A rchive Date
[ 10-01-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Muslims ]

http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/metcalf.htm

Piety, Persuasion, and Politics: Deoband's Model of Islamic Activism

Professor of History, University of California, Davis

As several commentators have noted, the Taliban identify themselves with a particular Islamic school of thought, the so-called "Deobandi" orientation widespread among the Sunni learned leadership, the

'ulama

, of the Indian sub-continent. Indeed, when I had a chance to meet the so-called "ambassador at large" of the Taliban, Rahmatu'llah Hashemi earlier this year, he went as far as to say, "Every Afghan "is a Deobandi."

Most comments on the school have been along the lines that "deobandism" as "a sect that propagates...a belief that has inspired modern revivals of Islamic fundamentalism."

A closer look at the Deobandi school of thought, however, indicates matters to be more complex. An examination of several contemporary movements or institutions that either identify themselves, or are identified by others, as Deobandi, show them to be astonishingly varied. Deobandi institutions and movements are united by the goal of spreading adherence to

shari`a

- divinely ordained morality and practices, as understood in this case by measuring current practice against textual standards and traditions of Hanafi reasoning. But how they operate politically or strategically is not fixed. Deobandis use

a range of strategies

to achieve mundane goals variously defined -- from protection of life and property, to social honor and political power, to the dignity that comes from pious adherence to what are taken as divine commands.

All Islamic politics are not alike. The Deobandi organization must be kept distinct from other Islamically based movements, in particular those I will label "Islamist."

These other movements are, arguably, intellectually the most interesting Islamic political movements of the last century. They constructed ideological systems that systematically built models for distinctive polities that challenged what they saw as alternative systems: nationalism, capitalism, Marxism. Participants were western educated-engineers and others with technical training, lawyers, doctors, and university professors. These were movements that would "do" modernity in ways that simultaneously asserted the cultural pride of the subjects and avoided the "black" side of western modernity. The three most important manifestations of this style of Islamist thought were those associated with the Iranian revolution, and, among Sunnis, the Muslim Brothers in Egypt and the Jama`at-i Islami in the Indian sub-continent. The Islamic movements now associated with the Afghan Northern Alliance are heirs to Islamist thought in parties that arose in opposition to the Soviets.

⁴

Although in recent years the Islamist parties have fought among themselves and been shaped by emerging ethnic polarization, this has not meant the end of Islamic politics.

⁵

The Taliban, true to the Deoband tradition of shaping political action to fit their context, act basically within the local political culture. The French scholar Olivier Roy, a specialist in contemporary Islamic politics who has studied Afghanistan since the 1980s, calls movements like the Taliban "non-ideological" because they do

not

have a distinctive theory of political organization, and he contrasts them specifically with the Islamist parties. For Roy, such groups as the Taleban are "neo-fundamentalist," by which he means limited to "mere implementation of the

shari`a

⁶

in matters of ritual, dress, and everyday behavior

without

distinctive social, political, and economic theories to shape their overall policies.

A survey of manifestations of one

shari`a

-focused movement, that of Deoband, is instructive, I believe, for illustrating this important model of contemporary Islamic thought and action. And since this movement includes both the Taliban and an Islamic political party at the forefront of anti- government protest in Pakistan, it is one of considerable current interest.

The Daru'l-`Ulum and "Cultural Strengthening"

The origin of the Deobandi school of thought is literally a school, a

madrasa

or seminary, founded in the late nineteenth century at the height of colonial rule in the Delhi region of northern India.vii The

'ulama

who founded this school were scholars of prophetic

hadith

, the narratives which constitute the Prophet Muhammad's sayings and practices which serve either directly or analogously to guide every aspect of moral behavior. These

'ulama

, in a pattern widespread in South Asia, were also part of Sufi networks. They did not teach English or other "modern" subjects. They deplored a range of customary celebrations and practices, including what they regarded as excesses at saints' tombs, elaborate life cycle celebrations, and practices attributed to the influence of the Shi`a.

The brutal repression of the so-called Mutiny of 1857 against the British had fallen very hard on north Indian Muslims. In the aftermath, the

'ulama

, not surprisingly, adopted a stance of a-political quietism. Their key institution was the seminary, and they reorganized

madrasas

along the modern lines they knew from colonial institutions. They gained support by utilizing all manner of new technologies from printing presses to the post office to railroads as they turned from reliance on princely patronage to popularly based contributions.

