishing for
Kashmiri culture, but the ruler was an avid Shia patron. In response to this ris-
ing Shia leverage, communal leaders appealed to the Delhi Mughals in 1586 to
wrestle control of the valley. The Rishīs, however, less concerned by the Sunni–
Shia differences, emphasized solidarity through local governance, and warned
of the consequences of inviting foreign rule.31 This ancient distinction between
Suhrawardi and Rishī, now seen as urban and rural, continues to cast its shadow
on the economic, political, and spiritual divide in present-day Kashmir.32
Today, the Surhwardis continue in prominence with large urban shrines, a
vibrant Sufi following, and political influence. But what has happened to the
Rishīs? Modern Rishī mutawalli families seem assimilated into mainstream soci-
ety; and the bastion Rishī shrines, Aishmuqam and Chrar-e-Sharif, appear undif-
ferentiated from the myriad of other dargāhs in the valley. One wonders whether
any of their ancient ascetic norms have survived. Where are the practicing
Rishīs and what remains of the order?
In search of the Rishīs
According to Sameer Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic Studies at the Islamic Uni-

versity of Awantipora, the Rishī community is active, but not in the strength it
once held. He noted that in the fifteenth century, over two thousand Rishī men-
dicants wandered the valley, celibate, mendicant, vegetarian, and in conscious-
ness of God in himself (fanā’ fil-haqiqa). Now there are only about fifteen. “Don’t
expect a lengthy conversation though,” he cautioned. “People who go to this
type of person—one at this spiritual state—experience a blessing. Sometimes
he will not utter a word; he will just look into your eyes, or breathe on you or
onto a stone for you to take along. But the person feels and experiences bless-
ing from having the encounter with him,” he explained.
Later on the road toward Bam ud-Dīn, the oldest Rishī shrine, he pointed to
a man walking quietly in the morning chill. “This man was a college professor,
but once his wife passed, he took to the forest. No one has seen him eat in eight
years, and when he is at the shrine he never sits or lays down to rest.” He is a
Rishī: one of that ideal type, the fully accomplished. Countless others draw
inspiration from these living saints and come to them for petitions or to experi-
ence a transcendent encounter with the divine.
The shrine at Bam ud-Dīn is a living testimony to the Shaivic legacy. Bhuma
Sidh, a revered Hindu sanyasi, harkened to Nūr ud-Dīn’s message and spiritual
presence from inside the mandir (temple) and became his first convert.
Although the exterior is indistinguishable from other local shrines, with a
pitched wooden-shingled roof and a lone fleche steeple, what one finds in the
interior is unexpected: the saint entombed in his mandir. The wooden Muslim
shrine is literally constructed over the ancient Hindu temple. Just behind the
site is a pathway up to Bam ud-Dīn’s meditation cave where Sufis for centuries
have gathered for dhikr, meditation, and teaching. Inside the chamber are large
hewn steps that lead up to a podium and granite lintel. On the large steps that
served as seats for the congregants are two lingam statues, Shaivic phallus sym-
bols. Though some Muslims have demanded their removal, the Rishī leaders
have allowed them to stay as silent reminders of the shared heritage and
niversal message. As there is an Archeology Society placard outside, one might

u
assume the cave to be an ancient relic; but quite the contrary, the cave is still in
use and many endured the Ramadan fast there only weeks before.
Another striking difference from other local tarīqas is the Rishī wilderness
pilgrimage. Though surrounded by deep forests and towering mountains, Kash-
miris are seldom described as intrepid naturalists. Whether due to the pursuit
of solitude and austerity, or to enduring Shaivic monism that understood deity
to be present in creation, the Rishīs cultivate a nature-appreciating spirituality.
As one participant stated, the purpose is to battle the nafs (ego, or self-interest).
The pilgrimage allows initiates to taste the Rishī ideal and to live in abandon-
ment for short periods. Time is allotted for solitude and meditation, but also
for ecstatic singing and dancing. As Noorudīn said long ago:
The nafs has disturbed me greatly, the nafs has ruined me entirely. It is the
nafs that makes us destroy others. The nafs is the slave of the devil. To serve
the nafs is to thrust ashes into one’s own eyes. How then can one expect to
see? The nafs is just like a rebellious calf, which should be tied up. It should
be threatened with the stick of fasting.33
In the spirit of the early Rishīs, the group spends great amounts of time meditat-
ing in the forest, but retains the ideal of returning to communities to teach and
serve.
A visit to Aishmuqam, the first Rishī shrine constructed, illuminates the
order’s ongoing role in society. Set upon a hill, square and layered, the edifice
is reminiscent of a Buddhist monastery, and fulfills the traditional purpose as a
haven where one might come close to God. Supplicants travel in a steady flow
to the shrine in search of comfort and intercession. Scraps of cloth with the
petitions of the faithful are tied to every free space of the lattice. Just at the bot-
tom of the rough granite steps from the upper building is a large flagstone
courtyard where lie the graves of the sajjāda nishīn, the spiritual heirs to the pīr.
Large cedar doors guard the passage into Zain ud-Dīn Rishī’s original medita-
tion cave. A brass plate hanging by thin chains crosses the door and each per-
son kisses it in reverence upon crossing the threshold. As one moves further
into the recess he/she has to crouch down until nearly prone before crawling
into the crypt. Unlike other shrines in the valley, women are allowed into the
sanctum and a line of supplicants stream through the recess.
The shrine has a mosque that also serves as a meeting hall. Built as a gift by
Sheikh Hamza Makhdoom at the time when the two orders became more
closely associated, the building is made of traditional adobe with a large carved-
wood pillar in the center. On the side of the hall, small low doors, less than 3
feet high, open into cells used for extended times of fasting and isolation.
The annual ‘urs draws large crowds and the festival is crowned by an evening
lantern procession called zool. This is yet another example of the continued
importance and vitality of these annual celebrations, attested elsewhere in this

book. Reminiscent of the Hindu festival of Dushera, the festival narrates Zain
ud-Dīn’s exorcism of the demons from the area. The procession winds up the
path to the shrine and dhikr emanates from the loud speakers until the call to
prayer at dawn. Thus with its holy graves, peaceful verandas, and festivals, the
shrine is a local haven for those seeking solace.
A closer look at Aishmuqam testifies the Rishī’s innovative manner of guid-
ance and service to the community. As an example, on ‘āshūrā, the tenth day of
muharram, Kashmir was under curfew due to Sunni–Shia violence. The date is
marked with processions of Shia men who flagellate themselves with chains and
sharp knives in mourning for the deaths at Karbala. In defiance of the curfew,
similar to many Shia neighborhoods, a crowd of young men wearing black
headbands labeled Hussein stood outside the entrance to the shrine. Identical
to their Shia counterparts, the Rishīs had erected a large tent that was deco-
rated with the names of the Imams. However, instead of the violent self-flagella-
tion, the Rishīs had organized a blood drive. Hospitals in the valley suffer
chronic shortages to the extent that there is a vibrant black market for blood.
The Rishīs transformed a time of intercommunity tension into one of solidarity,
and a time of waste into an example of social service. The creative response was
part of an ongoing effort to overcome the ancient Sunni–Shia hostility, and to
proactively care for the needs of the community. Sufi Islam sometimes builds
bridges across religions but also between different expressions and schools of
Islam. The order has initiated efforts to establish a hospital to serve that rural
area. If successful, it will be one of the first Muslim charity hospitals in Kashmir.
While other orders pursue the corridors of power or mystical detachment,
Rishīs seek to garner spiritual strength and apply it for the common good.
Walī-Allahs and Allah-walles
Though vehemently resisted for decades, the Islamic reformist influence in

Kashmir has increased to the level that it threatens the survival of the Rishī
order. British India’s Islamic reform movements were slow to take root in the
valley, and much of the traditional shrine-centered social structure and econ-
omy continued well into the twentieth century.34 Of the various reformist
groups, the two most noted are the Ahl-i Hadīth and the indigenous Allah-
walle.35 In Kashmir the group is broadly known as Shafi, whereas the garden-
variety Sunnis, including the Sufis, follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence.36
Though steadily gaining ground, the Ahl-i Hadīth37 are eyed suspiciously as a
foreign import, and do not have the strength of the Tabligh-i Jamaat-influenced
Allah-walle, who are also Hanafi. Thus to understand the differences it is more
profitable to examine the Allah-walle and their challenge to the Rishīs and to
other Sufi orders.38
The common-man’s definition of the Allah-wale is simply that “they say our
fathers were wrong.” What is meant is that the reformists disapprove of the ven-
eration of saints, the Walī-Allah, and the intercessory efficacy of their shrines. As
Francis Robinson so clearly stated: “Whereas their forefathers saw the resting
places of the sainted dead as inviting havens of spiritual warmth where they
might come close to God, they (reformists) tended to see them as homes of
mumbo-jumbo and of parasites who lived off the gullible.”39 Thus the spiritual
boundary among the majority Sunni community of Kashmir is that of the tradi-
tional Walī-Allah and the reformist Allah-walle.
The disagreements between the camps are extensive. There is a fundamental
difference between their opposing understandings of the nature of spiritual
knowledge. The Sufi claim that the Allah-walle preach a blind following of ritual,
without comprehension or appreciation of the inner meaning. The teaching is
formulaic and external, rather than internally transformative. As one contribu-
tor said, “without Sufism, one cannot practice shari’a. Shari’a is like a button, but
the teachings of a master, the Sufi way, is the buttonhole. The button is ren-
dered useless—only for show—without it. The Allah-walle see a wall, but we Sufis
see what is behind the wall.” For those who follow the Walī-Allah there is great
importance on the inner meaning and experiential understanding. The Allah-
walle can be characterized as having an objectivist perspective that sees knowl-
edge as a commodity that has a defined content and is independent of the
person who uses it or their purposes. The Walī-Allah, however, have an intersub-
jective perspective that views knowledge as a result of interactive relationships.
This means that the teacher–student interaction shapes meaning. Hence knowl-
edge is constantly being constructed through dialogue and improvisation,
interpreted and redefined. This type of knowledge can be characterized as
“knowing by doing,” or passing from “chest to chest,” and is considered to be
inseparable from the activity and the values of those who produce it.40 The dif-
ference in perceiving knowledge further complicates efforts for dialogue and
mutual understanding.
There is also a marked difference in message. The Walī-Allah magnify the love
of God, whereas the Allah-walle message emphasizes the fear of God. The for-
mer believe the purpose of the shari’a is to enable people to please God, as
opposed to merely averting hell. Noor ud-Dīn’s verse if often quoted:
With narrow-minded selfish interest,

For petty desire of paradise,
And for dreadful awe of hell,
They worship Thee, My Lord.41
The story of Rabia of Basri, one of the great early mystics, is also widely recounted
by the Sufis. She was seen walking into the forest carrying water and a torch.
When asked where she was going, she replied that she was off to put out the
fires of hell and to set heaven on fire. The story is popularly held to mean that
one should not be contemplating heaven and hell, as these are for Allah to
decide; instead she should pay attention to right living in awareness of God’s
presence. The Allah-walle, however, emphasize God as the judge who is pleased
with those who have right knowledge. The enemy is jahiliat, or ignorance, and
the goal is to provide information so that meritorious deeds (swab) can be per-
formed and acculturated in preparation for Judgment Day.
The battle line for the two parties is the acceptability of intercession in Islam.
The Allah-walle oppose saint veneration and argue that the blasphemous prac-
tice is heretical innovation (bid’at). They argue that the Quran allows for no
intercessors and that praying to the saint is the equivalent of elevating a human
to be equal with God. The faithful should follow their interpretation of the
Quran and return to the original and rightly guided way of the original Ummah.
They believe that additions in interpretation or practice from that golden age
are but harmful degradation. The Walī-Allah, on the other hand, hold that cre-
ative innovation, when it doesn’t oppose the tenets of Islam, should be discov-
ered. An example of this can be seen in the Rishī response to Ashura. The
reconciliatory stance to the Shia as seen in the blood drive is an adjustment
deemed beneficial to the community. Their position is in line with the early
Rishīnama that states: “In sharia every innovation (bid’at’) is not objectionable;
thus when you observe any good and acceptable innovation, don’t raise a hue
and cry against it.”42
The debate portrays not only the difference in opinion, but also indicates a
progression in the theology. Up to the eighteenth century the visiting of saints
and their graves was unquestioned and tantamount to performing the Hajj.
The blessing of the saints was equated to the tawaf of the Ka’aba. Mir Shams
al-Dīn’ Iraqi stated: “Any Muslims who would circumambulate my khānqāh seven
times, it would mean that he has made circumambulation of Ka’aba.” Kubravī
Shaikh Ya’qub Sarfī (b. 1521) related the same to the khānqāh of Sayyid ‘Alī
Hamdanī: “Everyone is blessed by visiting his hujrah (lodging), his khānqāh is
the Ka‘ba of Kashmir.”43 The Dastur al Salikīn notes: “His (pir’s) body is the
manifestation of truth. His pious soul is (the manifestation) of Allah’s secret.”44
The centrality of the shrines in local piety was such that it was believed that if
Kashmiris were denied saint worship they would be distanced from Islam itself.45
Consequently, both the Allah-wale and the Walī-Allah vehemently contest that
the other is bringing harmful innovation (bid’at):46 the former from the original
message of Islam to the early ummah; the latter from the Islam carried to their
forefathers in Kashmir. South Asian history is replete with examples of this
debate. As one scholar noted: “The extraordinary thing is that though the pres-
ent form of Sufism is made up of elements many of which contradict the teach-
ings of the Qur’ān it has found an abiding place in Islam and is integrally related
to it.”47 Consequently, the debate itself is less noteworthy than the significance
of the time in which the debate is occurring.
The present competition for orthodoxy is indicative of broader theological

and socio-economic transitions in Kashmiri society. Ishaq Khan argued that
Kashmir is progressing toward an Islamic ideal and will continue to gradually
relinquish “un-Islamic” practices and beliefs.48 In this view, Rishī-influenced
Kashmiris have maintained degrees of Hinduism in belief and practice, and are
gradually progressing to become orthodox Muslims.49 However, it is important
to note that the quest for orthodoxy does not regard merely a set of opinions
but a relationship of power that can be used to exclude, correct, or under-
mine.50 As Peter Berger noted: “[I]deas don’t succeed in history because of
their inherent truthfulness, but rather because of their connection to very pow-
erful institutions and interests.”51 Although there is a marked history of tension
between Rishīs and other views, never before has there been such a determined
move to see the order eliminated. According to one Rishī leader, Ahl-i Hadīth
mosques are constructed opposite the shrines in a formulaic effort to correct
and intimidate those who attend. Such construction in Bam ud-Dīn signals a
change in the Wāqf leadership and deeply concerns the community elders who
foresee conflict ahead. Sufi orders such as the Merak Shah have arranged activ-
ist groups—adorned with bright green turbans—that visit mosques preaching
the value of Sufism and resistance to the reformists. Although the Rishīs have
not responded in such a public way, the leaders understand that the youth must
be equipped to respond to the challenges of their detractors if the order is to
survive.
In response to the militant agitation that has wreaked the very fabric of
Kashmiri society, the Rishī spirit has kept aflame the “beacon of light, of sanity
and inclusiveness, in stark contrast to the fanatic and narrow-minded Islam
that a section of the Mullahs and political leaders have been propagating.”52
The order played a vital role in the spread of Islam in Kashmir and provided
stability in the social transitions that followed. Despite growing pressure to
comply with a subjective orthodoxy, the order has continued to offer a distinc-
tively indigenous spirituality characterized by innovative responses to modern
challenges.
Notes
1
The exact boundaries of Kashmir and the very definition of being Kashmiri are
a heated debate. This research focuses on Sufism in the Kashmir valley (India),
not what is known as Greater Kashmir which includes areas that each have their
own variegated history. Thom Wolf, “The Mahayana Moment: Tipping Point
Buddhism,” in Buddhism and the 21st Century, ed. Bhalchandra Mungerkar(New
Delhi: Government of India and Nava Nalanda Mahavihara University, 2009). On
the religious interactions of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians in that
period, see Louis Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj, Eng. tr. from the French by
Herbert Masson, Vol 1 entitled, The Life of al-Hallaj, 1994, 178–80.
2
F.M. Hassnain, Kashmir Shaivaism (Srinagar: Director of Archives, Research & Pub-
lication Department, Jammu & Kashmir Government, 1962), 1–8. Reminiscent of
the mendicant Hindu sage who wanders the forest, the Rishī silsillah reveals a
spiritual continuity with the pre-Islamic era. Some of India’s most ancient ruins,
possibly from the Vedic period, are found in Kashmir. The area was a leading
center of Buddhism, even hosting the fourth international Buddhist council in
the second century in the reign of Emperor Kanishka. Following the decline of
the Gandhara civilization in nearby Taxila, there was a shift from Buddhism to
Shaivism in the ninth century.
3
Prem Nath Bazaz, “The Story of Trika Shastra,” in The Sufis and Rishīs of Kashmir
(HU: The Sufi Way, A Journal of the Rumi Foundation, India), vol. 3, October
2008, 16–21. Kashmiri Shaivism, known in as Trika Shastra, is characterized by
absolute monism, and was developed in the ninth century by Vasugupta. Abdul
Qaiyum Rafiqi, Sufism in Kashmir, 2003 ed. (Sydney: Goodword Media, 1976),
160–1. Rishī comes from the Sanskrit meaning a singer of hymns, or a sage. G.N.
Gauhar, Kashmir Mystic Thought (Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2008), viii.
4
Muhammad Ashraf Wani, Islam in Kashmir (Srinagar: Oriental Publishing House,
2004), 54–6.
5
Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making
of Kashmir (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2003), 20; Wani, 126.
6
M. Ishaq Khan, Kashmir’s Transition to Islam: The Role of Muslim Rishīs, 2005 ed.
(Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2005), 22–32.
7
Shah-e-Hamdan is credited with being the one who brought Islam to Kashmir and
also of having introduced the handicraft industry that continues to be a staple of
the local economy. His impact is also perceived in the continued recitation of the
Aurad-ul-Fatiha, an extended Arabic prayer that is recited in unison before namaz
throughout Kashmir.
8
A.Q. Rafiqi, Letters of Mir Saiyid Ali Hamadani (Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2007),
47–89. F.M. Hassnain, Shah Hamadan of Kashmir (Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2001),
69–85. Further research could help better understand the syllabus of religious
education in the period. Adab al-Murīdin and ‘Awarif al-Ma’arif provided an
ideological basis for the organization of mystical life in, and were the primary
literary instruments for, popularizing Sufi practices in Kashmir.
9
Ranjit Hoskote, I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Ded (New Delhi: Penguin Books,
2011), x.
10
Zutshi, 18–20.
11
Hoskote, xx.
12
Ibid.
13
Gauhar, 48–9.
14
Shafi Ahmad Qadri, Kashmiri Sufism (Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2002), 75–81.
Their poetry, so similar in style and theme, is the corpus for the belief in Kash-
miryat, a cultural narrative that understands Kashmiri spirituality to be free from
dogmatic religious boundaries.
15
Though little is known beyond hagiography about their lives, Lal Ded and Nund
Rishi stand unmatched as the cultural pillars of Kashmir.
16
Khan, 45; Gauhar, 72.
17
Rafiqi, Sufism in Kashmir, 168–79.
18
Ibid, 164.
19
Bruce Lawrence, The Qur’an: A Biography (New York: Grove Press, 2006),
119–29. G.N. Gauhar, Kashmir Mystic Thought (Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2009),
221. Although some have argued that the early Rishīs were out of contact or influ-
ence from the broader world, there is evidence to the contrary. Royal emissaries
and even the leading scholars of the day came to meet with Noorudīn and his fol-
lowers. The hagiography indicates that they were pursued, but did not respond to
the invitation to come under their guidance or patronage. There are numerous
early references in Noorudīn’s poetry to Mansoor al-Hallaj and Rumi. “Who has
separated me form Mansoor? He and myself pursued the same goal; He slipped
in saying ‘I’, But blessed was he when ‘I’ became grace.” Gauhar, Kashmir Mystic
Thought, 162. See also A. Schimmel, “Mystic Impact of Hallaj” in Hafeez Malik,
ed., Poet Philosopher of Pakistan, (New York: Columbia 1971).
20
G.N. Gauhar, Sheikh Noor-Ud-Din Wali (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988), 54.
21
Gauhar, Kashmir Mystic Thought, 75.
22
Khan, 74–5. Nund Rishī’s poetry was gathered and compiled in the Nurnama and
Rishīnama.
23
Wani, 68.
24
Khan, 83; Mir Hamadan, the son Syed Ali Hamadan, urged Noorudīn to eat meat
and conform to Sunna. The ascetic practices were considered repugnant to his
Kubravi followers. The extravagant meat orgy called wazwam, a meal now manda-
tory at any respectable social function, is an interesting indicator of the turn away
from vegetarianism.
25
Rafiqi, 168. The Kubravis also went to great lengths to connect the Rishīs with
their order.
26
Wani, 147.
27
Ibid., 74.
28
Ibid., 75.
29
Eds. Carl Ernst and Richard C. Martin, Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Oriental-
ism to Cosmopolitanism, ed. Frederick M. Denny, Studies in Comparative Religion
(Columbia: The University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 159–78. David Gil-
marti noted: “Sufi saints have continued to provide lenses through which we can
examine the tensions inherent in the constitution of political authority within
the Islamic tradition as it has changed over time.”
30
Rafiqi, Sufism in Kashmir, 247.
31
Ibid., 260–5. According to interviews, it is commonly held that many Rishīs died
in the battle defending Yusuf Shah Chak. It should also be noted that Rishīs tra-
ditionally carry a weapon, be it a small knife, bow and arrow, or sword, on their
persons at all times.
32
Zutshi, 129. The urban shrines benefited from Mughal rule, and further extended
their influence through commerce during the Dogra and Sikh raj: “as in other
areas of the Indian subcontinent, where shrines were repositories of landed
wealth and social capital, the patronage of shrines was a clear means of exercis-
ing religious and political authority. The mutawalli, or custodians of the shrine,
were appointed by donors, and over time served to ensure that the family had
access to its revenues, including lands and donations.” Francis Robinson, The
‘Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (Delhi: Permanent Black,
2001), 11. For more on city and village differences, and ashraf Persian culture,
see Imtiaz Ahmad, “The Ashraf-Aijaf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in
India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1966, 268–78.
33
Qadri, 235.
34
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860–1900 (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
35
Yoginder Sikand, “Popular Sufism and Scripturalist Islam in Kashmir” http://
www.indianmuslims.info/articles/yoginder_sikand/popular_sufism_and_scrip-
turalist_islam_in_kashmir.html (accessed November 6, 2010).
36
Barbara Daly Metcalf, “”Traditionalist” Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis, and
Talibs,” Social Science Research Council (accessed March 1, 2011); Robinson, 36.
Kevin A. Reinhart, “Like the difference between heaven and earth: Hanafi and
Shafi’s discussions of fard and wajib in theology and usul,” in Bernard G. Weiss
(ed.), Studies in Islamic Legal Theory (Leiden, 2002), 205–34. See Bennett’s second
chapter, FN 16 for a brief note on some of the differences between the Sunni
legal schools.
37
Wani, 236–8; Zutshi, 45. There has been a concerted effort by the Ahl-i Hadīth
to place people in academic and media postings that exert great influence on
the youth. The cadre draws heavily from the growing middle class who have less
financial ties to the shrine assets than do the wealthy who trace their lineage to
a Sufi saint and his shrine. Though surely there was a spiritual dimension to this
affiliation, there was also, as Zutshi notes, a sense of secure investment, as the
shrines and their social capital, and consistent revenues from land and dona-
tions, were outside the control of changing monarchical control.
38
Lassen, Soren Christian, and van Skyhawk, (eds.), “Wahabis and Anti-Wahhabis:
The Learned Discourse on Sufism in Contemporary South Asia” in Sufi Traditions
and New Departures: Recent Scholarship on Continuity and Change in South Asian Sufism
(Islamabad: Taxila Institute of Asian Civilizations, 2008), 82–110.
39
Robinson, 38.
40
J S Duguid and P Brown, “Knowledge and Organization: A Social Practice Perspec-
tive,” Organization Science 2, no. 1 (2001); Peter L Berger and Thomas Luckmann,
The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Middlesex:
Penguin Books, 1967), 49–61.
41
Gauhar, Kashmir Mystic Thought, 226.
42
Wani, 248. Quote from Suhrawardi Makhdumi Baba Daud Khaki’s (Qasida-
Lamiyya) compiled in the Rishīnama, one of the earliest sources of Rishī thought
and hagiography.
43
Wani, 250.
44
Ibid, 251.
45
Ghulam Mohiuddin Hundu, “Takrir Dilpazir Dar Islahe Qaum” (Speech for the
Good of the Qaum), Amritsar 1906, in Zutshi, 155.
46
Sadia Dehlvi, Sufism: The Heart of Islam (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers
2009), 135–53; Zutshi, 150–1. Sikand, 135. Ahl-i Hadīth claim that “the other
groups who simply claim to be Muslim are not real Muslims at all. They have dis-
torted Islam beyond recognition.” The Deobandis and Barelvis continue to issue
fatwas in response claiming that the Ahl-i Hadīth are nothing less than allies of the
devil. Perhaps it would be wise to temper the debate with Abdullahi An-Na’im’s
observation that “every orthodox perception that believers take for granted today
began as a heresy from the perspective of some other doctrine and may well con-
tinue to be considered heretical by some believers. Richard C. Martin and Abbas
Barzegar, “Formations of Orthodoxy: Authority, Power, and Networks in Muslim
Societies,” in Rethinking Islamic Studies: From Orientalism to Cosmopolitanism, ed. eds.
Carl Ernst and Richard C. Martin, Studies in Comparative Religion (Columbia:
The University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 179–202.
47
John A. Subhan, Sufism: Its Saints and Shrines: An introduction to the Study of Sufism
with Special Reference to India and Pakistan (Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House,
1960), 331.
48
Khan, 23–32.
49
Ibid., 2.
50
Talal Asad, “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam,” ed. Georgetown University
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (Washington D.C.: 1986); Tim Winter,
The Cambridge Companion to Classical Islamic Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008).
51
James Davison Hunter, To Change the World, “The Trinity Forum Briefing” Vol. 3,
No. 2, p.3, 2002.
52
Karan Singh, The Sufis and Rishīs of Kashmir, 1.
Chapter 13
Bangladeshi Sufism – An Interfaith Bridge

Clinton Bennett
Sufis in Bangladesh fused an exogenous religion with a deeply rooted,

preexisting, inclusive strand of endogenous spiritual tradition. This predisposes
Bengali Muslims to build bridges between themselves and non-Muslims, not
barriers. Traditionally, Bengal1 has been a place where people of various faiths
peacefully coexist. Bangladeshis follow various faiths (of which Islam is the larg-
est) but share a common culture and language. Affirmation of human solidar-
ity and human values is a distinctive feature of Bengali literature. Beginning
with the history of how Sufi Muslims planted Islam in Bengal (expanding the
discussion in Chapter 1 of this book), I argue that, despite episodes of commu-
nitarian violence and the 1947 split from Hindu-majority West Bengal, most
Bangladeshis prefer an inclusive form of Islam. Many Muslims enjoy friendships
with Hindus. Although less common today, some non-Muslims visit Sufi shrines
and some Muslims attend Hindu festivals. Recent evidence that inclusive Islam
in Bangladesh remains healthy will be cited. Briefly referring to Bangladesh’s
progress toward gender equality, this chapter links this with Sufi Islam. A coun-
ter trend toward a more conservative, Arab-flavored, less Sufi-friendly Islam
(Islamism) has a level of support.2 On the one hand, in Bangladesh this type of
reform does not express the same level of hostility toward Sufism as it does else-
where. On the other hand, this negatively impacts relations between Muslims
and non-Muslims. Yet despite alarmist commentary and regrettable incidents of
violence against non-Muslims, Islamism is unlikely to win widespread support
or succeed in fundamentally changing the ethos of Bangladeshi society. One
popular expression of reform, Tabligh-i Jamaat (TJ), focuses exclusively on inner
renewal; it does not foment hatred of non-Muslims. Founded in Bengal, this is
now a global, apolitical movement. Beginning with a discussion of sources,
among issues that emerge as especially significant are the nature of conversion,
the idea that there is a normative Islam from which some versions are deviant,
and the relationship between culture and religion. Islam in Bangladesh is still
relatively under-researched. This author’s own ideas have changed over almost
twenty-five years of engagement with the subject. Analysis draws on fieldwork,
relevant literature, and published research. I conclude that Bengali-flavored
Islam, due to resonance with certain aspects of indigenous culture, brings to
the fore important principles and potentialities in the Qur’ān that cultural
f actors in Arab space may hinder. Having gifted Islam to South Asia, Arab space
might learn lessons from there. The existence of a single, pure version of Islam
is critiqued. Iran, of course, also contributed to the way that Islam developed in
Bangladesh, especially through Sufi thought.
The sources
Before my first exposure to Islam in Bangladesh, I conducted some research
among expatriate Bangladeshis in Birmingham – 1978–9. I was writing a short
dissertation for a University of Birmingham qualification.3 I worked in Bangla-
desh from late 1979 until mid 1982. Subsequently, I returned several times to
visit relatives by marriage and to carry out research. For over ten years, I lived in
a neighborhood in England where a majority of residents were Bangladeshi.
Groundbreaking research on Bangladeshi Islam published since 1982 repre-
sents a significant contribution to understanding Islam as a variegated tradition
able to adapt to different cultural contexts. The relationship between Islam,
culture, and locality is one area of scholarship that has benefited from this
research, raising questions about the very existence of Islam as a “closed, self-
contained essence.”4 The year after my return to the UK from Bangladesh, Asim
Roy’s now classic The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal appeared. Despite use
of the word “syncretistic” in his title, Roy’s work challenged the notion of a rari-
fied, pure, and orthodox Islam against which Bangladeshi Islam could be
judged deviant. He also challenged the claim that people had converted in
what is now Bangladesh at swords’ point or from dissatisfaction with caste Hin-
duism. In 1992, U. A. B. Razia Akter Banu’s Islam in Bangladesh presented the
results of substantial fieldwork. Her main focus was on Islam’s social-economic
role. However, she also researched how influential Sufi Islam remains and the
degree to which Bangladeshis elevate Bengali over Islamic identity, regarding
non-Muslims as equally Bangladeshi.
Richard M Eaton’s The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier appeared a year
later. Building on Roy, Eaton convincingly demonstrates how Islam spread in
East Bengal mainly through activities of peaceful Sufi teachers linked with
extending agricultural space, as Roy also argued. Like Roy, Eaton argues that
what enabled Islam to flourish in Bengali was its ability to adapt and absorb
rather than to displace indigenous culture. Finally, I draw on Sufia M. Uddin’s
Constructing Bangladesh (2006), which, as well as exploring how Sufis and later
cultural mediators spread Islam in Bangladesh, also looks at the impact of mod-
ernism and reform in shaping what it means to be a citizen of Bangladesh.
Uddin combined textual with fieldwork research. Roy and Eaton also reject the
claim that Muslims in Bengal have mainly descended from migrants, and that
no mass conversion of local people actually occurred. My own observations are
combined with these and other published sources as cited.
Bangladeshi Sufism – An Interfaith Bridge 213
Origins of Bengali Islam
Almost all discussions of Islam in Bangladesh describe Sufism as popular and

