Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind (JuH) leader Maulana Arshad Madani was slammed by VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) for making uninformed comments on Bajrang Dal (BD). Furthermore, VHP asked Maulana to introspect on his own conduct.
VHP statement on Maulana Madani
As per reports, on Sunday Maulana had said that Congress promised to ban Bajrang Dal if it came to power in Karnataka but it should have done so 70 years ago. He further added that if Congress had banned BD at the time of independence the country would not have been ‘ruined’.
VHP working president Shri Alok Kumar held a press conference and called out Maulana’s remark and termed it ironical. He highlighted that BD, VHP’s youth wing, was not even born seventy years ago. He stated that when the then-government banned BD in 1992, the decision was squashed by a tribunal as it found no grounds to ban the organization. Shri Alok Kumar pointed out that repeating the same mistake will lead to the same consequences.
“Madani should introspect and also look into his own conduct and that of Deobandis. Deobandi ideology is inciting certain sections of Muslims to indulge in violence. The time has now come for the civil society and governments, particularly governments in democratic countries, to take note of it and rise to resist and defeat the jihadi ideology”, Shri Alok Kumar remarked.
Who is Maulana Madani?
Maulana Arshad Madani is the President of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind (JuH) who is the present Principal of Darul Uloom Deoband and is known for making controversial statements. Earlier, Maulana termed notorious Taliban terrorists as ‘freedom fighters’. He had opined that co-education was leading to ‘apostasy’ in Muslim girls and to curb this more educational institutions should be opened.
Recently, he attempted to appropriate Hindu Dharma while speaking on the second day of the 34th Convention of JuH. Maulana Madani claimed that Islam originated in Bharat while adding Allah sent Adam to India and Muhammad to Arabia as Islam’s first and last Prophets. The Maulana further equated Manu and Adam saying Hindus referred to Adam as Manu.
Deobandis and Wahhabis have shared roots that go back centuries. Deobandis might have adopted some different methods to grow their movement and establish their authority in the Bharatiya subcontinent, but the fundamentals of both schools remained the same.
Darul Uloom Deoband in Bharat might try to distance itself from the Taliban to avoid negative publicity, but its pride in its protégé shines through when Maulana Madini compares the Taliban to Bharat’s freedom fighters.
Radical Islam in Bharat
The JuH is a supremacist Islamist outfit that not just comes out in support of terrorists but also is Hinduphobic as is apparent in the manner in which it opposes laws that safeguard Hindus. In January this year, the organization moved the Supreme Court against anti-conversion laws passed by five states – Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Himachal Pradesh.
It would be apt to remind Maulana Arshad Madani of the history of radical Islamic movements (under the garb of revivalist movements) in Bharat and how it is extremely intolerant of everything un-Islamic (the only aim being to turn Bharat into Darul Islam from Darul Harb or the land of infidels):
1) Shah Waliullah of Delhi (1703-1753 or 1762 by some accounts) combined religious scholarship with an active role in political matters. He wrote to the Afghan chieftain Ahmed Shah Abdali (1722-1772) asking him to attack the Marathas and save the Mughal empire from losing territory. He emphasized the importance of Muslim political power and ascribed Muslim decline to the rise of the secular monarchy at the expense of the religiously guided caliphate.
2) The Mujahidin Movement was initiated by Sayyid Ahmed Bareili (aka Syed Ahmad Barelvi, 1786-1831) in northwest India. The founder Sayyid Ahmed Bareili was influenced by Wahhabi teachings during a pilgrimage to Mecca and returned to Bharat with the belief that there was a need to purify Islam as it was practised in Bharat and to re-establish Muslim power.
3) Founded in 1866/67 by Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi, the Darul Uloom (Center of Learning) at Deoband (a town in Uttar Pradesh, Bharat) spearheaded a traditionalist reform movement among South Asia’s Muslims after the last Mughal emperor was exiled by the British following the 1857 war of Independence. The basic goal of the Deoband School is ‘purifying Islam of such un-Islamic beliefs and practices’.
4) The Tablighi Jamaat that originated in the Mewat region of Bharat in 1926/27 to urge Muslims to return to a ‘pure form’ of Sunni Islam is another offshoot of the Darul Uloom of Deoband.
