Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
Sufis, Scholars and
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World capegoats
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Seminary
Scapegoats: Rashid Ahmad
Gangohi (d. 1905) and
the Deobandi Critique
of Sufism
Brannon Ingram
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill, North Carolina
T
he Deoband madrasa of north India is arguably the most intellectually
influential and historically consequential center of Islamic learning
outside of the Middle East. Founded in 1867 in the wake of a failed
revolt against British rule a decade earlier, the Deoband madrasa aimed to
reassert Muslim intellectual prominence amidst a sharp decline in Islamic
political power in the Indian subcontinent. While the mission of Deoband in
its nascent stages was tailored to the needs of Muslims in nineteenth-century
north India, today the Deobandi curriculum has been copied or adapted by
thousands of madrasas in countries throughout the world, ranging from
Pakistan to Bangladesh, from Malaysia to South Africa and the United
Kingdom. In recent years, some journalists and scholars have noted that some
Taliban have studied in Deobandi institutions, bringing madrasas in general
and Deoband in particular under close scrutiny.1 Despite this sudden attention
lavished on Deoband in various media, both its founding figures and
contemporary global scope remain woefully understudied in European
and American academies.
Cautioning against the facile placement of Deoband under the rubrics
of ‘fundamentalism’ or ‘Islamism’, Barbara Metcalf identifies Deoband as an
example of “traditionalist” activism that sets it apart from other forms of Islamic
© 2009 Hartford Seminary.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148 USA.
478
Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
activism, such as that of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt or the Jamaat-i
Islami of Pakistan.2 Deobandis typically do not espouse a global political
agenda or operate within the framework of the nation-state; rather, they
advocate the continuous fashioning of moral selves through study of the
classical sources of Islamic knowledge and a rigorous adherence to the
sunna of the Prophet Muhammad.
It is ironic that Deobandis have been among the most vociferous critics
of Sufism, as Sufism is historically the preeminent source in Islam of the very
interior self-formation that they have advocated. Many of Deoband’s early
figures, who leveled some of the most trenchant critiques of Sufism, were
themselves Sufis. How has Deoband negotiated a critique of Sufism while
thoroughly embedded within Sufi discourses of the Indian subcontinent?
This paper provides one perspective on this question by examining the
writings of a seminal figure of the Deoband school, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi
(1829–1905), focusing on his collection of his legal responsa ( fatawa, sing.
fatwa) in Urdu, the Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya. I begin by examining how the
British presence in the nineteenth century changed the context for the
implementation of Islamic legal norms and thus altered the way that fatawa
were understood and issued by muftis like Gangohi. Next, I will provide some
perspectives on reformist critiques of Sufism prior to Gangohi, primarily in the
movement of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (1786 –1831) and in the writings of that
movement’s propagandist, Shah Muhammad Isma‘il (1779 –1831), and identify
how Gangohi adapted the latter’s ideas to his own programme of reform.
Finally, I will look at his collection of fatawa related to Sufism, in particular
his fatawa regarding shrine-based practices, and will draw his own thought
into relief by contrasting his writings on shrine-based Sufism with that of his
revered Sufi master, Hajji Imdadullah Muhajir al-Makki (1817–1899), from
whom Gangohi departed in myriad ways. Finally, lest the title of this paper
give the impression that there was a single, unified ‘Deobandi critique of
Sufism’, I stress at the outset that the Deobandi movement, to the extent that
it has been a coherent ‘movement’ at all, has encompassed a wide spectrum
of attitudes towards Sufism, ranging from outright rejection to cautious
embrace. I offer Gangohi’s perspective as one among many, but one singled
out by Gangohi’s immense stature within Deoband and his impact on the
movement’s origins.
Born in 1829 in the North Indian qasbah of Gangoh, Rashid Ahmad
Gangohi was a Sufi of the Indian Chishti order.3 He went to Delhi in his youth
to study hadith with Shah ‘Abd al-Ghani (d. 1868).4 Both Gangohi and the
co-founder of Deoband, Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi (1833–1877), studied
Sufism at the feet of Hajji Imdadullah.5 According to one source, Gangohi
progressed from the status of murid to khalifa in a mere forty days, after
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The Muslim World • Volume 99 • July 2009
which he returned to Gangoh where he sought to eliminate devotional
practices at the tomb of his ancestor, the Sufi saint Shaykh ‘Abd al-Quddus
Gangohi (d. 1537).6 According to some sources, he fought alongside his master
Imdadullah at Shamli during the 1857 revolt, spent six months in a British jail,
and began a career teaching hadith after his release.7 Although not officially
involved with Deoband until 1879, when he became chancellor (sarparast),
from the outset Gangohi was intimately involved with shaping the mission and
curriculum of the school, insisting on rigorous studies in the ‘revealed’ sciences
(manqulat) and deemphasizing the ‘rational’ sciences (ma“qulat), such as logic
and philosophy.8
In the aftermath of the abortive revolt against the British, many of
Imdadullah’s students retreated from political activity and looked to rebuild the
Muslim body politic from within, indicting popular practices surrounding
the tombs of Indian Sufi masters as a source of bid “a, practices thought to
contravene the prophetic sunna. This is the framework in which we must
locate Gangohi’s Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya. His collection of fatawa reveals
the extent to which Sufism was an ongoing point of contention for the
Deobandis; nearly half deal directly with ritual aspects of Sufism: reciting
pious ‘remembrances’ (dhikr) of God aloud, visiting saints’ tombs (ziyarat),
visualizing one’s shaykh (tasawwur-i shaykh) as a meditative practice,
celebrating the death anniversary (“urs) of a saint, creating and using
protective amulets (ta“widh), reciting the Fatihah at certain occasions, listening
to musical assemblies (sama“ ), and so on. His judgments concerning long and
well-entrenched Indian Sufi traditions did not emerge in a vacuum; rather,
the political fate of the Muslims in eighteenth and nineteenth century India
and its impact on the institutions of Islamic law are inseparable from the
creation of Sufism as a moral scapegoat.
Islamic Law after British Dominance
After 1765, when the East India Company was granted the status of a
“Diwan of the Mughal Emperor” and acquired control over tax collection in
Bengal, Bihar and Orissa, the context for the practice of Islamic law began
to change dramatically.9 In 1772 the Regulating Act of the British East India
Company determined that in “civil” matters of law, the judicial system would
adhere to the “law of the Koran with respect to Mahomedans.”10 However,
because the Company regarded Indian muftis and qadis to be fickle and
unreliable, they followed the advice of William Jones (d. 1794) in seeking to
create a “complete Digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws” that would render
the “Pandits and Maulavis” superfluous.11 Effectively, the British sought to
recast the institution of Islamic law in India in the image of British common
law, relying principally on ‘canonical’ texts rather than the face-to-face context
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Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
in which Muslim qadis typically made legal decisions. For their purposes, the
Hédaya of Marghinani formed almost the sole foundation of what the British
called “Anglo-Muhammadan law”. In the introduction to his 1791 translation
of the Hédaya, Charles Hamilton posited, at once, the immutability of
Islamic law’s textual sources and the fickle caprice of the Muslim jurists
who interpret it:
[I]t is impossible, in the infinite variety of human affairs, that the text of
the KORAN, or the traditionary precepts of the Prophet, would extend
to every particular case, or strictly suit all possible emergencies. Hence
the necessity of Mooftees, whose particular office it is to compound the
law and apply it to cases. The uncertainty of this science, in its judicial
operation, is unhappily proverbial in all countries. In some, which enjoy
the advantage of an established legislature, competent at all times to
alter or amend, to make or revoke laws, as the change of manners
may require, or incidental occurrences render necessary, this uncertainty
arises pretty much from the unavoidable mutability in the principles
of decision. Of the Mussulman code, on the contrary, the principles are
fixed; and being intimately and inseparably blended with the religion of
the people, must remain so, as long as they shall endure.12
As Scott Kugle has aptly stated, “British scrutiny of Islamic law consisted
of a two-fold dynamic: first, the British assumed that law exists in a formal
code which they could administer, and second, if such a code did not exist,
they assumed the right to alter legal practices in order to form one . . . The
British further assumed that all Indians acted out of inherent religiosity and
orthodoxy, so the codes of religious law were sufficient to adjudicate in
all their crises.”13
The practice of issuing fatawa, or ifta, expanded to fill the gap that the
British colonial system had created in the administration of Muslim personal
law.14 By the first decade of twentieth century, virtually every Muslim political
organization had a dar al-ifta. The Dar al-Ifta at Deoband claimed to have
issued over 100,000 fatawa.15 By Gangohi’s era, the mid- and late-nineteenth
century, muftis began to issue legal opinions on the authority of a particular
madrasa, and issued fatawa in substantially larger numbers than previously
through widespread use of the incipient technology of printing in India.16 The
Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya is one such compilation, and it is in this shifting legal
environment in which we must locate Gangohi’s text. By and large his fatawa
were solicited by individual Muslims, responding to their questions about
proper belief and practice. As Metcalf writes, “Fatawa in a Muslim state were
traditionally given by a court official, the mufti, for the guidance of the qadi
or judge. Now in India they were given directly to believers, who welcomed
them as a form of guidance in the changed circumstances of the day.”17 And
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unlike muftis of the past, Gangohi and his generation of muftis rarely cited
works of fiqh, and often gave their fatawa without any explanation of their
legal reasoning at all, although sometimes Gangohi would provide a relevant
quotation from the Qur’an or hadith.
