Muslim clerics slam jihadi ideology

It is a sad commentary on the conformism of our times that Muslim clerics, and not our voluble secular liberals, have taken on Wahhabism, the most virulent form of Islam. Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kachochavi, general secretary of the All-India Ulama & Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), a Sufi sect, recently said at a public meeting in Moradabad, “Hamey Wahhabiyon ka na Immamat kabool hai, na kayadat Kabul (We reject the religious and political leadership of Wahabis).”
He thundered, “If anyone knocks on your door with the message of extremism, hand him over to the nearest police station.” He hit the nail on its head, for Wahhabism wants to freeze time in the seventh century, at least for the Muslims all over the world. It was propounded by a theologian, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), from Najd in what is now Saudi Arabia. The movement strives to purge Islam of all impurities and innovations.
Wahhabism is the official version of Islam in Saudi Arabia. It is the ideology that inspires al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the countless other terrorist organizations.
Wahhabism got a big fillip when petroleum exports made the Arabian Peninsula and other Muslim countries rich. Saudi petrodollars in particular financed a number of schools, seminaries, and mosques as well as social programmes in the entire world. Thanks to the inveterate misogyny and limitless intolerance of Wahhabism, the consequences were catastrophic for Muslim women, pluralism, and liberalism in the Islamic world and elsewhere.
Kachochavi was right when he said, “About 100 years ago, Sunni Muslims in India had rejected the Wahabis. After Independence, however, the Wahhabis expanded their influence through political backing. While we remained away from government and politics, Wahhabis gained control over institutions dealing with minority affairs, including the wakf board and the Muslim Personal Law Board.”
AIUMB spokesperson Syed Babar Ashraf pointed out that while four out of five Indian Muslims believe in the Sunni Sufi tradition, the Wahhabis have control over just 13-14 per cent of the community. “But a large section of the Urdu press has boycotted us. They are controlled by hardliners.”
Terming the outfits like Deoband, Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind, and Ahl-e-Hadees as Wahhabi-inspired bodies, he said, “They are funded by petro-dollars and aim to grab political power.”
The Sufi conclave got the full support of Islamic scholar Sultan Shahin: “It is for the first time that mainstream Ulema have come out so strongly against Wahabism which is slowly but determinedly spreading in this country.” According to him, “Islam spread in India through the Sufi saints. But all that changed with the infusion of Saudi petrodollars. For me the most worrying example is Pakistan. Everything that happened there a decade ago is happening here today.”
Faizur Rahman, secretary-general of the Forum for the Promotion of Moderate Thought Among Muslims, also reacted in a similar fashion. “There are books of fatwas written by Saudi clerics which contain such abhorrent ruling as those that declare a Muslim who does not pray five times to be a ‘kafir’ and say that he must be killed and ‘buried outside the graveyards of the Muslims’ if he does not repent.”
But the most retrograde sections among the Muslim community were rattled by the statements made by the AIUMP leaders. Darul Uloom rector Maulana Qasim Nomani lashed out at both the AIUMB and the English press for giving good coverage to the Sufi event. “Why did the English media front-page this news?” he asked.
Unsurprisingly, the Urdu press practically boycotted the Sufi event, but prominently displayed the reactions of Nomani. What is regrettable is that it is not only orthodox and narrow-minded people who have thrown their weight behind Wahhabism; even those who are expected to fight the fundamentalist ideology are actually supporting it. Consider the case of Mujtaba Khan, a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, a publicly funded institution. Its faculty is supposed to uphold such cherished principles of Indian Republic as freedom of religion, equality of women, and modernity. But what does Khan believe in?
According to him, “the contributions of Wahabi/Deobandi movements in extricating Muslim youth from many customs forbidden in Islam cannot be simply glossed over.” He is actually saying that the reaction against any sort of modernization is good; so, there is nothing wrong if acid is thrown on a Muslim woman who does not dress properly; it is also proper that those using religious freedom to go beyond the literal interpretation of Koran are treated shabbily; it is also in the fitness of things that homosexuals, apostates, etc., are killed.
Intellectuals like Khan try to downplay or overlook the bigotry of such Wahhabi-inspired organizations. A recent instance of their bigotry was the demand by Darul Uloom Deoband for a ban on the followers of Ahmadiya sect to perform Haj. In a letter to the King of Saudi Arabia, the seminary urged him to act against the Ahmadiyas, also known as Qadianis.
It is not just Muslim luminaries like Khan but almost the entire intellectual class of India that refuse to see the evil of Wahhabism and the resultant Islamic terror. They are loath to take on the jihadis for the fear of being dubbed as ‘communal’ or fanatical. So, ironically, now Muslim clerics are fighting the jihadi ideology.