5) The Jamaat-e-Islami, founded in 1941 by Abu Ala Maududi, divided itself into three organizations after partition, one each for Bharat, Pakistan, and Kashmir. Maududi’s main ideas focused on the notion of a single law (i.e., Sharia), divine sovereignty and the belief that the struggle between Islam and un-Islam would lead to an Islamic revolution that would bring about the creation of an Islamic state. Maududi insisted it was necessary to Islamize society before creating the Islamic state.
These are just some of the Islamic movements that were started in the Bharatiya subcontinent. It must be emphasized that all Islamic movements are ultimately driven by the Quran and Hadith and Muslim revivalism to cleanse Islam of ‘corrupt’ (Hindu) influences in the Bharatiya sub-continent gained strength from their exchanges with the Saudi Wahhabi ideology.
The Wahhabi movement was founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in the 18th century in Najd, Central Arabia, to be adopted by the Saudi ruling dynasty in 1744 and since that time, has been the brand of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia. They reject all acts that they consider polytheism (shirk) and this includes visiting tombs or venerating saints. They advocate following only the original teachings in the Q’uran and Sunnah and recommend literal interpretation of these texts. Other sources of doctrine are considered ‘innovations’ (bid’ah) and not true to the faith.
Regarding the influence of Wahhabi ideology in India, Uday Mahurkar mentions the Taqwiyat-ul-Ima:
…a book being taught in all Wahhabi madrasas in the country for over 150 years now, which preaches hatred…..The book was written in the 1820s by Delhi-based Wahhabi Maulvi, Shah Ismail, who was a disciple of Syed Ahmed Barelvi.
The word ‘Taliban’ comes from Pashto or Dari, i.e. originally from the Persian language and means ‘students’. After the Deoband seminary was established in UP, the Deobandi tradition soon became the most popular school of Islamic thought among the Pashtuns (aka Pathans/Pakhtoons), an ethnic group living in an area on either side of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. After Bharat was partitioned in 1947, many prominent Deobandi scholars migrated to Pakistan, setting up a large number of madrassas.
After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the American spy agency CIA started covertly funnelling arms and money through Pakistan’s ISI to orchestrate a resistance movement consisting of religious fighters, the mujahedeen. Most of these fighters were drawn from Deobandi madrassas.
Money also started pouring into the Deobandi madrassas from Saudi Arabia, which by then was working assiduously to promote its Wahhabi doctrine all across the Islamic world. So there was a fresh injection of Wahhabism in these Deobandi madrassas in the Af-Pak region since the 1980s.
Many myths have been perpetuated about the role played by Deobandis, Barelvis and other Muslim ulemas in Bharat’s freedom struggle. A reading of historian Venkat Dhulipala’s book ‘Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India’ will clear many of these misconceptions.
A favourite of the secular cabal, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad is often portrayed as a secular icon symbolizing the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb (a term used to depict Hindu-Muslim unity) and a nationalist to the core. His speeches where he argues against the partition and formation of Pakistan are quoted in favour of this view. But does this argument hold water? Or is this simply white-washing his true Islamist nature?
He opposed the two-nation theory and partition of Pakistan not because he believed in Hindu-Muslim unity or equality, but because he felt that an undivided Bharat would mean safety in numbers for the Muslims and would allow for the unchecked propagation of Islam in the whole subcontinent.
In fact, when the constitution of independent Bharat was being written, Maulana Azad led the demand for a separate Muslim electorate besides weighted reservations for them (50% more than the Muslim population).
His belief in the Muslim Ummah (Muslim brotherhood) pre-dates the partition and is visible in his support of the Khilafat movement. When the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate was in plain sight, Maulana Azad supported the Khilafat movement and mobilized the Muslims of Bharat to wage Jihad in Turkey by delivering a rousing speech to a gathering of Muslims on 27th October 1914 in Kolkata.
The so-called moderate tolerant Sufis were equally anti-Hindu if not more. The history of Moinuddin Chisti, at whose dargah Hindus rather HINOs pray, should be an eye-opener for Hindus. Also, the multiple voices that have recently arisen in support of the Taliban within Bharat are a clear sign that Deobandis and other Indian Muslim fundamentalists are merely biding their time.
While Maulana Madani dog whistles BD as a ‘threat’ to the nation, it is actually radical Islam that the country should be wary of. Maulana Madani should answer (not that one can expect an honest answer from him!) if BD, that among other activities saves Gaumatas from being illegally smuggled, is the threat or if a Maulana who openly asks the PM to embrace Islam and desecrates Dharma and radical Islamic organizations is the real threat.
