Muhammad Isma‘il was by no means the only one advancing powerful critiques of shirk in India in the early nineteenth century; similar claims arose, for instance, out of the work of Khurram ‘Ali Bilhauri, whose Nasihat al-Muslimin of 1813 suggested that “[i]n the same way that the heathens worship the idols, Muslims started worshipping the tombs of the saints whom they believe to be as powerful as God.” Like Muhammad Isma‘il, Khurram ‘Ali was intent on disabusing the Muslim masses of their ill-informed notions of agency and intercession, putting forth a typology of shirk similar to Muhammad Isma‘il’s. He memorably describes the act of calling for help upon any entity other than God (e.g., a saint) as being as ineffectual as cupping water from a river in one’s hand and calling upon the water to come into one’s mouth.40
But Muhammad Isma‘il, more than any other early-nineteenth-century reformist thinker, impacted the first generation of Deobandis. No early Deobandi internalized this reformist impulse more than Rashid Ahmad Gangohi. For Gangohi, “Taqwiyyat al-iman is a magnificent, utterly true work, strengthening and reforming the faith, and the entire meaning of the Qur’an and Hadith is contained in it.”41 He regarded Muhammad Isma‘il as a “saint of God” (wali Allah).42 Yet, despite Gangohi’s unqualified praise, his collected fatwas reveal just how controversial Muhammad Isma‘il’s propositions were to many Muslims. Several people requesting them inquired whether it was permissible to call Muhammad Isma‘il an “unbeliever” (kafir),43 and in fact several prominent ‘ulama under the guidance of Fazl al-Haqq Khairabadi (d. 1861) did exactly that.44 Gangohi, expectedly, condemns declaring Muhammad Isma‘il an unbeliever with the justification that he is a saint (wali). He echoes his intellectual predecessor in still other ways, defending the controversial notion that God is capable of lying (imkan-i kizb) and that God could create other prophets on par with Muhammad (imkan-i nazir), offering the explanation, like Muhammad Isma‘il, that God is capable but would never do so.45 And like Muhammad Isma‘il, he steadfastly denies that Muhammad had “knowledge of the unseen” (‘ilm-i ghayb), a staple of Sufi perceptions of the Prophet as a man of unparalleled knowledge of this world and the next.46 Gangohi also endorses Muhammad Isma‘il’s stark vision of divine sovereignty. The relationship between God and the created world is like that between a potter and a pot: a potter creates a pot but also has the power to break it at will.47 But it is Isma‘il’s analysis of bid‘a that is critical for our purposes here. Indeed, Gangohi once reprimanded a young Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi for his insufficient understanding of bid‘a, for which he recommended that Thanvi read Muhammad Isma‘il’s Izah al-haqq fi ahkam al-mayyit wa al-darih.48 While the next two chapters will outline ways that the Deobandis attempted to constrain the populist hermeneutics that Isma‘il unleashed, the remainder of this chapter will show how these same Deobandis adopted, and adapted, Isma‘il’s interrogation of bid‘a and shirk in their critiques of celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s birth celebration (mawlud) and the Sufi saints’ death anniversaries (‘urs).
THE MAWLUD: HOW SHOULD ONE LOVE THE PROPHET?
No form of devotional practice became the object of incessant debate and critique more than the mawlud, the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, against which Deobandis deployed the theorization of bid‘a they inherited from Muhammad Isma‘il. Known variously as mawlud, mawlid or milad (in Arabic, “birth”), the celebration of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (the 12th of the Islamic month of Rabi‘ al-Awwal) has been a perennial flashpoint within modern South Asian Islam. It has, in fact, been contested from various quarters since at least the thirteenth century, and remains so today, with renowned institutions such as Al-Azhar issuing legal opinions on the practice.49 Arguments for and against the mawlud proliferate in fatwas, in scholarly studies, and on the internet.50 Nevertheless, the celebration is widely observed in nearly every country in which Muslims live.
