For Desai, this was a haphazard and irresponsible use of the concept of jihad, pressing the idea into the service of “kufaar politics.” Like Thanvi, Desai asserted that the call for jihad “devolves on Muslims’ rulers and governments, not on leaderless communities and not on Muslim communities which have chosen domicile in non-Muslim lands.”121 In this traditionalist framework, Shari‘a governs every conceivable action, and arrogating to oneself the status of mujahid—one who engages in jihad—without regard to the Shari‘a-mandated rules that stipulate its proper application is both arrogant and dangerous. After the Muslim Youth Movement issued a pamphlet in support of the so-called jihad of Mandela, The Majlis declared simply: “‘Mandela[’s] Jihad’ is not Islam’s Jihad.” Likewise, when the Muslim Youth Movement declared, “There is no need to be afraid of this word revolution,” citing the Iranian revolution of 1979 as a model,122 The Majlis deemed these calls for revolution at home “hollow slogans and cries—cries of the communist kufaar—cries of the Shiahs—cries which they subtly present in Islamic hues to hoodwink the Muslim community.”123 The fact that the Muslim Youth Movement found inspiration in Maududi was reason enough to condemn them. Desai accused the MYM of trying to import into South Africa what he facetiously called the “mazhab” (legal school) of Maududi.124
In the profound social unrest that pervaded South Africa in the 1980s, Desai saw a society that had become unhinged from any moral anchor, and even to associate such things with “jihad” was, in his view, an insult to a noble Islamic institution: “The Command for Jihaad decreed in the [Qur’an] does not call for the stoning of buses, burning of human beings, pillaging the homes of innocent persons. . . . The Jihaad of Islam is an orderly affair which operates under a host of conditions and stipulations.”125 These new calls for jihad were yet another “fitna” that strained the fabric of the Ummah. Errant political ideologies and the decline of Sufi piety alike conspired, in his view, to test Muslims’ faith and perseverance. In response to a reader’s question about whether Muslims should join the “struggle against oppression,” Desai replied: “Undoubtedly there does exist oppression in this land just as there is oppression in all the other lands of the world. But the way of combating injustice and oppression is not the sowing of fitnah and fasaad [corruption]. Muslims are not permitted by the Shariah to join with anarchical groups of kufaar [unbelievers] in any fight against oppression. Let Muslims first eliminate the oppression which they are inflicting on their own selves by their gross violations of Allah’s Laws, then Allah Ta‘ala will take care of the rest.”126
But Desai also invoked Thanvi to argue that proper exercise of jihad must be predicated on the ethical reform of the self. When one South African Muslim requested a fatwa on the topic, asking, “What do we do about the oppression in the world and South Africa? The Qur’aan emphatically speaks that we as Muslims should physically remove it,” Desai responded that the greater jihad against the nafs, the “lower self,” must come before the lower jihad of struggle against tyranny, and that South African Muslims have not yet won the war against the lower self. At the same time, Desai did not deny the importance of jihad in Islam. He simply denies that any South African Muslim is equipped to wage it properly:
Muslim failure on the Jihad front is on account of the abandonment of Islam. The Sunnah has been expunged from the life-style of the Ummah. . . . The cause of the failure is . . . the moral and spiritual corruption of the Ummah. As long as Muslims neglect their moral reformation and as long as they do not climb the ladder of spiritual elevation, they are doomed to disgrace and defeat in all their campaigns which they proclaim in the name of Jihad.127
Following Thanvi, Desai stated that only Sufism can provide such “spiritual elevation.” To be sure, casting Sufism as antipathetic toward politics is nothing new. The idea has a rich history throughout Sufism, notably within the Chishtiyya, though the idea was often more a rhetorical trope than it was a social reality.128 But Desai draws almost exclusively on Thanvi, rather than these older tropes. For the same reasons, Desai rejected any perceived exploitation of Sufi devotion or practice for political ends. Thus, as the popularity of South African zikr halqas peaked, as discussed previously, Desai came down strongly against them, labeling them a practice of “Barelvi Bid‘atis.”129 In casting Sufism in this light, Desai calls on Muslims to emulate the Sufi saints:
Those who clamour for Muslim participation in non-Muslim politics are short-sighted. They lack true insight which is a quality of an Imaan [faith] adorned with the higher and beautiful angelic attributes which a Mu’min [believer] gains by companionship with Auliya [Sufi saints]. Those Muslims shouting for Muslim participation in kufr politics are in the majority the followers of lowly desires and despicable motives. . . . They are swayed by mob-rule and mob-opinion.130
Many South African Muslims were understandably incensed by Desai. They regarded him as, perhaps, the paramount example of the ‘ulama failing to lead the Muslim community. He proclaimed loudly and sharply, according to this view, what many of the ‘ulama believed silently and implicitly. While this approach is certainly valid, I suggest that it fails to take into account the extent to which Desai participated in a discourse on law and ethics that preceded him. Just as Thanvi opposed Indian Muslims’ political alignment with Hindus and calls for jihad during the late colonial period, Desai called for Muslims to resist the temptations of a structureless “jihad,” and one enacted, moreover, on behalf of non-Muslims. As much as it was—and remains—easy to malign such a view as retrogressive, it is also worth reiterating that Desai and other Deobandi scholars did not outwardly support apartheid; rather, they saw the realm of the political in general as one of dangerous worldly enchantments, particularly in a space ostensibly unmoored from the Shari‘a.
