Nine Lives (26 page)

Then about ten years ago, a Saudi-funded Wahhabi
madrasa
was built at the end of the track leading to the
dargah
. Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they saw as the un-Islamic practices of the shrine. On my last visit there, in 2003, I talked about the situation with the shrine keeper, Tila Mohammed. He described how young Islamists now regularly came and complained that his shrine was a centre of idolatry, immorality and superstition. ‘My family have been singing here for generations,’ said Tila. ‘But now these Arab
madrasa
students come here and create trouble.’

‘What sort of trouble?’ I asked.

‘They tell us that what we do is wrong. They tell women not to come at all, and to stay at home. They ask people who are singing to stop. Sometimes arguments break out – even fist fights. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems, so gradually they have stopped coming.’

‘How long has this being going on?’ I asked.

‘Before the Afghan war there was nothing like this,’ replied Tila Mohammed. ‘But then the Saudis came, with their propaganda to stop visiting the saints and to stop us preaching
’
ishq
. Now this trouble happens more and more frequently.’

Making sure no one was listening, he leaned forward and whispered, ‘Last week they broke the
saz
of a celebrated musician from Kohat. We pray that right will overpower wrong, that good will overcome evil. But our way is pacifist. As Rahman Baba put it:

I am a lover, and I deal in love. Sow flowers,

So your surroundings become a garden.

Don’t sow thorns; for they will prick your feet.

We are all one body,

Whoever tortures another, wounds himself.

The end came on 4 March 2009, a week before my visit to Sehwan. A group of Pakistani Taliban arrived at the shrine before dawn, and placed dynamite around the squinches of the dome. No one was hurt, but the shrine chamber was completely destroyed. The Taliban issued a press release blaming the shrine for opening its doors to women, and allowing them to pray and seek healing there. Since then several other shrines in areas under Taliban control have been blown up or shut down, and one – that of Haji Sahib Turangzai, in the Mohmand Tribal Federally Administered Tribal Region of Pakistan – has been turned into a Taliban headquarters.

Behind the violence lies a theological conflict that has divided the Islamic world for centuries. Rahman Baba, like Lal Shahbaz in Sindh or Rumi in Anatolia, believed passionately in the importance of the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for remembering and reaching God, as a way of opening the gates of Paradise. But this use of poetry and music in ritual, and the way the Sufis welcome women into their shrines, are some of the many aspects of Sufi practice that have attracted the wrath of modern Wahhabis, and their South Asian theological allies, the Deobandis and Tablighis. For although there is nothing in the Quran that specifically bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with dancing girls and immorality, and infections from Hinduism, and there has been a long tradition of clerical opposition.

In the long story of the complex three-cornered relationship between Hinduism, Sufi Islam and Islamic orthodoxy – in which the determination of the Sufis to absorb Hindu ideas and practices has always clashed with the wish of the orthodox to root them out as dangerous and deviant impurities – Sehwan has historically played an important part. It was the home of the great Sufi philosopher-poet Mian Mir, who in turn became the
pir
of the seventeenth-century Mughal prince Dara Shukoh, the ruler who arguably did more than anyone else to attempt to bring together the two great religions of South Asia. Dara was taught by his Sehwan-born
pir
that there was an essential unity of the Islamic and Hindu mystical paths.  Heavily influenced by Mian Mir’s philosophy, Dara would go on to write, in his great treatise on Sufism
The
Compass of Truth
:

Thou art in the Ka’ba at Mecca,

as well as in the [Hindu] temple of Somnath.

Thou art in the monastery,

as well as the tavern.

Thou art at the same time the light and the moth,

The wine and the cup,

The sage and the fool,

The friend and the stranger.

The rose and the nightingale.

Dara also had the
Bhagavad Gita
and the
Upanishads
translated into Persian as
The Mysteries of Mysteries
, and he wrote a comparative study of Hinduism and Islam,
The Mingling of Two Oceans
, which emphasised the compatibility of the two faiths and the common source of their divine revelations. In it he speculated that the essential nature of Islam was identical to that of Hinduism, and following the Quranic injunction that no land had been left without prophetic guidance, became convinced that the
Vedas
constituted the mysterious concealed scriptures mentioned in the Quran as the ultimate scriptural spring of all monotheism. In the end, however, Dara’s Sehwan-influenced speculations proved too radical for the Muslim elite of India, and while Sufism has always had a large following, its influence among the Islamic
ulema
has always been controversial and frequently challenged. What is happening today is only the latest round of a much more ancient and intractable theological conflict within the Islamic world.

Now the same
madrasas
which had so radically and successfully challenged the Sufi traditions of the Frontier were beginning to spread their web around rural Sindh. Lal Peri had told me about a new Deobandi
madrasa
that had just that month opened on the edge of the Sehwan bazaar, so after leaving her at Lal Bagh that evening, I went and met its director, Maulana Saleemullah.

The
madrasa
was located in an old
haveli
, recently renovated at some expense in gleaming marble, but still only semi-furnished. The twenty or so children in residence were still sleeping on mats and bedding on the floor, and the only furniture in the classrooms where the kids sat cross-legged chanting the Quran was a single desk for the teacher.

