Ahl-i Hadith

Ahl-i Hadith or Ahl-e-Hadith (Persian: اهل حدیث‎, Urdu: اہل حدیث‎, people of hadith) is a religious movement that emerged in North India in the mid-nineteenth century from the teachings of Syed Nazeer Husain and Siddiq Hasan Khan.[1][2][3] The movement professes to hold the same views as the early generations of Islam, regarding the Quran, sunnah, and hadith as the sole sources of religious authority and opposing everything introduced in Islam after the earliest times.[4][5] In particular, they reject taqlid (following legal precedent) and favour ijtihad (independent legal reasoning) based on the scriptures.[3] The terms "Salafi" and "Ahl-i Hadith" are often used interchangeably, the movement shares doctrinal tendencies with the Hanbali school prevalent in the Arabian Peninsula, and many of its members have identified themselves with the Zahiri school of thought.[6]

This article is about the modern South Asian movement. For the early Islamic movement and theological school, see Ahl al-Hadith.

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The movement has been compared to Saudi Wahhabism,[7] or a variation on the Wahhabi movement,[8][9] but the movement itself claims to be distinct from Wahhabism,[10] and some believe it possesses some notable distinctions from the mainly Arab Salafis.[11][12][13] In recent decades the movement has expanded its presence in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.[10]

History

In the mid-nineteenth century an Islamic religious reform movement was started in Northern India that rejected everything introduced into Islam after the Quran, Sunnah and Hadith.[5] Syed Nazeer Husain from Delhi and Siddiq Hasan Khan of Bhopal drew primarily on the work of hadith scholars from Yemen in the early years of the movement, reintroducing the field into the Indian subcontinent. Their strong emphasis on education and book publishing has often attracted members of the social elite both in South Asia and overseas;[14] University of Paris political scientist Antoine Sfeir has referred to the movement as having an elitist character which perhaps contributes to their status as a minority in South Asia.[15] Folk Islam and Sufism, commonly popular with the poor and working class in the region, are anathema to Ahl-i Hadith beliefs and practices. This attitude toward Sufism has brought the movement into conflict with the rival Barelvi movement even more so than the Barelvis perennial rivals, the Deobandis.[16]

In the 1920s, the Ahl-i Hadith opened a center for their movement in Srinagar. Followers of the Hanafi school of law, forming the majority of Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir, socially boycotted and physically attacked Ahl-i Hadith followers, eventually declaring such followers to be apostates and banning them from praying in mainstream mosques.[17] From the 1930s the group also began dabbling in the political realm of Pakistan, with Ehsan Elahi Zaheer leading the movement into a full foray in the 1970s, eventually gaining the movement a network of mosques and Islamic schools.[15] Following other South Asian Islamic movements, the Ahl-i Hadith now also administer schools and mosques in the English-speaking world. In the modern era, the movement draws both inspiration and financial support from Saudi Arabia,[18] now being favoured over the rival Deobandi movement as a counterbalance to Iranian influence.[19]

Tenets
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Its adherents oppose taqlid. They believe that they are not bound by taqlid, but consider themselves free to seek guidance in matters of religious faith and practices from the authentic hadith which, together with the Qur'an, are in their view the principal worthy guide for Muslim. They reject the use of kalam in theology.

Due to their reliance on the Qur'an and Hadith only and their rejection of analogical reason in Islamic law, the modern-day Ahl-i Hadith are often compared to the older Zahirite school of Islamic law,[20][21] with which the Ahl-i Hadith consciously identify themselves.[13]

While their educational programs tend to include a diverse array of Muslim academic texts, few adherents of the movement ascribe themselves to one school of Muslim jurisprudence, placing a greater emphasis on personal responsibility to derive judgments and ritual practice.[14] While the movement's figureheads have ascribed to the Zahirite legal school, with a great number of them preferring the works of Yemeni scholar Shawkani, the generality of the movement is described as respecting all Sunni schools of Islamic law while preferring to take directly from the Qur'an, prophetic tradition and consensus of the early generations of Muslims.[14] While the movement has been compared to Salafist movement in Arab nations and been branded as Wahhabist by the opposing Barelwi movement,[15] the Ahl-i Hadith remain similar to yet distinct from Salafists.[22]

