Revival From Below

by Brannon D Ingram

  Deobandis conceived of bid‘a as altering, adding to, or subtracting from the din, a word usually translated as “religion” but which fundamentally connotes “debt” and “obligation”—a semantic range captured by Qur’anic references to the “day of judgment” (yawm al-din)—and which in time came to be understood as the sum total of ritual obligations that bind humans to God, as revealed by God in the Qur’an and elaborated through the Prophet’s words and deeds (the Sunna): hence din as “religion.”2 Bid‘a can also be understood as setting up any counternorm that competes with or simulates the normative order of the Qur’an and Sunna.3 What makes bid‘a insidious is that lay Muslims (the ‘awamm) confuse normativity, assuming for instance that nonobligatory aspects of religious practice are obligatory. This conception of bid‘a has roots in the premodern period. The Andalusian jurist al-Turtushi (d. 1126), for example, worried that supererogatory fasting—completely permissible in principle—would lead lay Muslims to assume that it was obligatory, like the fasting during Ramadan.4 We will see Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi make a similar comparison between obligatory and nonobligatory fasting below.5 But though the idea has premodern roots, Deobandis became focused on bid‘a—defining it, cataloging it, combating it—to an extent that has few, if any, premodern precedents.6

  The second major threat to the normative order is shirk (from the Arabic root “to participate or associate”). Shirk is commonly thought of as polytheism, but that is not entirely accurate. Polytheism is, of course, an example of shirk, but one need not posit other gods besides God to commit shirk. Rather, shirk is the idea that any of God’s attributes (e.g., God’s knowledge) are “associated” with any entity other than God—for instance, the notion that a saint may have superhuman knowledge. Believing this does not make the saint a god as much as it makes the saint godlike. As we will see, a saint may in fact have superhuman knowledge, but that knowledge is granted by God. It is believing that the saint possesses that knowledge independently of God that is the hallmark of shirk. Bid‘a, then, is a belief or practice that overlaps or competes with the din. Shirk, analogously, is to believe that some entity overlaps or competes with God’s essence and attributes. Bid‘a is to compromise the integrity of the din. Shirk is to compromise the integrity of tawhid, the oneness of God’s divinity.

  As mentioned above, the Deobandis were not the first to theorize shirk and bid‘a. They were influenced by a number of scholars of the premodern era who wrote extensively on these issues. One of them was the Andalusian scholar Abu Ishaq Ibrahim al-Shatibi (d. 1388), whom the Deobandis read, studied, and cited.7 Shatibi defined bid‘a as “an invented path in religion that emulates the Shari‘a and is intended to be followed in striving toward the obedience of God,” or is “intended to be followed with the same intentions as the Shari‘a.”8 Shatibi is clear that mere newness does not constitute bid‘a, whether good or bad. For this reason, he rejects earlier definitions of bid‘a that theorized it in terms of temporality rather than normativity—that is, as whatever came after the Prophet, as opposed to what simulates or competes with the din.9 This is also the reason he rejects other scholars’ classifications of bid‘a into “good” (hasana) and “bad” (sayyia), a dichotomy that presupposes a temporally defined conception of bid‘a. Deobandis, too, rejected this distinction as conceptually incoherent. “A bid‘a can never be ‘good’ [hasana],” Gangohi wrote. “What you call ‘good bid‘a’ is, in fact, the Sunna,” by which Gangohi means something new that has been substantiated through the normative legal sources.10 For Muhammad Shafi‘, too, the Hadith “All innovation [bid‘a] is misguidance, and all misguidance is in the Fire” is ample scriptural evidence for discarding any notion of a “good” bid‘a.11

  What defines bid‘a, for Shatibi and for the Deobandis who drew upon his work, is that it is an innovation in religion that also resembles religion—a distinction that Shatibi illustrates with his distinction between “real” (haqiqi) and “relative” (idafi) bid‘a.12 “Real” bid‘a consisted of innovations that cannot be substantiated in any way through the four sources of law in Sunni jurisprudence: Qur’an, Sunna, consensus (ijma‘), and analogy (qiyas). “Relative” bid‘a consisted of acts that may be permissible (mubah) or even recommended (mandub) in one context, but become bid‘a when people confuse their normative status—for example, by treating a merely permissible act as recommended. Raquel Ukeles described Shatibi’s category of “relative” bid‘a as “the gray area between sunnah and bid‘ah” brought about by “changing an occasional practice to a regular practice, or an optional practice to a required practice.”13 The significance of this, for Deobandis generally and especially for Thanvi, cannot be overstated. The difference between “real” and “relative” bid‘a might be thought of as the difference, as Thanvi once put it, between those who are “sacrilegious [bad dini] and disobedient [mo‘anid]” in committing bid‘a—that is, those who innovate intentionally and maliciously—and those who come from a place of “sincere” (mukhlis) motives, who innovate by accident.14 The latter becomes, in many ways, more of a preoccupation of the Deobandis precisely because it insinuates its way into public life, often through the best of intentions.

