Sufism - The Real and Violent History
By admin on Sep 17, 2014 | In
Society
Last weekend, I was speaking at a university on the comparative aspects of Kashmir Shaivism and Dzogchen. I was having a leisurely chat with one of the visiting Lamas, who I have had the privilege to study with, and we ventured towards discussing ISIS and Islamic Terrorism. Suddenly, one of his students brought up the topic of Sufism and pointed us to this
article.
Some Muslims have suggested to the Prime Minister of India that Sufism is the solution to all problems created by the adherents of Islam and nothing can be farther to truth than this! We have already written a
piece expressing our utter distrust and disgust towards Sufism.
M A Khan, in his book ‘Islamic Jihad - A Legacy of Forced Conversion, Imperialism and Slavery’, talks at length about the real and violent history of the Sufis and here are some excerpts from this book.
The Myth of Peaceful Conversion
Another lofty claim of mythic proportion being perpetuated about conversion to Islam is that a heterodox variety of Muslims, namely the Sufis, had propagated Islam through peaceful missionary activity. British historian Thomas Arnold (1864–1930)—desperate to alter the centuries-old European discourse of Islam as a violent faith—initiated this propaganda in the 1890s, which has been embraced by numerous Muslim and non-Muslim historians and scholars. As summarized by Peter Hardy, the following instances led Arnold to his conclusion:
...in 1878, a settlement report for the Montgomery district in the Panjab quoted Lieutenant Elphistone as follows: ‘It [the town of Pakpattan] contains the tomb of the celebrated saint and martyr Baba Farid, who converted a great part of the Southern Punjab to Muhammadanism, and whose miracles entitle him to a most distinguished place among the pirs (Sufi saints) of that religion.’ The settlement report for the Jhang district makes similar claims for Shaykh Farid al- Din. In the Punjab Census report of 1881, Ibbeston adds the name of Bana al-Huq of Multan to that of Baba Fraid as the two saints to whom ‘the people of western plains very generally attribute their conversion.’ The Bombay Gazetteer for the Cutch, published in 1880, ascribes the conversion of the Cutchi Memons to witnessing the miracles of one Sayyid Yusu al-Din a descendent of Sayyid Abd al-Qadir Jilani. Elsewhere in the Bombay Presidency, Sayyid Muhammad Gesu Daraz is said to have converted Hindu weavers to Islam. In the North-Western Provinces, data in an Azamgarh settlement report, collected in 1868, included a tradition among Muslim zaminders of the district that "the teaching of some Moslem saint" had been responsible for their ancestor’s conversion to Islam. In Bada’un, Shaykh Jalal al-Din Tabrizi, who later went to Bengal, is said with one look to have converted a Hindu milkman. It was from this and much other material that Arnold reached his conclusion that vast number of Indian Muslims are descendent of converts in whose conversion force played no part and in which only the teaching and persuasion of peaceful missionaries were at work.
The major reference, on which Arnold based his conclusion that peaceful conversion by Sufis played major role in conversion to Islam, was a generic reference in the 1884 Bombay Gazetteer that Sufi saint Ma’bari Khandayat (Pir Ma’bari) came to the Deccan in about 1305 as a missionary and converted a large number of Jains to Islam. This document gives no specifics on the means Pir Ma’bari employed in his conversion; the same applies to other claims (these claims are often unsubstantiated and legendary in nature) cited above. However, older documentation on Pir Ma’bari by Muslim chroniclers, as studied by historian Richard Eaton, reveals the measures Pir Ma’bari had applied in converting the infidels. According to Muhammad Ibrahim Zubairi’s Rauzat al-Auliya (1825–26), Pir Ma’bari Khandayat came to the Deccan as a holy warrior:
‘During the period of Ala al-Din Khalaji (Alauddin Khilji, d. 1316), the Shah of Delhi, he (Pir Ma’bari) accompanied the camp of the army of Islam in the year A.H. 710 (A.D. 1310–11) when buried treasures of gold and silver came to the hands of Muslims and the victory of Islam was effected.
A hagiographic record adds:
(Pir Ma’bari) came here and waged Jihad against the rajas and rebels (of Bijapur). And with his iron bar, he broke the heads and necks of many rajas and drove them to the dust of defeat. Many idolaters, who by the will of God had guidance and blessings, repented from their unbelief and error, and by the hands of (Pir Ma’bari) came to Islam.
Another tradition says that Pir Ma’bari had expelled a group of Brahmins from their village in Bijapur. Muslim literatures portray Pir Ma’bari as a fierce wager of Jihad against the infidels wielding an iron bar. This gave him his last name, Khandayat—literally meaning blunted bar.
Eaton has particularly become an influential propagator of the paradigm that Islam was spread peacefully by the Sufis. He says that Islam came to areas, where Muslim powers could not reach, ‘with the appearance of anonymous, itinerant holy men whom the local population might associate with miraculous power.’ Eaton then goes on to describe a popular Muslim folk-story in Bengal that a Muslim pir with occult power appeared in a village, built a mosque, healed sick people with his miraculous power and his fame spread far and wide. Thereupon, hundreds of people came to visit him with ‘presents of rice, fruits and other delicious food, goat, chickens and fowls,’ which he never touched but distributed among the poor. ‘This humane quality of the Sufis,’ asserts Eaton, made the mosque a centre of Islam from where it reached far and wide.
