INTRODUCTION TO SIGNIFICANT PHASES OF ISLAMIC REVIVALISM DURING THE 18TH, 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES IN ARABIA, PAKISTAN, INDIA, AFGHANISTAN, BANGLADESH

INTRODUCTION TO SIGNIFICANT PHASES OF ISLAMIC REVIVALISM DURING THE 18^TH, 19^TH AND 20^TH CENTURIES IN ARABIA, PAKISTAN, INDIA, AFGHANISTAN, BANGLADESH AND NORTH AFRICA.

Dr. Muin-ud-Din Ahmad Khan

Islam is avowedly a peaceful religion. It is divinely revealed by Allah to Prophet Muhammad (sm) as a model way of human life. Through variegated experimentation and devotional efforts, the Prophet himself developed it into a complete world system for the virtuous and moral guidance of the whole mankind.

Prophet Muhammad (peace be on him) was born at Makkah in 571 C.E. He was conferred divine Messengership by Allah in 610 C.E at the age of 40. The divine Message was revealed to him in the form of the holy Quran, transmitting its 6236 ayat, miraculous inimitable verses, bit by bit, through his later life of 23 years till he breathed his last in 632 C.E. at the age of 63.

The Islamic world system gradually developed and was firmly established by Prophet Muhammad (sm) in conformity with the environmental, temporal and earthly circumstantial perspective under divine guidance. These inspirational efforts of the holy Prophet fructified into the Prophetic Tradition which along with the Quran, constituted the Islamic way of life. The Prophetic Tradition is known as the Sunnatul-Rasul and the Quranic principles are known as Sunnatul-Lah, which as warp and woof built up the Islamic world system.

In the Islamic world system, the Quranic principles are directly given by Allah and are immutable and permanent whereas the running system of human life related to the Prophetic Sunnah admits of further extension, expansion and necessary innovation requisite to the demands of the changing circumstances in consonance with the basic principles of the Quran and the Sunnah. Thus, the Islamic way of life is not static but dynamic. Its bases are substantive and its framework and body politic are mutable, ever growing and amenable to change in consonance with the moral and spiritual imperative and the mundane demand of time and clime.

There is a Prophetic tradition saying; Allah will send to this community of Muslims (Ummah), at the head of each century those who will renovate (yujad-di-du) its system or way of life (din) for the sake of it (Sunan Abi Daud).

The process of the change is clearly laid down by further prophetic tradition which instructs the men in authority to look for the solution of any new problem arising in the changing social milieu, first in the holy Quran, secondly in the Prophetic Sunnah and thirdly by exerting one’s intellectual capacity to arrive at an appropriate judgment, which is called ijtihad (see for details: Chapter 3, opening sections). The process is illustrated by a four digital working progression: Quran-Sunnah-Ijtihad-Rayy (see Chapter 7). As such, it is recognized at all hands by the Muslims that history has witnessed the rise of centurion renovators or Reformers of centurion epochs, continuously operating during the last fourteen hundred years, who reasserted the fundamental principles and pristine rationale of Islam and reconstructed the Islamic way of life by purging the Muslim society of un-Islamic customs and usages as well as amalgamating to it newer usages, conventions, institutions and technicalities to meet the demand of time and circumstances. The wording ‘yujad-di-du’ in the above mentioned Prophetic Tradition, means to renew the Islamic way of life by timely reformation.

This point of renewal was emphatically emphasized by Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyah (661-729H. /1263-1328 C.E.) during the 14^th century C.E. He vehemently deplored the moral, intellectual, political and religious corruption then prevailing in the Muslim society and called for fortifying the Islamic faith and Muslim conduct by returning to the pristine purity of Islam, that is, to the basic principles of the Quran, the Sunnah and ijtihad. He called for the renewal of the faith in the pure Unity of Allah, the Unitarianism of the Supreme Creator, and to purge the Muslim society of all sorts of shirk and bid’ah, that is, to desist from associating any person or thing with the worship of Allah, and to remove all pre-Islamic customs and post-Islamic innovations and accretions in order to purify the Islamic way of life. In the intellectual arena, he abrogated Greek philosophy, Aristotelian logic and speculative thinking (see his Minhaj al-Sunnah) and approved of following the principles of the Quran and the Prophetic Tradition and imitating the ways and practices of first three generations of the Muslims, that is, the ages of the holy Prophet, the Companions of the Prophet and the Companions of the Companions (see the collection of his legal opinions: Fatawa ibn Taymiyah, 29 Vols. in Arabic). Thus, he advocated for the return to the pristine Islamic doctrines by-passing completely the historical growth of the Muslim community and the contemporary human life process. His mental attitude was doctrinal and theoretical.

