Mawdudi's Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islami Sangh Nepal

MAWDUDI’S ISLAMIC REVIVALIST IDEOLOGY AND THE ISLAMI SANGH NEPAL Megan Adamson Sijapati Introduction In contemporary Nepal, there is a growing movement of Muslims working towards the reform and revival of Islam. This essay concerns the organization at its vanguard, the Islami Sangh Nepal, and the ideological influence that the renowned Pakistani Islamic revivalist thinker Syyed Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903–1979) has had upon it, particularly in terms of the role of religious knowledge in the promotion of personal and collective identity. Mawdudi’s foundational role in the formation of what is now a global Islamic revival is well documented (Roy 2011; Nasr 1996; Adams 1966; Ahmad and Ansari 1979). Less understood, however, is the way in which Mawdudi’s ideology has shaped local identity movements and religious dispositions within Muslim minorities. This essay examines the nature and significance of Mawdudi’s salience for Nepal’s Islami Sangh Muslims. It aims to illustrate the ways in which Mawdudi’s ideology speaks directly to this group of Muslims who are navigating the complex ideological and activist worlds of global Islam from a local setting of political and social transition. While in previous work I have discussed Mawdudi’s influence upon the Islami Sangh’s cultivation of religious tradition (Sijapati 2011), this essay considers in greater depth the aspects of his ideology that have such salience for these Muslims and why. Because Muslims are an important part of the voice for religious minority rights in Nepal, an understanding of what their more conservative members seek, and what undergirds their claims and views, allows for a fuller picture of the complex nature of the minority religious worlds that have long been on the margins of dominant Nepali social and political discourse. Certainly, the Islami Sangh’s platform and philosophy share features with those of other minority groups in Nepal,1 but this organization and its program of religious revival cannot be understood solely through the lens of identity politics in Nepal. Religious ideas and translocal discourses must also be given attention, as processes of 1 See, for example, essays in Lawoti and Hangen (2012), Lecomte-Tiloune and Dollfus (2003), Gellner, Pfaff-Czarnecka and Whelpton (1997). Studies in Nepali History and Society 17(1): 00–00 June 2012 © Mandala Book Point 2 Megan Adamson Sijapati localization—which involve assertions of local identities—are imbricated in processes of globalization (Appadurai 1996; Asad 2010), particularly in the case of Muslims whose identities are necessarily translocal because of the nature of the global Islamic community, or umma. The religiously plural landscape of contemporary Nepal bears compelling illustrations of new religious phenomena emerging from the dynamics between local and translocal communities and discourses, from phenomena such as neo- Hindutva activism to Theravada Buddhist movements among Newars. Muslim religious life, too, is being shaped by new global flows, one component of which is the readily available revival ideology of Mawdudi. Attention to the translocal Islamic discourses and movements through which certain groups of Nepali Muslims—in this case the country’s most visible Muslims, no less—gain their self-perceived authority and authenticity is an essential component to understanding this dynamic as it is taking place in contemporary Nepal. This essay begins with a brief overview of Mawdudi’s life and context, followed by a discussion of the basic principles of his Islamic revivalist ideology. It then offers an overview of the major features of the Islami Sangh Nepal, followed by an analysis of the influence of Mawdudi’s ideas in the organization. In conclusion, the essay offers reflections upon the significance of this influence. This essay draws upon field research I conducted among Islami Sangh Muslims in the Kathmandu valley and Nepalgunj between the years of 2005 and 2010. In particular, I focus on 1) personal interviews and informal conversations with male and female members and leaders of the Islami Sangh in 2006, 2008 and 2009; 2) Islami Sangh pamphlet publications (translated from Urdu); and 3) participant observation in Islami Sangh activities in 2006, 2008 and 2009. Mawdudi: His Life and Times In order to understand Mawdudi’s Islamic ideology, it is necessary to first address his life and the times in which he lived. Syyed Abul Ala Mawdudi (1903–1979) was born in Aurangabad in South India in 1903 into a noble family from Delhi. He received a traditional Islamic religious education by his father, a practicing Chishti Sufi, and was taught Arabic, Persian and Urdu at a young age, only learning English and modern science later as an adolescent. His early years “corresponded with the birth of political consciousness among Indian Muslims” (Adams 1966: 372–373) and he developed a strong antipathy for the west and western  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 3 culture as he witnessed the British oppression of India and British dealings with the larger Muslim world. From this, he developed a passion for political issues, particularly Indian nationalism. He worked as a journalist in the 1920s, and in the early 1930s became editor of a journal published from Hyderabad, Tarjuman al-Quran. The journal largely became a vehicle for his own thinking, particularly his religious mission of halting the influence of western culture and thought upon Muslims, directing Muslims to the proper Islam, and asserting the supremacy of Islam vis-à-vis foreign and opposing religious systems (Adams 1966) to establish an Islamic state. He was actively involved in the Khilafat Movement for the preservation of the Caliphate, alongside other Muslim leaders (and even Gandhi), and later opposed the 1941 Lahore Resolution’s aim for the creation of Pakistan, fearing that Muslims would come to prioritize nationalism over Islam. As he saw it, the best method for transforming society into an ideal Islamic state was for small group of educated, disciplined, dedicated leaders to seek social and political leadership, and this group would be “thoroughly Islamic both in ideas and conduct” (Adams 1966: 375). To this end, he formed the Jama‘at-i Islami, which he envisioned would become the vanguard of an Islamic revival. In his writings and his political organization, the Jama‘at-i Islami, Mawdudi worked toward the religious and political mobilization of Muslims. Upon partition, Mawdudi went to Pakistan and began a campaign, through the Jama‘at-i Islami, to mobilize Muslims and establish an Islamic state in the new Pakistan, based in their Lahore headquarters. The Jama‘at-i Islami developed into one of the most powerful political parties in Pakistan, branched off into a political party in Bangladesh, and developed independently in India as a significant social and religious organization. He wrote extensively, and his best known pieces include his commentary on the Quran titled The Meaning of the Quran (1967), and his books Purdah and the Status of Women (1999), Towards Understanding Islam (1980), Human Rights in Islam (1976), and Let Us Be Muslims (1985). To the end of his life in 1979, Mawdudi’s agenda remained the promotion of Islamic revivalism for the establishment of an Islamic state. Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology To the extent that Mawdudi was immersed in concerns and debates over Islamic identity and the survival of Islam in South Asia during turbulent political times, his life and thought have served as a template for Muslims across the world (Roy 2011: 1). Mawdudi’s vision for Islam and Muslims 4 Megan Adamson Sijapati and his methods for implementing it, particularly through the Jama‘at-i Islami, have served as potent resources for Islamic political movements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in South Asia and regions far beyond. Muslims not just in Nepal, but in majority settings such as Indonesia, Malayasia, Algeria, Egypt and Sudan, for example, have found ideological inspiration and practical methods in Mawdudi. His books are shipped around the world from publishing houses from Saudi Arabia to Chicago and are widely available (in a variety of translations) online. In Kathmandu’s few Islamic bookstores, entire shelves of Mawdudi’s Urdu publications (and some in English and Nepali) are for sale. Mawdudi saw Islam as a complete system of life that held the key to political and spiritual problems faced by Muslims in his time period (Nasr 1996; Adams 1966; Roy 2011; Watt 1988). These problems, as he saw them, were the loss of Muslim political power in colonial India, Muslim failure to adhere to the Sunna (lit., “tradition,” and refers to the normative tradition that developed from the model of the Prophet) and Sharia (divine law), and communal fractionalization among the subcontinent’s Muslims (Adams 1966; Nasr 1996; Roy 2011). Mawdudi’s ideology of Islam was based upon the fundamental Islamic principle of the sovereignty of God and the Quran’s clear injunction of human obedience to God. Hence, Mawdudi “considered the moral evil of the age to consist in having accepted sovereigns other than God—the will of the people, the law of rulers, the nation-state, custom, personal preference” and held that “the sufferings of the age in their entirety are to be traced to this error” (Adams 1966: 382). Any individual Muslim or group of Muslims could, Mawdudi argued, with the sources of the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet, know God and his plan for humans through the exercise of individual reason and intellect (Watt 1988: 55–66). To him, Islam could and should be revived by ordinary Muslims, particularly in contexts of political marginalization. Mawdudi linked the revival of Islam to the uplift of Muslim social, political and spiritual lives – at the individual and community levels. Mawdudi’s solution was for individual Muslims—not just the classically trained scholars—to exercise reason and intellect to apply Islam as a blueprint for all aspects of life, not just religious life (Adams 1966; Nasr 1996). This solution for resurrecting Islam and bringing Muslims together (and the two were inextricably bound in his view) challenged the traditional order and power structure of the classically trained Islamic scholars, or ulama, of his time. He challenged the ulama’s reliance on the past and their exclusive claim to the interpretation of  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 5 religious sources, arguing instead that Islam needed to be interpreted with a view to the political exigencies of the era (Nasr 1996, Adams 1966). Paradoxically, he wanted to simultaneously revive the past glory of the ra÷idÒ (the “Rightly Guided Caliphs” of the first era of the Muslim community). Mawdudi sought an Islamic state, which was “nothing more than the culmination of a successful dà‘wat [religious work or mission]” (Nasr 1994: 105). According to Mawdudi, this required that “the ideals and principles of Islam would be restated in a language understandable to the people of the age” (Ahmad and Ansari 1979: 375). Islam, as it was once applied in the time of the Prophet and the early Caliphs, would be applied again; the effort would be all encompassing, involving society, culture, and politics. In some of Mawdudi’s most influential writings the focus was, as Nasr has explained, on “purifying the Islamic faith, explicating its ethos, and putting its teachings into practice, all with a view to modernizing Islam while extracting Western influence from Muslim minds” (Nasr 1996: 56). Mawdudi cast western civilization and Hindus as jahiliyyà (A., ignorant; referring to the polytheistic pagans in Arabia before the time of the Prophet), and the struggle to revive Islam and Muslim culture—i.e. the struggle to ignite an Islamic revolution—was against these two forces. He promoted Muslim communalism through an enhanced and distilled religiosity, arguing that social action is the logical outcome of Muslim piety, and an Islamic revolution the logical outcome of social action or missionary call, dà‘wat. Though Mawdudi saw himself as preserving and reviving Islam along a conservative line and he was antagonistic to modernist interpretations of Islam, his rendering of Islam was, “like modernism, a reaction to questions posed by the unique situation of Muslims in the modern world” (Adams 1966: 394). The Islami Sangh Nepal The Islami Sangh Nepal was established in 1985 by Muslims from southern Nepal and Kathmandu who, as they describe it, took it upon themselves to come together to ‘promote Islam’ among Muslims and ‘educate’ Muslims and non-Muslims about the Islam. Like many Muslim revivalists and reformers have done across time and place, its founders were first concerned with what they understood to be a lack of attentiveness to religious life and identity among their fellow Muslims. They focused on reviving religion in public