One intriguing thing about Eaton is that his own research of the medieval literatures on Indian Sufis for his Ph.D. thesis, published in Sufis of Bijapur 1300–1700, failed to find any trace of peace in the views and actions of Sufis and in their method of conversion. He found that all the revered Sufis, particularly the earlier ones to arrive at Bijapur, were fierce Jihadis and persecutor of Hindus; an example, that of Pir Ma’bari, is cited above. His research outcome was so damning to his tendentious, love-stricken views about the Sufis that Muslims in India protested against his book leading to its ban in India. But Eaton would not stop spreading his fallacious and unfounded views about Sufis.
For a rational person, the stories of spiritual and occult power of Sufis are nothing but fantastical myths. Such legends, upon thorough research, have indeed been found, according to Prof. Muhammad Habib, to be "latter day fabrication" (see below). Concerning conversion, historical records and circumstantial evidence lend little support to the paradigm that Sufis made great contribution in converting the infidels to Islam peacefully. In India, no historical documents mention that the Sufis converted the Hindus and other infidels to Islam in large numbers through peaceful means. The great liberal Sufi scholar Amir Khasrau (fourteenth century) mentions in his chronicles many incidents of enslavement of the infidels by Muslim rulers in large numbers for their conversion, but makes no mention of any incidence of peaceful preaching by a Sufi saint that drew the Hindus to Islam in significant numbers. The ideology of Indian Sufis and their involvement in the conversion of the infidels will be dealt here in some detail.
Although some Sufis deviated completely from Islam, majority of them remained largely orthodox. Imam Ghazzali enabled Sufism triumph in Muslim societies in the twelfth century. He basically weaved the Islamic orthodoxy into the body of Sufism, expunging deviant ideas and rituals, which made Sufism more acceptable amongst Muslims. Therefore, it is the orthodox strain of Sufism that got acceptance in the Muslim society, thanks to Imam Ghazzali. The deviant beshariyah Sufis often suffered brutal persecution and even death. For example, Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq (d. 1388), an austere orthodox believer, records in his memoir that he had put Sufi Shaykh Ruknuddin of Delhi, who called himself a Mahdi (messiah) and ‘led people astray into mystic practices and perverted ideas by maintaining that he was Ruknuddin, the prophet of God.’ People killed Ruknuddin and some of his followers; they ‘tore him into pieces and broke his bones into fragments,’ records the Sultan.
When the central Asian Turks established direct Muslim rule in India (1206), Sufism, the Ghazzalian orthodox Sufism to be accurate, had gained wide acceptance in Muslim societies. Following the trail of Muslim invaders, Sufis poured into India in large number. The great Sufi saints of India—namely Nizamuddin Auliya, Amir Khasrau, Nasiruddin Chiragh, Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti and Jalaluddin et al.— held rather orthodox and intolerant views. They held the Ulema, the orthodox scholars of Islam, in great esteem and advised their disciples to follow their rulings in religious laws and social behavior. Influenced by the unorthodox, controversial doctrines and practices of famous Arab-Spanish Sufi ideologue Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), Moinuddin Chisti and Nizamuddin Auliya were the most unorthodox and liberal amongst India’s Sufis. Annoying the orthodox, they had adopted musical sessions (sama) and dancing (raqs) in their rituals. However, when it came to the real question of Islam, they never took a stand against classical orthodoxy; they always put the Ulema ahead of them in religious matters. To the question of whether dancing and playing of musical instruments, as had been adopted by Sufi dervishes, were permissible, Auliya said, ‘‘What is forbidden by Law (Sharia) is not acceptable.’’ On the question of whether the controversial Sufi devotional practices were permissible or not, he said, ‘‘Concerning this controversy at present, whatever the judge (orthodox Ulema) decrees will be upheld.
The Sufis of India had no contradiction with the Ulema; both had a common goal—the interest of Islam, but to be achieved through different methods. Auliya used to say, ‘What the Ulema seek to achieve through speech, we achieve by our behavior.’ Jamal Qiwamu’d-din, a long-time associate of Auliya, never saw him miss a single Sunnah of the Prophet. Other prominent Sufis held even more orthodox views. The great Sufi saint Nasiruddin Chiragh, for example, purged and purified deviant aspects of the Sufi practices. According to Prof. KA Nizami, he prohibited all deviant (from Sharia) rituals and practices that had entered the Sufi community, saying, ‘‘Whatever Allah and His Prophet have ordered, do it and whatever Allah and His Prophet have forbidden you against, you should not do.’’ Nizami adds: ‘He brought Sufi institution in harmony with Sunnah. Wherever there was a slightest clash, he proclaimed the supremacy of the Sharia Laws.’
Views of Sufis
In this section, the views of prominent Sufis, particularly of India, on infidels and the violent Islamic doctrines, such as Jihad, will be summarized in order to understand their mind and ideology. Ghazzali, the greatest Sufi ideologue, held rather orthodox and violent views on Jihad. He advised fellow Muslims that,
‘...one must go on Jihad at least once a year... One may use a catapult against them when they are in a fortress, even if among them are women and children. One may set fire on them and/or drown them... One may cut down their trees... One must destroy their useful book (Bible, Torah etc.). Jihadists may take as booty whatever they decide...’