Saleemullah turned out to be a young, intelligent and well-educated man, who received me warmly. He was articulate in debate; but there was no masking the puritanical severity of some of his views.

For Saleemullah, the theology of the dispute between the Sufis and the orthodox was quite simple. ‘We don’t like tomb worship,’ he said. ‘The Quran is quite clear about this, and the scholars from the other side simply choose to ignore what it says. We must not pray to dead men and ask things from them, even the saints. In Islam we believe there is no power but God. I invite people who come here to return to the true path of the Quran. Lal Shahbaz is dead, I tell them. Do not pray to a corpse. Go to the mosque, not to a grave.’

‘Do the people here listen to you?’ I asked.

‘Sadly this town is full of
shirk
and grave worship,’ he replied, stroking his long, straggling black beard. ‘It is all the Hindu influence that is responsible. Previously these people were economically powerful in this area, and as they worshipped idols, the illiterate Muslims here became infected with Hindu practices. All over Pakistan this is the case, but Sindh is much the worst. It is like what happened with Moses and Pharaoh. The children of Moses were influenced by the children of Pharaoh, and when Moses left them to go and speak to God, a magician made an idol of a calf, and the children of Moses began to worship it. Our job is to bring the idol and grave worshippers from
kufr
[infidelity] back to the true path of the Shariah.’

‘And what about the drumming and the music and the
qawwalis
they play in the shrine?’

‘Music is also against the law of Islam,’ he replied. ‘Musical instruments lead men astray and are sinful. They are forbidden, and these musicians are wrongdoers. With education we hope they will change their ways.’

‘So you think there is nothing Islamic about what goes on in the shrines?’

‘Sufism is not Islamic,’ replied Maulana. ‘It is
jadoo
: magic tricks only. It has nothing to do with real Islam. It is just superstition, ignorance, perversion, illiteracy and stupidity. This town is full of fools – if people here were less stupid we could have filled this
madrasa
. We can accommodate 400 here, but only ten families have sent their children. Have you talked to the fakirs in the shrine? They are all illiterate. Really – what do they know of the Quran? Yet the people go to them and seek their opinion as if they were scholars. We have a long way to go here. At the moment only the poor will send their children to us, and then only because we feed them. We just have to be patient and explain to the people here that their superstition leads to Jahannam – hell – but the path of true Islam leads to Jannah – Paradise.’

‘And what of the Sufi idea that Paradise lies within you?’  I asked. Here, it seemed lay a small but important clash of civilisations, not between East and West, or Hinduism and Islam, but within Islam itself. Between the strictly regulated ways of the Wahhabis and the customs of the heterodox Sufis lay two entirely different conceptions of how to live, how to die and how to make the final and most important, and difficult, journey of all – to Paradise.

‘Paradise within us?’ said Saleemullah, raising his eyebrows. ‘No, no: this is emotional talk – a dream only. Is there evidence for this in the Quran? There is nothing in the Quran about Paradise within the body or in the heart: the heart is too small for God. Paradise is outside, a physical place in the heavens which God has created for his people. According to our beliefs there will be many levels of Paradise, eight in all, with a place for each believer.
There will be couches to lie in the shade, and rivers of milk and honey and cool, clear spring water. To get there you must follow the commands of the Almighty. Then when you die,
Insh’Allah
, that will be where your journey ends. On Judgement Day the seas and oceans and earth will be turned into hell, but those Muslims who follow the law and do good deeds will be transported up to Paradise.’

He paused and stroked his beard again. ‘Real Islam is a discipline,’ he said. ‘It is not just about the promptings of the heart. There are rules and regulations that must be followed: how to eat, how to wash, even how to clip your moustache. The heart and ideas of love – these are all irrelevant if you fail to follow the rituals and practices commanded by the Holy Prophet.’

Saleemullah’s organisation, he said, ran 5,000
madrasas
across Pakistan, and were in the process of opening a further 1,500 in Sindh. These figures seem to be just the tip of the iceberg. According to one recent study there are now twenty-seven times as many
madrasas
in Pakistan as there were in 1947: from 245 at Independence the number has shot up to over 8,000. Across Pakistan, the religious tenor has been correspondingly radicalised: the tolerant, Sufi-minded Barelvi form of Islam is now increasingly out of fashion, overtaken by the rise of the more hard-line and politicised Deobandi forms of Wahhabism, which many now see as an unstoppable force overwhelming the culture of the country.

‘I am full of hope,’ said Saleemullah. ‘Look what has happened in Bhit Shah. We have a large
madrasa
there and seven mosques in the control of the Deobandis. At first the people clung to
shirk
and resisted the truth. But slowly the children went back home and educated their parents. Now every day our strength is growing.’

I got up to leave. ‘Mark my words,’ said Saleemullah as he showed me out, ‘a more extreme form of the Taliban is coming to Pakistan. Certainly there are many challenges. But the conditions in this country are so bad. The people are so desperate. They are fed up with the old ways and the decadence and corruption. They want radical change – a return to the Caliphate.’