firmly embedded in the religious and cultural landscape. Any visitor will see
Sufi shrines and centers alive and vibrant with activity, showing little sign of
decline despite a degree of hostility toward Sufism from reformists. In Birming-
ham, the largest Bangladeshi mosque is affiliated to Jama’at-i-Islam (JI), known
as an anti-Sufi movement.5 Interviewing community members in 1979, I found
them reluctant to speak about Sufism. At the time, this disappointed me and I
went to Bangladesh prepared to find that Sufism was no longer widespread,
perhaps replaced by reformist Islam. Here I use reformist to refer to the move-
ment that in India began with the teaching of Shāh Walī Allah (d. 1762), who
called for adherence to a pure Islam in contrast to what he saw as the syncretis-
tic, Hinduized Islam of India.6 Some would say that of East Bengal in particular.
Many blamed loss of Muslim power in India on Islam’s alleged corruption. In
Bengal, Sayyid Ahmed (d. 1831) championed Shāh Walī Allah’s ideas. A mem-
ber of three Sufi orders, Walī Allah was not as hostile as his Arab counterpart,
Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1787), with whom he shared several teach-
ers. Both wanted a monolithic Islam. Walī Allah believed that closer identifica-
tion between Indian Muslims and Muslims in the Middle East would help
strengthen Islam. Arab Muslims were superior and all Muslims should emulate
their Islam. Here is the idea that an Islam that is more similar to Arab Islam is
more authentic. Yet while al-Wahhab and his ideological heirs demonstrate
almost total dislike of Sufism, Shāh Walī wanted to “reform Sufi practices,” not
to eradicate Sufism. Most reform movements and individual reformers in the
Subcontinent fall short of an outright rejection of Sufism. The Deoband move-
ment (founded in 1867) and its offshoot, TJ (founded by Muhammad Ilyas
in 1926), can be identified as “reformist Sufi.” Both demand adherence to
Islam’s external aspects, represented by sharī‘a and condemn certain Sufi prac-
tices, including pilgrimage to shrines, saint veneration, and prayers to God
through human mediation but embrace Sufi emphasis on inner intent and
spiritual development.7 Founders of Deoband were members of Sufi orders and
many teachers acted and act as Sufi guides.8 Deoband graduates often join Isla-
mist organizations but the movement per se is politically the quietest. Its found-
ers, who opted for noncooperation with the British, aspired for autonomy
within the larger political order of India, whether under Britain or as an inde-
pendent state. TJ bans members from discussing politics, which can detract
from spiritual growth. Ilyas was as anxious as other reformers to jettison non-
Islamic practices. However, effectively he functioned both “as an álim” and as a
Sufi guide. An initiate of the Chīshtī order, he used Sufi terms in his teaching.9
Today, TJ may be the largest Muslim movement. Its annual convention (near
Dhaka) of about three million people is the second largest Muslim gathering in
the world, actually described by one writer as being organized by Sufis.10 It was
while persisting in asking about Sufism in my 1979 research that a respondent

drew my attention to TJ. Although TJ has no political affiliation, members “typ-
ically support the Awami League (AL),” with its commitment to secularism and
Bengali nationalism, in contrast to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)
which construes Bangladeshi identity in more Islamic terms.11 Werbner’s work
suggests that Muslims in the Subcontinent are not confronted, unlike else-
where, with a stark choice between legal and Sufi Islam, since many ‘ulama are
also Sufi, reformed or traditional.12
Sufi Islam is far from extinct or moribund in Bangladesh today, even if it is
impossible to estimate the actual number of adherents. Reluctance to identify
openly as Sufi in the Diaspora context could be related to JI control of the
mosque. JI might want to minimize the degree to which Bangladeshi Islam is
seen as deviant. During the Pakistan period, this was a common perception:
West Pakistan’s Islam was closer to the ideal, that is, more Arabic; East Pakistan’s
was corrupt.13 How did this notion of a corrupt, less pure, less Arab Bengali
Islam develop? Did so-called Hindu elements creep in over time? Did Sufi Islam,
denounced as syncretistic (indeed often described as syncretistic per se) estab-
lish itself after substantial numbers had converted, or before? Was Sufi Islam
the main agent in spreading Islam in Bengal? The old idea that it was the sword
that spread Islam is not entirely incompatible with Sufi involvement, since some
legends depict Sufis as warriors who destroyed Temples to rebuild Mosques
over their ruins.14
Before my first tour in Bangladesh I had thought that mass conversion to Islam
resulted in the main from Sufi preaching, influenced here by Thomas Arnold’s
The Preaching of Islam (1896). I also assumed, probably for no very sound reason,
that conversion or substantial conversion preceded conquest, which took place
in 1204 by Muhammad Bakhtiyar of the Delhi Sultanate. However, Eaton shows
that prior to the Muslim conquest, there is little or no evidence of local conver-
sion although there is evidence of Muslims having settled in Bengal; Mas‘ūdi
(d. 956) “mentions Muslims – evidently long-distance maritime merchants –
living there in the tenth century.” Abbasid coins discovered from the Chandra
period (825–1035) evidence how Bengal was economically linked with the Arab
world at this time.15 However, if the Muslim population of Bengal resulted mainly
from cross-sea migration, it likely that a majority would follow Shafi’i, then
dominant in southern and western Arabia and later in east Africa. In fact, Hanafi
dominates.16 I had thought that Sufi traders and missionaries, traveling east,
proselytized before the armies arrived. Eaton, though, dates the earliest evidence
of Sufi presence in Bengal to 1221, “seventeen years after” the conquest. An
inscription in Birbhum District records construction of a Sufi lodge. Soon after
the Muslim conquest, we find numerous stories of Sufi saints arriving in Bengal,
including women.17 Conquest brought settlers, of course, but almost exclusively
to the towns and cities. In contrast, the mass of Muslims in Bengal live in rural
areas, where Muslim rule was weak.18
Muslims in Bangladesh tend to push back Islam’s arrival in the region, sug-
gesting that “the masses of Bengali Muslims originated in the very distant past,”
but Eaton says that this proposition finds no support in the primary material.19
Rather, in his view, comparatively small numbers initially identified themselves
with Sufi teachers. According to Roy, these early disciples of Sufi teachers knew
little about Islam, continued to know more Hindu stories, and to read or recite
the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, both available in Bengali. At this time,
high-caste Hindus regarded Bengali as a bastard child of Sanskrit, fit only for
“demons and women.”20 This is an interesting parallel with Ashrāf Muslim atti-
tudes toward Bengali; they preferred Arabic and Persian (and, later, Urdu).
Ashrāf refers to those Muslims in India who claimed noble descent, which indi-
cated foreign ancestry. Some Muslims of pure Bengali descent would claim
Ashrāf status, since this was regarded as a better Islamic pedigree; thus:
The first year I was a Sheikh, the second year a Khan. This year if the price of
grain is low I’ll become a Sayyid.21
It was much later, according to Eaton, that descendants of the early converts
became better informed about Islam. This was the work of Roy’s “cultural medi-
ators” who began to write in Bengali for their benefit in the sixteenth century,
three hundred years or so after the Muslim conquest. He also argues that mass
conversion took place as late as the Mughal period, which began in 1557. This
was preceded by the Delhi Sultanate (1204–1342), followed by independent
Bengali dynasties and a short period of Afghan–Pashtun rule. Of course, if most
Muslims in Bengal are of foreign descent, the conversion by the sword theory
becomes redundant. Eaton also dismisses what he calls the “social liberation
theory” of conversion, that mass conversion expressed dissatisfaction with caste
Hinduism by low castes or outcastes. Firstly, caste Hinduism was weak in the
East, where the majority of Muslims converted. In fact, bhakti Hinduism, in
which neither gender nor caste is very significant, became popular in the East.
My wife and I observed a woman devotee bathing a murti in a Temple in Cox’
Bazaar, a task normally reserved for male Brahmans. In her village, she sang
and I spoke during worship in a Krishna Temple, invited by a Hindu relative.
Second, there is no evidence that Islam was presented as socially equalizing.
What was emphasized was monotheism as opposed to Hinduism’s alleged poly-
theism. Another related theory is that many converts were Buddhists, who
embraced Islam due to Hindu animosity. Bengal’s Pala dynasty (750–1174) was
Buddhist. The Sena (1070–1230) promoted Brahmanism, so arguably Hindu-
ism itself was barely established when Islam arrived, at least, when Muslims first
entered Bengal. I subscribed to this theory in my 1979 dissertation, even specu-
lating that since Hinduism was not firmly established when Islam arrived, Islam
itself stood on thin ground, and so could be displaced by Christianity! Roy dis-
missed the idea that alienated Buddhists converted en masse due to the fact that,
although Hindu–Buddhist antipathy did occur, “the history of Bengal provides

countless incidents of a contrary nature, creating a general impression of har-
mony and understanding between” Hindus and Buddhists. Some converts were
Buddhist but the idea of a “total Buddhist estrangement as a backdrop to large-
scale conversion … is … highly dubious.”22
I am arguing that mass conversion took place later rather than earlier, mainly
during the Moghul period. Alam’s chapter in this book, “Encountering the
Unholy,” suggests that conversion took place earlier. We agree, however, that
conversion was not at “swords’ point” or directly caused by conquest. Eaton,
whose research drew heavily on Mughal records, catalogues the number of
known new mosques constructed before and during Mughal rule. Between
1200 and 1450 there were 17 (combining statistics for ordinary and congrega-
tional mosques). The short period from 1450 to 1500 saw 61 built. After 1500,
although some years saw more new mosques than others, the average is much
higher. Interestingly, Eaton also gives statistics for Temple construction, which
similarly increased: between 1570 and 1640 there were 18; between 1640 and
1660 there were as many as 20. The period 1680–1700 saw 23 and 1720–40 saw
52. This indicates that Hinduism remained a vital presence. Vaishnavites were
most numerous, followed by Shaivites, with worship of the goddess increasing
in popularity toward the end of the period surveyed (1760).23
Sufis and conversion to Islam
Roy, Banu, and Uddin all describe how Sufis attracted followers, initially quasi
converts, through deliberate identification with the land, its people, and popu-
lar beliefs. Anyone who has spent time in Bangladesh knows of how its people
love their land, its texture, color, seasons, flora, fauna, rivers, canals, and even
its odors. My mother-in-law delighted in teaching me plant names when I visited
the family’s village home. Although I speak fluent Bengali, I did not spend time
learning such words, since my language training was to equip me to teach theol-
ogy and pastor a congregation. Banu questioned 2086 people regarding what
they most valued about their country. Among her variables were “agricultural
products, mineral wealth, river resources, fertility of land, and national beauty,”
which she labeled “national resources.” Another set included “tolerance of peo-
ple.” According to her analyses, most respondents expressed “primordial loy-
alty to the land itself (47%).” Only 13.6% prioritized Islam. Uddin points out
that the National Anthem, penned by a Hindu, and the national flag both cel-
ebrate the bond between land and people. The land is “mother, affectionate,
nurturing and loving.” Does the mother goddess, popular among Bengali Hin-
dus, live on in this imagery?
Perhaps intuitively aware of the bond between people and land in Bengal,
those Sufis who arrived primarily settled in rural areas. They then found ways of
identifying themselves with the symbols and geography of the region. Some
identified with sacred trees, sitting under them or using a branch to perform
rituals. Some identified with local Hindu and Buddhist deities or spirits, which
were subsequently pīrified. Pīrs, some historical, some fictitious, became “as
ubiquitous as their numbers were legion.”24 Identification with the snake-
goddess manasa, with crocodiles and even with fish, attracted followers, assur-
ing them protection from attack or a healthy catch. One pīr arrived in Khulna
riding on two crocodiles. I lived in Khulna during 1981 and saw many croco-
diles while traveling in the nearby Sunderbans.25 Another pīr arrived on a “huge
fish.”26 Famously, Shāh Jalal Mujarrad (d/ 1346) was given a “clump of soil” by
his Yemeni teacher, who instructed him to settle when he “found a place whose
soil exactly corresponded to it. 27 Among Hindu–Buddhist objects that became
pīrified were the guardian spirit of water (Pīr-Badar), Panch-Pīr (linked with
fertility), and manasa (the snake-goddess). Leading the deforestation of the
Deltaic frontier, the pīrs extended agricultural space, to their followers’ eco-
nomic benefit. Later, pīrs were integrated (as zamindars) into the Mughal land-
grant taxation system, which helped finance their lodges and enhanced their
spiritual authority.28 Their own lodges and shrines substituted for Hindu and
Buddhist centers, becoming places of learning, refuge, and visitation. Numer-
ous stories about pīrs’ abilities to heal, prevent snake bites, bestow favors and
fertility indicate their popularity. Of course, miracles and supernatural or para-
normal abilities are generally attributed to Sufi masters.29
Stories of pīrs destroying or building on the ruins of earlier sacred places
appear in literature but there is actually no evidence that this happened.30 Cer-
tainly, they settled and built in or near existing sacred spaces but rarely if ever
replaced an actual building.31 Followers cannot at this stage necessarily be
described as converts, remaining “ill-grounded in and indifferent to Islamic
tradition.”32 Rather, they occupied a world in which rigid distinctions between
religions or paths did not exist. Eaton suggests that they did not regard reli-
gions as closed, self-contained systems to which loyalty must be exclusive; Ben-
galis could “pick and choose” from “an array of reputed instruments – a holy
man here, a holy river there – in order to tap superhuman power.”33 The pio-
neer Sufis succeeded in embedding Islam in the local culture by appropriating
powers and images, metaphors, and symbols from the existing culture. Partly,
this was essential to communicate their ideas and beliefs. Some argue that this
process was purely strategic, not indicative of any theological openness toward
Hindu thought or acceptance of Hinduism as authentic.34 However, while some
literature clearly depicted Islam as superior to Hinduism, interest in yoga and
in Hindu philosophy, sometimes in their own terms, suggests that Sufis saw
value and spiritual resources in this material. Here perennial philosophy and
notions of the universality of truth found in Iranian Sufi thought can be
detected. Banu says that Sufi stress on God’s immanence enabled them to find
God “throughout the universe.”35 The pīrs were especially attracted by and
interested in ideas about the human body as a microcosm of the universe.36 The
first and most popular Bengali work on the nath tradition (medieval yoga school
with Tantric aspects) was by a Muslim, Shaikh Faiz Allah.37 Yet distinctions were
maintained. For example, gurus were regarded as incarnate deities, pīrs were
always seen as those who enjoyed “mystic communion with the deity,”38 and over
time Arabic (or more usually Persian) vocabulary was used more extensively in
Bengali in preference to Sanskrit terms used earlier.39 Some pīrs had Hindu fol-
lowers. Some Gurus had Muslim followers. The Baul tradition – Muslim and
Hindu itinerant poets who sing in praise of Vishnu – evidences this unifying
current. In one area of West Bengal, a caste group identified itself as both
Hindu and Muslim, observing many Hindu rites, burying their dead (according
to Muslim tradition) and using two names, one Hindu and one Muslim.40 This
produced Muslim Bengali, a deliberate effort to “Islamize Bengali,” on which I
concentrated during my language study, which is why I did not learn many
words associated with flora. Iran’s influence continues, since most words pre-
ferred over Hindu-related equivalents are Farsi, such as khoda for God, and
namaz for prayer, although everyday words such as bagan (garden), deri (late),
and shosta (cheap) are also Farsi.
Roy’s “cultural mediators”
Meanwhile, early Muslim rulers patronized Arabic and Persian literature and
Bengali Hindu scholarship but had little interest in supporting Muslims who
wrote in Bengali, which they considered inferior and un-Islamic.41 On the other
hand, they also accommodated Hindus in administrative positions, perpetuat-
ing a tradition of tolerance or coexistence. Eaton says that “a significant share
of government patronage was extended to Hindus.”42 This continued under the
Mughals, who consolidated their rule by incorporating twelve traditional rulers,
including Hindus, within their system as revenue collectors or agents (jagirdars).43
The Mughals also “refused to promote the conversion of Bengalis to Islam”
even when they did forcibly convert people elsewhere.44 De facto, politics was
kept separate from religion.45 It was during the Mughal period that a genre of
Bengali literature evolved communicating Islamic teaching to the masses using
language, symbols, and concepts with which they were already familiar, drawn
from Hinduism. There is not enough space here to explore this literature in
detail. Some was described in chapter one. Roy (1983) contains detailed analy-
sis.46 Beginning with a pioneer such as Syed Abdus Sultan, author of Nabi bamsa,
the aim was to locate Islam in Bengal within Muslim history. However, it also
succeeded in rooting Islam in the soil. “The angel Gabriel gives Adam a plow
and Eve fire,” which links the beginning of human life with the land, with farm-
ing, so central to Bangladeshi identity. Bringing “dense forest under cultiva-
tion” is the purpose of life.47 As mentioned in chapter one, Muhammad was
presented as an avatar. Words were chosen with care. Brahman was at times
used for Allah but since Brahman is unqualified and Allah knowable, isvar was
preferred. On the other hand, the notion of the light of Muhammad as God’s
instrument in creation meant that Allah could be seen as Brahman, nur-al-Mu-
hammadiya as the creator, or Isvar (Ishore). Reference in Nabi bamsa to the
Trimurti of Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva deliberately located these within the
wider history of prophecy, perhaps regarding these as among the 124,000
prophets mentioned by Muhammad, of whom only 25 are named in the Qur’ān.
Sultan explicitly recognized Krishna as a prophet. Preaching monotheism,
Krishna was angry when he saw people worshipping his image.48 This fostered
the “claim that Islam was the heir, not only to Judaism and Christianity, but also
to the religious traditions of pre-Muslim Bengal.”49 Sultan “even understood the
four Vedas as successive revelations send down by God … each given to a differ-
ent ‘great person’.”50 Instead of repudiating pre-Muslim beliefs, this “connected
Islam with Bengal’s socio-religious path.”51 Islamic heroes were easily compara-
ble with Hindu counterparts, thus Ali was like Karna in generosity, Brahma in
power, and Yama as “exterminator.”52 Fatimah was comparable with and yet
more virtuous than Kali. Islam was presented as superior to the earlier tradi-
tions, thus Muhammad’s birth caused consternation among the Gods. Indra’s
throne fell over, and its canopy shattered. Muhamamd’s arch opponent, Abu
Jahl, was “king of the Hindus” who worshipped Brahma.53
These cultural mediators were largely outside ashrāf circles, although some
were ashrāf or petty-ashrāf. Over time, although hostility toward Bengali as a
medium for Islamic communication continued into the twentieth century,
more ashrāf began to speak and write Bengali. While Islamic literature in Ben-
gali rarely benefitted from government patronage, local landowners, including
some Hindus, did support this literature. Uddin refers to prefaces of Bengali
works crediting local patrons with support, which in her view also indicates the
strong link “between the petty religious class” – Roy’s cultural mediators – and
the land.54 In fact, she says, “religious affiliation was inconsequential” in arrange-
ments between local patrons and the poets and authors who wrote in Bengali.55
Not all contributors to the first wave of cultural mediation were Sufis but Uddin
says that book prefaces often “indicate that their authors were Sufis.”56 Eaton
shows how, over time, architecture was also acculturated so that mosques began
to resemble Buddhist and Hindu shrines. This allowed them to blend into the
countryside.57 In contrast, most Churches in Bangladesh look European and
exotic.
The impact of reformed Islam
The upsurge of reform, with its agenda of purifying Islam of Hindu elements,
saw a second wave of Islamic literature in Bengali. This set out to universalize
Islamic practice, positing a monolithic, unchanging, and immutable Arab-

flavored norm. This was actually very similar to Islam as described by Orientalist
scholars, for whom it was the same everywhere and at all times.58 Numerous
publications following the introduction of the printing press with Bengali script
and debates all “aimed to make less educated rural Muslims more conscious of
their membership in a larger Muslim community” and condemned what was
described as ‘“Hindu” accretion.59 Very hostile toward Hinduism, this did fuel
communitarian violence. Under the British,60 Hindus and Muslims were increas-
ingly dealt with as separate communities, with competing interests. Uddin sug-
gests that the very concept of “nation and religious communities as fixed
categories” developed in India “through interaction with missionaries and Brit-
ish administration.”61 The idea that Muslims and Hindus were separate nations
had some support from pioneer modernist thinkers in Islam. Sir Sayyid Ahmed
Khan (1817–98) has been attributed with sowing the seeds for the idea of Paki-
stan as a Muslim state, partitioned from India. He believed that Muslims and
Hindu interests were different, so each community should pursue these.62 Bue-
hler’s chapter in this book traces an even earlier origin of what became known
as the “two nation theory” to the Sufi, Ahmad Farūqi Sirhindī (d. 1624). On the
other hand, Sir Sayyid wanted a secular state, arguing that Muhammad’s reli-
gion, not his political leadership, which was circumstantial, is prescriptive.63
Khan, though, chose cooperation with the British as the best strategy to improve
the welfare of Indian Muslims. Others, such as the Deoband movement, chose
noncooperation. Some chose confrontation, which they expressed vocally or
through actual rebellion.64 The first wave of Islamic literature in Bengali set out
to build bridges between Islam and Bengal’s pre-Muslim culture. The second
wave wanted to construct barriers. To some extent, this literature succeeded.
Roy went so far as to state that what he called syncretistic Hinduism has more or
less yielded to “the heterogenic model of classical Islam,” widening the hiatus
that already existed between the exogenous Islam and the indigenous Bengali
culture and deepening the crises of Bengali identity.”65 However, I argue later
that the so-called syncretistic tradition, which I prefer to describe as a current
of spiritual openness, has survived, even if its flow is weaker.
Inclusive Islam in contemporary Bangladesh
Before describing reasons for claiming that inclusive Islam is healthy in Bangla-
desh, it is appropriate to identify contrary indicators. Reformist anti-Hindu
rhetoric did negatively impact Hindu–Muslim relations in Bengal. This negativ-
ity was exasperated by the British-imposed partition of Bengal in 1905, almost
certainly intended to “inflame Hindu–Muslim tensions.”66 This gave Muslims in
East Bengal, where they dominated the new legislature, a taste of power. The
Muslim League was founded there in 1906 specifically to represent Muslim
interests. Hindus throughout India protested Bengal’s partition, giving the self-
rule movement new impetus. The song Bande Mataram (“I bow to thee, mother”)
set to music by Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) became the “informal
anthem of the nationalist movement.” Secret terrorist organizations began to
operate, for whom Bengal as their motherland was epitomized by the goddess
Kali, “goddess of power and destruction, to whom they dedicated their
weapons.”67 After partition was rescinded in 1912, the British yielded to Muslim
League demands for separate electorates, which gave Muslims in Bengal a
majority of seats in the reunited province.68
Although initial proposals for a separate Muslim state excluded Bengal, based
on the assumption that Muslims there would prefer to remain in the same state
as their Hindu neighbors, circumstances combined to propel East Bengal into
Pakistan, as Pakistan’s Eastern province, in 1947.69 This can be represented as
Islam-trumping culture and Hindu–Muslim harmony, although leading Ben-
gali members of the Muslim League had supported the latter. East Pakistan’s
subsequent estrangement from West Pakistan, partly due to efforts to suppress
Bengali but also due to economic oppression, led to independence as Bangla-
desh in 1971. This can be credited to a reversal of Islam’s earlier triumph by a
resurgent culture and reassertion of Hindu–Muslim harmony. However, consti-
tutional changes in 1979 and 1988, which abandoned Bangladesh’s original
secularism in favor of Islamic identity, appear to confirm what Roy says about
how “the heterogenic model of classical Islam” displaced inclusive Islam.70
In 1992 following the Babri Masjid incident in India and in 2001 after BNP vic-
tory, there were increased reports of anti-Hindu violence.71 Yet the ballot box
has failed to give Islamists power to destroy inclusive Islam; only the bullet and
brutality could bring Islamists to power. Thus, “the overwhelming majority of
Bangladeshis likely will continue to resist the imposition of an Islamist
vision.”72
Even when anti-Hindu propaganda was rampant, not everyone favored Hin-
du–Muslim separation. In fact, during the Bengali Renaissance – the early
nineteenth century to early twentieth century – when many Bengalis led
Hindu reform and some led Muslim modernism, a great deal of creative
exchange took place.73 Muslim, Hindu, and Christian Bengalis occupied the
same intellectual world. Sufi thought influenced Rabindranath Tagore, the
Hindu reformer and poet. Nazrul Islam (1899–1976), a Muslim, looked on
Tagore as a mentor. He drew as much on Hindu as on Islamic imagery. Both
wrote for humanity. Both subscribed to universal values. Neither pitted Hindu
against Muslim. Today, members for all religious communities sing their songs.
Efforts to ban Tagore’s songs during the Pakistan period instead led to their
increased popularity, especially on Bengali New Year (still regarded as non-Is-
lamic by Islamists in Bangladesh).74 Such an intimate bond developed between
Bengalis of all creeds and their language that their earlier denunciations of
Bengali seem incredible. Pakistanis saw many aspects of Bangladeshi culture
as non-Islamic, several concerning women’s conduct, such as women’s

preference for the sari over shalwar kameez, the popularity of wearing the teep,
the scarcity of women wearing chador, and the fact that they marched in polit-
ical rallies.75 Incidentally, Bengali Muslim women were publishing, running
businesses, and speaking in the public arena in the late nineteenth century.76
Remarkably, Girish Chandra Sen (1836–1910), a Hindu, first translated the
Qur’ān into Bengali. He believed that all religions are “similar at their core.”
His lifelong study of Islam produced a translation and commentary that
remains “widely available in Bangladesh’s markets although other early trans-
lations written by Muslims” are not.77 Bengali Muslim modernist, a Shi’a,
Sayyid Ameer ‘Alī (1849–1928) stressed reason and shared humanity. His The
Spirit of Islam (1891) is replete with positive references to Sufi Islam, embraced
by the greatest Muslim “intellects of the east.”78 He supported separate elec-
torates but “stood for Hindu–Muslim unity,” believing that better relations
could be “cemented” if leaders were willing to compromise.79 The 1961, Paki-
stani Constitutional Report cited Ameer ‘Alī “profusely in its argument for
absolute judicial equality and equality in human rights between Muslims and
non-Muslims.”80 Even as the prospect of partition loomed in 1947, Bengal’s
Muslims, led by chief minister, Huseyn Suhrawardy (1892–1963) preferred
independence for Bengal, or taking the united province into Pakistan, which
was actually how they voted. East Bengal ended up as part of Pakistan because
the Hindu members of the Assembly voted, in a separate session, for partition.
The British ruled that a vote for partition by either caucus would override any
alternative.81 Despite popularity of the “two nation theory” elsewhere in India,
it was never really dominant in Bengal.
The Muslim League, which adopted the “two nation” goal in 1940, did not
win enough seats to form its own administration in Bengal until 1946. Muslims
voted for alternative parties. Abandonment of secularism in 1979 and the
founding of a more Islam-oriented political party in opposition to the AL, which
had broken from the Muslim League in 1949 and led the language and inde-
pendence struggle, does signify consciousness of the role of Islamic values in
Muslim-majority Bangladesh.82 Pragmatically, the constitutional change helped
attract aid from oil-rich Arab Muslim states. The BNP is interested in better rela-
tions with the Muslim world, accusing the AL of compromising Bangladeshi
sovereignty through various treaties with India. However, the two parties have
alternated in power since 1991. The AL achieved an absolute majority in 2008,
so it cannot be argued that pro-Islamic identity has replaced AL-supported,
more inclusive identity. Most non-Muslims support AL. The Islamist JI did com-
paratively well in 2001 but lost 16 seats in 2008. No other Islamist party has suc-
ceeded in winning more than 2 or 3 seats. Former President Hussain Muhammad
Ershad’s Jatya Party (27 seats) is Islamist in rhetoric yet, currently allied with the
secularist, inclusive AL, it is not anti-minority. A Christian serves in the cabinet,
elected by an overwhelmingly Muslim constituency. Since independence,
indus have held up to 12 seats and several cabinet posts. Currently, there are
H
4 Hindus in parliament, with 1 Cabinet seat.83
Although Bangladesh is no longer officially secular, a predominantly secular
ethos prevails. This has historical precedent, since previous Muslim rulers kept
politics and religion apart.84 Sufi Islam, based on Banu’s research, represents
approximately 49%. Her research showed that a very small number today par-
ticipate in “syncretistic” acts such as offering “votive donations to Hindu pīrs” or
to “supernatural powers” (6.5%) but 47.4% of urban dwellers reported friendly
relations with Hindus. A total of 14.6% of rural respondents and 18.3% of
urban respondents actually attend Hindu pujas. Purist or homogeneous Islam
is more visible in contemporary Bangladesh. When I carried out interviews in
the late 1990s, several respondents said that “some pīrs are rogues” but others
“sincere”; their task is to point people to “The Pīr” who is Muhammad, a view
similar to Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s.85 Some Sufi shrines “post signs indicating cor-
rect decorum,” which excludes “asking for the saint’s assistance” and venerating
the saint “in any way.”86 However, visitors still include Hindus, who are wel-
come.87 Alam’s chapter in this book, on the Maizbhandariyya Sufi Order,
informs us that it admits non-Muslim members. Politicians visit shrines “around
the country” before elections. “Dormitories, airplanes and office building” bear
saints’ names.88 Some ‘urs (death anniversary of saints) attract large numbers,
including one in Chittagong, which significantly, says Uddin, uses a “Bengali
rather than an Islamic calendar date.”89 Women as well as men perform dhikr,
singing at shrines, celebrations, and weddings. Some women earn their living as
devotional singers.90 All communities celebrate New Year. There are exceptions.
The popular Naqshbandi Pīr Artrashi, of whom Ershad is a follower, founded a
political party, the Zaker, in 1989 with the express aim of rallying Muslims
against a supposed Hindu threat.91 The AL’s pro-India foreign policy represents
“Hindu” subversion. Zaker has had no electoral success. Artrashi’s hostility
toward non-Muslims does not represent all Naqshbandi. Werbner’s work
describes a Naqshbandi pīr – based in Pakistan – whose attitude toward non-
Muslims was open, welcoming, and inclusive.92 Second-term Prime Minister, AL
leader Shaikh Hasina has visited the Sufi shrine at Ajmer, where Hindus and
Muslims still mix and mingle. Her maxim of “love of all and malice to none”93
resembles the Sufi motto sulḥ-i-kull (peace with all).
Khaleda Zia, her rival, also a two-term Prime Minister, projects a more reform-
ist Muslim image, yet heads an avowedly Islam-oriented party.94 All major politi-
cal parties except JI have nominated women candidates. The JI, allied with BNP,
did accept two reserved women’s seats in 1991 and actively campaigns for wom-
en’s votes. There is a case for linking the prominent role played by these women
to the Sufi tradition of female teachers, perhaps also rooted in ancient Bengali
notions of female divinity as power (shakti).95 It also builds on women’s contri-
bution to the Bengali renaissance and freedom struggle, in which they marched
and several fought. The tendency to reduce Hasina and Khaleda’s careers to
special circumstances (both are relatives of dead male leaders) ignores the fact
that other women, unrelated to former leaders, have gained important posts.
Women’s representation, too, has consistently risen.96 Gender legislation in
Bangladesh has improved women’s rights in many areas, although levels of
domestic violence remain regrettably high.97
Conclusion
Islam’s rootedness in Bengal, refusing to displace or destroy preexisting reli-

