Deobandi movement

Deobandi is a revivalist movement within Sunni Islam, adhering to the Hanafi school of law,

formed in the late 19th century around the Darul Uloom Madrassa in Deoband, India, from which the name derives,

by Muhammad Qasim Nanautavi, Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, and several others, after the Indian Rebellion of 1857–58.

The movement pioneered education in religious sciences through the ''Dars-i-Nizami'' associated with the Lucknow-based ''ulema'' of Firangi Mahal with the goal of preserving traditional Islamic teachings from the influx of modernist, secular ideas during British colonial rule. The Deobandi movement's Indian clerical wing, Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, was founded in 1919 and played a major role in the Indian independence movement through its participation in the Pan-Islamist ''Khalifat'' movement and propagation of the doctrine of composite nationalism.

Theologically, the Deobandis uphold the doctrine of ''taqlid'' (conformity to legal precedent) and adhere to the Hanafi school. Founders of the Deobandi school Nanautavi and Gangohi drew inspiration from the religio-political doctrines of the prominent South Asian Islamic scholar and Sufi reformer Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762 CE / 1114–1175 AH). In its early years, Deobandi ''ulema'' engaged in theological debates with Christian and Hindu scholars; with the objective of defending Islamic faith, and to form a popular struggle to overthrow British colonialism. Deobandi theologians of Jamiat Ulema e-Hind, in particular, discussed about multiculturalism and opposition to the partition of India, with a strategic vision to safeguard the religious freedom of Muslims in India.

In response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Saudi Arabia decided to support the Deobandi movement due to its popularity in the Pashtun regions in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which influenced the movement with Salafi ideals. From the early 1980s to the early 2000s, Deobandis were robustly funded by Saudi Arabia. Pakistan also strongly supported Deobandi '' Mujahidin'' to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and India in the Kashmir insurgency, owing to their affiliation with the Pan-Islamist legacies of Shah Waliullah and the Silk Letter Movement in the subcontinent. Alongside Jamaat-e-Islami, Deobandi Islamist militias constituted the most committed volunteers for the anti-communist Afghan Jihad.

The movement has spread from India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to the United Kingdom, and has a presence in South Africa. The Pakistani and Afghan branches and the original Indian seminaries have far less contact since the Partition of India, for political reasons related to the India–Pakistan border. Followers of the Deobandi movement are extremely diverse; some advocate for non-violence and others are militant.

Foundation and expansion

British colonialism in India was seen by a group of Indian scholars—consisting of Rashid Ahmad Gangohi, Muhammad Yaqub Nanautawi, Shah Rafi al-Din, Sayyid Muhammad Abid, Zulfiqar Ali, Fazlur Rahman Usmani and Muhammad Qasim Nanotvi—to be corrupting Islam. The group founded an Islamic seminary (''madrassa'') known as Darul Uloom Deoband,Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, p. 626. where the Islamic revivalist and anti-imperialist ideology of the Deobandis began to develop. In time, the Darul Uloom Deoband became the second largest focal point of Islamic teaching and research after the Al-Azhar University, Cairo. Towards the time of the Indian independence movement and afterward in post-colonial India, the Deobandis advocated a notion of composite nationalism by which Hindus and Muslims were seen as one nation who were asked to be united in the struggle against the British rule.

In 1919, a large group of Deobandi scholars formed the political party Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and opposed the partition of India. Deobandi scholar Maulana Syed Husain Ahmad Madani helped to spread these ideas through his text '' Muttahida Qaumiyat Aur Islam''. A group later dissented from this position and joined Muhammad Ali Jinnah's Muslim League, including Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, Zafar Ahmad Usmani and Muhammad Shafi Deobandi, who formed the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam in 1945.

Through the organisations such as Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind and Tablighi Jamaat, the Deobandi movement began to spread. Graduates of Darul Uloom Deoband in India from countries such as South Africa, China, and Malaysia opened thousands of ''madaaris'' throughout the world.

India

The Deobandi Movement in India is controlled by the Darul Uloom Deoband and the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind.

Pakistan

Of Pakistan's estimated 230 million Muslims, some 15-30% or 40-80 million Pakistani Muslims consider themselves Deobandi, forming majority in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan. It is the most followed Movement among Pashtuns and Balochs.
This estimates that 15% of Pakistani Muslims are Deobandi and 20% Shia, which equates to about 19% of Pakistan's Sunni Muslims being Deobandi. According to Heritage Online, nearly 65% of the total seminaries ( Madrasah) in Pakistan are run by Deobandis, whereas 25% are run by Barelvis, 6% by Ahl-i Hadith and 3% by various Shia organizations. The Deobandi movement in Pakistan was a major recipient of funding from Saudi Arabia from the early 1980s up until the early 2000s, whereafter this funding was diverted to the rival Ahl al-Hadith movement. Having seen Deoband as a counterbalance to Iranian influence in the region, Saudi funding is now strictly reserved for the Ahl al-Hadith.

Deobandi-affiliated groups such as the TTP, SSP, Let, etc. have a militant character and have attacked and destroyed Sufi sites holy to Sunni Muslims of the Barelvi movement, such as Data Darbar in Lahore, Abdullah Shah Ghazi's tomb in Karachi, Khal Magasi in Balochistan, and Rahman Baba's tomb in Peshawar.

