Abdal Hakim Murad – Hussain Ahmed Madani Paradigms of Leadership
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Bismillah Alhamdulillah wa Salatu was Salam ala Rasulillah early he
was off the heat on NY Allah.
So we're back now the academic year has begun again. And we've
decided to resume as our topic for these occasional Saturday morning
encounters. The bio data focused approach that seemed to go down
quite well last time as as an age perhaps of celebrities,
personalities, it's easy to relate to ideas when incarnated in human
beings. So rather than giving you anything too abstract and
conceptual, I thought I'd indicate what is after all, the Islamic
principle of more armella that ideas, concepts, values,
principles make sense and are most humanly osmotic when represented
to us in other human beings. So
we're going to begin by rewinding
to one of the lectures which we gave in the previous academic
year, you'll recall the topic was the subject of hazard news on the
Dean Alia, the great patron saint of the city of Delhi. Not because
I want to retell that story, but just to try and help us to
consider
how things have changed, internal things have not changed. It was
the 14th century by 1325 and became really the great unleashing
of the primary energies of War ended in Srishti subsequently and
need the Taraka a mass movement and engine of Islamization and
conversion. You'll recall that at the age of 23, he became the
Khalifa of Barbra, Fareed,
and who was separated by only one name bhakti Aukey, for more energy
interesting, choose to admire himself so very high centered and
becomes this incredible powerhouse of its normalization. And he is
generally regarded as the founder of the new zombie branch of the
church, dear.
But there's another one which in so many British mosques is better
known, which is the Salisbury branch.
If you look at those picturesque posters in the Bellevue mosques,
in particular, for the next build age, Sharif, or some off, you'll
see that it's the savaria who tend to prevail with a particular
presence in Kashmir, we are poor and those places
and the salaries come from another branch from Bebi. Very Molana.
Allah Adams saw there. So they're not actually his name, but a
eponym just means patient person with Sabra because of various
feats of endurance and zeal hood that he represented during his
lifetime. And his mother was actually Barbra Fareed, elder
sister, lady by the name of Jamila. So there's a genealogy
there. And his famous as an example of his suburb, is to tell
you the story today, that even though he was entrusted by about
the Fareed to look after the lung out of the place where everybody
would be fed, and the poor would be accommodated at the Durga he
was in charge of for 11 years, but thought it was not appropriate
that he should eat from this food himself because it was food for
the sadhaka. And so after serving everybody usual seen of enormous
Cauldrons of rice and ghee, and
he would, after cleaning up he would go off into the nearby sort
of forest and Wilderness Area Middle Ages, so much of India was
uncultivated and find some roots and berries on which he nourished
himself for 11 years. It's an example of the principle of water
of scrupulousness Does the Allah mat tend to maintain in not eating
from the income of our calf and that which is destined for the
poor. So, this is the principle of the Tuscia Siberia and it
continues to be a principle to this day. So we now fast forward
to see how this study engages with the new environment of colonial
India.
The end of the Delhi school tons and decline of the moguls the
first Indian War of Independence and so called mutiny 1857 And the
very hard questions posed to the Allah mat and the Sufis across the
course of the 19th century. Regarding the relationship to this
new non Muslim polity will
With its unheralded military and infrastructural progress, how
could these ancient saintly traditions, these ways of
holiness, actually fit in what was nominally a Christian but in
practice the materialistic, pragmatic, Imperial colonial
reality, how could this faceoff actually develop? So we fast
forward
to Sahara and poor, central India.
1814 is the birth of somebody called in there to learn more Hi
John Mackey is kind of named to be conjured with and they abandon
proto Deobandi circles to this day, who represents a Latter Day
instantiation of this Chishti Saberi principle, including lives
in the forest for six months just for his a bad and exhausted and
then conceives a great longing for the city of Medina, and finds his
way on a pilgrim ship. The ironies of British rule is that it's
actually easier to be connected to the Haramain now than it used to
be.
And then in the first Indian War of Independence, 1857, he leads an
army against the British and is briefly victorious, and then finds
himself persecuted and exiled to the hijas. And lots of stories are
told about him and his his or her very representative of this
tradition. For instance, he maintains the colonists tradition
of marrying people who are in need, rather than our current
sort of checklist approach, or she has to have this kind of
complexion and she has to have a PhD and she has to be blah, blah,
blah, otherwise, our ego is not satisfied. It's a customer of the
all on that. And you find this even hijacker in some of the
medieval Middle Eastern Allamah, as well to look for people who are
needy. So his wife is a blind widow, and he cares for her. And
this becomes one of the traditions of the target class. So he dies at
the end of the 19th century selling the Ottoman period and is
buried at them wonder which is the big cemetery in Makkah, generally
the subcontinent you find quite often people call themselves Nucky
or Madani, they like titles, this doesn't really necessarily mean
that they spent a lot of their lives in those places. It's more
an indication of what they would call an SDR In other words, a
particular spiritual connection, you have a great longing, a
particular sense that you need to be in Mecca or Medina and
therefore that spiritual allegiance that affinity is what
is generally alluded to by these
by these moniker so he works right to say yeah tafseer the cleaner or
and, but mostly, * Abdullah is famous for producing an outpouring
of amazing Persian poetry and commentaries on the great Persian
Sufi poets. Yes, one of the great commentaries on the Masnavi of
Maulana Rumi, for instance. So somebody who is already a
completely traditional Persian eats at continental Arlin. But
he's having to deal with the British and is writing steamers to
the Haramain that is straddling the two worlds. And in many ways
that East West dichotomy was more intense for people in the 19th
century than it is for us today, because we're already so
westernized. Look at the way we're dressing, we eat pizza and we're
already kind of hybrid creatures. But back then, it was a much more
intense and absolute thing and was experienced as such, not just by
the Indians, but the by the British as well. It was two worlds
and how you inhabit or cohabit with two worlds was one of the big
questions for the island, really across the OMA.
One of his leading disciples was at manana Rashid can go here
again, favorite for the nostalgics of the Deobandi tradition. Also
from Sahar and poor and along with somebody called no Nana Kasim, no
note we they are both mureeds of hygiene dental Lhasa from this
Chishti Sabri tariqa and together they are generally regarded as the
co authors of Darren or non dual band.
So Gungor he becomes the first director and also the sister
college those are headed on on in Saharanpur, which is kind of from
the same period and has the same orientation.
And he dies a little bit later in 1905 and remains in India. So
Deobandi, obviously one of the major transformations in the
intellectual infrastructure of the subcontinent in the 19th century.
And what's really going on there is that they see the inevitability
of British power. They have decided not to leave to go to
those few Muslim places that are still
Independent Afghanistan, the Ottoman Empire, wherever they're
going to try and hang on in order to reform the Muslims. Later on
the Tablighi Jamaat movement comes out of the same kind of circle and
mentality.
But
to create networks of scholars in a more formal way than had been
normal beforehand, most of Islamic history madalas is a kind of
founded by some local Bay or prince, and he brings somebody to
teach there, or the scholar founds it and gets an endowment is very
local. It's not really networked with anything or anyone else with
a few exceptions. But in the 19th century world where India is kind
of being united by railways, telegraph post offices and things,
these Deobandi scholars decided they're going to create a center,
which will then create substantive one of the subcontinent with a
view to stiffening the fiber of the Muslims so that they retain
loyal to their traditions in the face of the difficulties of living
under British rule. So, that takes us up to the 19th century, but the
individual I want to speak about mostly today
is that disciple and somebody of whom some people today in India
still have a living memory and this is Maulana Hussain athma.
