A core argument of this book is that we cannot fully understand Deoband without understanding the modalities through which it became global. As this network has become increasingly complex, it has raised questions as to what exactly constitutes “Deoband” as a tradition. What happens when the Deobandi contestation of Sufism travels into new social and political contexts beyond South Asia? To what extent is it mobile? Is mobility tantamount to portability? In other words, what forms of contestation does it meet? What accommodations does it make? If the first part of this book establishes how Deobandis articulated their reformist agenda in colonial India, the latter part explores how this agenda played out in South Africa, home to the largest and most prominent Deobandi seminaries outside of South Asia as well as to wide support for the very Sufi practices that Deobandis have most fiercely contested.2 South Africa is by no means the only country outside of South Asia where Deobandis have settled, but it has by far the most significant Deobandi presence.3
Besides being the most important site of Deobandi thought outside of the Indian subcontinent, what makes South Africa crucial to understanding the Deoband movement is that Deobandi texts, scholars, and ideas became the object of extended public debate there by non-Indian Muslims who brought vastly different perspectives to them—a debate informed by the richness and depth of the Muslim presence in South Africa, where Muslims have had a continuous history for nearly three and a half centuries. It is partly through this South Asia–South Africa connection that this book also attempts to grasp how “Deoband” coheres, or occasionally fails to cohere, as a tradition.
This book proceeds, then, under the premise that traditions do not fall like manna from the sky, fully intact, fully theorized; rather, they are created, debated, maintained, challenged, resuscitated—often retroactively. On one level, “tradition” for the Deobandis is simply the Sunna, the model for human behavior exemplified by the Prophet Muhammad and transmitted through his words and deeds. On another, “tradition” is an imagined, affective bond between scholars and students, Sufi masters and disciples—one traversing borders and boundaries, linking books and bodies. Through these very human forms of mediation, Deobandis believe, the Sunna is continuously revived and renewed. But these forms also foster and maintain a sense of what makes Deoband itself stand out as a movement—a tradition within Tradition, perhaps. The founders of Deoband certainly understood themselves to be doing something extraordinary, but it is only in retrospect that the full extent of what they did became clear to their successors and followers. Often these later generations reimagined their collective origins through the politics of the present. This book will regard Deoband as an Islamic tradition in its own right, one positioned at the nexus of centripetal and centrifugal forces: on the one hand, shared identities that bind this movement as a movement; and on the other, the inevitable fissures that emerge in a movement of such global reach.
What I explore here is not just a contestation centered on Sufism, though Sufism will be the lens through which many of these debates transpire; it is also a clash of divergent political and ethical imaginaries and the forms of authority that undergird them. One of the contentions of this book will be that religious authority cannot be defined or conceptualized apart from the spaces in, through, and upon which it is projected. In his reflections on the relationship between space and forms of rhetoric, Carl Schmitt distinguished between the “dialectics of the public square, the agora,” and the “dialectics of the lyceum and academy.”4 This distinction bears on the entire Deobandi project of public reform and the difference between how Deobandis addressed the public on the one hand, and how they addressed fellow classically trained scholars of Islam, known as the ‘ulama, on the other. For within the broader ambivalence of this book—Sufis critiquing Sufism—there is another, more subtle ambivalence regarding how to help the public understand the spiritual dangers of certain beliefs or practices without undermining the authority of the ‘ulama in the process. This very project entailed conveying complex legal hermeneutics in a language that the public could understand, while disabusing them of the notion that they could comprehend these issues without the ‘ulama’s help. But once Deobandis opened up the possibility of empowering the public to reform themselves, managing the tension between just enough knowledge but not too much became impractical. Many readers will be intuitively familiar with the rest of the story, for in some (admittedly limited) ways, this particular story within modern Islam has parallels in the history of Protestant Christianity. To a great extent, the story of modern Islam is one in which “everyday” Muslims now debate legal, ethical, political, and theological issues that had historically been the (never exclusive) purview of ‘ulama, rulers, courtesans, and litterateurs. It is also one in which these “everyday” debates transpire in books, pamphlets, and tracts written by lay Muslims, and, more recently, in chat rooms and on online message boards and social media.