It is worth contrasting this collection to one of the most important
pre-colonial works of Islamic law in the subcontinent, the Fatawa-yi “Alamgiri,
to understand how Gangohi’s collection stands out as a uniquely colonial-era
work. Completed during the reign of Aurangzeb from 1667 to 1675, the
Fatawa-yi “Alamgiri is not a collection of fatawa, unlike the Fatawa-yi
Rashidiyya, but a legal treatise on Hanafi fiqh. Its selection and arrangement
of subjects are modeled after Marghinani’s Hidaya, with chapters on judicial
proceedings and decrees, legal forms, legal devices, rules of inheritance,
economic transactions, treatment of slaves, land, etc. In short, the emphasis on
aspects of piety, belief, worship, and prayer found in Gangohi’s fatawa is far
removed from the more worldly, practical matters addressed in the Fatawa-yi
“Alamgiri. The shift from concern over the pragmatic exigencies of Mughal
rule to the late- and post-Mughal concern over matters of private faith and
piety is symptomatic of Indian Muslims’ public sense of moral crisis.18
Reform in the Nineteenth Century: Muhammad
Isma{ il’s Critique of Sufism
This sense of crisis formed the backdrop for a rise of self-conscious
‘reformist’ movements across the Islamicate world in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. This has been explored at length elsewhere,19 but here
I follow a recent definition of ‘reform’ as referring to “projects whose specific
focus is the bringing into line of religious beliefs and practices with [what
are interpreted as] the core foundations of Islam, by avoiding and purging
out innovation, accretion and the intrusion of ‘local custom’.”20 ‘Reform’
here is best understood as a heuristic category that subsumes a multitude
of movements, agendas, and ideologies bearing strong family resemblances.
These emerged across such a wide swath of the Islamicate world over such a
long period of time that one may legitimately question the utility of ‘reform’ as
an analytic category. Its use is partly justifiable as a translation of the term islah
that self-proclaimed reformists often use to describe their own agendas.21
The framework within which it is necessary to understand the Fatawa-yi
Rashidiyya is the reformist activism that preceded the 1857 revolt. Foremost
among the movements that arose at this time, the movement of Sayyid Ahmad
Barelwi (d. 1831) aimed to forestall what he perceived as a downslide into
decadence, immorality, and ignorance of the Shari‘a. Popular, shrine-based
Sufism became an easy target for his reformist polemics.22 Sayyid Ahmad was
born in 1786 in the town of Rai Bareilly in Awadh. He toured the Ganges delta
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Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
valley from 1818 to 1821, went on the hajj with some 600 disciples from 1821
to 1824, and began raising the call to jihad against the Sikhs upon his return
to India.23 In 1831 Sayyid Ahmad and his compatriots were killed at Balakot
fighting against Sikh armies under Maharaja Sher Singh. For his followers, his
death only amplified his mythic status, and through aggressive printing in
Urdu, the movement of Sayyid Ahmad reached a popular audience; the works
of the movement’s main propagandist, Muhammad Isma‘ il Shahid (d. 1831),
were read out loud to throngs of Muslims in small villages across North India.24
Both Sayyid Ahmad and Muhammad Isma‘il, like Gangohi after them,
participated in the centuries-old discourse on Sufism in the subcontinent at
the same time that they made critical interventions into it. Sayyid Ahmad and
Muhammad Isma‘il underwent initiations into multiple Sufi lineages, including
the Naqshbandi, Qadiri, and Chishti silsilas. Sayyid Ahmad claimed multiple
Uwaysi initiations (initiations by way of dreams or visions) from prominent
Sufi shaykhs, including such luminaries as ‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani, Baha al-Din
Naqshbandi, and Qu†b al-Din Bakhtiyar Kaki. Consisting largely of Sayyid
Ahmad’s oral teachings (malfuzat), the movement’s first manifesto was the
Sufi treatise al-Sira† al-mustaqim, written first in Persian by Muhammad Isma‘il
and Muhammad ‘Abd al-Hayy, and later translated into Urdu.25 But the gold
standard of Indian reformist manifestos was Muhammad Isma‘il’s Taqwiyyat
al-Iman, written in 1826. The central argument of this text is simple but has
immense and complex repercussions for the religio-political imaginary of
South Asian Muslims: tawhid, the absolute unity of God, is diametrically
opposed to shirk, associating another person or thing in any way with God.
Sunna, the morally sanctioned path of right belief and conduct laid out in
the words and deeds of the Prophet, is diametrically opposed to bid“a,
anything that diverges from the sunna.
Muhammad Isma‘il identifies four fundamental forms of shirk: association
with God in knowledge (ishrak fi l-“ilm), association with God in power
(ishrak fi-t tasarruf ), association with God in worship (ishrak fi l-“ibadat),
and association with God in matters of custom or everyday life (ishrak fi-l
“adat).26 Closely aligned with shirk is the offense of bid“a, conceived in three
ways: first, as a practice that directly opposes or invalidates sunna; second, as
a practice done with same intent or regularity of the sunna but not part of
it — in other words, creating a kind of false or counter-religion alongside
the sunna; or third, making a merely permissible act an obligatory one.27
Muhammad Isma‘il’s reformist project operates on at least two levels.