Madani
who in many ways, was the one who kind of kept his hand on the
tiller of deal bandits and other institutions in India in the
mayhem after
partition.
So his was had you ended up a lot of the earlier ones were dealing
with the fact of the British coming to India in the mid 20th
century, the Allamah having to deal with the fact of the British
leaving India and Hindu * in the context of a new nation,
state democracy, Hindu chauvinism and all of those other challenges.
So, again, a major transformation and a test of their claim that in
their man hedge of teaching and understanding of FIPS 100 view
folks to read the doctrine this Chishti sencilla there is an
optimal way of being that will adequately guide the Muslims
morally and politically through these
transformations which, obviously, somebody like Barbra, fried and
Moinuddin Chishti did not have to
confront. So Maulana Madani born 1877 This is after the mutiny is
when the Roger is really in its full,
full power and Grandia
is firmly up poor, but they have a memory of having seen service
civil servants under the Mughals and then under the Nawabs of old
which is one of the earlier princely states, one that was
displaced by the British. After the 1857
revolt, the British decided to cement their power by introducing
something more resembling really a feudal system creating large
landowners Zamin Doris Talaq DARS and dispossessing the smaller
landowners and owners of individual plots and they would
give these larger states to people,
native people who they are regarded as being loyal pro
British sympathizers.
So
the father of Mallanna Hussein's called manana Habibollah,
has connection to del band and is also really mainly known as a kind
of Sufi Pierre, as a healer, the functions of the traditional Sufi
masjid or chef used to heal people. And in the subcontinent,
they have indigenous traditions of medicine, not just prophetic
medicine, but your nanny medicine and so forth. And he was famous
for this. And in particularly, he was known as somebody who would
vicariously heal.
In other words, you went to him with a bad shoulder. And somehow
the bad shoulder would be transmuted into the shoulder of
Mowlana Habibollah. And you'd feel fine. And he'd then have to deal
with it in his own self with exercises and so forth, and they
will be infectious diseases as well as physical, physiological
ailments. So he's from that really very medieval world.
In the city of Faizabad, which is the old capital of the nerves of
old which is right across the river from Ayodhya, of course
which is a flashpoint then it was a mainly Muslim town. The 1992
demolition of the Babri Masjid there in many ways triggered the
visible militancy of Hindu chauvinism in India. Very diverse
place.
Big Hindu festivals all the time.
Lots of
She communities in that part of India with a IMAMBARA is
everywhere and muharram Ricci also a very kind of pluralistic place
with a slight Muslim majority, but basically it's cosmopolitan, India
with everybody being neighbors to everyone with often tensions as
well as conviviality. So Mallanna Habibollah has five sons. And he
wants them all not to go to the British schools or the missionary
schools or reforming schools, but to have a traditional Deobandi
type education. Hussein was the one who liked to play most. So his
father actually sent him away to Dale Benz to board there to become
a Maulvi.
And in those days in Delve, and it was normal for the students to
stay in the houses of the scholars. They didn't really have
a dormitory system at that time. So there was a strong kind of
father son relationship that developed between
teachers and students.
The particular ideology of the deobandis then really is just the
classical mainstream Sunni Islam. It has nothing to do with reformed
Islam as such.
We nowadays tend to think of the sort of besetting ill of the
subcontinent and of many British mosques as being the Bravia
Deobandi dispute so somebody builds a Deobandi mosque. And then
five years later, there's sure to be a real V mosque that is
slightly bigger on the same street, and then it's kind of
crazy stupidity.
And they say, Oh, the Braille business who fears in the
deobandis, that kind of puritanical, but there have been
some evolutions and like some deobandis, reactive relations with
Al Hadith in India. But in this 19th century period, and the
period when Jose Madani is made, becomes the rector, principal of
Lawndale band after partition, that
the
dispute is not really are you a Sufi? I'm not a Sufi, because
everybody's a Sufi apart from small groups of Hadith who have no
clout at all. But it's really to do with certain issues of
this state of people in the grave. And relatedly, how you commemorate
the knowledge. Now, if you talk to the classically oriented scholars
in those parts of the Islamic world, I say, well, everybody
knows that these are matters that cannot be decisively known. And
therefore this in this, I remember when I was a student in Cairo at
the Alzheimer, we had the first British dental along graduates
turned up.
And the Indian students were amazed by them, because Indian
students were wearing jeans at the Alzheimer. And the British Muslim
students are in the kind of traditional pajama thing.
very counter intuitive. And then the Brave is without and would
they pray together and this and that, and so we went to some of
the Azeri Allah, and they hammered out the issues of between the
religious Messiah in Philadelphia, there is a there is a permissible
points of dispute because when it comes to how conscious somebody is
in the Barossa, whether they can hear you whether they can pray for
you. issues, which are not decisively resolved in Quran and
Hadith and the automat have taken different views. And it's like,
that's like a dream world. And it's difficult for us in this
world really to conceptualize it so. So in the end, neither the
deobandis nor the railbus were happy with us sorry, scholars
recommendation, I guess they wanted something a bit more
polarizing. But this in the 19th century, this became a very big
disputation or matter and even affected some of the politics and
the boundary drawing of politician but the thing to bear in mind is
that they take themselves to be simply the inheritors of a Sufi
tradition and that Srishti Sunbury traditions is in many ways got an
ecstatic devotional tradition.
The Knox Mondays tend to be historically a bit more
sober, but in any case,
individuals impose their own stamp on these as much as tradition. So
he's been sent by monana. Habib, a lot to study in Del band.
So
let me just see if we can find a reminiscence here rather than just
having my voice for the next
One of the advantages about studying was enough med is that
he's, he writes lots of kind of autobiographical test type works
about his experience in different places. So we can reconstruct his
early life quite, quite
easily here. He says later on, I never had much enthusiasm for
study and would not study thoroughly or do much to review my
books. As far as the beginning books on which there was only an
oral exam I did well, but not so well. In the later written ones. I
failed three of six in the first year. The night before the exam, I
would study the whole book and sleep only an hour or less. To
stay awake, I would prepare salty tea and whenever I felt sleepy,
drink the tea and thus keep off the sleepiness for an hour or two.
I always needed much sleep, and I especially feel sleepy when
reading. After I failed my exams for the first time, Alhamdulillah
I did not fail again. And within my class, I often attained good
marks that are long Dobyns exams from the beginning of May
difficult, whether oral or written. When a student of the law
entered government institutions, or did exams after competing
English classes, they will always the most distinguished. Although I
was always unenthusiastic and shrank from any kind of work and
sacrifice, thank Allah gradually, both my intellectual inclination
and balance of character grew, the very beginning my interest was in
logic and philosophy, and literature, and Hadith. So you get
a sense that he kind of seems to be an ordinary type of student and
nobody could have guessed at that point that it ended up being the
head of the general at all in my hand, and one of the most prolific
authors as well as campaigners for Indian independence. Later on is
just an ordinary boy from a small town.