About the protocol of the payment of jizyah in humiliation by a dhimmi, he wrote:
‘...the Jews, Christians and the Majians must pay the jizyah... On offering up the jizyah, the dhimmi must hang his head while the official takes hold of his beard and hits on the protuberant bone beneath his ear.’
He follows it up with prescribing a number of standard disabilities for dhimmis as enshrined in the Sharia and the Pact of Omar. He wrote:
‘They are not permitted to ostensibly display their wine or church bell... their houses may not be higher than the Muslim’s, no matter how low that is. The dhimmi may not ride an elegant horse r mule; he may ride a donkey only if the saddle is of wood. He may not walk on the good part of the road. They have to wear patches... and even in the public bath, they must hold their tongues...’
The prominent Indian Sufis did not leave behind a comprehensive commentary about their ideas of non- Muslims or on issues, like Jihad. However, their isolated comments on such issues, whenever opportunities arose, give a good deal of idea about their views on these subjects. In general, their views on the infidels and Jihad were of the mould of Ghazzali, the greatest Sufi master.
Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–1325), toeing the orthodox line, condemned the Hindus to the fire of hell, saying: ‘The unbelievers at the time of death will experience punishment. At that moment, they will profess belief (Islam) but it will not be reckoned to them as belief because it will not be faith in the Unseen... the faith of (an) unbeliever at death remains unacceptable.’ He asserted that ‘On the day of Resurrection when unbelievers will face punishment and affliction, they will embrace faith but faith will not benefit them... They will also go to Hell, despite the fact that they will go there as believers.’ In his khutba (sermon), Nizamuddin Auliya condemned the infidels as wicked, saying, ‘He (Allah) has created Paradise and Hell for believers and the infidels (respectively) in order to repay the wicked for what they have done.’
Auliya’s thought on Jihad against non-Muslims can be gleaned from his statement that Surah Fatihah, first chapter of the Quran, did not contain two of the ten cardinal articles of Islam, which were ‘‘warring with the unbelievers and observing the divine statutes...’’ He did not only believe in warring with the unbelievers or Jihad, he came to India with his followers to engage in it. He participated in a holy war commanded by Nasiruddin Qibacha in Multan. When Qibacha’s army was in distress facing defeat, Auliya rushed to him and gave him a magical arrow instructing: ‘‘Shoot this arrow at the direction of the infidel army.’ ...Qibacha did as he was told, and when daybreak came not one of the infidels was to be seen; they all had fled!’ When Qazi Mughisuddin inquired about the prospect of victory in the Jihad launched in South India under the command of Malik Kafur, the Auliya uttered in effusive confidence: ‘What is this victory? I am waiting for further victories.’ The Auliya used to accept large gifts sent by Sultan Alauddin from the spoils plundered in Jihad expeditions and proudly displayed those at his khanqah (lodge).
Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti (1141–1230), probably the second-greatest Sufi saint of India after Nizamuddin Auliya, demonstrated a deep-seated hatred toward Hindu religion and its practices. On his arrival near the Anasagar Lake at Ajmer, he saw many idol-temples and promised to raze them to the ground with the help of Allah and His Prophet. After settling down there, Khwaja’s followers used to bring every day a cow (sacred to Hindus) near a famous temple, where the king and Hindus prayed, slaughter it and cook kebab from its meat—clearly to show his contempt toward Hinduism. ‘In order to prove the majesty of Islam, he is said to have dried the two holy lakes of Anasagar and Pansela (holy to Hindus) by the heat of his spiritual power.’ Chisti also came to India with his disciples to fight Jihad against the infidels and participated in the treacherous holy war of Sultan Muhammad Ghauri in which the kind and chivalrous Hindu King Prithviraj Chauhan was defeated in Ajmer. In his Jihadi zeal, Chisti ascribed the credit for the victory to himself, saying: ‘We have seized Pithaura (Prithviraj) alive and handed him over to the army of Islam.’’
Amir Khasrau (1253–1325), Shaykh Nizamuddin Auliya’s exalted disciple, is lauded as the greatest liberal Sufi poet of medieval India. His coming to India, deem many modern historians, as a blessing for the subcontinent. He had the good fortune of working at the royal court of three successive sultans. Regarded as one of India’s greatest poets, he is also credited with being a great contributor to Indian classical music and the creator of Qawwali (Sufi devotional music). The invention of the Tabla (an Indian drum) is usually attributed to him.
There is little doubt about Amir Khasrau’s achievements in music and poetry. But when it came to the fallen infidels and their religion, his bigoted Islamic zeal was very much evident. In describing Muslim victories against the Hindu kings, he mocks their religious traditions, such as "tree" and "stone-idol" worship. Mocking the stone-idols, destroyed by Muslim warriors, he wrote: ‘Praise be to God for his exaltation of the religion of Muhammad. It is not to be doubted that stones are worshipped by the Gabrs (derogatory slang for idolaters), but as stones did no service to them, they only bore to heaven the futility of that worship.’