Immediately after him, his great disciple and student ibn Qayyim upheld his renovative doctrines; but it was not until four hundred years after his death that his reformist ideas found a powerful advocate in the person of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab of Najd in Eastern Arabia. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1115-1201 H. /1703-1789 C.E.) turned ibn Taymiyah’s doctrine of return to the pristine Islam into a forceful religio-political movement of Islamic revivalism (tajdid al-Islam).

Again, in the broader Muslim consciousness, the concept of political renovation (tajdid) has been practically inter-twined with the Quranic pivotal concept of ‘islah’, which means ‘to reform’, ‘to reconstruct’ etc. Hence ‘tajdid’ and ‘islah’, renovation and reform in combination do constitute the most potent continuous process of change and growth in the Islamic social system as the intrinsic capacity of the Muslim society (Ummah).

The Indian reformers of Islam, such as, Shaykh Ahmad Sarhindi, known as Mujaddid-i-Alf-i-Thani (d. 1623 C.E.) and Shah Wali Allah Muhaddith Dehlavi (1703-1762 C.E.) though attached equal importance to both tajdid and islah (renovation and reform), yet laid greater emphasis on islah. As a matter of fact, Shah Wali Allah, a great contemporary of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, developed an all-embracing reform scheme for rejuvenating the Muslim society under the context of maslahah, meaning social reformation derived from the basic word of islah (see chapter 3).

The inter-twined reform movement of tajdid and islah inaugurated by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab at Najd and Shah Wali Allah at Delhi by the middle of the 18^th century C.E. took strong root in the popular feeling both in Arabia and India and flared up in the 19^th century into a jihad movement in Arabia against the corrupt local government and also in India against the oppressive rule of Ranjit Singh in the Punjab and the government of British India (see Chapters 4 and 5).

Mohammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab wrote his magnum opus in a summary doctrinaire form entitled: Kitab al Tawhid. We procured two copies of Kitab al-Tawhid, one was published in 1344 Hijri from Bombay (Mumbai) by Maktabatul Qayyimah al-Idarah al-Taba‘ah al- Muniriyah, which consists of the Arabic text and excellent foot notes annotating the references of the Quran and the Hadith, and the other was published from Dhaka in 1980 consisting of Arabic text and Bangla translation. Both have identical text, an excerpt of which has been presented by us in the first part of the second Chapter.

We are publishing herewith two new original documents, one of which is intimately related to the life and works of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and the other an authentic exposition of Muhammad ibn al-Wahhab’s reform doctrines by his son Abdullah, which have not so far reached the hands of the general readers of our times (see Chapters 1 and 2). Recently, however, it was published by the Asiatic Society of Bengal from Kolkata at the present writer’s suggestion (see Chapter 2).

Our first Chapter contains the unique document, being the diplomatic report of the British Ambassador to the (Othmania) Ottoman government, Sir Jones Brydges, who was the British Resident at Baghdad, dwelling on the life and activities of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab dated 1799 C.E., just ten years after his death. It categorically says that Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and his followers did not call their movement Wahhabism.

This is a very significant piece of information raising the question as to who concocted this derogatory terminology of Wahhabism for the puritan ‘Muwahhidun’ movement.

It may be contemplated that the Arabic speaking people could not fabricate such a gross mistake, since the movement was launched by Muhammad and not by his father Abd al-Wahhab.