Practices
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Like other Islamic movements, the Ahl-i Hadith are distinguished by certain common features and beliefs. The men tend to have a particular style of untrimmed beard often considered a visual indicator. In regard to ritual acts of Muslim worship, the movement's practices are noticeably different from the Hanafi legal school which predominates in South Asia; the men hold their hands above the navel when lined up for congregational prayer, raise them to the level of their heads before bowing, and say "amen" out loud after the prayer leader.[14]

While the organization Lashkar-e-Taiba has recruited followers of the Ahl-i Hadith movement in the past, the organization's views on jihad are thought to alienate the mainstream of the movement.[23]

According to one source (Yoginder Sikand), "from the 1970s onwards", as Ahl-i Hadith began to access to funds from Saudi Arabia, it began to be "transformed" and doctrinal differences with ‘Wahhabis’ began to disappear "so much so that the Ahl-i Hadith came to present itself as a carbon copy of Saudi-style ‘Wahhabism’, with nothing to distinguish itself from it and upholding this form of Islam as normative."[24]

Organizations

Leading proponents of the movement joined forces against the opposition they faced from established ulama (religious scholars) and in 1906 formed the All India Ahl-i-Hadis Conference.[25] The Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadees was respresented in the All India Azad Muslim Conference, which opposed the partition of India.[26] One member organization of the All India Ahl-i-Hadis Conference is the Anjuman-i-Hadith, formed by students of Sayyid Miyan Nadhir Husain and divided into Bengal and Assam wings. After the 1947 separation of India and Pakistan, the Pakistani Ahle-Hadith center was based in and around Karachi.[27]

In 1930 Ahl-i Hadith was founded as a small political party in India.[15] In Pakistan, the movement formed a political party, Jamiat Ahle Hadith, which unlike similar Islamic groups opposed government involvement in affairs of sharia law.[28] Their leader, Ehsan Elahi Zaheer, was assassinated in 1987. The Ahl-i Hadith oppose Shi'ism.[5]

Demographics

During the rule of the British Raj, no accurate census was ever taken of the movement's exact number of followers.[16] They control roughly 40 mosques in Maharashtra and 75 in Kerala. Latest data informs that about 1,000 Ahle-hadith mosques have opened up in Kashmir (The New Arthashastra, A Security Strategy For India). In the United Kingdom, the Ahl-i Hadith movement maintains 42 centers and boasts a membership which was estimated at 5,000 during the 1990s and 9,000 during the 2000s.[29] Although the movement has been present in the UK since the 1960s, it has not been the subject of extensive academic research and sources on the movement are extremely limited and rare.[29]