and private life according to their understanding of what authentic tradition is (and this, it should be noted, has been debated by Muslims since the earliest years of the Muslim 6 Megan Adamson Sijapati community). Today the Islami Sangh is the largest Islamic organization in the country. It holds religious education programs and classes in various districts and has branches dedicated to various types of outreach work (which are discussed further below). Nepal’s Muslim population, though only representing 4.2 percent of the national population, is fragmented and diverse, comprised of a variety of ethnicities, geographic affiliations, castes, languages and sectarian orientations.2 Additionally, there is a long-standing tension between hill (pahàç) and Tarai-based (Madhesã) Muslims, as well as between upper class or caste (U., ashraf) Muslims who first arrived from Kashmir and once enjoyed a close relationship with the monarchy (and are affiliated with Sufi orders) and the lower-status (U., ajlaf) Muslims who are descendants of converts from southern Nepal and northern India and dominate in number but have historically been disenfranchised.3 The Islami Sangh continues to be led mostly by Muslims from the Tarai who have now established headquarters in Kathmandu and settled there with their families.4 They do not uphold Madhesã identity and Muslim identity as inextricable, as many Muslims in the Tarai have (Dastider 2012). They promote religious identity first, undergirded by a strong sense of national citizenship,5 in what they see as an antidote to the regional and sectarian divisions among the nation’s Muslims. The Islami Sangh’s strategy is to promote a pan-Nepali religious consciousness and Muslim collective identity to transcend these divisions. To some Kashmiri Muslims, however, this is seen as an affront to their 2 Muslims arrived in Nepal in beginning of the fifteenth century along trade routes from Kashmir and later from north India for trade as well as for refuge following the Indian revolt in 1857 against British colonial rule. Other groups of Muslims arrived at different times, such as Tibetan Muslims who have been in Nepal for centuries since the earliest trade routes from Kathmandu to Lhasa, but arrived in larger numbers after the 1952 occupation of Tibet. For summaries of this history, see Ansari (1980); Ansari (1981); Gaborieau (1972); Dastider (1995) and Sijapati (2011). 3 Ajlaf Muslims are predominant in the Islami Sangh and are gaining an elevated social status as a result Islamic revivalism’s upending of traditional social hierarchies. The extent to which this upward mobilization is a motivating factor for participation in the movement is debated, but it is clear that it cannot account fully for their work towards a revival of Islam. For a discussion of this, see Sijapati (2011: 7–9). For more on the categories of ashraf and ajlaf status among South Asian Muslims, see Ahmad (1978). 4 The other headquarters are in Biratnagar. 5 For a treatment of the Sangh’s sister organization, which directly promotes this notion, the National Muslim Forum, see Sijapati (2011).  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 7 community’s longstanding authority as high-caste Muslims with deeper historical roots in Nepal. It also conflicts with some Madhesi claims to an a priori Madhes identity. While the Islami Sangh has grown in scope and influence since its creation, it has also created waves among Muslims uneasy with its conservative religious and social programs and the politicization of Islam that has attended the Islami Sangh’s efforts to promote a collective Muslim identity. Depending on how one views Islam and such matters, the Islami Sangh can represent a forward thinking, globally aware Muslim movement involved in reviving Islam for the good of Muslims (and of course what is “good” is variously defined), or as a foreboding sign of the growing popularity of more politicized incarnations of Islam and Muslim community that seek to highlight religious difference over national identity (and by extension, loyalty to religion over state and society), and conservatism over openness. Since the post-Jana ândolan II (JA II) political developments (i.e. after April 2006) that gave Nepal’s many ethnic and religious minorities an opportunity to participate in the nation’s political and social restructuring, the Sangh has continued to promote its revivalism through its religious work, da‘wat, but with new vigor. In my conversations and interviews with Islami Sangh Muslims in 2008 and 2009–2010, the difference in their confidence and aspirations at that time compared to the pre-JA II time period was striking. The inclusion of seven Muslims on the Constituent Assembly (CA) and the agreements that were made between Muslims and new government officials, Prachanda in particular, which included the promise of a Muslim Commission and recognition of Muslim religious holidays, had clearly elevated the confidence and energy of Muslims concerned with religious identity and rights in the post- Gyanendra government (though many saw the erasure of Hinduism from the official religious identity of the state as a mere formality).6 It was felt that the setting was rife with possibility for the mobilization of the community through dàw‘at, and greater recognition overall. The Sangh programs continued to give particular emphasis to discursive knowledge and Muslim communal consciousness, a mission no doubt given shape by the readily available ideology of Syyed Abul Ala Mawdudi and his vision for an Islamic revival. It is this confluence to which I now turn. 6 The National Muslim Forum formed in 2005 in order to work at a more political level to promote unity among Muslims that it saw as necessary for the protection of Muslim rights. For more on the ways it has pursued this, see Sijapati (2011, 2012). 