First, he articulates a stark and radically polarized vision of divine sovereignty
in which human beings, including all prophets and Sufi saints, are utterly
powerless before God’s majesty, thereby undercutting the very possibility of
saintly intercession between God and humankind. Affirming the notion of
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imkan-i nazir, Muhammad Isma‘il argues that God could replace the Prophet
Muhammad with another Prophet, or create scores of new Prophets. “Verily
the power of this Shah of Shahs is so great,” he writes, “that in an instant,
solely by pronouncing the command ‘Be!’ God can create millions of prophets,
saints, djinn, and angels equal to Gabriel and Muhammad, or in a single
breath, can turn the whole universe upside down and bestow upon it a wholly
new creation.”28 In defining sovereignty in such absolutist terms, he collapses
a nuanced spiritual hierarchy within Sufism that regards some especially pious
Muslims as being close to God, and therefore able to intercede with God on
behalf of others. Muhammad Isma‘il’s ontology, in other words, nullifies the
very possibility of saintly intercession (shafa“at). Second, he articulates a strict
polarity between a pure ‘religion’, on the one hand, and the impure domain
of culture on the other, consigning much of Sufi popular practices surrounding
the tombs of saints to the latter category. The problem with these practices is
that they impinge on the sphere of ‘religion’; that is, they threaten to corrupt
it, or more sinisterly, to imitate it, to create a faux-religion alongside true
religion.29
In the Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, Gangohi’s praise for the Taqwiyyat
al-Iman is unreserved: “Taqwiyyat al-Iman is a magnificent, utterly true
work, strengthening and reforming the faith (quwwat o islah-i iman), and the
entire meaning of the Qur’an and hadith is contained in it.”30 Gangohi uses
Sufi appellations to extol Muhammad Isma‘ il, declaring him one of the ‘friends
of God’ (wali Allah) and averring that the Taqwiyyat al-Iman contains
the “essence of Islam” (“ayn-i Islam).31 Despite his unqualified praise, other
fatawa in the collection reveal just how controversial Muhammad Isma‘il’s
propositions were. Several mustaftis, those requesting fatawa, inquire whether
it is permissible to call Muhammad Isma‘il a kafir,32 and in fact several
prominent ‘Ulama’ under the guidance of Fadl al-Haq Khairabadi (d. 1861)
did exactly that.33 Gangohi, expectedly, condemns takfir against Muhammad
Isma‘il with the justification that he is a wali Allah. He echoes his intellectual
predecessor in still other ways, defending the controversial principles of
imkan-i kidhb, the notion that God is capable of lying, and imkan-i nazir,
that God could create other prophets on par with Muhammad, offering the
explanation, like Muhammad Isma‘il, that God is capable but will not do so.34
And like Muhammad Isma‘il he steadfastly denies that Muhammad had
‘knowledge of the unseen’ ( “ilm-i ghayb), a staple of Sufi perceptions of the
Prophet as a man of unparalleled knowledge of this world and the next. 35
Gangohi recommends that a certain mustafti consult Muhammad Isma‘il’s
work on the problem of saintly intercession, ratifying his views on shafa“at.36
Whereas God has promised the ‘major intercession’ (shafa“at kubra) on the
Day of Judgment, he explains, no one has his permission for any other form
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Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
of intercession.37 Finally, Gangohi endorses the polarized vision of divine
sovereignty found in the Taqwiyyat al-Iman. One mustafti wants to know the
meaning of a passage from Taqwiyyat al-Iman in which Muhammad Isma‘il
likens the difference between God and humankind as that between a king
and a chamar. Gangohi, in turn, makes a comparison between a potter and
a pot: the potter can create the pot but also has the power to break it at will,
and there can be no equality whatsoever between the potter and his or her
creation.38
It is clear, then, that Gangohi positioned himself as an intellectual
successor to Muhammad Isma ‘il. But like Sayyid Ahmad and Muhammad
Isma‘il, and markedly unlike his Wahhabi contemporaries, Gangohi did not
reject Sufism outright.39 On the contrary, Sufism was an indelible part of Indian
Islamic traditions. If, as we will see, Gangohi elevated the interior, personal
aspects of Sufi piety far above Sufism’s popular manifestations, he also saw
himself as helping to save Sufism from its dalliance with shirk and kufr,
two words that are as ubiquitous in his fatawa as they are in the work of
Muhammad Isma‘il.
Sufism and its Discontents in the Fatawa-yi
Rashidiyya
The third section of this paper makes several broad observations about
Gangohi’s stance towards Sufism in the Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya. First, for
Gangohi, Sufism and the Shari ‘a are fundamentally the same thing, with
Sufism being the intensification and internalization of the ethos of the
Shari‘a. However, in this judgment he assimilates Sufism to his normative
vision of Islamic law, decisively rejecting Sufism’s antinomian strains.
Secondly, Gangohi fully acknowledges the efficacy of Sufi ritual practices,
including meditative techniques and those that take place in the vicinity of
tombs, but believes that their popularization distracts the masses from the
Shari‘a. Thirdly, many Sufi practices may have been permissible at one point,
but the political and social context of British rule and perceived decline
of Muslim vitality dictate that contemporary Muslims shun such practices.
Fourthly, Gangohi extends the reasoning found in Muhammad Isma‘il’s
work that articulates perceived cultural distinctions along ‘religious’ lines, so
that the act of a Muslim wearing ‘Hindu’ clothing becomes anathema. Gangohi
often reasons that such acts are shameful because of their ‘resemblance’
(mushabbah) to Christians’ and Hindus’ practices. Fifth, it is important to note
that Gangohi did not prohibit visiting saints’ tombs in principle, but only on
prescribed occasions or for prescribed purposes other than honoring God, or
if the visit entails prostrating before the shrine, adorning it, and the like. For
Gangohi, as with Muhammad Isma‘ il, all of these impinge on the sanctity of
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the sunna by virtue of ‘resembling’ or ‘mimicing’ the normativity of religiously
sanctioned acts.
Marc Gaborieau has proposed a four-part typology for understanding
the juridical controversies surrounding Sufi practices, which applies in each
instance to Gangohi’s fatawa. There are four domains of ritual action —
namely, rituals of prescribed places and times; ritual gestures; words and
incantations; and offerings and sacrifices — that reformists attempted to
regulate by demarcating a strict boundary between ritual actions legitimated
by the Qur’an and sunna and those that fall beyond the purview of
legitimacy.40
Concerning the first, rituals of place and time, reformists often accepted
only the location-bound ritual of hajj and the time-bound ritual of salat as
legitimate practices. This excluded, among other things, staples of popular
Sufism in the subcontinent, including pilgrimage to tombs (ziyarat) and the
celebration of saints’ death anniversaries (“urs). Gangohi uniformly declares
that such celebrations and local pilgrimages are impermissible, reasoning that
in the distant past such celebrations may have been permissible when the
collective morality of the umma was greater, but today the ‘corruption of
the time’ ( fasad al-zaman) dictates a stricter demarcation of permissible and
impermissible acts.41 In one fatwa responding to a query about the legality of
birth and death (mawlud o “urs) celebrations, Gangohi writes, “In connection
to birth celebrations, although in this matter there may be nothing directly
against the law, care and solicitude are necessary because such celebrations
are not proper in this age. And in regard to death anniversaries, the answer is
that just as many things that were once permissible (mubah) at a certain time
are now prohibited, birth and death gatherings are just the same.”42
Reformists likewise drew clear boundaries between permissible and
impermissible ritual gestures, the second domain of ritual practice in this
typology, holding that the only legitimate gesture is prostration towards Mecca
in the act of prayer. Prostration towards any other direction, for instance
a saint’s tomb, or circumambulation of anything other than the Ka‘ba, was
strictly interdicted. Gangohi explains his position on this matter in a fatwa
on the circumambulation of tombs, relying yet again on the logic that formerly
permissible practices are now too risky to be acceptable, but adding the
further point that such acts bear a disturbing ‘resemblance’ (mushabbah) to
non-Muslim practices. At the same time, he calls for restraint in calling the
perpetrators of such acts kafirs:
Circumambulation of the tombs of pious ancestors or the saints is bid“a
without the slightest doubt because its occurrence is not found in the
past. But these days, the contestation (ikhtilaf ) concerns whether this
bid“a is of the permissible or the forbidden variety. In the past this was
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Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
not the case, but now it is a matter of ethics (akhlaq) whether or not to
regard this as bid“a or as an acceptable practice. In some works of fiqh,
it is considered permissible, but the correct juridical ruling is that it is
not, since it necessitates resemblance with the idol-worshipers, who
engage in the same activity around their idols. Furthermore, according
to the legal norm (shar“ ), circumambulation has been specified for
the Ka‘ba and to suggest a resemblance between the grave of a saint and
the Ka‘ba is a bad thing. But if someone engages in this practice,
to call him a kafir and push him outside the domain of Islam is very
undesirable. In the same way, to label the one who pronounced takfir
as a kafir is also bad.43
Reformists policed a third domain of ritual practice, words and
incantations, forbidding prayers, invocations, and oaths addressed to
anyone other than God. For Gangohi one ought not invoke any other
name besides God’s in a prayer or an oath.44 Seeking help from and
petitioning the deceased saints (ahl-i qubur) is impermissible in every
respect,45 nor is one permitted to seek out spiritual refuge in anyone
or anything other than God.46
A final ritual dimension is that of making offerings and sacrifices. Gangohi
uniformly equates lighting candles at shrines with polytheism and Hindu
idolatry,47 and regards leaving food at tombs in most cases and setting up lights
at tombs as haram.48 Gangohi specifically forbids leaving food at tombs on an
appointed day or a specific occasion, a line of reasoning similar to Muhammad
Isma‘il’s belief that anything done with a prescribed time encroaches upon the
sunna: “Distributing food on an appointed day is without the slightest doubt
an innovation, even though one may still incur divine favors, and a fixed “urs
is against the sunna, and therefore an innovation. Distributing food only at an
unappointed time is permissible.”49
Most of these multifarious practices fall under the rubric of ‘Sufism’ as it
was understood in the mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, Gangohi denies
that such practices have anything to do with ‘Sufism’ at all, arguing instead
that Sufism is grounded in the normative moral order of the Shari‘a. I argue
here that Gangohi’s version of Sufism is a truncated one, reduced largely to
personal morality, disciplining of the body and reverence for God and the
Prophet. It is a ‘Sufism’ largely bereft of the human, ‘this-worldly’ relationships
between Sufis and their disciples, and devalues the immense respect and
honor reserved for such figures in poetry, commemorative festivals and
pilgrimage to their tombs.
