Muslims In India: Taking Back Islam From The Wahhabis

[DeoKDushman]

India, the world’s second largest country by population after China, includes a significant Muslim minority of 140 to 160 million. Indian Muslims are well-represented in the country’s institutions and cultural and media life. As India is a democracy, albeit a weak one, moderate Muslims in India have been asserting their rights against the radical clerics who have gained status as representatives of the whole Muslim community.

 India, the pattern seen in many other countries, including Western societies, has held: Saudi-financed Wahhabi radicals, as well as Deobandi extremists from Pakistan, have been officially accepted as the authoritative, autocratic Muslim leaders. Islamist terror in India has taken the notable form of the 2008 Mumbai atrocities.

The Wahhabis and Deobandis - the latter being the inspirers of the Afghan Taliban - have gained control of many public institutions relevant to Muslims’ lives. These include The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), which handles family law disputes as determined by a mixture of shariah and Indian law. Until recently, the board was headed by a member of the Barelvi sect of Sunni Muslims. Barelvis, probably a majority among Indian and Pakistani moderate Muslims, account for a large share of immigrants in Britain. They are theological conservatives, but they recognize the Muslim obligation to obey the laws of countries in which Muslims are not a majority, whether Britain or India. They are also dedicated to the Sufi practice of the Qadiri mystical order. And, although traditionalists, they accept the political realities of modern life.

The AIMPLB has become a battleground between the Barelvis and the Deobandis. Aside from their historic link to the Taliban, Deobandis are a radical fundamentalist sect that opposes the preservation of Islamic architectural legacy, such as tombs and shrines, and that preaches violent hatred toward Barelvis and Sufis in general. This is particularly troubling to Indian Muslims as Islam in India has always been Sufi-flavored, both reflecting and extending itself toward the mystical traditions of millions of Hindus.

 As Stephen Suleyman Schwartz and I mentioned recently in The Weekly Standard Blog [seehttp://www.islamicpluralism.org/1441/moderate-muslim-leaders-take-a-stand], Barelvis in India had already begun protesting Wahhabi and Deobandi usurpation of public institutions. The article told of a conference on January 3, “in the Indian city of Moradabad, held by the All-India Ulema Mashaikh Board, representing the moderate leaders. The board’s general secretary, Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichowchhwi, called for 10,000 madrassas, shrines, tombs, and other Islamic monuments in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh (India’s largest, with a population of nearly 200 million) to be taken out of the hands of the “Wahhabis.”

Kichowchhwi accused a minority, financed by petro-dollars - no need to guess from where - of systematically capturing mosques and madrassas.

He called upon the moderates to “liberate our properties,” and demanded that the Indian government assure that administrators of the countless religious facilities be named from the 80 percent of Indian moderate Muslims who maintain Sufi traditions." In the latest episode another Barelvi leader with a similar name, Maulana Syed Zafar Masood Kichauchvi, resigned from the Personal Law Board. Masood Kichauchvi, who also functions in another powerful religious body, the All-India Hussaini Sunni Board, has warned that it may be necessary to create a wider range of separate institutions.

Masood Kichauchvi, the son of the long-serving vice president of the Personal Law Board, who recently died at 90, said he resigned from the Personal Law Board because his voice had been “throttled” in its recent convention. He described the Board as “occupied by ‘Wahhabis,’ who make merry with the money they receive from Saudi Arabia.” According to him, the radicals also want to keep control over madrassah religious schools by opposing state oversight over them.

Indian Muslims point out that continuous quarrels between the Wahhabi infiltrators and indigenous Muslim leaders, and the insistence by the radical Wahhabis on their interpretations of law and beliefs, have fostered various shariah or “personal law” boards, with competing claims of authority -- including separate groups led by Shiites and women.

While remaining conservative in their dedication to Shariah law among Muslims, Barelvi leaders like Masood Kichauchvi refuse to be swept aside by the Wahhabis, Deobandis and other extremists who seek to permanently establish their control of Indian Muslims.

As Kichauchvi put it, “I had just demanded adequate representation of all sects on the Board, but it was turned down.”

Muslims living in democratic states like India, Britain, and the U.S. have special opportunities to expose the expansion of petrol-financed fundamentalism and to assist those who have pledged to resist it among Muslim communities around the world.

The battle for Islamic pluralism is not limited to the West, or to controversy over Western principles; it strikes to the heart of Muslim spiritual life, whether in America, Britain, India, or Pakistan.

 

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/1177/muslims-in-india-taking-back-islam-from-the-wahhabis

 

 

 

[shahzad6058811]

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[DeoKDushman]

Save India from Wahhabism
8th Annual General Meeting of All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board

by Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichowchhwi
All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board
June 30, 2013

 

 

Rudauli (Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, India) June 30, 2013.

"Terrorism burned Pakistan and the Islamic countries; we could not throw India in the same flames of Wahhabism and/or Salafism" Maulana Syed Mohammed Ashraf Kichhowchhwi, General Secretary of the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), appealed to hundreds of scholars, Sunni Muslims, intellectuals, Sufi clerics and common people at the 8^th general annual meeting of the Board.

Maulana Ashraf said it is no doubt the prerogative of any independent and sovereign government to frame its foreign policy and business strategy. We appreciate that this century demands a more strengthened oil/energy security to cope with the requirement of an ever-growing India. We, as patriotic citizens, have faith in the wisdom of the government, but it is alarming to note that India is not only importing oil from Saudi Arabia but also importing an extreme Saudi/Wahhabi ideology which is totally against our ethos, and very much detrimental for the national interests, including internal security. To keep the Saudis in good humor and remain in their good books successive Indian governments have embarked upon a dangerous path and committed a blunder, injurious to the national security. Handing over management of Muslim affairs to Saudi/Wahhabi elements at the behest of the Saudi/Wahhabi regime, and making them an engine of propagation of Wahhabism will in no way serve the country or the community.

