A video has been making rounds on Facebook and people have been indiscriminately sharing and commenting upon it. The video is in itself the trailing of a growing paradigm of thought which insists upon ascribing all evils, the causes of decadence and the pervasive presence of all sorts in a Muslim society to Mullahs, Maulanas, religious clerics and the preachers in general. A consensus seems to have been built around the narrative that religious figures or Mullahs, as they are heuristically called, are intrinsically evil, retrograde, mischief makers and embodiments of evil. To worsen the situation and to win the argument, irrespective of truthfulness and consequences, Sufis/Mystics/Sages have been portrayed as standing parallel and in opposition to Mullahs and their open-mindedness, liberating praxis, love for and hatred for none have been posited as the ultimate antithesis to the theory and practice of Mullahs. This has served the dual purpose of deepening fault lines between the mystic and Mullah and has been a tremendously successful tactic to malign and mischaracterize Mullahs and to create among masses the image that is repugnant, disrespectful and demeaning. It is intended here to look at the contours and consequences of this mischaracterisation, its deviation from facts, the covert intentions behind the ploy and the impact it has on religious and spiritual consciousness in general.
Every facet of life derives its legitimacy and rulings from the men of expertise and specialisation who dedicate their lives to the particular field and thereby qualify themselves to form an opinion or take the custodianship of that particular enterprise of human life. A layman is not supposed to propose a scientific theory or disagree with a particular scientific view on the mere pretext of his “feeling” for he lacks the necessary training and requisite qualification to make any judgements to this effect. This respect for specialisation is maintained everywhere except in matters of religious import where every one of us takes liberties to express him/herself on the issues of utmost complicity and sensitivity.
It has happened, unfortunately, that each one of us feels entitled to the religious opinion – an uninformed opinion without giving a prior thought to our abilities in these matters and without caring an iota about the consequences of these ill formed opinions. This trend was set in motion long ago, when Muslims were reeling under colonial pressure and every attempt was made by the colonisers to deface and efface the identity of Muslims and for the fact that Mullahs were the foremost symbols of Islam, they were indiscriminately maligned and presented in bad colours. These are not the conspiracy theories but hard historical facts which authors like Edward Saeed et Al have well commented upon and traced the pedigree of this line of thinking. Religion in general and the religion of Islam in particular was antidote to all placebos of progress and Modernity West was peddling across the globe. Leaving apart if the progress has been real or hallucinatory, but it is an agreed upon fact that the West mobilised its men and machinery to present the image of religious scholars in worst terms possible and made words like Mullahs, Maulvis, Maulanas synonymous to regress, backwardness, inhumanity and all colours of evil. Mullahs were, as history shows, at the forefront of rebellion against the imperial powers and no wonder that they faced a strong backlash and were so presented in their societies that the word itself became abusive and derogatory. A more profound historical reason is to be traced to the spread of Islam beyond the boundaries of Arabia. In an attempt to fight and deter the spread of Islam, cultures like Persia and India created a dichotomy of Rind O Zahid, Shaikh O Salik, Sufi O Mulla and many other binaries. In this binary, an attempt was made to posit Zahid/Shaikh/Mulla with artificiality, narrow mindedness and anti-intellectual tendencies and to associate Rind/Salik/Sufi with progression, enlightenment, universalism, inclusion and all elements of human nature. This approach, to say the least, is both historically falsifiable and factually incorrect. Let us recall Maulana Rumi, Imam Ghazali, Mohiuddin Ibn Arabi, Mulla Jami, Mulla Sadra and countless others. These are the names Muslim modernity and western scholarship have come to take special interest in and have come to be identified as the icons of Progress, Enlightenment, Universal message of salvation and as the exemplars of highest manifestation of religion. But how many of us know or bother to know that all these were scholars in the traditional sense of the word and were actually what we now derogatorily label as Mullahs. They were all taught and brought up in traditional and orthodox schools of learning and had a strong and rigorous training in the sciences of Shariah. It is left to the judgement of the reader to judge if this upbringing and training played a positive or negative role in making them what they became and it makes us rethink if the category of Mullah is truly so bad as to demonise and derange it?
There is another subtle and deeper aspect of the problem which, as raised in the above quoted video, needs immediate response. Time and again it has been said that Mullahs represent the harsher, legalistic and “wrathful” aspect of God as opposed to their Sufi compatriots, who represent mercy, grace, forgiveness and the “Jamaali” aspect of divine. What this line of thinking and these people demand in effect is that there shall be no norms of behaviour, no laws of ethics and morality, no bounds on human behaviour in any way conceivable. But what religion shall it be that does not discourage evil and promote virtue, define the contours of acceptable and normal paradigms and patterns of behaviour, draw a line of distinction between the good and the evil and forewarn people of the consequences thereof. It is said that the Mullahs emphasise the “Jalaali” or the majestic aspect of God and thereby generate fear and repulsion in the hearts and minds of people. But is not jalaal an aspect of divinity and if it is so, on what grounds shall it be discounted and seen in a negative framework and haven’t Sufis said that divine wrath is actually a different manifestation of divine mercy.
What is wrong if Mullahs remind us of divine laws and the consequences of the violations thereof, the laws and regulations which are enshrined in the scripture itself? And divine wrath is not what people usually make out of it. It is not a bloodthirsty and revengeful God spying upon his creatures with a whip in his hand. It is not a dictator who is annoyed and irked at the disobedience of his orders. It is nothing like that and what it is in reality has been well explicated by our scholars and Sufis in their valuable texts. And what do these people mean (as has been well articulated in the link given above) that Mullahs push people away from God, whereas Ibn I Arabi, the greatest of the sufi theoreticians asked surprisingly “Is there anything, anywhere away from God”? Even when we think, by our finite human minds that this and that is farther and away from God, we are actually ignoring the basic ontological principle that the Quran says “ I am, where you are”, also “Wherever you turn, there is the Face of God”. So Mullahs and Maulvis do not push anyone away from God, they wake us to the aspects of Divine which compensate for and equilibrate the liberty and infinite mercy preached by sufis, which if allowed to run its course freely, can usurp the normative order of the world. Human and Muslim well being lies not in positing Mullah and sufi against one another, but to look at them as complimentary and to benefit from the sobriety of Mullah and the intoxication of Sufi, for partialities are always incomplete and the whole includes all opposites in its perfection.
- Views expressed in the article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial stance of Kashmir Observer
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