8 Megan Adamson Sijapati Mawdudi in the Islami Sangh Nepal Mawdudi’s writings are easily accessible to South Asian Muslims. Books written in South Asia on Islamic subjects tend to circulate in South Asia, and the writings of Pakistani and Indian Muslim thinkers, in particular, are readily available at mosques, libraries and bookstores in the urban centers of Nepal. Increasingly, writings from gulf country authors and Middle Eastern authors are available, too. In each of Kathmandu’s Islamic bookstores, booksellers stock their shelves with Mawdudi’s writings, and at the Islamic library in Ghanta Ghar numerous Mawdudi titles are available for checkout. Mawdudi wrote in Urdu and most often these books are found in Urdu, though some are in English translation, and a few are in Nepali. Urdu is spoken and read by most formally educated Nepali Muslims, and certainly by members of the Islami Sangh. Urdu plays contrasting roles in South Asian countries (Rahman 2006) and it functions not just as a pan-South Asian Muslim language but also as an Islamic language in so far as it is a sign of religious identity and a carrier of religious understanding and orientation (Rahman 2006). Coupled with the fact that Mawdudi’s arguments and discussions are couched in the idioms of South Asian culture and society, the fact that they are in Urdu guarantees a certain immediate appeal and authority for Nepal Muslims. Further, a number of leaders and long-standing members of the Islami Sangh have likely long been familiar with and sympathetic to his ideas, given that many are graduates of madrasas in India affiliated with the Indian branch of Mawdudi’s Jama‘at -i Islami (Ahmad 2009). There they likely had regular exposure to Mawdudi’s writings, were educated in the principles of Islam per Mawdudi’s understanding of them, and were trained in the importance of Islam to social and political aspects of life.7 None of these factors can fully account for the pervasiveness of his ideology in the organization, however. What is largely to account for this, I suggest, is the relevance of particular components of his revival ideology to the Nepali Muslim situation, in particular, what he had to say about Muslims who found themselves surrounded by non-Muslims, with no access to political power and with no strong collective identity. One of Mawdudi’s ideas that gained the most currency outside of Pakistan was that individual Muslims—not just the classically trained scholars—could exercise reason and intellect to apply Islam as a blueprint for all aspects of life, not just religious life, as a method for achieving political power 7 For more on this, see Ahmad (2009).  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 9 and collective religious unity. When I have asked Sangh leaders about Mawdudi’s overall importance in modern Islam they reiterate this position, which is fundamental to Mawdudi’s revival ideology: being a Muslim is not just about praying and being pious, for “every aspect of the individual is Muslim” and “religion, Islam, provides a method for upliftment, which the government is not undertaking for Muslims as it should.”8 Mawdudi “created a revolution,” one member told me, “by helping Muslims to perceive the true relationship between education, economics, politics, basically ‘everything’ to Islam.” 9 In this way, Mawdudi linked the cultivation of religious knowledge with the mobilization of religious community, and for a minority community in particular. This link is promoted in Islami Sangh literature and activities. Islami Sangh literature states that it emphasizes both “character building in accordance with the guidance of the Hadith and the Quran”10 (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006: 1) and the development of a Muslim community bound together through the project of religious character building and social activism all within the parameters of the organizational structure. Members are to study the Quran and its meaning, Hadith11 literature and the biography of the Prophet, the biographies of the companions of the Prophet, and the literature of religious movements (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006). Levels of membership and leadership in the organization are determined by one’s level of religious study and memorization of Quranic verses, Hadith, manuals of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) and interpretive works by scholars from India, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They are to perform supererogatory namaz (U. daily ritual prayer) and fasting, compulsory zikr (remembrance of God), are to aim for the “accuracy and reform of their own customs and knowledge” (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006: 1), and to “sacrifice” for the 8 Personal communication with Islami Sangh member; Islamic Library, Ghanta Ghar; January 2010. 9 Personal interview with Islami Sangh Member, Islamic Library, Ghanta Ghar; January 2010. This might also help to explain the claim, which is made sometimes by senior members, that the Islami Sangh is “not a religious organization.” They prefer to describe it as a social service organization, yet to obtain membership into the Sangh and to achieve higher levels within the organization one must be a practicing Muslim and must be continually studying the Quran and hadith and other religious literature and performing extra prayers. 10 I thank Ali Ramzan Miyan and Zeeshan Shaukat for reviewing my Urdu translations of the Islami Sangh’s Mansubeh ‘Amal (U., “Plan of Operation”). 11 Hadith is a collection of the words and deeds of the Prophet. 10 Megan Adamson Sijapati group’s da‘wat and other collective work. Members are actively involved in community outreach through inter-religious organizations such as Nepal’s Inter-Religious Council, the sponsorship of health clinics in rural areas, and the procurement of funding for madrasàs and university scholarships from international donors.12 For Mawdudi, dà‘wat meant the internal conversion within individual Muslims to a more pristine Islam as well as the renewal of Islam within society. Mawdudi was “interested in the cultivation of individual virtues and…in fostering a depth of personal faith in his followers” but he could not be satisfied “with the rectification of the lives of individuals; his ultimate objective…[was]…transformation of the social order” (Adams 1966: 388). The concept of tajdid (A., U., renewal) was pivotal for Mawdudi’s dà‘wat. Mawdudi invoked tajdid not only as a religious doctrine but also “as a historical paradigm to relate political exigencies to faith, mobilize Muslims, and above all, claim the authority to reinterpret and rationalize the Islamic faith” (Nasr 1996: 56). The term tajdid is not employed heavily in Islami Sangh discourses, perhaps because, as its General Secretary once stated, Nepali Muslims lack a tradition of Islamic scholarship and among them there are few ‘ulama.13 This makes a “renewal” of Islamic society impossible. Islàh (A., U., righteous reform), however, is a concept operative in Muslim reform thought and movements across the Islamic world and one central to the Islami Sangh. It is similar to tajdid and has historically