Why does any of this matter? Given Deoband’s impact on global Islam, its purview encompasses tens, if not hundreds, of millions of Muslims. The debates Deobandis have initiated are a matter of utmost importance for some Muslims—a matter of choosing between salvation and damnation—and one of utter triviality for other Muslims—a fruitless theological cavil at best, and at worst, a stifling distraction from more pressing matters. At the heart of the debate is defining what Sufism is, how it is practiced, who gets to define it, and under what authority. A contestation over Sufism is a contestation over Islam itself, by virtue of Sufism’s paramount importance in the lives of countless Muslims. It is also a debate within Deoband about Sufism, as well as a debate among other Muslims about Deoband—its ideologies, its origins, the authority of its scholars, and the legitimacy of its claims to represent Sunni Islam.
This book is the first extended study of Deoband outside of South Asia, of Deoband’s complicated and often vexed relationship to Sufism, and of Deobandi scholars’ attempts to remake Muslim public life. It engages a veritable efflorescence of work on the Deobandis and the South Asian ‘ulama in recent years. Above all, it builds especially on the pioneering work of Barbara Daly Metcalf and Muhammad Qasim Zaman.5 Though Metcalf ably reconstructed the social milieu of Deoband’s origins, she spent little time looking at the actual texts composed by its scholars. And whereas Metcalf limited her scope to South Asia in the nineteenth century, this book explores Deoband as a global phenomenon in the twentieth. Likewise, whereas Zaman masterfully positioned Deoband within the normative Islamic textual tradition, this book pivots away from those intra-‘ulama debates and toward the Deoband movement’s attempt to remake the public itself.
Let me also outline some of what, for reasons of space, this book will not do. Insofar as the book focuses on what I call Deoband’s “public texts”—texts composed mostly in Urdu and primarily for lay Muslims—it does not look in depth at Deobandis’ Qur’an and Hadith commentaries, though it refers to them as needed to flesh out various arguments. And while it occasionally positions Deoband within classical Sufi discourses in the subcontinent and beyond, we begin in the late nineteenth century and narrate forward. It will leave to other scholars the project of situating Deoband vis-à-vis the (mostly) precolonial scholarship its adherents inherited, especially the endlessly fecund legacy of Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762), whom many Deobandis see as their most important progenitor.
Second, although the last two chapters discuss the Barelvi movement, the Deobandis’ historic archrivals, as essential to understanding the Deoband movement’s trajectory in South Africa, the bulk of the book does not focus on the Barelvis. This is not because I deem Barelvi arguments as somehow unimportant or irrelevant for understanding this history (indeed, they are vitally important). Rather, it is because there are already major studies of Barelvi thought,6 and, more importantly, prevailing assumptions already treat Barelvis as the “true” Sufis.7 Deobandis and Barelvis are, for all intents and purposes, identical to one another: Sunni Muslims, Hanafi in law, Ash‘ari or Maturidi in theology, adher
ing to multiple Sufi orders, and sustained institutionally through madrasa networks. Deobandi and Barelvi seminaries, too, have common features, including fixed curricula, annual examinations, and salaried teachers and staff.8 In truth, the real fault lines between Deobandis and Barelvis have mostly to do with their divergent views on three theological concepts advanced by some Deobandis and which the Barelvis saw as a profound slight toward the dignity of the Prophet Muhammad: the possibility of God creating another Prophet, or many prophets, on par with the Prophet Muhammad (known as imkan-i nazir, “possibility of an equal”); the possibility of God telling a lie (known as imkan-i kizb, “possibility of lying”); and the question of whether the Prophet has suprahuman knowledge (known as ‘ilm-i ghayb, “knowledge of the unseen”). Though it refers to these debates, too, they are not the focus of this book, partly because they are somewhat peripheral to Deoband’s contestation of Sufi devotions and its remaking of Sufi ethics, and partly because they have been explored in depth elsewhere. Where this book does discuss these debates, it does