Islam

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ISLAM

ISLAM Islam is a monotheistic religion that arose in Arabia in the early seventh century as a movement for social and spiritual reform. It began with Muhammad (571–632), regarded by Muslims as a prophet, who received revelations from God (Allah in Arabic) through Archangel Gabriel.

Islam means peaceful submission to God, and a Muslim is one who acknowledges the need of such a sub-mission and commits to required practices identified as the Five Pillars or acts of faith. These include: the acknowledgment of the one God and of Muhammad as the Prophet of God; ritual prayer five times a day; fasting during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar; almsgiving according to one's capabilities; and pilgrimage to Mecca, if means permit.

In Islam, God has no representation, although the practice of making calligraphic imagery of the many names of God is fairly common and can be seen in mosques and in the homes of many Muslims. The revelations God sent to Muhammad were collected and now form the sacred text of the Qu?an. Islam does not prescribe priesthood, and there is no clergy. Muslims rely on the learning from ulama (religious scholars) who strive to understand and teach the Quran, the hadith (sayings of the prophet Muhammad), and Shari?a (Islamic law) to others. There are five major schools of law. Most Muslims in India follow the Hanafi school, prevalent in the north, and the Shafi?i school, which is more popular in the south.

The majority of Muslims in the world are Sunni, but a smaller percentage belong to the second major branch of Islam, Shi?ism. There is a significant population of Sh?a in India, which includes the Isma?ilis, concentrated in the western states and in Mumbai, and the Twelvers, who are more scattered. One of the major festivals in India in which both the Sunni and Sh?ia Muslims come together is the celebration of Ashura, the day of remembrance of the martyrdom of Husain, the grandson of the Prophet. This takes place each year on the tenth day of the first Islamic month, Muharram.

Sufism and the Growth of Islam in India

Islam spread rapidly throughout Arabia and its environs during the lifetime of the prophet Muhammad. Within a century of his death, Muslim armies were present in the farthest regions of North Africa in the west and among the Hindus and Buddhists of Sind in the east. It is through the conquest of Sind that Islam first came to North India. At the same time, Islam grew peacefully among the natives in the south through the Arab merchants who had been part of a thriving trade between Indian western coastal regions and the Muslim world since pre-Islamic times.

While Islam is not indigenous to India, Islam in India is as authentically Indian as are Indian Buddhism and Indian Christianity. A significant majority of Muslims in India descend from the native Indians who converted to Islam from the eighth century onward. They share ethnic and cultural as well as linguistic traits with Indians of other religious traditions. According to the 2001 census, there were approximately 138 million Muslims in India, 13.4 percent of the country's population. Unofficial estimates, however, range from 150 million to 180 million. Indian Muslims are culturally diverse, economically disparate, and geographically they are spread all across the country. The areas of concentration of Muslims can be found in the northern and eastern states of Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and West Bengal.

Since its arrival in the seventh and eighth centuries, Islam has continued to spread in India due to multiple factors. The most significant reason for this rise is the mediation of Sufis and scholars who are engaged in teaching, healing, and general spiritual guidance. The conversions themselves were a gradual process, spanned over centuries, thus indicating that they occurred partly through the assimilation of cultural and religious ideas. A major factor in the growth of Muslim communities in India was emigration from other Muslim lands.

The Sufis, or the mystics of Islam, were themselves of various origins. Many had emigrated from other Muslim lands; others simply emerged as Islam developed its roots in India. Many immigrants came because they were enchanted by the notion of "Hind" (Persian for India) as the land of ancient wisdom as well as of spices and silk. They intermarried and adopted those local customs that did not conflict with their faith obligations. There were also missionaries among them. Among the first Muslim missionaries to come to India were the Isma?ilis. Arriving in the northwest, they tried to convert the natives to Islam through preaching. With the help of the Fatimids, the ruling dynasty in Egypt at the time, the Isma?ilis exercised political control in the northwestern region for a brief period.

The second major thrust in conversions came from the Sufis, who were largely Sunnis. Sufism speaks of tariqa (mystical path), which has many varieties worldwide, and India certainly has its share of them. Authentic Sufism is based on the Qur?an and basic principles of Islam, but sometimes in actual practice these principles are interpreted in unorthodox ways. This becomes a cause for tension between what the textually explicit, orthodox tradition teaches and how a particular mystical seeker interprets those teachings and incorporates them into practice. Sufis often claim to have a direct experience of the oneness of God. From the eighth century, Sufis were organized in various orders, many of which were brought to India by traveling scholars and saints with their disciples.

Among these was the Sufi Ali bin Uthman al-Hujviri, popularly known as Data Ganj Bakhsh (died c. 1073), revered to this day in parts of the northwest. He was the author of Kashf al-Mahjub, a major treatise on the lives of Sufi saints, which offered spiritual advice. Traveling throughout the Muslim world, he chose Lahore as his final destination, which is where his tomb lies today, visited by thousands of seekers each year.

