Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya

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The Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadīya ( Urdu طريقهٔ محمديه, from Arabic الطريقة المحمدية, DMG aṭ-Ṭarīqa al-Muḥammadīya ) is a purist Islamic movement from India , whose understanding of Islam is based on the teachings of the Shāh Walīyullāh ad-Dihlawī (1703–1763) from Delhi and their ideas in association with those of the Yemeni Qādī al-Qudāt of Sanaa ʿ Alī aš-Šaukānī (1760–1834) can be regarded as a model for the Ahl-i Hadîth , which is important up to the present day . The tariqa was first mentioned by the Ottoman scholar Imam Birgivi , whose influence on the Dihlawi is considered certain, but to what extent it has not been clearly clarified.

About the name: The purist renewal movement of the 18th century and the meaning of the hadith

The name "Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadīya" consists of two parts.

  1. " Ṭarīqa " denotes an Islamic mystical order, is of Arabic origin and means "way, path" when translated. What is meant is the path that the mystic treads during his search for God. The -yi is the Persian genitive compound.
  2. "Muḥammadīya" meaning "in the manner of Muhammad "

The translation of the term would therefore be: a mystical path in the style of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. The name suggests that the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya in no way rejects Sufism (Islamic mysticism ) in its entirety. The rejection, on the other hand, relates to the mystical devotions that do not follow the example of the prophet, which, according to Muslim beliefs , he left the people in his Sunna , which is handed down in the form of the hadith .

For this reason, the science of hadith and the reference to the prophetic sunna receive special attention from the movement. This knowledge is also the key to the ideological-historical classification of the movement. According to the thesis of the Islamic scholar John O. Voll , whose findings are largely confirmed by Martin Riexinger, a network of scholars emerged in the Muslim world in the 18th century who rejected the Taqlid and the possibility of their own direct judgment from the sacred sources of the Islam, Koran and Sunna, demand. Voll identified the Kurdish legal scholar Ibrāhīm al-Kūrānī (d. 1690) as the founder of these ideas . His son Abū Ṭāhir al-Kūrānī, who worked in Medina, and the Indian scholar Muḥammad Ḥayāt as-Sindī studied both Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (the founder of the Wahhabism named after him ) and Shāh Walīyullah ad-Dihlawī, who was the pioneer of this school of thought applies in India.

The movement also drew on Islamic thinkers such as Ibn Taimiya , Ibn Qaiyim al-Jschauzīya , Ibn Hazm and as-Suyūtī , who were also hostile to Taqlid.

It should not be forgotten, however, that there are also numerous differences in the views, e.g. Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Shāh Walīyullah ad-Dihlawī, for example with regard to the Tawheed and the resulting takfīr .

Theological ideas

Following on from the purist ideas of Islam of the 18th century, from which, in addition to the Wahhabi teaching in today's Saudi Arabia, also in Yemen, but above all in India, movements with the same ideas emerged, the followers of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya had the following basic theological ideas:

  1. Rejection of Taqlīd (imitation of human legal authorities) and direct reference to the Koran and Sunna
  2. Application of Ijtihād (Ijtihād to be understood here in its legal, not later modernist view)
  3. Rejection of the cult of saints and mystical practices that indicated a different worship than that of God (but no rejection of mysticism in its entirety, as the name Tarīqa already indicates)
  4. Strict rejection of Shiite directions in Islam

Protagonists of the movement

history

The Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya reinterpreted parts of the ideas Shāh Walīyullāh ad-Dihlawī in a religious-political ideology at the beginning of the 19th century. After the internal turmoil of the empire, after the death of the Mughal emperor Sultan Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707), under whose rule the empire flourished, he began to fight the perceived weakness of Indian Islam . In the dabeiāmiʿ Masǧid in Delhi, Shāh Ismāʿīl "Shahīd" preaches against the veneration of saints in Islamic mysticism and against Shiite faiths , and is the key figure. The Sayyid Aḥmad Barelwī , who came from Rae Bareli in Awadh , was forced to leave his homeland in 1812 due to poor economic circumstances and to join the army of the Muslim ruler of Tonk Šāh ʿAbdulʿazīz. After the British disbanded the Indian troops, he returned to Delhi and came into contact with Shāh Ismāʿīl "Shahīd". Barelwī took over his teachings and began missionary work in the Delhi area. There he already won some followers for the movement, who paid homage to Barelwī as Pir (Pers. For the Arabic Shaiḫ, name for the leader of a Tariqa). In 1821 a group of followers of the Tariqa set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca with Shāh Ismāʿīl and Aḥmad Barelwī . On the way to Mecca, the group in Patna came into contact with Wilāyat ʿAlī, who, after the movement had been broken up, was supposed to carry on their ideas. On the way back from Mecca to India, the group made a detour to Yemen . There two followers stayed with the Yemeni judge Alī aš-Šaukānī , who thereby got an important influence on the ideas of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya.