The general annual meeting in Khanqah Shaikhul Alam Rudauli Sharif, Faizabad District (Uttar Pradesh) took very serious note of the supremacy gained by Saudi/Wahhabi individuals and organizations, who are creating chaos in the society, while the government of India knowingly ignores their presence and practices, and the Salafis/Ahle Hadith who are preparing a new generation of insurgents/mercenaries that would eventually work to destroy the national fabric.

 

Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichowchhwi.

Maulana Ashraf said the Salafis/Jamiat-e Ahle Hadith group of Saudi/guided/dictated/funded Muslims have a history of being used as insurgents/mercenaries in the name of jihad and working to destabilize society politically. They adopt different names in different nations. In Afghanistan/Pakistan they are Taliban, while in Egypt they are Ikhwanul Muslimoon (Muslim Brotherhood) and in other places they carry other locally-recognized names. They are organized very carefully from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Not only are they getting Saudi funds through regular sources like India's Foreign Contribution Regulation Act, but Hawala money [transferred by informal networks] is filling their coffers. The real threat to the security of India by Wahhabis might not be immediate. But India after two decades will have to bear the burden of this interference.

 

The general secretary said that the K.S.A. not only funds Wahhabis but also provides them active guidance through radical Saudi clerics. There are more or less a dozen government appointed so-called Imams at the Haram-i Sharif [Grand Mosque of Mecca] and they take turns visiting India to lend their religious leadership/guidance to the Wahhabis in India. Abdur Rahman Al Sudais, chief imam at the Mecca Grand Mosque, was treated as a state guest and given a public reception at places like Ram Lila Ground, and thus under government patronage the Wahhabis are creating a space in Indian Muslim society, which never before accepted Saudi leadership. The most sensitive part of the story is that the Wahhabis are carrying out their agenda of killing non-Wahhabis in other disturbed Muslim nations, fighting to dislodge governments in the Islamic countries which have refused to adopt Wahhabi/Salafi ideology in their national lives and dismantling tombs of Sufi Muslims in all those Muslim nations where they have been able to achieve political power.

Syed Mehdi Miyan Chishti, Patron in Chief of the Board and the gaddinashin of Ajmer Dargah said that the pious land of India could not be polluted by the unholy hands of anti-Indian elements. He called all like minded people to gather against the anti national efforts. Mehdi Miyan asked youth to join hands for the sake of Sufism.

Syed Mohammed Mehmood Ashraf, National President of the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board demanded that the Wahhabis "be made accountable for their activities, the government of India and State Governments must be made aware of the goings on, so that national security is not compromised for energy security and steps are taken to ensure that India, the home of the second largest Muslim population in the world, is not made to suffer due to negligence or underestimating the dangers hidden" in the Wahhabi ideology.

The AIUMB in the presence of several hundred Sunni Sufi Muslims, Mashaikh, clerics and intellectuals took note of a number of alarming aspects of the control given to Saudi/Wahhabi/Salafi institutions and individuals over Muslim issues and came to a conclusion that Wahhabism/Salafism has gathered considerable influence in government circles and is shrewd enough to hide its main agenda of radicalizing youth and propagating a culture of intolerance in the Indian society.

Hence the Indian Muslims are very much worried about the consequences of this process and the Annual General Meeting of AIUMB demands that the activities of Saudi/Wahhabi/Salafi elements be curbed immediately.

Syed Babar Ashraf, National Secretary of the Board said that wherever Saudi/Wahhabi/Salafi ideology is successful in penetrating the socio-political arena it has created political chaos, even rebellion against the established governments working for the welfare of their people and destroyed peace in those nations. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mali, Syria and now Turkey are all socially disturbed and politically destabilized due to Saudi/Wahhabi interference in their internal affairs. The government of India is wise enough to understand the pattern, behavior and agenda of Saudi/Wahhabi/Salafi elements who are being welcomed in the political class, administrative circles and bureaucracy.

Syed Babar recalled that AIUMB demands that the rise of extremism in India be viewed in the context that government authorities are creating space for Saudi/Wahhabi elements in policy making, program implementation and project co-ordination, and in this way marginalizing the Indian Muslims.

Syed Shah Ammar Ahmed Ahmedi Nayyar Miyan, chief of AIUMB in Uttar Pradesh, said Indian Sufi Muslims should get their proper share in the representation in the establishment. He demanded representation in the Uttar Pradesh government for the Sufi Muslims.

Chief Mufti of the Board Syed Waseem Ashraf said Indians must be alert to the threat of Saudi-promoted Wahhabi/Salafi ideology. He said that we cannot take for granted the internal security of the nation in the name of energy security.

The present members of the Board passed a resolution to the Union Government including 50 points about internal security, threats to the social fabric, terrorism, waqf properties, Muslim representation, Wahhabi/Salafi ideology and many more issues.

In the Board's discussion about Wahhabism, it was agreed that AIUMB needs to counter Wahhabism, which has thriving from the petrodollars of Saudi Arabia with the active help of Indian Union governments since the late seventies. The latter have as a policy offered the Saudi guided/dictated/funded Wahhabis access to the corridors of power, to administrative circles and to bureaucratic positions, to that now they are well equipped and also know how to manage their financing and get monetary benefit from the union and state government through Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs).

The AIUMB demands that the sources of funding of these elements be identified and scrutinized to save the country from the real danger coming from the Saudi regime, so that the Board may be ready to face their assaults and to anticipate the steps they may take to inflict more damage on the Sunni/Sufi Culture and to the composite culture of India