But Desai’s critics approached the very concept of the political from a different set of presuppositions and norms. Theirs was a “political Islam,” to be sure, but it was an Islamic politics unbound to the pursuit of a state. It was a praxis that saw a revolutionary potential in Islam that could be mobilized toward the very specific, highly local aims of Muslims in Cape Town. Praxis, as a reciprocity of theory and action, is what Desai could not tolerate, for in Desai’s (and Thanvi’s) view, the entire range of possible actions had already been worked out in the normative order derived from the Qur’an and the Sunna. Yet Muslim anti-apartheid activists were inspired by the Qur’an and Sunna, too, and found in them the basis for a normativity of a different kind. As Farid Esack wrote in 1984, “The idea that paradigms or models of Islamization can be worked out perfectly prior to us being plunged into action is alien to the sirah [biography] of the Holy Prophet Muhammad. They are worked out whilst we are involved. Indeed, they are the synthesis of our action and theological reflection.”131 This is what Matthew Palombo calls a dialogic relationship between a “theology of liberation” and the “liberation of theology.”132 It is a dynamic trinary of text, exegesis, and politics. Whereas Desai forecloses politics prior to, or in absence of, an Islamic state that can govern its application, his opponents see aspirations for statehood as irrelevant to the exercise of an Islamic politics.
It is essential to note, again, that not all Deobandis shared Desai’s politics, in South Africa or elsewhere. I do not intend to suggest that all, or even most, South African Deobandis outwardly opposed mass participation in anti-apartheid politics, let alone surmise that there is some inherent aversion to the political in the Deoband movement; there is no such thing. There are, of course, major activist currents in Deobandi thought. We have already noted Mahmud Hasan and Husain Ahmad Madani. Within the orbit of Hasan and Madani, other Deobandis took up the activist cause, most notably ‘Ubaidallah Sindhi (d. 1944), a Sikh convert to Islam who entered Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband in 1888 where he studied with Mahmud Hasan, who sent him to Kabul in 1915 to foment anticolonial revolution. Over the course of twenty-five years, Sindhi traveled between Afghanistan, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the Hijaz, being arrested for his work on mul
tiple occasions. At the same time, as Muhammad Qasim Zaman demonstrates, Sindhi’s position in the Deoband movement has been a tenuous one; he has been the object of incessant critique from within Deobandi circles. Still, his legacy, though ambivalent, remains very much vital.133 If Sindhi is the most well-known Deobandi activist after Hasan and Madani, there are still others. The Bengali activist and politician Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani (d. 1978) studied at Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband from 1907–9, was active in the Khilafat Movement and, later, the Muslim League. The crux of his legacy, however, was his political organization of peasants in Bengal and Assam.134
In South Africa, too, there were representatives of this activist strain in the Deoband movement. Maulvi Ismail Cachalia (d. 2003) studied at the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband from 1925 to 1931, and was active in anti-apartheid politics in the 1950s and ‘60s, serving as an advisor to Mandela and representing the African National Congress (ANC) at the Bandung Conference of 1955, a landmark event in the formation of Afro-Asian anticolonial alliances.135 But it is also debatable how much a figure like Cachalia represents the “Deoband movement.” As discussed in the introduction, studying at a Deobandi seminary does not necessarily make one a “Deobandi.” But it is clear, regardless, that there is nothing inherent in a Deobandi education, let alone in a madrasa education generally, that leads necessarily to political quietism. Farid Esack and Ebrahim Moosa, too, were both products of madrasas. Moosa studied at Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband and Nadwa al-‘Ulama, and Esack at Jami‘a ‘Alimiyya Islamiyya. Cachalia, Moosa, Esack, and others are reminders that Deobandi madrasas produce ‘ulama, first and foremost, only some of whom take up Deobandi critiques or become standard bearers for the Deobandi “brand.”