Amir Khasrau showed delight in describing the barbaric slaughter of Hindu captives by Muslim warriors. Describing Khizr Khan’s order to massacre 30,000 Hindus in the conquest of Chittor in 1303, he gloated: ‘Praise be to God! That he so ordered the massacre of all chiefs of Hind out of the pale of Islam, by his infidel-smiting swords... in the name of this Khalifa of God, that heterodoxy has no rights (in India).’ He took poetic delight in describing Malik Kafur’s destruction of a famous Hindu temple in South India and the grisly slaughter of the Hindus and their priests therein. In describing the slaughter, he wrote, ‘...the heads of brahmans and idolaters danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet, and blood flowed in torrents.’ In his bigoted delight at the miserable subjugation of Hindus and the barbarous triumph of Islam in India, he wrote:
The whole country, by means of the sword of our holy warriors, has become like a forest denuded of its thorns by fire? Islam is triumphant, idolatry is subdued. Had not the Law granted exemption from death by the payment of poll-tax, the very name of Hind, root and branch, would have been extinguished.
Amir Khasrau described many instances of barbaric cruelty, often of catastrophic proportions, inflicted by Muslim conquerors upon the Hindus. But nowhere did he show any sign of grief or remorse, but only gloating delight. While describing those acts of barbarism, he invariably expressed gratitude to Allah, and glory to Muhammad, for enabling the Muslim warriors achieve those glorious feats.
Another great Sufi saint to come to India was Shaykh Makhdum Jalal ad-Din bin Mohammed, popularly known as Hazrat Shah Jalal, who had settled in Sylhet, Bengal (discussed later). Apart from these highly revered Sufi saints, there were other great Sufi personalities, namely Shaykh Bahauddin Zakaria, Shaykh Nuruddin Mubarak Ghaznavi, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi and Shaykh Shah Walliullah et al., who have often been condemned by some modern historians for their relatively orthodox views. For example, Shaykh Mubarak Ghaznavi—a great Islamic scholar and Sufi saint of the Suhrawardi order—had utter disrespect and violent hatred of non-Muslims (kafirs) and their religion, as he reminded the sultans that ‘‘Kings will not be able to discharge their duty of protecting the Faith unless they overthrow and uproot kufr and kafiri (infidelity), shirk (associating partners to God, polytheism) and the worship of idols, all for the sake of Allah and inspired by a sense of honor for protecting the din of the Prophet of God.’’ However, in case of an impossible situation, he advised, ‘‘...if total extirpation of idolatry is not possible owing to the firm roots of kufr and the large number of kafirs and mushriks, the kings should at least strive to disgrace, dishonor and defame the mushriks and idol-worshipping Hindus, who are the worst enemies of God and His Prophet.’’
Although condemned by modern historians, these Sufi saints were highly popular in their days, respected by the Ulema and especially in ruling circles, thereby wielding critical influence on the formulation of state-policies. Sufi masters Bahauddin Zakaria and Nuruddin Mubarak held the highest Islamic epithet— the Shaykh al-Islam, normally bestowed upon the most learned scholars of Islam. Without going into further detail of the views of those popular but more orthodox Sufis, let us now examine the role, Sufis played, in the propagation of Islam.
Sufis and the Propagation of Islam
Sufis have been credited with converting large masses of infidels to Islam through peaceful missionary activity. But this claim comes with little supporting evidence. Two points must be taken into consideration beforehand in this discussion. First, Sufis became an organized and accepted community in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. By this time, the peoples of the Middle East, Persia, Egypt and North Africa had become largely Muslim. The Sufis could not have played significant roles in their conversion. In agreement, says Francis Robinson, Sufis played a leading part in ‘the remarkable spread of Islam from the thirteenth century onwards.’ Second, the Sufis almost invariably needed the power and terror of the sword to create the dominance of Islam first before their alleged peaceful mission of propagating Islam could proceed.
The attitude and mindset of the greatest Sufi saints of medieval India, discussed above, were hardly different from those of the orthodox, who advocated for the use of unconditional force in accordance with the Quran, the Sunnah and the Sharia for converting the infidels. The famous Sufis of India invariably supported violent Jihad for making Islam victorious. India’s greatest Sufi saints—Nizamuddin Auliya and Moinuddin Chisti—themselves came to India to participate in holy war against the infidels, which they both did. Auliya had also sent forth Shaykh Shah Jalal, the greatest Sufi saint of Bengal, with 360 disciples to take part in a holy war against King Gaur Govinda of Sylhet (see below). The renowned Sufis of Bijapur also came there as holy warriors for slaughtering the infidels and establishing Islamic rule (noted already).
Conversion by Sufis in Bengal
The claim that Sufis peacefully converted the non-Muslims to Islam in large numbers is not supported by historical records. Furthermore, most Sufis were intolerant, of violent Jihadi mindset, and even, were themselves Jihadis. While discussing these issues in a friendly conversation with two learned secular Bangladeshi scholars, they informed me that, at least in Bangladesh, Sufis had propagated Islam through peaceful means. This agrees with Nehemia Levtzion’s assertion that ‘Sufis were particularly important in achieving the almost total conversion in eastern Bengal.’
