Islam in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives - Islamic Books ...

1 2 4Islam i n World Cult u r e sThe Taliban see themselves as reformers, a movement to restore past glory. Thelogic is we must become exactly like the Sahaba [the early community surroundingthe Prophet Muhammad]. But you can not be like that. The Prophet and theSahaba are not coming back. This is just shallow imitation ( t a q l i d ) , nothing else.Imitating them without their purification and perfection. You see, a focus onoutward display is an easy way out for something that is simply not so easy. Thes u n n a of the Prophet is beyond the capacity of any Muslim. I think it’s incumbenton all Muslims to try to follow the s u n n a of the Prophet in all areas. Butthere is a difference between imitation and s u n n a . The outward becomes merei m i t a t i o n .What we have here is nothing less than a battle over the definition of Islamicorthodoxy itself, a public wrangling over authority and authenticity, a debateabout who knows and about who has a right to speak for Islam. For theChishti Sabiri practitioners, the answer is unambiguous: only the awliya Allah(the Sufi masters, the “friends of God”), with an authority forged through selfdisciplineand experiential knowledge, carry the mantle of the Prophet. In thewords of another senior male disciple:Our group is not like the Jama’ati Islami and others. You are not told that youshould behave in this or that manner. It is just the way you feel inside. If someoneis sleeping during prayer time, let him sleep. In the Tablighis, however, youc o u l d n ’t imagine not praying at the exact times! We reject all elements of compulsionor force. There is a saying of Hazrat Shahidullah Faridi that you simplycan not do d a w a without permission. Until you are explicitly given permission,you are just a student, you have no business doing d a w a. So many of these m a u l-v i s [preachers] give passionate speeches. People leave in tears. But people don’tchange. It’s because these m a u l v i s do not have permission to speak. The s h a y k h sdo not say a word, but people’s lives are profoundly changed. That is becausethey have the express permission to do d a w a.As this quote suggests, Chishti Sabiri Sufis find revivalist attempts to reify, synthesize,codify, and systematize Islamic piety and practice highly dubious. Tr u eknowledge, they assert, must be e a rn e d through a disciplined journey along theSufi path under the watchful tutelage of a spiritual master. In the absence ofindividual moral and spiritual reform cultivated under the discipline of dailyworship, channeled through strict adherence to s h a r i ’ a , and grounded in therigors of Sufi ritual practice, any attempt to institutionalize top-down social reformsis doomed to failure. Such rhetoric, Chishti Sabiris argue, is nothingmore than political posturing.Upon entering the Chishti Sabiri order, a disciple is forced to relinquishpersonal autonomy, surrendering selfhood to the will of a teacher. To quote a