The group's aim was to establish an Islamic state. The Sikh area in northwest India, in today's Pakistan, near today's Afghan border was chosen for this purpose. The reason for choosing this area was the alleged oppression of the local Muslims by the Sikh . The final goal was always the establishment of an Islamic state over all of India. The selected region should only serve as a base. In 1826, under the leadership of Barelwī, the hijra (extract) of the followers of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya to Afghanistan began. With this behavior, the group followed the normative example of the Prophet Muhammad, who emigrated from Mecca to Medina after the political situation in Mecca had become too dangerous for him. Similar to the prophet, the excerpt means the transition of the movement's activities from proselytizing to active political and military struggle. Those taking part in the exodus become religious fighters, mujahed . Eventually the group came to Peshawar , which was then ruled by the Sikh. Together with local tribes, there were numerous battles with the ruling class. In 1830, Peshawar fell under the control of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya, watched with benevolence by the British.

In 1832 Barelwī began a new advance against the Sikh in the Hazara region . The two armies met at Balakot . In the developing battle, the Sikh ultimately retained the upper hand through their technical superiority and managed to inflict a crushing defeat on the religious fighters. Aḥmad Barelwī lost his life in the fight. Since his body was never discovered, some of his followers revered him even more, claiming that Barelwī was merely "raptured". An opinion that goes hand in hand with eschatological ideas. It is commonly assumed that the raptured is the expected Mahdi , a Jesus figure who will fill the earth with righteousness in the run-up to the Last Judgment . However, the jihad on the Afghan border continued even after this event, although the great momentum of the movement was initially broken. Shāh Ismāʿīl also lost his life in the battle and was subsequently given the nickname "Shahid", martyr .

In addition to these militant activities, the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya also relied on strong missionary activity from the start. Following on from Shāh Walīyullāh ad-Dihlawī , the popularization of ideas through vernacular products played an important role. They were one of the first Islamic movements to use printed matter for their propaganda. Mainly the grave cult and the veneration of saints were attacked in these scriptures, since these were understood as shirk , veneration of someone other than Allah. Conventional gender distribution is also emphasized in the scriptures. Adoration of the female figures Fatima bint Muhammad (the daughter of the Prophet and " ancestral mother " of all Shiite imams after her husband Ali ) and the black-faced Kali were described as particularly bad forms of shirk. The former with a thrust on the Shiites , the latter on Hindus and Sikhs.

The defeat at Balkot, however, did not mean the end of the movement. For a long time there were still followers of the Tariqa, without them being able to present themselves as spectacularly as under Ismaʿīl and Barelwī. The British only succeeded in their complete suppression in 1883.

meaning

The movement of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya is a reaction to the felt weakness of Indian Islam at the time. While Shāh Walīyullāh ad-Dihlawī had tried to solve this weakness quasi "from the desk", the Tariqa chose a more actionist variant to disseminate their ideas. Since the Mughal Empire was abolished by the British, the Tariqa followed the ideal of an Islamic state. It is thus a forerunner of numerous Islamist movements of the 20th / 21st centuries. Century who pursue this goal.

The ideas of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya lived on in movements such as the Deobandis or the Ahl-i Hadîth . It is therefore also of importance for the present.

Because of the similarity of thought to Wahhabism , the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya was called Wahhabis both by the British and by warring Indian groups. Hence the misconception that Wahhabi Islam has a major impact on religious tensions in Pakistan . In reality, "Wahhabi" Islam in Pakistan and from there in Afghanistan is not an import product from Saudi Arabia, but an inner-Indian development that began in the 18th century. Rather, the Islam of the Wahhabis from Arabia has the same roots as the Islam of the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya, Deobandis or Ahl-i Hadîth. Their connection in the present is only a connection of ideologies that belonged together from the start. In other words, based on the ideologies of movements like the Tariqa-yi Muhammadiya, it was easy for Usama ibn Ladin and al-Qaida to find support.

The connection of the ideas of movement with mystical forms also shows that the purist movements of the 19th century, as well as the more modernist, but ideologically related Salafism, is by no means opposed to mysticism in its entirety. At this point, the Sanussiya should be mentioned as a further example , which took up even more explicitly the idea, which goes back to al-Ghazali , that mysticism should only be accompanied by observance of ritual duties.

literature

  • Rudolph Peters: Renewal Movements in Islam from the 18th to the 20th Century and the Role of Islam in Modern History: Anti-Colonialism and Nationalism. In: Ende / Steinbach: Islam in the Present. P. 90 ff.
  • Martin Riexinger: Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī (1868-1948) and the Ahl-i-Hadis in the Punjab under British rule. Ergon. Würzburg 2004 (communications on the social and cultural history of the Islamic Orient; 13) - ISBN 3-89913-374-9 (from there, p. 103-108)

See also

Remarks

  1. ↑ See corresponding Urdu article .

Web links