Gangohi subscribed to the notion that knowledge of Sufism was
completely synonymous with knowledge of proper, ‘orthodox’ belief and
practice. Knowledge of the Sufi path (†ariqat) and knowledge of normative
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Islamic practice (shari“at) are, for Gangohi, the very same thing; they are
indistinguishable for Gangohi, insofar as the former is an internalization
of the latter. “Both [†ariqat and shari “at] are one. Outwardly, it is a matter
of performing the shari “at. When the rules of the shari“at enter the heart,
naturally they will remain. This is †ariqat. Both are derived from the rules
of the Qur’an and hadith.”50
One of the longest fatawa in the collection, “On the difference between
Sufism and Shari‘a,” demonstrates this point well. Here, the mustafti
repeatedly inquires why Sufis and ‘Ulama’ have come to represent dueling,
competing cultures of Muslim piety. The fatwa is so revealing about
popular perceptions of Sufism and Shari‘a that it is worth reproducing
it at length here:
Question: Are Shari‘a, which some call ‘knowledge of the book’
(“ilm-i safina), and Sufism, which some call ‘knowledge of the heart’
(“ilm-i sina), one and the same thing, or two different things? If they are
one, then why not say that ‘purification’ (tazkiya) comes only through
external knowledge (“ilm-i zahiri ) and, why not stipulate that every
“alim is a Sufi and every Sufi an “alim? As for one who is a mujtahid
of external knowledge [i.e. fiqh] why can’t he engage in ijtihad within
Sufism?
For instance, consider that Hazrat ‘Azim Sahib is an imam of the
Shari‘a, and Hazrat Mu‘in al-Din Chishti is a ‘mujtahid’ of Sufism. One
never hears anything to contradict this. On the other hand, considering
the great Sufis who instruct in such things as feats of mental labor
(ashgal-i ifkar), remembrances (azkar), meditations (muraqabat), vocal
zikr (dhikr-i jahr), zikr of contracting the vein (dhikr-i rag), visualization
of the master (tasawwur-i shaykh), keeping rhythms (dharbayn
lagana), seclusion for forty days (chilla), holding the breath (habs-i
dam), and so on, one never hears that Imam Azim Sahib also instructs in
matters of this sort, or that Khwaja Sahib [Mu‘in al-Din Chishti] engages
in ijtihad over some matter of Shari‘a, or that some imam or mujtahid
goes to Khwaja Sahib, or that some Sufi goes to an imam.
In fact some ‘Ulama’ completely deny the existence of Sufism. I don’t
mean to say that Sufism is opposed to Shari ‘a, or Imam Sahib did not
understand Sufism, or that Khwaja Sahib did not understand Shari‘a . . .
Within Sufism, there exist thousands of ‘Ulama’ and great scholars
who have a Sufi initiation, yet among the throngs of ‘Ulama’ there is no
knowledge of this, including Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim Muhaddith,
who were great scholars in their hadith criticism. But there was no Sufi
order that we can trace back to them. For in fact, if Sufism and Shari‘a
were the same, and one person is a Sufi, and another is an “alim, what
does that mean? Imam Muhammad Ghazali was a Shafi‘i, and Hazrat
Khwaja Mu‘in al-Din Chishti was a Hanbali, and Bare Pir Sahib
[‘Abd al-Qadir Jilani] was a Hanbali . . .
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Answer: Why is your question so long? Knowledge of Shari‘a and
knowledge of Sufism are the very same thing, and Shari‘a and Sufism
are also the same. When one knows the precept of Shari‘a, one attains
knowledge of Shari‘a. And when one knows the essence of this
precept, that is knowledge of Sufism. To perform a duty or necessary
deed against the will of the lower self is called an action in line with
Shari‘a. When purity (ikhlas) and love for the reality of God completely
encompass the depths of the heart, that is called Sufism. So long
as knowledge and practice are in conflict with one another, Shari‘a
must dominate. And when the conflict dissipates, that is Sufism. The
difference between them is the difference between a beginning and an
end. He who says the source of both is one, he is right. And he who
makes a distinction between the two, he is also right. The meaning of
both is the same. Likewise, the master jurists were involved in Sufism.
But they did not involve themselves in the investigation of this field of
knowledge. The external form of the Shari‘a was an obligation, so they
understood its explanation to be more important. They were complete
experts of Sufism, because Sufism is substantiated by and derived from
the hadith, and most masters within Sufism were ‘Ulama’, but were not
busy with investigating Shari‘a. It was sufficient that they be part of a
group of ‘Ulama’ who wrote about the internal explanations of Shari‘a.
Some of the Sufis possessed enough knowledge about fiqh but were
also specialists and scholars of the subtleties of Sufism, and thus they
did not involve themselves in both fields of knowledge . . . Without its
justification within the precepts of the Shari‘a, no act is acceptable.
And without the acceptance of an act, the status of sainthood cannot
be achieved.51
In his response, Gangohi does not assimilate Shari‘a to Sufism; he
assimilates Sufism to Shari‘a. In positing a higher synthesis between the two,
he implicitly privileges the normative moral order of Shari‘a, regarding Sufism
as an intensification and interiorization of its ethos.
True Sufism, for Gangohi, is so intertwined with proper conduct that the
very possibility of attaining a mystical state (hal ) “depends entirely on the
piety and morals of the individual in question.”52 His esteem for personal piety
was such that he had little tolerance for antinomian strains among the Sufis
of the past, hence his attack on one of the towering icons of early Sufism,
Mansur al-Hallaj (d. 922).53 To one query about al-Hallaj, Gangohi responds
tersely, “Mansur Hallaj was arrogant, and his execution was necessary.”54
Elsewhere he condemns the tendency for Sufis to believe that the Shari‘a
does not apply to them, a belief which renders one a “total unbeliever”
(kafir mu†laq) and angers God.55
While many Sufi ritual actions were proscribed, Gangohi did not deny their
efficacy. In fact, he believed they must be regulated all the more diligently
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precisely because of their efficacy. He did not dwell in a disenchanted
universe; rather, he insisted that these ritual actions had been adulterated on
the popular level through mass patronage from both Sufis and non-Sufis, and
from both Hindus and Muslims. Gangohi believed strongly in the mysterious
powers of ‘effulgence’ ( faid) that emanate from the tombs of saints, but
objected that the masses do not have the insight to understand the nature
of effulgence and tend to mistake the spiritual rewards of pilgrimage (ziyarat)
as something that comes from the saint himself rather than from God alone,
a form of shirk. Thus one inquirer wishes to know whether effulgence ( faid )
“can be acquired at the shrines of the saints, and if so, in what form?” Gangohi
replies, “Effulgence can be experienced at the shrines of saints, but it is never
permissible to sanction this for the masses . . . For the people who patronize
the shrine, then, in this manner the abundance of effulgence can be attained
according to one’s capabilities, but for the masses, to explain these matters is
only to open up the door to idolatry and polytheism.”56
While Gangohi affirmed the existence of saintly miracles (kharq-i “adat,
karamat), again he asserted that, on a popular level, the masses are likely to
believe mistakenly that the miracle originates from the saint himself rather than
from God alone.57 Likewise, Gangohi denounced the gullibility of the masses
in believing just about any miracle tale of the great pirs. “Ignorant people often
misunderstand the tales of the great ones, and even if some of them are true,
they do not understand those and might be made to say ecstatic utterances
(sha†hiyat) the meaning of which they do not know. Do not accept them —
remain silent about them. Any matters that are contrary to the rules of the
Shari‘a should be rejected, or one should remain silent about them.”58 While
he confirms the veracity of miracles and that faid surrounds the tombs of the
saints, Gangohi vehemently condemns any tomb-related practices that may
result in shirk.
Gangohi’s disdain for popular interpretations of Sufi practices arises in
part through their alleged adulteration from Hindu and Christian influence.
