Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE INDIAN TOMB
orders, which adhered to so-called ibāh˛a, 16 which openly
declared its adherents to be free from religious laws.
(Goldziher 1967–71, 2: 32)
‘Sober’ mystics of moderate doctrine also found the shockingly impudent
behaviour of certain awliyā in their lifetime just as repellant.
Among these awliyā there were many ecstatic visionaries, ‘possessed’
majdhūbs, and malāmatīs, negating all sorts of restrictions of temporal
or spiritual authorities. No less irritating for them must have
been the fussy diversity of ziyārat, insufficient concentration on
the spiritual by the pilgrims, and their utilitarian pragmatism in
conjunction with their propensity for coarse entertainment of the
type dished out at fairs. In addition, in the rites of the veneration of
the saints there was so much of the pagan, licentious or extravagant
– from offering of sacrifice to crocodiles in Mangho Pir to collective
ritual dances (dhammal) in Sehwan – that the aversion which the more
enlightened members of the Muslim community had for the cult of
saints on the whole becomes understandable.
The spiritual leader of Indian Sunnis, ‘renovator of faith’ Shah
Waliullah (1703–62), whose teaching is close to that of Wahhabis,
has formulated his case against pilgrims:
Everyone who goes to Ajmer [to Mu‘inuddin Chishti’s
tomb], or to the tomb of Salar Mas‘ud or similar place
because of a need which he wants to be fulfilled is a sinner
who commits a sin greater than murder or adultery. Is he
not like those who call to Lat and ‘Uzza? Only we cannot call
them infidels because there is no clear text in the Koran on
this particular matter.
(Waliullah 1970: 34)
No less passionately did Shah Waliullah also accuse those mystics,
who at the time of dhikr invoked God in the terms of Hinduism (for
example, Bhāgwān, Paramātmā, or Parame´svara), which was an
important part of the proselytizing practice of the early Sufis and
owing to which their doctrines became comprehensible to the Hindu
masses. Shah Waliullah summed up his philippics against mystics
and saints with the phrase: ‘The books of the Sufis may be useful for
the elect, but for common people they are more dangerous than
poison’ (Waliullah 1970: 87).
Even Shah Waliullah’s famous contemporaries, the ‘pillars’ of Urdu
poetry and members of the Naqshbandiyya fraternity, Mir Dard and
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