referred to “increasing the prosperity of the community and increasing the righteousness of its members” (Voll 1994: 32–33). Modern Islamic discourses use the term islàh to mean “reform” in a general sense, and often pair it with tajdid (Voll 1994). Historically, islàh has referred to the work—individual or collective—of defining Islam exclusively in relation to the sources of the Quran and the Sunna. In South Asia, sectarian groups such as the Deobandis, Barelvis, Ahl-e Hadis, and the movements and organizations founded by leaders from these schools of thought, such as the Tablighi Jama‘at and the Jama‘at-i Islami, have made efforts to define Islam in terms of the textual sources and to live according to them. The Islami Sangh’s approach is best understood in line with these specific regional 12 The Islami Sangh distributes glossy pamphlets in order to solicit funding from overseas donors; these highlight the schools’ needs, featuring photographs of students, the run down facilities, and the relatively little cost required for remedying each school’s resource problems. 13 Personal interview with Ghulam Rasul Miyan Falahi, General Secretary of the Islami Sangh; November 2005.  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 11 traditions and the broad historical tradition of renewal and reform, or tajdid-islàh, that “at its core…represents the individual and communal effort to define Islam clearly and explicitly in terms of God’s revelation (as recorded in the Quran) and the customs of Sunna of the Prophet Muhammad” (Voll 1984: 32). Islàh’s malleability allows for the application of Mawdudi’s principles to the social and political landscape of Nepal. Central to the Islami Sangh’s program of reform, or islàh, is the consumption, production, and re-production of religious knowledge. The medium of print was in Mawdudi’s time, as well as now, essential to the dissemination and accessibility of religious knowledge (Robinson 1993), particularly among a Muslim minority with limited traditions and institutions of discursive learning.14 There is a dearth of religious literature authored by Nepali Muslims (a point lamented to me by many in the Sangh),15 so the ideas in circulation, and in the curriculum of the Islami Sangh in particular, are mostly penned outside of Nepal by non- Nepalis. The Sangh publishes a few Islamic materials and writing by Nepali Muslims, and more recently new electronic media (websites, for example). It completed a Nepali translation of the Quran in May 2008, funded by the London based Al Quran Academy, for use in its dà‘wat programs across the country, and it published a Nepali translation of a treatise of Mawdudi’s on Islamic faith (N., “Islàmã âsthà”). Translations and reprints of Islamic sources into local languages give non-religious scholars access to religious texts they would not have direct access to otherwise, an important factor in the contemporary spread of revivalist discourses among Muslims. The organization’s education branch, Al Hira Educational society, publishes a monthly Nepali newsletter that addresses contemporary issues in Nepali politics, Islamic faith and ritual, Islamic learning and global Islamic issues. It publishes the organization’s required curriculum for members and aspiring members and its annual “Plan of Operation” (U., Mansubeh ‘Amal). It also sells various Urdu tafsir (Quranic commentaries) that are required reading for members. Like Mawdudi, the Islami Sangh emphasizes religious education and training as the foundation for a Muslim collective. Through training 14 Madrasa education is an area that has largely gone unresearched; I am aware of no systematic study of madrasa education in Nepal to date. For a brief treatment of the challenges in education for Muslims, see Sijapati (2011). 15 And from the Islami Sangh perspective, the few published books of Urdu poetry authored by Nepali Muslims would not qualify as “religious literature.” 12 Megan Adamson Sijapati sessions the Sangh propagates an all-encompassing Islamic system through structured educational programs guided by the principles of tazkiya (A., U., purification) and tarbiyat (A., U., training, teaching). These sessions encourage an epistemological orientation, encouraged by Mawdudi, in which the individual is granted the right—and given the tools—to engage with Islamic texts him/herself and read out of them spiritual and political significance germane to the particular context. Through the use of a collection of translocal texts, Islami Sangh Muslims participate in a movement of pan-Islamic consciousness devoid of any one center and held together through the production, and to a much larger degree, consumption of discourses. Study groups, readings, and other programs focus on scriptural sources and contemporary reform and revival themes such as the importance of women’s modesty, Muslim solidarity, the corrupting influence of western culture, the necessity of Islamic education for the sustenance of the individual and the community, the model of the Prophet Muhammad, and the injunctions of the Quran. The goal of its educational programs, according to the Sangh, is “the complete training of the intellect, thoughts, and habits of the organization’s founders, members, and affiliates…so that their relationships with Allah may become increasingly stronger” (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006: 2). Members study the Quran and Hadith, alongside the guidance of selected exegetical texts authored by prominent figures, the most central of which is Mawdudi, other secondary texts on the Hadith and fiqh (jurisprudence), and contemporary writings on Islamic revival. Tafsir required in the organization include the globally influential In the Shade of the Quran, by Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, Syed Qutb (1906–1966), who was influenced by Mawdudi, and Mawdudi’s The Meaning of the Quran. The Islami Sangh uses works that are applicable across sects and schools of law. Though Muslims in Nepal are most all Hanafi, the school of law practiced in South Asia, its choice for reading on fiqh reflects Mawdudi’s reductionist and broadly applicable rendering of Islamic tradition; for example, its required reading of fiqh is a compilation of juristic commentaries on the regulations for religious practices that was originally commissioned by Hassan al-Banna of Egypt’s globally-influential Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood. It can be comprehended by non-scholars and offers simple rules based