Author: Praveen Swami
Publication: The Hindu
Date: April 18, 2006
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2006/04/18/stories/2006041805780800.htm
Last week's terror bombing in Karachi points
to one of the least-examined faultlines in Pakistan: the war for power between
Barelvi and Deobandi clerics.
Pakistan's Religious right is at war with
itself, with clerics locked in a mortal combat that could have more fateful
consequences for the future of the nation than any of the several crises that
have enveloped it since 2001.
Last week, a massive explosion at a Karachi
congregation, held to celebrate the birthday of Prophet Muhammad, claimed
57 lives and left over 200 injured. The congregation was organised by the
Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat, a body of the Barelvi religious sect that is opposed
to Islamist groups affiliated to the Deobandi and Salafi traditions such as
the Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the Tablighi Jamaat and the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadis.
Experts believe that the bombers targeted
Abbas Qadri, Amir or supreme leader of the Sunni Tehreek, a Barelvi organisation
fighting since 1992 to regain mosques which it claims were usurped by the
sect's opponents. Sunni Tehreek leaders claim to have seized at least 62 Deobandi
and Salafi mosques between 1992 and 2002 in ways that have on occasion sparked
violence.
To those familiar with Pakistan's ugly history
of sectarian conflict, the signs are ominous. In May 2001, murderous sectarian
riots broke out after Sunni Tehreek leader Saleem Qadri was assassinated by
the Sipah Sahaba Pakistan, a Deoband-affiliated terrorist group. His successor,
Abbas Qadri, charged President Pervez Musharraf's regime with "patronising
terrorists" and "standing between us and the murderers."
After Abbas Qadri's death, one thing is clear:
someone, sooner rather than later, will seek to settle the Sunni Tehreek's
unfinished business with his murderers.
Shia and Sunni sectarian organisations have
long been locked in murderous conflict. Last week's bombing though was executed
by a Sunni terrorist organisation, targeting other Sunnis. What is this conflict
all about?
Set up at Karachi in 1956, the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat,
or Organisation of the Followers of the Scripture, rapidly emerged as one
of the largest organisations of the Barelvi faith. According to Mohammad Amir
Rana's encyclopaedic A-Z of Jihadi Organisations in Pakistan, the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat
is raising upwards of Rs. 400,000,000 to build educational and social service
institutions and even a bank.
Barelvi organisations such as the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat
represent the mainstream of popular Islam in South Asia, drawing on theologian
Raza Ahmad Khan (1856-1921). In the Barelvi tradition, the Prophet is an immanent
presence, not flesh [bashar] but rather light [nur]. For followers of the
high traditions that emerged from the Dar-ul-Uloom seminary in Deoband, the
Prophet is a perfect human [insan-i-kamil] but a mortal nonetheless.
In practice, the Barelvis believe in intercession
between humans and the divine through Pirs or holy personages who are bound
in a chain that reaches, eventually, to the Prophet. The Barelvis venerate
the tombs of Pirs and holy relics. Deobandi groups, such as the West Asia-based
Salafi school, argue that these practices - which include celebration of the
Prophet's birthday - are heretical deviations from scripture.
While the Pakistan Movement drew much of its
support from the Barelvis, the Indian National Congress had the support of
Deoband. In the years after the creation of Pakistan though the elite rallied
behind the high-church practices of Deoband. The Tablighi Jamaat and the Jamaat
Ahl-e-Hadis flourished, making significant inroads into Pakistan's most important
institution - army.
After the Iranian revolution of 1979, President
Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq threw the resources of the state behind Deobandi-Salafi
clerics, hoping to contain Shia radicals. However, this course of action had
two unanticipated consequences. First, the emergence of anti-Shia terror groups
provoked a backlash from the minority. Secondly, the Barelvi groups also began
to mobilise against the growing influence of their Deobandi radicals.
Put simply, the Barelvi tradition might have
been concerned more with personal piety than political power but the clerics
who represent it were not about to sit back and watch the state destroy their
authority. By the time of the assassination of Saleem Qadri in 2001, these
tensions were coming to a head. Now with the terror bombing of the Karachi
congregation, they threaten to tear Pakistan apart.