gion, tapping into its inclusive and soil-loving ethos, becoming part of the tap-
estry of the land, entering its history and myth, demonstrates ability to adapt to
local contexts. Uddin suggests that reformists really preach a “Middle East-in-
formed Islam,” not a global Islam.98 When Bangladesh separated from Pakistan,
it did not repudiate Islam but employed an oppressive version that condemned
inclusive spirituality. Islam is singular in values, obligatory practices, and theo-
logical belief. It is also variegated in how it expresses itself in different localities.
Sufi Islam around the world may represent an alternative global phenomenon
to the Orientalist and Islamist macro-Islam, as Werbner has argued.99 Sufi Islam
in Bangladesh and elsewhere makes local space sacred, contradicting the claim
that only Arabia is holy, that everywhere else is barren, waiting for Islam to colo-
nize the ground, so that history itself can begin. In this view, Islam enters new
space to displace everything pre-Islamic, all preexisting culture, history, reli-
gion, and values.100 Did aspects of Bengal’s ancient inclusive spiritual tradition
resonate with certain Qur’ānic potentialities for tolerance, openness, and affir-
mation of human solidarity, such as might be extrapolated from Q30: 22 and
49: 13?101 Have aspects of culture in Arab space hindered the development of
the Qur’ān’s potential in some areas, for example, attitudes toward non-Mus-
lims and women’s rights? Can South Asia help Arab Islam rediscover some of
the Qur’ān’s most profound affirmations?
Notes
1
I use Bengal to refer to the historical region and sometimes kingdom or sultan-
ate of India. I use East Bengal to refer to the geographical east of that region,
roughly corresponding to what became East Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh
in 1971. East Bengal was also briefly separate from West Bengal between 1905 and
1911. West Bengal, after 1947, became a state within the Republic of India.
2
Islamism refers to movements espousing what is also known as “political Islam.”
Islamists have explicitly political goals, unlike some reformists and revivalists (see
footnote 6).
3
Clinton Bennett, Islam in Bangladesh, a survey of its historical, constitutional and expe-
riential dimensions as part requirement for the Certificate in the Study of Islam (unpub-
lished thesis, University of Birmingham, 1979).
4
Richard M Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier: 1204–1760 (Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press, 1993), 129.
5
Jama’at-i-Islam was founded by Abu Ala Mawdudi (1903–79) in India in 1941 as
a reformist religious–political organization. It is usually described as Islamist. In
Pakistan, JI initially opposed the government as un-Islamic, then collaborated
with Zia al-Haq’s Islamization program (members held important posts) but later
criticized him for not holding elections. In Pakistan, the organization has won
seats in Parliament ranging from as few as 3 in 1993 to 53 in 2003. During the
Bangladeshi War of Independence, JI remained loyal to Pakistan and was banned
until 1979. It won 10 seats in 1986, 18 in 1991 and in 2001 (when it was awarded
2 cabinet posts under the Bangladesh National Party government), but only 2
in 2008. The party is allied with BNP, which is Islam-oriented but not Islamist.
Mawdudi’s family descended from a Chīshtī sheikh but he denounced Sufism for
lack of interest in political engagement, declaring that Sufis violated “true Islam”
and were comparable with atheists and polytheists; see Roxanne Leslie Euben
and Muhammad Qasim Zaman Princeton readings in Islamist thought: texts and con-
texts from al-Banna to Bin Laden (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 81.
6
A reformer is a muslih. Like the word islahi (reformist) this is derived from salih
(upright) and islah (reform). Those whose aim is to restore a supposed past ideal
practiced by Muhammad and the first three generations of Muslims (Salafiyun,
for example, al-Wahhab and his heirs) and progressives who think that Islam can
achieve yet unrealized potential can both be called reformers. I will use reformer
to describe champions of a restored Islam, modernist for champions of progress.
Revivalist may be a more accurate term for the former. Islamists are often revival-
ists, although some advocate political structures that are dissimilar to those previ-
ously found in Islamic societies. Progressives may also support the notion of an
Islamic political order but perceive this differently from Islamists. Progressives
usually embrace gender and Muslim–non-Muslim equality, for example, and do
not insist on such penalties as amputation or stoning.
7
In fact, although some Sufi practices in the Subcontinent associated with visiting
shrines have Hindu elements, neither visitation per se nor intercession though
pīrs is of specific Hindu or Buddhist origin. They are encountered wherever
Sufism flourishes.
8
Martin van Bruinessen and Julia Day Howell, Sufism and the “modern” in Islam
(London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), 130.
9
Bruinessen and Howell, 133.
10
Richard D Lewis, When Cultures Collide: Leading Across Cultures: a Major New Edi-
tion of the Global Guide (Boston: Nicholas Brealey International, 2005), 447. On
the Deobandi and TJ, see Barbara D. Metcalf, “‘Traditionalist’ Islamic Activity:
Deoband, Tablihjis and Talibs” (NY: Social Science Research Council, nd) avail-
able at http://essays.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/metcalf.htm (accessed August 4,
2011).
11
Sufia M. Uddin, Constructing Bangladesh: Religion, Ethnicity and Language in an
Islamic Nation (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press 2006),
162. See also Uddin, 117–53 on the two competing concepts of national iden-
tity, Bengali (stressing loyalty to land and language) and Bangladeshi (stressing
Islamic aspects). The first also stresses what Bangladeshis have in common with
Hindus in West Bengal. Uddin says that “sentiment over the question of the parti-
tion of Bengal” still haunts people on both sides of the border, commenting that
many Hindus in the West proudly proclaim having their “roots in Bangladesh,”
184.
12
Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love: The Anthropology of a Global Sufi Order (Blooming-
ton, IA: Indiana University Press, 2003), 28.
13
Uddin, 176 comments on how a Bangladeshi exposed while overseas or on the
hajj to what some see as “pure Islam” might then regard the Islam of Bangladesh
as “backward, full of superstition and improper.”
14
Eaton regards these stories as apocryphal, revised later to conform to ideas about
how Muslims should act vis-à-vis idolatry; see Eaton, 71–7; 212–13. U. A. B Razia
Akter Banu Islam in Bangladesh (Leiden: E J Brill, 1992) refers to “warrior-saints”
but does not dispute that some combined preaching with conquest; see 14–15.
Ramsey refers to sword-wielding Sufis, too, in this book’s conclusion.
15
Eaton, 129–30.
16
With Hanbali and Maliki, these are two of the four main Sunni schools of juris-
prudence. Hanafi is often described as the most liberal, allowing more scope
for personal opinion or reasoning, conscience, notions of fairness, and equity.
Hanbali, the only school recognized by al-Wahhab, relied mainly on Qur’ān and
hadīth, discouraged “reasoning” but also left large areas to local custom (where
no specific precedent could be cited).
17
For women saints, see Uddin, 36, 143–4.
18
Eaton, 116 points out that the largest Muslim populations in both Bengal and
Punjab “took place along the political fringe.” It was the 1872 census that first
alerted the British to the Muslim majority in East Bengal. They had thought that
Hindus predominated. They were also surprised that most lived in rural areas,
while Dhaka, for centuries a center of Muslim power, had only a small Muslim
majority; see Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal (NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1983), 20–1; Eaton, 120.
19
Eaton, 130.
20
Roy, 79.
21
Eaton, 315. See Roy, 61–2. Discovering foreign ancestry, people used titles to
which they had no actual claim, including Saiyed (Syed or Sayyid) denoting
descent from Muhammad, a cherished designation in much of the Muslim world.
See Arthur Buehler’s chapter in this book on Ashrāf society and Ahmad, Imtiaz,
“The Ashrāf–Ajlāf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in India,” Indian Eco-
nomic & Social History Review 3: 268–78, 1966.
22
Roy, 34. Buddhism, too, still exists in Bangladesh, admittedly close to the Bur-
mese border, which might explain its survival. On the other hand, it shows that
Buddhists have resisted converting to Islam over many centuries.
23
See Eaton’s tables 1 and 3, (pages 67 and 184).
24
Roy, 51.
25
Uddin, 37.
26
Banu, 13; Uddin, 37. Fish are integral to Bangladeshi diet, inseparable from
national culture.
27
Eaton, 212–13.
28
See Eaton, 211–12, 256 who notes how what began as charismatic authority over
time became routinized as “proprietary rights over land” were acquired, refer-
ring to Max Weber’s theory of authority.
29
Such stories can be dismissed as incredulous, even as evidence that “they” are
less rational than “us” or regarded as testimony of disciples’ esteem for and belief
in their pīr; see my discussion, drawing on anthropologist Michael Gilsenan in
Clinton Bennett, Studying Islam: The Critical Issues (London: Continuum, 2010),
104–5.
30
Eaton, 73.
31
Banu, 15 refers to one lodge “built on top of a Hindu Temple,” to two “located
on ancient sacred mounds,” and to one where Buddhist relics have been
discovered.
32
Roy, 41.
33
Eaton, 281.
34
Uddin, 33.
35
Banu, 15.
36
Roy, 104.
37
Roy, 104.
38
Roy, 159–60 although Guru and Pīr were also used interchangeably.
39
Uddin, 34.
40
J. J. Burman, Hindu–Muslim Syncretic Shrines and Communities (New Delhi: Mittal
Publications, 2002), 14.
41
See Uddin, 30 and Roy, 67. Roy says that patronage was “confined to the Hindu
writers on Hindu themes”. Uddin says that on occasion rulers sponsored writing
in Bengali on Islamic topics.
42
Eaton, 259.
43
Eaton, 154.
44
See Eaton, xxv, 134, 178. Aurangzeb did impose the jizya (tax on non-Muslims),
which no previous Muslim ruler in Bengal had levied. Uddin says that “through-
out history” Bengal’s “Muslim rulers demonstrated little interest in converting …
people to Islam,” 21. The Mughals were mainly interested in “high productivity
yields in the eastern delta,” which opened up the possibility of expanding arable
space, 22.
45
“The ruling class in Bengal maintained a clear separation between matters of
religion and matters of state,” Eaton, 176.
46
Some felt they had to apologize for writing in Bengali. Such was the “deep-seated”
Ashrāf prejudice against this that Roy praises their “moral courage” in defying
the “crushing weight of power and tradition,” 67, 76. One cultural mediator dis-
missed criticism by arguing that God is able to understand all languages and that
those who had “no liking for the language and the learning of their country”
had best leave it, 78. Writing as late as 1927, one author expressed humiliation
that Muslims were still speaking Bengali and “amused himself with the notional
exigency of 25 million Muslims in Bengal emigrating in search of a land where
Bengali was not spoken and where sharif status was consequently assured,” 67.
47
Uddin, 36.
48
Roy, 97.
49
Eaton, 286.
50
Eaton, 288.
51
Eaton, 289.
52
Roy, 92.
53
Roy, 90.
54
Uddin, 37.
55
Uddin, 38.
56
Uddin, 37.
57
Eaton, 60–1. The nativist style typically had one dome with “octagonal corner
towers,” and made “exclusive use of brick” and “extensive terra-cotta ornamenta-
tion” showing Buddhist influence and also that of the “familiar thatched bamboo
hut found everywhere” in Bengal.
58
Roy, 5, compares the Orientalist and Islamist “macro-vision” of Islam as equally
“monolithic.”
59
Uddin, 64.
60
In Bengal, British rule began in 1757, initially as a revenue collector (jagir) for
the Mughals and continued until independence and partition in 1947.
61
Uddin, 85.
62
Khan “stopped short of advocating a separate state” but he did call for a “separate
status”; Stephen P Cohen, The Idea of Pakistan (Washington, D.C., Brookings Insti-
tution Press, 2004), 25.
63
Khan was “particular in drawing a distinction between affairs purely religious and
worldly in matters of traditions.” It is obligatory for Muslims to follow traditions
of the prophet “which refer to religious injunctions” but “in social, economic and
cultural affairs” Muslims “are free to adopt” according to circumstances provided
they do so in conformity with Islam’s “spiritual values.” Cultural, economic, and
social affairs cannot be “determined by the standards as they existed in early
Islam.” B. A. Dar, Religious Thought of Sayyid Ahmed Khan (Lahore: Zarreen Art
Press, 1971), 268–9. This is the opposite of Islamist insistence on din wa dawla
(unity of religion and state).
64
Khan argued that India under the British was a “place of safety or peace,” not Dar-
al-Harb (Place of War) and that Muslims owed the British their loyalty; see Dar,
78. Others chose revolt – many Muslims supported the 1857 anti-British revolt.
Members of the Tariqah-i-Muhammadiya declared jihad and campaigned in the
North West Frontier; see Uddin, 54–5. Muslims were duty-bound to migrate from
India to Muslim-controlled territory, from where they could oppose the British
and reclaim India as Dar-al-Islam (Islamic territory).
65
Roy, 253.
66
James J. Novak, Bangladesh: reflections on the water (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1993), 87. Novak says that until this point, “though there had been
friction… neither Hindu nor Muslim Bengalis thought of themselves as a sepa-
rate nation.”
67
Barbara Daly Metcalf, and Thomas R. Metcalf. A Concise History of India. (Cam-
bridge Concise Histories. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
155.
68
In the 1932 communitarian allocation of seats, Europeans were awarded 25, Hin-
dus 80 (of which 10 were for untouchables), and Muslims 119 (constituting 54%
of the population); see M. J Akbar, The shade of swords: jihad and the conflict between
Islam and Christianity (London: Routledge, 2002), 181.
69
The original proposal for Pakistan excluded Bengal, hence the acronym Punjab
Afghan province Kashmir Sindh Baluchistan suggested by Rahmat Ali in 1933.
70
Constitutional Amendment Five replaced “secularism” in the 1972 Constitution with
“belief in Almighty Allah” and spoke of Bangladesh seeking solidarity with Muslim
states. The 8th Amendment (1988) declared that Islam was the state r eligion.
71
Temples were destroyed, homes burned, women raped. In addition to target-
ing Hindus, Islamists also attached secular organizations and nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs). The latter are perceived as foreign efforts to undermine
Muslim values, especially vis-à-vis women’s freedom and rights. See Julie Cher-
nov-Hwang Peaceful Islamist mobilization in the Muslim world: what went right (New
York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2009) 49. The Babri Masjid in Ayodhia was destroyed
in 1992 by Hindus, allegedly because it was built on Ram’s birthplace (Ram is an
incarnation of Vishnu).
72
Uddin, 185.
73
Hindu reformers, as did Muslim, reacted to Christian criticism, presenting a
version of Hinduism devoid of what Christians found objectionable. However,
whether “reformer” is an appropriate term is debatable, since some argue that so-
called classical Hinduism was also to a degree an Orientalist construct. If Hindu-
ism was only homogenized by colonial discourse, then representing such reforms
as that of the Brahmo Samaj (of which Girish Chandra Sen was a member) “falls
into the trap of seeing pre-colonial” Indian religions “through colonial specta-
cles,” Richard King, Orientalism and Religion: postcolonial theory, India and the “mystic
east” (London: Routledge, 1999), 106. See also Uddin, 195 FN 16.
74
See Uddin, 134–6. Initial plans to more or less ban Bengali were eventually aban-
doned, due to the strength of opposition. Urdu was declared the official lan-
guage of Pakistan in 1952. An alternative was to Arabize Bengali, introducing
Arabic script, which met with little success. See Uddin, 125.
75
Uddin says that Tagore’s songs “and his religious tolerance became symbols of
Bengali national consciousness,” 135. The teep is a red dot worn on the forehead,
regarded as Hindu. In post-independence Bangladesh, the shalwar kameez has
become more common, partly because women prefer wearing this while working
in industry, where it is considered appropriate dress. See Elora Shehabuddin,
Reshaping the holy: democracy, development, and Muslim women in Bangladesh (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 64, 188.
76
The first book by a Muslim Bengali woman was published in 1876; Sonia Nishat
Amin, The world of Muslim women in colonial Bengal, 1876-1939 (Leiden: Brill, 1996).
77
Uddin, 89. Sen used non-Arabic words for God, choosing to emphasize universal
aspects. He made extensive use of Muslim commentary (mainly in Farsi); see
Uddin, 95.
78
Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam (NY: Cosimo, 2010), 457. His references to
Hinduism are not entirely positive, though. He describes Manu’s “denunciation”
of women as “fanatical,” xxix.
79
Syed Ameer Ali and Shan Muhammad, The Right Hon’ble Syed Ameer Ali: political
writings. (New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1989), xii.
80
Nikki R. Keddie, Scholars, saints, and sufis: Muslim religious institutions in the
Middle East since 1500. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 265.
81
On the partition issue, June 20, 1947, the whole chamber of the Bengal Assem-
bly voted 126 to 90 against a united province in India. The Muslim delegates
then voted by 106 to 35 for the whole province to cede to Pakistan. The Hindu
delegates voted 58 to 21 for partition, with West Bengal ceding to India. See
Sumantra Bose, Bosnia after Dayton: nationalist partition and international interven-
tion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 195. Lord Mountbatten, the last
British viceroy, had favored an independent Bengal. In the end he ruled this
out, saying it would lead to other regions wanting separate statehood as well; see
Mushirul Hasan, Legacy of a divided nation: India’s Muslims since independence (Lon-
don: Hurst, 1997), 311.
82
Uddin, 133, reminds us that Bangladesh has “more than sixty ethnic minorities,”
so Bangladeshi (literally people who live in Bangladesh, as opposed to bideshi or
foreigners) might be more appropriate than Bengali.
83
Fluctuation in the number of Hindus elected and their present lower number
(12 in 1972 was the highest number) can be interpreted as a sign of increas-
ing marginalization; see Ali Riaz, God willing: the politics of Islamism in Bangladesh
(Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 1–2. The-AL nominated 14 in 2008.
Analysis would need to consider many variables. However, there were pamphlets
circulating asking Muslims to withdraw support from non-Muslim candidates.
Five still won. See Election Bulletin 2008 (Dhaka: Bangladesh Hindu–Buddhist–-
Christian Unity Council, 2008), 1.
84
Bengal’s sultans, says Eaton, developed a “stable, mainly secular modus vivendi
with Bengali society and culture” through a “mutually satisfactory patron–client”
system “in which the state systematically patronized the culture of the subject
population,” 69.
85
Clinton Bennett, In Search of Muhammad (London: Cassell, 1998), 199. Writing
about the relationship between Pīr and disciples, Khan concluded that “the
Prophet is the one valid Pīr” thus “organized Sufi life must be strictly directed
to following the Prophet alone,” K. S. Bharathi, Encyclopaedia of Eminent Thinkers
(New Delhi: Concept Pub. Co, 1998), 41–2.
86
Uddin, 148.
87
Uddin, 149.
88
Uddin, 148.
89
Uddin, 148.
90
Lisa I Knight, Contradictory lives: Baul women in India and Bangladesh (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2001), 20.
91
Pnina Werbner and Helene Basu, Embodying charisma modernity, locality, and per-
formance of emotion in Sufi cult (London: Routledge, 2002), 48. Ershad, however,
appointed his sister-in-law, Mumta Wahab, to a deputy minister’s post. During the
1986 election, women won non-reserved seats for the first time. Alam’s chapter
“Encountering the Unholy” in this book offers an alternative description of Zaker
as a more secular-oriented party, and more accommodationist in opposition to
Islamist politics.
92
Pīr Zindapīr, who died in 1999, believed in Islam’s tolerant, unifying, and univer-
sal spirit. All people are God’s children. He respected everyone for their common
humanity, Werbner, 2003, 92–3. Buehler on another Naqshbandi saint, Sirhindi,
in this book says that he espoused a “live and let live” philosophy toward other
religions although he is also reputed to have compared Hindus with dogs and was
accused of fomenting Hindu–Muslim hostility.
93
Cited in Sirajuddina Ahameda, Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister of Bangladesh (New
Delhi: UNS Publishers, 1998), 255.
94
See Anwara Begum, “Asian Women Leaders: A Comparative Study of the Images
of Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh,” Asian Profile 34, 3: 265–89, 2006
for a detailed analysis of how each woman projects an image consistent with their
ideas about nationalism. Khaleda projects herself as belonging yet “not belonging
to the land” like an Ashrāf noblewoman or Nawab’s wife. Her single-color silk saris
symbolize a purer Muslim heritage. She moves among the people yet maintains a
certain distance. Hasina wears cotton saris, patterned with “rural scenes, angular
ferns, wild flowers, birds in flight, fish Bangladeshis like to eat” and even Bengali
letters (279), all celebrating “secular, linguistic, Bengali nationalism.”
95
The only known Hindu rebellion against the Dhaka Sultanate was waged in the
name of the goddess Chandi; Eaton, 109.
96
The percentage of women in parliament was 13% in 2001 to 18.6% today (64 out
of 345 with 45 reserved seats). The current percentage of women in the US Con-
gress is 16.8%; see Women in National Parliaments, Inter-Parliamentary Union
data at http://www.ipu.org/wmn-e/classif.htm.
97
One source cites 200 “acid attacks” per annum, commenting that statistics are
“hard to come by, “Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls,” UNICEF: Flor-
ence, Innocenti Digest, No 6 June 2000, 7.
98
Uddin, 182.
99
See Werbner, 2003, 289 and her contribution to this book.
100
See V. J Naupaul, Among the Non-Believers: An Islamic Journey (London: Peter Smith,
1998), 311, 318, who sees all non-Arab space as necessarily “barren” waiting for
faith and history to begin. No continuity with preexisting culture or history can
be tolerated; sacred space is “elsewhere,” that is, in Arabia. In contrast, Werbner
argues that Sufi shrines transfer sanctity. Linked by initiation with a distant Pīr, and
through his silsilah with Muhammad, sanctity becomes transferrable. In her 2003
book she describes how one of Zindapīr’s deputies built a mosque in Birming-
ham, which became the center of the symbolic universe for his followers, purified
and sacralized by the saint’s “divine blessing” and presence. I lived opposite this
mosque, and observed how a plot of vacant land in inner-city Birmingham was
transformed. I recently revisited this neighborhood. The Mosque is now part of
what Werbner describes as a “sacred spatial network” that stretches across the
globe, 49. She distanced herself from Clifford Geertz’s view that “global religions
are necessarily embedded in the taken-for-granteds of local cultural milieu” in
favor of seeing Sufism as a “global … movement which everywhere fabulates the

possibility (if not the actualization) of human perfection,” 289.
101
I am indebted to the ideas of Muslim scholars who argue that what are eternal
are the Qur’ān’s principles and values, not their implementation during Muham-
mad’s life. Accommodation had to be made with existing circumstances and with
people’s willingness to fully embrace God’s ideal. As Muhammad Iqbal (1877–
1938) argued, the completeness of the Qur’ānic revelation and of Muhammad’s
mission is “potential” rather than “realized.” Humanity can progress “onward to
receive ever-fresh illuminations from an Infinite Reality” which appears every
moment in “new glory.” Muslims must not be captive to their “past history”; see
Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1930), 123, 151, 163.
Chapter 14
A Garden Amidst the Flames: The Categorical

Imperative of Sufi Wisdom
Hugh van Skyhawk
Since the murder of Benazir Bhutto in Liaquat Bagh on December 27, 2007,
again and again death has cast its fearsome shadow over the promised land of
the Indian Muslims. Media reports of target killings, suicide bombings, behead-
ings, and death and destruction by intercontinental remote control roll over us
every day like garish billboards advertising: irreligious deeds in the name of
religion, brutality and barbarism in the name of democracy, national dishonor
in the name of political expediency, all beamed out in high definition, all avail-
able for replay at the push of a button day or night.
Caught in the vise‐grips of enemies whose names and faces they will never
know, the people, the sovereigns of the democratic state, take to the streets in
the futile rage of a wounded beast, throwing stones, smashing car windows,
burning tires, and bashing the heads of their fellow countrymen whose duty it
is to keep public order.
But pictures of blood‐splattered casualties can also distract attention from the
all-important fact that victims of terrorist attacks are often martyrs of the Idea
of Pakistan, Quaid‐i‐Azam Muhammad ‘Ali Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan as the
homeland of the Indian Muslims in which every citizen, regardless of his per-
sonal faith, is an equal shareholder in the state and has equal freedoms of reli-
gion and expression. This social contract of Pakistan has been underwritten
again and again in the blood of these martyrs of humanity, the defenders of the
vision of a nation any man could be proud of.
In the days following the assassination of Shahbaz Bhatti on March 2, 2011, it
seemed that the 26 shots that Mumtāz Qādiri had fired killing Salman Tasīr on
January 4 might truly have “sent Pakistan over the edge” as one Washington Post
reporter put it. I read the sūra al-Hijr and contemplated its chilling implications
for a mankind that was clearly on the path of error:
Iblīs said: “In the manner in which You led me to error, I will make things on
earth seem attractive to them and lead all of them to error, except those of
Your servants You have singled out for Yourself”…
(Allah said:) “Surely, Hell is the promised place for all of them. … As for
the God‐fearing, they shall be amid gardens and springs. They will be told:
‘Enter it in peace and security.’ And we shall purge their breasts of all traces
of rancor; and they shall be seated on couches facing one another as broth-
ers.” al Qur’ān, sūra 15, 40–5
But two events of recent days may be seen as cause for hope for the normaliza-
tion of human relations in Pakistan: The leader of the Jami’at ul-Ulema i Islam,
Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, took a brave position when he publicly stated that
“abuses or aberrations” of the blasphemy law could indeed be discussed in the
National Assembly,1 and Shaykh-ul-Islam Hazrat Mufti Muhammad Idris Usmani
of the Jamia Islamia2 was no less courageous when he issued a fatwa condemn-
ing lawlessness regardless of one’s religious motivations. While both men have
undoubtedly placed themselves in great danger—two attempts on Maulana
Fazl-ur-Rehman’s life were made on two consecutive days, killing 19 of the
Maulana’s followers—their courage may, after all, bring Pakistan back from the
brink of chaos.
While considering the deeper historical and cultural layers of Pakistan set
against the background of Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman’s and Mufti Muhammad
Idris Usmani’s Islamic course correctives, I come to the conclusion that the
nine centuries of compassion for one’s fellow man that are immediately associ-
ated with the names of Mu‘īn ud-Dīn Chīshtī (d. 1236/633), Farīd ud-Dīn Ganj-
i-Shakar (d. 1265), Nizām ud-Dīn Auliya (d. 1325/725), Nasīr ud-Dīn
Chirāg-i-Dihlī (1276–1356/757), Hazrat Banda Nawāz Gīsūdirāz (1321/721–
1422/825), Shah Abdul Latīf of Bhit (d. 1754), Bulhe Shah (d. 1752), and
countless other noble men who had the courage to reach out to their fellow
man, regardless of his religion, caste, or ethnic origin—this common bedrock
of universal ethics in the cultures of South Asia cannot be destroyed by the
bombs and bullets of the misguided faithful, nor by the cynicism of hardened
target killers, the arrogance of drone bomber imperialism, or the machinations
of shamelessly corrupt political leaders.
On February 13, 2009, one of the most beloved pīrs of Pakistan, Pīr Nasir
ud-Dīn Nasīr, died at Golra Sharif near Islamabad. Less than two hours later the
roads leading to Golra Sharif had to be closed because of the cars of thousands
of his followers who were trying to reach Golra in time to be present at Nasīr
ud-Dīn Nasīr’s namāz-i-jināza (funeral prayers). Nonetheless, only twelve days
later, it was possible for the BBC correspondent Barbara Plett to market her
report “Can Sufism Counter the Taliban” in which Sufis and their cults are pre-
sented in terms of Western stereotypes of hashish-smoking and dancing der-
vishes with little or no political significance rather than as beloved and holy
teachers of ethics and morals.3
To know the values of a people one must probe more deeply than is possible
in daily journalism. If the national outrage against the Taliban for publicly
A Garden Amidst the Flames: The Categorical Imperative of Sufi Wisdom 235
hipping a seventeen-year-old girl made the Taliban press spokesmen seem to

w
lose their self-confident voices for a few days,4 the destruction of any major Sufi
shrine, such as Bābā Farīd at Pākpattan, Datta Ganj Baksh in Lahore, or Lal
Shabaz Qalandar at Sehwan Sharif, might well prove to be their undoing. Who-
ever has experienced the joy and merriment of a wedding in Punjab or Sindh
with music and dance or the ‘urs of a great pīr, which itself is seen as a wedding
to the Almighty, and is also celebrated with music and dance, will know that the
great majority of the people of Pakistan would never accept the Taliban idea of
an Islamic society of rigid laws forbidding the joys of life and all-encompassing
systems of intimidation and brutal punishments to enforce them.5
This year the 1014th ‘urs of Hazarat Tabl-i-Ālam Bādshāh Nathar Walī (d.
1079/474) will be celebrated in Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, India. For more
than one millennium the shrine of Nathar Walī has been a place of interreli-
gious dialogue between Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. While a thousand
years of Sufi traditions in the Subcontinent may not have resulted in the pro-
duction of significant contributions to the metaphysics of tassawuf, Sufis of the
Subcontinent have, without doubt, helped to shape the largest multireligious
culture in the world. Not by hashhish smoking or ecstatic dancing but by the
fusion of Divine Love to words and feelings that can be understood by all have
the Sufis of the Subcontinent become the teachers of all, whether Hindu, Mus-
lim, Christian, Parsi, or tribals. The indomitable strength of Sufism lies in its
readiness for dialogue with and unconditional esteem for the other.
There are good reasons for trusting these deeper ethical values of Pakistani
society, for they are the same collective values that underlie the one institution
in Pakistan that survives all crises and functions when all else fails: the family.
The thoughts that follow are the temporary harvest of my ongoing search for
this heart of hearts of Pakistan:
O people! Behold!
We have created you from a male and a female
and have made you into nations and tribes
so that you might come to know one another.
Verily, the noblest of you in the sight of Allah
is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him.
Behold! Allah is all-knowing, all-aware. [al-Qur’ān, 49:13]
In 1165/560, one of the most enlightened religious thinkers of all time was
born in Murcia in the Muslim Almohad Empire of southern Spain and North
Africa. As a young man ‘Abū ‘Abdullāh Muhammad ibn ‘Alī ibn Muhammad
ibn al-‘Arabī al-Hātimī al-òā’ī, who was later to be accorded the honorific titles
“Reviver of Religion” and “al-Shaikh al-Akbar,” was deeply conscious of the
immanence of Allah in all things and, above all, of Allah as the Source of the
three religions of Ibrahim: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. According to pious
tradition, as a young man he would keep vigil at night in a cemetery listening

for messages from the hereafter. One night the young ibn al-‘Arabī was blessed
with visions of Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muhammad (Peace and Prayers be upon
Them!). Later in life in the Futūhāt al-Makkiyyah, ibn al-‘Arabī wrote:
There is no knowledge except that taken from God, for He alone is the
Knower. ... The prophets, in spite of their great number and the long periods
of time which separate them, had no disagreement in knowledge of God,
since they took it from God.6
Though ibn ‘Arabī left al-Andalus in 1200/595 at the age of thirty-five never to
return, his mature thought and teachings would always reveal their roots in that
Golden Age of Muslim Spain in which the mystics and thinkers of the three
religions that acknowledge Ibrahim as the prophet of God interacted freely and
shared their visions of the One God and His Creation. Long before there was a
terminology to describe what we today know as ‘Inter-Faith Dialogue’ ibn
‘Arabī’s mystical vision “Everything Is He” (hama ūst) found expression in a
perception of a world filled with dialogue with and appreciation of the faiths of
others:
O marvel! A garden amidst the flames!