on a compilation of juristic commentaries that are applicable to every-day situations. A chief concept of Mawdudi’s was the increased benefit that training takes on in the context of the group. This is clearly a central premise of  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 13 the Islami Sangh as well. The Sangh’s rules of operation state that “the wisdom of the importance of gathering together, of respecting group decisions, of listening, thinking and obedience” (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006: 2) is central to the organization. Its hierarchical structure promotes community based on levels of knowledge and training. The organization’s highest-level trainings are held by the Imams of various mosques, below which they are held by the highest-level members, and below that the regular members. Women’s groups are led by female members, and the young women’s groups are led by the most seasoned young female members. The young women’s group, started in 2006 by a younger woman attending the women’s sessions who saw a need for unmarried young women to have their own sessions, was by 2009 drawing around thirty women per weekly session. A Maulvi would also come teach the session, giving lessons in the Quran, hadith, namàz, and other matters. Islami Sangh rules state that all members should uphold “togetherness, good wishes, brotherhood and love” (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006: 2), the goal being that the intellectual leaders make themselves available to ordinary members and that equality be established among them, laying a foundation for a unification of a self-conscious Muslim community. They become the vanguard of a new community of Muslims promoting an Islamic revival in society, much as Mawdudi explained individual Muslims must do to “resurrect” Islam. Through a hierarchical network and the attendant individual requirements of this purification and training—reading, prayer and service—the Sangh provides the blueprint for Muslim men and women to work toward the goal of living according to “the laws stated by Allah and the Prophet Muhammad” (Islami Sangh Nepal 2006: 2). The Sangh maintains public reading spaces such as an Islamic library, adult education programs including a women’s class, social welfare programs, and dà‘wat activities centered around the mosque. These are all activities that help build community among members and that Mawdudi advocated for promoting Islamic knowledge with the goal of eventual political upliftment. Though the bulk of the organization is comprised of men, there is a small and active women’s branch. There is also a student branch and a support group for Muslim converts, a number of whom converted to Islam during their time as guest workers in the Persian gulf. When I first spent time with the women of the Sangh in 2005 and 2006, weekly sessions were held in a downstairs room of the organization’s Ghanta Ghar offices and were typically attended by a core group of eight to twelve women. Seated in a circle on the ground with books in hand and 14 Megan Adamson Sijapati sometimes children playing in their laps or in the corner, the women read together and discussed the readings. The women spoke varying first languages, and meetings were conducted primarily in Urdu, as opposed to Nepali, a choice emphasizing the Islamic identities of the women over their national or even regional identities and the egalitarian aim of the gatherings. These sessions would begin with casual socializing followed by a senior of the group leading the reading. This was always one particular woman, an Indian married to a Nepali Muslim, who was educated at the primary levels in a madrasà in north India and had accompanied her husband, the librarian of the Millat-e Islamiya, to the University of Karachi, Pakistan, years prior where she took courses in Arabic and English. When I met with her again in 2010 she had just returned from the Hajj, which elevated her religious status in the organization and enhanced her authority as a leader in religious learning among the women. She would begin the Islami Sangh session by reciting supplicatory prayers (A., U., duà) and then reading verses of the Quran in Arabic (she was one of the only women who could read Arabic and so she always performed this function). She would then read and discuss the meaning of the verse with the guidance of the exegesis from the Tafsir Ahsan ul-Bayàn, in Urdu. This tafsir was not part of the Sangh’s formal curriculum, but made available through donations from the Saudi press Dar al-Salàm.16 In most meetings, another woman, a Kathmandu native whose father had founded the earliest Islamic organization, the Millat-e Islamiya now affiliated with the Sangh, would then read an article photocopied from a Pakistani women’s magazine and the women would then apply principles from their study of the Quran to these contemporary articles. In one session, women studied selections directly from Mawdudi’s text, Khutbat (lit., “sermons”) pertaining to faith (A., U., imàn) and the centrality of knowledge to one’s piety (Maududi, 1977: 1–9). With these various pedagogical materials, and under the guidance of the most educated woman in the group, the women were teaching themselves. 16 This tafsir is published by the Riyadh-based press called Darussalam and appears to be distributed free of cost to Muslim populations worldwide. Darussalam describes itself as an international multi-lingual publishing house. The publisher’s website lists this tafsir’s translator and complier as Hafiz Salah-ud-Din Yusuf, “of Salaf Saliheen perspective.” It also explains that the King of Saudi Arabia, “Khadimul Haramein Al-Sharifain Malik Fahd has established a permanent system for the publication of the text.” See its website: http://www.dar-us-salam.com/about_us.html.  