  Shatibi’s normativity-based conception of bid‘a is also the one elaborated by Muhammad Isma‘il (d. 1831), by far the most important figure for understanding how Deobandis conceived of the normative order. As we will see, Gangohi, like other early Deobandis, referenced Muhammad Isma‘il’s works and urged his followers to read them. At the same time, Muhammad Isma‘il’s works challenged the very interpretive hierarchies on which the ‘ulama staked their claims to lead the masses toward salvation—in ways this chapter hopes to make clear.

  Muhammad Isma‘il was born in 1779 in Delhi into the Wali Allah family of scholars: his father was Shah ‘Abd al-Ghani, one of Shah Wali Allah’s sons. He received the standard religious education that others in his family received, but his life was changed irrevocably when in 1819 he met Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi (d. 1831), the foremost activist for Islamic revival in early-nineteenth-century India.15 Born in 1786, Sayyid Ahmad was also close to the Wali Allah family, becoming Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s Sufi disciple and student in 1806. From an early age, Sayyid Ahmad began to attract a following of Muslims anxious about the perceived decline of Indian Islam.16 He preached across the Ganges Delta from 1818 to 1821 and took his scores of followers on the Hajj from 1821 to 1823.17 Upon returning, he called for jihad against the Sikhs, who had banned the call to prayer in the Punjab and desecrated mosques.18 In 1831 Sayyid Ahmad and Muhammad Isma‘il were both killed fighting Sikhs at Balakot (in what is now northwestern Pakistan).19

  Muhammad Isma‘il’s real impact, however, was in his writings, some of which are among the earliest examples of Urdu in print. He composed his work at the cusp of a shift from Persian to Urdu as the language of the Muslim elite, which would also become the primary language of Deobandi works.20 Muhammad Isma‘il wrote his most important and widely read treatise, Taqwiyyat al-iman (Strengthening the faith), in “simple Urdu” (salis Urdu), from which “both the elites [khawass] and the commoners [‘awamm] can derive some benefit.”21 These dual tropes of simple language beneficial to elite and commoner alike continue to animate Deobandi thought into the present.22

  Much has been written about Muhammad Isma‘il, and I intend to touch only on the two aspects of his legacy that are most important for understanding Deoband: first, his discourse on bid‘a and shirk; and second, his radically populist hermeneutics, which called individual Muslims to reject any forms of authority other than the Qur’an and Sunna and to study the Qur’an and Hadith directly, without mediation by religious elites. I argue that the Deobandi project was animated by the former even as it tried to constrain the latter.

  The argument of Taqwiyyat al-iman, written around 1824,23 was deceptively simple but had immense repercussions for the religio-political imaginary of Muslims in British India: tawhid, the absolute unity of God, is diametrically opposed to shirk, associating an
other person or thing in any way with God. Isma‘il identified four fundamental forms of shirk: association with God in knowledge (ishrak fi-l ‘ilm), association with God in power (ishrak fi-l tasarruf), association with God in worship (ishrak fi-l ‘ibadat), and association with God in matters of custom or everyday life (ishrak fi-l ‘adah). Later Deobandi scholars would adapt this typology of shirk in their own works for lay Muslims.24 “Association” with God in knowledge informed debates about whether the Prophet Muhammad has knowledge of the “unseen realm” (ghayb)—that is, suprahuman knowledge. “Association” with God in power led into debates about whether there are theoretical limits to God’s sovereignty—namely, whether God could produce additional prophets of Muhammad’s stature or even tell a lie, and whether to suggest that God is somehow incapable of doing so is itself akin to denying his limitless omnipotence. The last two categories are the most salient here: “association” with God in worship and in customary practices covered those Sufi practices that bore a dangerous similarity to the worship accorded solely to God, or customary practices that resembled acts sanctioned by the Sunna—such as the reverence bestowed upon the Prophet Muhammad during the mawlud or in the act of granting him salutations, or upon the Sufi saints during their death-anniversary festivities. Shirk is not simply polytheism: “Shirk is not simply to equate some entity with God or consider it on par with God. It is also shirk to see in entities other than God the attributes that God has specified for Himself, the acknowledgment of which is one of the marks of servanthood.”25 As a later Deobandi scholar, Muhammad Manzur Nu‘mani, elaborated, it is God that has endowed medicine with the power to heal and water with the power to quench thirst. Shirk is, analogously, to believe that anything, even medicine, has an intrinsic power apart from God. Shirk is, in this sense, mis-assigning agency. It is the assumption that dead saints have agency, or that an amulet for curing an illness has agency, or that astrological predictions exercise agency over the future.26