My heart is capable of every form,
A cloister of the monk, a temple for idols,
A pasture for gazelles, the votary’s Ka’ba,
The tables of the Torah, the Koran.
Love is the creed I hold: wherever turn
His camels, love is still my creed and faith.
Tarjumān al-Ashwāq (“The Interpretation of Divine Love”)7
Even for the casual observer it is obvious that for ibn ‘Arabī, Allah is understood
to be free of confinement in human constructions such as “church,” “monas-
tery,” “temple,” “Ka’ba,” or of confinement to any one of His Holy Revelations.
Both the Torah and the Holy Qur’ān are the Word of God in ibn ‘Arabī’s view.
Moreover, he engaged in interfaith dialogue as a learner and not a converter,
celebrating as fully as possible the different paths to God. In both attitudes ibn
‘Arabī, were he to be alive today, would easily find himself at home in the inter-
faith dialogue of present-day liberal Protestantism and the “centered set” as
opposed to the “bounded set” theology of the emerging Christian churches.
While the ontological monism implied in ibn ‘Arabī’s vision of the divine as
“Everything Is He” was (and is) rejected by the majority of the orthodox Sunni
ulema, his influence on medieval Sufi thought is beyond estimation. If only to
explain, modify, or correct the apparent pantheism in the great Shaikh’s vision,
by the first half of the fourteenth century every Sufi from al-Andalus to Hindu-
stan had at least heard of, if not seriously studied, ibn ‘Arabī’s Fusūs al-hikam
(“Bezels of Wisdom”) and Futūhāt al-Makkiyyah (“The Meccan Revelations”).
Though the first explicit references to ibn ‘Arabī’s doctrines of the Oneness of
Being (wahdat al-wujūd) appear suddenly en masse in the writings of the Sufis of
the Subcontinent in the latter half of the fourteenth century,8 there is evidence
to suggest that even as early as Hazrat Mu‘īn ud-Dīn Chīshtī of Ajmer (d.
1236/633), who was a contemporary of ibn ‘Arabī, a doctrine very similar to ibn
‘Arabī’s unity of being was the centerpiece of Chīshtī teachings in the Indian
Subcontinent. As the late Khaliq Ahmad Nizami (1925–97) noted:
The firm faith in the unity of being (wahdat al-wujūd) provided the necessary
ideological support to Mu’īn ud-Dīn’s mystical mission to bring about the
emotional integration of the people amongst whom he lived.9
Aziz Ahmad also affirms that
the sheet-anchor of the Chishtī order was the doctrine of wahdat al-wujūd
which explains the influence on it of ibn al-‘Arabī’s almost pantheistic
ideas.10
And Sayyid Athar Abbas Rizvi concurs that
the devotional approach of Shaikh Nizām ud-Dīn Auliya regarding the doc-
trine of wujūd was not basically different from the speculative one of Ibn
‘Arabī.11
While, with Hazrat Banda Nawāz Gīsūdirāz (1321/721–1422/825), the Áalīfa of

Hazrat Nasīr ud-Dīn Chirāg-i-Dihlī (1276–1356/757), a major reinterpretation
of Chīshtī mystical teachings with regard to ibn al-‘Arabī’s wahdat al-wujūd
appears to take place, the doctrine of the Unity of Being is revised to the Unity
of Witnessing (wahdat al-shuhūd),12 at the same time, the intra- and interreli-
gious dialogue surrounding the mystical perception that “All is He!” becomes
even more intense among the mystics—both Hindu and Muslim—of the Indian
Subcontinent, producing diverse effects. On the one hand, as a counterreac-
tion, there is an enormous production of literature on Islamic jurisprudence
(fiqh) beginning from the latter half of the fourteenth century,13 while, on the
other hand, there is an even more determined outreach by Muslim mystics,
especially those who came to India from Iran in the sixteenth century, to join in
dialogue with their Hindu brethren, who had reached similar levels of mystical
experience through the ontological monism of advaita-vedānta and the devo-
tional path of bhakti.14
Beginning with the famous 108 sayings of Hazrat Mu ‘īn ud-Dīn Chīshtī in the
thirteenth century one can effortlessly place corresponding teachings from the
bhakti tradition next to the words of the great Shaikh:
He indeed is a true devotee, blessed with the love of Allah, who is gifted with
the following three attributes: (1) River-like charity, i.e. his sense of char-
ity has no limits and is equally beneficial to all the creatures of Allah who
approach him, (2) sun-like affection, i.e. his affection may be extended indis-
criminately to all like sunlight and (3) Earth-like hospitality, i.e. his loving
embrace may be open to all like that of the earth.15
For Shaikh Mu ‘īn ud-Dīn Chīshtī the highest form of devotion (tā ‘at) was
to redress the misery of those in distress, to fufill the needs

of the helpless and to feed the hungry.16
Already in the early fourteenth century we hear Shaikh Nizām ud-Dīn Auliya
voice the mature statement of Chīshtī’s mystical doctrines with regard to non-
Muslims:
Sansār har pūje kul ko jagāt sarāhe

May the whole world worship (Allah)!
May all praise (Him)!
Makke men koī hūn he Kāśī ko koī chāhe
One seeks Him in Mecca, another desires Him in Kāśī.
Duniyā men apne pī ke payyāri parūn na kāhe
I have found my Beloved in the world.
Should I not bow down before Him?
Har qaum rāst rāhe dīne wa qiblagāhe
Every nation has its faith and the direction of its qibla.
Man qiblā rāst kardam bar simt-e-kajkulāhe
But I keep my eye on the tilted cap of the Beloved.
Kajkulā ‘ajabe!
O wondrous Wearer of the Tilted Cap!17
By emphasizing that Allah abides only in the heart of man, abides equally in the
hearts of all men, and is equally absent in the various houses that men build for
Him, such as the masjid, church, or temple, the Sufis at once made a powerful
statement of the equality of all true believers in God and, conversely, that all
forms of exoteric religion and the places in which they are practiced are equally
ineffectual in bringing one nearer to God. This central tenet of Sufism remains
the chief source of contention between the orthodox ‘ulama and the followers
of the Sufi Way of the Heart up to this day.
In the oldest surviving lines of poetry in Deccani Urdu the great Chīshtīyya
Hazrat Banda Nawāz Gīsūdirāz, despite his criticism of ibn al-‘Arabī’s doctrine
of the Unity of Being (wahdat al-wujūd), leaves no doubt that he too shares this
core value of Chīshtī mystical doctrine:
‘Allaha ko dekhya so mainca

‘Allaha nahin milaya kahinca
lokana batae kahī ke kakinca
unhe milaya yahin ke yahinca.
When I looked for Allah
I could not find Him anywhere.
When the people said ‘He’s out there somewhere’,
I found Him here and here only.18
But it is in the poetry of Bulhe Shah (d. 1754) that the presence of Allah in man
is underlined in vivid metaphors taken from the everyday life of the rural Pun-
jab of the eighteenth century:
The Muslims are afraid of cremating the dead body

And the Hindus are afraid of burying it.
But they quarrel about small points
And miss the One who lives within.19
Or
In this dark and slippery world

Men’s eyes are turned outward
So that they cannot see the One within.
Here one is called “Ram Das”
And another is called “Fateh Muhammad”.
But when you see Who is within both
You see neither “Ram Das” nor “Fateh Muhammad”
But only the One without a second.
Or
Men tire themselves reading the Vedas and the Qur’ān,

Their foreheads are worn thin by rubbing on stones.
But they will never see Allah in Mecca
nor in any other place
because Allah is within man.
He sits concealed in my own heart.20
But
…in his innumerable forms

Allah is a Sunni here and a Shia there.
He has matted locks here
And is clean-shaven there.
He reveals Himself here
And conceals Himself there.
He Himself is the mullah and the qazi,
He Himself is the talīb.
Here He is Rumi, there He is Shami,
Here the maula (Master), there the banda (Slave).
Here He is among the distinguished
There among the commoners.
Here He is in the masjid, there He is in the mandir.21
Though Allah is present in all beings and in each man’s heart, only a pīr or a
guru can teach the seeker the special vision required to perceive Him. Knowing
how to spin thread on the spinning wheel is a beloved metaphor throughout
the Subcontinent for treading the path of divine love properly. Especially in the
final years of human life the spiritual friend guides the seeker on to the union
with the Beloved, lest the thread break on the spinning wheel and the soul leave
behind the body as a corpse.
As the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (1948–97) once sang (and thrilled us to the
marrow):
Bulhe Shah pleased the Friend with bells on his ankles;

Ranjha got jog by getting his ears split to put on earrings;
Everyone has to find a way to meet the Friend, whatever the cost.
(...)
I will not go to any other door, nor will I return empty-handed.
O Beloved! Put a new thread on my spinning wheel...22
In the course of time the poetry of the Sufi pīrs, both of the great and famous
and of the humble and only locally known, expressed in images and metaphors
of everyday life, especially rural life, became familiar idioms of devotional
hymns, qawwalī, which spoke and still speak to the spiritually minded millions
of the Subcontinent regardless of their religious communities, castes, regional
languages, or political boundaries.
In the hymns of the most beloved devotional singers or qawwals, such as the
late Ghulam Farid Sabri (1930–94) and Maqbul Ahmad Sabri (1941–), Nusrat
Fateh Ali Khan, and Aziz Miyan (1942–2000), the sublime invitations to spiri-
tual dialogue sung in the twelfth century in the poetry of ibn al-‘Arabī and
Shaikh Mu‘īn ud-Dīn Chīshtī, reechoed in the thirteenth century by Shaikh

Farīd ud-Dīn Ganj-i-shakar (d. 1235) and in the fourteenth century by Shaikh
Nizām ud-Dīn Auliya and Amir Khusrau (d. 1325), reaffirmed in the early fif-
teenth century by Hazrat Banda Nawāz Gīsūdirāz, and then woven into deeply
moving threads of everyday life in the rural Punjab of the eighteenth century by
Bulhe Shah (d. 1754) and Shah Abdul Latīf of Bhit (d. 1752), these sublime
words still call the seeker of whatever religion he may be to seek God in his own
heart and see God in the heart of his neighbor, be guided by a benevolent mas-
ter, the Friend, and be ever conscious of Him, on Whom all creation depends
equally from second to second and from eternity to eternity:
Jahan vo hāī, vahan dil hāī.

Jahan dil hāī, vahan sab kuch hāī.
Pehle maqāme pīr samajhne ki zarurat hāī.
Tu merī dīvāngī par
Yeh hush vāle behas farmāīe: āchā!
merī dīvāngī par
Yeh hush vāle behas farmāīe.
Lekin magar pehle
inhein dīvāna bane ki zarurat hāī.
merī dīvāngī par
Yeh hush vāle behas farmāīe
magar pehle
inhein dīvāna bane ki zarurat hāī.
Iske bāwujud bhi yeh Muslim,
Yeh Muslim, Muslim yeh hi
Kehte hāī ka: Masjid māīn ā!
Hindu yeh he kehte hāī: Mandar āchā!
Sikhun kā yeh da’wah ke: Gurdār āchā!
Aur ‘Esāī yeh kehte hāī ke: Girjā ā!
Phir Ka’ba, Qalisā, Gurdār vo Gangā
In sāre bākharon se mujhe mañlab kīā
māīn to dīvānī, Khvājā ki dīvānī.
Khvājā ki dīvānī, dīvānī
Khvājā ki dīvānī
māīn to dīvānī, Khvājā ki dīvānī
māīn to dīvānī, Khvājā ki dīvānī23
Where He is, the heart is.

Where the heart is, there’s everything.
But first you must understand the spiritual level of the pīr.
“You are my Beloved, you are my Beloved.”
Those who know this say “Yes!”
Again, “You are my Beloved.”

Those who know this say “Yes!”
Those who know this say again “Yes!”
But first you must be mad about Him.
Those who know this say again: “You are my Beloved.”
But first you must be mad about Him.
But, later, these Muslims, these same Muslims
These Muslims say: “Come to the masjid!”
The Hindus say: “The mandar is good!”
The Sikhs say: “The gurdwāra is good!”
And the Christians say: “Come to the church!”
Again, the Ka’ba, the Cross, the Gurdwāra, and the Gangā.
What’s the use of all these places for me?
I am crazy, crazy about Khwāja.
I am crazy, crazy about Khwāja.
(repeated four times).
And no less do we feel the love for one’s neighbor in the exhortations of the
poet-laureate of the Muslims of India, Mirzā Ghalib Asadullāh24 (1797–1869):
A true heart and steadfastness are the roots of faith.

If the Brahman should die in the idol house
So bury him in the Ka’ba anyway.25
And
If I have moved to the Ka’ba,

Don’t censure me!
Have I forgotten the people of the fire-temple
And their claim upon my society?26
Not only does God dwell in the heart of man, it is He Himself Who gives man
faith and unconditionally accepts that faith. The highest possible moral posi-
tion is reached when a person realizes this and, no longer depending upon
himself alone, takes the leap to faith27 implied in Christ’s great teaching:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
This is the first and great commandment.
And the second is like unto it,
Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
On these two commandments hang all
The law and all the prophets. (The Gospel of St. Matthew, XXXII, 34–40)
Conclusion
A strong current runs through Sufism in South Asia that recognizes truths in all
religions. Many Sufis understand faith as God’s gift. It is not a human work,
derived from or mediated exclusively through, membership of one religious
tradition. Several chapters in this book draw attention to this current of open-
ness and social inclusion, which remains vibrant despite counter trends from
some Muslims.
Notes
1
Raja Asghar, “Fazl says misuse of blasphemy law can be discussed,” Dawn, March
5, 2011, http://www.dawn.com/2011/03/05/fazl-says-misuse-of-blasphemy-law-
can-be-discussed.html, accessed August 4, 2011; and Issam Ahmed, “Pakistan
attacks reveal widening split between religious parties and militants,” Christian
Science Monitor, March 31, 2011,

“http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2011/0331/Pakistan-attacks-
reveal-widening-split-between-religious-parties-and-militants accessed August 4,
2011.
2
Sarah Khan, “Fatwa of Shaykh ul-Islam Mufti Muhammad Idris Usmani about
Malik Mumtaz Qadri and his supporter,” Let us build Pakistan, January 5, 2011,
http://criticalppp.com/archives/36283 accessed August 4, 2011.
3
Barbara Plett, “Can Sufi Islam counter the Taleban?” BBC News, http://news.
bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/south_asia/7896943.stm. Published: 2009/02/24
05:55:03 GMT. Accessed August 4, 2011.
4
Declan Walsh, “Video of Girl’s Flogging as Taliban hand out justice,” The Guard-
ian, April 2, 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/02/taliban-pak-
istan-justice-women-flogging accessed August 4, 2011.
5
Hugh van Skyhawk, “The Wine Cup of Love and the Message of Peace: Sufi
Poetry and Civil Courage”, 173–85 in Journal of Asian Civilizations (Islamabad),
Vol. XXXII, No. 1 (July 2009), pp. 184f.
6
Futūhāt al-Makkiyyah, II. 290. Translated by W. Chittick in: The Sufi Path of Knowl-
edge (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989).
7
Tarjumān al-Ashwāq (Madras: Theoso Publishing House, 1911), poem XI.
8
Syed Shah Khusro Hussaini, Sayyid Muhammad al-husaynī-i-Gīsūdirāz: On Sufism
(Delhi: Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Dellim, 1983), 10.
9
Nizami, K. A., “Chishtiyya”, in The Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965),
50–6.
10
Aziz Ahmad, An Intellectual History of Islam in India (published in the series: Islamic
Surveys, vol. 7, Edinburgh: University Press, 1969), 38.
11
Sayid Athar Abbas Rizvi, Muslim Revivalist Movements in Northern India in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, (Agra: Agra University1965), 43 and 54.
12
Hussaini, op. cit., p. 9. Also see S. S. Khusro Hussaini, “Shuhud vs. Wujud. A Study
of Gisudiraz”, 323–39 in Islamic Culture (Hyderabad), vol. LIX, no. 4 (October
1985).
13
Hussaini, op. cit., p. 10.
14
Cf. Hugh van Skyhawk, “Ethical Implications of the Mahāvākyas in the Literature
of the Cānd Bodhale Circle”, 285–94 in Bhakti in Current Research, 2001–2003,
285–94, Horstmann, Monika (ed.) (published as vol. XLIV, South Asian Studies,
Delhi; Manohar, 2006).
15
Mirza Wahiduddin Begg, The Holy Biography of Khwaja Muinuddin Chisti (Tucson:
The Chisti Sufi Mission of America and The Hague: East-West Publications Fonds,
1977), 139f.
16
Hussaini, op. cit., p. 7.
17
Cf. Regula Burckhardt Qureshi, Sufi Music of India and Pakistan: Sound, Context
and Meaning in qawwali, Cambridge Studies in Ethnomusicology (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 42; and Hugh van Skyhawk, “Der muslimis-
che Beitrag zur religioesen Dichtung Marāñhī-sprechender Hindus”, in Zeitschrift
der Deutschen Morgenlaendischen Gesellschaft , 87–99 (ZDMG), Band 153, Heft
1 (2003), 98f. I remain grateful to the late Professor Dr. h.c. mult. Annemarie
Schimmel (1922–2003) for informing me that these famous verses attributed to
Shaikh Nizām ud-Dīn Auliya (first stanza) and Amīr Khusrau (second stanza)
were actually completed spontaneously in the second stanza by Shaikh Nizām
ud-Dīn Auliya’s friend ÿasan Sijzī Dihlawī (d. 1328 a.D.) and that the reference
to the “tilted cap” refers to the Prophet Muhammad (Peace and Prayers be upon
Him!), who, according to a ḥadīth, had on his mirāj seen Allah (s.w.t.) as a beauti-
ful youth wearing a tilted cap (personal communication, 2001).
18
That is, in the heart. Gesu Daraz’s perception of God being ‘here and now’ can
also be found in sura 2, åyat 109 of the Holy Qurán: ‘Whithersoever ye turn there
is the Face of God’, while the impossibility of seeing Allah is declared in sura 6,
ayat 103. ‘Sights do not reach Him.’ Similar mystical expressions of the imma-
nence and immediacy of God can be found in Mir Dard (1721–85): ‘The veil on
our Friend’s Face that’s we ourselves: We opened our eyes, and no veil was left.’
And in Shah ‘Abdu’l Latīf of Bhit (1689–1752): ‘One castle and a hundred doors,
and windows numberless: Wherever you may look, o friend, there you will see His
Face.’ Translations from XE “Annemarie Schimmel” Annemarie Schimmel, Pain
and Grace. A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India; pub-
lished in the series: Studies in the History of Religions/Supplements to Numen,
vol. XXXVI, Leiden [E.J. Brill], 1976, p. V.
19
Quoted by J. S. Grewal, “The Sufi Beliefs and Attitudes in India,” 24–38 in Asghar
Ali Engineer ed. Sufism and Communal Harmony (Jaipur: Printwell, 1991), 30f.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
22
Engineer, op. cit., p. 33. On the development of Sufi folk poetry in the Indian
Subcontinent out of Arabic and Persian sources of Islamic tradition, see Ali S
Asani, “Sufi Poetry in the Folk Tradition of Indo-Pakistan”, Religion and Literature,
vol. 20: 81–94 (Spring 1988).
23
My transcription and translation of Ghulam Farid Sabri, and Maqbool Ahmad
Sabri, “Khvājā ki dīvānī”, from the album Legends, vol. 4, Karachi 1999.
24
Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, A History of Sufism in India, vol. 2, (Delhi: Munshiram
Manoharlal, 1983), 457.
25
Rafia Sultana, Bhakti-Cult and Urdu Poets (Hyderabad: Cooperative Press, no date
given), 11.
26
Ibid.
27
On the necessity of a “leap to faith,” see Søren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxi-
ety, translated and edited by Thomte (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1980 original 1844).
Chapter 15
South Asian Sufism in America

Marcia Hermansen
South Asian Sufism has a long and variegated history and presence in America.
Some of the complexity of the topic should be indicated at the outset. One
dimension is that South Asia extends beyond India and Pakistan to include Sufi
trends from Sri Lanka and even Fiji. Further, America extends beyond the
United States, and although I know little of Mexican developments, Canada,
which has received so many South Asian immigrants, has been and continues to
be a center for Sufi movements. How we define Sufism also needs to be
elaborated. The strictest definition might limit the discussion to initiatory Sufi
orders that have a discrete identity and inculcate some form of exercises and
guidance toward individual development along with collective spiritual prac-
tice. Beyond that, however, we find South Asian influences both among univer-
salist groups that invoke the name Sufi with minimal reference to Islamic
identity or practice, and within South Asian post-tariqa movements such as
Deobandism, Barelvism, and Tablighi Jama’at that may have little or no scope
for initiation or individual Sufi practice alongside collective activities.
In the United States, three types of Sufi movements emerged over the twenti-
eth century. One strand of movements, more universalistic in outlook, invoked
Sufism and some aspects of Muslim tradition, but did not demand formal con-
version to Islam of their adherents. The earliest, most well known, and success-
ful of these movements was that brought by the Indian Chishti Sufi, Hazrat
Inayat Khan (d. 1927). Other universalist Sufi movements include branches or
offshoots of the Inayat Khan movement such as the Sufi Movement, the Sufi
Islamiyat Ruhaniyat Society, and the Dances of Universal Peace (Samuel Lewis)
that are more remotely connected to South Asia. The Society for Sufi Studies
(Idries and Omar Ali Shah) also included a South Asian element, for while
Idries Shah claimed royal Afghan blood, he was born in Shimla, India, and his
father and grandfather were born in British India as well.
A second type of South Asian Sufi movement, while substantially recruiting
among Americans, has a grounding in the Islamic shari’a (ritual law) and
understands being Muslim as essential to spiritual progress within the Sufi tra-
dition. In one of my early papers on the subject I termed such movements
“hybrids.”1 Most of the leaders of these movements have been immigrants from
Muslim societies. Notable among South Asian movements of this type is the
Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship, established by a Sinhalese teacher, Guru Bawa

(d. 1986). Even in this case there remains some ambiguity about the shari’a
orientation since a substantial proportion of Bawa’s pupils see his teachings as
universal, rather than specifically Islamic. I can think of no other South Asian
hybrid Sufi movement, although South Asian immigrants and their children
have joined other non-South Asian hybrid movements, in particular the Naqsh-
bandi–Haqqani Order led by the Cypriot, Shaikh Nazim, and directed in the
West by Shaikh Hisham Kabbani, who is of Lebanese origin.
Finally, in a category that I term “transplants,” I place Sufi groups influenced
by South Asian tariqa Sufism. Such groups have included pockets of immigrants
from Muslim societies, particularly found in larger urban centers such as New
York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, who follow Sufism in ways very similar to prac-
tices in their home societies.
The specifically South Asian emphasis of this volume leads me for the first
time to include consideration of what might be termed “post-tariqa” or “quasi--
tariqa” movements that are very South Asian, while being somewhat removed
from the Sufism of the traditional orders. Here I would include varieties of
Islamic practice, interpretation, and spirituality that emerged in India in more
recent centuries, especially since the late 1800s, such as those associated with
the Deoband madrasa system and with the movement known as Barelvism initi-
ated by Reza Khan of Bareli (1856–1921). These forms are especially influen-
tial today in certain areas of the United States and Canada and have found a
strong following among Muslim youth of South Asian background. While they
make many accommodations and adjustments to the modern, in some cases by
using technology or social media, they have little attraction for Americans and
therefore they may also be considered transplanted forms of South Asian
Sufism.
Early South Asian Universalist Sufism in

America – the Inayat Khan movement
Hazrat Inayat Khan was born in Baroda (Varodhera), India, in 1882 into a
family of prominent classical Indian musicians. As a young man he fre-
quented Indian courtly society and became a Sufi disciple of the Hyderabadi
Chishti, Abu Hashim Madani (d. 1907). His teacher instructed him that his
mission lay far to the West and Inayat Khan first embarked on a career bring-
ing classical Hindustani music to America in 1910. In the aftermath of the
World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and through the activities
of groups such as the Theosophical Society, he found the West ready to
receive Eastern spirituality of a certain type. Inayat Khan is said to have real-
ized that his Western audiences in many cases needed spiritual instruction
from him more than musical edification. He therefore reoriented his
South Asian Sufism in America 249
a ctivities and to a great extent sacrificed his music in order to better serve
what he perceived as the spiritual needs of the West.2
Inayat Khan traveled throughout the United States, Western Europe, and
Russia, giving lectures and musical performances after which he would often
hold informal talks with potential disciples, conferring formal initiation into
the Sufi Order upon all those who requested it.3 Circles of disciples, or murids
as they were called, were established in England, France, Switzerland, and the
United States. In 1915 the Sufi Order of the West was registered in London
under the “Rules and Regulations of the Sufi Order,”4 and in 1923 the Interna-
tional Headquarters of the Sufi Movement was legally instituted in Geneva.5
In the United States, Inayat Khan’s first disciple, and later head of the Ameri-
can branch of the Sufi Order, was a woman, Ada Martin (known as Rabia Mar-
tin). Another early American disciple was Samuel Lewis, who was to become a
seminal figure in the development of the American Sufism in the 1960s. In 1914
Inayat Khan married an American woman, Ora Ray Baker, who had initially
been his student in music.6
Inayat Khan’s career as a Sufi master was cut short by his death during a
return visit to India at the age of forty-four. By this time he had initiated a num-
ber of European and American disciples into Sufism and given copious teach-
ings and lectures. Most of his published works are based on transcripts of the
talks made by disciples. His teachings explored the common spiritual themes of
various world religions and he did not require his followers to formally accept
Islam or to practice the Islamic shari’a.
In Inayat Khan’s Sufi order there were many elements of South Asian Sufi
practice and cultural sensibility. Terms such as murshid, dhikr, or wazīfa are used.
The Chishti-Nizami silsila is published as being his spiritual lineage. Certain ele-
ments also draw on the eclectic spirituality and ideas of mastery in movements
such as Theosophy, which also had a strong Indian influence. The image of
India as pluralistic and deeply spiritual is conveyed in his writings. Themes from
other world regions and religions are embodied in the weekly practice know as
universal worship, where edifying passages are read from a range of scriptures.
One joined the order through a process of initiation with the murshid or his
representative and received individual concentrations and wazīfas in periodic
interviews, progressing through 12 grades or levels. Certain teachings and prac-
tices were only introduced at the higher stages.
Inayat Khan’s son and successor, Vilayat Khan (1916–2004), grew up in
Europe but spent time in India after World War II studying with both Hindu
teachers and a Sufi in the Kalimi-Chishti lineage in Hyderabad. Vilayat Khan’s
teaching was eclectic, incorporating some Sufi practices based on the breathing
techniques, as well as tantric-style exercises based on chakra visualization, and
later on Christian and alchemical symbolism.7 In this Order, the South Asian
Sufi tradition of commemorating the death anniversary or ‘urs of Inayat Khan
is preserved and Khan was interred in a shrine near the Nizamuddin Dargāh in
Delhi, built on land donated by the famous Indian Sufi, Khwaja Hasan Nizami,
who had known him personally.8 European and American murīds of the move-
ment who came to India for the ‘urs were exposed to Indian Sufi practices such
as listening to qawwālī music and this also kept a certain South Asian flavor
within the Order. Vilayat Khan’s son and successor, Zia Inayat Khan (b. 1972),
the current head of the order, was especially attracted to his South Asian heri-
tage and spent extensive time in Baroda (Varodhera) and Hyderabad learning
Urdu and Persian so as to undertake deeper study of the sources of the Chishti
Sufi tradition. He married an Indian woman from his circle of relatives, further
deepening his personal connection to India. Among the current following of
the Sufi Order International,9 however, the Islamic or South Asian influence
seems to be less than it was during Vilayat Khan’s leadership in the late 1960s
and 1970s. This may be due to the fact that the post-baby boom generation has
a less romantic view of South Asian and Indian spirituality, while inexpensive
overland travel to India has become increasingly difficult, if not impossible,
since the Iranian Revolution and the invasion of Afghanistan in the late 1970s,
not to mention the current overt and covert wars along the route.
Samuel Lewis and the Sufi Ruhaniyat
Samuel Leonard Lewis (d. 1970) was born in San Francisco on October 18,
1896, to Jacob Lewis, a vice-president of the Levi Strauss Company, and the
former Harriet Rothschild, of the international banking family. His Sufi name
was Ahmed Murad Chishti.10 He was an early student of Inayat Khan who also
followed Zen and Yogic paths and teachers.11 His “Sufism” was transmitted to a
smaller circle of disciples in San Francisco during the 1960s.12 He developed, in
particular, practices of “spiritual” movement and “Sufi dancing” utilizing circle
and round dances in group settings accompanied by the chanting of litanies
drawn from various religious traditions, including the Islamic profession of
faith. This is still carried on in many parts of the West in the form of the Dances
of Universal Peace.13 The disciples that Lewis passed on to Inayat Khan’s son,
Vilayat Khan, infused the latter’s group with new leadership and energy in the
early 1970s. Many of “Sufi Sam’s’” disciples chose to constitute a distinct group
called the Sufi Islamia Ruhaniat Society.14 Members of this group share in the
annual ‘urs of Inayat Khan held every February in the Nizamuddin area of New
Delhi, India. The current leader, Shabda Kahn, is an accomplished musician in
the Indian tradition. Later in life Lewis maintained a correspondence and spir-
itual connection with the Pakistani Sufi, Barakat Ali (d. 1997), based near Fais-
alabad, with whom he had taken initiation. Despite dropping the term
“Islamiyat” from their title, the group is interested in some elements of Islamic
Sufi practice, for example, reciting the divine names of Allah with proper pro-
nunciation, as evidenced by a website providing MP3 sound files to accompany
a forthcoming book on reciting the wazīfas.15
The International Sufi Movement
This group in the Inayat Khan [Inayati] lineage has had rather more influence
in Europe, Canada, Australia,16 and New Zealand, although there are some
activities in the United States.
This branch did not accept the succession going to Inayat Khan’s son, Vilayat,
but focused more on relatives Mahboob Khan, Ali Khan, and Musharaff Khan.17
The current leader is Inayat Khan’s son, Hidayat, who was born in 1917 and
trained as a European classical musician. In 1988, Hidayat Inayat Khan assumed
the role of Representative-General of the International Sufi Movement and Pīr-
o-Murshid of its Inner School. He divides his time between Holland and
CHART OF THE INAYAT KHAN (INAYATI) LINEAGES
‘Inayat Khan’s selected sub-lineages (leadership dates in bold)
Muinuddin Chishti (d. 1236 Ajmer)

[After 600 years of successors]
‘Inayat Khan (1882–1927/1910–1927) The Sufi Movement/ The Sufi Order in the West
Mahbub Khan (1927–1948) Samuel Lewis (1923–1971)

(‘Inayat Khan’s brother) aka Ahmad Murad Chishti
Muhammad Ali Khan (1948–1958) Muinuddin Jablonsky (1971–2001)

‘Inayat Khan’s uncle
Musharraf Khan (1958–1967) Sufi Islamia Ruhaniat Society renamed

‘Inayat Khan’s brother Sufi Ruhaniat International in 2002 by
current leader, Shabda Kahn
Fazl ‘Inayat Khan (1967–1977) Dances of Universal Peace

(‘Inayat Khan’s grandson)
Vilayat Khan (1916–2004/1956–2004)

Hidayat ‘Inayat Khan (1977–present) (‘Ināyat Khan’s son)
(‘Inayat Khan’s son)
Zia ‘Inayat Khan (2004–present)
(Vilayat Khan’s son)
The International Sufi Movement The Sufi Order
Chart Based on Art Buehler “Modes of Sufi Transmission to New Zealand”, 101.
Germany, and travels extensively, giving classes and lectures on Sufism.18 In the
United States the main representative is Rabia Perez. In a 2010 article, she
described the leadership of the movement as “under a collaborative pīr. It offers
a bold change in how we will address leadership in the world.”19 The same arti-
cle describes Inayat Khan’s teachings as “synthesized Sufi practices, extracted
from four Sufi turuk, the Chishti, Naqshbandi, Qādiri and Suhrawardi lineages.”20
In addition, she says, “[h]e developed what we now call the Five Activities of the
Star, the Esoteric school, the Universal Worship Activity, the Healing Activity,
the Sister/Brotherhood Activity and the Zirat (Ecological Symbology) Activity.”21
These latter elements are also part of Sufi Order activities.
The Golden Sufi Centre
Although they trace their lineage to an Indian branch of the Naqshbandi Sufi
Order, I would classify the Golden Sufi Centre as a “universalist” Sufi move-
ment. This group was inspired by the teaching and writings of a female teacher
from Britain, Irena Tweedie (d. 1999),22 who traveled to India in 1961 and
became the disciple of a Hindu Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi called “Bhai Sahib.”
Tweedie chronicled the process of her instruction in her book Chasm of Fire, first
published in 1985, and since 1986 available in an expanded version as Daughter
of Fire.23 Once the book was published, she began to give lectures at the Theo-
sophical society in London and started a small meditation group. Her followers
later expanded to Germany and Switzerland. She first visited the United States
in the role of a spiritual teacher in 1985 and again in 1987 when she came to
the Bay Area accompanied by fifty disciples from London. She appointed
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee as her successor before her retirement in 1992.24 On
her instructions he started a group in Inverness, Marin County, California, and
since 1991 has resided for long periods in the United States where he writes
articles and books and occasionally gives seminars on spirituality and Jungian
dream interpretation.
In an article, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes the meditation process of the
tariqa using Sanskrit terms such as dhyana and samadhi and indicating their
compatibility with Jungian psychological understandings of the transformative
process. He lists the practices of the group as primarily consisting of medita-
tion, dreamwork, discussion, and ultimately the relationship with the teacher,
known as suhbat.25 He further characterizes the Naqshbandi Sufi path as the
most introverted one,26 indicating the challenge of such a practice in “extro-
verted” American culture. For example, “solitude in the crowd,” a traditional
Naqshbandi teaching, is described as a spiritual process that primarily takes
place in inner worlds beyond the conscious mind, a dimension that is often dif-
ficult for Americans who expect fast and tangible results.27
As of 1994 there were an estimated 500–600 members of this movement in

Germany and Switzerland, 300 in England, and 200 in the United States.28 In
the United States, a website notice as of 2011 lists Golden Sufi meditation groups
in northern California, Los Angeles, Seattle, Boulder, Minnesota, Chicago,
North Carolina, New York City, Boston, New Hampshire, and Vancouver, B.C.29
Guru Bawa Muhaiyuddeen: A Sufi saint from Sri Lanka
The Bawa Muhaiyaddeen Fellowship was founded by a Singhalese teacher, Guru

Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen, who first came to the United States
in 1971. He gradually gathered a group of Western disciples at his Fellowship in
Philadelphia, which is particularly remarkable since he was already quite elderly
and never learned to speak more than rudimentary English.30
Bawa’s public career began in Sri Lanka during the 1940s when he emerged
from the jungles and was approached by some pilgrims to local shrines who
recognized him as a holy man and requested spiritual instruction from him. He
founded an ashram in Jaffna, primarily a Hindu area, and was later invited to
teach in Colombo by visiting Muslim businessmen.
In 1955 he laid the foundation for a mosque in Mankumban, but the build-
ing was only fully constructed during the 1970s with material assistance form
American followers. He, apparently, regularly used teaching stories from Hindu
sources as well as stories of the Prophets (Qisās al-Anbiya) and other Muslim/
Sufi traditions.31
Bawa came to America at the invitation of a group of spiritual seekers with
whom he had corresponded. His early circle in the United States was comprised
of black and white Americans from both Christian and Jewish backgrounds. As
this circle grew, disciples purchased a former Synagogue in the Overbrook area
of Philadelphia that remains the central focus of the Bawa Muhaiyadeen Fellow-
ship. Webb suggests that the early circle did not recognize the distinctive Sufi
and Islamic elements of Bawa’s early teachings, despite their clear presence. He
was rather perceived as a South Asian guru who imparted no formal practices
or exclusive religious identity.
In fact, the Sufi content of some of these early teachings has been docu-
mented by Gisela Webb as including the light of Muhammad (Nūr Muhammadī),
the inner Qur’ān, letter symbolism of the Alif and Mīm, and the role of the Sufi
saints of the past including Abd al-Qadir Jilani, among other elements.32
One may characterize a gradualism in Bawa’s introducing Islamic and Sufi
elements of practice into his teachings during the period between 1971 and
1986 including the ritual prayers (salat), performance of silent and vocal dhikr,
and finally, in 1984, the construction of a mosque. His tariqa affiliation is pri-
marily Qadiriyya and this is written above the entrance to the mosque.
Construction of the mosque element defined the group as Islamic, and this
identification alienated some members who then left the group, while the Sufi
aspects were not acceptable to some local non-Sufi Muslims who considered the
movement to be heretical. The mosque did position the group more explicitly
as part of the interfaith movement in Philadelphia, since it was no longer seen
as an isolated cult but rather as representative of Islam. It also positioned the
Fellowship as part of the international Muslim community and attracted more
Muslims of immigrant Muslim background, both South Asians and others, to
consider the teachings of Bawa.
Currently there are three orientations among those involved with the
Fellowship – a universalist group who do not see the teachings of Bawa as
restricted to any one religious or cultural form; a group who come for the exter-
nal practices of Islam associated with the mosque and Islamic functions and
holidays; and a group following both external Islam and the Sufi elements of
Bawa’s teachings. In fact, the eventual splitting of followers of hybrid Sufi groups
into universalist- and shari’a-oriented branches is fairly typical in the West.
Bawa did not appoint a successor and the community continues to publish
archived material drawn from his teachings. Two Imams were appointed by
Bawa to lead the Friday prayers. In addition to Friday prayer activities, there are
Sunday sessions focusing on Bawa’s teachings, Friday and early morning dhikr
sessions, as well as children’s and other meetings. There is also a school for the
children of Fellowship members.
A farm in Unionville Pennsylvania was acquired to serve three functions: a
residential and instructional site, a burial ground for Muslims, and the place for
Bawa’s shrine (mazār), which is the first large structure of its type in the United
States.
The mazār is a concrete manifestation of South Asia Sufi custom in the United
States and an annual ‘urs is held there. At many other times it is visited by pil-
grims from around the United States. During some periods of Bawa’s leader-
ship, disciples would follow him back and forth to Sri Lanka and reside there
for extended periods33 and a handful of disciples even studied Tamil, so as to
work more directly on his teachings.
Writing in 2003, Webb states that the membership of the Fellowship has
remained fairly steady at about 1,000, with several small branches in other cities
and even in Canada. Numbers involved in the mosque activities would be even
greater.34 While the group of followers is diverse and therefore does not take a
collective stand on political and cultural issues, many individuals involved in
the Fellowship have been inspired to undertake creative, spiritual, and progres-
sive activities – contributing extensively to these sorts of currents within the
broader American Muslim community in the United States. Here I might men-
tion Coleman Barks, well-known translator of Rumi’s poetry and Sufi feminist
scholar, Zohara Symmons.
Hakim Moinuddin Chishti and the Chishti

Order of A
merica
Another smaller example of hybrid Chishti practice under an American shaikh
is the Chishti Order of America, founded in 1972 by Hakim G. M. Chishti. At
first the group was known as the Chishti Sufi Mission, an affiliate of the Chishti
Sufi Mission Society of India in Ajmer. Hakim was a student of Mirza Wahidud-
din Begg who was a senior Sufi teacher in Ajmer during the 1970s. When Begg
died in 1979, Hakim was granted his succession, a fact confirmed in a ceremony
in Ajmer in 1980. At the same time, the Chishti Sufi mission was renamed the
Chishti Order of America. Hakim Moinuddin has authored several books on
traditional Sufi healing35 and studied and promoted unani medicine and aro-
matherapy. He studied Persian at the University of Arizona and traveled on a
Fulbright to Afghanistan to study with traditional shaikhs and healers there. He
claims a Chishti Sabiri lineage and was also associated with a Pakistan Shaikh,
Syed Safdar ‘Alī Chishti of Lahore.
This group features one of the first born-in-America Muslim Sufi shaikhs and
although small in numbers, may represent South Asia Sufi influence through
its promotion of unani healing, which is typical of South Asian ethno-medical
cultural practice.
Transplants and local forms of

South Asian Sufism in America
The small South Asian immigrant groups in local American contexts are too
diverse and numerous to be comprehensively documented and described in
the course of this chapter. They constitute expressions of Sufism in America
where one would find the most South Asian diversity in language, nationality,
tariqa affiliation, and practice. Since the transplants are so closely linked to
immigration patterns, I will briefly summarize that element. Literature on
South Asian immigration identifies two major waves of immigration to the
United States. The first wave during the first half of the twentieth century was
limited and consisted primarily of agriculturalists and working-class immigrants
from the state of Punjab. The second wave following immigration changes since
the Luce-Celler Act of 1946 brought in more diverse groups, and Lyndon John-
son’s Hart-Cellar Act of 1965 further opened the door for immigration based
on skills and education. Not only were South Asians immigrants originating
from postcolonial nations like Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri
Lanka, the community also consisted of individuals belonging to the wider
South Asian diaspora spread across the world. The selectivity of American immi-
gration standards initially insured that immigrants would generally have high
levels of education and skills required to rapidly advance in American society.

Family reunification gateways to immigration eventually resulted in some immi-
grants coming without strong language skills or professional training. While
some degree of illegal South Asian Muslim immigration also takes place, many
illegal South Asian Muslim immigrants fled after 9/11.
Historically and today, the West Coast and specifically the San Francisco Bay
area is a rich center of South Asian Sufi immigrant populations and Sufi diver-
sity. Among Sufis there, I encountered a small community of Fijian Rifa’i Sufis
in San Jose who showed me tapes of their practices of testing faith and states of
consciousness through sticking small skewers in their facial skin during a Rabita
ceremony. Several academic colleagues in New Zealand have described similar
groups of Fijian immigrant Sufis in their country.36
Afghan immigrants in Walnut Creek, CA, the Washington, DC area, and in
Chicago also include small, tariqa-based circles of transplanted Sufis. I came
across the website of one such group while researching this article.37
In Chicago, the large Hyderabadi immigrant population includes Sufi initi-
ates from diverse turuk. Few continue traditional Sufi practices, and individual
spiritual guidance is almost completely missing. What do persist are collective
dhikr circles that may be held in basement mosques or in private homes. There
is a strong overlap with the South Asian Barelvi population that holds broader
sessions incorporating devotional practices such as celebrating the Prophet’s
Birthday (milad), ceremonial viewing of a beard hair of the Prophet (mu’i muba-
rak), and recitation of the Qasida Burda (The Poem of the Mantle) accompa-
nied by drums and processed flags. In New Jersey, Chicago, and perhaps some
other cities, activities such as a public processions of green banners and chants
of “Marhaba Ya Mustafa” may accompany the occasion of the Prophet’s Birth-
day.
The disciples of Muhammad Afzal al-Din Nizami (d. 2007), a Hyderabadi
Chishti shaikh, continue his lineage with monthly dhikr sessions, an annual ‘urs
including ceremonies at the Rosehill cemetery where he is interred, and peri-
odic Qawwālī sessions.38 Meanwhile a circle of South Asian Qadaris meets every
Monday evening to perform a dhikr in the basement of the Elmdale (Hamidi-
yya) mosque in North Chicago. Dr. Abd al-Sattar Khan, a retired Arabic profes-
sor from Usmania University, who resides above the Elmdale mosque, is a shaikh
and khalifa in the Naqshbandi lineage of Abdullah Shah Sahib (d. 1964) from
Hyderabad.
Baji, a Pakistani Sufi shaikha in America
Baji Tayyibah is a contemporary Pakistani Sufi shaikha who lives in Philadelphia.

Since she has followers who are both Pakistani and American, her group could
be considered in some ways hybrid, but the limited extent of her circle leads me
to locate her among transplants. Baji’s family came to Pakistan from Agra in
India and she speaks Urdu interspersed with English. She is a teacher in the
Indian-based Chishti order (founded by Moinuddin Chishti, d. 1326), although
her master held several lines of tariqa affiliation. Baji characterizes the path of
Chishtis thus: “Small effort, big results. There are no complicated litanies and
obligations to do every day. In spiritual seeking, there is the way of difficulty and
the way of ease. We must take the way of ease.”
Before he passed away, Baji’s teacher gave the succession of the order to Baji
and her brother jointly. When asked by researcher Barbara von Schlegell
whether one of them had more power than the other, she replied: “No. We are
both ‘zeroes’.” In Peshawar the brother leads the men in their rituals and
prayers, while Baji holds separate ceremonies for women. But in the United
States she also has male disciples, including the adolescents and unmarried
men of the group.
Baji herself, who is perhaps forty years old, is not married. When asked
about this, Baji was insistent that this celibacy is not Islamically acceptable; the
reason she never married is that she performed istikhara (a prayer made to
God to answer a specific question, made right before sleep) after every mar-
riage proposal that came her way, but God never gave His consent to any of
her suitors.
Baji’s master, Mawla ‘Abd al-Rahim Chishti, was Pashtun but he insisted on
women’s education and advancement. Baji says: “He wanted women to excel
both in din and dunya (religion and the world).” The shaikh worked hard to
convince husbands to allow their female family members to attend his Sufi
gatherings.
Every week, Baji cooks for hundreds of people; she owns and operates an
Indian food business in the center of Philadelphia and she provides the donated
meals at a local mosque.39
South Asian post-tariqa Sufi movements: Deobandis,

Barelvis, and Tablighi Jama’at
In discussing Deobandis, the Tablighi Jama’at, and Barelvis in relation to South
Asian Sufi influences in America, the first issue to be addressed is whether these
movements are, in fact, Sufi at all. There is disagreement on this issue arising
from the fact that each of these groups stresses collective behavior and practice
rather than individual spiritual training and initiation in a tariqa. For this rea-
son they may be termed “post-tariqa” forms of Sufism.
The Deoband madrasa was founded in 1867 in northern India by scholars in
the lineage of Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762), a Naqshbandi Sufi scholar who him-
self combined scholarly, reformist, and Sufi elements in his thought and
ractice. Deoband has been known for inculcating a rigorous madrasa training
p
along with Sufi-like attachment of students to their instructors as spiritual
guides, and in fact these guides may have been members of Sufi turuk. Among
the more famous Deobandi scholars have been Ashraf ‘Alī Thanvi, a Chishti
and Hajji Imdadullah Muhajir Makki, a Chishti Sabiri. Among Indian Deoban-
dis one finds lines of both Chishti and Naqshbandi influences, along with the
idea of a spiritualizing of the madrasa experience. More recently Deoband has
been named as a source of Taliban training, although this is not characteristic
of Deobandis more generally. In America, Deobandi ulema are increasingly
influential since their institutions such as madrasas and fatwa boards are the
most active in inculcating Islamic learning and practices in South Asian Muslim
immigrant communities.
In a few instances there are strands of what I term “Deobandi Tasawwuf.” An
example of this is a group directed by Shaikh Hussain Abdul Sattar in Chicago.
Abdul Sattar is a practicing physician trained in the United States and the khal-
ifa of a Pakistan Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi, Shaikh Zulfiqar Ahmad.40 This is per-
haps the only Deobandi group in North America that is openly “Sufi.” The
group holds open lessons and a dhikr session every Sunday that are podcast
from the Islamic Center of Chicago.41
In areas with significant South Asian Muslim populations I would generally
place Deobandism as having a conservative influence – an alternative to the
Salafi-Saudi trend that may be more resonant with South Asians. As an attitude
and practice, Deobandism is fairly compatible with most strands of the United
States Islam except for the rival South Asian Barelvis who offer little resistance.
Part of its success in having a growing influence is through the madrasa institu-
tions in the West that train young imams fluent in English who are capable of
providing leadership due to their authority in Islamic law.
In some senses we could see such influences as moving away from South
Asian cultural Islamic practices toward a more transnational circulation of
authority through mastery of fiqh. In this fiqh-privileging arena, the Hanafi
school (madhhab) seems to be dominant, and of course this legal school is the
most popular one among South Asians. Among youth in America who are pri-
marily of South Asian background, currents that are primarily “fiqhi,” as
opposed to Sufi, are represented by White Thread Press42 and Sunni Forum.43
The trend is clearly Hanafi Deobandi, although the Sunni Path accepts content
from other Sunni legal schools as sufficiently “traditional.”
Tablighi Deobandis
Another current in American Deobandism is what I term a Deobandi–Tablighi

synthesis. The Tablighi Jama’at was founded in India in the 1920s by Maulana
Muhammad Ilyas, a Deobandi scholar influenced by Sufism who was inspired to
try to preach to the Muslim masses who were either uninformed or lax about
their religion. Referred to by several contributors in this book, the Tablighis have
been the subject of extensive scholarly interest as a global movement involving
large numbers of Muslims transnationally, although the predominant constitu-
ency is South Asian. Over time I would observe that they have become ever less
Sufi and more Deobandi in outlook. Many customs of the Tablighis do reflect
their South Asian Sufi origins such as a preference for simplicity and maintain-
ing proper comportment (adab). Unlike many of the other groups mentioned in
this chapter, Tablighis eschew electronic and even print media, although they
are not averse to traveling internationally by air – they often prefer to act locally
and perform their missionizing tours around neighborhoods on foot.
French scholar, Marc Garborieau, reviews conflicting scholarly opinions as to
the Sufi nature of Tablighi Jama’at.”44 While some scholars have emphasized
the Sufi origins of the movement in the life of Muhammad Ilyas, others put
more stress on its critique of popular Sufi ritual and exclude it from the fold of
tasawwuf.
Garborieau states that the Tablighis
have done away with all the external practices which characterized traditional
Chishtiyya religiosity. Not only do they shun mystical audition, sama‘, which
in Nizamuddin takes the shape of qawwālī singing; but they also prohibit the
visit of the tombs in the dargāh complex, and the celebration of annual fes-
tivals which are either the Islamic death anniversaries of Nizamuddin, of the
Indo-Persian poet Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) and of the Prophet Muham-
mad, or festivities of Hindu origin like basant in honour of the Spring.45
In contrast to Sufis, Garborieau characterizes Tablighis as “outward looking and

collective,” “more concerned with building power than with self-improvement,”
and having “lost all esoteric character and only interested in reform.”46 While
Garborieau’s view is perhaps excessively harsh on Tablighis, it does appear that
the overwhelming majority of Tablighis and Tablighi Deobandis can barely be
considered Sufis at this point.
Sufi Barelvis
Considering Barelvism47 as a manifestation of South Asian Sufism in America

clearly fits in terms of its being South Asian. This interpretation and practice of
Islam is typically South Asian and was given intellectual form by Reza Khan
Barelvi, an early twentieth-century scholar. Barelvis promote and defend Islamic
Sufi practices and attitudes such as veneration of the great saints (auliya) of the
past and maintaining a devotional relationship with the Prophet Muhammad.
On specific matters of practice and doctrine they have come into conflict with
Deobandi and other views, at times leading to rather severe arguments and
mutual condemnations.48
Individuals may be initiates of Sufi Orders as part of their Barelvi commit-
ment or their Sufism may be more collective and diffuse. Scholars such as Pnina
Werbner and Ronald Geaves (both contributors to this volume) have looked at
the British South Asian Barelvi community, noting the overlap and occasional
conflict between the authority of learned maulvis and of charismatic pīrs within
that community. Institutionally, madrasas and mazārs are institutional centers
for these varied forms of authority in England.49 In the case of the American
landscape, there are perhaps fewer and less concentrated Barelvi populations
and therefore this dynamic has not arisen.
Two Barelvi-oriented madrasas are Al-Nur Masjid in Houston, Texas, and Dar
al-‘Ulum Azizia in Dallas. In the following sections will mention a few other
Barelvi organizations in America.
The Naqshbandiyya Foundation for Islamic Education

The Naqshbandiyya Foundation for Islamic Education was founded by Barelvi-
oriented Sufis from Pakistan, specifically murīd of Jama’at Ali Shah (d. 1955), a
Naqshbandi, studied by Arthur Buehler),50 and organizers have tried to have an
impact in the United States by organizing milad conferences (celebrations of the
birth of the Prophet Muhammad), and at one point gathering ulema of the
“Ahl-i sunna wa l-Jama’a” (Barelvi) orientation to try to form some kind of North
American umbrella organization. That the group envisioned a broad Sufi–-
Barelvi consensus is evident from their website which links both Western and
Muslim World Sufi Orders and the sites of Ahl-i Sunnat associations in various
countries.51 Here a form of contemporary South Asian Sufism–Barelvi-ism was
being exported to the United States through immigrant networks, and attempts
were made to cooperate with three local groups: American (Muslim) academics
sympathetic to Sufism; American Sufi Orders, including at one point the Helve-
ti-Jerrahis, Naqshbandi-Haqqanis, the Guru Bawa Fellowship, and some others;
and Barelvi ‘ulama of South Asian origin. Several Milad al-Nabi conferences were
held in Chicago (1993–5) that attempted to combine all three constituencies,52
and branches in several other American cities continue to host smaller events.53
I would characterize this effort as one based on the efforts of a handful of
immigrant Muslim professionals. The main target of this initiative was to influ-
ence the Muslim community in North America toward more inclusion of the
Barelvi element. However, most Muslim institutions, mosques, the Islamic
Society of North America (ISNA), and so on rejected these manifestations of
Sufism, and the Barelvis were not ultimately able to organize themselves in the
United States at the national level.54 The ‘ulama didn’t achieve consensus among
themselves, while the Sufi groups often were not very Barelvi in style, and had
different concerns. For example, the divergent interests of American convert

Sufis included a focus on Sufism as a source of personal development, promot-
ing their respective charismatic shaikhs,55 identifying with classical “high” tradi-
tion Sufism, and nostalgia for the great Sufi past.
At the same time in Pakistan, India, and even in Britain, one finds successful
Barelvi madrasas and networks, in some cases even political parties – but of
course these have emerged in ethnically more homogeneous “local” settings.56
Therefore we may question whether the problem with organized Barelvis taking
hold in the United States is the paucity of a certain “class” of South Asian immi-
grants? We may also view it as attributable to elements in the American larger
culture. Alternatively its failure may have occurred as a result of factors specific
to the Muslim subculture in the United States; for example, the fact that most
community organizations were already controlled by anti-Sufi I slamists.
Islamic Studies and Research Association (ISRA)

An offshoot of Barelvi-organized milad activities that has become an indepen-
dent site for Sufi activities is the Islamic Studies and Research Association
(ISRA). This is said to have had its origin in a “think tank” established in 1987
formed by South Asian Muslim professionals. Since 1998 the group has gath-
ered ulema and Sufi teachers across ethnicities and turuk, every year in North
Carolina for a milad conference.
The organization’s current mandate extends beyond milads or specifically
South Asian-style activities to “introducing true tasawwuf (Sufism).”
Cary Mosque, North Carolina

A Sufi-oriented mosque where teachings and practices are imparted is located
in Cary, North Carolina.57 The teacher is a young graduate of the Jamia Arabia
Ziaul ‘Ulum, Varanasi, India, and the Jamia Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya in New
Delhi, Mufti Manzarul Islam.
The founders of the mosque are disciples of Shaikh Ali Akhter Ali, a khalifa
of Sufi Barkat Ali of Pakistan. While the mufti is of Indian origin and has written
extensively on Ahmed Raza Kahn, the mosque also has many members with
strong links to Pakistani Deobandi ‘ulama such as Asif Qasmi (Toronto) and
Taqi Usmani (Pakistan).58
Minhaj ul-Qur’an
Other manifestations of organized Barelvi groups in America are the Pakistani
movement Minhaj ul-Qur’an, which is under the guidance of Maulana Tahir
ul-Qadri (b. 1951), a Barelvi scholar who relocated to Toronto from Pakistan
in 2005. (See Phillippon’s chapter in this volume.) Qadri is a community leader,

intellectual, author, and the founder of a network of educational and charitable
institutions in Pakistan. He issued a prominent fatwa against terrorism in 2010,
and some say his relocation in Toronto is to avoid the dangerous environment
of reprisals in contemporary Pakistan.
Davat-e Islami
Davat-e Islami constitutes another sort of Barelvi movement founded by the
Pakistani Maulana, Abu Bilal Ilyas Qadiri.59 Its reach is exclusively within the
immigrant community and primarily to Pakistanis. A strong online presence is
developing, including the ability to connect through Facebook and tweet.
Downloads include Ghaus-e Azam (Abdul Qadir Jilani) wallpaper for your com-
puter60 and aspirants can also become murīds online.61
In Chicago, for example, Dawat-i Islami has founded its own mosque and
engaged in some public activities such as a milad parade on Devon Avenue.
South Asian Sufism in Canada
According to one source, Sufism was first brought to Canada by Maulana Abdul
Alim Siddiqui, a Barelvi scholar, who spoke in Edmonton and Toronto during a
tour he made in 1939.62 In Toronto, one of the early tariqa Sufi teachers was the
Chishti shaikh, Dr. Mirza Qadeer Baiq of Ajmer, India, who was a professor in
the Islamic Studies Department of the University of Toronto from the late 1960s
until his death in 1988.63 He was the deputy (khalifa) of the Guderi Shahi branch
of the Chishti Order of Ajmer, India.64 He founded organizations such as the
Society for the Understanding of the Finite and Infinite (SUFI), later known as
the Sufi Circle of Toronto. Among his followers were both South Asian immi-
grants and Canadians who accepted Islam. Branches of South Asian Qadiri and
Naqshbandi orders have also operated in Toronto.
Among universalist Sufis, the first branch of Inayat Khan’s Sufi Order in the
West began activities in Toronto in 1973. In Montreal, followers of this group,
under the leadership of a French-Canadian, Jean-Pierre (Junayd) Gallien,
began holding public meetings and teaching sessions in 1974.
In western Canada, the Sufi teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan was first intro-
duced by his student, Shamcher Bryn Beorse, in the early 1970s. Beorse was living
near Seattle at the time, and made contact through mail with a seeker in Edmonton
named Carol Sill. After meeting Shamcher in person, and with his encourage-
ment, Carol began to hold meetings, and a number of disciples (murīds) were
initiated. Centers were subsequently started in Calgary and then in Banff.
The Sufi seekers in western Canada were for a time associated with the Sufi
Order, and had some contact with Sufi Order teachers Junayd Gallien, Anna
Paloheimo, and Shahabuddin David Less. Pīr Vilayat also visited Calgary in those
years. However, before his death in 1980, Shamcher Beorse introduced the small
group to Hazrat Inayat Khan’s younger son, Hidayat Inayat Khan, and under his
guidance they joined the International Sufi Movement in the early 1980s. Within
the Sufi Movement, the first National Representative for Canada was Carol Sill.
The Sufi Movement in Canada has centers in Edmonton, Calgary, Banff,
Salmon Arm, Vancouver, Victoria, and Toronto, with a membership of approxi-
mately one hundred in the mid-1990s. A Canadian, Nawab Pasnak, edited the
International Sufi Movement Magazine Caravanserai, published twice yearly from
Sufi Movement Headquarters in The Hague for a time. Apart from local center
activities, the Sufi Movement in Canada traditionally held a yearly camp, under
the direction of Pir-o-Murshid Hidayat Inayat Khan, in the Rocky Mountains near
Banff. In Vancouver both the Sufi Order and the Sufi Movements are active.65
In terms of post-tariqa South Asian Sufism Canada, there are four Deobandi
madrasas in Canada. The first one is Al-Rashid Islamic Institute in Cornwall,
Ontario. The second madrasa is Mufti Majid’s madrasa, Jamiatul ‘Ulum al Islami-
yyah in Ajax, very close to Toronto. The third madrasa is Darul ‘Ulum in Bow-
manville, Ontario, which is also very close to Toronto. The fourth one is in
Kelowna, British Columbia, about five hours by car from Vancouver.
As in the United States, Tablighi and Barelvi activities are also engaged in by
South Asian immigrant Muslims.66 An article by Siddiq Osman Noormuham-
mad mentions a number of these activities taking place in Toronto including
qawwālī singing, viewing of the Prophet’s beard hair, and dhikr sessions.
Conclusions
Due to the South Asian focus of this chapter, I initially wish to comment on a
romanticized idea of “India” evident in the teachings of Inayat Khan and Sam-
uel Lewis. This image is also that of a religiously pluralistic India, evident in the
stories and motifs that each Sufi leader prominently incorporated in his teach-
ings, invoking examples from both Islamic and Hindu traditions. I have a sense
that these ideas of India resonated differently between areas of the West that
shared the linkages of the British Empire and the circulation of colonial admin-
istrators and ex-Raj families, and those that did not. This may explain why the
Sufi Movement has been more prominent in Canada, Australia and New Zea-
land while the Sufi Order International was more influential in the United
States. This romanticized idea of India overlooks periodic episodes of commu-
nal tensions and even violence. However, as several chapters in this book show,
Sufism in South Asia has been a vehicle for building bridges across faiths and
different expressions of Islam, countering other tendencies towards hostility
and fragmentation. Universalist Sufism as it has developed in North America
demonstrates the vitality and adaptability of Sufism in attempting to meet
c ontemporary challenges, while illustrating the bias toward inclusivism in how

India in represented among certain movements.
The association of India with the mysterious East may also have played into
the reception or appropriation of some Sufi claims or motifs among African-
American Islamic and proto-Islamic movements. Figures such as the Ahmadi
missionary, Mufti Muhammad Sadiq, who preached in America during the
1920s. while not tariqa Sufi teachers, imparted some elements of South Asian
spirituality in their teachings.67
A further concluding observation that I will make regards gender. Among the
universalist Sufi movements, female participation and leadership began early
and reaches high levels. In these groups restrictions on women in matters such
as dress codes are often seen as cultural and outmoded. What does remain in
both the Inayati and Golden Sufi lines is a sense of the “feminine” as a distinct
category that needs to be appreciated and, to an extent, nurtured and pro-
tected in an extroverted Western culture that is by nature dismissive of it.68 This
attitude is typical of traditionalist Sufism more generally.69 Hybrid and trans-
planted South Asian Sufi movements negotiate gender roles and behaviors
much as other South Asian Muslim groups in the diaspora.
It is clear that in America, as elsewhere in the West, the constituencies and
interests of South Asian inspired Sufi movements can vary greatly. In South Asia
itself, the shift from Sufi practice as an individual spiritual training imparted
through an instructor Shaykh (shaykh tarbiyya) to a movement clustered
around a Shaykh who embodies and conveys the charisma of a Sufi Order
(shaykh tariqa), has been discussed by Arthur Buehler.70
This lack of attention to and competency for personal guidance among South
Asian Sufi Orders was naturally also imported to the West. The Inayati move-
ments attempted to retain a process of individual guidance and training by a
shaykh, but faced the quandary that once any movement expanded beyond a
smaller circle, the leader could not be available to provide such spiritual train-
ing on an individual basis. Attempts to institute deputyship and local leaders,
most of whom were Western trainees, have only had a limited success and con-
tributed to these groups becoming ever less Islamic and South Asian over time.
The transplanted practices of specific South Asian tariqas as well as the larger
post-tariqa constellations of Sufi inspired movements seem on the whole to
have dropped the element of individual spiritual transformation and the per-
sonal training that leads to this, both in South Asia and the West.
Among the Sufi Orders imported to the West from India, the Chishti tariqa
seem to have come first to arrive and to have the greatest propensity to univer-
salize and adapt. Its Indian origin and influences led the Chishtiyya to build
conceptual bridges, even in South Asia, for example, by incorporating Hindu
practices, terms, and spiritual motifs. Therefore the Chishti tariqa was the most
distinctively South Asian Sufi Order and the most porous to cultural and reli-
gious diversity, and this continues to be the case in the West. The extent to
which the performative elements of Chishti practice such as sama (Qawwali)

can persist in the West is subject to factors such as the number of South Asian
immigrants in a locality and the availability of specialists/performers. At the
same time, among South Asian immigrants to North America other group per-
formances such as recitation of the Qasida Burda may take on revitalized forms
and broader practice in the diaspora, but these broader forms are primarily
devotional rather than explicitly Sufi.
In response to my inquiries about South Asian Sufi influences in America,
one respondent answered that, “there is no difference between the Barelvi
practice of Sufism and Arabic practices of Sufism”. This may disclose a current
perception and possibly an aspiration to the ideal of an authentic trans-cultural
Sufism. At the same time it may signal an Arabo-normative perception of Islam
that is increasingly confronting local articulations and practices.
Notes
1
Marcia Hermansen, “In the Garden of American Sufi Movements: Hybrids and
Perennials.” In New Trends and Developments in the World of Islam, 155–78, Peter B.
Clarke (ed.) (London: Luzac Oriental, 1997).
2
Inayat Khan, The Mysticism of Music and Sound (Tishery: Element, 1991), prologue.
3
James Jervis, “The Sufi Order in the West,” In Peter Clark, ed. New Trends

and Developments in the World of Islam, 211–60 (London: (Luzac Oriental Press,
1997), 214–15.
4
Ibid., 215. Jervis also discusses the problems associated with determining the
exact date of the so-called London constitution (249 n.33).
5
Elizabeth de Jong-Keesing, Inayat Khan (The Hague: East-West Publications
1974), 209.
6
Ibid, 106–7.
7
Various mediations of Pīr Vilayat Khan in audio or video are available at http://
www.universel.net/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
8
Marcia Hermansen, “Common Themes, Uncommon Contexts: The Sufi
Movements of Khwaja Hasan Nizami (1878–1955) and Hazrat Inayat Khan
(1882–1927)” In A Pearl in Wine: Essays on the Life, Music and Sufism of Hazrat Inayat
Khan, Zia Inayat Khan (ed.) (New Lebanon, NY: Omega, 2001), 323–53.
9
The name was modified from “Sufi Order in the West” in 1956.
10
Wali Ali Meyer, “Murshid Samuel L. Lewis”, http://www.marinsufis.com/murshid.
php Accessed August 4, 2011.
11
Many of his writings are now archived online http://murshidsam.org/Papers1.
html. Accessed August 4, 2011.
12
A unique resource for Lewis’ activities and teaching style is the diary of one of his
closest disciples, Mansur Johnson, Murshid: A Personal Memoir of Life with American
Sufi Samuel Lewis (Seattle WA: PeaceWorks Publications, 2006). Photos of Lewis and
his disciples may be found at http://www.mansurjohnson.com/node/6 and http://
www.sonic.net/%7Efatima/oldphotos1/oldphotos1.htm Accessed August 4, 2011.
13
http://www.dancesofuniversalpeace.org/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
14
The group dropped the word “Islamiyat” from its name some years ago. Links
between the Sufi Order and the Ruhaniyat continue and both fell victim to the
2009 financial scandal perpetrated by Bernie Madoff that notably scammed many
Jewish charities as well; see Beth Healy, “Madoff scheme took in members of
religious group,” The Boston Globe August 27, 2009 http://www.boston.com/busi-
ness/articles/2009/08/27/madoff_scheme_took_in_members_of_religious_
group/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
15
http://physiciansoftheheart.com/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
16
On this lineage in Australia, see Celia A. Genn, “The Development of a Modern
Western Sufism” in Sufism and the ‘Modern’ in Islam, 257–77, Martin van Bruines-
sen and Julia Day Howell (eds.) (London: I. B. Taurus, 2007).
17
Discussion of this branch in Europe is beyond the scope of this chapter. A study
of the lives and leadership roles of these figures is Karin Jironet, Sufi Mysticism in
the West: Life and Leadership of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Brothers 1927–1967 (Leuven:
Peeters, 2009).
18
http://www.sufimovement.org/repgen.htm Accessed August 4, 2011.
19
http://www.sufimovement.org/teach_m_rabia.htm Accessed August 4, 2011.
20
A discussion of Inayat Khan being a representative of “four-school” Sufism
is offered in Carl W. Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love (London:
Palgrave, 2002), 142–3.
21
Ibid.
22
On Tweedie and female leadership, see the article by Sara Sviri, “Documentation
and Experiences of a Modern Naqshbandi Sufi”, 77–89 in Women as Teachers and
Disciples in Traditional and New Religion, ed. Elizabeth Puttick and Peter B. Clarke
(ed) (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1994).
23
Irena Tweedie, Chasm of Fire: A Woman’s Experience of Liberation through the Teachings
of a Sufi Master (Tisbury: Element, 1979) and Daughter of Fire (Nevada City, CA:
Blue Dolphin, 1986).
24
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, The Lover and the Serpent: Dreamwork Within a Sufi Tradi-
tion (Rockport, MA: Element Books, 1991), The Call and the Echo: Sufi Dreamwork
and the Psychology of the Beloved (Putney, VT: Threshold, 1991), Sufism: The Trans-
formation of the Heart (Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center, 1995). Awakening the
World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice (Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Center,
2006).
25
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, “Neither of the East nor of the West: The Journey of the
Nashbadiyya-Mujaddidiyya from India to America”, 12. Available online http://
goldensufi.org/article_eastwest.html Accessed August 4, 2011.
26
Ibid, 14.
27
Ibid, 15.
28
The information about the Golden Sufis in the 1990s is based on their publica-
tions and on an interview with Michael Eccles at the International Association of
Sufism Conference in San Rafael, March 26, 1994.
29
http://www.goldensufi.org/about.html Accessed August 4, 2011.
30
The Fellowship has smaller branches in Iowa, Boston, Connecticut, Vermont,
and Sacramento.
31
Gisela Webb, “Third-Wave Sufism in America and the Bawa Muhaiyadeen Fellow-
ship” Sufism in the West, 86–102 Jamal Malik and John Hinnells (eds) New York:
Routledge, 2006), 92.
32
Ibid, 94.
33
Maryam Kabeer Faye, Journey Through 10,000 Veils: The Alchemy of Transformation on
the Sufi Path (Clifton, NJ: Tughra Books, 2009), 121–55.
34
Webb, “Third-Wave Sufism,” 99.
35
Hakim Moinuddin Chishti, The Book of Sufi Healing (Rochester, VT: Inner Tradi-
tions International, 1991).
36
Arthur Buehler, “Modes of Sufi Transmission to New Zealand” in New Zealand
Journal of Asian Studies 8, 2: 97–109 (December 2006), 100.
37
http://www.afghansufi.com/ourteacher.html Accessed August 4, 2011.
38
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v1PxycSH6Vy0 Accessed August 4, 2011.
39
I owe this material and these quotations to an unpublished article by Barbara von
Schlegell, who interviewed Baji in 2008.
40
http://www.tasawwuf.org/ and his publications at http://www.faqirpublications.
com/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
41
www.sacredlearning.org Accessed August 4, 2011. One can download a “rabita”
form from this site in order to keep track of the extra devotional and Sufi prac-
tices performed every week.
42
http://www.whitethreadpress.com/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
43
http://www.sunniforum.com/forum/forum.php Accessed August 4, 2011.
44
Marc Garborieau, “What is left of Sufism in Tablîghî Jamâ‘at?” In Archives de
sciences sociales des religions. 135: 53–72, 2006. Available at http://assr.revues.
org/3731 Accessed August 4, 2011.
45
Garborieau, para 38 [online].
46
Ibid, para 42 [online].
47
The terms Barelvi and Barelvism are not usually self-descriptions. Barelvis call
themselves “ahl-i sunna wa’l jama’a” – the people of the Sunna and the commu-
nity indicating that they see themselves as the center of mainstream Islam, not as
a sectarian or distinct movement.
48
Usha Sanyal, “Are Wahhabis Kafirs? Ahmad Riza Khan Barelwi and His Sword
of the Haramayn.” In Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and Their Fatwas, 204–13,
Muhammad Khalid Masud, Brinkley Messick, and David S. Powers (eds) (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
49
Ronald Geaves, “Continuity and Transformation in a Naqshbandi tariqa in Brit-
ain: The Changing Relationship between Mazār (shrine) and dar al-ulum (semi-
nary) revisited.” In Sufism Today: Heritage and Tradition in the Global Community,
65–82, Catharina Raudvere and Leif Stenburg (eds) (London: IB Tauris, 2009).