There is reason to believe that this mistake was done by the Europeans who thought that the ‘last name’ Abd al-Wahhab was the real name of ‘Muhammad’ in the English style, which was actually his father’s name super-added for identity. In 1799, Sir Jones writes his Report under the title ‘The Whabee’ (see Chapter 1, text of the Report) and states that, ‘they term themselves true Mussulmans’ (ibid. doctrine No.2). The term ‘Whabee’ is etymologically un-Arabic and the pronunciation is typically English. His term ‘true Mussulman’ is again a Persian pronunciation and un-Arabic wording to mean ‘true Muslim’, which may more correctly be compared to D.S. Margoliouth’s description that ‘the Wahhabis call themselves Muwahhidun’, that is, Unitarians or monotheists (Ency. Islam, 1^st edn. Vol. IV, p. 1086).

On the other hand, the founder of the movement and his followers never called themselves Wahhabi nor did they ever admit the epithet ‘Wahhabi-sm’ for their movement. Indeed, the epithet ‘Wahhabism’ being etymologically wrong and semantically misleading and always used by its opponents as a derogatory abuse, it could not have been coined by the Arabs themselves. Besides, it is popularly known that the founder’s father Abd al-Wahhab disapproved of his radical contentions and his brother Sulaiman ibn Abd al-Wahhab was vocal in opposing his extremism.

Available historical data show that the term ‘Wahhabi’ was first of all gathered from somewhere by Carston Niebuhr (see Chapter 1, opening sections) in the 1770’s and his works being translated from German into English and published in England in 1792 (ibid.), came to the notice of the British government. Sir Jones’ Report of 1799 (Chapter 1) must have been in reply to a diplomatic inquiry. Moreover, the procurement of a copy of Abdullah’s book on the doctrines of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (written in Arabic in 1803 at Makkah) and procured by the British government of India (Manuscript in Arabic preserved at British Government Archives in Delhi see Chapter 2) shows that the British took persistent interest in watching over the movement.

The development of Muwahhidun movement in Arabia during the later half of the 18^th century C.E. coincided with the formative stage of the British empire in India from the Battle of Plassey in 1757 C.E. to the British occupation of Delhi in 1803 C.E. At this time the British authorities were deeply concerned with preserving the security of so-called ‘Imperial life line of communication’ through the Middle East to India, for which they had built up cordial relations between the ‘Sultan of Turkey and the British Crown’ on the one hand, and entered into firm treaty relations with the Sheikhdoms of the Gulf area on the other. The British government felt deep apprehension towards disturbances created by the Muwahhidun movement in Arabia and they instigated the Sublime Porte, the government of the Ottoman Sultan, with the bogey of Wahhabism, as a rebellious movement against the Sultan of Turkey, at that time posed to be the Khalifah of the Muslim world and the Custodian of the Shariah, the Islamic way of life. This could have been sorted out by the Sultan-Khalifah with administrative action and could be minimized and compromisingly settled through mutual consultation or shura, as they had done with the Sanusi movement of North Africa. But the British diplomacy fomented mistrust into the ears of the Porte, which eventually compelled the Sultan to request another rebellious force of the Khedive Muhammad Ali of Egypt to quell and subdue the Saudi-Wahhabi rebellious forces of Arabia which though immediately brought destruction upon Saudi regime (1817 C.E.), yet it could not uproot Muwahhidun religious movement from the Arabian desert society. On the other hand, it strengthened Muhammad Ali’s determination to achieve independence from the Turkish suzerainty.

The British did not stop there, but carried their bogey of Wahhabism to India and applied it on the Fara’idi movement, being an extension of Arabian Muwahhidun movement in Bangladesh, which assumed the form of a social activist movement from 1818 C.E. (History of the Fara’idi Movement in Bengal, of the present writer) and the British administration also applied the same term to another similar reform movement namely Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah that cropped up at Delhi under the leadership of Sayyid Ahmad Shahid of Rai Bareilly in the same year (see Chapters 4,5,6,7), which were beamishly designated by the British administrators as ‘Indian Wahhabism’(Dr. Qeyamuddin Ahmad: The Wahhabi Movement in India, Calcutta, 1966; Ency. of Islam and Ency. Britannica). This has been reflected in the introduction to so-called Wahhabi Doctrines (see Chapter 2) where the translator J.O’Kinealy says: ‘but what is of far greater interest is that it proves beyond all possibility of doubt, the identity on all important points of Wahhabi doctrines in Arabia with Wahhabi doctrines in India and confirms the prevalent view that one is the offshoot of the other (Chapter 2, commentary of translation).