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 15 They incorporated the activities of daily life into the realm of religious practice and sought knowledge on the proper ways to perform them: from caring for children, to preparing food, to reading namàz. Though they studied and learned in this collectivity, there was a clear sense of the individual’s responsibility in seeking religious knowledge in the texts provided and applying it to every dimension of life. The sessions emphasized the availability of Islamic learning to those who seek it, the responsibility of each individual Muslim to engage in self-education and group work, and the importance of promoting of Islamic reform and revival within the women’s immediate surroundings. The training sessions cultivate a new community of women drawn together in their commitment to (or at least interest in) undertaking religious learning. The Islami Sangh claims no sectarian or doctrinal affiliation and strategically resists outsider attempts to affiliate it with one school of Islamic thought or another. Reform and revival organizations compete with one another for the “authentic” Islam, and the Islami Sangh, in its deep affinity with Mawdudi and by extension the Jama‘at-i Islami, opposes the claims to knowledge and authority of other schools of thought while claiming a universal Islam for its own. Of the leaders and senior members of the Islami Sangh I met between 2005 and 2010, many were graduates of Jami‘atul Falah, which was established by the Jama‘at-i Islami Hind (the Indian branch of Mawdudi’s Jama‘at-i Islami) in 1962 and offers a mixture of Islamic and “modern” education (Ahmad 2009).17 An Islami Sangh leader in 2009 described the Sangh’s maslak (U., path, school of thought) to me as the “right one” of looking exclusively to the Quran and Sunna. He confirmed the significant influence of Mawdudi’s thought on the Sangh and said that of all the schools of thought, Islami Sangh Muslims are “most like Salafis.” He quickly added the clarification that they are “not so extreme [as Salafis] in dealing with non-Muslims” (Sijapati 2011: 107–111). Salàfi (lit., “predecessor,” a reference to the earliest community of Muslims who are regarded as having lived a purer form of Islam), is a term applied to Muslims ranging from Saudi Wahhabis to members of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, and is meant to refer to those who look to the earliest Muslims as authorities on the tradition. It has become a complicated term in contemporary discourse on 17 See Irfan Ahmad (2009) for a detailed study of the Jama‘at-i Islami Hind, which includes detailed field-based analysis of Jami‘atul Falah. Ahmad notes that at the time he was there, most hostellers at Falah came from the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Maharashtra, and from Nepal. 16 Megan Adamson Sijapati Islam, however, for another way it is used is to describe Muslims seen as most intolerant in dealing with non-Muslims and western cultural practices (whether they self-ascribe as “Salàfi” or not). In fact, both terms Salàfi and Wahhàbi18 are used in a derogatory sense by Muslims to describe other Muslims who are either perceived to have become too extreme, or even hold opposing viewpoints to one’s own. If politicization is the measure of extremism, as it is for some Kashmiri Muslims with whom I have spoken, “Salàfi” may be used to describe Islami Sangh Muslims. But Muslims of conservative orientation are also re-appropriating these terms, embracing them as signifiers of a new, more authentic (in their view) and strict piety they seek to embody (or believe they already possess). If Islami Sangh Muslims view themselves as aligned more with their conservative Middle Eastern co-religionists, they may self-describe as Salafi as a point of pride.19 This Islami Sangh leader’s caveat about Islam Sangh Muslims not being “so extreme” may reflect his attempt to communicate that they see themselves as moderate, cooperative, and not antagonistic to Nepalis of other faiths. They must, it is often emphasized by Islami Sangh Muslims, live cooperatively with Hindus on account of their minority status. In some matters, Mawdudi’s views closely align with Salafi views (which are not monolithic). This is seen particularly in his mission to return to what are perceived as the pristine ideals and practices of Islam at the time of the Prophet, his criticism of Sufi and Shia practices, the interdependence of religion and government, and the right of Muslims to engage in personal ijtihàd. In the words of one scholar, Mawdudi’s form of revivalism “is extremely difficult to pigeon- hole…Mawdudi tends to borrow from so many different traditions as and when it suits” (Roy 2011: 85). On some points he agreed with Salafi thought, and on others he aligned more with that of Islamic modernists. 18 See Roy (2011: 95–100), for discussion of Mawdudi’s views in relation to Wahhabism. 19 Another often deployed but greatly misunderstood term is “Wahhàbi,” which one hears less among Muslims in the Kathmandu valley these days than “Salàfi,” but which has an intriguing history in South Asia beginning with the British application of the term to Ahl-e Hadis Muslims, based on their experiences with Wahhabis in the Arabian peninsula. Non-Muslim observers have referred to Nepal’s conservative, revivalist oriented Muslims as “Wahhabis,” and some Muslims dissatisfied with these revivalists label them “Wahhabi,” too.  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 17 If, like Mawdudi, Islami Sangh Muslims exhibit no interest in aligning themselves with one sect or another, but rather are interested in sculpting their own conservative, revivalist path, they nonetheless fall into the broader category of revivalists who promote an Islam that is opposed to “folk” or “vernacular” Islam (distinguished by an amorphous groups of practices including tomb veneration, local healing traditions, the use of amulets, and other forms of practice deemed bid‘at). In the Kathmandu valley, a loose affiliation exists among those aligned with the Ahl-e Hadis, Deobandi, Tablighi and other Indian reformist-type schools of thought that see themselves in distinction to those of Barelvi and/or Sufi persuasion.20 A tenet of these groups is one shared by the Islami Sangh: discursive religious knowledge is the proper path to piety and, in some cases, political power. Islami Sangh Muslims promote it with a particular Mawdudian spirit. The Islami Sangh sees itself as a guarantor of a level of Islamic education that would not exist otherwise, and by extension, as a bulwark against vernacular practices (such as tomb veneration) and heresies (in its view) such as the Ahmadis. Whereas for Mawdudi this mission had as its goal the establishment of an Islamic state governed by Islamic law, for the Islami Sangh the goal is a more modest: a pious and self-sufficient Muslim collective in possession of greater rights and representation. In the spirit of revivalist and Islamist discourses, it sees vernacular religious practices as a consequence of an uneducated population being victim over the generations to an overwhelming environment of non-Islamic practices, and eventually developing non- Islamic accretions as a result. Casual day-to-day discourse among Muslims affiliated with the Sangh reveals a prevailing attitude that Hindus are “superstitious” and worship “false idols” (common stereotypes and critique reaching back to early British colonial ethnographies). These perceptions of Hindus, and Westerners alike, are found in Mawdudi’s writings; whether Mawdudi is the instigator of these sentiments among Sangh Muslim or not, his writings certainly promote them. In a much more direct application of Mawdudi’s views, the Islami Sangh reproduces his vitriol for Ahmadis, a Muslim sect that recognizes a Prophet after Muhammad, is outlawed in Pakistan, and has expanded its presence in the Kathmandu valley (as well as many other parts of the 20 Developing tensions between the Kashmiri Muslims and Tarai-based ajlaf Muslims in the Kathmandu valley were noted in the early 1990s (see Gaborieau 1993). 