so with reference to their bearing on Muslim publics, for as we will see, some Deobandis castigated Barelvis for inserting into public life what they saw as arcane theological puzzles that should be debated only by trained scholars. (Barelvis insisted, in turn, that the reformist firebrand Muhammad Isma‘il (d. 1831), discussed in chapter 2, who inspired the first generation of Deobandis, was the real culprit for initiating these debates in the first place.) In recent decades, both sides have taken defensive postures, attempting to push back against their respective stereotypes. Thus, Deobandis have penned treatises detailing how much love they have for the Prophet,9 while Barelvis have catalogued all the ways that Ahmad Raza Khan (d. 1921), founder of the Barelvi movement, despised illicit innovation in religious matters (bid‘a).10
One of the myths this book hopes to dispel is a persistent stereotype that Deobandis represent the stern, inflexible Islam of the urban middle classes while the Barelvis represent the popular “folk” Sufism—the “real” Sufism—of rural South Asia. Even a cursory look at the sources for both the Deobandis and Barelvis shows this dichotomy to be utterly untenable, yet it persists within the academy and beyond it. Surely, for instance, the contrast that Marc Gaborieau draws between “reformed” (réformés) Deobandis and “unreformed” (non-réformés) Barelvis is too neat.11 The discursive overlap between the Deobandis and Barelvis—legal, juristic, theological, and otherwise—belies facile categorizations of Deobandis as law-centered “reformists” and Barelvis as mystical “counterreformists.” Ahmad Raza Khan, to take just one example, shared the Deobandis’ revulsion toward popular practices surrounding Sufi saints’ tombs. He forbade the lighting of incense, leaving food, taking vows in the saints’ honor if they grant some specific request, circumambulating and prostrating before saints’ shrines, and a host of other practices that are typically associated with Deobandis. The notion that Barelvis are somehow less concerned than Deobandis with the Shari‘a is another common misconception. One of Ahmad Raza Khan’s fatwas, issued in 1910, insisted on the mutual imbrication of the Shari‘a and Sufism, on the ‘ulama as custodians of Sufi tradition, and on the fact that the overwhelming number of Sufis in Islamic history have meticulously followed Islamic law.12
Finally, although this book does not focus on the geopolitics of the Deoband movement, it aims, nevertheless, to contribute to a more nuanced conversation about madrasas—those much-maligned and poorly understood institutions of traditional Islamic learning.13 This book sees Deobandi madrasas not as radical “terrorist factories,”14 but as pious institutions that combine scholarship on Qur’an, Hadith, and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) with a dynamic mobility that has propelled Muslim scholars across the globe. Historically, far from facilitating militancy, madrasa networks were engines behind Islam’s global cosmopolitanism, compelling students to travel across continents long before the era of “globalization.”15
When discussions of Deoband appear in popular media, it is usually in reference to Deobandis’ alleged antagonism to Sufism and Sufi shrines. Recent attacks on Sufi saints’ shrines in Pakistan have exacerbated this tendency, with reporters labeling the attackers “Deobandi” and reasoning that the attacks stem not from local politics but from Deobandis’ primordial, unflinching hatred of Sufism. After one such attack, the British newspaper The Guardian concluded, “Sufism is offensive to Muslims from the more ascetic Wahabbi [sic] and Deobandi sects, who consider worship of any saint to be heretical, and that the only access to God is through direct prayer.”16 It is worth pausing a moment to unpack this claim. Deobandis would proudly challenge the notion that Sufism is “offensive” to their religious sensibilities; most are, in fact, Sufis. They would also push back against lumping the Deobandis in with Wahhabis, followers of the archconservative reformer Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1791). This is doubly ironic, since Wahhabis have criticized Sufism as such and Deobandis have explicitly denied being Wahhabis. Even the muftis of the Deobandi seminary that nurtured the Taliban have said there is no basis for calling Deobandis “Wahhabis” and have rejected that label.17 I return to this point in the second chapter and, again, in the conclusion.