In India, the British Government kept a close watch over these religious reform movements through their secret Police network and ultimately suppressed them (see the present writer’s Titu Mir and His Followers in British Indian Records, Dhaka, and British Indian Records Relating to the Wahhabi Trial of 1863, Dhaka, 1961, History of the Fara’idi Movement in Bengal, Dhaka, 1981, and Chapters 6, 8 and 11).

On the other hand, the contemporary Sanusiyah movement in North Africa received ample sympathy and patronage from the government of the Ottoman Sultan. Sanusiyah movement had absorbed considerable impact of the Muwahhidun movement of Arabia. In a recent study Dr. Mahmood Ahmad Ghazi says: “by this time the Muwahhidun movement (ironically called Wahhabi movement) was rippling out of Najd, its birth place. In spite of vigorous opposition of a strong group of influential Ulama to the movement, the number of its supporters was increasing day by day. Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi seemed to have a soft corner in his heart for the Wahhabis” (see his The Sanusiyah Movement of North Africa, Islamabad, 2002, p.115).

Regarding far and wide dissemination of the Sanusiyah movement in North Africa, the author observes: “The result of this penetration and influence were tremendous. As pointed out earlier, the Ottoman government recognized the Sanusi suzerainty over a vast territory and issued several fireman (edicts), from time to time to this effect; it exempted all Zawiyahs from taxes and imposed no levies on Sanusi trade and cultivations” (p.116). He further comments: “Cordial relations between the Sanusi and the Ottomans reached the climax during the reign of Sultan Abd al-Hamid. When he started his movement for Islamic unity, he also tried to strengthen the Sanusi emirate more and more. He believed that it would not only further the cause of Islam but it would also result in the reinvigoration of the Ottoman empire” (p.117).

“Western powers deemed it a threat to their interests and they conspired to create misunderstanding between Sultan Abd al- Hamid II and Sayyid al-Mahdi. Yet, they failed in their nefarious designs” (p.117).

‘They, however, played another card and spread the rumour that Sayyid Mahdi was posed to proclaim himself the Caliph of Islam” (p.118).

“The Sanusi leadership always tried to maintain friendly relations with all Islamic forces. They never took any step, which might sow the seeds of dissension among the Muslims. Towards other contemporary revivalist movements also, their attitude was very friendly and cooperative in many respects” (p.120).

We can define Islamic revivalism as characterized by the endeavours of its protagonists to return to the pristine purity of early Islamic doctrines and practices by combining the Quranic concept of islah (reformation) with the Prophetic traditional concept of centurion renovation of the Islamic way of life: din al-Islam.

Dr. Ghazi discusses the initiative of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Shah Wali Allah Muhaddith Dehlavi in this respect and regards them as the doctrinaire founders of Islamic revivalism of the 18^th, 19^th and 20^th centuries of the Christian Era in complete agreement with us (see Chapter 3). He says: “These two revivalists [leaders] left far reaching impact on the Islamic world. Soon after their death a large number of religious reformers appeared on the scene and sought to further [extend] their mission. The Sanusiyah movement of North Africa, the Fulani movement of Nigeria, the Mahdiyah movement of Sudan, Salafiyah movement and Ikhwan al-Muslimeen movement of Egypt, the jihad movement of the [Indian] subcontinent, the Fara’idi movement of Bengal, the Jamaat-i-Islami and Tabligh movement of Pakistan and India, the Paduri and Masjumi movements of Indonesia, all echoed the same voice ”(pp. 17-18).