18 Megan Adamson Sijapati world).21 Islami Sangh Muslims view their presence, their clandestine programs of proselytization, and their claim to be Muslim (despite their belief in a Prophet after Muhammad) as a grave threat to the integrity of Nepal’s already uneducated and fragmented Muslim population. One Nepali Muslim woman explained to me that when the Ahmadis visit neighborhoods and come to their door, as they do as part of their religious outreach, she closes the curtains and locks the doors, pretending she is not there. This would not normally be a socially acceptable response to the presence of a fellow Muslim at one’s door. In Mawdudian fashion, the Sangh’s promotion of a Muslim community is given urgency and definition by the effort to combat what it sees as internal threats to the faith. Political power at the national level is far beyond the reach of Nepal’s Muslims for the foreseeable future. It is perhaps for this reason that the Islami Sangh focuses on religious education and approaches it as a means of mobilizing and uplifting the Muslim population, promoting personal and collective identity. This reflects the modern Islamic revivalist position in which “Islamic re-education” is viewed as “a prelude to revolution and the attainment of political power” (Rahnama 2005: 6). While women attending the Islami Sangh training sessions emphasized the centrality of religious knowledge in becoming a better Muslim, this is clearly a discursive knowledge and one that upholds the main values of an amorphous global Islamic revivalism, articulated so effectively by Mawdudi. Conclusion Mawdudi’s ideological influence on Nepali Muslims’ understanding of personal and collective identity illustrates that certain ideas which seem inherent to the political and cultural moment in Nepal, such as identity politics and newly urgent claims to essentialized religious or cultural traits, may in fact also be deeply shaped from outside the social, cultural, and political sphere of a locality. However, the basic principles and practices of the Islami Sangh reviewed in this essay also illustrate that while the ideological principles of a modern organization may originate 21 The Ahmadiyya movement was founded in Punjab, and is based on the teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908), who is understood by Ahmadis to have been a prophet in line of the Muhammad. Ahmadis were declared non-Muslim in Pakistan in 1974 and became the targets of sectarian violence by Sunni Muslims in the following decades.  Mawdudi’s Islamic Revivalist Ideology and the Islamic Sangh Nepal 19 from beyond the borders (cultural and geographic) of Nepal, the usages of it and the products of its application are determined by the realities of contemporary life in Nepal. The prevalence of Mawdudi’s thought in the contemporary Islami Sangh is therefore evidence of the dynamism between the local and the translocal in shaping religious tradition and religious identity. For Muslim Nepalis who are part of the Islami Sangh, the organization is a platform for applying the type of reformed and revived Islam that Mawdudi called for in working towards a unified collective identity, which they see as necessary in an environment in which the reification and demonstration of a collective identity is no longer an option for the country’s minorities, but a matter of survival. Islam, as any religious tradition, is subject to change across time and space, and the particular community in which it is lived makes it what it is at that moment in time and place. It may seem hardly of note that a renowned Muslim ideologue such as Mawdudi should be influential on a group of Muslims elsewhere in the Muslim world, given the bonds of the umma and the translocal nature of the religion itself. But Islam and Muslim thought are neither monolithic nor ahistorical; religious ideas gain salience in particular times and places, and Muslim experiences in Nepal shape the community’s consumption, production, and re- production of religious ideas. The clear influence of Mawdudi upon the Sangh, which is suggested by the examples and analysis offered in this essay, underscores the point that translocal religious ideas compete seriously in the local arena for a leading role in defining religious authority and authenticity. An understanding of the Sangh’s ideological underpinnings sheds light on the ways that some Nepali Muslims re-fit globally salient ideologies to work best in the dynamic context of contemporary Nepal where competition for minority rights and recognition is high. From the perspective of Sangh Muslims, being a good Muslim is not just about learning to recite the Quran or to pray, but also creating a community in which to do this and mobilizing this community for a revival of Islamic life and piety; this conviction bears clear traces of Mawdudi, who lives on in Islamic revival movements around the world, shaping the way Islam is lived. 20 Megan Adamson Sijapati References Adams, Charles J. 1966. The Ideology of Mawlana Mawdudi. In South Asian Politics and Religion. Donald Eugene Smith, ed., pp. 371–397. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press . Ahmad, Imtiaz. 1978. Caste and Social Stratification among Muslims in India. Columbia, Mo: South Asia Books. Ahmad, Irfan. 2009. Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of the Jama‘at-e Islami. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ahmad, Khurshid and Zafar Ishaq Ansari. 1979. Mawlana Sayyid Abul A‘la Mawdudi: An Introduction to the Vision of Islam and Islamic Revival. 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