  If shirk is the preoccupation of Taqwiyyat al-iman, Muhammad Isma‘il theorizes bid‘a principally in other works, especially Izah al-haqq fi ahkam al-mayyit wa al-darih (Elucidating the truth about the rules concerning the dead and tombs). In the broadest sense, just as shirk is the opposite of tawhid, so bid‘a is the opposite of the Sunna. Isma‘il begins this text by citing a number of Hadiths pertaining to bid‘a, including “Whoever innovates [ahdatha] something in this matter [amr] of ours that is not part of it will have it rejected.” Isma‘il says the two key words in this Hadith are “innovates” and “matter.” “Innovation” describes anything that is utterly new. Like Shatibi, he calls bid‘a only that which is both new and unable to be substantiated from the normative legal sources. As for “this matter of ours”—that refers to the din. From this we get a two-part conception of bid‘a very similar to Shatibi’s “real” and “relative” bid‘a. The first he calls “literal bid‘a” (bid‘a asli), “anything that is invented [muhadas].” That is, in other words, the literal definition of something newly invented. “The second,” which he calls “figurative bid‘a” (bid‘a wasfi), “is to add to, subtract from, or alter the form of the Shari‘a.”27 The latter is the one about which he expressed the deepest concern, for a whole range of things—studies of Arabic grammar, or Sufi litanies (adhkar)—are not “parts of the religion” (ajza’ al-din), but “if someone considers them to be part of the religion, that act necessarily becomes bid‘a for that person.”28 Overall, then, Muhammad Isma‘il conceived of bid‘a in three ways: first, as a practice that directly opposes or invalidates the Sunna; second, as a practice done with the same intent or regularity as the Sunna but not part of it—in other words, creating a kind of false or counter-religion alongside the Sunna; and third, making anything non-obligatory obligatory, or vice versa.

  Muhammad Isma‘il initiated a comprehensive critique of all forms of earthly authority—so comprehensive, in fact, that it sidelined even the ‘ulama. The Qur’an and the Hadith alone, he believed, should be the sole sources of authority for Muslims. One can see Isma‘il’s exclusive reliance on the Qur’an and Hadith in the very structure of the book: each section begins with a brief quote from the Qur’an or Hadith, on which his radical critique of bid‘a and shirk rests.

  What is radically novel about Muhammad Isma‘il’s approach to the Qur’an and Hadith is the idea that they are transparently simple to understand and require no mediation, whether by the ‘ulama or by any other figures of authority. Taqwiyyat al-iman opens with a stunning passage worth reproducing at length:

  In the present age, people have chosen myriad paths. Some follow the customs of their ancestors, while some follow the ways of holy ones [buzurg]. Some offer the self-proclaimed sayings of the scholars [‘ulama] as their proof, while some pry into religious matters under the pretext of using their intellect [‘aql]. The best path is to refrain from meddling in what has been revealed [naql] with our intellect and, instead, take the Qur’an and Hadith, fountains that nourish the soul, as the standard by which to assess the sayings of the holy ones, the decisions of the ‘ulama, and the customs of one’s community, accepting what conforms and rejecting what does not.

  It is common today for people to believe that the Qur’an and Hadith are difficult to understand and require a whole lot of knowledge, that we are so ignorant that we are unable to understand them and incapable of acting on them, and that only the saints [awliya’ Allah] are capable of such acts. This is absolutely baseless, for God has said that the Holy Qur’an is clear and manifest: ‘We have sent down to you verses that are clear proofs, and no one disbelieves them except the transgressors’ [2:99]. Understanding this is not difficult, nay it is easy. Acting on it is difficult, because it is difficult to control the self [nafs], and thus the disobedient give it no credence. It is not necessary to have a lot of knowledge to understand the Qur’an and Hadith because the Messengers were sent to bring understanding to the ignorant and knowledge to those without it, as God says: ‘It is He who sent among the illiterate a messenger of their own, who recites to them verses and purifies them, who teaches them the Book and Wisdom. Truly before this they were clearly in error.’ [Qur’an 62:2] . . . If someone says that understanding the Qur’an is only for the ‘ulama and acting on it is only for the holy ones, then they trample upon this verse and disregard God’s glorious bounties.29