So, in the midst of this,
he gets a message from his father, who is experienced what they call
an jetboat. In other words, an inner, overwhelming yearning to go
and live in one of the holy cities, he wants to go and live in
Medina. So the whole family
to move and he ends his studies in Del band. And before he leaves he
takes a formal br with Maulana Rashid can go here who saw was the
great disciple of * him dead lot. So he's got his bat. But as
an alum, he's still not half is still on the way. So in 1898, the
whole family move and one of the advantages of going to the
hedgerows is the * Abdullah, who led the army in the mutiny is
still in Makkah, and they're able to sit at his feet is really old,
but that's an opportunity for them to engage.
They get to NACA, and then they head for Medina, which in those
days is like a two week journey. Now that there's a high speed
train, which is a bit of a strange thing to build for pilgrims when
you think about it, so the old thing was to sit on your camel or
your mule and you would study you would talk to people who look at
the you'd be prepared spiritually, leaving your worldly things and to
enter the holy city was a form of respect for the
Shah, but now as a high speed train, dude, miles and I got to
funny. So, four days out from Makkah, he has a dream, in which
he says the Holy Prophet alayhi salat wa salam, ALA, this is
always true dream, right, your sadaqa so he sees the Holy Prophet
and he falls at his feet and asks him
to pray for him to be a better student, so that he will remember
what he learns and understand everything that he reads and this
is granted he was about 21 at the time. In the Dena, things for the
Indian family are hard.
They start by opening a little shop, but it doesn't work too well
close. It's after about a year so that Jose Madani has to find work,
just doing a bit of tutoring or working as a copyist writing up
people's marriage certificates and things like that. And they
actually build their own house with sort of lumps of rock and and
rammed clay so they're living in considerable indigence. But
in Medina, Madonia is
1900 He gets a letter from India Malena Rashid can go He is
inviting him, says missing him and wants him to visit.
Not so easy. The journey back then,
even though is there's always been a connection between India and
Arabia because you know, they're not so far. You take a boat from
Bombay and then
have hidden and up the Red Sea. But still, if you have to work
your passage, it can take weeks and weeks.
So he comes to
Delhi.
And then they'll band and then he goes to see his teacher in this
town, Ganga Hall, which is about 25 miles and he walks. And it's a
famous walk in that he is said to have been crying the whole way is
he feels bad about meeting his teacher, and having to say I just
found work as a copyist and selling little books and Medina
and still not a half is and I'm still not following your
instructions.
But when he gets to the Durga, and spend some time there Molana
Rasheed whines his own turban around his head, which is on the
stake of neotraditional sign of investiture and permission.
And then he visits various Mazhar as he goes to famous Chishti
massage. And then, having spent several months in India, goes back
to Medina. So this is obviously why Montana has invited him
because he recognizes that he has to be a successor, which seems
strange is only a kid really, in a culture that validates agent and
dignity But the surprising thing has happened. So in Medina, he
goes back and immediately starts to have dreams. And he actually
writes down and describe some of these as 18 Dirty records. And
very often he would see see dreams in which the Holy Prophet alayhi
salatu salam, or Ibrahim or Mao Nana, Rashid or * him that
Allah would give him something to eat dates or milk or something
sustaining.
Now in those days, Mecca and Medina were not what they are now,
in that they were full of little madrasahs and libraries. I read a
article, which listed the 30 libraries that used to exist in
Medina until the mid 20th century. It was the case in the Ottoman
Empire in particular for statesman to go to Medina as a kind of
retirement place. In England, you retire to the Bahamas or Margate
or something but the Ottomans, Medina, of course, in the hope of
being buried that and very often these moneyed caches would do
something positive, like endow a library or a house for the hedges
or a little hospital. So there was quite an elaborate infrastructure
though.
So it's a good place for students and always has been. And one of
the reasons why the Haramain have been particularly critical in
intellectual exchange in Islam is that if you can imagine before jet
aircraft or trains or steamships, the Hajj, which was your
obligation, had to be very carefully thought out, because to
get there from West Africa or Indonesia or somewhere Condor,
someone, you had to make sure that you got there well in advance,
because if you missed our effort,
you have to wait until the next year. There's no way of me if
you've missed Arafa, that's it. So people will get there well in
advance. And as the months Drew, particularly from Ramadan, to the
Hajj, the Haramain were like university towns, and it would be
great all of that from everywhere. Engaging, and also the small
amount that I says would be really busy. And nowadays, what do they
do in the Movenpick in Medina, you look out and there's the heroin,
but it's kind of interesting to see people walking around, I
guess, but there's a great big TV, and a picture by toulouse-lautrec
on the wall. And it's kind of space out entertainment culture,
but back then it wasn't like that. It was an opportunity really to
turn around and prove yourself to be in circles of the character
visit the medulla says, To enjoy the software of the show. It was
an amazing experience that was really part of your, your visit to
the Haramain. And of course, Jerusalem was fully integrated
into all of this. At the same time, so his teaching and starts
to teach very hard he becomes a teacher at something called the
mother a session CO which is one of the big Ottoman founded
madrasahs in Medina and he's known for teaching without notes because
he prepares at night from fajr until Asia and then sometimes
afterwards and later in life. His practice was to teach Buhari after
Asia. He was be at his most active then it will be a three hour class
every night. So quite hard for the younger students, but he was full
of energy for it. And he also taught in the Haram
now
Raise, you don't see that because the model now is for people to go
to Mecca, Medina to do that a bad and to go to Burger King and to
buy a bottle of perfume and a leaky bottle of zamzam. and off
you go.
But then
it wasn't just the libraries and the Madras says, but the Haram
itself, not just that other mothers isn't but haram itself.
Every column had a scholar sitting and
talking, talking. Nobody was controlling it, there was nobody
in charge of it. Anybody with an ijazah because we started just
talking and you couldn't show that some well known Arlynn had
authorized you.
Nobody would want to listen, it was kind of self selecting
process. That was a truly amazing place. And particularly in the
days before electricity, because during the day, it's hot, people
have a long siesta. But at night, when the
Toa she would come out and light all of the olive oil lamps in the
Haram in Makkah. It was a truly amazing magical spectacle and the
sound of Quran and people studying everywhere, it was very reverent
and very intense and astonishing. So he's part of of that and is a
teacher and is certainly respected by this time is Arabic is really
amazing. And later on some of the arguments in his
polemics about partition roof relate to the fact that supposedly
he doesn't understand Arabic words properly. A cabal accuses him of
this, that was Arabic was probably a little bit questionable, but he
is a master of the Arabic language. So in 1909,
he goes back to India, his wife has died in Medina, antique
mirrors again,
spend some time in Del band, and
refreshes his knowledge of Hadith under somebody called Maulana
Muhammad Al Hassan is the great Hadith scholar in dual band at the
time.
Maulana Muhammad, Al Hassan,
then goes to the hijas and Molana for saying goes back as well. Lots
of tooing and froing. And then in 1914,
the great war begins.
And this is immediately a problem for any British subject in the
holy cities because the holy city is a part of the Ottoman Empire,
which is at war with the British Empire.