66 Pnina Werbner, Pilgrims of Love (London: Hurst, 2003), 257.
50
Arthur F. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the
Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
1998).
51
http://www.nfie.com/links.htm Accessed August, 2011.
52
Publications arising from these conferences are contained in two journal issues
of Sufi Illuminations.
53
While NFIE continues sporadically only at the local level, an offshoot of Islamic
Studies and Research Association (ISRA) has a similar style of networking, and
has hosted twelve annual conferences with a regional appeal, but clearly now is
attempting to have a global reach through social media such as Youtube. http://
www.israinternational.com/ Accessed august 4, 2011.
54
In fact, a later organization, ISRA, tries to draw on many of the same networks.
While localized in the south-east of the United States, the movement has tried
to enter the Chicago area through a network of Pakistani Punjabi businessmen.
This seems to have met with little enthusiasm from the persons who were ini-
tially gathered from the Chicago businessman’s contacts in the Pakistani Busi-
ness Association (ethnic and professional networks) but who have less interest in
Barelvi spirituality or American Sufism, although sympathetic to Islamic activities
in a more general sense.
55
In particular Naqshbandi-Haqqanis who at one point threatened to pull out of
the event if their Shaikh Hisham was not given top billing.
56
See Ron Geaves, Sufis of Britain (Cardiff: Cardiff Academic Press, 2000) on Barelvis.
57
http://www.carymasjid.org/ Accessed August 4, 2011.
58
Private e-mail communication from Maulana Manzurul Islam, March 28, 2011.
59
http://www.dawateislami.net/home.do Accessed August 4, 2011.
60
http://www.dawateislami.net/html/banners/ghous-ul-azam-wallpaper.
php?IslamicWallPaper5 Accessed August 4, 2011.
61
http://www.dawateislami.net/mureed Accessed August 4, 2011.
62
Siddiq Osman Noormuhammad, “The Sufi Tradition in Toronto” in The Message
International (#6, Aug. 1995):42.
63
From biography at http://muslim-canada.org/sufi/drbaig.htm Accessed
December 21, 2006, not available August 4, 2011.
64
The Guderi Shahi Order is one of the few orders mentioned in an article by N.
Landman, “Sufi Orders in the Netherlands: Their Role in the Institutionalization
of Islam” as appealing to Dutch converts to Islam. P. S. van Koningsveld and W. A.
R. Shadid, eds. The Integration of Islam and Hinduism in Western Europe (Kampen,
The Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1991), 26–39.
65
I am indebted to Nawab Pasnak for information on Sufi activities in Western
Canada.
66
On Tabligh in Canada, see Rory Dickson, “The Tablighi Jama’at in Southwestern
Ontario: making Muslim identities and networks in Canadian urban spaces” in
Contemporary Islam 3, 2: 99–112, 2009; and Shaheen H. Azmi, “A movement or a
Jama’at? Tablighi Jama’at in Canada” in Travellers in Faith, 229–39, Muhammad
Khalid Masud (ed.) (Leiden, Brill, 2000).
67
Individual cases of African Americans influenced by Sufi motifs in the 1940s and
50s are being traced Patrick Bowen, forthcoming.
68
Marcia, Hermansen “Two Sufis on Molding the New Muslim Woman: Khwaja
Hasan Nizami (1878–1955) and Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) in Barbara
Metcalf ed. Islam in South Asia in Practice (Princeton, 2009), 326–38. and Llewellyn
Vaughan-Lee, “Neither of the East”, 20–2
69
Sachiko Murata. The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic
Thought. (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1992).
70
Arthur F. Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of
the Mediating Sufi Shaykh (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998).
Chapter 16
Sufis and Social Activism: A Chīshtī Response

to Communal Strife in India Today
Kelly Pemberton
10/11/07: Ajmer bombing and its aftermath
Following the bomb blasts that rocked the shrine of renowned Sufi master
Mu’in al-Dīn Chīshtī in Ajmer, Rajasthan, on the last day of Ramadan, October
11, 2007, initial police investigation and media reports cast blame upon Paki-
stan-based militant Islamic groups Lashkar-e Toiba and Harkat ul-Jihad-i Islami.
Citing a growth in militant Islamic movements across the border, analysts sur-
mised that the strike was designed to stir up communal strife in this largely
peaceful city, which draws pilgrims from all faiths to honor and venerate the
thirteenth-century Chīshtī master. This narrative, linking across-the-border
Muslim extremism with communalist forces in India, is a familiar one, as Alex
Keefe points out in his blog, Jugaad.1 Despite a frequent lack of evidence for
Lashkar involvement, the Indian authorities routinely pursue “foreign involve-
ment” in such cases of terrorist activity at religious sites. Soon after the blast,
reports surfaced of the detention and questioning of Bangladeshi pilgrims who
had come to visit the shrine.
By April 2010, the police investigation netted several suspects and a new nar-
rative of the forces and motivation behind the bombs: Hindu militants, among
whom are individuals allegedly connected with the right-wing Hindutva outfits
Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) and the Abhinav Bharat Sangathan, had set off
the bombs in order to deter Hindu pilgrims from visiting the shrine. This nar-
rative was corroborated by one of the prime suspects, Aseemanand, who added
that two of the men involved are connected to the Inter-Services Intelligence
(ISI), or Pakistani intelligence. As ongoing investigations have revealed, the
Ajmer bombing was not an isolated incident, but part of a series of terrorist
activities committed by right-wing Hindu groups, including the Malegaon blasts
(Sept 8, 2006),the Samjhauta Express bombing (Feb 18, 2007), the Mecca
masjid blasts in Hyderabad (May 18, 2007), the Thane cinema blast (June 4,
2008), which coincided with the screening of the film Jodhaa Akhbar, and a
series of other bombings which took place in 2008 and 2009.2
Since the Ajmer blasts, Chīshtī Sufis, particularly the Ajmer-based Chīshtīs
who witnessed the bombing and its aftermath, have stepped up their efforts to
foster intercommunal harmony among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, and
others in India. While these efforts may be seen as a new response to increasing
militancy from right-wing Hindu groups, in fact, they are neither new nor sim-
ply a reaction to this trend. Rather, they point to twin phenomena which few
scholars have observed among Chīshtī Sufis and other Sufi orders since the
1990s: a shift toward interfaith activism, and an emphasis on universalizing nar-
ratives that, while liberally drawing upon elements of Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī’s
life, de-emphasize the particulars of Islamic authenticity3 in favor of discourses
that promote the vision of a community of shared faith in the divine. These
twin modalities of religious activism and discursive production underscore the
ways in which narratives of the past are being mobilized in service of the aims
of the present. As I will demonstrate, the Chīshtī Sufis of Ajmer are currently
engaged in interfaith and anticommunalist missions that suggest more than
just a shared understanding of their activities as representatives of Mu’in ud-Dīn
Chīshtī. Instead, I argue, these roles require them to mobilize the symbolic and
cultural capital of the “idioms” of Sufism, particularly Chīshtī Sufism, but they
also reflect strategic aims. Namely, some of the social and economic transfor-
mations that have made India a regional powerhouse have also enabled Sufi
groups to actively increase the numbers of their “clients” and to acquire
enhanced symbolic capital for themselves globally as promoters of communal
harmony.
Sufis and social activism: Crafting public meaning
The connections between Sufi practice and social activism have been amply
evaluated in academic studies.4 Building on such prior research, recent studies
of Sufism in the South Asian Subcontinent have also begun to highlight the
roles that Sufis play as social actors seeking to “craft” public meaning.5 Social
activism among Sufis, in general, has translated in an increasing number of
ways since the mid twentieth century: using modern technologies and media
(such as demotic literature, cassettes and CDs, the internet, social networking
sites, blogs, and discussion forums) to communicate and market the messages
of the Sufi orders, attracting new adherents and associates, particularly among
South Asian expatriates and Westerners6; promoting messages of “universal
humanistic” import over sectarian worldviews through relationships of sacred
exchange7 sponsoring ritual events that emphasize a shared community of
faith8; promulgating alternative messages of community in contrast to narrow
visions of national identity9; and transmitting scripturalist, Sharià-focused ideas
AQ: Please A Chīshtī Response to Communal Strife in India Today 271
check the
Shortened
Running of reform to Arab Middle Eastern audiences.10 For Chīshtī Sufis in particular,
Head. such activities signal both continuity with past traditions of openness to non-
Muslims and strategic efforts to reinscribe Chīshtī traditions of public engage-
ment in the service of anticommunalism, a term which I use here to signal
efforts to counter the messages of intolerance and exclusivity promoted by both
the Hindu right and Islamic extremists.
This chapter follows the aforementioned studies in linking new forms of
social activism with the messages of common faith and communal harmony
being promoted by the Chīshtī Sufis in India who are directly connected with
the shrine of Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī in Ajmer, Rajasthan. In particular, I look at
two such groups: the Gudri Shah Chīshtīs and the Syedzadgan khadims (heredi-
tary servants) of the Ajmer shrine.11 Both have actively initiated and supported
efforts to counteract communal strife in India today through programs of
engagement (e.g., concerts for peace; conferences; interfaith activities; and
school programs inaugurated by the Sufi Saint School, founded by the current
pīr o murshid of the Gudri Shah order); interaction with other anticommunalist
groups through various forums (e.g., conferences and symposia); the publica-
tion of demotic literature that espouses social activism as a means of fighting
intolerance; and the promotion of messages of peace and anticommunalism on
their websites and through targeted mailing.
Because of their ongoing efforts to promulgate interfaith relations and com-
munal harmony, I suggest that these Sufi groups can be characterized as “social
change movements.” In recent decades, their work mediating the power of
shaikh Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī, hosting pilgrims to his shrine, and guiding the
spiritual development of their murīds, or disciples, has demonstrated a “set of
opinions and beliefs… which represents preferences for changing some ele-
ments of the social structure and/or reward distribution of a society.”12 This
includes the normalization of relations between Hindus and Muslims in the
Subcontinent and beyond, the destabilization of extremist elements, the mobi-
lization of idioms of Sufism13 for projects fostering cross-border or cross-cultural
communication, and an idealization of the past (particularly the narratives cen-
tered on the life and socio-spiritual work of Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī in India) as a
key to finding solutions to the dilemmas of the present. These characteristic
features of social change movements as theorized in the past decade – an orien-
tation toward social change goals; “imagined solidarities” among actors with
“partially shared” interests14; a focus on shaping meanings within culture and
society15; the strategic production of knowledge that is conceived of as useful
for society at large16; and the use of multiple “frames” to craft a narrative of
Chīshtī engagement in the world17 – bear some features in common with Islamic
“religious activism” that constitutes “extraordinary” activities aimed at bringing
about social change.18
Social movement theory
While the Gudri Shah order and the Syedzadgan khadims are the focus of my
study, I will also connect the particular examples of their discourses and activi-
ties to broader trends in social activism among Sufis of the Subcontinent, par-
ticularly as they have indicated countermovements against recent incidents of
communal strife and Islamic extremism. For that task, I draw upon social move-
ment theory to explain some of the dynamics of activism among the Chīshtī
groups included in this study. As seen in Quintan Wiktorowicz’s 2004 study,
Islamic Activism: a Social Movement Theory Approach, social movement theory has
moved away from its earlier structuralist framework to address instrumentalist
concerns: why social mobilization happens, what forms it takes, and how it
effects social change.19 Following Wiktorowicz, I argue that Islamic activism – in
this case, forms of activism that are exemplary of twentieth- and twenty-first-
century Chīshtī Sufi approaches – is not always triggered by structural con-
straints, although it is responsive to socioeconomic and (geo)political trends.
In that regard, one must consider the impact of the expansion of the Indian
Sufi orders, particularly by and among nonresident Indians (NRIs), into West-
ern European, American, and Australian lands; ongoing incidents of commu-
nal violence, in which Muslims are disproportionately affected, the influence
of the 2006 Sachar Committee Report upon the Government of India’s (GOI)
(as yet inadequate) efforts to bring Indian Muslims more into the socioeco-
nomic and cultural mainstream of Indian society20; the scattered efforts of Mus-
lim clerics to denounce extremist violence, and the growth of anticommunal
movements in the Indian Subcontinent more generally, particularly in the
aftermath of 9/11 and the Mumbai blasts of November 26, 2008 (also known as
26/11).
These events in particular underscore the importance of political and socio-
cultural contexts in the emergence of social movements. What I aim to demon-
strate is how social activism among the Sufi groups in my survey is, first,
introspectively a response to the public faces of Islam. In particular, it draws
upon narratives from Chīshtī sacred history to respond to stereotypes of Mus-
lims as backward, intolerant, and preoccupied with the past as a remedy for the
disappointments of the present.21 Second, it comes in the wake of calls from a
diverse array of groups in the Subcontinent to counteract the growing waves of
communalism and anti-Muslim sentiment, many of which have made conscious
efforts to engage the Sufi orders in this mission. Thus, social activism among
the Chīshtī groups in my survey is collaborative, mobilizing the resources of
multiple partners in order to bring about (what is intended to be) lasting social
change. Third, it coincides with an influx of wealth into the orders, and the
expansion of their sphere of influence, both within and outside the
Subcontinent.
A Chīshtī Response to Communal Strife in India Today 273
Chīshtī responses to communal strife
That the picture of Islamic activism among Chīshtī Sufis in Ajmer is more com-
plex than the causal linkages between structural strains and social mobilization
would suggest – because structures and systems are neither inherently balanced
nor stable, but remain dynamic and responsive, and because not all structural
strains produce or energize social movements – has been demonstrated by sev-
eral studies.22 In the case of India, communalism and communal violence has
long been within the ambit of a number of social and political movements, and
remains germane to discussions of political enfranchisement, minority rights,
Hindutva, and more recently, post-9/11 Islamic extremism. However, consider-
ing the long history of Chīshtī engagement with others, particularly Hindus; the
Chīshtī (indeed, Sufi) paradigm of responsibility for the poor and disenfran-
chised; the expansionist and entrepreneurial activities of the orders both within
and outside the Subcontinent since the late nineteenth century, including their
mobilization of new media; the growth of anticommunal movements in India
more generally, and their efforts to engage the Sufi orders; and the Chīshtīs’
long history of anticommunal activism, understood as an integral part of their
spiritual “duties,” I believe that the Chīshtī response to communal strife in India
today signals less a reaction to the crisis of conscience generated in the after-
math of the bomb blasts of 2007 than (1) a continuation of extant forms of
social activism among the Chīshtī Sufis, and (2) a response to social and eco-
nomic transformations since the 1980s (including economic liberalization poli-
cies) that have expanded the Indian economy, its middle classes, and its global
influence, and that have facilitated the process of (3) outreach to Muslims and
non-Muslims outside of the Subcontinent.
In this sense, Chīshtī social activism may be understood as part of a broader,
decades-long trend in the Indo-Pakistani Subcontinent – particularly among
artists, musicians, and the nongovernmental organization (NGO) community –
to bridge the divide between Hindus, Muslims, and others. For Chīshtīs, the
aims of such activism include interfaith alliances as well as the desire to spread
the influence of the orders. To this extent, such activism is neither a particularly
new nor a primarily Chīshtī phenomenon, as evidence from studies of other
leading Sufi orders attest.23 The activist stance assumed by Chīshtī and other
Sufi orders also challenges the “interiorization” theses of Islamic reform, sug-
gesting that a concern with the internal mechanisms of spiritual development
does not always signal a disconnect with the external, and particularly the socio-
political exigencies of the age. Rather, the drive for spiritual development is
often connected to the push for social and political reforms. Through the stra-
tegic mobilization of external resources (e.g., recruits, funds, musical and
prayer assemblies, programs, literature, websites) and its marriage with the
internal aims of the orders as representatives of faith (here understood as a
spiritual quest for the moral refinement of the individual), the anticommunal-
ist activities of Ajmer Chīshtī groups exemplify the dynamic interface between
spiritual and social activism, and personal and political transformation.
The language of engagement: Mobilizing the sacred past
These connections are reflected in the language of engagement in which

Chīshtī groups use to highlight their objectives of communal harmony; within
this language is an emphasis on a shared community of faith. On the website for
Haji S.M. Hameed Chishty, one of the Syedzadgan khadims (servants) at the
Mu’in ud-Dīn dargāh, an emphasis on the essential unity of religions is promi-
nent. Under the heading “Truth Always Prevails,” a subsection of the narrative
about Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī’s (Gharib Nawaz) “Arrival and Preaching,” the
author recalls the divine truths revealed in the words and deeds of the exem-
plars of various faiths:
Again and again through all successive ages, the apostles of God have suc-
cessfully fought and defeated the forces of evil. Prophet David succeeded in
overthrowing Goliath. Prophet Abraham survived the torture of a huge fire
made by Namrood to destroy him but it turned into a garden of fragrant flow-
ers and Namrood himself was destroyed by a gnat. Shree Ramchandra, the
exiled but dutiful son of Raja Dashratha secured a mighty victory over Ravana
the demon king of Ceylon, in righteous cause. In spite of all torture, the Holy
Christ and his religion did survive even after his crucifixion and the Holy
Prophet gave noble lessons of Christianity to the world. Prophet Mohammed
was tormented by Abu Jehal and Abu Lehab with superior forces but he suc-
ceeded triumphantly in the end with his grand religious mission. The whole
history of the world is replete with such illuminating and noble examples of
the success of “Truth” against evil and repeats itself again and again.24
On this same page, Mu’in ud-Dīn’s mission is also presented in terms that empha-
size the essentially humanistic and universal agenda of his travel to India:
It is a historic fact that Hazrat Khawaja Moinuddin Chishty was the greatest
preacher and founder of Islam in India. It was he who laid the real founda-
tion of Islam in India by his peaceful mission and unparalleled forbearance.
He brought the message of “Universal Love and Peace” and paved the way
for his succeeding Khalifas for the peaceful propagation of Islam in this coun-
try without any compulsion whatsoever in the true spirit of the Holy Qur’ān
which says, “Let there be no compulsion in religion. Wilt thou compel men to
become believers? No soul can believe but by the persuasion of God.” Khawaja
Moinuddin followed this dictum throughout his mission. Before his arrival,
Muslims in India were in a most negligible minority. His piety and sympa-
thetic preaching made a profound impression upon all he came across.25
This language may also be found in websites belonging to other khadims, includ-
ing that of Salman Chishty:
He chose the way of non-compulsion in the true spirit of holy Qur’ān he says:
“Let there be no compulsion in religion, will thou compel men to become
believers? No soul can believe but by the persuasion of Allah.” Khwaja Moi-
nuddin Chishty (R.A.) followed this dictum strictly throughout his mission. It
is because of this reason that he is popularly known as “Gharib Nawaz” which
means the one who shows kindness to the poor. This was later reinforced by
succeeding Chīshtīa Sufis, who became religious pioneers in national integra-
tion in the country. They fulfilled the objective of bringing together various
castes, communities and races, elevating the humanity from the morass of
materialistic concerns, which is the bane of mankind even today.26
It is also prominent in the descriptions of the saint posted on the website of the
Gudri Shah Chīshtī order in Ajmer:
Hazrat Khwaja Moin Uddin Hasan Chīshtī came to India as the harbinger of
peace and humanism and as an ambassador of unity and goodwill. He ulti-
mately came to be identified as the Spiritual Sovereign of India.27
Echoing the information contained in hagiographic narratives of the saint,

these descriptions of Mu’in ud-Dīn’s mission highlight the universal and non-
specific character of the saint’s migration to India. Two of the major sources for
Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī’s life, the Siyar al-Arifin and the Akhbar al-Akhyar, describe
the shaikh’s initial arrival in Ajmer in similarly innocuous terms.
After 20 years, his service came to an end and Khwaja Usman Haruni (his
pīr o murshid) honored him with khilaifat (permission to become a spiritual
guide). In the time of the reign of King Pithura (Prithvi Raj), he came to
Ajmer and remained occupied with the worship of God. 28
When the crowd of ordinary and distinguished [people] surrounding him
had become too large, [Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī] departed from Delhi to the
city of Ajmer. Although the splendor of Islam had already been established in
this sacred place, only one league separated a large number of unfortunate
unbelievers from that place.29
Although the language used by the Chīshtī Sufis of Ajmer today to craft a new
narrative of interfaith activism and communal harmony often embellishes the
information relayed in the hagiographic and didactic literature important to
Chīshtī Sufism, it is neither “imagined” nor invented. The hagiographic literature
is replete with examples of non-Muslims (particularly Zoroastrians and Hindus)

converting to Islam after their encounter with the saint, usually “immediately”
after witnessing or experiencing a miraculous event in his or her presence, or
being trumped by his or her powers over al-ghaib (the unseen world). The uses of
such stories to memorialize or enhance the reputation of Sufi shaikhs (and, thus,
help in the process of institutionalizing their orders) have been well analyzed.30
While in these narratives Islam is unequivocally depicted as the superior faith, the
saint’s encounter with non-Muslims can hardly be described as proselytizing.
Rather, the spiritual perspicacity of shaikhs to recognize divine truths, in whatever
form they may appear, and to convey them to others, serves as a beacon call to
Islam for non-Muslims. Jamali’s Siyar ul-Arifin relates the following anecdote about
the Chīshtī shaikh Hamid al-Dīn Nagauri, a disciple of Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī:
Hazrat Shaikh Nizam al-din related that there was a Hindu in Ajmer who was
in mourning. Hazrat Shaikh (Hamid al-din Nagauri) always said, concerning
him, that this man is good and one of God’s saints. People were astonished
that Hazrat would call a non-believer a saint. Afterwards, that Hindu became
Muslim and was among the saints of God.31
The language of interfaith outreach used by the khadims of the Mu’in ud-Dīn
Chīshtī shrine and the Gudri Shah Chīshtīs recalls hagiographies and oral tradi-
tions32 about the saint’s travels to the Subcontinent to craft a narrative that
addresses present-day concerns over communal strife. It seeks to recast the saint
as both a peaceful missionary of Islam and a model of interfaith activism for his
spiritual successors. Yet there is little information about his life to suggest that
intercommunal harmony as such was a particular concern of his, or that his
encounters with non-Muslims in the Subcontinent were much different than
they were for many other shaikhs and cultural mediators33: they interacted with
the local population as “sources” of authority (both spiritual and material)34
and as guides in matters both practical and spiritual; they spread the idioms of
Islam and Sufism both intentionally and as a matter of course, and after their
deaths they came to be regarded by many, regardless of religious community or
social class, as powerful mediators between humans and the divine realms. If
there is anything that is emphasized in the known hagiographic literature on
Mu’in ud-Dīn’s life, it is that he understood his spiritual mission to pivot on
three causes: the spread of knowledge about the divine, the uplift of the (spiri-
tually and materially) poor, and the fight against injustice.
Engaging others
The documentation of these tripartite aims of Mu’in ud-Dīn’s spiritual mission

to India provides a framework for the early Chīshtīs’ engagement with the local
environment. More to the point, however, literary output also suggests ways in
which they sought to engage non-Muslim traditions and practices. Notably, the
translation of texts served as a medium by which metaphysical knowledge and
insights into the divine could be deepened, or conveyed to others. In some
cases, these projects constituted attempts to translate Islamic concepts into
terms that non-Muslims could understand, as in the Jñana sagara, by the eigh-
teenth-century Sufi Ali Raja of Bengal.35 In others, they suggested the interests
of Sufis in validating the truths of Islam through the lenses of other sacred texts,
as in the translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Àbd al-Rahman Chīshtī (d.1683)
(Vassie 1999, 375–6) or Ghawth ‘Ali Shah Qalandar Qadiri’s (d. 1880) explana-
tion of yogic practice, included in Gul Hasan Qadiri’s Tazkirat-i ghawthiyya.36
They conveyed the desire of Sufis to demonstrate the essential unity of meta-
physical concepts in religions, as in the translation of 50 Upanisads, the Bhaga-
vad Gita, the Yoga Vaisishtha, and several other sacred texts of Hinduism by the
Mughal prince and Qadiri Sufi Dara Shikoh (d. 1659) (Nasr 1972, 141). Finally,
they testified to the importance of essentially Indian ideas in Sufi thought and
praxis, as in the translations and retranslations of the Sanskrit work on yoga,
Amrit Kund (including a translation by the sixteenth-century Shattari shaikh,
Muhammad Ghaus of Gwalior), and its widespread circulation within Sufi
circles.37
In part to emphasize the essentially Indian character of Chīshtī Sufism in
Ajmer,38 the Syedzadgan khadims and the Gudri Shah Chīshtīs employ a dis-
course of communal harmony that connects their active involvement in the
local community with their spiritual duties as representatives of the shaikh. One
example of such involvement was recently recorded in the Times of India, Jaipur
edition.
It’s a living example of reconciliation between two communities. The khad-

ims of the Dargāh of Khwaja Garib Nawaz Chīshtī lent a helping hand to
reconstruct an age-old Shiva temple, barely 400 meters from the main shrine
in Ajmer. On the left of the main Nizam Gate, tucked in a corner, lay the
ruins of a centuries-old temple of Shri Pipaleshwar Mahadev till last year.
However, now a magnificent temple stands at the site, built by the labour of
both Hindus and Muslims. … The locals had wanted to repair the temple but
the costs were too high. … Soon, the news of rebuilding the temple reached
the khadims. “It was unanimously decided that since we are here for the ser-
vice of the Khwaja, it would only be right on our part to pitch in for the con-
struction of the temple,” says Sayeed Ibrahim Fakre, former member of state
minority commission. The khadims along with some minority organisations
generously contributed to rebuild the temple. “For us every place of wor-
ship is to be respected,” says Munover Chīshtī, assistant secretary of Anjuman
Yadgaar.39
The Gudri Shah Chīshtīs have also made their mark locally, not just as represen-
tatives of the shaikh and mediators of his power, but as champions of the poor.
Their role as such is best exemplified by the founding of the Sufi Saint School by
the fifth and current pīr in 1990. The school offers an accredited educational
program for children from nursery school to grade 8, regardless of religious or
sectarian background. It particularly caters to the needs of lower-middle class
and poor families, and has promoted a message of communal harmony and
social uplift since its inception, as the school’s website makes clear in its introduc-
tion, adopting the sobriquet “Peace Maker Sufi Saint School.” The school’s stated
mission is the promotion of communal harmony and universal brotherhood, a
message that it incorporates in the prayer recited by all students each morning:
From these thorns, this poor one may be saved forever.