A typical mawlud entails reading stories about different events in the Prophet’s life, reciting the Qur’an, sending benedictions (Arabic, salawat; Urdu, durud) upon the Prophet, and singing poems of praise (na‘t) in honor of him. Many wealthy Indian Muslims even endowed mawlud festivities in their wills.51 Shah Wali Allah, notably, vividly recounted the mawlud that he attended during his Hajj pilgrimage in 1730–1731, where he described seeing visions of the Prophet’s spiritual light (nur) during the event, in unmediated form: “I saw his blessed and holy spirit clearly and manifestly, not only from the world of spirits [‘alam-i arwah] but directly from the imaginal realm [‘alam-i mithal].”52 By no means limited to Sufis, the mawlud has long been intimately linked to Sufi practices, especially accompanying Sufi musical assemblies (sama‘) as well as narrative accounts of his birth, virtues, and superhuman qualities, such as his primordial light (nur).53
Deobandi scholars were also not the first to criticize mawlud festivities. Many early condemnations of mawlud festivities were based simply on the fact that they did not exist in the Prophet Muhammad’s era, nor did he celebrate his own birthday. Even its supporters concede that the earliest documented celebrations of the mawlud are from much later—possibly as late as the twelfth century.54 Even in the twelfth century, one critic bemoaned “the taking of hashish, the gathering of young men . . . [and] the singing of [songs] arousing longing for worldly pleasures.”55 In the sixteenth century, the legal legitimacy of standing in honor of the Prophet, known as qiyam, was debated, with some denying its legality and others seeing it as a natural display of love and emotion for the Prophet.56 Jalal al-Din Suyuti’s (d. 1505) Husn al-maqsad fi ‘amal al-mawlid (The good intention of celebrating the mawlid) defended the practice as a “good innovation” (bid‘a hasana) provided that it remained within certain normative parameters.57 Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), founder of the Wahhabi movement, opposed the practice, but his views on mawlud and other alleged innovations did not become entrenched in the Hijaz until long after his death; even in the late nineteenth century, as Deobandis such as Gangohi were issuing fatwas against the practice of standing in reverence of the Prophet (qiyam) during the mawlud, a Hanafi mufti of Mecca issued a polemic in support of the mawlud, insisting that not standing for the Prophet was sinful—precisely the sort of claim, as we will see below, that Deobandis came to see as one of the clearest marks of bid‘a.58
Deobandi critiques of the mawlud begin largely with Gangohi, who issued many fatwas on the celebration. “This festival,” one of them concludes, “did not exist in the era of the Prophet Muhammad, in the era of the pious Companions, in the era of the Followers, or the Followers of the Followers, or in the era of the founders of the Islamic legal schools [mujtahidin]. It was invented some four hundred years later by a king59 whom most historians regard as immoral [fasiq].”60 The practice of standing in respect of the Prophet (qiyam), the theological implications of which we will examine below, only exacerbates its iniquities. What if the mawlud is free of qiyam? In response to this question, Gangohi simply declared: “Holding a mawlud gathering is not permissible under any condition.”61
Besides, Gangohi says, most of the masses attend mawlud gatherings not for the purpose of remembering God (zikr) but for entertainment. And while they justify these gatherings with the claim that it increases the love for the Prophet, in fact, most of the stories they tell are based on weak, unsubstantiated Hadith narrations. “In truth,” he concludes, “any good that is acquired through illicit [ghayr mashru‘a] means is, in itself, impermissible.”62
And yet, Gangohi approved lectures about the Prophet’s birth and virtues, even small gatherings for that purpose. He was frequently asked how to perform mawlud “properly.” On one occasion (unfortunately undated), he sent Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri, one of his most accomplished Sufi disciples, to conduct a mawlud at the request of a certain “Sultan Jahan,” likely Sultan Jahan, Begum of Bhopal from 1901 to 1926, who had extensive contact with Deobandi scholars in her court—in particular, graduates of Mazahir al-‘Ulum, where Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri taught.63 When the mawlud commenced:
