Sufism
is authentic Islam, and Islam is a religion of victory. Our Prophet was
victorious. Islam offers hope, hope for victory in the end despite all odds. If
we lose hope, we lose faith. As the saying goes, loss of hope leads to
infidelity. The Prophet explained this maxim beautifully when he said that if
one has a sapling in one’s hand and the Day of Judgment is just about to arrive,
one must still plant it. That is the spirit of hope in the face of trials that
Islam talks about. As a Muslim, I believe that trials come from God. Wahhabism
is one such trial, but, in the end, I know we shall triumph over it.
-- Sadia
Dehlvi
Based in New Delhi, Sadia Dehlvi is a noted
columnist who has written extensively on Islam, Sufism and Muslim-related
issues. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, she talks about
the need for articulating alternative narratives of Islam.
Q: Why is it that the public face of Islam is today associated
largely with the dry and literalist Wahhabi and Deobandi versions of it? Why
does the Sufi way of Islam appear to have given way before them?
A: It all began with the
discovery of oil in Arabia, which has really proven to be a curse for Muslims.
With its massive oil revenues, the Saudi state has sought to export its Wahhabi
version of what it calls Islam to Muslims all over the world as an instrument to
bolster the legitimacy of the Saudi regime, which lacks popularity in its own
country. This literalist, stern, authoritarian and radical and warped version of
Islam has been liberally funded, through setting up mosques, publishing houses
and other institutions, among Muslim communities across the world, including
India. In India and other Asian countries, Wahhabism has gained a big boost from
workers in the Gulf, many of who, during their stay there, have converted to
that ideology. All this has resulted in a growing attack on local Muslim
cultures and Sufi traditions, which the Wahhabis regard as un-Islamic. In many
countries, Saudi embassies also act as centres to promote or outsource
Wahhabism, funding local Wahhabi institutions, publications and
propagandists.
So, this is why the Wahhabi
version of Islam appears so publicly visible today. Yet, it is crucial to note
that the silent majority of Muslims are not Wahhabi at all. Most Muslims are
still associated with Sufi traditions in some way or the other, which I regard
as authentic Islam. Even in Saudi Arabia itself, the Wahhabis have not been able
to stamp out Sufism, particularly in the more cultured Hijaz area, in contrast
to the Najd, which is where the Wahhabis originate
from.
The Wahhabis prohibit other
Muslims from praying the way they want to in Mecca and Medina. In these two
cities, they have destroyed numerous monuments associated with the Prophet, his
family and his companions, as if they are the owners of these places. They want
to destroy the whole 1400 year-old Muslim tradition itself. The whole trajectory
of Wahhabism is rooted in hatred and violence. The alliance between the mullahs
of the Wahhabi Al-e Shaikh and the rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Al-e Saud, is
like the oppressive nexus between the Christian Church and the monarchy in
medieval Europe. It is proving to be a curse for
Muslims.
Q: But, if as you say, most Muslims are not Wahhabis, or are in fact
opposed to Wahhabism, how has Wahhabism managed to get such support? Why have
Muslims associated with Sufi forms of Islam not spoken out or opposed the
Wahhabis?
A: This has, in part, to do with
the fact that, unlike the Wahhabis, the followers of Sufism are not
well-organised. They don’t have massive funds at their disposal, unlike the
Wahhabis. In contrast to them, they are not combative. They don’t go out and
preach and demand that other Muslims accept their way of understanding Islam,
which is what the Wahhabis do. They are moderates, and believe in moderation,
not in aggressively converting others to their way of thinking. They don’t brand
other Muslims as apostates and condemn them as wrong. They just let you be the
way you are. This is because they believe that it is for God to guide people if
He wills.
Another reason why the Sufis are
not so publicly visible today is because the Sufi khanqahs or hospices,
which were for centuries centres of instruction and spiritual training, have
largely disappeared. All that remains now are dargahs or Sufi shrines
that today largely function as centres of mediation, where people go in the hope
of having their requests met from God through the agency of the buried
saints.