Most South African Deobandis were neither critics, like Desai, nor activists, like the figures I have just discussed. Most simply remained distant from the political fray. To take just one example, Yunus Patel (d. 2011) was a Deobandi Sufi-scholar who taught at a girls’ madrasa, Madrasa Sawlehaat, in Durban, where he also led a popular weekly majlis for the public and took on scores of Sufi disciples. Patel was inspired to study at Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband after meeting Qari Muhammad Tayyib during his visit to South Africa in 1963. He later became a Sufi successor (khalifa) to both Mahmud Hasan Gangohi and Muhammad Hakim Akhtar. Patel devoted his life to teaching Sufi ethics to his students and disciples. He wrote little beyond a handful of short pamphlets exploring Sufi themes, tailored to the needs of his audience. The point that I wish to make here is that Deobandis like Patel engaged with their audiences in a very different way than Desai, one far less “public.” Ironically, while he did not involve himself in overt critiques of apartheid, much of the pastoral care that Patel provided centered on improving the lives of Muslims who were apartheid’s victims. Violence and drug-use among Muslim youth were frequent themes of his majalis.136
I want to conclude this chapter by returning to the contested nature of Sufism and politics in the twilight of apartheid. Desai specifically, but to a large extent Deobandis generally, lost popular support in the Cape through their criticism of, and public confrontation with, other Muslims during the heyday of anti-apartheid activism, not just by refusing to mobilize against apartheid, but even by justifying that refusal to mobilize through Sufi vocabularies. At the same time, many Muslims not only mobilized against apartheid, but justified their mobilization through Sufi ritual practice. More broadly, these Muslims did not merely reject Deobandis’ critique of Sufism, but indeed, they rejected their very authority to lead. At the same time, despite calls by some during the apartheid era for “exporting” debate over mawlud and ‘urs back to the Indian subcontinent, these debates clearly remain deeply entrenched in Muslim public discourse in South Africa. If anything, debate over these contentious issues has expanded widely, incorporating new interlocutors and new vocabularies.
The story narrated here also suggests a certain historical irony: the Deobandi ‘ulama, who have been associated in the popular imagination with the jihad of the Taliban, rejected jihad in apartheid South Africa, whereas progressive Muslims, who in other contexts have critiqued jihad, called for jihad against apartheid. Put differently, certain South African Muslims mobilized Islamist language in support of one of the great struggles for human rights and dignity of the late twentieth century, whereas certain South African ‘ulama invoked Sufism to justify their detachment from this struggle and to criticize those who would, in their view, politicize Islam needlessly and irresponsibly.
At the very least, this reminds us of ways in which Sufism is an almost endlessly pliable discourse, used to justify anticolonial rebellion in one context and apolitical quietism in another. Thanvi’s, and Desai’s, Sufi politics recalls Francis Robinson’s ideal types of “otherworldly” and “this-worldly” Islam.137 In some sense, Thanvi and his spiritual descendants traversed the space between these two polarities. They sought to implement a project of ethical reform among a worldly public, beyond the madrasa and khanqah, but it remained a project that reminded Muslims at every step of the ultimate futility of worldly pursuits. In other words, they used “this-worldly” means to achieve otherworldly ends. Of course, as we have seen, not everyone accepted this agenda. And indeed, a sizable number of South Africans, living under apartheid, could not wait until the Day of Judgment for justice to prevail on the earth—or, at the very least, in Cape Town.