Prominent Ahl-i Hadith figures

Scholastic

Political/militant

See also

References
  1. Daniel W. Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought: Vol. 5 of Cambridge Middle East Studies, pg. 27. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 9780521653947
  2. M. Naeem Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics, pg. 458. Leiden: Brill Publishers, 1999. ISBN 9004113711
  3. John L. Esposito, ed. (2014). "Ahl-i Hadith". The Oxford Dictionary of Islam. Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195125580.001.0001. ISBN 9780195125580.
  4. Inayatullah, Sh. (2012). "Ahl-i Ḥadīt̲h̲". In P. Bearman; Th. Bianquis; C.E. Bosworth; E. van Donzel; W.P. Heinrichs (eds.). Encyclopaedia of Islam (Second ed.). Brill. doi:10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_0380.
  5. Olivier, Roy; Sfeir, Antoine, eds. (2007). The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism. Columbia University Press. p. 27. ISBN 9780231146401.
  6. Brown, Daniel W. (1999). Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought. Cambridge University Press. p. 29-32. ISBN 978-0-521-65394-7. Ahl-i-Hadith [...] consciously identified themselves with Zahiri doctrine.
  7. Rabasa, Angel M. The Muslim World After 9/11 By Angel M. Rabasa, p. 275
  8. Alex Strick Van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, An Enemy We Created: The Myth of the Taliban-Al Qaeda Merger in Afghanistan, pg. 427. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780199927319
  9. Lieven, Anatol (2011). Pakistan: A Hard Country. New York: PublicAffairs. p. 128. ISBN 978-1-61039-023-1. Ahl-e-Hadith ... a branch of the international Salafi ... tradition, heavily influenced by Wahabism.
  10. Rubin, Barry M., ed. (2010). Guide to Islamist Movements. Volume 1. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. p. 349. ISBN 978-0-7656-1747-7.
  11. Dilip Hiro, Apocalyptic Realm: Jihadists in South Asia, pg. 15. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012. ISBN 9780300173789
  12. Muneer Goolam Fareed, Legal reform in the Muslim world, pg. 172. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.
  13. Daniel W. Brown, Rethinking Tradition in Modern Islamic Thought: Vol. 5 of Cambridge Middle East Studies, pg. 32. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. ISBN 9780521653947
  14. Hewer, C. T. R. (2006). Understanding Islam: The First Ten Steps. SCM Press. p. 204. ISBN 9780334040323. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  15. Olivier Roy; Antoine Sfeir, eds. (26 September 2007). The Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism. ISBN 9780231146401. Retrieved 24 September 2012.
  16. Arthur F Buehler, Sufi Heirs of the Prophet: the Indian Naqshbandiyya and the Rise of the Mediating Sufi Shaykh, pg. 179. Part of the Studies in Comparative Religion series. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998. ISBN 9781570032011
  17. Yoginder Sikand, "Islamist Militancy in Kashmir: The Case of the Lashkar-e Taiba." Taken from The Practice of War: Production, Reproduction and Communication of Armed Violence, pg. 226. Eds. Aparna Rao, Michael Bollig and Monika Böck. New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. ISBN 9780857450593
  18. Rubin, Barry M., ed. (2010). Guide to Islamist Movements. Volume 1. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. p. 348. ISBN 978-0-7656-1747-7.
  19. Sushant Sareen, The Jihad Factory: Pakistan's Islamic Revolution in the Making, pg. 282. New Delhi: Har Anand Publications, 2005.
  20. Brown, pg. 28.
  21. M. Mahmood, The Code of Muslim Family Laws, pg. 37. Pakistan Law Times Publications, 2006. 6th ed.
  22. Mathieu Guidère, Historical Dictionary of Islamic Fundamentalism, pg. 177. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2012. ISBN 9780810878211
  23. Geoffrey Kambere, Puay Hock Goh, Pranav Kumar and Fulgence Msafiri, "Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT)." Taken from Financing Terrorism: Case Studies. Ed. Michael Freeman. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781409476832
  24. Sikand, Yoginder (14 April 2010). "Wahabi/Ahle Hadith, Deobandi and Saudi Connection". Welcome to Sunni News. Retrieved 22 July 2017.
  25. Mohsin, K. M. (2001). "The Ahl-i-Hadis Movement in Bangladesh". In Ahmed, Rafiuddin (ed.). Religion, Identity & Politics: Essays on Bangladesh. Colorado Springs, CO: International Academic Publishers. p. 180. ISBN 978-1-58868-080-8. It was ... not an easy task for the Ahl-i-Hadis preachers to go against the powerful sunni ulema ... They encountered frequent opposition from the latter ... In order to consolidate their efforts, the leading members of the movement decided to form an all-India organization, called the All India Ahl-i-Hadis Conference in 1906, in Lucknow, India.
  26. Qasmi, Ali Usman; Robb, Megan Eaton (2017). Muslims against the Muslim League: Critiques of the Idea of Pakistan. Cambridge University Press. p. 2. ISBN 9781108621236.
  27. Islam, Sirajul; Jamal, Ahmed A., eds. (2012). "Ahl-e-Hadith". Banglapedia: National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh (Second ed.). Asiatic Society of Bangladesh.
  28. Roy, Olivier, The Failure of Political Islam, by Olivier Roy, translated by Carol Volk, Harvard University Press, 1994, p.118-9
  29. Gilliat-Ray, Sophie (2010). Muslims in Britain. Cambridge University Press. p. 105. ISBN 978-0-521-53688-2.
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