Another major Sufi movement that established its foundations in India was the Chishti Order, introduced by Khwaja Muin al-Din Chishti (1142–1236) in the thirteenth century. Mu?in al-Din (or, as he is often called, Khwaja Gharib Nawaz) is associated with countless stories of spiritual miracles, which make him one of the most famous of all saints in India. His shrine in Ajmer is a major center of pilgrimage for Hindus and Muslims alike.

The memory and traditions of these and other Sufis are still kept alive through a chain of successors to the shaykh or pir (Sufi master), and their shrines have become sites of prayers and community gatherings for disciples and lay people alike. They believe that the shaykh's spiritual blessings are continuously available to all who come to seek it at their dargah. Such shrines exist throughout India. In the south, the shrine of Banda Nawaz (1321–1422) is known as the dargah of Gulbarga and is a place of pilgrimage for both Hindus and Muslims. The importance of shrines attached to the memory of Sufi saints is a significant aspect of Indian Islam because it is strong evidence against the cliché classification of fixed religious behavior belonging to either Hinduism or Islam.

The Sufis' main approach was devotionalism, which included, among other things, the practical arts of healing the physical and the spiritual together. The devotional culture promoted by the Sufis and the Hindu bhakti movement gave rise to all forms of "religious" or spiritual trends, some syncretistic, others eclectic. Devotional music was introduced by the Chishti Sufis in the thirteenth century as a means of achieving the state of ecstasy. They believed that the harmony of sounds stirs the heart of the listener, arousing a deeper love for God. Sufis wrote in and used other major languages besides Persian and Arabic. Sufi devotional literature is found in Punjabi, Sindi, Bengali, and Urdu in particular, which became the language of the masses throughout North India.

Development of Urdu

Muslims over the centuries introduced several languages to India. Besides Arabic, the language of the Qur?an, Persian was the main medium of literary and political discourse. Many of the rulers during the Sultanate period were of Turkish origins, hence elements of their language became part of the local dialects. It seems probable that the interaction of the local languages of North India with Persian, which was used by the ruling classes, gave rise to a "proto-language" during the period of the Delhi Sultanate. As the Sultanate became well established in the twelfth century, the emerging proto-language further coalesced with the Brij Bhasha spoken in Delhi and other local dialects of the surrounding regions, and gave rise to Urdu.

Spoken by the ruling classes, the language soon evolved as the forerunner of modern Urdu. In the fourteenth century Urdu was picked up and further developed in the south under Bahmani rulers, becoming known as Daccani. Like other languages, Urdu began its literature with poetry. In the south it flourished as the ruler of Golcanda, Sultan Quli Qutb Shah (1565–1610), was himself a poet who wrote in Persian, Telgu, and Urdu.

While Urdu developed in the south, it was not so in Delhi, where Persian continued to dominate the literary scene. One major poet from the south, Wali Deccani (1644–1707), shook the city with his Urdu poetry while visiting Delhi. Wali thus became the reviver of Urdu in the north. This gave rise to a new and invigorating period in Urdu literature with the emergence of the so-called Delhi school, with Mir Taqi Mir (1723–1810) and Mir Dard (1720–1784), two of its pillars, developing different genres of poetry.

The towering figure of Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1789–1869) is another major poet who contributed to Urdu's honored status. His also wrote letters, and his style was regarded by many as groundbreaking and innovative, liberating Urdu from the clutches of formalism and setting it apart from its "superior" rival, Persian. Ghalib wrote mostly in Persian, but his Urdu divan (collection of poems) is considered a classic.

In the twentieth century, Urdu poetry has served as a medium of expression for social critics, literary trendsetters, and even secularists and humorists, giving rise to figures such as Ali Sardar Jafri (1913–2000), Quratul Ain Haider (b. 1926), and Majrooh Sultanpuri (1919–2000). Urdu continues to be the language in which much of Islamic religious and secular literature is published, and it is also the national language of Pakistan.

Music, Architecture, and Art

For centuries, Islamic and Hindu cultures developed in relation to each other. There is a long history shared by the members of these two traditions with regard to Indian classical music, art, and architecture. India Muslim devotional music is a blend of bhakti-style poetry and music from Muslim regions brought to India by travelers and immigrants. The sharing of musical traditions can be traced back as early as the eighth century. Musical traditions originating in Persia and Central Asia can still be found in the Kashmiri and Punjabi art forms. Many Indian musical instruments also developed as a result of Islamic influences. For example, the santoor as well as the tabla evolved during the Muslim period. Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) was a composer and a literary giant who wrote prolific poetry. He is credited with developing Hindustani classical music as well as Qawwali, a genre of Sufi devotional music that continues to be popular in South Asia today.

Islamic architecture in India is a reflection of the synthesis of Hindu and Muslim cultures. As these influenced one another, an unparalleled style developed out of the two seemingly contradictory cultural traditions. The Qutub Minar and the Jami Masjid in Delhi are classical masterpieces of Muslim architecture. The Mughals, connoisseurs as well as patrons of art and architectural masterpieces, built great monuments throughout India. One of the finest examples is the Taj Mahal at Agra, built during Shah Jahan's reign (1628–1658) as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal.