Gangohi fashioned himself as a self-styled purifier of Sufism from the
corrupting influence of Hinduism. One can argue that the Deobandis
internalized the modern reifications of ‘Hindu’ and ‘Muslim’ along sectarian
lines.59 Indeed, Gangohi wrote and taught in an agonistic sectarian milieu, one
typified by the many heated public debates between Deobandis and Christian
missionaries, Hindu nationalists and various sectarian leaders that hardened
religious boundaries.60 A famous debate (munazara) in 1876 –77 between
Gangohi’s colleague Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi and representatives of the
Arya Samaj, a Hindu reformist movement, reveals the extent to which these
identities had become objectified.61 With new audiences among the literate
middle classes and new technologies for communication in the form of print,
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these identities could be easily packaged, exported and consumed, helping to
form a transnational, pan-Islamic identity in the nineteenth century. Gangohi
lived through a period of increasing ‘objectification’ of Indian religiosity that
fashioned rigid, ossified boundaries between communities. Towards the end
of his life, Gangohi discouraged Muslims from doing business with Hindus,
urged Muslims not to attend Arya Samaj lectures and rallies, and criticized
Muslims who retained trappings of ‘Hindu’ culture and lifestyles, whether in
dress, hair styles or even in the use of brass instead of copper for containers.62
This aversion to all things Hindu included Christians and Jews as well. One of
his fatawa rejects the practice of kissing tombs, ostensibly not because kissing
tombs is forbidden from an Islamic legal standpoint, but because “Kissing
tombs is the practice of the Jews and Christians, and is thus haram.”63 One
fatwa not only prohibited Muslim parents from sending students to English
schools where they may sing patriotic British songs or Christian hymns, but
declared that singing such songs and hymns is an act of kufr.64 A similar fatwa
banned the wearing of ‘Hindu’ and English clothing.65
Challenging the Master: Gangohi and Imdadullah
We can draw Gangohi’s critique of Sufism into starker terms by comparing
his work to that of his revered master, Hajji Imdadullah al-Makki. Not only
did Imdadullah commend many tomb-based ritual practices to his students,
he also offers detailed directions for effecting specific mystical states in the
presence of a saint’s tomb. That Imdadullah spoke of receiving an initiation
into Sufism from Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi himself, whom he saw in a dream
standing beside the Prophet, encapsulates this tension, revealing how
Imdadullah, like Gangohi, was heir to conflicting intellectual legacies.66
Imdadullah not only adopted techniques of visualizing the body and
controlling the breath that derived to some extent from Yogic techniques (of
which Gangohi would surely disapprove)67 but these were channeled to
Imdadullah through his study of the Chishti Sabiri master ‘Abd al-Quddus
Gangohi (d. 1537),68 the very shaykh and ancestor of Rashid Ahmad Gangohi
whose tomb ceremonies the latter Gangohi attempted to put an end to.69
Born in 1817 to a scholarly family in Thana Bhavan, Imdadullah traveled
to Delhi in 1833 to study in the circles of Maulana Mamluk ‘Ali and Maulana
Muhammad Ishaq Dihlawi, a pupil of Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz.70 He took ba“iat
from Nasir al-Din Dihlawi, grandson of Rafi‘ al-Din Dihlawi, who was a son
of Shah Wali Allah. Nasir al-Din, a khalifa of Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi, initiated
Imdadullah into the Naqshbandi silsila. Another khalifa of Sayyid Ahmad’s,
Miyanji Nur Muhammad Jhanjhanawi (d. 1845), initiated Imdadullah into
the Chishti Sabiri silsila.71 As mentioned previously, he took up arms against
the British in 1857 and fled to Mecca in 1859, whence he continued to teach
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students from afar and where he lived out the rest of his life, until his death
in 1899.72
Rashid Ahmad Gangohi and Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi were
Imdadullah’s disciples, along with many other luminaries of the Deoband
school, including Ashraf ‘Ali Thanvi and Hasan Ahmad Madani. Gangohi
described his own devotion to Imdadullah in the language of ‘annihilation of
the self in one’s shaykh’ ( fana fi-sh shaikh): “For three years the face of
Imdadullah was in my heart and I did nothing without asking him first . . .
Then, for three years the face of the Prophet was in my heart . . . Then there
existed the rank of spiritual realization (ihsan ka martabah).”73 What made
him diverge from his master in so many respects? How do we reconcile
Imdadullah’s own support for tomb-based Sufism with Gangohi’s critique of it,
and how do we reconcile Gangohi’s own unflagging devotion to Imdadullah
with his judgments against the very practices that Imdadullah advocated?
Before exploring this question, it is necessary first to discern exactly how
Imdadullah’s own Sufism diverged so dramatically from his pupil’s. Here I will
discuss the practice of achieving visionary states using bodily discipline and
meditative techniques in the vicinity of tombs. One technique that Imdadullah
deploys, istikhara, entails sleeping or meditating, often in the precincts of a
tomb, for the purpose of gaining knowledge and guidance in the form of the
veridical dream (ruya).74 Reformists have typically rejected this technique even
though it was advocated by major Sufis such as Ruzbihan Baqli.75 Moreover,
this practice has a long pedigree in Chishti Sufi circles, of which Gangohi
was a descendant. Shah Kalim Allah Jahanabadi of Delhi (d. 1729), often
credited with ‘reviving’ the Chishti silsila in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries by making it more palatable to the ‘Ulama’, was an advocate
of certain techniques of istikhara. In his Kashkul-i Kalimi Shah Kalim
Allah recommended a “zikr for an unveiling (kashf ) at tombs” as a reliable
means for a disciple to communicate with the soul of one’s deceased
shaykh.76
In his treatise “The Brilliance of Hearts” (Îiya al-Qulub), Hajji Imdadullah
describes various techniques for the practice of istikhara.77 The first,
“A Method for Istikhara Prayer” explains how meditating at a tomb with
the right intention and the right bodily demeanor will achieve the desired
visionary insight:
First, to begin by taking a precise look at the practice of istikhara, in
istikhara sleep is not necessary; tranquility of the heart is sufficient. If
time is not available then simply pray and in this manner perform two
prostrations with the intention (niyya) of experiencing the istikhara.
In the first prostration, after saying “Praise be to God!” say “O God!”
And in the second prostration, say “O God!”
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A lengthy du“a in Arabic follows in which the seeker entreats God directly
for blessings (barakat).78 Imdadullah notes, finally, that the seeker can repeat
these and other formulas for up to six nights, though ultimately it is “up to God
whether that which is intended comes to pass.”79
Elsewhere Imdadullah offers more concise prescriptions for effecting a
vision (kashf ) through meditative practices and sleeping near the tombs of
shaykhs. Oral recitation of prescribed formulas is an essential ingredient in
effecting the desired vision. One section, “A Method for a Vision of Souls
and Angels,” is designed for ascertaining knowledge from deceased
individuals or angels:
The devotee should emphatically recite via a thousand rhythmic beats
(darb): ‘Praise be to God’ to his right, ‘O Holy God’ to his left, ‘Lord of
the Angels’ towards the sky, and ‘O Soul’ towards his heart, and then
facing the intended direction, he will meet the intended soul or spirit. In
dreaming or in wakefulness, this meeting will take place by means of a
thousand recitations.80
Other sections offer dhikr formulas to achieve visions tailored to specific
needs (such as curing the sick or ascertaining knowledge of the future)
or specific places (recitations at tombs). A “Dhikr for a Vision at Tombs”
recommends a series of formulas for acquiring knowledge about or from
a deceased master:
First, say ‘O Lord’ for twenty-one rhythmic beats, and then recite
‘O Spirit’ towards the sky, ‘O Spirit’ over the tomb and ‘O Spirit of the
Spirit’ towards the heart. God willing, in dreaming or in wakefulness,
you will gain knowledge of the state of the deceased. There is an
additional way. First, after sitting near the tomb, recite the Fatiha
over the deceased and then say ‘Bring a vision, O Light’ towards the sky,
and say ‘Bring a vision, O Light’ towards the heart, and over the tomb,
and then face in the direction of the heart.81
Elsewhere Hajji Imdadullah prescribes “A Method for Discovering a
Spiritual Link with a Living or Dead Saint (Ahl-i Allah)”:
This method is as follows: If he is alive, then sit together with him,
and if he is dead, sit together with his tomb. Then empty yourself of
all spiritual bonds and then pray in the palace of the Knower of the
Unknown, saying “O Omniscient One! O Knowing One! O Manifest
One! Make me knowledgeable and tell me of his inner states. And facing
in the direction of his spirit, after a moment, your own spirit will be
given over to his.82
Readers of the Îiya al-Qulub are bound to notice how brief and
often even terse these sections are. Throughout the text Hajji Imdadullah
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emphasizes the importance of niyya and maqsud, both denoting the pious
‘intention’ of the practitioner, implying that these formulas are not sufficient in
and of themselves but are in fact heuristic devices, or the merest outlines of
techniques for achieving visionary states. Two points are worth noting here.
