Healing a Divided Faith: What Imdadullah Muhajir Makki Can Teach Today's Muslims When Faith Becomes a Battleground
By New Age Islam Special Correspondent
18 December 2025
Imdadullah Muhajir Makki left behind no loud political movements but only wisdom: subtle, demanding, and deeply ethical. Haft Masla reminds us that Islam was never meant to continually test others. It was meant to be a journey of self-reform. As he warned long ago: "When religion loses gentleness, it loses its soul." Today, South Asian Islam faces a choice. It can continue to argue itself into isolation or rediscover a tradition that values unity without uniformity, law with mercy, and faith with humility. The path that the Sufi master Imdadullah shows is not a retreat from reality; it may be the only way of surviving it.
Main Points:
• Imdadullah Muhajir Makki lived in the 19th century amidst major political and religious upheaval in India. The Muslim power was declining, Britain ruled the land, and the reform movements were shaking the community from within. Religious debates grew sharper, louder, and more public.
• Imdadullah was respected by all sides. He taught the biggest Deobandi scholars, yet he never let himself be reduced to a sect. His vision of Islam became, if anything, even wider and more inclusive after he migrated to Mecca following the 1857 uprising.
• Haft Masla means “Seven Issues.” These were hotly debated topics among Indian Muslims during the lifetime of Imdadullah: questions about Sufi practices, innovations, public rituals, remembering God, and following different schools of law.
• Instead of giving strict verdicts, the unusual thing Imdadullah did was to acknowledge differences. He showed how many of these disputes exist within Islamic tradition itself. More importantly, he warned that converting these differences into identity wars would hurt the community's moral core.
• The legal-combative approach treats religion as a battlefield of correct versus incorrect practices. It is obsessed with labels, rulings, and external conformity.
• Sectarian conflict saps energy, leadership, and credibility. An approach inspired by Sufism provides a means of safeguarding faith without hardening hearts. It teaches Muslims to be firm in belief but gentle in behaviour.
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In most Muslim localities in India nowadays, you are aware of a constant unease. It isn't just pressure from the outside. Masjids compete with each other. Religious talks are judged before anybody understands them. Social media debates turn into moral trials. And people just care more about labels instead of character.
Is he Deobandi or Barelvi?
Is this a bid‘ah or Sunnah?
Is that speaker "sound" or "deviant"?
What should have remained a serious study has become a part of everyday life. Instead of comforting, faith has become a source of stress. Many Muslims, particularly young ones, feel stuck between the strict legal arguments on one side and full disengagement on the other.
More than a century ago, there was a Sufi scholar warning about this very future. His name was Shah Imdadullah Muhajir Makki, and the short work that he wrote, Haft Masla, is still speaking to our times.
A Scholar Who Refused to Take Sides
Imdadullah Muhajir Makki lived in the 19th century amidst major political and religious upheaval in India. The Muslim power was declining, Britain ruled the land, and the reform movements were shaking the community from within. Religious debates grew sharper, louder, and more public.
Imdadullah was respected by all sides. He taught the biggest Deobandi scholars, yet he never let himself be reduced to a sect. His vision of Islam became, if anything, even wider and more inclusive after he migrated to Mecca following the 1857 uprising.
He once said in words that still sting: People care more for winning arguments than saving hearts.
This was not courtroom language; it was the voice of a Sufi acquainted with human weakness.
What is Haft Masla, and why does it matter?
Haft Masla means “Seven Issues.” These were hotly debated topics among Indian Muslims during the lifetime of Imdadullah: questions about Sufi practices, innovations, public rituals, remembering God, and following different schools of law.
Instead of giving strict verdicts, the unusual thing Imdadullah did was to acknowledge differences. He showed how many of these disputes exist within Islamic tradition itself. More importantly, he warned that converting these differences into identity wars would hurt the community's moral core.
His simple message was this:
"Difference is not the problem. Hostility is."
This message feels almost radical today.
Law without Mercy, Faith without Spiri
The cause of today's religious fights so often emanates from this narrow legal view, in which Islam becomes a matter of mere checklists: who is right, who is wrong, and who needs correcting in public.
Imdadullah did not reject the Islamic law. He rejected using the law as a weapon.
He warned:
"When Sharia is separated from good character, it is oppression."
The Sufi approach he stood for is about intention, humility, and self-criticism. Before asking if others are wrong, a believer should ask if his heart is clean. This is where Sufism offers something practical, not mystical or escapist.
