Is this Islam? Could this be the Islam of Prophet Mohammad, who was sent as a blessing for mankind? Could Islam convert a British-born into a mass killer of his own people, ploughing a car into innocent pedestrians, as happened this week in a London attack on British Parliament?
Questions like this are asked every time there is an Islamist terrorist outrage. This question was asked recently in India when a young radicalised Muslim, Saifullah was killed in Lucknow, preferring what he called “martyrdom” to life, despite hours-long pleadings of his brother as well as a cleric and other elders. The same question was put in an even more poignant scene by a lady in Peshawar, crying over the blood-spattered dead bodies of her school-going children in December 2014. The proud killers of 132 innocent children and scores of female teachers were the Pakistan Taliban, students of Islamic madrasas, supposedly well-versed in the teachings of Islam. The Taliban claim to kill in the name of Islam. They claim to glorify Islam by doing so. They believe they are trying to establish the sovereignty of Allah over the world. So, the question is inevitable. Is this Islam, indeed?
Only a fortnight ago, I was forced to ask this question in a slightly different mode. Is this pure Islam or true Islam, as Salafis, Wahhabis claim? Not for the first, nor for the last time, to be sure, over hundred devotees of Sufi saint Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sindh, Pakistan, had been killed in the name of what Salafi-Wahhabis consider true, pure Islam. Salafi-Wahhabis abhor Sufism, because they believe that Sufi practices resemble pre-Islamic polytheistic Hindu traditions. Any Muslim who strays from the path of what Salafis consider true Islam is an apostate and deserves to be killed. The murderer has been brainwashed by the Wahhabi ulema into believing that he can be assured of a place in heaven if he kills apostates and kuffars.
So there are questions galore. But no real answers. The Sufism-oriented Ulema and Mashaikh in India and the Sahel region of Africa are becoming more and more vociferous in denouncing Wahhabism-Salafism. No doubt Islamist terrorism is a result of the indoctrination of sections of Muslims by the Wahhabi-Salafi ulema around the world. This has been possible owing to the induction of tens of billions of Saudi petrodollars over the last 40 years. Even after 9/11, in which 16 of the 19 terrorists were products of the Saudi education system, the West has allowed Saudi Arabia to continue spending billions in the propagation of an extremist, desiccated version of Islam, shorn of all its beauty and benevolence.
So it is good that the Sufi ulema, under attack from Wahhabi militants, are coming out to denounce the Salafi understanding of Islam. But is this enough? Do they not need to ask why it’s Salafis who are winning this ideological war? Have the Sufi ulema been able to bring back to the Sufi fold even a single Islamist terrorist? After all, all the terrorists of today, at least from the South Asian and African Sahel region were part of a Sufism-oriented Islam until recently. Wahhabism existed mainly in the Arab regions. There were very few Salafis anywhere else. The easy availability of petrodollars for the propagation of Salafism has certainly played an important role. But can money alone bring about this kind of transformation? Why is the Sufi counter-narrative not effective enough to make a difference?
Writing in this space, almost exactly a year ago, I had made an earnest appeal to the Sufi Ulema and Mashaikh gathering in Delhi for an international conference. I had asked them to go beyond the usual shibboleths and utilise this great opportunity to consider this most urgent question: why is the Sufi focus on positives of Islam not working? The more Sufis and other moderate Muslims denounce terrorism, the more followers this Satanic ideology finds. I had pointed out the basic reason behind this conundrum: the radical theology of violence and exclusion, and the current theology of consensus of all the ulema, including the Sufi ulema, are by and large one and the same. Any differences are cosmetic. ISIS and other terrorist organisations may be militarily defeated tomorrow, but the problem of radicalisation and violent extremism in Islam will still remain. Islam supremacism, xenophobia, intolerance and exclusivism as well as gender inequality are inherent in the current Islamic, including Sufi, theology. It is this that should concern us most.
I had an opportunity on the eve of that last March’s conclave in Delhi to meet Maulana Tahirul Qadri, a Sufi-Barelvi scholar from Pakistan, renowned for his 600-page fatwa against Islamist terrorism. I asked him two questions. One: are Holy Quran’s war-time instructions still applicable in the 21st century, though we could not be possibly fighting 7th century wars? His answer: All of them are applicable to us for ever. My second question was: By quoting a profusion of Ahadith (plural of Hadith) in your presentation, and considering them akin to revelation, are you weakening Abubakr Al Baghdadi’s teachings, which he claims is largely based on Ahadith, or strengthening it? He remained silent.
It is such thinking on the part of all our ulema, of whatever school of thought, that must change, if we are going to fight violent extremism in Islam. Sufi fulminations against Wahhabism-Salafism are of little use until the core of their theologies remains the same. It is sheer escapism to quote peaceful, pluralistic verses of Quran and teach in a madrasa books like Tafsir-e-Jalalain, which say that these verses have been abrogated by later war-time verses asking believers to kill the kafir wherever they are found.
The fact is the battlefield exhortations were meant for a particular situation and do not apply to us anymore. Similarly, many Ahadith were concocted to justify imperialist, expansionist wars fought by monarchical, dynastic khalifas, all in the name of the Religion of Peace, Islam. It is irrational to call them akin to revelation. The same holds true of Sharia that was first codified 120 years after the demise of the Prophet and has been changing since from time to time and place to place. It simply cannot be considered divine. Such aspects that are interpreted as the consensus core theology of Islam constitute the root of the problem.
Clearly, the moderate ulema, from whichever sect, must realise the need to introspect deeply and honestly and go far beyond their present positions, if they are serious about rescuing Islam from extremism. This should not be a sectarian endeavour. There are hundreds of millions of Muslims in all sects who want to live in peace and favour pluralism. They all need to get together and brainstorm.
Sultan Shahin is the Founding Editor of a Delhi-based progressive Islamic website, NewAgeIslam.com. He can be reached at sultan.shahin@gmail.com