First, it seems that to understand these formulas fully, one would need the oral
exposition of a living Sufi master, and in this manner one might guess that
Imdadullah sought to counteract what Ernst has called the ‘publication of
the secret’, namely how modern printing has eroded, but certainly not
replaced, the traditional person-to-person model for the transmission of
Sufi knowledge.83 Second, if the technical details of these formulas have
been pared down to the barest essentials, it points to the increasing
importance of personal morality for the fulfillment of their purpose or
the attainment of visions.
Compared to Imdadullah, Gangohi articulates a far more externally
rule-bound ontology, one in which the presence of good intention (niyya) will
neither augment the fulfillment of a visionary formula nor cancel or diminish
the error of a blameworthy act. For instance, one mustafti asks “if one utters
words of infidelity (kalimat-i kufr) if the heart intends well, is this act kufr in
the eyes of God?” Gangohi answers that any such action or words are kufr,
even if the heart means well, unless the individual commits them under duress
(ikrah).84 To state any words of infidelity, even if one does not actually believe
that statement, is kufr. Niyya is of little consequence here.85
Three closing observations about the differences between Imdadullah and
Gangohi are relevant here. First, Imdadullah and Gangohi were united in their
belief that absolute moral purity in belief and pious intentions in ritual practice
were the most important elements of Sufism. Gangohi, unlike his master,
adopted an alarmist stance towards the perceived demise of Islam in India
and rejected the whole social edifice on which Sufi practice had been built,
reducing it almost entirely to matters of personal morality and devotion to
one’s shaykh.
Secondly, the shrine-based practices that Imdadullah describes in the
Îiya al-Qulub are still firmly within the domain of the pir-murid relationship
that Gangohi regarded so highly; they just happen to take place at tombs.
Gangohi approved and even encouraged certain practices of visualization, not
altogether unlike the one’s depicted in Îiya al-Qulub, such as the technique
of tasarruf, the ‘expenditure’ of the master’s psychic energy on the murid,
and the practice of tawajjuh, ‘concentration’ of the master’s attention on the
murid in order to effect certain states.86 For the student there is “no harm”
in visualizing the master (tasawwur-i shaykh), so long as it does not entail
the creation of amulets and other devices for maintaining visualization.87 He
echoes this judgment elsewhere when he notes that although Muhammad
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Isma‘il forbade the practice, Shah Wali Allah and Ahmad Sirhindi approved
of it, and notes that it is natural for people to use visualization in thinking. 88
Third, Imdadullah wrote mostly for an elite audience of fellow Sufis such
as the circle of those he had personally initiated. In contrast, as we have seen,
Gangohi’s fatawa reached a wide readership concerned with issues relevant
to the belief and practice of the Muslim masses, for whom shirk and bid”a
were seen as constant temptations. In other words, if Imdadullah’s literary
persona is an intimately private one, Gangohi’s is eminently public. This
contrast is brought into clear relief by comparing his fatawa to Gangohi’s
treatise Imdad al-Suluk. Written in Persian for a comparatively small group
of fellow Sufis, long after Persian had ceased to be the lingua franca
of educated Muslims, this treatise contains almost no discussion of the
tomb-based practices that occupy such a prominent place in the fatawa,
nor any formulas of the kind we see in Îiya al-Qulub. Rather, Imdad al-Suluk
explains stages in the Sufi path, enumerates conventional dhikr techniques,
and offers advice on the pir-murid relationship and characteristics of the ideal
shaykh. Quoting widely from early Sufi masters Abu-l Qasim al-Junayd (d. 910)
and Sahl al-Tustari (d. 896), he predictably identifies Shari‘a as the first stage
(maqam) in the Sufi path, and the goal of the Sufi path as the complete
“reformation of the heart” (qalb ki islah) through a regimen of disciplinary
techniques.89 These conditions of the Sufi journey include being in a state of
ritual purity, refraining from food beyond what is necessary to live, refraining
from excessive talk, seclusion (khalwat), mastery of dhikr, and commitment to
a Sufi shaykh.90 What is remarkably absent from this treatise, compared to the
fatawa, is any lengthy treatment of legal matters pertaining to, or dangers
inherent in, popular shrine-based Sufism. The only hint at such issues here is
advice to shun “ignorant Sufis” who purport to know more than they really do
and repeated warnings that Satan is always waiting to dupe and deceive those
on the Sufi path.91 But the very absence of discussion of popular Sufi practices
signals Gangohi’s notion of what Sufism is: a striving to purify the self in the
journey towards God (sair ila Llah).92 Composed in Persian and translated into
Urdu only at a much later date, Imdad al-Suluk was, by default, written for a
far smaller audience of like-minded Sufis who, unlike the masses, had the
knowledge to proceed cautiously and prudently along the Sufi path.
Conclusion
In the Îiya al-Qulub Imdadullah wrote about two of his famous Deobandi
pupils, “Whoever feels love and devotion towards me should regard Maulvi
Rashid Ahmad [Nanautvi] Sahib and Maulvi Muhammad Qasim [Nanautvi]
Sahib, in whom the inner and outer perfections are united, as my equal, or in
fact as residing at a higher level than me. Although on the surface the matter
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is quite the opposite [given that Imdadullah was their shaykh], they stand in
my place and I stand in theirs. And their presence yields such rewards that
such men are not to be found in this age, and from the blessings of their
service, effulgence ( faid) is abundant, and the Sufi path (which is contained
in this book) will not be bereft of their presence, God willing.”93
The parity with which Imdadullah regarded his star pupils helps to explain
how Gangohi was willing and able to depart from his example on so many
points. Perhaps we can best understand their relation as two altogether
different responses to the problems that beset the Muslim body politic in the
nineteenth century. Imdadullah was by no means ignorant of or oblivious
towards the effect of colonial modernity on the piety and prestige of Indian
Muslims, but Gangohi seems to have interpreted the crisis of colonial Islam in
starker and much more urgent terms, a problem that for him demanded more
drastic solutions than those offered by his master.
I have explored how Gangohi’s work exemplifies a larger trend in
reformist Sufism that retains, perhaps even intensifies, some Sufi devotions
such as the importance of the pir-murid relationship while jettisoning popular
Sufi ritual and practice. This strain of reformist thought ‘intellectualizes’ Sufism,
elevating the importance of Sufi spiritual insight while disavowing its social
dimensions. Such a reformist impulse in the founders of Deoband is best
understood as part of a larger trend in Islamic movements of the colonial
era, many of which vigorously critiqued Sufi practice from standpoints
nevertheless infused with Sufi belief and piety.
Endnotes
1. One could cite, alongside many other similar articles, Michael Fathers’ “At the
Birthplace of the Taliban,” Time, 21 September 2001, and Jeffrey Goldberg’s “Inside Jihad
U.: The Education of a Holy Warrior,” The New York Times, 25 June 2000. One of the more
balanced and thorough journalistic accounts comes from Ahmed Rashid, who concludes
that the Taliban took the ideas of Deoband “to an extreme which the original Deobandis
would never have recognized.” See Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New
Great Game in Central Asia (London: I. B. Tauris and Company, 2002), 88. The Taliban
emerged partly out of the Jamiat Ulema-i Islam, a political movement comprised largely
of Deoband-trained scholars that broke off in 1945 from an older Deoband-based political
group, Jamiat Ulema-i Hind, because of the latter’s support of the Indian Congress and
opposition to a separate Muslim state.
2. Barbara Metcalf, “‘Traditionalist’ Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis and Talibs,”
(Leiden: ISIM, 2002).
