Home Religion & Spirituality A Wahhabi Wart, the Sufi Antidote, and the Ailing Muslim Body

A Wahhabi Wart, the Sufi Antidote, and the Ailing Muslim Body

Thus, what is often derided as the cult of Wahhabism in popular liberal discourse, is in fact representative of the vast majority of Muslims for whom orthodox religious belief and practice is the very cornerstone of their spirituality. And this orthodoxy or normativity is what is actually in question when liberals denounce ‘Wahhabi Islam’ in favor of ‘secular Sufism’.

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“I would say we have sort of almost an ideal version of Islam in India. Do you think it could be shaken up by the Wahhabi kind of thinking that’s going around elsewhere?”

A middle-aged lady in red spoke with some reservation into a packed crowd at the 2019 Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), during a session entitled ‘Islam: Multiple Histories’. Mr. Salman Khurshid, a panelist, crisply responded: “Wahhabism, which is very different from Sufi Islam, cannot find a place in our country”.

I recall sensing the same dynamic while attending a session on a fresh translation of the Persian poet Fariduddin Attar’s ‘The Conference of the Birds’ at the JLF in 2017. The Sufi poetry was presented denuded from its Islamic garb, which was supposedly superfluous. Indeed, sitting in the front row there was William Dalrymple, one of the directors of the JLF, who is regularly seen touting this dynamic in his articles on the subject. In a piece for the New York Times Dalrymple observes: “…Sufism in terms of goals and outlook couldn’t be farther from the violent Wahhabism of the jihadists.” He invokes the poet Rumi as an example of “the great Sufi saints “who held that “all religions were one”, and for whom outward religious formalism was unimportant. Finally, Dalrymple warns: “The West would do well to view Sufis as natural allies against the extremists.”

This kind of discourse is rigorously examined in a paper entitled ‘Secular Sufism’ by the religious studies scholar Gregory Lipton, who argues that the phenomenon of ‘secular Sufism’ is built upon ‘a revival of a nineteenth-century Orientalist bifurcation between a Semitic Islam and a supposed Aryan mysticism’ – where Islam is understood as inherently intolerant and incompatible with Western secularism, while Sufism is claimed to be profoundly tolerant and secular because of its supposed extra-Islamic origin. Lipton further states that ‘the claim that so-called “authentic” Sufism is always and everywhere opposed to normative Islamic practice has no textual or socio-historical basis’.

Thus, what is often derided as the cult of Wahhabism in popular liberal discourse, is in fact representative of the vast majority of Muslims for whom orthodox religious belief and practice is the very cornerstone of their spirituality. And this orthodoxy or normativity is what is actually in question when liberals denounce ‘Wahhabi Islam’ in favor of ‘secular Sufism’.

Wahhabism, following the thought of Muhammad ibn Abd al Wahhab of the 18th century, is a relatively recent upspring. But it is hardly a modern aberration, finding less parochial parallels in the older literalist traditions of ‘Salafism’ and the ‘Ahl-al-Hadith.’ Thus, Wahhabism is but an expression – albeit historically marginal – of the original Islamic potentiality. Admitting this entails firstly, recognizing Wahhabism as a tradition to be reckoned with, and secondly, the inconvenience of engaging in dialogue with it. But to refuse to even acknowledge it one’s interlocutor, deeming it irrelevant or ‘inauthentic’, would be the liberal equivalent of silencing heresy.

Mr. Khurshid, who is eager to dissociate Wahhabism from Indian Islam, calls in the same breath for ‘Ijtihad’ or ‘critical thinking’ in dealing with modernity. The irony is that Wahhabism – known for its ‘Anti-traditional’ spirit – inspired calls for rationalism in the early twentieth century and gained the admiration of Modernist reformers like Muhammad Abduh, Jamaluddin Afghani, and Muhammad Iqbal, to name a few.

So, is it entirely fair to single out Wahhabism as the singular threat to pluralism? Well, some like the American-Kuwaiti scholar Khaled Abou el Fadl, who has been a long-suffering critic of Wahhabism, would certainly say so. Yet, one must wonder what Wahhabi link might be established between equally belligerent communities and traditions, that are theologically and geographically worlds apart from the Wahhabi world – such as some Shi’a groups in Iran, and a considerable number of non-Wahhabi, and even anti-Wahhabi Sunnis/Sufis in the Indian subcontinent?

Intolerance, belligerent reasoning, and parochial interpretations are hardly the province of any one group. Does it not seem, therefore, that the problem isn’t simply a ‘wart’ called Wahhabism, but rather something systemically wrong with the global Muslim body itself? Were the problem merely an isolated wart, simply excising it would bring the desired relief. But things are seldom so simple.

The more disturbing fact of the matter, however, is that the problems of Muslims in modernity have to do – not with one interpretation or the other – but with the very paradigms of interpretation itself. How does a premodern tradition negotiate its position in the (post)modern world? How does it cope with being systematically uprooted by colonialism, undermined by westernized globalization, and dismembered by the secularization of educational institutions? These are the questions modern Muslims feel at the heart of their plight, and these are the questions for their future.

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