The Mughals were also patrons of the literary arts, which thrived during this period. Historiography reached new heights with the writing of Akbarnamah by Abul Fazl (1551–1602). Persian and later Urdu were refined, spurring the production of numerous literary works. During the Mughal period, the art of miniature painting was also prevalent. These and other Mughal cultural traditions were replicated at various levels among the nobility and in the larger society in general, affecting Hindu and Muslim communities alike.

Islamic Modernism

Muslims are the largest minority in India, and Indian Muslims have influenced the world of Islam in several ways, most notably by creating a unique form of Islam that expanded the intellectual and spiritual horizons of Muslims everywhere. India was the land of enchantment for many in the Muslim world. Muslims learned from Indian wisdom and transferred it, as faithfully as they could, to other centers of learning around the world. It was Muslims who gave India its fundamental sense of self and defined it as a civilization, setting it apart conceptually as well as geographically. As André Wink notes in his magnificent study Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, it was the Arabs and Muslims who first applied the word "Hind" to the entire subcontinent as well as the archipelago. In later writings India was referred to as "Hindustan," the land of the Hindus.

Through the Middle Ages and into the modern period, Islam's involvement in India has been so intricate that it has become an inseparable part of the fabric of India's cultural heritage. The long presence of Muslims in India entitles them to be part of both Indian and Islamic civilizations, hence, Muslims are as much Indian as any other community in India. Muslims of India can be faithful to both their nationalistic aspirations as well as their religio-cultural traditions, without having to choose between the two. This is the message, echoed by many modern Muslim reformers, of Sayyid Ahmed Khan (1817–1898), founder of the Aligarh Muslim University.

Another early modernist Muslim thinker was Sayyid Ameer Ali (1849–1928), who appreciated the importance of scientific learning, earlier advanced by Sayyid Ahmed Khan. Ali studied abroad and practiced law upon his return to India. An orthodox Shi?a, he presented Islam in a nonsectarian framework. He produced a number of books, including a major influential work on Islam, The Spirit of Islam (1922).

Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938) is perhaps the most revered modernist Muslim thinker of the twentieth century. He was a philosopher by training and studied in the West. He published a major philosophical work, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, in 1934. Iqbal believed that the decline of Muslims had been caused not by the failure of Islam but by a lack of adherence to the spirit of Islam. His poetry, written mostly in Farsi and Urdu, inspired not only religious but also sociopolitical activism among Muslims.

Another major thinker of the twentieth century was Abu?l ?Ala Maududi (1903–1979). He founded the Jama?at-i Islami in 1941, which has been proactively promoting Islam as a "way of life" and advocating the establishment of an overtly Islamic government through peaceful means by way of political processes.

During the same period, Maulana Muhammad Ilyas (1885–1944) founded a humble organization, now known worldwide, called the Tablighi Jama?at, a society of missionaries. Ilyas and his followers became active in the 1940s as teachers of the basics of Islamic practice to rural illiterate Muslims, and they encouraged personal renewal of faith.

Challenges in the Twenty-first Century

Before the nineteenth century, Muslims and Hindus did not consider each other merely in religious terms. Religious differences were clearly present, but class differences, geography, and language were greater factors in determining identity than was religion. At the level of the common person, for most of their history in India, Muslims and Hindus have experienced a common culture, language, and even ethnic makeup. Religion as the determinant of identity is a very recent construct and one that has been exploited by political leaders of both communities since the heightened awareness of their separateness was reflected in the policies of the British Raj.

Indeed, Hindus and Muslims are different and they have always seen each other as such. The Muslim religious elite, especially in the early twentieth century, highlighted these differences in clearly religious terms, some even attributing the term kafir (used as a derogatory term) to denote Hindus. Similarly, since the rise of Hindutva, the politics of the Sangh Parivar, Muslims and other minorities have been subjected to communal riots, frequently since 1947, in which their economic, social, and personal interests have suffered. The height of this religious tension was reached in the 1992 destruction of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya by members of right-wing Hindu groups, who continue to be vocal about their plans to build a Ram temple on the site. Many more Muslims and Hindus were affected throughout India by the violence that ensued. Then in 2002, a systematic persecution of Muslim communities was carried out in several towns and villages in Gujarat with the help of the state apparatus.

Islam in India is unique in many ways, and cultural traditions, both homegrown as well as those borrowed from Hinduism, are major factors in its uniqueness. Indian Muslims have "indianized" Islam in such a way that often many local customs (and they differ from community to community) have lost the puritanical Islamic status in their extended and parochial forms.

Indian Muslims also differ in cuisine and attire, as well as in their general attitude toward Pakistan and other Islamic countries. Furthermore, the process of Indian Islamization has allowed Muslim communities to legitimize social customs and practices on the basis of the Shari?a, hence remaining firmly rooted within both their cultural and religious traditions. Islam in India is hardly monolithic. It is as varied as Indians themselves.

Irfan A. Omar