3. Muhammad ‘Ashiq Ilahi, Tazkirat al-Rashid (Karachi: Maktaba Bahr al-‘Ulum,
1978), 40–62. The Chishtiyya has two branches: the Nizamiyya and Sabiriyya. The
Nizamiyya stems from Nizam al-Din Awliya’ and the Sabiri branch stems from ‘Ala al-Din
‘Ali Sabiri, both pupils of Farid al-Din Ganj-i Shakkar. The historical record on the Nizami
496 © 2009 Hartford Seminary.
Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
Chishtis is far more profuse than that of the Sabiris. The most important Sabiri Chishti prior
to the nineteenth century was ‘Abd al-Quddus Gangohi, ancestor of the Rashid Ahmad
Gangohi who is the subject of this article. In the nineteenth century, Hajji Imdadullah
al-Makki, the latter Gangohi’s master, became the singlemost influential Sabiri master since
‘Abd al-Quddus. See Carl Ernst and Bruce Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love: The Chishti Order
in South Asia and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1992), 118–119.
4. Muhammad ‘Ashiq Ilahi, Tazkirat al-Rashid, 88–96.
5. Ibid., 40.
6. Sayyid Mahboob Rizvi, History of the Dar al-Ulum Deoband, Vol. 1 (Deoband:
Maulana Abdul Haq, 1980), 97. Another account seems to challenge this one, suggesting
Gangohi was not technically a khalifa at all; according to Imdad al-Mushtaq Imdadullah
designated two kinds of successors, those on whom he bestowed authority to initiate others
(khilafat) and those he permitted to propagate religion on his behalf (tabligh-i din).
Gangohi was part of the latter group. Cited in Ernst and Lawrence, Sufi Martyrs of Love,
119–120. These conflicting accounts may not be easily resolved, and point to the extent
to which the legacies of the early Deobandis remains contentious.
7. Sayyid Mahboob Rizvi, History of the Dar al-Ulum Deoband, 97. However, Metcalf
notes that stories of Gangohi’s and Imdadullah’s valiant struggles against British rule only
appear in sources after 1920, suggesting a nationalist bent in Deobandi historiography. See
Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860 –1900 (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 82.
8. Barbara Metcalf, “Rashid Ahmad Gangohi,” in Dictionnaire biographique des
savants et grandes figures du monde musulman periphérique du XIXe siècle à nos
jours, ed. Marc Gaborieau (Paris: Programme de recherches interdisciplinaires sur le
monde musulman péripherique, 1992), 21–22. For a detailed discussion of the Dars-i
Nizami curriculum that Deoband adapted, see Francis Robinson, The “Ulama” of Farangi
Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2005).
9. Scott Alan Kugle, “Framed, Blamed and Renamed: The Recasting of Islamic
Jurisprudence in Colonial South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 35, 2 (2001): 261–262.
10. Quoted in Asaf A. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law (London: Oxford
University Press, 1955), 37.
11. Muhammad Khalid Masud, “Apostasy and Judicial Separation in British India,” in
Islamic Legal Interpretation: Muftis and their Fatwas, eds. Muhammad Khalid Masud,
Brinkley Messick and David S. Powers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 197.
12. Hedaya, a Commentary on the Mussulman Laws, trans. Charles Hamilton
(London: T. Bensley, 1791), xxxi. For such a historically consequential text, the Hidaya
of Burhan al-Din Marghinani (d. 1197) has received minimal scholarly treatment. For one
account, see Y. Meron, “Marghinani, His Method and His Legacy,” Islamic Law and Society
9, 3 (2002): 410–416.
13. Scott Alan Kugle, “Framed, Blamed and Renamed,” 270.
14. Muhammad Khalid Masud, “Apostasy and Judicial Separation in British India,” 195.
15. Asaf A. A. Fyzee, “Muhammadan Law in India,” Comparative Studies in Society
and History 5, 4 (1963): 405.
16. Muhammad Qasim Zaman, The “Ulama” in contemporary Islam: custodians of
change (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 25.
17. Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, Deoband: 1860 –1900 (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002), 50.
18. See Alan M. Guenther, “Hanafi Fiqh in Mughal India: The Fatawa-i Alamgiri,” in
India’s Islamic Traditions, 711–1750, ed. Richard M. Eaton (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003), 214 –15.
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19. For the Islamicate world broadly speaking, see for example Nehemia Levtzion
and John O. Voll, Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform in Islam (Syracuse: Syracuse
University Press, 1987). For India, see Kenneth W. Jones, Socio-Religious Reform Movements
in British India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
20. Filippo Osella and Carolina Osella, “Introduction: Islamic Reformism in South
Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 42, 2/3 (2008): 247–248.
21. For example, in the fatawa Gangohi speaks often of islah-i iman, ‘reforming the
faith.’
22. The best general study of Sayyid Ahmad’s movement is Harlan O. Pearson’s
Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth-century India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2008)
which until recently remained an unpublished dissertation.
23. Muhammad Hedayetullah, Sayyid Ahmad: A Study of the Religious Reform
Movement of Sayyid Ahmad of Ra”e Bareli (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1970), 44,
115–118. There are numerous Urdu biographies of Sayyid Ahmad, many verging on
hagiography. See, for example, Abulhasan ‘Ali Nadvi, Sira†-i Sayyid Ahmad Shahid
(Lucknow: Majlis-i Tahqiqat wa Nashriyyat-i Islam, 1977) and Ghulam Rasul Mahr,
Sayyid Ahmad Shahid (Lahore: Kitab Manzil, 1954–1956).
24. For a discussion of the impact of print on this movement, see Marc Gaborieau’s
“Late Persian, Early Urdu: The Case of ‘Wahhabi’ Literature (1818–1857),” in Confluence
of Cultures: French Contributions to Indo-Persian Studies, ed. Françoise Nalini Delvoye
(New Delhi: Manohar, 1994), and the same author’s “Sufism in the First Indian Wahhabi
Manifesto: Siratu‘l Mustaqim by Isma‘Il Shahid and ‘Abdu’l Hayy,” in The Making of
Indo-Persian Culture: Indian and French Studies, eds. Muzaffar Alam, Françåoise
Delvoye Nalini and Marc Gaborieau (New Delhi: Manohar Publishers & Distributors, 2000).
25. The Sira† al-Mustaqim contains, among other things, a theory of the ‘path of
sainthood’ (rah-i wilayat) compared to the ‘path of prophecy’ (rah-i nubuwat) and
a detailed analysis of zikr techniques in the Qadiri, Naqshbandi and Chishti silsilas
alongside a critique of Sufi practices surrounding the reverence of saints. See Marc
Gaborieau, “Sufism in the First Indian Wahhabi Manifesto.”
26. For a summary of these points, see Muhammad Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-Iman
(Multan: Kutub Khana-i Majidiya, n.d.), 14–17. Each type of shirk forms the subject
of an individual chapter in this treatise.
27. Ibid., 55–56.
28. Ibid., 39.
29. A standard litany of such practices in the Taqwiyyat al-Iman is the following:
“The observance of the following practices are strictly reserved for God alone: prostration,
bowing in prayer (ruku“ ), standing with the arms folded, spending money in someone’s
name, fasting in someone’s name, traveling to another’s home and in the guise of a pilgrim,
calling out the name of one’s ruler while traveling, or doing acts such as slaying animals
along the way, circumambulating the shrine, prostrating in front of it, carrying animals,
making supplications, covering the grave with a sheet, uttering a prayer (du“a) while
standing at its threshold, making entreaties in religious or profane matters concerning this
world and the world to come, kissing a stone, pressing one’s mouth or chest against the
wall, uttering a prayer while gripping the sheet over the grave, lighting lamps around it,
working as an attendant and doing related practices such as dusting off the lamps, laying
out carpets, offering water to visitors for the purposes of ablution, pouring water from the
well over the body with the notion that it is blessed, setting it aside for absent friends, taking
leave of the shrine to walk away backwards while facing it, showing deference to the forest
( jangal ke adab) near the shrine, refraining from slaying animals nearby or from cutting
trees or pulling up grasses growing there. All of these practices are reserved by his servants
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Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
for the worship of God alone . . . It is established that such actions qualify as shirk.”
Muhammad Isma‘il, Taqwiyyat al-Iman, 15.
30. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya (Karachi: Educational Press
Pakistan, 1985), 83.