There were rival Islamic reformist school in the quest for true Islamic practice. One group, the Ahl-i Hadith, for example, in their extreme opposition to such practices as visiting the Prophet's grave, rivaled that of the Arabians typically labeled "Wahhabi." The "Wahhabis" were followers of an iconoclastic late l8th century reform movement associated with tribal unification who were to find renewed vigor in internal political competition within Arabia in the l920s.

⁸

From colonial times until today, it is worth noting, the label "Wahhabi" is often used to discredit any reformist or politically active Islamic group - opponents often call Deobandis "Wahhabi." In the colonial-era,

'ulama

competed in public life to show themselves as the spokesmen or defenders of "Islam" to their fellow Muslims. This was a new understanding of Islam, as a corporate identity in competition with others, and it created a new role in public life for religious leaders.

As the Indian nationalist movement became a mass movement after World War I, the Deobandi leadership did an about face. For the most part, they threw in their lot with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress in opposition to British rule. Like much of the orthodox Jewish leadership in the case of the Zionist movement, most Deobandis opposed the creation of what in 1947 would become the independent state of Pakistan -- a separate state for Muslims to be led by a westernized, secular leadership.

⁹

As the website of the main seminary at Deoband shows, the school has flourished in recent years. Its emphasis is on continuity, above all the training, "of Ulama, Shaikhs, traditionists, jurisconsults, authors and experts." It refers to its network of schools as "stars of this very solar system by the light of which every nook and corner of the religious and academic life of the Muslims of the sub-continent is radiant." Among these, presumably would be the humble Deobandi madrasas along the Pakistan-Afghan frontier and in southern Afghanistan which were the original Taliban base.

¹⁰

But within India at least the

'ulama

of Deoband continued their pre-independence pattern: they did not become a political party and they justified political cooperation with non-Muslims as the best way to protect Muslim interests. For "millions of Muslim families," the web site continues,....[their] inferiority complex was removed...."

The JUI, and the Politics of Sectarianism and Realpolitik

In the final years of colonial rule, a minority group among the Deobandi

'ulama

dissented from support for the secular state espoused by the Indian nationalist movement. They organized, instead, as the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam to support the Muslim League and the demand for a separate Muslim state. In independent Pakistan after 1947 they became a minor political party led by

'ulama

and a voice in the on-going debate over the nature of the Pakistani state. Would it be the secular state presumably intended by its founders or as a state meant to be shaped in accordance with Islam? The JUI has never had more than minute popular support, and the content of the party's programs over the years, it is probably fair to say, has been a fairly simplistic call for the primacy of Islam in public life.

¹¹

Like other Pakistani parties, the JUI has been subject to factional splits coalescing around personalities more than issues, and there have been perhaps a half-dozen factions and reorganizations.

¹²

The JUI has struck alliances with any party that would win them influence. In the 1970s, for example, they allied with an ethnically-based sub-nationalist party in opposition to Bhutto's PPP, a party that is, in principle, socialist. In the mid 1990s, in contrast, they allied with that same PPP, now led by Bhutto's Harvard and Oxford educated daughter. When the JUI is excluded from power, as it is now, its Islamic rhetoric becomes a language of opposition, often invoking a language of "democracy" and "rights."

Recently the commentator Nicholas Lemann has argued that particularly in contexts of weak or non-existent states alliances typically reflect estimates of who will prevail, not who is "right." The JUI would seem almost a textbook case of this kind of argument. As Lemann puts it, "in the real world people choose to join not one side of a great

clash of civilizations

but what looks like the winning team in their village."

¹³

To speak of the Deobandis in India, sometimes the winning team seems to be the British colonial power; sometimes the Indian National Congress, sometimes other parties. In the fragmented, factionalized world of Pakistan's gasping democracy, the winning side seems to be whatever party - regional interest, secular, or Islamic - offers some leverage. Similarly, in contrast to what one might expect of a party of

'ulama

, there is no assumption that the leadership is one of particular virtue. "Maulana Diesel" is only one of the colorful epithets applied to JUI

'ulama

, in this case alluding to the target's alleged participation in fuel smuggling in the mid 1990s.

¹⁴

Now, along with the Jamaat-i Islami, the JUI has been at the forefront of anti-American protest. Would they moderate this if they were brought, at some point, into a ruling coalition? Or do they think, particularly given their support base among Pashtuns along the Afghan border, that the "winning team" will be transnational Islamic militants and, in the end, that they will gain the support of the presumed majority of Pakistanis who do not support religious parties but do resent American foreign policy?