Yet there is a much older, more resilient concept that informs The Guardian’s analysis: that “mystical” Islam is perpetually in conflict with the “law”—a notion now thoroughly embedded in views of Sufism as “moderate” Islam, one rooted in a much older Orientalist dichotomy between scholar and Sufi. This dichotomy fueled ideas that Sufism could not have possibly come out of Islam, as Orientalists celebrated the “spirituality” of the great Sufi poets as diametrically opposed to what they deemed as the dry legalism of the Qur’an.18 These tropes are nothing if not persistent. Many still see Sufism as intrinsically tolerant and promote it as an antidote to Islamic militancy. At the same time, Orientalists largely ignored the ‘ulama—and especially, as in this study, ‘ulama who were also Sufis—considering them outmoded relics of Islam’s medieval past. This approach to the ‘ulama ignores how they are “custodians” of a tradition that has been “constantly imagined, reconstructed, argued over, defended and modified.”19
What is Deoband? And who is a Deobandi? Deoband is, first and foremost, a place: a town of some one hundred thousand residents approximately one hundred miles northeast of Delhi. A “Deobandi” can be a graduate of the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband, or a graduate of one of the hundreds of seminaries formed on its model, or simply someone who adheres to the set of ideologies and dispositions that Deobandis call their maslak (literally, “path” or “way”)—in other words, someone within what Barbara Metcalf has called Deoband’s “concentric circles of influence.”20 On the other hand, graduating from a Deobandi madrasa does not automatically make one a “Deobandi.” Some eschew this label outright, either because they do not adhere to the maslak, or simply because they insist their worldview cannot be limited to a single ideological mantra. As one madrasa official in Cape Town told me, “I am not a ‘Deobandi.’ I have not seen Deoband with my own eyes. I am a student of the din [religion].”21
This rhetorical slippage is ubiquitous in how Deobandi scholars understand themselves. They acknowledge the unique contributions the movement has made to contemporary Islam, yet often decline to recognize it as a “movement” at all, believing it to be nothing more than Sunni Islam per se—a tacking back and forth between identifying Deoband’s profound importance and assimilating it to Sunni Islam as such. Yet although Deobandis consider themselves Sunnis par excellence, they would not assert that non-Deobandis are therefore non-Sunnis. They do not claim a monopoly on Sunnism; they simply believe that they best represent it. In the words of the authoritative history of the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband, Deoband “is neither a legal school [mazhab] nor a sect [firqa], though its opponents attempt to present it as a school or sect to the public. Rather, it is a comprehensive ‘edition’ of the way [maslak] of the People of the Prophetic Model and the Community [Ahl-i Sunnat wa-l Jama‘at]”—in other words, of Sunni Islam.22 Yet the
very fact that this history presents Deoband as an “ism” (Deobandiyat) foregrounds the tension in how to talk about it as a phenomenon without reifying it. Defining “Deoband” too rigidly, then, denies it its elasticity, yet defining it too loosely recapitulates how these terms are bent and stretched in a Procrustean manner within anti-Deobandi polemics, where Deobandis are conflated with groups with whom they share very little.23 Amid such slippery discourse, we must be wary of reifying the very terms that we seek to analyze.
This task is complicated further when we seek to understand groups and organizations that have spun out of the Deoband movement, whether the Taliban, the Tablighi Jama‘at, or political organizations like Jami‘at ‘Ulama-yi Hind or the Jami‘at ‘Ulama-yi Islam. These groups grew directly out of Deobandi teachings, were founded by Deobandi scholars, but cannot be reduced to those connections. The Tablighi Jama‘at, for instance, has tens of millions of followers. While the Tablighi Jama‘at may not be a “Deobandi” organization in the strictest sense of the word, its founder, Muhammad Ilyas, was a graduate of the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband and studied with three of the most prominent early Deobandi scholars: Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Mahmud Hasan, and Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri. The Tablighi Jama‘at is indisputably linked at every level with Deobandi madrasas, in South Asia, South Africa, and elsewhere. Yet not all those involved in the Tablighi Jama‘at have a formal relation to a Deobandi madrasa or other institution, even as they participate, knowingly or unknowingly, in Deoband’s reformist project.
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