31. Ibid., 78.
32. Ibid., 79.
33. Fazl al-Haq Khairabadi was, like Sayyid Ahmad and Muhammad Isma ‘il, a disciple
of Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. Khairabadi defended the notion of saintly intercession against
Muhammad Isma‘il’s assertions that believing in intercession was tantamount to shirk. He
also vilified Muhammad Isma ‘il for his alleged slandering of the Prophet Muhammad. See
Ayesha Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge and London: Harvard
University Press, 2008), 80–81.
34. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 113.
35. Ibid., 100.
36. Ibid., 140–142. Gangohi states that the act of seeking aid (isti “anat) has three
meanings: the first is to utter a prayer (du“a ) to God, asking him to perform some deed,
which is unanimously accepted as permissible; the second is to utter a plea for
anyone who is deceased to perform some deed, whether at the tomb or not, which is
unequivocally shirk; the third is to go to tombs and ask the deceased to say a prayer
(du“a ) on one’s behalf, which is also shirk. The notion of intercession (shafa“at),
Gangohi states, encompasses the latter two forms of seeking aid, both of which are
impermissible.
37. Ibid., 104.
38. Ibid., 84.
39. Esther Peskes has attempted to argue to the contrary that Muhammad ibn ‘Abd
al-Wahhab was not as dogmatically and resolutely anti-Sufi as contemporary scholars have
interpreted him to be. See Esther Peskes, “The Wahhabiyya and Sufism in the Eighteenth
Century,” Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radtke, eds. Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen
Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Scott Kugle, in a rejoinder to
Peskes, remains unconvinced. See his Sufis and Saints’ Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality, and
Sacred Power in Islam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2007), 280–281. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, besides the Wahhabis, the Fara’idi movement in Bengal
was also stridently anti-Sufi. This simplistic anti-Sufism was appropriated in the twentieth
century by some Muslim nationalists in South Asia, Maududi foremost among them. See
Marc Gaborieau, “Criticizing the Sufis: The Debate in Early-Nineteenth Century India,” in
Islamic Mysticism Contested.
40. Marc Gaborieau, “Le Culte des Saints Musulmans en tant que Rituel: Controverses
Juridiques,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 85 (1994): 85–98.
41. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 220.
42. Ibid., 115–16. See also pg. 131 for a similar judgment on “urs.
43. Ibid., 82. See a similar judgment on pg. 69, where he also prohibits kissing tombs.
44. Ibid., 38.
45. Ibid., 59.
46. Ibid., 41.
47. Ibid., 142–3.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid., 166.
50. Ibid., 214–17.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 227.
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53. In perhaps the most famous execution in the history of Sufism, Hallaj was
allegedly put to death for his ecstatic utterance (sha†h) Ana al-haq, ‘I am the Truth/Ultimate
Reality’. This was in fact one of several accusations against Hallaj, including the claim of
divine lordship (rububiyah), incarnationism (hulul ), divinity (ilahiyah) and prophethood
(nubuwwah). As Ernst has shown, the record of his trial is inseparable from its tenth century
political context, namely the suspicion that Hallaj and other contemporary Sufis were
dangerous crypto-Shi’is. To say that he was executed merely for ecstatic utterances misses
the larger picture. See Carl Ernst, Words of Ecstasy in Sufism (Albany: State University of
New York, 1985), 107–112.
54. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 107–108. Gangohi was by no
means unique among Sufis in his criticism of Hallaj. In regards to the execution of Hallaj,
Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111) quipped, “the killing of him who utters something of this
kind is better in the religion of God than the resurrection of ten others.” Carl Ernst, Words
of Ecstasy in Sufism, 14.
55. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 82.
56. Ibid., 104.
57. Ibid., 105.
58. Ibid., 107.
59. See the introduction to Beyond Turk and Hindu: rethinking religious identities
in Islamicate South Asia, eds. David Gilmartin and Bruce Lawrence (Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 2000).
60. Avril A. Powell’s Muslims and Missionaries in Pre-Mutiny India (London: Curzon,
1993) examines the role of the munazara in the formation of sectarian religious identities
in the nascent Indian public sphere prior to the explosion of print-based interreligious
polemics.
61. See Muhammad Qasim Nanautvi, Mubahisah-yi Shahjahanpur (Karachi:
Dar al-Sha‘at, 1977).
62. Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, 153.
63. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 69.
64. Ibid., 54–55.
65. Ibid., 70.
66. Imdad al-Mushtaq, 26. Imdadullah stated, “I was three years old when Sayyid
Ahmad took me into his lap and bestowed ba“iat upon me.” Quoted in La†if Allah,
Anfas-i Imdadiyya (Karachi: Nashr al-Ma‘arif, 1995), 58. The author of Anfas-i Imdadiyya
remarks, “The appearance of Sayyid Ahmad left a profound effect on his subconscious mind
and in the depths of his heart.”
67. He did, however, approve of the apparently Yoga-derived practice of regulating
the breath ( pas-i anfas). Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 220.
68. Scott Kugle, Sufis and Saints’ Bodies, 243–48.
69. Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, 79.
70. Latifullah, Anfas-i Imdadiyya, 50.
71. Ibid., 61–62. Metcalf suggests that Imdadullah emphasized his Chishti lineage
above the others in part because the Chishti tradition of disengagement from politics
was appropriate for the post-1857 context. See Barbara Metcalf, “Imdadu’llah Thanawi,”
Dictionnaire biographique, 13.
72. Barbara Metcalf, “Imdadullah Thanvi,” Dictionnaire biographique, 13.
73. Quoted in Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival, 184.
74. Istikhara is not necessarily performed in the vicinity of a tomb; in fact, it can be
performed while sleeping or meditating in a mosque as well. But nearly all of Imdadullah’s
formulas require that the seeker is soliciting knowledge or insight from a deceased Sufi
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Sufis, Scholars and Scapegoats
master while situated at his tomb. Unfortunately, Gangohi does not make his views of this
practice clear in the fatawa.
75. T. Fahd, “Istikhara,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 259–60.
76. Nile Green, “The Religious and Cultural Roles of Dreams and Visions in Islam,”
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 13, 3 (2003): 307.
77. For a detailed discussion of this treatise, see Scott Kugle’s chapter “Body Revived:
The Heart of Hajji Imdadullah,” in Sufis and Saints’ Bodies.
78. Hajji Imdadullah al-Makki, Kulliyat Imdadiyya (Karachi: Dar al-Sha‘at, 1976), 62.
79. Ibid.
80. Ibid., 44.
81. Ibid., 45.
82. Ibid., 55.
83. See Carl W. Ernst, “Sufism, Islam, and Globalization in the Contemporary World:
Methodological Reflections on a Changing Field of Study,” in Islamic Spirituality and the
Contemporary World, ed. Azizan Baharuddin (Kuala Lumpur: Centre for Civilisational
Dialogue, University of Malaya, 2007).
84. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 43–44.
85. Ibid., 54.
86. Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, 172–75.
87. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Fatawa-yi Rashidiyya, 217. Here, alas, is one instance in
which Gangohi departs from Muhammad Isma ‘il and Sayyid Ahmad. A story told to bolster
Sayyid Ahmad’s reformist credentials tells of an early encounter between the young Sayyid
Ahmad and Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. The elder master began to instruct the young iconoclast in
the technique of tasawwur-i shaykh, at which point Sayyid Ahmad asks what the difference
is between visualizing one’s master and idolatry. S. A. A. Rizvi, Shah “Abd al-“Aziz:
Puritanism, Sectarian Polemics and Jihad (Canberra: Ma‘rifat Publishing House, 1982),
475–476.
88. Ibid., 217–218.
89. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Imdad al-Suluk (Deoband: Dar al-Kitab Deoband, 2005),
99. It makes sense that Gangohi would take Junayd as his principle source of inspiration in
this treatise. Among early Sufis, Junayd emphasized purification of the self and sobriety
(sahw) as fundamental traits of the Sufi path, and believed in a ‘spiritual elect’ whom God
had endowed with special capacities for affirming tawhid through fana”. See Ahmet
Karamustafa, Sufism: The Formative Period (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007),
15–18.
90. Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Imdad al-Suluk, 78–140.
91. Ibid., 57–58.
92. Ibid., 155–156.
93. Hajji Imdadullah, Kulliyat-i Imdadiyya, 72.
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