So a huge problem the Turks that make difficulties for them, even
though technically their enemy aliens, but they just continue
teaching and nobody really cares. And Harley Pasha, who is the
governor of the hijas actually go out of his way to make sure that
the scholars are not interfered with.
But the Ottoman Empire is really no match for the British Empire on
one side and Russians on the other. And
on a visit to Mecca in 1916.
The Arab Revolt takes place a lot of slavery Arabia in a Sharif
Hussein and
all of that
romantic nonsense, which was basically just a piece of Imperial
manipulation and mischief making. After the British had failed so
catastrophically at Gallipoli a quarter of a million men died or
felt was casualties. On either side. The biggest ever defeat the
British Empire suffered really was by the so called sick man of
Europe and the Dardanelles, Churchill's greatest, greatest
debacle. So the idea was to weaken the Ottoman Empire by trying to
detach the Arabs from their loyalties to the Salton KDF in
Constantinople that had already been done successfully in the 19th
century to detach the Balkan provinces, which, as we saw in the
episode lecture, were really considered to be the heartlands of
the Ottoman Empire by the Ottomans themselves. But with the Balkan
wars in 1912, Albania went but no Macedonia went southern
Montenegro, Western Thrace, and there's just a little kind of
amputated stump of Turkey in Europe, which is still there. But
it's not
on the borders of Austria any longer. It's small.
So they wanted to do the same thing to the Arab provinces. The
trouble was that the Arabs weren't really nationalist, unlike the
Serbs and the Muslims and the Albanians and the Greeks and the
others, because they were thinking in more specifically religious
terms, they remember the Crusades unhappily and
The assault on Kaelyn particularly sought and unblocked in need were
really popular in the Arab world. Abdul Hamid did a lot for the
Haramain he built the Hejaz railway.
And nobody saw any point in rebelling so the British
eventually had to bribe a few tribesmen. No Arabs ever
defected from the Ottoman army to go over to the side of the British
or the Arab rebels. The Arabs in the Ottoman army were completely
loyal and also fought at Gallipoli, incidentally along in
their patches admission into the Caucasus, which wasn't a great
success. So if they just saw themselves as Ottomans.
So for the British, this was a problem. So they managed to get
their Sharif Hussein in Makkah, with a promise of sovereignty
after the war, told him Somerset on the Empire of the Turks, now
it's going to be an Arab kingdom under our tutelage, whether you
like it or not, and we'll make you king of Arabia and we'll probably
make you Khalifa
Burj Khalifa should be an Arab anyway, as long as you throw off
your allegiance to the to the Turks, and the Schaffer saying I
bought this.
And with the help of Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab euro and Cairo
and British gold, they managed to get Makkah to secede from the
healer alpha, which is a fairly extreme thing.
So, this is going on, and clearly the situation of British subjects
in the holy cities is increasingly precarious one, because they were
British subjects living under the enemy Ottomans, and now they are
British subjects, but the British are pulling the strings behind
this new while the ghostly kingdom of the hijas and indeed, in 1916.
The group of scholars Maulana Muhammad Al Hassan and Jose
numbered Madani are arrested by order of the Sharif of Mecca.
Now the British in the Arab era in Cairo, have drafted a fatwa
in which they declared that the Ottomans are catheter and that is
an obligation for Muslims to fight against the Ottoman Empire
in the interests of
the British Qing emperor, and the Allamah. Everywhere in the British
Empire are being pressed to sign this strange fatwa, which is
endorsed in Makkah by an obscure scholar who has now been made the
Sheikh Al Islam. The real shift from Islam, of course, is still in
Constantinople. But this scholar who is
rather terrified of their Sharif Hussein is going around getting
everybody in Mecca to sign this thing saying the Turks are
catheters and the British are protectors of true religion. And
then he comes to work the place where Maulana Muhammad Hassan will
say not mad money staying and says, you have to sign this thing.
The texts are called far and they say, and they have to be evasive,
because consequences could be disastrous. They say, Well, this
is just for the owner of McCann, we've got nothing to do with this.
We're from India. This is not our document that comes back the next
day, and it's got the same factor but the words and the Turks are
catheter have kind of disappeared, hoping that this will be more
acceptable, but they still won't sign it. And so
with the orders of the British pilgrim officer in Jeddah,
certain Colonel Wilson, they are arrested and put on mules and
taken to Jeddah accused of plotting with the Ottomans.
Beggars in Medina, they've been hanging out with olive Pasha and
some of the Ottoman statesmen there. And it seems pretty obvious
that they've been consorting with the enemy. So
the
the times are very tense and this of course, is a traumatic and and
horrible experience for the whole
so they're taken to Jeddah under God and we have to ask ourselves,
why the British on doing this? Do they really believe that these
Indian Alanna are in cahoots with the Ottomans and trying to stir up
sedition? Well, of course, the relations but in all in that, and
the British had always been uncomfortable, since the Muslims
basically took the lead in the first Indian War of Independence
in a
1857 And a lot of the scholars, so * Abdullah himself were
associated with that and that giusti Sunbury line that ended up
becoming very organized in Dale band was obviously subject to some
British colonial suspicion, even though they're banned was not
political, but there was one. ARLEN Amman, Anna Obaidullah Cindy
was an interesting person who was actually a Sikh convert. In his
teenage years he converted to Islam managed to become a
dual band organized some of the Dell band graduates into something
called the jam out and unsolved.
Which again, was not really political or explicitly anti
British, but clearly was some kind of mobilized group. And Maulana
Muhammad Hassan had a close relationship with him and was
constantly corresponding with him. So we have
Obaidullah, Cindy, during the First World War
goes to the NorthWest Frontier, province, all of those seven foot
tall, frowning Pashtuns
to try and foment a rebellion against the British. They're
always rebellion, rebelling against everybody and against each
other. But this has to be a jihad against the British, specifically,
in order to establish an independent India to meet up with
Muslims in Central Asia, who will then rise up against the Tsar,
because Russia is in disarray. And
he writes a letter to mahmudul, Hasan telling him what he is
doing, but asking for his support.
Now the British through a spy, intercept the letter, which is
written on silk to make it easy to, to hide, and this is called
the silk letter conspiracy, which is one of the episodes of the
British Raj in India.
And as a result, Muhammad, Hassan immediately comes under suspicion,
which seems to be why the British have had him lead away under
arrest with whoever happens to be in his house at the time.
Now, this starts to politicize them a lot more, because it's very
obvious what the British are up to, in the hijas. The Arabs are
still staunchly pro ottoman. But these wild tribes have been told
that they will get British gold and the right to pillage Damascus,
if they fight with Lawrence, it's very transparently a piece of
Imperial manipulation. And although we think of that period,
and the parceling up of the Middle East, according to lines of
colonial influence, the creation of countries like Lebanon and
Jordan, Iraq, places that had not been countries before, lines that
were drawn across the desert by a bunch of men in a smoke filled
room, and the Palace of Versailles,
as the kind of original sin that has caused the instability of the
Middle East. It's also had a big impact in Muslims elsewhere,
particularly in India in strengthening anti British
feeling.