An investigation of two greatest Sufi saints of Bengal outlined below will give us an inkling of the roles Sufis played in the proselytization and how peaceful it was. Two Jalaluddins, Shaykh Jalaluddin Tabrizi (d. 1226 or 1244) and Shaykh Shah Jalal (d. 1347), were the greatest Sufi saints of Bengal. Shaykh Jalaluddin Tabrizi came to Bengal after Bakhtiyar Khilji conquered Bengal defeating the Hindu King Lakshman Sena in 1205. He settled in Devtala near Pandua (Maldah, West Bengal). He is said to have "converted large number of Kafirs" to Islam but the method of his conversions is unknown. According to Syed Athar Abbas Rizvi, ‘a kafir (Hindu or Buddhist) had erected a large temple and a well (at Devtala). The Shaikh demolished the temple and constructed a takiya (khanqah)...’ This will give one a good deal of idea about the kind of means this great Sufi saint had employed in converting the kafirs to Islam.
Shaykh Shah Jalal, the other great Sufi saint of Bengal, had settled in Sylhet. He is regarded as a national hero by Bangladeshi Muslims. Shah Jalal and his disciples are credited with converting a large majority of Bengalis to Islam through truly peaceful means.
When Shah Jalal came to settle in Sylhet in East Bengal (now Bangladesh), it was ruled by a Hindu king, named Gaur Govinda. Before his arrival in Bengal, Sultan Shamsuddin Firuz Shah of Gaur had twice attacked Gaur Govinda; these campaigns were led by his nephew, Sikandar Khan Ghazi. On both occasions, the Muslim invaders were defeated. The third assault against Gaur Govinda was commanded by the sultan’s Chief General Nasiruddin. Shaykh Nizamuddin Auliya sent forth his illustrious disciple Shah Jalal with 360 followers to participate in this Jihad campaign. Shah Jalal reached Bengal with his followers and joined the Muslim army. In the fierce battle that ensued, King Gaur Govinda was defeated. According to traditional stories, the credit for the Muslim victory goes to Shah Jalal and his disciples.
As a general rule, every victory in Muslim campaigns brought a great many slaves, often tens to hundreds of thousand, who involuntarily became Muslim. Undoubtedly, on the very first day of Shah Jalal’s arrival in Sylhet, he helped conversion of a large number of kafirs by means of their enslavement at the point of the sword—a very peaceful means of propagating Islam indeed! Ibn Battutah, who paid a visit to Shah Jalal in Sylhet, records that his effort was instrumental in converting the infidels who embraced Islam there. But he gives no detail of the measures the Sufi saint employed in the conversion. One must take into consideration that Shah Jalal ‘came to India with 700 companions to take part in Jihad (holy war)’ and that he fought a bloody Jihad against King Gaur Govinda. These instances give a clear idea of the tools he had applied in converting the Hindus of Sylhet.
In another instance, Sufi saint Nur Qutb-i-Alam played a central role in making a high profile convert in Bengal. In 1414, Ganesha, a Hindu prince, revolted against Muslim rule and captured power in Bengal. The ascension of a Hindu to power created strong revulsion amongst both the Sufis and the Ulema. They repudiated his rule and enlisted help from Muslim rulers outside of Bengal. Responding to their call, Ibrahim Shah Sharqi invaded Bengal and defeated Ganesha. Nur Qutb-i-Alam, the leading Sufi master of Bengal, now stepped in to broker a truce. He forced Ganesha to abdicate and Ganesha’s twelve-year-old son Jadu was converted to Islam and placed on the throne under the name of Sultan Jalaluddin Muhammad. This conversion by a Sufi saint, call it peacefully or at the point of the sword, proved a boon for Islam. The Sufis (also the Ulema) trained the converted young sultan in Islam so well that he became a bloody converter of the infidels to Islam through extreme violence. There took place, says the Cambridge History of India, a wave of conversions in the reign of Jalaluddin Muhammad (1414–31). About Jalaluddin’s distinguished role in converting the Hindus of Bengal to Islam, Dr James Wise wrote in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal (1894) that ‘the only condition he offered was the Koran or death... many Hindus fled to Kamrup and the jungles of Assam, but it is nevertheless possible that more Mohammedans were added to Islam during these seventeen years (1414–31) than in the next three hundred years.’
Prof. Ishtiaq Hussain Qureishi makes an interesting observation that the Sufis in Bengal played significant missionary role in converting the Hindus and Buddhists but on an "orthodox" line. This means that the Sufis of Bengal were doctrinally strict; therefore, doctrinal compromise and peaceful persuasion were unlikely part of their methods as orthodoxy demands the use of unconditional force in converting the infidels. Ishtiaq lends credence to the orthodoxy of Bengal Sufis in saying that ‘They established their khanaqahs and shrines at places (i.e., temples) which already had a reputation for sanctity before Islam.’ Ishtiaq wants to tell us that the establishment of their khanqahs at the place of former Hindu or Buddhist temples (after destroying them), a recurring phenomenon amongst Sufis everywhere, facilitated the conversion of the native infidels as Levtzion agreeingly put it, ‘(the Sufis) established their khanaqahs on the sites of Buddhist shrines, and (it) fitted well into the religious situation in Bengal.’