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br /> [First] Khalil Ahmad read the verse “There has come to you a Messenger,”64 and explained it, after which he discussed . . . some current innovations [bid‘at]. After expounding on some events and details of the Prophet’s birth from Tavarikh-i habib Allah [Stories of God’s beloved],65 the mawlud was finished. Many were very displeased toward the owner of the house, saying, ‘You invited us to your home and then you disgraced us.’ But in reality, this mawlud was beneficial. Some of the people present thought that those who reject the mawlud reject every aspect of it, but many were disabused of this notion.66
Saharanpuri himself summarized all the features of the customary mawlud that Deobandis disdained, adding that, were these features to be removed, such a mawlud would cease to be a bid‘a—precisely the type, in other words, that he performed for Sultan Jahan:
We [Deobandis] reject the impermissible things that have become associated with . . . mawlud assemblies in India: lecturing from weak [Hadith] narrations, men and women mixing together, extravagance in lighting candles, believing the assembly is obligatory, shaming and declaring unbelievers of those who do not participate, and other things prohibited by the Shari‘a. If the mawlud assembly were free of such things, how could we say that recalling the noble birth is impermissible and an innovation [bid‘a]?”67
The debate over mawlud took an especially contentious turn in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, however, with the 1887 publication of Saharanpuri’s Al-Barahin al-qati‘a ‘ala dhalam al-anwar al-sati‘a (Definitive proofs on the darkness of al-Anwar al-Sati‘a), a response to ‘Abd al-Sami‘ Rampuri’s Al-Anwar al-sati‘a (The dazzling lights). Rampuri, a disciple of Imdad Allah, wrote Al-Anwar al-sati‘a in response to Gangohi’s (and others’) criticisms of mawlud and ‘urs.68
Saharanpuri, a disciple and close associate of Gangohi’s, believed that the most theologically alarming facets of the mawlud were the belief that the Prophet was present (hazir) at the gathering and the act of standing (qiyam) in his alleged “presence.” Critiques of standing (qiyam) during the mawlud, to be sure, long predate the Deobandis. The crux of these critiques was the participants’ specification of the mawlud as the only context in which one stands in respect of the Prophet. Shah ‘Abd al-Ghani, son of Shah Wali Allah and father of Muhammad Isma‘il, had asked why it is only during the mawlud that people tend to stand in respect of the Prophet: “Who says that it is impermissible to remember the Messenger of God while standing? Our objection is that if standing is to show respect, then what is the reason for standing only when recalling the Prophet’s birth and not at other times? In fact, if the Prophet’s birth is recalled in any place other than a mawlud assembly, then no one stands up.”69
Saharanpuri built upon these prior interventions. Al-Barahin al-qati‘a is a lengthy text, with multiple lines of argument; here I will discuss only those aspects of his argument related to standing during the mawlud. First, before addressing the details of the mawlud itself, Saharanpuri begins by clarifying that recollecting the Prophet’s birth is an acceptable and even laudable act. This is something he demonstrated in practice with his own celebrations of the Prophet’s birthday, as we have just seen. He then critiques the metaphysical basis for believing the Prophet is present at the mawlud gathering. Rampuri had compared the Prophet’s presence to the ubiquity of sunlight, for “just as the sun is everywhere within the first Heaven,” he says, “the Prophet’s spirit [ruh-i nabi] is in the seventh Heaven, the ‘Illiyun.”70 “How is it unreasonable to believe,” he therefore asks, “that, from there, his blessed sight is cast upon the earth, or some parts of it, and the lights of the Muhammadan effulgence [faizan-i ahmadi] grace every pure gathering like the rays of the all-encompassing sun?”71 For Saharanpuri, this is a flight of poetic fancy that treads dangerously into polytheism. He takes the Qur’anic pronouncement, “There is nothing like Him” (42:11), to mean that any quality belonging to God—seeing all, hearing all, knowing all—belongs to Him and Him alone. Assuming that the Prophet is present at the mawlud assumes that he has these divine qualities.72 Third, Saharanpuri delves into the act of standing itself, which he deems a bid‘a on the basis of how it is specified both for the mawlud only (an argument others had made prior to him), as well as for specific times within the mawlud that were meant to correlate with