Every moment may be passed in Your remembrance.
In your remembrance, this heart may be engaged forever.
This is a desire, a request, a longing and a wish:
In the hearts, the lamp of knowledge may be illumined forever.
Poverty will go away from this world, everywhere there will be peace all
around.
Conductor! Every house from the happiness may be filled forever.
Every race and sect will live together in this world.
Of fruits and flowers gardens will be loaded forever.
The Jew, Sikh, Christian, Hindu, Muslim and Zoroaster,
Together under the blue canopy will live forever.40
…
The prayer draws upon stock symbols of Sufism: (spiritual and material) pov-
erty, which is one of the early stations of spiritual illumination that the mystic
seeker obtains41; dhikr (remembrance), a ritualized method of imprinting the
qualities of the divine on the seeker’s heart; and the lamp of mystical illumina-
tion (ma`rifa) which reveals the secrets of divine unity (tawhid), including the
essential unity of God’s creation.
As an institution that aims to promote the cause of communal harmony, the
Sufi Saint School has also become the host of a number of events that bring it
into close collaboration with individuals, including Indian and foreign disciples
and associates of the current and former Gudri Shah pīrs, as well as other
groups, local and international, that share similar ideals. One such event is the
“Annual Function for World Peace,” which took place this year in February.
Students perform dances and plays with the themes of integration and toler-
ance, and the event features performances by local and international musi-
cians. In the past few years, the event has become a venue for reaching out to
other groups (especially NGOs and volunteer associations) that are working
against communalism, extremism, and intolerance.
An objective of the school since its inception, building alliances with groups
that are working to combat communal strife, has become more feasible in recent
years as the anticommunalist movement in India has grown. The school has
received funding from donors, lenders, and the Indian government, and conse-
quently expanded its outreach efforts. A group with which the school has recently
formed an alliance is Friends without Borders, an all-volunteer global movement
and collaboration of different groups and individuals around the globe. The
group has launched a campaign to promote cross-border communications
across national boundaries. One of their campaigns, “Aman ki Asha,” has been
to open the lines of communication between young Indian and Pakistani stu-
dents (including students at the Sufi Saint School), by having them write letters
of friendship to each other, thereby combating the conditioning that has left
previous generations perpetually suspicious of the “enemy” across the border.
Such activities are increasingly common among Chīshtī Sufis, as among other
Sufi groups in India. They reflect, on the one hand, the expansion of the order’s
sphere of influence beyond its regional and national borders and, on the other,
they exemplify the ways in which some orders have been able to mobilize the
symbolic and cultural capital of Sufism as a welcoming, peace-loving, and open-
minded tradition that is actively invested in the spiritual and material uplift of
society at large. In this way, the Ajmer Chīshtīs have sought to make a lasting
impact on social relationships beyond their own circles of disciples.
Expanding Sufi circles globally
The activities of the Syedzadgan khadims and the Gudri Shah Chīshtīs of Ajmer
demonstrate some features common to social activist movements today. First,
they are introspective, mobilizing the past to craft a narrative of interfaith activ-
ism that draws upon the spiritual mission of the saint at whose shrine they serve,
and that recasts them as promoters of communal harmony. Second, their work
is increasingly collaborative: both the Syedzadgan khadims and the Gudri Shah
Chīshtīs have increasingly sought out alliances with other groups – both Indian
and foreign – in order to achieve their aims of fostering communal harmony
and combating intolerance. Finally, these two groups have benefited from the
influx of wealth into the local economy through the tourist trade, as well as
from the rise of India as a global economic power more generally.
The expansion of the orders outside the borders of India has been taking
place since the late nineteenth century, with European travelers and residents
becoming disciples of Sufi shaikhs and some shaikhs taking advantage of innova-
tions in transportation and communication to travel outside of the country,
both to strengthen alliances with existing disciples and to form new relation-
ships of sacred exchange with prospective disciples and other Sufi orders. The
activities of such “traveling” shaikhs first amplified in the context of the
I ndependence movement, which ended British occupation of the country

in 1946.42 From the late 1960s, the orders expanded further with travelers and
spiritual seekers from Western Europe, Australia, and the Americas coming
into contact with them. Several of these people became close disciples and,
claiming spiritual descent (e.g., as khalīfas) from their pīr,43 established their
own circles and centers of Sufi activity in their home countries, where they
nowadays observe major commemorative events when unable to travel abroad.
In particular, the Chīshtī orders in India have long welcomed foreign visitors,
and many do not require those seeking to become disciples to convert to Islam,
which has also attracted many disciples from the West.
These are not the only factors that have enabled the Gudri Shah and Syedzad-
gan Chīshtī orders to expand their sphere of influence. With the availability of
new forms of media, particularly social networking sites and blogs, the publica-
tion of books and articles on the shrine and its servants by Indian and foreign
researchers, continued media attention, particularly during the time of the ‘urs
festival, and the promotion of travel to the shrine by the Rajasthan tourism
board, along with the influx of wealth into the orders since the 1990s, these
groups have been able to increase their activities and expand their outreach
even further than before.44 On this last point, in particular, it is worth mention-
ing that India’s growing economy, and the rise of its middle class (which form a
large portion of the pilgrim traffic each year), has also affected the fortunes of
the Gudri Shahs and Syedzsadgan khadims in several ways. One, pilgrims donate
money for the upkeep of the shrine, and they also give nazrana, or pious offer-
ings, to the pīrs in order that they may carry out their spiritual work. Two,
increased pilgrim traffic has also meant an increase in sales of items at the
dargāh bazaar that surround the shrine. Three, some of the Syedzadgan khadims
have also expanded beyond their usual income-generating activities to offer
advertising space to local and international businesses on their websites. Finally,
although most khadims derive a relatively modest income from their work at the
shrine, a few have earned enough income from such sources as remittances
from family members working in the Gulf countries to be able to send their
children to the United Kingdom and the United States for higher education.
Travel abroad to the Gulf and Europe has enabled them to further expand their
circle of associates, disciples, and affiliates and, as a result, the shrine’s reputa-
tion as a harbor of peace and communal harmony has spread outwardly, into
new networks around the globe.
Notes
1
Alex Keefe, “Interpreting Ajmer, Part 1,” Jugaad, entry posted October 11,
2007, http://jugaadoo.blogspot.com/2007/10/interpreting-ajmer-part-1.html
(accessed July 15, 2011).
2
The Malegaon blasts were a series of bombs that took place in a Muslim cem-
etery in the town on Malegaon in Maharashtra, during the time of the Muslim
holiday Shab-e Barat. The Samjhauta Express train connects New Delhi, India,
with Lahore, Pakistan. The Mecca masjid is located in the old city in Hyderabad,
capital of Andhra Pradesh. The film “Jodhaa Akhbar” depicts the relationship
between the Mughal emperor Akbar and his Hindu Rajput wife.
3
This sense of “authenticity” often references Islamic Shari’a as a “normative”
standard for the belief and practice of Muslims. Shari’a itself is a slippery term
that is used in parlance to refer to one or more of the following: fiqh (Islamic
substantive law), Islamic jurisprudence, or a set of moral-ethical injunctions
enshrined in the foundational texts of the tradition, particularly the Qur’an and
the Prophet Muhammad’s sunna. See Geaves and Hermansen in this book on
some Sufi movements in diaspora that stress universal values and do not insist on
Muslim identity. Also see references elsewhere in this volume to Sufi shaikhs who
accept non-Muslim disciples, for example, in Alam’s first chapter.
4
By social activism I mean activities (particularly those outside of the usual quotid-
ian fare) designed to bring about sustained social change.
5
See Rob Rozehnal, Islamic Sufism Unbound: Politics and Piety in Twenty-First Century
Pakistan (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007); Marica Her-
mansen, “A Twentieth Century Sufi Views Hinduism: the Case of Khwaja Hasan
Nizami (1879–1955).” Journal of Comparative Islamic Studies 4, 1–2: 157–79 (2008);
Itzchak Weisman, The Naqshbandiyya: Orthodoxy and Activism in a Worldwide Sufi
Tradition (Oxon and New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis, 2007); Peter Man-
uel, “North Indian Sufi Popular Music in the Age of Hindu and Muslim Funda-
mentalism,” Ethnomusicology 52, 3: 378–400 (2008).
6
Carl W Ernst and Bruce B. Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chīshtī Order in
South Asia and Beyond (New (York and Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002),
139–40.
7
Kelly Pemberton, “Ritual, Reform, and Economies of Meaning at a South Asia
Sufi Shrine.” In Shared Idioms, Sacred Symbols, and the Articulation of Identities in
South Asia, 166–87, edited by Kelly Pemberton and Michael Nijhawan (New York
and Abdingdon: Routledge Books, 2009).
8
Qamar ul Huda, “Khwâja Mu’in ud-Din Chīshtī‘s Death Festival: Competing
Authorities over Sacred Space.” Journal of Ritual Studies 17, 1: 67–78 (2003).
9
Rozehnal 2007, 228.
10
See Itzhak Weismann, “Sufi Fundamentalism between India and the Middle
East.” In Sufism and the Modern in Islam, 115–28 edited by Martin Van Bruinessen
and Julia Day Howell, 115–28 (New York, I.B. Tauris, 2007).
11
The Gudri Shah Chīshtīs came to the region in the 1800s and have an “Uwaysi nis-
bat,” or spiritual link made in the physical absence of the saint, with Mu’in ud-Dīn
Chīshtī. The Syedzadgan khadims have descended from a cousin and disciple of
Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī, Khwaja Syed Fakhr ud-Dīn Gurdezi, through his three sons:
Khwaja Syed Masood, Khwaja Syed Mehboob Bahlol, and Khwaja Syed Ibrahim.
12
John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Move-
ments: A Partial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology 82, 6: 1212–41 (1977),
1217–18.
13
In India, in particular, Sufism and Sufis have acquired enormous symbolic and
cultural capital over the past few decades as crusaders against intercommunal
violence, Islamic and Hindu extremism, and social injustice. While the “romanti-
cization” of Sufism by (particularly Western) scholars has been amply (and justifi-
ably) criticized, little has been written about how Sufis are perceived by ordinary
people in the Subcontinent, and about how they perceive themselves as spiritual,
cultural, and moral ambassadors of social justice.
14
Asef Bayet, “Islamism and Social Movement Theory,” Third World Quarterly 26, 6:
891–908 (2005), 902.
15
Cihan Tuğal, “Transforming Everyday Life: Islamism and Social Movement The-
ory” Theory and Society 38, 5: 423–58 (2009), 425. The theoretical turn toward
culture and society, and a preference for constructivist approaches, in recent
studies of social movements has been rightly criticized for neglecting the role of
the state in shaping cultural and social meanings. Although I, too, lean toward
a constructivist hermeneutic, I aim to avoid this neglect by foregrounding cer-
tain structural aspects of Chīshtī social activism, particularly the importance of
spiritual hierarchies within the orders, the importance of certain foundation-
al-canonical elements of faith in Mu’in ud-Dīn Chīshtī’s message and mission,
and the presence of political and social movement actors in the narratives of
shared faith, anticommunalism, and activism articulated by the Chīshtī Sufis in
my study.
16
Casas-Cortés, Maria Isabel, Michal Osterweil, and Dana E. Powell, “Blurring
Boundaries: Recognizing Knowledge-Practices in the Study of Social Movements”
Anthropological Quarterly 81, 1: 17–58 (2008), 28.
17
Richard Foley, “The Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya, Islamic Sainthood, and Religion
in Modern Times,” Journal of World History 19, 4: 521–45 (2008), 532–3.
18
Bayet 2005, 893–4.
19
Quintan Wiktorowicz, Islamic Activism: a Social Movement Theory Approach
(Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 2004). Here, my implication is
undeniably materialist in nature. I address this potential imbalance by calling
attention to the interrelation between material concerns (and conditions) and
“platforms” for action as they are articulated within the two groups under survey.
Although this brings me uncomfortably close to the type of older, outdated mod-
els for “collective action” that dominated the field of social movement theory in
the 1970s and 1980s, I believe that the importance of the centralization of power
and authority in the Gudri Shah order and the hierarchicalization of the same
in the khadim community can be instructive for looking at platforms of action
and how these translate into guidance for disciples (murīds), clients, and loosely
affiliated associates of these two groups.
20
Wiktorowicz 2004, 4. In particular, there is a marked emphasis in the report on
bringing the status of Indian Muslims into greater conformity with UN-derived
human development indicators. See, for example, p. 2 in Prime Minister’s High
Level Committee, Cabinet Secretariat, “Social, Economic, and Educational Status
of the Muslims of India: a Report.” Delhi: Government of India, 2006. There is
a version available online at http://zakatindia.org/Files/Sachar%20Report%20
(Full).pdf accessed August 7, 2011.
21
As the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi asked in her 1987 text, The Veil and
the Male Elite, “Why is there this desire to turn our attention to the dead past when
the only battle that is important to us at the moment is that of the future?” See
Fatima Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: a Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights
in Islam (Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1991), 17.
22
See Wiktorowicz 2004; Mellissa Y Lerner, “Connecting the Actual with the Virtual:
The Internet and Social Movement Theory in the Muslim World – The Cases of
Iran and Egypt,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 30, 4: 555–74 (2010); Laura
Huey, “A Social Movement for Privacy/Against Surveillance? Some Difficulties
in Engendering Mass Resistance in a Land of Twitter and Tweets,” Case Western
Reserve Journal of International Law 42: 699–709 (2010); and Tuğal, 2009.
23
See Foley, 2008; Qamar ul-Huda, Qamar ul “Memory, Performance, and Poetic
Peacemaking in Qawwali.” Muslim World 97: 678–700 (2007): 678–700; Muham-
mad Hisham Kabbani, Classical Islam and the Naqshbandi Sufi Tradition (Fenton,
MI: Islamic Supreme Council of America, 2004); Amir Hussain, “Interfaith Move-
ments,” in Encyclopedia of Muslim-American History, vol. 1: 264–6. Curtis IV, Edward
E. (ed). New York: Infobase Publishing, 2010; Jamal Malik and John Hinnells,
Sufism in the West. Abingdon, UK; New York: Routledge, 2006.
24
http://www.dargahajmer.com/g_arrival.htm, accessed August 7, 2011.
25
Ibid.
26
http://kgn786.com/HTML/missonofkhwaja.htm, accessed August 7, 2011.
27
http://www.sufiajmer.org/tasaurdu.html, accessed August 7, 2011.
28
Abdul Haq Muhaddis Dihlawi, Akhbar ul-Akhya, Urdu translation from the original
Persian by Maulana Iqbal al-din Ahmad (Karachi: Dar ul-Isha’at, 1963), 50–1.
29
Hamid bin Fazl ullah Jamali, Siyar al-arifin. Urdu translation from the original
Persian by Muhammad Ayoub Qadiri (Lahore: Markazi Urdu Board, 1976), 14. A
league is roughly 3.75 miles.
30
See Winand M Callewaert, and Rupert Snell (eds) According to Tradition: Hagio-
graphical Writing in India (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1994); Marcia Her-
mansen and Bruce B. Lawrence, “Indo-Persian Tazkiras as Memorative Occasions”
in Beyond Turk and Hindu: Rethinking Religious Identities in Islamicate South Asia,
149–75, David Gilmartin and Bruce B. Lawrence (eds) (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2000), 152; and Ernst and Lawrence 2002, 80.
31
Jamali 1976, 16.
32
Here I refer to oral traditions preserved within the families of the khadims, which
are passed down among them and shared with their “clients.” These sometime
contradict the narratives found in hagiographic accounts of the saint, but more
often they “fill in” details of the saint’s life and work that have not been recorded
in writing (at least not to historians’ current knowledge).
33
That there historically existed a range of cultural mediators in the Subcontinent
who professed Islam (including ‘ulama) is now well known among scholars of
Islam in South Asia. The Bengal context provides some of the richest examples
of the diversity of this cohort. For further information, see studies by Rafiuddin
Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims 1871–1906, A Quest for Identity (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1996); Asim Roy, The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal (Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983); and Richard M. Eaton, the Rise of Islam and
the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1993).
34
For an explanation of how the concept of a “source” works in one local context,
see Kelly Pemberton, Women Mystics and Sufi Shrines in India (Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 2010), 145.
35
Eaton, 276.
36
Carl W Ernst, “Situating Sufism and Yoga.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3,
no. 15, iss.1: 15–43 (2005), 26.
37
The Amrit Kund is believed to have been translated by the thirteenth-century
chief Qazi of Lakhnauti (and Sufi adept), Rukn al-Dīn Samarqandi (d. 1218)
(Nabi Hadi, Dictionary of Indo-Persian Literature (Delhi: Indira Gandhi National
Center for the Arts and Abhinav Publications 1995), 519–20) or by a Brahmin
convert to Islam (Eaton, Rise, 78–9).
38
Communalist rhetoric often depicts Indian Muslims as Pakistan sympathizers or,
worse, agents of Paksitan’s spy agency, ISI. For a discussion of this rhetoric and its
widespread influence in India, see Huma Dar, “Can a Muslim Be an Indian and
Not a Traitor or Terrorist?” in Shared Idioms, Sacred Symbols, and the Articulation of
Identities in South Asia, edited by Kelly Pemberton and Michael Nijhawan, 96–114
(New York and Abdingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge Books, 2009).
39
Khitiz Gaur, “Muslims help rebuild centuries-old Shiva temple in Ajmer.” The
Times of India, Jaipur. Online edition October 2, 2010. http://articles.timesofin-
dia.indiatimes.com/2010-10-02/jaipur/28244275_1_shiva-temple-temple-prem-
ises-main-shrine#ixzz11D1YkDB8 accessed August 7, 2011.
40
http://sufi-mystic.net/text3.htm, Sufi Saint School, Ajmeer, accessed August 7,
2011.
41
Stations are the stages of spiritual progress on the path toward God that the mys-
tic seeker strives to ascend. There are several different schema that describe these
stations; among the most authoritative are those found in al-Qushayri’s (d. 1072)
Risala fi ilm al-tasawwuf.
42
Arthur Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the
Mediating Sufi Shaykh. (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1998),
195–6.
43
A khalīfa is the representative or deputy of a shaikh, who is appointed by the latter
to pass on his spiritual teachings to others. In many cases khalīfas are able to make
their own disciples. In this way, the orders have branched out further than in the
past, often without fracturing as a result of disputes over succession.
44
One indication of the growing popularity of the Mu’in ud-Dīn dargāh is the increase
in pilgrim traffic each year for the death anniversary (‘urs) of the saint. In 2005,
the number of pilgrims was reported to be between 250,000 and 300,000. See
Marina Montanaro, “Succor to Distressed Hearts,” Sufi News and Sufism World
Report, entry posted June 30, 2009, http://sufinews.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_
archive.html (accessed August 1, 2011). In 2011, reports stated that almost one
million people attended the ‘urs. Staff, “Urs of Khawaja Moinuddin Chīshtī con-
cludes,” Daily the Pak Banker, June 10, 2011.
Conclusion: South Asian Sufis, Devotion,
Deviation, and Destiny
Charles M. Ramsey
I vividly remember the book’s inception. The journey began when I happened
upon a copy of John Subhan’s Sufism: Its Saints and Shrines, an older manu-
script—published in 1938—the yellowed-page and tattered-cover sort of trea-
sure a scholar dreams of stumblimg across. Though it was hardly the Sinaticus,
the descriptive opening lines captured my imagination.1 Subhan drew me into
the energy, mystery, and passion of a dhikr in Lahore. “Tonight is Thursday
night. … Come let us visit some shrines and see for ourselves what strange reli-
gious rites are practised almost at our very doors.” It was a window into the
world of South Asian Sufism in pre-partition India. As I turned the pages I
could feel the pulsating and ecstatic drums from the Madhu Lal Hussain dargāh
and was awakened to the continuity of these ancient rituals so vibrant in South
Asia. It was fascinating also to read in the introduction—by the Raja Maharaj
Singh of Lucknow no less—the manner in which Sufism brought people
together into dialogue. As the Maharaja explained, there is something from the
“happy blendings” that yield a valued commodity: “It is that one finds practi-
cally nothing of that communal hatred, known as fanaticism, in mystics whether
Hindu, Christian, or Muslim.”2
But is this still true today? While many of Subhan’s descriptions remain
extant, the practice and structure of Sufism in its many forms, like the very com-
munities where it is lived, is far from static. Like a fine Persian carpet that
changes hues when seen from different angles, Sufism defies simple definition.
As Ronald Geaves noted, the very label “Sufism” has a contested significance
ranging from “Traditional Islam” to “New Age” spiritualism. And after a mille-
nia of interaction with cultures, personalities, and schools of thought it is a
challenge to separate the varied and mutual influence of Neo-Platonist, Eastern
Christianity, and Vedanta. It is from this intricate history that we set out to
encounter contemporary Sufism in South Asia: the way it is practiced (devo-
tion), the way it is changing (deviation), and its future, as well as its impact on
our futures (destiny).
286 Conclusion: South Asian Sufis, Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny
Devotion
The love and devotion for Allah, the Prophet, and the pīrs endures among
South Asian Muslims. The research emphasized that traditional tarīqas such as
the Chīshtīyya, Qādiriyya, Suhrawardiyya, and Naqshbandiyya continue to be
vibrantly active and in no peril of disappearing, despite the concerted efforts of
their opponents. Furthermore, the current devotion was found to be surpris-
ingly consistent with the founders’ teaching, and the link to the traditional
orders remains strong.
The devotion to the ziārat/dargāh and the associated pīr lineage as the locus
of the divine continues to be a central theme. At the shrine the devotee encoun-
ters a living pīr or his successors, the sajjada nishin. They experience his spiritual
power through touch or by his blowing verses and blessings upon them. They
may also have contact with the spirit of the pīr, living or dead. This is experi-
enced through meditation, or visualization of his countenance (tassāwur-e-
shaikh), by measured breathing exercises, or dhikr—for some out loud and for
others in silence—and in the ecstacy of music and dance. Hafeez-ur-Rehman
described how light or power comes through the hand of the pīr during the
oath of allegiance (bai'at) and that strengthens the devotee to overcome the
nafs (ego or base desires) and move from the perceived forms (majaz) to the
sublime reality(haqiqat). This training relationship, a process where one matures
through stages of spiritual adeptness, continues in the thousands of dargāhs that
dot the subcontinent. As Valdinoci observed, the pīr need not physically pres-
ent as the devotee can draw from his/her creative imagination (tasāwwur-i
shaikh) to strengthen the pīr–murīd bond and receive aid for the journey of
faith.
Devotion at the shrines continues to be a place of intercommunal interac-
tion. Perhaps it is a human commonality, but certainly deep in the Indian
psyche is a marked and pervading reliance on intercession (safārish). In a
society deeply divided by class, with the lingering remnants of the caste sys-
tem, the sacred space of the shrine has a leveling effect where for a brief hia-
tus social and theological distinctions are exchanged for a common humanity
in need of assistance from one who cares and is able to help. For a brief time
Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, rich and poor, are united in their devotion
to the Almighty embodied in the life, lineage, and even tomb of the pīr.
Although some pīrs such as the Chishtis at Golra Sharif require one to recite
the kalma before embarking on a more formal allegiance (bai'at), others such
as in Jhok or Ajmer do not. These believe the baraka is for everyone and that
the shrine, and Sufism itself, is beyond religion. As Permberton describes,
some proactively draw from the narratives on the life and socio-spiritual work
of great pīrs such as Mu‘īn ud-Dīn Chīshtī in efforts to normalize relations
between Hindus and Muslims and to destabilize extremist or “communal” ele-
ments. In this manner Sufi idioms, literature, and music are used to foster
c ross-border or cross-cultural communication as a means to finding solutions

to present tensions and dilemmas.
Uzma Rehman deftly described the psychological and cathartic healing and
peace (sakūn) experienced by devotees at the ziarat. Although many shrines do
not allow women into the tomb area of the saint, the ziarat continues to be a
place of sanctity and devotion for women. One is much more likely to see
women at a shrine than in a mosque. As Werbner observed, the paramount
occasion for such experience occurs a the ‘urs, a festive time of commemora-
tion and remembrance of the wali’s spiritual marriage. Similar to a family wed-
ding, they dye their hands with henna and adorn their best embroidered suits.
Binding and reinforing their devotion and domestic roles, the women work
together clearing and cleaning after the meals (langar) and caring for the
guests. They stay up late into the night passionately singing heart-stirring milad
and na’t to the Prophet and qasidas for the pīr. Those familiar with the strength
and beauty of South Asian women, and the unrestrained delight of a typical
wedding would understand that without the ladies it would hardly be much of
a celebration. The verandas and separate zanana quarters provide a means for
the women to be away from the home and participate in the sanctioned com-
munity experience.
Just as Islam offers guidance for all areas of life, din and dunya, Hafeez-ur-
Rehman explained how devotion to a pīr continues among many traditional
families as an expectation, or legitimizing necessity, and as a means of social or
spiritual capital among the pīr-bhai (brotherhood). The pīr–murīd relationship
is the bedrock of spiritual authority, which extends from the religious into all
spheres of life. On the one hand, the shrine helps to merge “different segments
of local society” while on the other hand it also reinforces social exclusion. In
this manner belonging to the silsila creates a bond between the adherents and
creates the added benefits of spiritual and social capital. Michel Boivin observed
how the communitas from the shrine economy can validate and continue politi-
cal power. One need not look far to see examples of this in business and poli-
tics. Yousaf Raza Gilani, the current Prime Minister of Pakistan, shrewdly
mobilized support from the Qadriyya mutawalli families of Multan and even
Sindh through the marriage of his son into the family of the kingmaker, Pīr
Pagara Shah Mardan Shah II. The shrine network continues to operate as an
ecomomic nervous system throughout South Asia. Thus, devotion clearly offers
benefits not only in the thereafter, but also in the here and now.
Deviation
Despite the continuity of Sufi devotion, there are clearly changes, or deviations,
as well. As a caveat, let me note that it is a challenge to classify or interpret accu-
rately these deviations as we are dealing with a specific slice of time. It is also
important to recall that historically there are rhythms of adjustment along the
spectrum of belief and practice in Islam. As Bennett noted in the introduction,
there are internally corrective efforts to reconcile external aspects with the
inner, more esoteric, Sufi Islam. There have been waves of reformation and
seemingly constant debate—sometimes outright conflict—between the ‘ulama
and pīrs, though it is notable that in South Asia they have often managed ways
to accommodate differences. As Pnina Werbner observed, followers have not
been compelled to choose between saint and ‘ulama, or shrine and mosque; the
two exist in symbiotic relation within the same movement. This has fostered the
continued vitality of Islam as a mystical and intellectual movement on the
subcontinent.
As described in the research, there are shifts occuring in this generation that
are worthy of careful attention. First, as Ronald Geaves and Marcia Hermansen
have described, Subhan’s “strange religious rites” are indeed practiced at our
very doors, be they in Bradford (UK), Berkeley (USA), or Ba (Fiji). With the
waves of immigration and ongoing da’wa efforts, Sufism, traditional and variant,
has become an international phenomenon. The two-way chain of resources and
relationships continue to strengthen and cross-pollinate the ongoing develop-
ment of those in the diaspora as well as in the traditional venues of the subcon-
tinent. The demand for imams countinues to outpace the supply, and many
madrassas, such as the Dar ul-Ulum Deoband, have added English and com-
puter classes to help prepare students to work abroad. Financial resources, on
the other hand, are often supplied by devotees living in the diaspora. Thus an
ongoing exchange and readjustment continues across continents. Perhaps the
minority experience of Muslims in India can illuminate possibilities for the Mus-
lims of Europe and North America. Indian Muslims have explored the means of
developing a community that is at once part of the national identity yet distinct
enough to fulfill their own sense of Islamic fidelity.3
I find it impossible to overemphasize the importance of the context and of
the time period of this research. There have been unprecedented and over-
arching changes in the subcontinent over the past 150 years that have left little
untouched. Muhammad Qasim Zaman argues that the greatest rupture in the
history of Islam was brought about by the impact of Western modernity.4 This is
particularly interesting if one concurs with Bruce Lawrence’s conclusion that
the Islamist movement is a product of modernist thought.5 Thus we are study-
ing Sufism in the wake of phenomenally large changes in the educational and
sociopolitical fabric of South Asia.
Perhaps the most notable change is the rise of influence of the Barelvi and
Deobandi movements. Hermansen terms these as “post-tarīqa” or “quasi-tarīqa”
movements that are very South Asian, while being somewhat removed from the
Sufism of the traditional orders. Although the Deobandi, and even the Tablighi
Jamaat (TJ) have Sufi roots, and many of the founders were associated with a
tarīqa, they are increasingly considered to be opponents to Sufism and even
theological allies to the wahhabis.6 Similarly to the nuanced rhetoric through

which Mawdudi adjusted the Jamaat Islami’s anti-Sufi rhetoric in order to
appease local sensibilities (Barelvi) in Pakistan, many see the Deobandi move-
ment as gradually shifting their message toward opposition of the traditional
tarīqas and their shrine-centered systems of authority as described by Rehman,
Alam, and ur-Rehman.
Conversely, according to Werbner, the existence of Barelvi ‘ulama in South
Asia has meant that the belief in saints and shrines and in Islamic mystical ideas
more generally has continued to flourish. Barelvis promote Sufi practices and
attitudes such as veneration of the saints (auliya), the inclusion of music and
drums, and belief in a devotional relationship with the Prophet. It was noted
that individuals may be initiates of tarīqas as part of their Barelvi commitment
or their Sufism may be more of an affinity, and collective or diffuse. While the
Barelvi tend to be numerically larger, the Deobandi madrassa system is produc-
ing more leaders and they oversee a larger number of mosques.7 Despite the
deep economic and political veins of Sufi-affiliated communities in traditional
South Asian societies, as Alam, Bennett, and Boivin described, this generation
is poised to see the ever-widening influence—perhaps even the tipping point—
of the reformist movements.
The prominence of these post-tarīqa movements sheds light on the contested
destiny of South Asian Sufism. As one Kashmiri practicioner confided in quot-
ing Bushanji, an eleventh-century mystic, “[t]oday tassawuf is a name without a
reality but formerly it was a reality without a name. … That is to say formerly
the practice was known and the pretence unknown but now the pretence is
known and the practice unknown.” Traditionally for most South Asians to be
Muslim meant to be Sufi. His statement helps voice the heated discussion rag-
ing regarding whose practice is more authentically Islamic, or who is guilty of
commiting the sin of innovation (bid'a). Reminisent of the Protestant Refor-
mation in northern Europe some 500 years ago, reformers in South Asia draw
heavily from the newly literate urban middle class who are distrustful of the
devotional superstitions of the shrines. The reformers appeal to the text alone
for authority and claim to be guiding the community back to the messenger’s
original intent. Slower to respond, and often on the defensive, the pro-Sufi
argue that the Prophet himself was the first among their number and that the
way of his companions and their own fathers could not be misguided. A
nuanced observation of the debate reveals a deviation in the very perception of
change. As noted in my chapter on Kashmir, earlier generations of Sufis,
though grounded in tradition, were expansive in thought and creatively sought
common ground among the peoples of South Asia. For Baba Daud Khaki
(Qasida- Lamiyya) the definition of bid'a was not limited to heretical innova-
tion, but included innovation as a positive adaptation of metaphors, idioms,
and practices for one’s spiritual growth and for the diffusion of Islam. Might
there be resources yet to be mined or rediscovered from this trove?
Destiny
This leads us to question the future of Sufism in South Asia. As previously noted,
the research from this book predicts that the traditional tarīqas will continue to
be a vital source of guidance and influence in the Muslim community. But is
there a broader destiny for Sufism on the subcontinent and on the global stage?
As many are asking: Is Sufism a peaceful missionary force that would help Islam
be more pallatable to the West? The research noted that the more universalist
and nontraditional (read non-Islamic) form of Sufism has found ready inroads
in the West. However, it was also noted that as the path, or organizational
expression, drew devotees toward a traditional Islamic affiliation there tends to
be a withdrawl. People drawn to this expression of “New Age” Sufism see this as
extra-religious or not directly associated with being a Muslim. It was also noted
that the “post-tarīqa” expression, more commonly popular among the immi-
grant and diaspora communities, has not found a broader reception than that
of other mosques or da’wa organizations.
Another question raised is whether Sufism is a force that can diffuse fanati-
cism or religiously sanctioned violence. Soon after receiving Subhan’s book I
attended a conference in Islamabad that gathered over 100 pīrs, sajjāda nishīn,
and Sufi writers to register their protest against the targeted violence of ziarats.8
Between 2008 and 2010 14 shrines were bombed, including some of the most
prominent and best-loved ones in Pakistan such as Baba Rehman in Peshawar,
Bābā Farīd at Pākpattan, and Datta Ganj Baksh in Lahore. The message of the
conference can be summarized by a quote from a leading political activist: “The
Sufi message can defeat terrorism and intolerance. Writers should use their
pens to reacquaint the new generation with our ‘golden traditions’.”9 This is
reflective of Zidane Meriboute’s description of Sufi Islam as “liberal, rational,
enlightened and tolerant” and as the “only way in which Islam will be able to
co-exist in the West.”10
Though other contributors may disagree, I argue that the expectation for
Sufism to counteract the trends of Islamist agendas is sure to be disappointing.
Let me first interject that there are plenty of examples of Sufi warriors involved
in military campaigns and revolts so one should guard against seeing them as
pacifists and the antidote to war. Kashmir, for example, continues to be heavily
influenced by traditional tarīqas yet has experienced twenty years of militancy
and has vehemently resisted political solutions. Furthermore, Meriboute’s
attempt to cast Sufi Islam as better conditioned toward liberal democracy needs
to be considered more carefully. Akbar Ahmed presents a more nuanced under-
standing of the global picture and argues that this role is a better fit for the
integrative (Aligarh) effort that seeks to engage and synthesize modernist val-
ues such as democracy and women’s rights.11 There is little in the literature
from South Asia that makes Sufis seem pro-West or pro-Democracy. The view of
Sufis as better conditioned toward democracy is perhaps more accurately a
description of their perceived compliance with current regimes or disinterest in