Haft Masla addresses seven controversial issues that were tearing Indian Muslims apart in the nineteenth century. These included questions about:
• Permissibility of certain Sufi practices
• Loud or silent remembrance (dhikr)
• Celebration of the Prophet’s birthday
• Visiting graves
• Innovations (bid‘ah)
• Following legal schools (taqlid)
• Public religious customs
The Bid‘ah Obsession: When Caution Becomes Cruelty
Few words have harmed Muslim social life more than bid‘ah. What began as a mechanism to preserve Islam against corruption has become in most contexts today an instrument of shaming, silencing, and exclusion.
The differentiation came from Imdadullah. He clarified that those practices that were clearly against Islamic beliefs must be avoided, but practices that are embedded in love, culture, and remembrance should not become reasons for hate
He wrote:
Not all that is unfamiliar is misguidance, nor is everything old wisdom.
In today's India, where Muslims are already under pressure, such internal witch-hunts for rituals weaken community bonds and public trust. Sufism is not lawlessness.
Critics commonly assert that Sufism is soft or careless about rules. Imdadullah disagreed.
He insisted that spirituality without Sharia becomes self-deception. However, he also said that Sharia without spirituality becomes harsh and hollow.
This is the balance that too much modern Muslim talk misses: too many shout about the rules, too few speak about mercy.
Takfir Culture: Declaring Others Lost
Quick judgment ranks among the most hazardous habits today. Individuals are quickly judged to be misguided or deviant.
Imdadullah warned against this:
"Whoever declares others lost should fear losing himself."
This is a warning particularly urgent in the age of social media, where clips spread without context, and anger moves faster than reflection. The Sufi approach is to teach silence when knowledge is incomplete and humility when certainty is absent.
At the heart of South Asian Islamic schism lies a clash between two religious attitudes:
1. Legal-Combative Approach
2. Sufi-Ethical Approach
The legal-combative approach treats religion as a battlefield of correct versus incorrect practices. It is obsessed with labels, rulings, and external conformity. Its key features include:
• Harsh judgement
• Public condemnation
• Excessive focus on ritual correctness
• Ignoring intention and spiritual state
· The Sufi-ethical approach, represented by Imdadullah, prioritises:
• Purification of the heart (tazkiyah)
• Adab (spiritual manners)
• Mercy and humility
• Unity of the community
· Lessons for Indian Muslim Life Today
• Mosques as Shared Spaces
Many mosques have become sectarian zones. Imdadullah was of the view that the mosques unite and not divide. Any practice as accepted by a recognized school should not be fiercely opposed. He believed in unity, not uniformity.
• Madrasas and Moral Training
The current system of religious education primarily emphasizes refuting others rather than cultivating character. Before learning to subdue the ego, learners learn to defeat others.
Character came first in Imdadullah’s model. Knowledge should soften a person, not sharpen him.
• The Expatriate Experience
South Asian Muslims carry old disputes to new lands. In minority settings, these divisions do more harm. The life of Imdadullah in Mecca taught him that Islam is bigger than regional arguments. His Sufi perspective encourages the focus on shared ethics, rather than inherited quarrels.
• Why Sufi Ethics Still Work
Sufi ethics do not weaken faith; they strengthen faith by making it humane. Legal rigidity asks: Who is correct? Sufi wisdom inquires: Who is wounded?
Legalism brings fear. Spiritual ethics bring trust.
Imdadullah realized that religion survives not through loud enforcement but through quiet transformation.
• Faith in An Age of Pressure
Today, Indian Muslims are subject to surveillance, suspicion, and social marginalization. In such a climate, internal unity is not optional.
Sectarian conflict saps energy, leadership, and credibility. An approach inspired by Sufism provides a means of safeguarding faith without hardening hearts. It teaches Muslims to be firm in belief but gentle in behaviour.
A Forgotten Voice, a Needed Return
Imdadullah Muhajir Makki left behind no loud political movements but only wisdom: subtle, demanding, and deeply ethical. Haft Masla reminds us that Islam was never meant to continually test others. It was meant to be a journey of self-reform. As he warned long ago: "When religion loses gentleness, it loses its soul." Today, South Asian Islam faces a choice. It can continue to argue itself into isolation or rediscover a tradition that values unity without uniformity, law with mercy, and faith with humility. The path that the Sufi master Imdadullah shows is not a retreat from reality; it may be the only way of surviving it.
…
URL: https://newageislam.com/the-war-within-islam/faith-imdadullah-mujahir-makki-/d/138042
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