It is incredulous in the highest degree to suggest that the Hindus and Buddhists of Bengal loved it more that the Sufis destroyed their temples and build khanqahs thereon, to which the natives could easily connect. Indeed, India’s history is replete with instances that the Hindus and other non-Muslims always welcomed Muslims when settled among them peacefully, but revolted against them when attacked their religion. The unceasing rebellion and strife that Muslim invaders instigated amongst native Indians were as much political as it was for the invaders’ attacks on their religious institutions and culture—a fact, repeatedly affirmed by Jawaharlal Nehru in his writings. The reigns of liberal Akbar and Zainul Abedin (in Kashmir), who disbanded religious persecutions and allowed religious freedom, were most peaceful and prosperous. This proves that Indians never liked it when Muslims, be it the rulers or the Sufis, defiled their religious symbols. Moreover, the Buddhists, the dominant converts to Islam in Bengal, had earlier embraced Buddhism voluntarily leaving their former Hindu faith, because of the peaceful and non-violent nature of Buddhism. Muslims’ attack on their temples and shrines, and converting those to mosques and khanqahs had undoubtedly created amongst them a greater revulsion, not a favorable impression, toward Islam.
Horrifying Conversion by Sufis in Kashmir
Persian chronicles, Baharistan-i-Shahi and Tarikh-i- Kashmir (1620), give somewhat detailed accounts of the involvement of Sufi saints in the conversion of Hindus of Kashmir to Islam. The greatest Sufi to arrive in Kashmir was Amir Shamsud-Din Muhammad Iraqi. He formed a strong alliance with Malik Musa Raina, who became the administrator of Kashmir in 1501. Earlier Sultan Zainul Abedin (1423–74), the only tolerant and liberal Muslim ruler of Kashmir, had allowed religious freedom enabling the flourishing Hinduism, ‘which had been stamped out in the (earlier) reign of Sikandar the Iconoclast.’ With the patronage and authority of Malik Raina, records Baharistan-i-Shahi, ‘Amir Shamsud-Din Muhammad undertook wholesale destruction of all those idol-houses as well as total ruination of the very foundation of infidelity and disbelief. On the site of every idol-house he destroyed, he ordered the construction of a mosque for offering prayers after the Islamic manner.’ Tarikh-i-Kashmir, a historical account of Kashmir written by Haidar Malik Chadurah, who served in Sultan Yusuf Shah’s Court (1579–86), records: ‘Sheikh Shams-ud-Din reached Kashmir. He began destroying the places of worship and the temples of the Hindus and made an effort to achieve the objectives.’ A medieval chronicle, entitled Tohfat-ul-Ahbab, records that ‘on the instance of Shamsud-Din Iraqi, Musa Raina had issued orders that everyday 1,500 to 2,000 infidels be brought to the doorstep of Mir Shamsud-Din by his followers. They would remove their sacred thread (zunnar), administer Kelima (Muslim profession of faith) to them, circumcise them and make them eat beef.’ There they became Muslim. Tarikh-i-Hasan Khuiihami notes of the conversion of Hindus to Islam by Shamsud-Din Iraqi that ‘twenty-four thousand Hindu families were converted to Iraqi’s faith by force and compulsion (qahran wa jabran).’
Later on in 1519, Malik Kaji Chak rose to the rank of military commander under Sultan Muhammad Shah. And ‘one of the major commands of Amir Shamsud-Din Muhammad Iraqi carried out by him (Kaji Chak) was the massacre of the infidels and polytheists of this land,’ says Baharistan-i-Shahi. Many of those, converted to Islam by force during the reign of Malik Raina, later reverted to polytheism (Hinduism). A rumor was spread that these apostates ‘had placed a copy of the holy Quran under their haunches to make a seat to sit upon.’ Upon hearing this, the enraged Sufi saint protested to Malik Kaji Chak that,
‘This community of idolaters has, after embracing and submitting to the Islamic faith, now gone back to defiance and apostasy. If you find yourself unable to inflict punishment upon them in accordance with the provisions of Sharia (which is death for apostasy) and take disciplinary action against them, it will become necessary and incumbent upon me to proceed on a self- imposed exile.’
It must be noted that Shaykh Iraqi’s complaint does not mention the alleged disrespect of the Quran but simply emphasize the Hindus’ abandonment of Islam after accepting it. In order to appease the great Sufi saint, Kaji Chak ‘decided upon carrying out wholesale massacre of the infidels,’ notes Baharistan-i-Shahi. Their massacre was scheduled to be carried out on the holy festival day of Ashura (Muharram, 1518 CE) and ‘about seven to eight hundred infidels were put to death. Those killed were the leading personalities of the community of infidels at that time.’ Thereupon, ‘the entire community of infidels and polytheists in Kashmir was coerced into conversion to Islam at the point of the sword. This is one of the major achievements of Malik Kaji Chak,’ records Baharistan-i-Shahi. This horrifying action, of course, was order by the great Sufi saint.