Bangladesh

As with the rest of the Indian subcontinent, the majority of Muslims in Bangladesh are traditional Sunni, who mainly follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence (madh'hab) and consequently the Maturidi school of theology. The majority of them are Deobandi along with Tablighi (51%) Or 80 Million Muslims and Barelvi or Sufi (26%); the Deobandi, in the form of Qawmi institutions, own the vast majority of private Islamic seminaries and produce the majority of the ulema in Bangladesh. Among Sunnis who are not traditional Hanafi, the Salafi-influenced Ahle Hadith and the Jamaat e Islami (19%) have a substantial following.

Afghanistan

Deobandi Islam is the most popular form of pedagogy in the Pashtun belt on both sides of the Durand Line that separates Afghanistan and Pakistan. Moreover, prominent Afghan and Pakistani Taliban leaders have studied in Deobandi seminaries.

United Kingdom

In the 1970s, Deobandis opened the first British-based Muslim religious seminaries (Darul-Ulooms), educating imams and religious scholars. Deobandis "have been quietly meeting the religious and spiritual needs of a significant proportion of British Muslims, and are perhaps the most influential British Muslim group." In 2015 Ofsted highlighted the Deobandi seminary in Holcombe as a good example of a school "promoting British values, preventing radicalisation and protecting children".Alternative URL
The journalist, Andrew Norfolk, did not agree with this assessment.

According to a 2007 report by Andrew Norfolk, published in ''The Times'', about 600 of Britain's nearly 1,500 mosques were under the control of "a hardline sect", whose leading preacher loathed Western values, called on Muslims to "shed blood" for Allah and preached contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus. The same investigative report further said that 17 of the country's 26 Islamic seminaries follow the ultra-conservative Deobandi teachings which ''The Times'' said had given birth to the Taliban. According to ''The Times'', almost 80% of all domestically trained Ulema were being trained in these hardline seminaries. An opinion column in ''The Guardian'' described this report as "a toxic mixture of fact, exaggeration and outright nonsense."

In 2014 it was reported that 45 per cent of Britain's mosques and nearly all the UK-based training of Islamic scholars are controlled by the Deobandi, the largest single Islamic group.

Most Muslim prison chaplaincies in Britain are Deobandi, and in 2016 Michael Spurr (chief executive of the National Offender Management Service) wrote to Britain's prison governors bringing to their attention that Ofsted had said that "the UK’s most influential Deobandi seminary promotes 'fundamental British values such as democracy, individual liberty and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths'."

Beliefs

The Deobandi movement sees itself as a scholastic tradition that grew out of the Islamic scholastic traditions of Medieval Transoxania and Mughal India, and it considers its visionary forefather to be Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703-1762). Dehlawi was a contemporary of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703 - 1792), a great scholer, and they studied in Medina under some of the same teachers.

Theology

In tenets of faith, the Deobandis follow the Maturidi school of Islamic theology.
Their schools teach a short text on beliefs by the ''Maturidi'' scholar Najm al-Din 'Umar al-Nasafi.Martin van Bruinessen, Stefano Allievi, Producing Islamic Knowledge: Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe, p 100.

Fiqh (Islamic law)

Deobandis are strong proponents of the doctrine of ''Taqlid''. In other words, they believe that a Deobandi must adhere to one of the four schools (madhhabs) of Sunni Islamic Law and generally discourage inter-school eclecticism. They themselves claims the followers of the Hanafi school. Students at madrasas affiliated with the Deobandi movement study the classic books of Hanafi Law such as ''Nur al-Idah'', ''Mukhtasar al-Quduri'', ''Sharh al-Wiqayah'', and ''Kanz al-Daqa’iq'', culminating their study of the madhhab with the ''Hidayah'' of ''al-Marghinani''.

With regard to views on ''Taqlid'', one of their main opposing reformist groups are the Ahl-i-Hadith, also known as the '' Ghair Muqallid'', the nonconformists, because they eschewed ''taqlid'' in favor of the direct use of Quran and Hadith. They often accuse those who adhere to the rulings of one scholar or legal school of blind imitation'','' and frequently demand scriptural evidence for every argument and legal ruling. Almost since the very beginnings of the movement, Deobandi scholars have generated a copious amount of scholarly output in an attempt to defend their adherence to a ''madhhab'' in general. In particular, Deobandis have penned much literature in defense of their argument that the Hanafi madhhab is in complete accordance with the ''Quran'' and ''Hadith''.

Hadith

In response to this need to defend their ''madhhab'' in the light of scripture, Deobandis became particularly distinguished for their unprecedented salience to the study of ''Hadith'' in their madrasas. Their ''madrasa'' curriculum incorporates a feature unique among the global arena of Islamic scholarship, the ''Daura-e Hadis'', the capstone year of a student's advanced madrasa training, in which all six canonical collections of the Sunni Hadith (the ''Sihah Sittah'') are reviewed.

In a Deobandi madrasa, the position of ''Shaykh al-Hadith'', or the resident professor of Sahih Bukhari, is held in much reverence. Their views were widely shared by a broad range of Islamic reform movements of the colonial period.

Sufism and Wahhabism

Deobandis oppose traditional Sufi practices such as celebrating the birthday of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and seeking help from him, the celebration of ''Urs'', pilgrimage to the shrines of Sufi saints, practice of ''Sema'', and loud ''dhikr''. Some Deobandi leaders incorporate elements of Sufism into their practices. Deoband's curriculum combined the study of Islamic holy scriptures (Quran, hadith and law) with rational subjects (logic, philosophy and science). At the same time it was Sufi in orientation and affiliated with the Chisti order.

Arshad Madani