  There are several aspects of this passage worth noting here. First, the notion that the Qur’an is easy to understand was radical in its implications for individual Muslims. It opened the floodgates of a populist hermeneutics, dismissing the importance of both the intellect and scholarly experts in understanding the text. Of course, the Qur’an is not always easy to understand and even occasionally highlights its own opacity, hence the legal distinction between verses that are clear (muhkam) and those that are ambiguous (mutashabih).30 Later Deobandis stressed that the Qur’an is actually difficult to understand. “If exacting the right meaning from the Holy Qur’an were so easy,” Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlavi (d. 1982) wrote, “then why was it necessary for prophets to be sent? The Qur’an could have been hung from the Ka‘aba and people could have taken from it what they wish. The prophets were sent because through their deeds divine guidance was given perfection and form.”31

  Second, even the ‘ulama fall under his critique of all forms of authority beyond the Qur’an and Hadith. This is precisely why India’s own Salafi movement, the Ahl-i Hadith, found inspiration in Muhammad Isma‘il for its rejection of the Islamic legal schools.32 Third, Taqwiyyat al-iman invokes the Qur’an and Hadith in support of its arguments, but conspicuously avoids citing any medieval Islamic legal or theological authorities. The text, in short, encapsulates a certain scripturalist impulse that would animate later Deobandi discourses even as it stood in tension with them as Deobandis attempted to retain that legal and theological edifice.

  The corollary to a Qur’an so transparent that it requires no intermediary to understand it is a God so powerful—indeed, a God with an utter
monopoly on power—that no one can intercede between humans and God, because any would-be intermediaries, such as the saints (awliya’), are as powerless as the average believer: “Think about those who associate God with others [mushrik], who call upon the holy ones [buzurg] and implore them to fulfill their desires. These holy ones do not control even a mote of creation or have the slightest share in it, let alone are they pillars of divine power.”33 God is so powerful that he could, if He wished, instantaneously upend and subvert every law of the universe and even every article of Islamic faith, replacing them with an entirely new system. In one of the most striking passages of the text, Isma‘il writes: “Truly the power of this Shah of Shahs is so great that in an instant, solely by pronouncing the command ‘Be!’ God could create millions of prophets, saints, djinn, and angels equal to Gabriel and Muhammad, or in a single breath, can turn the whole universe upside down and bestow upon it a wholly new creation”—the essence of Isma‘il’s controversial doctrine of imkan-i nazir.34 Muhammad Isma‘il articulated a stark and radically polarized vision of divine sovereignty in which human beings, including all prophets and Sufi saints, are utterly powerless before God’s majesty, thereby undercutting the very possibility of saintly intercession between God and humankind. The sovereign, in this vision, is the sole power capable of deciding on the exception to otherwise immutable rules and laws. The sovereign by definition transcends the law, simultaneously dictating the law and exempt from it.35

  It is important to clarify that the semantics of sovereignty in Taqwiyyat al-iman are quite different from theorizations of God’s sovereignty by twentieth-century Islamists, such as Qutb and Maududi, who used the neologism “hakimiyya” to connote the political valence the word carries in English—quite explicitly in Maududi’s case, who inserted the English word “sovereignty” into the Urdu text in Islam ka nazariyya-i siyasi (The Islamic view of politics) of 1939, leaving no doubt about the word’s intended meaning. Maududi took Qur’anic statements such as “[A]uthority [al-hukm] belongs to God alone” (12:40) to mean that society and state must be governed exclusively by God’s laws, not “man-made laws”—a notion more or less foreign to the medieval exegetical tradition, as Muhammad Qasim Zaman has shown.36 Muhammad Isma‘il, too, invokes Qur’an 12:40, but does so to argue that God alone ought to be worshipped—a reading that aligns more with exegetes like Tabari (d. 923) than it does with Maududi.37 When Isma‘il wants to convey God’s “authority,” he uses words like tasarruf (“holding, disposing, possessing”) and ikhtiyar (“discretion, disposal, management”) to describe God’s utter and complete control over the universe.38 To convey God’s “power,” he uses words like taqat (“power, capability”) and saltanat (“dominion, rule”). The latter, of course, does have a political connotation, but not so much in the way Isma‘il uses it, which again takes the form of a critique of shirk: “No one is a partner or associate in God’s power [saltanat].”39 The distinctly modern neologism hakimiyya does not appear at all in the text. This does not mean, of course, that Isma‘il’s theorization of divine power does not have political implications. But it is important, nonetheless, to distinguish between Isma‘il’s notion of divine sovereignty, centered around a critique of shirk, and notions of divine sovereignty that emerged much later.