Because the kind of deceit of it was particularly offensive to
Muslim sensibility. On the one hand, the British had written to
the Sharif Hussein, promising him that he will be an Arab sovereign,
and the Arabs would receive their independence under some kind of
vague British imperial supervision, the French would have
Syria, but they'd also signed secret Sykes pico accords. So Mark
Sykes, or former principal here, Muhammad Assad has written a great
book about Mark Sykes and that period where the British and the
French had secretly written another agreement saying no, the
city Arabs aren't going to get any kind of independence. It's just
going to be colonial rule, the British will get Iraq and the
French will get Syria and Lebanon and
file closed. So that kind of deceit was particularly regarded
as particularly sleazy and disgraceful, particularly to the
kind of classical Sufi Allamah who really respected men who kept
their word but this was a nasty form of nofap and did a lot to
galvanize what became the hill effort movement in India, which
was one of the currents that moved into the campaign against British
rule and for Indian independence. So the Hossein McMahon
correspondence, which is where the British said, you will be top dog
And the secret Sykes pico correspondence where they said
actually no, we're just going to take over ourselves
a very significant documents if you've seen the film, a dangerous
man
which is basically about the betrayal of the Arabs at the
Treaty of Versailles. You will see that and they're still really
angry about it her and a bunch of Jordanian taxi drivers saying,
we're not really Jordanians. We'd have to be polite to taxi drivers
in the Arab world. No, we're not Jordanians. It's all Sham. You
know, it's all Sham, Palestine and Lebanon and Syria and all those
silly countries we always used to be together, we speak the same
kind of Arabic with the same people. It's just you British who
kind of ruined everything.
probably correct. But the British crosstalk This is Imperial
planning, this is going to go on forever, they never really thought
that there would be independent countries. But in any case, these
are very, very traumatic times. And it's like 100 years ago, and
everybody's been commemorating the end of the First World War and the
Battle of are done, the last post, etcetera, etcetera. But Europe
kind of has recovered the Middle East,
still suffering.
You should read David from King's book, a piece to end or piece
where he talks about the catastrophes of the map drawing
that took place at the Treaty of Versailles. Let's create a place
called Yugoslavia, they thought
let's put Albanians in it and Slovenes and craps and Serbs, you
know, they hate each other and Bosnia and Montenegro. It will be
the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It's never existed before. And then of
course, when authoritarian rule ends, Tito dies, we're not sure
which takes over bang is it's an unreal nation state. And the same
happens for so many of those
fantasy states that were created at the Treaty of Versailles, Iraq
was put the Kurds together with the Sunnis and the Shia and the
Turkoman and the Yazidis. And the Christians, and it's going to be
just great. kind of handy for extracting oil, I guess. But
that didn't work. So well, either. In any case, yeah, centuries gone
by and we're still suffering, the peace to end all peace. But for
the Indians, they could see what a momentously awful thing was being
done, that these places that have been united under their field
effort, and before that, under the Mamluks, for 1000 years or more,
we're now going to become Syria and Lebanon and these strange
borders, dividing people and checkpoints everywhere and
passports. This was this was a monstrosity and really tended to
exacerbate anti Imperial and anti British feelings. So the silk
letter conspiracy is part of that people are really angry. So
they're under arrest in Jeddah. They don't know where they're
going to go. But they assume they're going to be taken to
India. But they're not put on a ship and taken to Egypt. They stay
in a kind of encampment, a prisoner of war place or just
outside Cairo. They're interrogated by a tribunal
where they make the fatal admission that actually the
Turkish rule in the hijackers was a lot better than the Sharif
Hussein. And the verdict on that was that they were disloyal, and
that they should be interned on the island of Malta, the opposite
direction to India. And they're sent with a lot of prisoners of
war, basically, Ottoman loyalists, Ottoman officers, and others,
civil servants who are going to be interned. And the sea voyage is
somewhat dangerous in the submarines and it's it's wartime.
But Mawlana, for saying Ahmed has a piece of the turban cloth of
* him dadullah, tears it up and gives one to each of the members
of the group for tobacco cat in order to keep them safe during the
sea passage.
So he arrives in Malta, and it's a huge prisoner of war camp about
3000 prisoners of lots of different nationalities, this kind
of Prussians with monocles as well as Syrian patches. Everybody has
their four layers of barbed wire outside it's like, like cold. It's
really multinational. And the pro Ottoman Egyptians and Syrians,
Lebanese Palestinians, as well. So they organize a mosque, they get
prison blankets, and do they create a mosque, and Syrians will
Ottoman patriots managed to stitch together an ottoman flag and keep
raising it to the annoyance of the British guards and it's the usual
situation and then
A prison where there are interrogations and then spies and
stole pigeons and petitions are coming from India because these
are like the best known Muslim scholars in India. So, people are
writing to the British saying you can't arrest
our Mo learners.
His father is Habibullah Habibollah, of course is still in
Medina eking out a living when the Sharif Hussein's forces after the
siege of Medina, which is a very kind of heroic event and the last
train to leave Medina railway station going north when the
Sharif Hussein's forces besieging the city it has
they take the relics of the Prophet's mosque with the Prophet
sword and his turban and artha and the battle cat that have always
been kept in the, in the harem in Medina, taken up and those
everybody's weeping. And of course, they're still in Istanbul
to this day where you can see that that Siege is something worth
reading about. But the shooting for saints forces take over. And
so
Maulana Habibollah is arrested.
But he's, he's arrested by the Turks That's right, as a British
subject under suspicion, and he's taken off to a dinner in European
Turkey, where he dies. And the news gets to Nana, Jose Madani in
Malta, and of course, is greatly affected by this. But by this
time, the hijas has been taken Palestine has been taken the two
battles of Gaza, the first one, the
Ottomans are victorious. And then when they're defeated, and from
that time, really, Gaza, which used to be just an ordinary Syrian
sleeping place has become one of the great tragedy zones on Earth.
And somehow these these all on that the Muslims who saw the
collapse of this ancient traditional order, somehow
intuited the human catastrophes that were to come on in our time
still goes on look at the Governability of Syria and Iraq.
And it's all from that period.
Iraq, under the Ottomans for 400 years didn't have a single major
episode of sectarian conflict. Not one, the Ottoman sometimes used to
send persons of gold to endow the Shiite shrines at Karbala and
Najaf and the Castlemaine that was just kind of normal. They were
just neighbors.
And now look at it. So there was something of an intuition in many
Muslim souls at the time that some kind of great darkness is coming.
So
Malena
Mallanna is working away Nakamoto Huson. And they have access to pen
and paper. So this is where Marlon Hossein Madani completes his great
commentary on Buhari, which is a very monumental work.
But they do a lot of vicar, and they have a very holy presence. So
the British guards when they go past them, couldn't stop taking
their hats off to them, which is not prison regulations at all,
you'd find a guard in strange ways sort of taking his hat off to a
particular prison unless it's a mafia boss who can threaten him
but just out of respect for a prisoner doesn't. prison
environment isn't like that. Sometimes the British guys would
even bow to moaning or saying afterward, because holiness has an
effect that people have an extraordinary charisma and some of
the Syrian prisoners that mostly from the Ottoman Navy took ber
with him and Atari and started to spread in Syria so we have another
let's listen to his words again.
Magic routine materialized
we actually have
a book as Irani Mata, it's an order but there's an English
translation we have it and CMC library upstairs which is a very
detailed account in a kind of traditional philosophy, law
monarchy genre, it's like his miracles and the people who
converted his hands and it's a spiritual prison diary.