Sayyid Ali Hamdani was another famous Sufi saint, who had arrived in Kashmir earlier in 1371 or 1381. The first thing he did was to build his khanqah on the site of ‘a small temple which was demolished...’ Before his coming to Kashmir, the reigning Sultan Qutbud-Din paid little attention to enforcing religious laws. Muslims at all levels of the society, including the Qazis and theologians of those days, paid scant attention to things permitted or prohibited in Islam. The Muslim rulers, theologians and commoners had tolerantly and comfortably submerged themselves in Hindu tradition. Horrified by the un- Islamic practices of Kashmiri Muslims, Sayyid Hamdani forbade this laxity and tried to revive orthodoxy. Sultan Qutbud-Din tried to adopt the orthodox way of Islam in his personal life but ‘failed to propagate Islam in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of Amir Sayyid Ali Hamdani.’ Reluctant to live in a land dominated by the infidel culture, customs and religion, the Sufi saint left Kashmir in protest. Later on, his son Amir Sayyid Muhammad, another great Sufi saint of Kashmir, came during the reign of Sikandar the idol- breaker. The partnership of holy Sayyid Muhammad and Sikandar the Iconoclast succeeded in wiping out idolatry from Kashmir as discussed above. And ‘the credit of wiping out the vestiges of infidelity and heresy from the mirror of the conscience of the dwellers of these lands,’ goes to the holy Sufi saint Sayyid Muhammad, notes Baharistan-i-Shahi.
Conversions by Sufis in Gujarat
Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlaq (r. 1351–88) had appointed Furhut-ul- Mulk as the governor of Gujarat. Undertaking tolerant policies toward Hindus, notes Ferishtah, Furhut-ul- Mulk ‘encouraged the Hindu religion, and thus rather promoted than suppressed the worship of idols.’ As usual, this caused revulsion among ‘the learned (Sufis) and orthodox (Ulema) Mahomedans of Guzerat, fearing lest this conduct should be the means of eventually superseding the true faith (Islam) in those parts.’ They addressed the Delhi Sultan explaining the liberal Muslim governor’s political views and ‘the danger (it posed) to the true faith, if he were permitted to retain his government.’ After receiving the complaint, Sultan Firoz Shah ‘convened a meeting of the holy men (Sufi saints) at Dehly and in conjunction with them appointed Zuffur (Moozuffur Khan)’ as the viceroy of Gujarat.
This Moozuffur Khan—requested as well as chosen by the Sufi saints—soon ousted tolerant Furhut- ul-Mulk from Gujarat and unleashed brutal terror against Hindus, including their forced conversion and general destruction of their temples. In 1395, ‘He proceeded to Somnath, where having destroyed all the Hindoo temples which he found standing; he built mosques in their stead and left the learned men (Sufis) for the propagation of the faith and his officers to govern the country.’
This example once again proves that the Sufis were generally intolerant of any tolerance certain kind-hearted and liberal Muslim rulers accorded to non-Muslims. The question further arises: how did the Sufis, left behind by Moozuffur Khan in Somnath, propagate Islam among the terror-stricken Hindus after all their temples had been destroyed?
The Sufis of Gujarat and Delhi wanted the ouster of tolerant governor Furhut-ul-Mulk from Gujarat for not suppressing idol-worship (i.e., Hindu religion). It should, therefore, leave one with no doubt that the Sufis, left behind by Moozuffur Khan, meticulously worked in conjunction with the Muslim officers on enforcing the writ of Islamic laws and suppressing the Hindu religion. That means, the Sufis made it sure that the destroyed temples were not rebuilt and that the Hindu religion was not practised to ensure the suppression of idol-worship. Of course, they might have acted like Sufi saint Shamsud-Din Iraqi of Kashmir—whose followers, aided by Muslim soldiers—brought 1,500–2,000 infidels to his khanqah everyday and forcibly converted them to Islam.
The Real Truth about Sufis and Conversion
If Sufis were to play a major role in the propagation of Islam as popular notion goes, it must have happened in India; because, the Islamic conquest of India started in real earnest right at the time, when Sufism had become properly organized and widely accepted in Muslim societies for the first time. It has been noted that Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti came to Ajmer with Sultan Muhammad Ghauri’s army just when Muslim conquest was making a hold in Northern India. As accounted above, none of the greatest Indian Sufis had a mentality needed for the peaceful propagation of Islam. Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti, Nizamuddin Auliya and Shaykh Shah Jalal came to engage in holy war in India and, indeed, participated in Jihadi wars involving slaughter and enslavement of the Hindus. Nizamuddin Auliya encouraged Sultan Alauddin’s barbaric holy wars, and expressed obvious delight at victories in his blood- letting Jihad campaigns, and delightfully accepted large gifts from his plundered booty.
These are only the stories of the most revered and tolerant Sufi saints of medieval India. All indications suggest that, instead of taking on a missionary profession for propagating Islam through peaceful means, the Sufis were invariably the spiritual and moral supporter of bloody holy wars that were waged by Muslim rulers. They were even prominent participants in them. In Kashmir, it is the Sufis, who inspired bloody Jihad that involved whole-sale destruction of Hindu temples and idols, slaughter of Hindus and their forced conversion to Islam. The mentality, attitude and actions of these illustrious Sufis saints of medieval India—whether in Ajmer, Bengal, Bijapur, Delhi or Kashmir—differed very little. Hence, the role Sufis played in conversion all over India may not have been very different from the one, they played in Kashmir.