the birth of the Prophet. Fourth, responding to Rampuri’s assertion that standing is neutral with respect to the law (mubah), Saharanpuri writes: “Yes, the act of standing [in and of itself] is absolutely neutral [mubah]. And honoring the Pride of the World [the Prophet Muhammad], Peace be upon Him, is praiseworthy [mustahabb]. But the way the ignorant engage in both with such diligence [taqayud] and specificity [takhsis], the way the masses regard them as a Sunna and a necessity [wujub], makes the act bid‘a and reprehensible [makruh].”73 Finally, standing is also an aspect of the Salat prayer—in other words, of the basic ritual commands of Islamic worship. Saharanpuri reasons that the commandment to stand for God’s sake in the Qur’an—“Stand up for God, obedient” [wa qumu li-Allahi qanitina] (Qur’an 2:238)—renders the act of standing in reverence an intrinsic act of worship, which he defines as “standing, with hands folded, in humility.” The act begins to border dangerously close to shirk when it is coupled with the belief in the Prophet’s suprahuman knowledge.74
We can glimpse the impact of Saharanpuri’s text in a letter that Hajji Imdad Allah sent to him from Mecca in July 1890, three years after the publication of Al-Barahin al-qati‘a. As the preeminent Sabiri Chishti master of the nineteenth century, Imdad Allah mentored the first generation of Deobandis, including Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi and Rashid Ahmad Gangohi. In this letter, Imdad Allah was concerned with the effect of that publication on public sentiment and—a subject to which we return in the next chapter—the public’s capacity to understand its content:
From cities and kingdoms across India—Bengal, Bihar, Madras, Deccan, Gujarat, Mumbai, Punjab, Rajputana, Rampur, Bhawalpur—newspapers have arrived one after another, stirring up grief and shock. Hearing all this has made this poor faqir extremely sad. The cause is Barahin-i qati‘a and other books. The fires of fitna have been kindled by the refutation of Anwar-i sati‘a, which ‘ulama everywhere have defended. (I shall remain neutral on the matter.) . . . Your refutation of every sentence showed such arrogance that—I seek refuge in God—you have even said that God is capable of uttering a lie. This affliction has been so world-shattering that noble mawluds have been subdued and this issue has reached every city and town, even reaching the Two Holy Cities—May God increase their nobility and honor!—and other countries. . . . My friend, this is an issue for which the understanding of the masses [‘awamm] is deficient. I fear it will lead to suffering and strife. Publicizing these issues is against the public interest [maslahat] and against the Shari‘a.75
This is the context for the publication of Hajji Imdad Allah’s Faisala-yi haft mas’ala (A decision on seven controversies) in 1894. Hajji Imdad Allah regarded the mawlud as a matter in need of urgent resolution, ranking it first out of the seven controversies he addresses in the book.76
Before outlining Imdad Allah’s approach to the mawlud, it is crucial to comment on his relationship with Gangohi and the Deoband movement.77 Though he took on hundreds of disciples throughout his life, he was not a scholar (‘alim), a status that did not always keep him from opining on legal matters. But Imdad Allah saw precedents in Islamic history for his role as a non-‘alim among the ‘ulama. “God grants to some of his servants who are not technically ‘ulama the tongue [of another],” he explained, and just as “the tongue granted to Shams Tabrizi was Maulana Rumi, who elaborated upon the knowledge of Hazrat Shams Tabrizi in great detail, similarly, Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi is my tongue.”78 Nanautvi saw their relationship in a similar light; he once quipped that Imdad Allah was not a “scholar” (maulvi) so much as a “scholar-maker” (maulvi-gar).79 Imdad Allah was deferential to the ‘ulama: “I am ignorant,” he once told a group of ‘ulama. “You are ‘ulama. In my hea
rt is only what has alighted there, and I have explained it thus; if there is any error in it, anything in conflict with the Qur’an and the Sunna, please do not hesitate to tell me. Otherwise, on the Day of Judgment, I will say, ‘I told them to explain it but they did not clarify the matter.’”80 His Sufi lodge, Khanqah Imdadiyya, in the northern Indian town of Thana Bhawan, was a hive of scholarly activity, a place where Qur’an, Hadith, and Islamic law (fiqh) lessons took place, even before Thanvi took up residence there.81
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