What defines the JUI as an Islamic party is not their basic modus operandi in terms of political actions and loyalties, but rather their desire to further observance of certain correct practices

, as fostered by their training as Deobandis.

The Taliban

The Taliban - the word means "students" - were in fact students in Deobandi seminaries along the frontier provinces between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

¹⁵

These sometime students were shaped by many of the core Deobandi reformist causes, all of which were further encouraged by Arab volunteers in Afghanistan. These causes include rigorous concern with fulfilling rituals; opposition to custom laden ceremonies like weddings and pilgrimage to shrines, along with practices associated with the Shi`a minority; and a focus on seclusion of women as a central symbol of a morally ordered society.

The Pakistani state has had reasons, quite apart from any religious sympathy, to support a client state in Afghanistan. Similarly, the Taliban also appeared in the mid 1990s to serve a range of U.S. interests, above all in securing a route for an oil pipeline to the Central Asian oilfields outside Iranian control. The Taliban, in short, have not been ideologically driven as they determined who they were willing to work with as allies and supporters. Indeed Olivier Roy suggests that while they cannot be manipulated easily - for example in relation to issues related to women - they are profoundly expedient when it comes to securing a power base, whether in terms of forbidding the use of drugs but not their cultivation, or, Roy at one point argued, despite their anti-Shi`a position, of dealing with Iran if it served their interests.

¹⁶

The United States interest in the Taliban shifted away from them, however, first, because of what were seen as human rights abuses in relation to women, and second, because the embassy bombings in 1998 were linked to the presence of terrorist activists within Taliban controlled areas, with Osama bin Laden as their most visible supporter.

Bin Laden's charisma, his wealth, and his networks were invaluable to the Taliban in achieving their success, and his anti-Americanism found fertile soil among the Taliban already inclined to disapproval of "the West." The U.S. bombings in Sudan and Afghanistan in August 1998, following the East African embassy bombings, gave further credence to his cause. Nonetheless, the Taliban's driving force at core has not been abhorrence of Western culture but the specific goal of prevailing within Afghanistan, and, in so doing,

creating what they see as an Islamic moral order. To do this, they have adopted the goals and strategies shared by every Afghan party in the ongoing fighting

, namely, through engagement with the emerging ethnic polarities in the country to establish an Islamic state that would transcend these very divisions. To this end, they have taken support wherever offered. And their goals do not entail worldwide

jihad

. Thus, it is not unreasonable to speculate, as many commentators have suggested, that Taliban protection of the Arab-Afghans can best be explained by their now visible military weakness which makes them dependent on Arab fighters and finances, rather than by a complete overlap with their goals.

The Tablighi Jama`at

The final movement I briefly want to sketch is one known as Tablighi Jama`at, "the preaching" or "inviting" society, many of whose leaders have been associated with Deoband.

¹⁷

Their primary activity consists of encouraging Muslims to move out of their normal everyday enmeshments and pressures to call other Muslims to what one might call a "lowest common denominator" of correct ritual practice. Each year perhaps two million people congregate for three day meetings in Pakistan and Bangladesh; large regional meetings are held in India; and other convocations take place in north America and Europe.

The discourse of Tabligh is fundamentally a discourse of

jihad

- the leaders are

amirs

, the outings are "sorties" or "patrols," the merit for actions are exponentially multiplied as they are during a military campaign, a person who dies in the course of

tabligh

is a

shahiid

. Finally, the obligation to mission is not negotiable: on fulfilling it hinges nothing less than one's own ultimate fate at the Day of Judgment. This is

jihad

of personal purification, not warfare. In the words of Muhammad Khurshid Haqq, this year's annual meeting organizer at Raiwind, "Islam is in the world to guide people, not to kill them. We want to show the world the correct Islam."

¹⁸

The oft-told tales of the movement are ones of meeting opposition, even violence, and of unfailingly withdrawing from conflict - and of so gaining divine intervention and blessing. The movement is little known. Earlier this month a Los Angeles Times reporter who was present at the annual meeting wrote, " because it is almost always conducted in a spirit of moderation and civility, [Tablihgi Jama`at] gets little of the attention paid to the much smaller fundamentalist movements here, particularly in these tense weeks."