Conclusion
What is the fate of Sufism in the twenty-first century? And what might the Deoband movement have to do with it? So far this century has seen a torrent of violence unleashed against Sufis, Sufi shrines, and their devotees. Most recently, militants attacked a Sufi-affiliated mosque in the Sinai Peninsula on 24 November 2017, killing 311 people—the worst terrorist attack in Egyptian history. While no group ever claimed official responsibility, most signs pointed to the Islamic State, or ISIS. The Islamic State did claim responsibility for another attack, one that took place at a Coptic church in Cairo on Sunday, 11 December 2016—a date that, many were quick to note, coincided with celebrations of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (12 Rabi‘ al-Awwal) around the city.1
The Islamic State is bringing this hatred of Sufism to Pakistan, where recent attacks on Sufis and Sufi shrines bear the hallmarks of an increasingly global anti-Sufi campaign. From November 2016 to February 2017, the Islamic State waged a series of assaults on Sufi shrines across Pakistan, including attacks on the remote shrine known as Shah Noorani, in Balochistan, and the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, in Sindh, both killing dozens.2 In both cases, notably, the bomber targeted the shrine during the Thursday evening dhamal, a dance associated with the antinomian Qalandar Sufis of Sindh and Punjab.3 The Islamic State’s perpetration of attacks on Muslim devotional practice, of course, is limited neither to Pakistan, nor to saints’ shrines.
But long before the global rise of the Islamic State, the Pakistani Taliban had claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on Sufi shrines, dating at least to March 2009, when the tomb of the Pashtun poet Rehman Baba, outside Peshawar, was bombed during the poet’s ‘urs.4 In July of the following year, a bomb destroyed a sizable portion of the tomb of Lahore’s patron saint, Al-Hujwiri, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh.5 On 7 October 2010, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for two explosions that rocked the shrine of ‘Abdullah Shah Ghazi in Karachi.6 The bombers deliberately chose this day, a Thursday, because people gather at shrines on Thursdays at dusk to celebrate the beginning of jum‘a, the day of congregational prayer. Just a few months later, in April 2011, Taliban affiliates attacked the ‘urs celebration of Sakhi Sarwar in Dera Ghazi Khan. Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesperson for the TTP, indicated that it was revenge for a government offensive against the group.7
What responsibility does the Deoband movement have for these attacks? According to a 2010 Time magazine story, the Taliban attacks Sufis because it “deem[s] Sufism . . . a heresy,” which in turn has prompted Sufis, “typically nonviolent and politically quiescent,” to begin “preparing for battle.
”8 Even in academic studies, we are often simply told that the Taliban is “hostile to Sufism as well as the veneration of shrines and saints.”9 How accurate is this assumption? Let us focus for a moment on the Deobandi roots of the Taliban. If we want to know about these roots, we could do worse than to look closely at the madrasa that nurtured them, the Dar al-‘Ulum Haqqaniyya, in Akora Khattak, a small town in northwestern Pakistan. Indeed, Sami‘ al-Haq, the Dar al-‘Ulum Haqqaniyya’s director, once boasted that “nearly 90 percent of Taliban leadership graduated from Darul Uloom Haqqaniyya.”10
The Dar al-‘Ulum Haqqaniyya was founded in 1947 by Maulana ‘Abd al-Haq (d. 1988), who graduated from the Dar al-‘Ulum Deoband in 1933 or ’34. Upon ‘Abd al-Haq’s death in 1988, ‘Abd al-Haq’s son Sami‘ al-Haq was appointed chancellor of the Dar al-‘Ulum Haqqaniyya, a position he still holds today. The Dar al-‘Ulum Haqqaniyya’s six-volume collection of fatwas gives us a window onto how its scholars and muftis think about Sufism. In fact, there is very little to distinguish this collection from standard Deobandi positions. Like the Deoband movement as a whole, the Fatawa-yi Haqqaniyya regards Sufism as an essential part of Muslim piety. One fatwa substantiates the validity of the four major Sufi orders of the Indian subcontinent (Qadiri, Suhrawardi, Chishti, Naqshbandi).11 Another makes it clear that all Muslims must discipline the self (nafs)—something best done under the tutelage of a Sufi master, one who should be a scholar (‘alim), pious (mutaqqi), and an ascetic (zahid) in his sensibilities. One’s Sufi master should also be available for companionship (suhbat), and he must shun illicit innovations (bid‘at).12 Numerous fatwas, too, clarify Sufi meditative practices (zikr) and other spiritual techniques. The collection endorses a well-known Chishti zikr, known as zikr haddadi, with reference to the first Chishti manual on zikr.13 It assuages the doubts of one Muslim who wrote the Dar al-‘Ulum Haqqaniyya’s muftis to ask about the legal permissibility of the forty-day Sufi meditative retreat known as a chilla (Persian, “forty”). The practice is “permissible, without any doubt.”14
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