A categorically different type of Islamic revivalism was the Fulani movement of Sheikh Usman ibn Fudi, otherwise known as Osman dan Fudio, in West African region during the 19^th century C.E. The area of its origin and expansion comprised central and western Bilad al-Sudan covered by the modern Nigeria, Mali, Senegal, Zambi, and the neighbourhood. The epicentre of this fast developing movement was Housa land, which eventually grew into a vast Islamic State around the capital city of Sokoto and came to be known as Sokoto Caliphate around 1804 C.E. Its emphasis was on islah, social and religious reform, but it strictly adhered to the selfsame doctrine of tajdid, Islamic revivalism like the Sanusiyah of North Africa, Muwahhidun of Arabia, Tariqah-i-Muhammadiyah of Indo-Pakistan and the Fara`idi movement of Bangladesh. Yet, whereas all other movements sought to revive the pristine ideology of Islam amongst the Muslim individuals and reinvigorate thereby the existing decadent Muslim society, the Fulani movement endeavoured to educate the ignorant Muslim masses of the area through two separate programmes of lower grade and higher grade, mass and elite education and to organize them into a compact unified and enlightened Islamic society. At the second stage, the education programme was extended to the neighbouring Muslim and non-Muslim population by dint of manifold enthusiastic programmes of hijrat and jihad over a vast area. At the third stage, the intensive network of local societies and settlements were organized. Shari’ah-based central administration designated as Sokoto Khilafat under an Amirul Muminin or Khalifah. Sheikh Usman ibn Fudi was recognized as the Mujaddid or renovator of Islamic way of life of Bilad al Sudan.

In a brief but a brilliant survey of the Fulani movement, Ahmad Mohammad Kani says: “Thus, the Sokoto Caliphate stretched over a geographical area of approximately 250,000 square miles within which numerous linguistic groups in a short while were drawn into its primary fold by the broad universal rather than the limited outlook of the people of the area with active cooperation of the governors of provinces who strived to fortify the strongholds and wage holy war (jihad) against the war mongers and oppressors and set up military stations on every frontier and root out all sources of corruption lurking in the country” (The Intellectual Origin of Islamic Jihad in Nigeria, al-Hoda, London, 1988, p.13).

The aims and objects of the Fulani movement can be roughly delineated from the corpus of his discourses as summed up by Kani. He says that these may be divided into five categories: “First, the fundamentals and derivations of the religion… Second, the refutation of certain misconceptions held by some students. The Shaykh was continuously condemning those students who tried to mislead the common man by labelling those as unbelievers who could not comprehend the debate of the theologians on the Unity of Allah (Tawhid). They were strongly denounced by him for the pessimistic approach they were trying to inculcate in people’s mind. Third, admonition to follow the religious injunctions; fourth, the quelling of evil innovations and the refutation of customs foreign to Islam… Fifth, the dissemination of the Shar’iah” (p.41).

“ In terms of Unitarianism, he complains that there were some people who still venerate trees and stones which were syncretistic, therefore they were obviously unbelievers” (p.63).

“The Sokoto Caliphate continued to expand and consolidate its political authority over the non-Muslim areas as well for a whole century before it was finally overthrown by the British imperialist forces in 1903. The greatest part of the Caliphate was conquered by the British colonial administration and was annexed to other non-Muslim areas, the consequence of which was the creation of Nigeria. In 1913, other parts of the Caliphate, to the north-west and north-east, were sliced out by the French colonialists”(p.15).

Thus, in response to the spiritual depravity, moral turpitude, social degradation, economic deterioration, politico-administrative corruption of the world-wide Muslim society during the 18^th century C.E, there had arisen Islamic revivalist tendencies, re-awakening, and reverberating resurgence from the depth of the deep-laid vital force of the religion of Islam. In the face of the further deteriorating condition of the Muslim world and repeated failures of the existing Muslim political powers, these tendencies bolstered up with sincerity, throbbing energy, enthusiasm and vitality of the primeval Islamic faith. The protagonists of the Islamic revivalism waged a limitless struggle and an unrelented war against all internal and external hostile forces that came in their way. In general, they developed their reform programs by three stages (a) re-educating the masses and sympathetic elites with the pristine doctrines of Prophetic Islam, (b) re-organizing the people into compact settlements and societies of practising Muslims and (c) waging internal struggle and external jihad against all hostile forces and consolidating ideologically converted masses into political States.