It should be noted that the Muslim rulers of India were incessantly undertaking holy wars against the multitude of Hindus. Many of these wars involved mass slaughter of the vanquished and enslavement of tens to hundreds of thousands of women and children for their conversion to Islam. Not a single famous Sufi saint ever objected to this cruel and barbaric practice and means of converting the infidels en masse to Islam. No great Sufi saint of India ever made a statement, condemning these barbaric acts. They never asked the rulers to stop their barbaric expeditions and means of conversion on the pain of death. None of them ever said: ‘Do not capture the Hindus for conversion to Islam in this cruel manner. Leave the job to us. That’s our mission to be achieved thorough peaceful persuasion.’ Instead, they offered unstinted support, indeed encouragement; and even, eager participation, in those barbaric wars.
The instances of Sufis’ involvement in converting the Hindus in Kashmir, Gujarat and Bengal gives clear idea about the means they applied in perfect harmony with their deranged ideology and attitude toward non-Muslims and their creeds. In Kashmir, they were the ones to inspire the rulers to unleash brutality against the Hindus and their forced conversion. There is no evidence to support the claim that they converted non- Muslims through peaceful means in large numbers. If such conversions ever took place—those, at best, played a peripheral role in the overall conversion in medieval India. Their role elsewhere was, likely, even less prominent.
Muslim historians have left piles of documentation of the infidels being forced to convert in the battlefields and through enslavement in large numbers in the course of ceaseless Muslim expeditions to all corners of medieval India. Not a single document makes mention of an occasion, in which a Sufi converted the Hindus to Islam in significant numbers through nonviolent means.
Sultan Mahmud enslaved 500,000 Hindus in his first expedition to India, who instantly became incorporated into Islam. Shams Shiraj Afif records that Sultan Firoz Tughlaq converted a great number of Hindus to Islam by offering them relief from the oppressive and humiliating jizyah and other onerous taxes, which is also claimed by the sultan himself (discussed above). According to Afif, he had collected 180,000 Hindus boys as slaves; ‘Some of the slaves spent their time in reading and committing to memory the holy book, others in religious studies, others in copying books.’ Even during the rule of enlightened Akbar, who had prohibited enslavement and forced conversion, his not-so-illustrious General Abdulla Khan Uzbeg, who ruled Malwa for only about two years, had converted 500,000 infidels to Islam through enslavement. The forefathers of today’s Muslims of North West Provinces converted to Islam mostly during the reign of fanatic Aurangzeb in order to avoid persecution, attain privileged rights, and to be relieved of the burdensome discriminatory taxes.
In the midst of this dominant coercive mode of conversion, there exists few evidence or record that the Sufis made significant contributions to proselytization. Based on historical investigation of conversion in medieval India, noted Habib, ‘The Musalmans have no missionary labor to record... We find no trace of missionary movement for converting non-Muslims.’ He added that medieval Islam ‘failed to develop any missionary activity;’ and that, in India, ‘we have to confess frankly that no trace of a missionary movement for the conversion of the non-Muslims has yet been discovered.’ He further added: ‘Some cheap mystic books now current attribute conversions to Muslim mystics on the basis of miracles they performed... But all such books will be found on examination to be latter-day fabrication.’ Rizvi’s investigation on the Sufi mystics of medieval India also led him to conclude that ‘the early mystic records (Malfuzat & Maktubat) contain no mention of conversion of the people to Islam by these Saints.’ Nizamuddin Auliya was India’s greatest Sufi saint. But his biographical memoir Fawaid-ul-Fuad records the conversion of only two Hindu card-sellers by him.
In instances of large-scale conversion, in which Sufis were involved, their roles were to incite the rulers into unleashing violence and cruelty on non-Muslims leading up to those conversions. The evidence recounted above makes it overwhelmingly clear that the Sufi mystics took little interest or initiative in peaceful missionary activity. Indeed, they were opposed to such engagements. For example, when the zealous proselytizer, Sultan Muhammad Shah Tughlaq, wanted to employ the Sufis for missionary work, notes Mahdi Hussain, it faced strong opposition from the Sufi community. Whenever Sufis were involved in the conversion, their method was obviously not peaceful.
Moreover, most of the Indian Sufis, who came from Persia and the Middle East, did not speak Indian languages to transmit Islam’s messages to ordinary people effectively. They never learned the hated jahiliyah Indian languages, while masses of Indian natives were illiterate; they rarely learned Arabic or Persian. Finally, the Hindus of our time, particularly those of the lower caste, are much better able to judge the superior message of equality, peace and social justice, allegedly contained in Islam. Today, the message of Islam is reaching to every corner of India in well-expounded and clear language through so many easily accessible and innovative means. If it was the greatness of Islam’s message, which impressed tens of millions of Indian infidels to embrace Islam during the Muslim rule, the rate of their conversion to Islam should be greater today than at any previous time.
Would Rajputs give their daughters in marriage to a person from an SC tribe? The answer is obvious.