So
later on one and a half note, writing about his teacher wrote
this in short, the truth of the matter is that no learner not
model has
son in his whole life, had never had such an opportunity for
spiritual work in a progress and intimacy with His True Beloved,
like the days of his state on Malta. It was a true gift from
Allah for achieving the stages of inner progress. The eternal writer
made this journey and this imprisonment the means for
achieving the stages he had fixed for him from eternity. And what's
achieved He sent him to his homeland and then summoned him
so well enough to say an armored,
who's a very apt student by now learns Turkish while he's here,
and completes finally his fifths of the or n, and is really well
known for showing and being esteemed by all the prisoners for
having amazing compassion for them all. So, another text from this
amazing diary
so this is what he writes later on. Among these 3000 some are
Muslims, some Christians, some Jews and Catholics are more black,
some white, some Eastern, some Western, some civilians and
military, some Asian some Africans and Europeans and Turkish but
trouble joined all in such a bond, that each was ready to sacrifice
his life. And in his heart, everyone breathed wellbeing for
the other. This was an extraordinary vision, as if the
differences of religion nation and Homeland had completely
disappeared from the human world, as if each was the other's real
brother. Everyone viewed the English officers and soldiers with
your anger, but looked at each prisoner with an eye of dignity
and respect.
So this goes on 11th of November, of course, the 11th hour of the
11th day of the 11th month, the armistice is signed and the guns
for silent are they expect to be released because they're getting
newspapers to know what's going on. But the Arab Bureau in Cairo,
which is planning this new British French suzerainty over Middle
Eastern is also interested in India, because Aidan is for a long
time administered through from Bombay
decides not to release them because they are undesirable.
Indians and Mohammed and malcontents, they haven't actually
been able to convict them of anything, just kind of hearsay
rumor. We think you're in this match list with the Ottoman Pasha.
And we think that you've been corresponding with albedo last
Sunday, and why did he send you this letter, but they can't
actually convict them of anything. In 1920. Finally, because there's
no evidence at all, and there's a lot of pressure coming from Indian
Muslims they are released.
from Malta back to India, it takes them three months. Chaos after the
war, the Middle East is an uproar. They didn't have any money. But
they met by a rapturous crowd and welcoming party at the docks in
Bombay, Ghandi as they're the Deobandi leaders and also
activists of a new movement called the healer foot movement, which is
an Indian Muslim movement concerned at British and
ultimately command list plans to abolish the Khilafah itself in
order to facilitate British rule.
He didn't go back to Medina. But his experience in prison has
turned him into a kind of activist Mowlana
that Indian Muslims in this time of the philosophic movement are
very alienated by clear British anti automatism.
Now, before this time, the idea of the Caleb the Khalifa had never
really been a very big idea in India.
Until the early 16th century, the deadly soul times tall knocks and
so forth, had had the Khalifa. There are Basset Khalifa, who at
this time was living in a kind of exile in a palace in Cairo,
mentioned in Hotspurs. But otherwise, it wasn't really alive
principal.
And some of the Mogul the Mogul saw times had made key level
claims for themselves, that they list of titles was so gigantic
Lord of the sun and the moon, all of that Lord of the Eastern the
West, master of the horizons, master of 1000 elephants. By the
time he got to khalifa, nobody was reading that far, so it wasn't
really part of their legitimation. In the medical world, of course,
they're aware that it was a claim made by the Ottoman assault, and
particularly the 18th and 19th century, as an Ottoman military
fortunes started to wane.
So, the British then had this idea
that the Sharif Hussein could be induced to declare himself to be
Khalifa and could then bring the whole Arab world and maybe the
whole Islamic world into British allegiance. There are letters from
him that indicate this been released in the India office
archives. So in 1919, something called All India feel effort
movement was founded out of anger, the kind of slicing up of the Arab
world, the Balfour Declaration, what was going to happen to
Palestine, and they were supported by Gandy as well. And Maulana
Muhammad Al Hassan declared his support was given the title
Schakel Hynd. And they lent their weight to many of the early
Gambian campaigns of civil disobedience, not buying British
products and not standing up with a European into the room, that
kind of thing.
partnered with a lot of other Muslims, including, interestingly,
some Cambridge educated Muslims, somebody called sayfudine
KISSFLOW. I probably pronounced that wrongly it was at Peter house
here in the
late 19th century, there's something called the Cambridge
Majlis here, which was founded in about 1891 for not just Muslim,
but there are a lot of Muslims and Indian students who were in
Cambridge, and they would get together and
talk society politics, talk about the aspirations later on, there
was an Oxford metrics as well.
People like Mallanna use Yusuf Ali when he was in Cambridge to
translate with the current users and John's College, Cabal, we're
all kind of, as it were graduates of the circle of Cambridge based
Muslim intellectual. So
this is an opportunity for the Mowlana to engage with some of the
more kind of Western educated Muslims in India who are
often much more active as nationalists than to Allah that
were, who tend to prefer the traditional distance that that
alone that maintain from the assault on
the British like this, and in Karachi, he is tried for anti
British agitation, and true to the principles of non cooperation.
They refuse to stand for the judge.
And they don't acknowledge the legitimacy of the court and he
gets sentenced to two years rigorous imprisonment, which means
that at night is chained and the food is really bad.
Is released two years later, but then in 1924, the heat alpha is
abolished by Ataturk and the movement kind of gets a bit
adrift, it staggers on for a few more years. But this the wind has
gone out of its sails. And also, there's growing dissension between
Hindus and Muslims and Muslim identity politics in India starts
to take on a different tenor. Still limit he's out of prison, he
resumed his anti British preaching and pointing particularly to the
cynical carve up of the Middle East.
And his preaching against communism, because he says that
for the different groups in India, to war on each other simply serves
British colonial interests, because the Raj justifies itself
as the White Man's Burden. If the white man goes, the Indians will
all kill each other as allegedly they did before. And similarly, he
didn't like sunny she disputations, which were quite
shocked. But this time, he was very strong in his disagreement
with the Shia, but he didn't like that to reflect itself in any kind
of communism.
Milan and Maha model hasn't passes away. And he moves off to distance
silhouette, in order to teach Hadith. He has always been really
a man who is not afraid of discomfort and going to out of the
way places. And one of his great delights, according to His
biographers, was just to go to villages and to talk about Islam,
the Quran and the Sunnah of the lives of the great ones. And even
if only half a dozen people came and kind of stood with their
mouths open, sort of on the way to the paddy fields, you'd be really
happy and that was it. He said his his greatest, greatest delight. So
a kind of tab leave is something that he starts as well. And he
creates
a kind of India wide organization for a kind of Ireland based re
Islamization because the Hindu militants have been launching
campaigns to bring very superficially Islamist populations
back into Hinduism. Organizations like the Arya Samaj sending
missionaries, essentially around the countryside to go to people
who have Muslim names, but maybe only nominally Muslim in practice
observing the Hindu calendar, and Hindu deities to read
assimilate them the process of
should be back into Hinduism. So movements like the Tablighi Jamaat
and Mawlana Hossein Madden, his organization are very much part of
the pushing back against this Hindu
militancy, and that organization also
tries to fight some on Islamic practices. So, he has this idea
that the Muslim birthrate is smaller than the Hindu birthrate
in India, because Muslims marry later, and because sometimes they
didn't marry at all. And the reason for that is cultural
expectations about extravagant weddings.