In all the three stages of their development strategies, they were generally successful so long as they had to face their own people with conventional tactics and conventional weapons. But since their political advancement coincided almost parallels with the European expansion to Asia and Africa, sooner or latter they came into head on clash with English and French imperialism. Being amateur in international politics, novice in military tactics and their indigenous weaponry being vastly outclassed by the European modern weaponry, they proved no match to the imperial and colonial powers of the West. The English imperialists abused them as madcap, fanatic and Wahhabi in Bengal, India, Pakistan, Arabia, North Africa and Nigeria and crushed their political hegemony one by one. Likewise the French colonialists called them the Red Mullah and chased them to non-entity.

In the 19^th Century Bangladesh, Fara’idi movement flourished from 1818 C.E. which then languished under the tight control of British imperialism ; they were tactfully surrounded, accused of creating social disturbances, communal riots, terrorism and tumult (History of the Fara’idi Movement ; Trial of Dudu Miyan, and chapter 11 and references therein), and gradually suppressed (see chapter 8). Likewise in the West Bengal of India, the reform movement of Titu Mir, being a branch of Tariqah-I-Muhammadiyah was blotted out under similar accusations in 1831 (see chapter 6). In Indo-Pakistan territories where the hold of the British Government was not tight enough, they closely watched upon the activities of Tariqah-i-Mummadiyah movement (miscalled “Indian Wahhabism”) and destroyed them through so-called legal action, instituting grand court trials, at Ambala in 1864, at Patna in 1865 (see Qeyamuddin Ahmad: The Wahhabi Movment in India, Calcutta and Madras (see our Selections from Bengal Governments Records on Wahabi Trials, 1863-1870, Asiatic Society of Pakistan, Dhaka, 1961, 418 pages, and Lewes A. Mendes: Report on the Proceedings in the Matters of Ameer Khan and Hashamdad Khan, part I, Calcutta, 1871, C.E.).

Moreover, besides the diplomatic intrigues of the British against the Muwahhidun movement of Arabia and setting them as Wahhabi rebels against the Sultan Caliph of Turkey, they suppressed the Sanusi and Fulani movement of North and West Africa and annexed their territories to their empires about 1903 and 1912 C.E. Thus, the Islamic revivalist movements, which upsurged with tremendous enthusiasm during the first half of the 19^th century, suffered set back while confronted by the European colonial powers in the later half of the century and gradually fizzled out at the end of the century under the brunt of the violent suppression by the imperial powers of the West.

As a matter of fact, to convert a religious ideology into a social system, purity of faith and sincerity of purpose are though indispensable, yet these are not enough; political astuteness and military prowess are needed too, as necessary ancillaries, which these resurgence movements were lacking with the single exception of the Arabian Muwahhidun movement, which had gained the hand of the Saudi Emirate to recuperate it even from the death-bed by the beginning of the 20^th century C.E. Firm faith in the Unity of Allah, saturated political wisdom and a desert warfare strategy based on settlement brotherhood organization of Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud (see “Abdul Aziz ibn-e-Saud-er Sathe Ikhwaner Samparka”, the relation of the brotherhood with Abd al-Aziz bin Saud”by Muhammad Yakub Hussain ( Dhaka University, Ph.D. Thesis,Bengali,1997), succeeded in reviving and regenerating the Muwahhidun movement once again and the Saudi rule in Arabia during the first quarter of the 20^th century C.E.

We are including herewith our studies, observations and surveys of some related movements such as, Ahl-e-Hadith of India-Pakistan-Bangladesh subcontinent and Mawlana Karamat Ali Jaunpuri’s mediation between the revivalist movement and the rising wave of Muslim modernism, which are likely to provide the readers with a deeper insight into the realities of time and circumstances.