the Islamist project of a renewed “caliphate.” Although there has been both
direct and tacit support of political parties, it is not clear whether the lack of
more aggressive involvement is a result of otherworldly concerns, or the sense
that the current options, though far from optimal, are better than the alterna-
tive presented by regimes with more resolute positions, such as has been the
fate in both Iran’s Islamic Democracy and Turkey’s Secular Democracy. Both of
these regimes have been intolerant of organized Sufi organizations.
Nevertheless, there is an element from Sufism that I believe if rediscovered
and strengthened would prove a worthy legacy from the “golden traditions.” I
describe it as the element of wonder. The quest for knowledge, experience, and
learning was part and parcel of the journey of faith for the wandering faqirs.
There was a reverence for the unknown and an amazement at the limitlessness
of the divine that was refreshingly creative. More than in any other facet of
Islam the Sufis have a bias toward inclusivism, a higher threshhold for divergent
points of view, and an expectancy for learning. As ‘Alī bin ‘Uthman al-Jullabi
(990–1077 CE), more affectionately known as Data Baksh Sahib, confided from
Lahore in the oldest Persian treatise on Sufism, “[t]he disagreement of divines
is a mercy.” This attitude continues among practicioners today. Sufis are gener-
ally more able to listen—without the burdern to agree or submit—and consider
with openness new ideas and possibilities. This orientation stands in stark con-
trast to the logic Irshad Manji warns against: “Unity equals uniformity. Debate
equals division. Division equals heresy.”12
Conclusion
These remarks have sought to assess from the chapters in the book conclusions
regarding Sufism in South Asia. These have been considered from the broad
categories of devotion, deviance, and destiny. As to destiny, it was noted that
Sufism has not necessarily proven to be more successful than other Islamic
expressions as an avenue for the spread of Islam in the West. Nor does the book
surmise that Sufism will be the bulwark against Islamist expansion in South
Asia, or the means by which democracies in the region can be strengthened.
Never static, there were changes observed. Some of these are in practice, such
as decreased frequency of devotional music, or the use of the creative imagina-
tion and media to envision the pīr who is geographically distant. Another prom-
inent change is the importance of the Barelvi‘ulama as a communal expression
of Sufism instead of, or in addition to, personal connection or commitment to
a shrine or guide. Finally, in both individual and communcal practice, Sufism
continues to be a vibrant part of South Asian Islam. The devotion continues to
reflect many of the traditional and ancient practices and to expound the forma-
tive principles and philosophical formulations of the founders. Like the lush
meadows along the Indus and Ganga, South Asia is an unparalleled place of
spiritual fecundity. The fertile soil of faith, worked consistently for over a mil-
lennia, has yielded rich diversity of expression, textured with practical faith and
deep spiritual insight.
Notes
AQ1:The
year is miss- 1
Simon Broughton, “Sufi Soul, the Mystic Music of Islam,” (UK: Riverboat/ World
ing in the
Bibliogra- Music Network, 2008). This film offers a tremendous visual tour of Sufi musical
phy. devotion around the world.. AQ1:Subhan
2
John A. Subhan, Sufism: Its Saints and Shrines, second ed. (Lucknow: Lucknow 1960 is miss-
ing in the
Publishing House, 1960), iii. On a personal note, it was wonderful to see the Bibliogra-
author’s acknowledgment of his “revered friend and counselor” L. Bevan Jones, phy.
Principal of the Henry Martin Institute School of Islamics, Lahore. The guidance
and deep insight from Jones’ writing continues to inspire many explorers such
as myself and my mentor Clinton Bennett who jointly saw the potential for this
book.
3
Amartya Sen, The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture, and
Identity (London: Penguin, 2005), 311–13.
4
Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The Ulama in Contemporary Islam: Custodians of Change
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002; Karachi; Oxford University
Press, 2004).
5
Ibid., 8.
6
William Dalrymple, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (London:
Bloomsbury, 2009), 133–40.
7
Owen Bennett Jones, Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale Nota
Bene, 2003), 9–11.
8
International Sufism Conference, October 13, 2010, organized by the Inter-faith
Peace and Harmony Committee, Ministry of the Interior (GOP), Islamabad,
Pakistan.
9
Faryal Talpur, PPP Women Wing’s President, Pakistan, quoted in The ExpressTri-
bune, February 5, 2011.
10
Meriboute, Zidane Islam’s Fateful Path. (London: I. B Taurus, 2009), 13.
11
Akbar Ahmed, Journey Into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution), 2008.
12
Irshad Manji, Allah, Liberty, and Love (New Delhi: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 46.
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Index
Abu Bakr, 1st caliph 8, 17, 45, 57n. 4, bai’at (oath) 44–7, 51, 53–6, 57n. 4,
146, 148, 153 59n. 33, 87, 103, 117, 185, 286
adab (etiqutte) 54, 57–8, 58n. 18, 101, Bangladesh 1–2, 4, 8–10, 17, 21–2,
120, 199, 259 27n. 52, 28n. 68, 63–4, 77n. 8,
Afghanistan 20, 250, 255 80n. 61, 123–40, 163–80, 189,
Aga Khan 25n. 3, 27n. 45 197, 211–32, 255, 269
Ahl-i Hadīth 170, 179n. 41, 185, 194, Bangladesh National Party
203, 206, 209n. 37, 210nn. 46, (BNP) 9–10, 167–9, 172–3,
66–7 175–6, 179n. 53, 214, 221–3,
Ahmed, Akbar 290, 292n. 11 225n. 5
Ajmer (shrine) 12, 223, 237, 251, 255, Bangladesh Tariqah Federation 164,
262, 265–84 166, 168, 173
Akbar, emperor 9, 130, 143, 145, Banu, U.A. B Razia Akter 212, 216–17,
149–52, 281n. 2 223, 226n. 14, 227nn. 26, 31–2
Alam, Muzaffar 154–5, 161nn. 63, 68, baqa (union) 23, 107, 130, 133
72, 162nn. 84, 87, 91 Muhammad Bakhtiyar 18, 214
Alam, Sarwar 5–6, 8–11, 156, Shaikh Baqibillah 142, 146, 148,
177n. 9, 197, 216, 223, 154–5, 160nn. 46, 51, 162nn. 86,
231n. 91, 281, 289 88, 90
Ali ibn Abu Talib 8, 26–7n. 42, 146, baraka (blessing) 6, 61–2, 64–8, 71–4,
219 76, 77n. 2, 78n. 16, 79n. 30,
Ali, Syed Ameer 4, 230nn. 78–9 88–9, 112, 118, 134, 184, 186,
Aligagh Muslim University/Aligharh 286
school 145, 154, 159n. 28, 170, Barelvis 7, 67, 83–93, 111–14, 116–17,
290 119, 183, 185–6, 210n. 46, 247–8,
Allah 24, 28–9n. 80, 33, 37–8, 45, 256–64, 267n. 47, 268nn. 54, 56,
48, 57n. 13, 67, 71, 73, 75, 85, 288–9, 291
87–8, 97, 130–1, 133, 184–5, Basu, Helene 78nn. 1, 14, 23, 64,
199, 205, 219, 235–6, 238–40, 79n. 44, 81n. 66, 89n. 61, 93n. 4,
224nn. 17–18, 250, 275, 286 108n. 22, 177n. 7, 239n. 91
aqida (creed) 72, 186–7 Bayet, Ashaf 3, 282n. 14
Artrashi, pir 167, 172, 223 Bengali, language 171, 200, 215,
Aryan Invasion Theory 15–16, 25n. 4 218–20, 226n. 11
ashrafs 5, 149–53, 160n. 54, 209n. 34, Bennett, Clinton 7, 19, 63–4, 77n. 10,
258 156, 165, 179n. 47, 197, 200,
Australia 251, 265, 266n. 16, 272, 280 209n. 36, 225n. 3, 227n. 25,
Awami League (AL) 10, 167, 175, 214 230n. 85, 288–9, 292n. 2
Azad, Abu l Kalam 142–4, 158n. 11 Berger, Peter 73, 206, 209n. 40
314 Index
Bhagavad-Gita 25, 125, 277 249, 252, 254, 256, 258, 263,
bhakti (Hindu devotional worship) 23, 278, 285–6
215, 237–8, 244n. 14, 245n. 2 djinn (spirits) 53, 68
Bhutto, Benazir 8, 11, 233 du’a/intercession 46, 51–2, 54, 88–9,
bid’a (innovation) 4, 10, 187 103, 120, 136, 184–6, 202, 205,
bin Laden, Osama 8, 114 225n. 7, 286
Birmingham 7, 86, 182, 190, 212–13,
231n. 100, Eaton, Richard 17–18, 22, 24n. 1,
Brahman 23, 25, 219, 242 26nn. 21, 23, 34–5, 40,
Britain, Sufism in 7, 86, 180–96, 28nn. 54, 56–9, 63, 65–9, 71–5,
212–13, 231n. 100 77–8, 29n. 38, 56n. 2, 107n. 1,
Boivin, Michel 6–7, 9, 56, 107n. 5, 139n. 16, 165, 177n. 12, 182,
283n. 33, 284nn. 35, 37 212, 214–19, 225nn. 4, 14–15,
Buehler, Arthur F 2, 7, 9, 11, 18–19, 21, 23, 227n. 27–8, 30,
36–7, 41n. 14, 96, 137n. 3, 33, 42–4, 228n. 49–51, 57,
177n. 2, 179nn. 52, 56, 220, 230n. 84, 231n. 95, 283n. 33,
226n. 21, 231n. 92, 251, 260, 284nn. 35, 37
263, 267nn. 36, 66, 268n. 67, eids (festivals) 105, 115
284n. 42 Esposito, John L 144, 158n. 24
Egypt 9–10, 110, 179n. 56, 291
Canada, Sufism in 8, 12, 247–8, 251, Ernst, Carl 121n. 1, 154, 162n. 79,
254, 262–5 208n. 29, 210n. 46, 266n. 20,
Christianity/Christians 5, 7, 23, 281n. 6, 283n. 30, 284n. 36
58n. 27, 61, 66, 75–6, 125, 128, Ershad, Hussain Mohammed 166–8,
221–2, 229n. 73, 230n. 83, 172, 174, 222–3, 230n. 91
235–6, 249, 253, 278, 285
Chīshtī (order) 21, 30, 45, 47, 67, fanā (passing away) 23, 38, 96, 201
85–6, 151, 243n. 9, 251, 270–3, faqirs (voluntary state of poverty) 96,
275, 280, 286, 289 104–5, 291,
Cornell, Vincent J 107n. 3, 136, Farsi 5, 15–29, 200, 218, 229n. 77
178n. 37 Fatimah (Muhammad’s daughter)
cultural mediators 22, 28n. 64, 212, 24, 219
215, 218–19, 276, 283n. 33 Friedmann, Yohanan 142, 147–8,
151, 157nn. 2–3, 5–6, 158nn. 10,
Dar-al-Harb (house of war) 8, 228n. 24 26, 159n. 32, 160nn. 47, 50, 52,
Delehaye, Hippoltye 3, 124–5, 136–8, 161n. 64, 162n. 76,
139n. 8
Delhi, Sultanate of 18, 214–15, Gaboreíeau, Marc 78n. 12, 259,
224n. 1 267n. 41
Deoband/Deobandis 7–8, 12, 67, Gandhi, Rajmohun 23, 28nn. 62, 79
96n. 1, 111, 113, 115, 166, Geaves, Ron 7, 10, 114, 176, 192nn. 3–4,
170, 172, 185, 194nn. 11, 13, 193nn. 6, 8–9, 194nn. 10, 15,
210n. 46, 213, 220, 225n. 10, 195n. 25 , 260, 267n. 49, 268n. 50,
247–8, 257–63, 288–9 281n. 3, 285, 288
dhikr (remembrance) 8, 35, 54, 87–9, Geertz, Clifford 231n. 100
103, 113, 119, 124, 127, 133, Ghamkol Sharif (shrine) 7, 83–93
136, 184, 186, 201, 203, 223, Al-Ghazali 9, 45, 132, 188
Index 315
Golra Sharif (shrine) 6, 46, 50–4, 207nn. 2–3, 208–9n. 32, 213,

234, 286 215, 220–3, 224n. 1, 225n. 5,
Guru Muhammad Raheem Bawa 228n. 64, 229n. 73, 230n. 81,
Muhaiyaddeen 248, 253–4, 235, 237, 242, 243n. 11,
260, 267n. 31 244n. 22, 247–50, 252, 255,
257–8, 261–2, 264, 266n. 25,
Hajj (annual pilgrimage) 67, 170, 269–84, 285–6, 288
205, 226n. 13 interfaith dialogue/openness 4,
Al-Hallaj, Mansur/Mansoor 96–7, 11–12, 17, 75, 168, 211–32, 236,
130, 207n. 1, 208n. 19 254, 270–1, 273, 275–6, 279
Heck, Paul 163, 177n. 5 Iqbal, Muhammad 4, 9, 44,
Heerrernan, Thomas J 125, 135–6, 57nn. 5, 16, 142–4, 157nn. 4, 9,
Hermansen, Marcia 2, 5–8, 11–12, 150nn. 12, 17–18, 232n. 101
114, 181, 190, 192nn. 2, 4, Iran 2, 5, 13n. 5, 15–29, 115, 128, 183,
265nn. 1, 8, 268n. 68, 281nn. 3, 212, 218, 237, 283n. 27, 291
5, 283n. 30, 288 islah (reform) 4, 225–6
Hinduism 9, 15, 17, 21, 23, Islam, Nazrul 221
108n. 13, 144, 165, 206, 212, Ul-Islam, Sayyid Muhammad
215–18, 220, 225–6, 229n. 73, Amir 124, 128–31, 134
230n. 78, 277 Islamists 1, 7–8, 113, 115, 121, 134,
Hindu-Muslim relations 9, 15, 21–4, 164, 166–7, 173–6, 191, 213,
25n. 3, 61, 63, 68, 76, 98, 106, 221–2, 224–6, 228nn. 58, 63,
151, 171, 197, 201, 211, 214–15, 229n. 9, 261, 288, 290–1
217–23, 225n. 7, 228n. 66,
231n. 92, 235, 237, 249, 253, Jama’at-I-Islami (Jama’at-e-Islami)
264–5, 269–71, 276, 278, 113, 166–8, 172–3, 175, 194n. 13,
281n. 2, 282n. 13, 285 213–14, 222–3, 225n. 5, 289
Hindutva 269, 273 Jerusalem 17, 19, 26n. 36
Hyderabad, India 5–7, 11, 27n. 49, Jesus Christ 66, 236, 242, 274
31–42, 95, 107, 108n. 14 Jhok Shairif shrine 7, 67, 95–110,
Hyderabad, Sindh 95, 98, 107 162n. 92, 286
jihad (striving) 45, 57n. 4, 114,
Ibn Arabi 6, 12, 125, 129, 144, 153, 228n. 64
158nn. 22–3, 162n. 78, 164, Jilani, Abdul Qadir 41n. 17, 45, 47,
236–7 103, 129–30, 160n. 46, 262
Ibn Battuta 22, 28n. 71 Jinnah, Muhammad Ali 11, 25n. 31,
ijtihad (mental striving) 50, 114, 286 42, 233
Ilyas, Muhammad 194n. 11, 213, Jizya (tax) 145, 149, 151, 227n. 44
258–9
Inayat Khan 247–53, 262–4 Kali (Hindu goddess) 24, 29n. 86,
India 1–2, 4–5, 9, 11–12, 15–42, 78n. 15, 219, 221
74, 78n. 12, 79n. 34, 80n. 67, Kashmir 10, 40, 86, 197–210,
81n. 77, 98, 105, 108nn. 14, 24, 229n. 69, 289–90
111, 120, 137, 141–5, 148–52, Keys, Charles F 64, 68, 71, 73, 78n. 13
155, 156n. 1, 157n. 3, 159n. 28, Khan, Ahmed Reza Khan 111–12,
160nn. 53, 57, 165, 167, 170–1, 185, 248, 259
178n. 18, 183, 185–6, 193, Khan, Dominique-Sila 61, 72, 76,
194nn. 10–11, 198, 203, 206n. 1, 77n. 3
316 Index
Khan, Sir Sayyid Ahmed 220, 223, Naipaul, Vidiadhar

228n. 62–4, 230n. 85 Surajprasad 26n. 37
Khomeini, Ayotollah Ruhullah 128, 166 Naqshbandi/Naqshbandiyya 5, 7–9,
12, 36, 42n. 24, 67, 85–6, 96, 112,
Lawrence, Bruce 208n. 19, 266n. 29, 115, 147–62, 179n. 56, 182–5,
281n. 6, 283n. 30, 288 192n. 1, 193nn. 4, 6, 8, 223,
Lewis, Samuel Leonard 250–1, 264, 231n. 92, 248, 252, 256–8, 260,
265nn. 10, 12 262, 268n. 55, 286
Lindholm, Charles 79n. 44, 163, 175, New Zealand 251, 256, 265, 267n. 36
177n. 7 nur (light) 27n. 43, 219
lingam 10, 201
Olsen, Alexandra H 125, 139n. 10
Manasa (snake deity) 21, 217 Organization of Islamic
Martin, Richard C 160n. 53, 161n. 63, Cooperation 171, 174
208n. 39, 210n. 46
Mawdudi, Abul A’la 113, 187, 225n. 5, Pakistan 1–2, 4, 7–9, 11–12, 15, 18,
289 24–5, 43–60, 74, 76, 77n. 8, 83–5,
Mecca 19, 156, 170, 172, 199, 237–9, 88, 95–109, 111–22, 142–4, 157,
269, 281n. 2 165, 171–2, 182–3, 185, 189, 214,
mehndi 89–90 220–4, 225n. 5, 229nn. 69, 74,
Meriboute, Zidane 1, 13n. 1, 290, 230n. 81, 233–5, 247, 255, 257,
292n. 10 260–1, 269, 281n. 2, 284n. 38,
Metcalf, Barbara 58n. 18, 93n. 1, 287, 289–90
194n. 10, 209nn. 34, 36, Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) 8–9,
225n. 10, 229n. 67, 268n. 68 115–17
milad (prophet’s birthday) 87, 113, Permberton, Kelly 11–13, 64, 76n. 19,
256, 260–2, 287 96, 102, 105–6, 145, 200, 203,
Muhammad, prophet 6, 9, 20, 24, 205
27n. 43, 150, 218–20, 223, Phillipon, Alex 5–6, 8–9, 65, 86,
225n. 6, 226n. 21, 231n. 100, 107nn. 5, 12, 156, 176, 190, 262,
232n. 101, 236, 244 287, 289
Muharram (Shi’a memorial) 72, pīr-murīd (master-disciple relation-
80n. 64, 101–2, 106, 203–35, ship) 5, 7–8, 10, 35, 40, 44,
Muinuddin Chīshtī 45, 47, 234, 237–8, 46–52, 54, 56, 57nn. 9–10, 18,
241, 251, 257, 269, 271, 274 58nn. 26, 28, 59n. 33, 62, 77n. 5,
Mughal Empire/emperors 19–21, 104, 107, 117, 124, 155, 172, 186,
130, 141–2, 145–50, 152, 190, 204, 263, 271, 282, 286–7
161n. 69, 208n. 32, 215–18
Mujaddid (renewer) 9, 48, 57n. 10, Ul-Qadri, Tahir 8, 86, 111–22, 267
117, 119, 277, 281n. 2 Fatwa 8, 114, 262
MUQ (Minh ā j-ul Quran) 7–8, 10, Qadiri/Qadiriyya 86, 96, 262, 277
12, 110–22, 190–1, 262 Qur’an 4, 11, 19–20, 23, 41n. 4, 45,
Muslim League 25, 142–3, 166, 52–4, 85, 115, 118, 120, 150, 152,
220–2, 275 169, 199, 281n. 3, 205, 224
Qutb, Sayyid 187
nafs (ego) 23, 47–8, 54, 57n. 17, 120, United States, Sufism in 181, 247–62,
150, 198, 202 288
Index 317
‘urs (anniversary celebration) 7, 34–5, 107nn. 6, 9, 108n. 18, 162n. 92,

41n. 16, 52, 67, 72, 80n. 53n. 64, 177nn. 1, 16, 193n. 9, 208n. 19,
83–93, 105, 185, 202, 223, 244nn. 17–18
235, 249–50, 254, 256, 280, Shah Latif 62, 57n. 9, 62–80, 96, 104–5
284n. 44, 287 Shah Wali Allah 9, 194n. 11, 213, 147
Shariat (Islamic law) 47, 67, 98, 167–8,
Ramsey, Charles M 5, 10–13, 40, 173, 189, 204–5, 248, 254, 270,
226n. 14 281n. 3
Rashtriya Swayam Sevak (RSS) 269 Sheikh Hasina 223, 231n. 94
Rasul, Gholam Mhd. 124, 131–5, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman 127–8, 171
138n. 4 Shi’a 21, 26n. 47, 27nn. 43, 45, 96,
Hafeez-ur-Rehman Chaudhry 6, 11, 102, 105–6, 145, 200, 203, 205
286–7, 289 shirk 36–7, 42n. 19
Rehman, Uzma 5–7, 11, 287, 289 silsilah 8, 62, 198, 231n. 100
Rhinehart, robin 137, 140nn. 23, 26 Sindh 16–17, 24, 27n. 49, 57n. 11,
Riaz, Ali 139n. 17, 175, 178nn. 20, 63, 70, 76, 95–109, 229n. 69,
24, 58, 189nn. 62, 65–6, 235, 287
230n. 83 Sen, Girish Chandra 222, 229n. 73
Rizvi, Athat Abbas 145, 159nn. 28, 30, Sikder, Jamal Ahmad 124–35, 138n. 4
162n. 84 Ahmad Sirhindi 7, 9, 96, 147–62, 176,
Robinson, Francis 204, 209n. 32 231n. 92
Roy, Asim 212, 215–16, 218–21, Subhan, John 210n. 47, 285, 288, 290,
226nn. 18, 20, 22, 227nn. 24, 32, 292n. 2,
36–8, 41, 46, 228nn. 48, 52–3, Sulḥ-i-kull (peace with all) 152, 223
58, 65, 283n. 33 Sufi Abdullah 182, 193n. 6
Roy, Oliver 112, 121n. 5 Sufi political parties 8–9, 115–16,
Rozehnal, Robert 13n. 2, 36, 42n. 20, 163–80, 223, 261, 273, 282n. 15,
137, 139n. 22 287, 289–91
Rumi 1, 5, 20, 23, 45–6, 67n. 16, Sufism, meaning of term 10, 183–4
58n. 23, 119–20, 132, 199, Sunnah 4, 6, 54–5
208n. 19, 240, 254 Sunni schools of law 185, 188, 203,
209n. 96, 226n. 16, 258
Sagar, Krishna Chandra 16, Sri Lanka 2, 247, 253–5
25nn. 8, 20
salik/salikun 57n. 13, 124 Tablighi Jama’at (TJ) 8, 12, 170, 173,
sama (Sufi ceremony) 35, 101, 103–5, 185, 203, 209n. 26, 211, 213–14,
107, 113, 120, 259, 264 225n. 10, 247, 257–9, 263,
samadhi 23, 252 268n. 66, 288
Sanskrit 16, 21, 23–4, 207n. 3, 215, Tagore, Rabindranath 221, 229n. 75
218, 252, 277 Taliban 8, 11, 111, 116, 234–5,
Saudi Arabia 2, 118, 166, 186, 258 243n. 4, 258
Sayyid Zia al-Haqq 8, 123–40 Tambiah, Stanley J 135, 139n. 14
Sayyid Pair Warris Shah 6, 57n. 9, taqlid (imitation) 4, 114, 170
62–80 taqwa (god-consciousness) 22, 45
sayyids 62, 86, 97–8, 148 tariqah/turuk (sufi orders) 1–2, 10, 85,
Schimmel, Annemarie 27nn. 50–1, 96, 117, 123–6, 129, 135, 182–91,
65, 77nn. 8, 10, 78n. 20, 97, 202, 247–8, 252–7, 262–4
318 Index
Turkey 9–10, 119, 179n. 56, 291 83–7, 90, 92, 95, 99, 112–13, 117,
Turner, Victor 3, 7, 95, 107nn. 2–3 119–20, 124, 153, 163, 184, 226,
Tweedie, Irene 182, 192–3, 252, 233, 253
266n. 23, 267nn. 22–3 warrior saints (legends of) 22, 214,
226n. 14, 290
Uddin, Sufia 178n. 41, 212, 216, war on terror/terrorism 8, 111, 114,
219–20, 223–4, 226nn. 11, 17, 116, 167, 173, 176, 221, 233, 262,
227nn. 25–6, 34, 39–41, 44, 269, 284n. 38, 290
228n. 47nn. 54–6, 59, 61, 64, Al-Wahhab/Wahhabis 114, 121, 163,
229nn. 72–5, 77, 230nn. 82, 170, 179n. 41, 188, 194n. 13,
87–9, 231n. 98 209n. 38, 213, 225n. 6, 226n. 16,
‘ulama (scholars) 83–6, 92, 96–7, 114, 267n. 48, 289
119, 123, 128, 134, 166, 169–72, Webb, Gisella 254–4, 267nn. 31, 34
174, 182–3, 186–7, 214, 239, Werbner, Pnina 5–7, 36, 42n. 24,
260–1, 283n. 33, 288–9, 291 47, 57n. 17, 64–5, 70, 77,
‘Umar 2nd caliph 17, 146, 148 78nn. 14, 21, 23, 79nn. 44–5,
‘Uthman 3rd caliph 146, 291 49, 80nn. 61, 70, 72, 81n. 76,
93nn. 2, 4, 6, 107n. 1, 121n. 4,
Valdinoci, Mauro 5, 107, 285 122n. 22, 177n. 7, 192, 193n. 6,
Van Skyhawk, Hugh 2, 5, 11, 209n. 38, 194n. 10n. 14, 214m, 223–4,
243n. 5, 244nn. 14, 17 226n. 12, 230n. 91, 231n. 90,
Vaughan-Lee, Llewellyn 252, 231n. 92, 260, 267n. 66, 287–9
266nn. 24–5, 268n. 68
Vedas 16, 25n. 4, 125, 219, 239 yoga 22, 217–18, 277, 284n. 36
Vilāyat Khan 250–1
Vishnu 17, 25–6, 26n. 30, 29n. 86, Zaker (party) 164, 166–7, 223,
137, 218–19, 229n. 71 231n. 91
visualization 5, 31, 36–7, 40, 198, Zia, Khaleda 179n. 53, 223, 231n. 94
249, 286 Zia-al-Haqq (Pakistani dictator) 113,
225n. 5
wahdat-al-haqq (unity of truth) 5, 23 Ziaur Rahman (Bangladesh
wahdat-al-wujut (unity of being) 5, 23, president) 165, 172, 174
125, 144, 237, 239 Zindapir 5, 83–93, 231n. 100
Walī-Allah/saints 4, 6, 10–11, 18–19, ziyārat (visitation) 71, 95–109,
21–2, 37, 42, 52, 67–71, 75, 80, 113, 286

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South Asian Sufis

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© Clinton Bennett, Charles M. Ramsey and Contributors 2012

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

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Introduction: South Asian Sufis, Continuity, Complexity, and Change 1

Chapter 1: Iran’s Role in Stimulating South Asian Islam 15

Chapter 2: A Model of Sufi Training in the Twenty-First Century:

Chapter 3: Understanding the Philosophy of Spirituality

Chapter 4: Spiritual Power and ‘Threshold’ Identities:

Chapter 5: Du’a: Popular Culture and Powerful Blessing at the ‘Urs 83

Chapter 6: The Sufi Center of Jhok Sharif in Sindh (Pakistan):

Chapter 7: When Sufi Tradition Reinvents Islamic Modernity.

Chapter 8: Making the Case for Sainthood in Modern

Chapter 9: Ahmad Sirhindī: Nationalist Hero,

Chapter 10: Encountering the Unholy: The Establishment

Chapter 11: The Transformation and Development

Chapter 12: Rishīwaer: Kashmir, the Garden of the Saints 197

Chapter 13: Bangladeshi Sufism – An Interfaith Bridge 211

Chapter 14: A Garden Amidst the Flames:

Chapter 15: South Asian Sufism in America 247

Chapter 16: Sufis and Social Activism: A Chīshtī

Conclusion: South Asian Sufis, Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny 285

reviews, chapters, editorials, and encyclopedia and dictionary entries. He is

Dr. Kelly Pemberton is assistant professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at

notably analyzed the re-composition and mobilization of (neo) Sufi orders,

Dr. Uzma Rehman is an Associate at Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Univer-

Dr. Hafeez-ur-Rehman is tenured track professor of Cultural Anthropology at

(63 research projects) with various international organizations. His area of

Mauro Valdinoci obtained his MA in Anthropology from the University of

Dr Pnina Werber is professor emita of social anthropology at Keele University,

Clinton Bennett and Charles M. Ramsey

change in response to new contexts and circumstances. The book aims to

Contributors and methodology

Contributors represent a range of disciples. The majority work broadly within

c­ ontributors. Contributors were free, if they wished, to declare their presence

­ ractical contributions.”4 This is yet another example of how reform in South

Valdinoci takes us to Hyderabad, India. There, we learn that a branch of the

­ yderabad, is evidence that Sufism is successfully responding to contemporary

Community bonds and social relations

(­Bennett, Boivin, Geaves, Hermansen, Hafiz Rehman, Uzma Rehman, and

Buehler’s chapter, together with Alam’s second contribution, share a political

Iran’s Role in Stimulating South Asian Islam

Ancient Iran–India contact

between European and Indian languages, giving us the Indo-European family.

Islam’s entry into India

Iranian Islam’s influence and impact on Indian Islam

developing and propagating Islamic civilization. Compilers of the “six ­canonical

­ isciples,” constantly referenced the “universality of tradition” in his Mathnavi,

argue that communitarian rivalry in India was largely stimulated by European

recognized Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, as the legitimate leader.

Hindu vocabulary; Allah as “the unqualified absolute” contained the “potency of

A Model of Sufi Training in the Twenty-First

among other Sufis. By providing an ethnographical description of how this

Decline of the khānqāh-based model of training?

Strengthening the connection with the shaikh from afar:

The shaikh justifies the legitimacy of this exercise by relating it to an outstand-

We have a great method of visualization of the shaikh, which involves a jour-

In this statement the imagination of the shaikh is pictured as a journey of the

Constantly available at the subtle level

3. The tasāwwur-i shaikh is an exercise which has to be developed and refined,

Introduction: South Asian Sufis, Continuity, Complexity, and Change 1

Chapter 1: Iran’s Role in Stimulating South Asian Islam 15

Chapter 2: A Model of Sufi Training in the Twenty-First Century:

Chapter 3: Understanding the Philosophy of Spirituality

Chapter 4: Spiritual Power and ‘Threshold’ Identities:

Chapter 5: Du’a: Popular Culture and Powerful Blessing at the ‘Urs 83

Chapter 6: The Sufi Center of Jhok Sharif in Sindh (Pakistan):

Chapter 7: When Sufi Tradition Reinvents Islamic Modernity.

Chapter 8: Making the Case for Sainthood in Modern

Chapter 9: Ahmad Sirhindī: Nationalist Hero,

Chapter 10: Encountering the Unholy: The Establishment

Chapter 11: The Transformation and Development

Chapter 12: Rishīwaer: Kashmir, the Garden of the Saints 197

Chapter 13: Bangladeshi Sufism – An Interfaith Bridge 211

Chapter 14: A Garden Amidst the Flames:

Chapter 15: South Asian Sufism in America 247

Chapter 16: Sufis and Social Activism: A Chīshtī

Conclusion: South Asian Sufis, Devotion, Deviation, and Destiny 285

c ontributors. Contributors were free, if they wished, to declare their presence

ractical contributions.”4 This is yet another example of how reform in South

yderabad, is evidence that Sufism is successfully responding to contemporary

(Bennett, Boivin, Geaves, Hermansen, Hafiz Rehman, Uzma Rehman, and

developing and propagating Islamic civilization. Compilers of the “six canonical

isciples,” constantly referenced the “universality of tradition” in his Mathnavi,

Inscribed in a context of globalization and tense national debate, the ideology

olitical system later. He foretold the triumph of Ayatullah Ruhullah Khomeini

Maijbhandari (King of Kings Ziaul Haquue Maizbhandari), in English in 1992.11