Competitive communalism
Do Pakistan's Barelvi clerics, as some in
India argue, represent a benign traditionalist piety, hostile to the jihad-enthusiasm
of Deoband? Not quite. Like its Deobandi counterparts, the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat
has been associated with Islamist causes across the world. A manifesto published
after its April 2000 convention in Multan commits the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat
to expressly political causes such as preparing "a plan of action to
help all the oppressed Muslims in the world, particularly the Kashmiri mujahideen,"
and to "protect and publicise the concept of Pakistan."
Several major terrorist groups active in Jammu
and Kashmir, notably the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front, the Tehreek-i-Jihad
and the al-Barq have emerged with support from the Barelvi clerical establishment.
While none is as large as the Hizb ul-Mujahideen or the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the
groups have demonstrated their capabilities more than once: the JKIF, for
example, was responsible for the bombing of a crowded New Delhi market in
1996.
Several Barelvi organisations have taken even
more expressly Islamist postures than the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat. For example,
Pir Mohammad Afzal Qadri's Aalami Tanzim Ahl-e-Sunnat, or the World Movement
of the Followers of the Scripture, which was set up in May 1998, responded
to the growth of the Tablighi Jamaat by campaigning for the creation of an
Islamic state.
Aalami Tanzim leaders initiated their activities
with a 1999 demonstration in Rawalpindi, followed in quick time by a protest
at the Army's General Headquarters. Its cadre held up placards that demanded:
"Rulers, implement the Nizam-e-Mustafa [Order of the Prophet] upon yourself."
The organisation's literature attacked rival Islamist groups for creating
"a soft corner for false religions and thus causing great damage."
Like both the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat and the
Deobandi organisations it opposed, the Aalami Tanzim was also not opposed
to Islamist terrorism. Amongst its other front organisations is the Lashkar
Ahl-e-Sunnat, which funnelled both funds and cadre to terrorist groups such
as the Tehreek-i-Jihad. Led by Ghulam Farid Usmani, the Lashkar Ahl-e-Sunnat
is committed to a "jihad for Allah and the supremacy of Islam."
At the heart of the conflict then is competition
among clerics for retaining and expanding their power. The massive flow of
funds from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to organisations such as the Ahl-e-Hadith
and the Tablighi Jamaat brought the traditional authority of Barelvi clerics
under siege, provoking them to respond by creating their own jihadi groups,
political fronts and institutions of patronage.
A troubled future
It is no coincidence that the Karachi bombing
came in the midst of a renewed mobilisation by religious right, aimed at taking
power in Pakistan through the 2007 elections.
With the military allowing little space for
mainstream political organisations such as the former Prime Minister Benazir
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party or the deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's
Pakistan Muslim League, the clerics grouped together in the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
are sensing real opportunity. Organisations such as the Jamaat Ahl-e-Sunnat
undermine their claim to speak for Islam - hence, it seems likely, the Karachi
attack.
Little noticed, competition amongst the Barelvis'
rivals has also been escalating. Last year, Pakistani journalist Khalid Ahmad
pointed to intense fighting within the ranks of the Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadith, the
sect from which the Lashkar was born, with at least 17 separate organisations
scrambling for space. On more than one occasion, intra-sect invective has
been at least as acid as anything directed at supposed heretics.
For example, after the Lashkar chief, Hafiz
Mohammad Saeed, criticised the Markazi Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadith for its lack of
support for armed jihad, he promptly faced retaliatory allegations. The head
of the Markazi Jamaat Ahl-e-Hadith, Qari Abdul Hafeez, charged Saeed with
authorising the detention of kidnapped women slaves, bank robbery, and misappropriation
of funds.
Under other circumstances, scurrilous polemic
traded among clerics would be little more than public entertainment. But the
fact that clerics on all sides of the ideological divide have access to formidable
military resources - the wages of the use of jihad as an instrument of state
policy - means that theocratic disputes pose a real threat to the fabric of
civil society in Pakistan.
Despite repeated demonstrations that the costs
of the jihad in Jammu and Kashmir are at least as high for Pakistan itself,
President Musharraf's regime has shown few signs that it is willing to break
with the past. Unless it finds the courage and good sense to do so, the only
real question emerging from the unimaginable horror in Karachi is just when
and where it will repeat itself.