Q: So, would you say the Sufis are fighting a losing battle against
their Wahhabi and other detractors?
A: No, not at all. Sufism is
authentic Islam, and Islam is a religion of victory. Our Prophet was victorious.
Islam offers hope, hope for victory in the end despite all odds. If we lose
hope, we lose faith. As the saying goes, loss of hope leads to infidelity. The
Prophet explained this maxim beautifully when he said that if one has a sapling
in one’s hand and the Day of Judgment is just about to arrive, one must still
plant it. That is the spirit of hope in the face of trials that Islam talks
about. As a Muslim, I believe that trials come from God. Wahhabism is one such
trial, but, in the end, I know we shall triumph over
it.
Today, especially in the West,
there is an enormous interest in Sufism. There are new Sufi masters who are
attracting vast numbers of seekers. Many of them have a strong presence on the
Internet and so have a global audience. Unfortunately, the media does not
highlight this fact, and also the fact that the vast majority of Muslims are not
radical Wahhabis. Just because they are loud, aggressive and violent, the media
tends to focus on these radicals as spokesmen of Islam, which gives both Islam
and Muslims a bad name.
Q: But isn’t it a fact that popular Sufism is itself seen by growing
numbers of Muslims as superstitious and corrupt? Many custodians of the shrines
of the Sufis are known to make a living out of pilgrims.
A: What you say is true, but
then corruption is today endemic in every sphere of society. There are, needless
to say, scores of fake Sufis, but this does not mean that real Sufis do not
exist. About the allegation that popular Sufism is rife with un-Islamic
superstitions and practices, there is some truth in this argument, but many
practices that the detractors of Sufism brand as un-Islamic are actually, to the
Sufis, beneficial innovations orbiddat-e hasana. These cannot be
dismissed, as the Wahhabis so easily do, as ‘un-Islamic’ and as ‘wrongful
innovations’ (biddat-e sayah).
The Wahhabis have a very narrow
and literalist understanding of biddat, condemning 1400 years of Muslim
scholarship, spiritualism, culture, poetry, philosophy, and art as ‘un-Islamic’.
They go so far as to brand the great Sufis, who were flowers in the garden of
Islam, as heretics. They want to impose an Arabised culture, based on tribal
Bedouin traditions, in the name of Islam and to totally destroy the beauty of
Muslim civilization, branding all this as biddat and, therefore, as
un-Islamic. For them, the soul-stirring, God-inspired verses of Rumi or Sadi are
undistilled heresy. As far as I am concerned, I regard Wahhabism as a heresy and
as nothing to do with Islam at all.
Q: Historically, Islam has been able to spread outside the Arab world
because it accommodated itself to local cultural milieus. With what you call
their extremely narrow understanding of biddat and their stern opposition
to Ajami or non-Arab cultural traditions, what implications does Wahhabism have
for the universal appeal of Islam?
A: In contrast to how the
Wahhabis perceive it, Islam is all about cultural diversity. It is like a river
that flows and whose tributaries rush to join during the course of its travels.
It is an undeniable fact that the world of Ajam—the non-Arab Muslim world—has
played a much more important role in the development of Muslim culture and
philosophy than the Arab Bedouins. One of the reasons for the vibrancy of Islam
historically has been its capacity to express itself in multiple local cultural
forms and milieus and to find God therein, for the light of God, as the Sufis
say, is present in every particle of His creation. So, Muslims in India
expressed their devotion to and search for God in soul-stirring qawwalis,
and African Muslims did the same by playing drums and singing hymns. For their
part, the Wahhabis condemn all this as biddat, as un-Islamic, thereby
seeking to seriously limit the universal appeal of Islam and its ability to
adjust to different cultural contexts. This goes completely against the 1400
year-old tradition of Islam.
