Defending Muhammad In Modernity

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In this groundbreaking study, SherAli Tareen offers the most comprehensive account of the longest running dispute in modern Islam: the Barelvi- Deobandi polemic. The Barelvi and Deobandi groups are two normative orientations with beginnings in colonial South Asia almost two hundred years ago, yet their differences haunt the religious sensibilities of South Asian Muslims even today.

Tareen challenges those who see intra-Muslim contest through the prism of liberal secular binaries like legal/mystical, moderate/extremist, and reformist/ traditionalist. He argues that the Barelvi-Deobandi polemic was animated by "competing political theologies-contrasting visions of the normative relationship between divine sovereignty, prophetic charisma, and the practice of everyday life. Based on a close reading of unexplored print and manuscript sources in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, his book marks a major intervention in the fields of Islamic Studies, South Asian Studies, and Political Theology.

‘’...beautifully written in a language accessible for students and colleagues. If you can only read three books on Islam in South Asia, Defending Muhammad in Modernity needs to be one of them" MARGRIT PERNAU, Max Planck Institute.

"No book offers a richer, more illuminating guide to the origins and the complex theological relationship of the Barelvi and the Deobandi orientations [a] remarkably accessible study MUHAMMAD QASIM ZAMAN, Princeton University.

“……..a major contribution to the literature on the history of Muslims (and Islam) in South Asia. The book is also noteworthy for its deep engagement with Urdu, Persian, and Arabic sources" DAVID GILMARTIN, North Carolina State University

SHERALI TAREEN is associate professor of religious studies at Franklin and Marshall College. He is co-editor of Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia.

The division between different Muslim groups in nineteenth-century North India has caught the attention of historians for a long time. Not only were Indian Muslims highly divergent in their social and economic status as well as in their daily experiences, but Islam itself, or at least what the actors saw as the correct, legitimate and hence universally valid interpretation of Islam, was contested to a degree that could lead opponents to no longer recognize each other as Muslims. Scholars have struggled to name these parties, let alone understand what was at stake. It was not a division between 'ulama' and Sufis-both sides were learned scholars, they often even referred to the same curriculum, and both were deeply embedded in the Sufi tradition. It was not a division between different Sufi orders, as multiple initiations were the rule rather than the exception. It was also not a division between reformers and traditionalists, as both sides acknowledged the need to reform the life of the Muslims of their time and to preserve or return to the authentic traditions.

Sher Ali Tareen presents a book that looks at these developments in a new way. Drawing on a deep knowledge of the theological and philo- sophical discourses of the Islamic tradition and on linguistic skills that allow him to access an archive in Urdu, Persian, and Arabic, he provides a detailed reading of two debates. The first, between Fazl-i Haqq Khay- rābādī and Shah Ismail, took place in Delhi in the first decades of the nineteenth century. While Fazl-i Haqq was known as one of the foremost ma'qulis of his time, an adherent of the tradition that was linked to both the recognition of the importance of reason ('aql) and Sufic practices, Shah Ismail was a scion of the Madrasa Rahimiyya, founded by Shah Wali Ullah, which emphasized the unique role of the holy texts in accessing the truth (mangulat). The second debate took place in the last de- cades of the century and opposed Ashraf All Thanvi, a prominent scholar from the Deoband tradition, who spent most of his life as the guardian of the Sufi shrine in Thana Bhavan, to Ahmad Raza Khan, the leading figure of the Barelvi tradition, who is known as much for his defense of Sufi traditions as for his voluminous fatwa collection.

Through the intellectual history of these four well-chosen individu- als (and those they interacted with), SherAli shows and explains the inner logic of their thinking, in detail and with a clarity that has rarely been achieved previously. Though debates like the one on the possibility of God creating a second Prophet Muhammad might appear to be no longer of interest to anyone except those wedded to theological intricacies of little relevance to other people, SherAli succeeds in showing what is at stake in this question for the authors, and how this debate can become a starting point through which to explore a whole cosmology and way of being in the world. These closeups are consistently related to a more distant perspective, in which he shows what the Barelvi-Deobandi polemics mean for our current debates on political theology, but also on sovereignty- divine sovereignty as well as the establishment and legitimation of the colonial state.

In September 2006, 'Abid 'All, an eighty-year-old man from the village of Aharaullah, around twelve miles from the town of Muradabad in North India, retook his marriage vows with his seventy-five-year-old wife of many decades, Asgeri 'Ali. A few weeks earlier, their marriage had been annulled because they, along with two hundred other people, were declared non-Muslim by a local Muslim cleric, 'Abdul Manan Karimi. Karimi made this radical pronouncement after he was informed about the circumstances in which these people had offered funeral prayers for a recently deceased elderly man in their village. There was nothing objectionable about participating in funeral prayers. However, in Karimi's view, these villagers had committed a grave sin by offering funeral prayers that were led by a cleric from a rival doctrinal orientation."

Karimi and the two hundred villagers he had cast outside the fold of Islam belonged to what is known as the Barelvi orientation of Sunni Islam. Abū Hāfiz Muhammad, the cleric who had led the funeral prayers, was affiliated with the archrival Deobandī orientation. On the day of the funeral, because the local prayer leader was away, Muhammad had stepped in as a substitute. For Karimi, praying behind a Deobandi cleric had rendered the faith of the villagers invalid. And with that, the marriages of the couples among them had dissolved. Karimi stipulated that the only way for them to get back together was to repent, profess their faith again, and then enter a new marriage contract. As he put it, "Re- pent, proclaim the testimony of faith, and get remarried" (Tawba karo, kalima parho, awr nikah parhwão). That is precisely what happened. In a public spectacle, over a hundred couples were remarried. A jubilant Karimi trumpeted, "These weddings were free of any pomp or celebrations. Only the requirement of the presence of two witnesses was fulfilled.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages