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To: alt.religion.gnostic,alt.sufi,alt.islam.sufism,alt.magick.tyagi,alt.consciousness.mysticism From: tyagi@arkaotika.abyss.com (tyaginator) Subject: YahyaM: Deobandi Sufis Date: 27 Mar 1999 01:26:35 -0800 [from tariqas@world.std.com: YahyaM@aol.com] The Deobandi sect is perhaps the most influential of all among Muslims of South Asia. Its origins go back to the descendants of Shah Wali Allah of Delhi, who lived over 200 years ago. Shah Wali Allah was a Sufi in the Mujaddidi Naqshbandi lineage of Ahmad Sirhindi and wrote on theology and the Shari`ah, and also translated the Qur'an into Persian. My friend Ahmed Hussain, one of the rising stars of Sufi scholars of the new generation, is very much impressed with Shah Wali Allah's Sufi theology, although I don't know much about it myself. What I read about Shah Wali Allah being influenced by the Wahhabis of Najd left me incredulous, but some cite this as the connection between Wahhabism and Deoband. Sayyid Ahmad Shahid was a disciple of Shah Wali Allah's son who waged jihad against the British and is usually called the Wahhabi of India. The son and grandson of Shah Wali Allah were also Mujaddidi Sufis and their efforts led to the founding of the Deoband school over a hundred years ago. This school has to be seen in the context of the conservative reformist "neo-Sufi" movements of the 19th century (like the Sanusiyah and the Idrisiyah in Africa). They vigorously attacked the practices of Indian Muslims and insisted on a more scriptural normative Islam to replace the popular folk customs. Barbara Daly Metcalf has studied this school and written much about it (Islamic revival in British India : Deoband, 1860-1900). She takes quite a positive view of them. She translated the Bihishti zevar of Ashraf `Ali Thanvi under the title of Perfecting Women. Ashraf `Ali Thanvi was the head of Deoband a hundred years ago and is credited with the movement to educate Indian Muslim women (because the culture had left them uneducated). This seems liberal in the context of that time & place. (Thanks to Sufism; the reason I discuss Muslim women's rights in the context of Sufism is that throughout history the Sufis have allowed the most liberal expressions of Islam and given women their full equal status.) A major outgrowth of the Deobandi school was the Tablighi Jama`at movement that arose in the 1920s. A grass-roots, traveling, pietist, anti- intellectual movement with an extremely simplified and repetitive approach to Islam, the TJs are well-known to Muslims around the world. If anyone asks them about Sufism, they de-emphasize it and try to deflect everyone's energies into supporting their agenda. TJ is a good example of how "Sufism" can completely lose its esoteric dimension when excessive stress is put on the outward legalistic Islam (a tendency of the Mujaddidi). Barbara Daly Metcalf has a very positive view of the TJs and wrote that they encourage the spiritual equality of men & women and destroy the old hierarchical social strata of Indian Muslims, and even feminize men when they are in the mosque by getting them to perform tasks that were thought to be only for women. Again, this sounds pretty liberal in the Indian context. Given all this, the thing that puzzles me the most about Deobandism is that the effect I see them having here & now is very much against women's rights. Their tendency has been to enforce the most restrictive measures against women. No women can enter their mosques. They enforce absolute "purdah": women have to veil their faces, it's "haram" for men & women to exist in the same space at the same time (which is not from the Qur'an or the Prophet's sunnah at all). They are so extreme about this sexual apartheid that you get the impression if they could segregate all men on one planet and all women on another, they would. The most ironic twist of all is that the woman-beating Taliban of Afghanistan, the most systemically evil tyrants against women in the world, were indoctrinated in Deobandi schools. Imagine that what was originally a Sufi, somewhat liberal, movement should have come to this! EOF
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