Sufis also appreciate the fact
of religious pluralism as the will of God, which is why they had such a powerful
appeal even for many non-Muslims. This is also why it was the Sufis who were the
principal agency for the spread of Islam. In contrast, the dry, literalist,
Arabised version of Islam that Wahhabism represents is wholly hostile to
pluralism, to people of other faiths, whom it exhorts upon Muslims to demean, to
war against and to subjugate. Naturally, Wahhabism, in complete contrast to
Sufism, can hold no appeal whatsoever to non-Muslims, and can only lead them
even further away from Islam.
Q: In contrast to Sufism, Wahhabism appears to be fixated with the
nitty-gritty of legal injunctions and hair-splitting discussions about them.
This is also true of the Deobandis. Do you feel that this overwhelming focus
with legalism and legal literalism somehow negates the spiritual inner core of
the message of Islam, the more jamali or ‘beautiful’ aspects such as
love, compassion, gentleness, these being replaced by harshness and a very
punitive approach?
A: There is a saying of the
Prophet that God is Beauty and likes what is beautiful. Throughout the
centuries, Islamic scholars have warned people not to engage beyond the required
limits with legal issues because it might blind them to the other, spiritual
aspects of Islam. In contrast to this, the Islam of the legalists is dry,
inflexible and devoid of beauty, love and compassion. It is concerned only with
the law and punishment. This is a reflection of the culture of the illiterate
desert Bedouins, the backbone of Wahhabism when it emerged, who had no literary
tradition, and who were obsessed with the external (zahir) dimensions
while neglecting completely the inner or esoteric (batin) dimensions of
the faith.
I think it has now become
crucial for us to highlight alternative narratives of Islam in order to
challenge the monopolistic claims of the Wahhabis and other such
groups.
Q: Highlighting what you call alternative narratives of Islam is what
you are trying to do with your regular appearances on various TV channels as
well as your recently-published and widely acclaimed book, Sufism: The Heart
of Islam. As someone who is not a madrasa-trained scholar, and a woman at
that, how do the ulema react to you speaking about and interpreting about Islam?
Are you accused of attempting a task which, they might argue, you are not
qualified for?
A: I must say that the Indian
Muslim ulema whom I have interacted with—and these include Deobandis and
Ahl-e Hadith maulvis, whose aqidah or religious beliefs I do not share,
have, on the whole, treated me with considerable respect. They know that I, too,
respect them, and that I come from a point of view of faith. I do condemn the
Wahhabi ideology, but I never speak against the Deobandi or Ahl-e
Hadith ulema, the latter being even closer to classical Wahhabism than
the former. I believe in the principle that your faith is yours and mine is
mine, , as articulated in the Quran. There can be no compulsion in religion, for
God guides whom he will. They realize that I am able to talk about Islam and
articulate Muslim concerns and views in the media, and they respect me for this.
I have never used terms such as ‘mullah Islam’, which some ultra-secularist
Muslims do in order to dismiss the ulema altogether, treating them as
their foes.
We must refrain from
stereotyping the ulema in this manner, and of approaching them from a position
of arrogance or antagonism. After all, Muslims need the ulema, who have spent
many years of their precious lives studying the Quran and the Hadith, teaching
it to Muslims, and carrying on with the tradition of Muslim learning. I cannot
do without the ulema myself. A maulvi sahib comes regularly to my house to teach
my son to read the Quran. When I die, I hope a maulvi sahib will come to pray
for the salvation of my soul.
In this regard, I would also
like to say that it is completely baseless to claim, as some do, that the Indian
ulema are creating terror or training terrorists in their madrasas. There is no
truth in this allegation. It is true that I, like many other Muslims, might
differ from them on certain views and beliefs, but we must understand that we
all are victims of our own circumstances and that we all have a concern for the
community at heart. All of us, including myself, have our own limitations, and
the ulema are no exception to this rule. They, like the rest of us, may be
limited in their understanding of various issues, but I have always held them in
respect. We must also acknowledge the positive things that some of them are
doing. For instance, I am not a Deobandi, but I certainly welcome the
much-needed fatwa issued by the Deoband madrasa condemning all forms of
terrorism, including in the name of Islam, as
un-Islamic.