So he issues a series of factors indicating what a true Islamic
wedding should be, and the money you save, should be used to
establish yourself in a business or some other Halal form of
income. And that's one of the things that he is
remembered for.
Of course, it's still very much in the Deobandi orbit.
The head of the Lawndale band amalan, Anwar Shah Kashmiri
goes off to establish another big one or more in Gujarat. And Alana
Hossain Ahmed is invited to take his place and be the the grand
Rector of this
extraordinarily prestigious institution. He doesn't
particularly want to do it, but he says, if you agree to my 27
conditions, all right, I will, I will come and one of those
conditions is that don't longdale band will not stand aloof from
anti British campaigning in India. So the kind of quietest on on that
to be sidelined. And he also includes other conditions such as
he says, haven't seen this in a recent academic contract. If I
have to miss a lecture,
the regulations must specify that that is to be deducted from my
salary.
So it's the kind of purist approach and they say, all right,
and they let him in and he becomes
rises to this position of considerable eminence. Now, the
automat by this time are being contested in their claim to be the
natural leaders of the Ummah by different kinds of organisations.
You've got the Muslim League, starting up with gin. Now, who is
this Lincoln's in? educated, very anglicized
individual who, as far as anybody can tell, is not particularly
religiously, observant, and it's really more at home with sort of
anglicized and British elites than with traditional Muslims, with a
kind of nationalistic idea.
And then you have
this idea of a kind of romantic Muslim nationalism,
influenced by all of the ideas and visions, and sometimes quite
interesting insights that he picked up here in Cambridge and
elsewhere.
And like, gymnastic, he's not really at ease with the Alanna.
And then you've got Mel Dodi who more or less openly disrespects
the all of that,
and says that they are obscurantist, and they have veiled
the shining face of the Quran and the Hadith with all of their
hairsplitting. disputations. And that he Malgudi writes that
because of an inner light, he is able to tell whether a hadith is
strong or weak, just by looking at it, he doesn't need to go to all
of the polymers yellow books about Joshua and toddy eland assessing
isn't it? He can tell spontaneously and this of course,
completely short circuits, the whole traditional mechanisms of
Islamic scholarship. So there's these three groups who are Muslim
groups that are kind of not on the side with the the Alannah and
competing with them for popularity.
Most of the automatic groupings
are aligning themselves with Congress in the movement for the
Indian National Liberation against the British especially see rod,
which is a big group and most of its territories are now in what's
called Pakistan nowadays, which is very much a kind of Paul relief
type, scholars activist organization very much in the
Chishti tradition. We're particularly active in upholding
the
rights of Muslims in Kashmir, which was a Muslim majority
province, but under Hindu Raja, and they were historically quite
quite browbeaten and then you've got the famous movement of
Abdullah far Abraca for Han, amongst the protons who improbably
For a Putana creates a kind of Islamic pacifism in order to
resist the British.
But the Muslim League is the group that seems to be growing fast,
even though gymnasts natural habitat tends to be with with the
aristocratic. So do you know who's talking to westernized
intellectuals, aristocratic and princes from the princely states,
whereas the colonists support tends to come from the grassroots.
The British are also emphasizing that the role in India is to as it
won't be referees between two competing teams and that, but for
the referee, the rules would be cast aside and mayhem would ensue.
And they do a lot to promote, particularly the the zealous sides
of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism. And the story is
still coming out. But it's becoming evident now that
Whitehall's role was quite a nefarious one at a time when
Churchill, for instance, is absolutely determined and
desperate that India would remain the jewel in the kernel. So 1937
was in madonie, writes a book with the head Muttahida commit our
Islam, which is an interesting document in that it is really
written from a very classical Hanafi matterI perspective,
explaining what Islam actually could make of nationalism,
which is the dominant ideology in the world at the time, whether of
the left or of the right, and certainly the way in which anti
colonialism was expressing itself. If the movement against the
British in India
is a nationalism, what should be the role of the automat? When
nationalism is something that comes out of the European
experience? What on earth can be our role in this to just go along
with it? Can we find ways of justifying it in the Quran? Or the
Sunnah? Or do we have to oppose it?
Or do we have an alternative vision so he proposes a kind of
alternative vision, and he is very much targeting these different
voices.
Akbar Jinnah and also Mel DoDI, who he sees as people who are
speaking for Islam, but not really with a sufficient knowledge base
and sufficient
authorization
and continuity with the classical past. So in many ways, it's a
restatement of the classical, even medieval Islamic understanding of
how government works.
And if Baal writes a poem, attacking him,
is quite sick by this time he dies the next year, but he writes a
Persian poem in which he calls the head of the norm, del band, the
Abu Lahab have the time
because it's apparently opposing the word of the Holy Prophet,
which is about the Muslims of the Ummah and the traditional way. But
and then
he writes a counter refutation and his basically his his
understanding in India because by this time, things are looking
quite dire. And he certainly doesn't want the region to be
divided the way the British divided the Middle East, which
seems to be the usual British policy, in power, and when leaving
power, you just divide it up into smaller bits and step back and
watch the fun that
his view is that if you look at the classical Islamic sources, and
set aside sort of journalistic or philosophical and nationalistic
considerations, you find that there are three principles that
should be guiding the all on that looking at this, do we stay with
the British? Do we stay with the United India? Do we support the
idea of cutting into Europe into Muslim and Hindu bits? There's
three points he says. Firstly, the Sunnah validates alliances with
non Muslims. So he talks about the same as Constitution of Medina
that the Holy Prophet fought with the Jews when he arrived there and
there's plenty of other examples you can collaborate politically
with non Muslims. Secondly, Muslims are people of
faithfulness, who keep their promises and are honorable
neighbors.
And thirdly, that Muslims belong in India. Hindu nationalists and a
certain British narrative regard them as legacies of outsider
conquest. But actually they are locals. This is Hindustan is their
country. And the landscape is full of mosques and Zambia's and
graveyards and it's Hindustan.
Muslims are not kind of camping out. So his arguments are
All religious arguments that Islamic arguments. And his concern
is that partition would divide the Muslims into maybe three different
bits that unite the Hindus. So in an attempt to avoid Hindu
predominance in the region, it would actually cement it because
it would be the Muslims who would be divided, and the Hindus who
would be united.
And he also has an aside at Nadodi, who he calls and he's
never really abusive, he doesn't call anybody Abu Lahab. But now
dot equals a journalist, a writer of articles and editorials, who
should not be giving fatwas that is authorized him to give that was
so this
idea of partition to him, looks as if it's going to leave the Muslims
in the lurch and destabilize the region, the way the British
destabilize the French destabilize the Middle East, and is a bitter
experience of seeing the consequences. The first world war
in the Middle East probably informed this this view.
Second World War happens and the future of British rule becomes
even more ambiguous. Subhas Chandra Bose has taken a bit of
the Indian Army to side with the Japanese in the hope that the
Japanese sponsored Indian independence would be the best
thing for the subcontinent. There's, there's 1000s of them,
and they're just waiting in Burma to cross the border into Assam.