¹⁹

Certainly political figures, in Pakistan as in Bangladesh, have been prominent attendees at these meetings. Some however have even claimed that Tablighis in Pakistan have been engaged in military

jihad

. Others argue that the Islamicization of the movement and the line it draws between true Muslims and others is a stage on the way to militancy. These concerns have been enhanced by the fact that the majority of Tabligh activists in Pakistan belong to the frontier province adjoining Afghanistan. All of this is, however, speculation, and

the formally a-political tours, gatherings in local mosques, and annual gatherings continue to be the routine of the movement

, and one that clearly offers meaning and dignity to many who participate.

Conclusion

Deobandis, Talibs, and Tablighis demonstrate pragmatic responses to the varying environments in which they find themselves. These include solutions that de facto if not always de jure are compatible with secular states and even in the case of Tablighi Jama`at with an identification of religion with the private sphere. The

shari`a

-focused organizations need to be distinguished from both the militant extremist fringe and from the sophisticated Islamist movements. As such, they offer challenges - above all in the stark line they draw against outsiders - yet opportunities - because of their participation in on-going political regimes - for the local and global polities in which they find themselves today.

Endnotes

¹ Conversation with Rahmatullah Hashemi, Berkeley California, 6 March 2001.
² John F. Burns, "Adding Demands, Afghan Leaders Show Little Willingness to Give Up bin Laden." The New York Times, 19 September 2001
Here I differ from Rushdie who uses the term, I think, too broadly: "These Islamists [here he speaks of "radical political movements"] - we must get used to this word, "Islamists," meaning those who are engaged upon such political projects, and learn to distinguish it from the more general and political neutral "Muslim" -include...the Taliban. " Salman Rushdie, "Yes, This is About Islam." The New York Times, 2 November 2001
⁴ The Jamiyyat-i Islamic was formed by Burhanuddin Rabbani and others who had studied at Al Azhar; the Hezb-i Islami of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was more influenced by the Pakistani Jama`at-i Islami.
⁵ The phrase "ethnic polarization" is Olivier Roy's. He uses this to suggest that ethnic loyalties are only one stratum of many. They are, moreover, complex and fluid, not ideologized, and they have shaped all parties in the Afghan competitions of recent years. Olivier Roy, "Has Islamism a Future in Afghanistan?" In William Maley, ed. Fundamentalism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban. New York: NYU Press, 1998, pp. 199-211.
⁶ Roy, op.cit, p. 208.
⁷ See my Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband 1860-1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982).
⁸ For a comparative view of the contexts of such movements see William R. Roff, "Islamic Movements: One or Many?" in William R. Roff, ed., Islam and the Political Economy of Meaning. London: Croom Helm and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987, pp.31-52
⁹ Yohanan Friedmann, "The Attitude of the Jam`iyyat-i `Ulama'-i Hind to the Indian National Movement and the Establishment of Pakistan." In Gabriel Baer, ed., The Ulama in Modern History. Jerusalem: Israeli Oriental Society, Asian and African Studies, VII, pp. 157-83.
¹⁰ The Madrasa Haqqania in Akhora Khatak trained the core Taliban leadership. See Jeffrey Goldberg, "Jihad U.: The Education of a Holy Warrior." The New York Times Magazine 25 June 2000.
¹¹ Seyyid Vali Reza Nasr makes the important argument that it is by welcoming Islamist parties into the democratic process, as happen in Pakistan in the mid 1980s, that they become politically moderate, for example in contrast to suppressed Islamists in Egypt and Algeria. See his The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama`at-i Islami of Pakistan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
¹² See Sayyid A.S. Pirazda, The Politics of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam Pakistan 1971-77. Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000.
¹³ Nicholas Leman, "What Terrorists Want." The New Yorker 29 October 2001 (pp. 36-41), p.39
¹⁴ The target of this is Fazlur Rahman, head of the JUI (F). See Rick Bragg, "A Pro-Taliban Rally Draws Angry Thousands in Pakistan, Then Melts Away." The New York Times, 6 October 2001.
¹⁵ The definitive source for the Taliban is Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
¹⁶ Roy, op. cit., p. 211.
¹⁷ For an excellent introduction to the movement and to the current bibliography on it see Muhammad Khalid Masud, ed., Travellers In Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama`at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal. Leiden: Brill, 2000.
¹⁸ Tempest, Rone, "Huge Gathering of Moderate Muslims in Pakistan." San Francisco Chronicle, 3 November 2001. Also, Maulana Zubair-ul-Hassan: "[The Holy Prophet] said it is not bravery to kill the non-believers but to preach [to] them is the real task." "Tableeghi Ijtima concludes," The Frontier Post (Peshawar), 5 November 2001
¹⁹ Tempest, op.cit.

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