My point, therefore, is that we
should seek to engage with the ulema instead of shunning them. This task is
crucial if efforts to articulate alternative narratives of Islam are to succeed
and gain general acceptance among Muslims. We need to learn much from the ulema
at the same time as we need to sensitize them to the changed demands and
conditions of today, to the needs of the community, to the need to creatively
and positively interact with the media. We have to look at ourselves and at the
ulema as co-seekers, who might both have something to learn from each other. We
have to think of how we can evolve a common minimum programme along with them,
despite the fact that we may not agree with their views and beliefs on a range
of issues.
Q: When you speak of the need to articulate alternative narratives of
Islam, what exactly do you mean?
A: By this I mean the need to
articulate the legacy of 1400 years of classical Islam, or Sufism, what
is called ‘tazkiya’ orpurification of the sell. It is a discipline
that which the literalists want to wipe out. It is the Islam of the silent
majority of Muslims, even today. It is an Islam of moderation. I am happy to
call myself a ‘moderate Muslim’, even if that label sounds jarring to some ears.
After all, according to Islam the ummah of Muslims is the ummatan
wasatan or the ‘moderate community’, the ‘community of the middle
path’. Islam teaches us to be moderate in everything: in what we eat, what we
earn, what we spend, how much to pray, how we relate to people of other faiths,
and so on. Extremism and extremists, therefore, have no place in Islam. It is a
fact that the vast majority of Muslims are moderates, and extremists like the
Wahhabis are only a fringe, though loud and aggressive,
minority.
So, articulating alternative
narratives of Islam means to articulate this vision of the moderate Muslim
majority. I think for this task to really take off, it is important for
middle-class, modern-educated Muslims to also be engaged in it, and not to leave
the task of studying, interpreting and articulating Islam simply to the
traditional, conservative ulema. But at the same time, this should not be a mere
academic exercise. Those engaged in promoting these alternative discourses of
Islam must also live these discourses in their own
lives.
Q: If, as you say, the moderates are really the majority among
Muslims, why does the media tend to depict the radical fringe minority as
representing Islam and Muslims?
A: I have already dealt with
this question, but let me add that this media projection of the radical
obscurantists as spokesmen of Islam also has to do with globalization and the
globalised media. The image of Islam as synonymous with Wahhabi hate and
radicalism was aggressively promoted by George Bush, when he was the American
President, and by the largely Jewish-controlled American media. The Saudi
regime, despite Wahhabism’s abhorrence for non-Muslims, is thoroughly
pro-America and depends on America for its survival. So there has been this
nexus between the American establishment, the Jewish-controlled media and the
Saudi Wahhabi state. The American media aggressively sought to project the image
of Islam and Muslims as the new enemy, an enemy driven by hatred and violence.
Given its global reach, it succeeded in influencing global opinion. Following
its lead, large sections of the Indian media, too, began toeing its line on
Islam and Muslims.
There is also the factor to
consider that radicals provide the media with the sound-bites that it craves
for. They actually cater to the media and so the media highlights them. They
trigger off debates that the media laps up but which embarrass Muslims and give
them a bad image. That is why the silent, moderate Muslim majority is almost
completely invisibilised in the media.
That said, one cannot absolve
Muslims of their responsibility in this regard. We can’t keep blaming others,
including the media, for our predicament. There is an almost total lack of
creative intellectual discourse among Muslims, at least in India, which has
allowed the Wahhabis and other obscurantists to claim to speak for them and for
Islam as well. Muslims are not good communicators any more. We have failed to
exemplify, in our own lives, the true message and values of Islam, the values
that the Sufi saints, for instance, exemplified. I mean, if you go about blowing
up buses and then claim Islam is a religion of peace, you cannot seriously
expect anyone to believe you.
Muslims have to learn to
introspect. I am sad that not enough of this is happening. We cannot, as I just
said, keep blaming others for our problems, for our bad image in the media. We
have to see where we have gone wrong, to examine what is wrong with our
discourse, with our way of understanding our faith.
That said, I think we also need
to understand that Muslims across the world do have genuine complaints. They
suffer from a general sense of humiliation, of being despised, of suffering at
the hands of others, as in Palestine and Iraq, and of living under brutal
dictators in Muslim lands who have no popular legitimacy but who survive simply
because of American backing.
Q: I accept what you said earlier about the need to respect and
engage with the ulema, but why, then, have you so openly spoken against the
Muslim televangelist Zakir Naik and his Peace TV channel?
A: I make a total distinction
between the ulema, on the one hand, and people like Zakir Naik, on the other.
Zakir Naik is no alim. Even the ulema would refuse to consider him as
such. No ulema in India regard him as an authoritative teacher. I have great
problems with the Wahhabi ideology that Zakir Naik and his television station
are propagating. He is totally against Sufism, for one thing. His selling point
is his memory, his ability to quote line and verse from the Quran, the Bible,
the Gita and so on, and this is what mesmerizes his viewers. I think the
ideology that he is propagating is very dangerous, and could lead to radical,
confrontationist and extremist tendencies. I also detest the way he runs down
other religions, which causes his audience to exult and clap. This is not the
Islamic approach to deal with other faiths and their adherents. The Prophet and
the Sufis never did anything of this sort. They related to others with love and
compassion.
Nor is his the sunnat or
Prophetic way of interacting with non-Muslims. The Prophet welcomed a group of
Christians to the mosque in Medina and allowed them to pray, in their own way,
therein. The Christians did not accept Islam and left, but the Prophet never
harangued them or threatened them that they would go to hell for this. He simply
offered the Christians the message of Islam, and left it to them to accept or
not, without condemning them, for he knew that it was for God to guide them if
He willed. The contrast with Zakir Naik is really stark in this regard. I am
appalled that his followers treat his programmes more like an achievement show.
An assembly of the righteous should bring forth tears from the eyes and the
heart, not applause. The Quran is not something you hear and clap. You should
be moved to weep at its recitation.
Q: What do you think could be done to improve media images about
Islam and Muslims?
A: I think, as I said earlier,
articulating alternative narratives about Islam, rooted in compassion, love and
mercy, is really crucial in this regard. And these narratives should be
articulated through the media.
But, let me say that there are also serious limits to what Muslim
organizations can do in this regard. Creating a media image of a religion or a
community is not something that can be stage-managed. You have to exemplify that
image in our own life, you have to believe in it and, in fact, you have to be
that changed image yourself. The Quran sets the highest ideals possible in a
society. Mulims have to exemplify the message of the Quran in their daily lives
to bring about a change in people’s perceptions of Islam. . Simply talking it in
the media is not going to change others’ perceptions of you if you do not live
by those values yourself. You cannot pretend to be what you are not. You cannot
pretend to be the media image that you want projected if you do not yourself
embody and exemplify that image, as a person, as a community, because, sooner or
later, your claim will be exposed. Islam teaches that compassion is one of the
attributes of God, and unless you have compassion and relate to others
compassionately, no amount of insisting on the media that Islam is a religion of
compassion will convince people of your claims.
As Islam teaches, all that is
not true will, ultimately, perish and only what is true shall remain. So, my
point is that to change media images of Muslims we Muslims have to be true to
the authentic values of Islam—love, mercy, compassion and so on—and to embody
them in our own lives. If this is absent, no amount of preaching or protest or
media networking will make any difference to others’ perceptions about Islam and
Muslims.
Sadia Dehlvi can be contacted on
sadiafeedback@gmail.com
9:49 PM
Sultan Shahin
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