The idea being that the Indian population will then rise up
against the white man and welcome the joint Japanese Indian
liberators, which could have happened could have happened and
British were really unpopular, particularly given the
manipulations of the Bengal famine in 1942, which is worth reading
about.
Basically,
the story of the Bengal famine is that in order to prevent the
Japanese from landing on the coasts of eastern India,
the British destroyed the infrastructure of the coasts.
And they also diverted green chips away from India to go to Britain
and also stockpile for a putative Allied invasion of the Balkans.
So Britain was not hungry during the Second World War, despite all
the you vote attacks, but several million Indians basically and in
Bengal, disproportionately Muslims died as a result of those
manipulations of people. If you look out the window of the train,
and there's people starving children and corpses around, you
tend to think twice about the alleged civilizing benefits of
colonial rule. And indeed, there hasn't been a famine in India
since independence, were other Imperial arguments. So that
Muslims have decided or that a decision has to be taken, is it
going to be united Hindustan with Muslims at about 25 or 30% of the
population or is the continent to be divided, which tends to be the
British preference partly as a way of saying, I told you so. 1940 The
Lahore resolution calls for partition.
And
I say that Madani continues with his polemic, he tends to be more
strongly anti British, but also strongly out anti politician. And
you can see in his writings at this time, anxieties about the
nature of modernity itself, the technology, when weaponized is
infinitely more threatening than anything human beings have seen
before. And that the breakdown in order would be unbelievably
calamitous. So he writes about Hindustan as a Muslim land and as
the his of the historic responsibility of Muslims to
remain everywhere in the land in order to continue the just the
process of proselytization and converting people. He even has a
theory that because of Adam's peak and Salon SriLanka, the first
human being on Earth was actually an India but it was a person of
Tawheed. So in a sense, the Muslims were in India before the
Hindus came along. So to say is the Hindu nationalist that Muslims
are kind of foreigners doesn't really make much sense. The
Muslims are the original Indians. And the VirtIO in India is all
prophetic. It comes from the north Mohammadi. And he also has an
interesting argument, I'm not quite sure what to make of it,
that when Indians die, if they're Hindus, they're cremated and they
kind of leave the Earth. But when Muslims die, they're buried in the
land of India and therefore the land is kind of full of
Muslim Muslim Nanda.
Interesting. So more attacks on male Daudi as a kind of
philosopher, and somebody who's unwilling to understand that so
much of Islam is about recognition of local particularities, the
orphan that harder was modeled, he tends to be purist and
ideological. And so nobody says a normal son can never lead Muslims.
Live Nadodi has been brought up in the Nizam of Hyderabad domains
where than his arm is ruining substantially northern Muslim
population. So he's used to that scenario than the Mowlana says,
What does that mean that you could never have, for instance,
a non Muslim head of the post office or a non Muslim headmaster
of the school or non Muslim, anything with any position of
authority, he just doesn't accept it. And as for the idea of Islamic
rule, and Islamic government and Islamic State, he goes to very
meticulously says there is no consensus amongst all of that as
to how the ideal form of government for Muslims should be.
But one thing that you cannot have is the idea of Islamic law,
becoming enacted as statutory law because the Sharia doesn't work
like that. If you're westernized, you assume Islamic law is like
British law and the legislature to enact it. And it becomes the law
of the land. But Syria doesn't operate like that, because it is
not state law. And it's not one of the capacities of the of the
assault on to enact legislation.
We saw this when he talked about Ebersole defending and how limited
were the actual powers of the Ottoman Sultan, which is
counterintuitive, but it is the case the Sharia is a local common
or
guild based bottom up type of legislation that doesn't have any
kind of overarching control from above. So his having a what we now
call Islamists on those grounds as well. So he gets angry, he writes
traps, like an open letter to the Muslim League, what is the Muslim
League? What is Pakistan? He talks about gingers Islamic
inauthenticity and how his culture is basically British rather than
Islamic. But not all the Allamah agree with him should be Hamid
Osmani and others think that things are going to get so bad
that we do need our independent Pakistan and partition is the only
way. So 1947 He lives to the horrors incredible cyclone of PATA
partition, millions massacred on both sides and DCS.
People getting on trains leaving Delhi and their children left
behind and 70% of the Muslim population of Delhi leaves but he
doesn't leave he urges patients is a summary of the role.
And together with Mallanna Zakaria Candela, we they issue a
proclamation urging Muslims not to leave Delhi since the Great Muslim
city with the great mosques and the great shrines. And there's
Ahmed Ali, that whole infrastructure, how can you
abandon it? How can you leave it to others but still, most Muslims
in Delhi leave and as in Hyderabad, a lot of other formerly
Muslim shaped places in the subcontinent, then that kind of
sad places abandoned.
Partition takes place nonetheless, despite his intentions, and He
then turns down a longtail band into something less political
British are gone. And he focuses more on trying to uplift the
remaining Indian Muslims to a reform of a clock and aim.
And becomes a sort of significant but not political figure in the
early years of independent India,
Lady 55, who makes his last Hajj
and
just two years before his death, and he's able to go back via
Lahore by Pakistan to visit his his pupils.
And then he goes on because the borders were open in those days
back to Delve and unknowingly to end with a quote that indicates
that despite the politics and everything, he really should be
seen as a selfless Sufi watershed. So this is one of the narratives
of his train journey back from
back from his Hajj.
This is
from
one of his editors When Hazrat Maulana Madani returned from his
final hedge
We came to the station in the horror for the honor of seeing him
shut off his era. And among those in relationship with him was
Samsonite and Mohammed RF from District Jang, which in the Punjab
who accompanied him as far as Dale band. And he told me the following
story. On the train there was also a Hindu gentleman who experienced
a call of nature and went to attend to it. Clearly unhappy he
came right back. If you've been to public toilets in that part of the
world, you'll understand why he came back and he was still
uncomfortable. Anyway, hazard Maulana Madani understood what had
happened, and immediately gathered some empty cigarette packets and a
jug of water and went and cleaned the toilet.
Then he said to the Hindu man, please go the toilet is clean,
perhaps because it was nice, you couldn't see it properly.
You said Molana. I saw how the toilet was but he got up and went.
You found the toilet wasn't completely clean. He was much
moved and with great conviction said, Your Honors horizontal
kindness, cherishing of servants is beyond comprehension. And
there's so many stories that are told about him of that kind, which
kind of indicates what sort of person that ilm, who is properly
inflicted by the slog of to so off can be complete selflessness and
complete lack of self regard but concern for others.
But of course, his vision of a united Hindostan which Islam would
continue to progress didn't take place. We don't know what the end
game will look like. But with both sides, bristling with nuclear
warheads, and nationalists, louder than ever on both sides, things
are looking a little bit ominous. But in any case,
history is in Allah's hands. But it is as well to bear in mind the
struggles of that generation. Lest we think that religion and
authentic automat religion in its highest form is about dichotomy
and polarization because it isn't.
Adam is Indian as well.
So thank you very much. I've got to travel shortly, but in short,
and I will see you all the next installments of these
leadership lectures. barnacle Olfi call for Salam aleikum wa
rahmatullah.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers