Why Salman Nadwi’s Lamentation Puts a Negative Spotlight on Islam
By
Arshad Alam, New Age Islam
22 April
2022
A Call
To Embrace Monotheism Does Not Necessarily Further The Cause Of Indian Muslims
Main
Points:
1. Salman Nadwi
has produced a short video in the backdrop of Jahangirpuri clashes.
2. He argues
that Muslims are facing this calamity because they have deviated from the path
of Islam and become ‘grave worshippers.’
3. He falsely
argues that Sanatan Dharm and Islam proclaims monotheism.
4. He argues
that India was gift given to Muslims by God to spread the light of Islam which
they have squandered by behaving like the Hindu polytheists.
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A short
video by Salman Nadwi is enough to tell you what is wrong with the
self-proclaimed Indian Ulama. The video has been made in the backdrop of
Jahangirpuri clashes in Delhi which saw stone-pelting by Muslims after Hindus
attempted to hoist a flag atop a mosque during the Ram Navami procession.
Salman Nadwi analyses why this happened, how this is a lesson for Muslims to
change their ‘deviant ways’, and how the provocateurs were not really the
followers of Sanatan Dharma.
>
In the
video, Nadwi makes a distinction between Sanatan Dharm and Hinduism, arguing
that the former has always believed in monotheism (Allah/Ishwar ek hai).
Hinduism, he says, was a pejorative designation given to Indians by the
Persians. He may be correct that one of the usages of the word Hindu at that
time was extremely negative, but should he be saying this at all in today’s
religiously polarized context? What does he want to achieve by reminding the
Hindus that they are still carrying the name given by Muslims? If today, a vast
number of people want to call themselves as Hindus, then what is his problem?
Why this urge to foist his own nomenclature on a billion who want to be known
by that name. What it tells us about Nadwi is that he is still dwelling in the
past, when the likes of his had the power to confer names and designations on
people.
Nadwi
instead would like to use the word Sanatan Dharm to describe Hindus. But then
he has a peculiar understanding of Sanatanis as well and it is not surprising why
he prefers that word. His argument is that Sanatan Dharm is promotes monotheism
rather than polytheism as is the popular Hindu practice. Thus, his preference
for the word Sanatan derives from the fact that like Islam, the other faith
also promotes monotheism. This tells us what is fundamentally wrong about
Muslim religious leadership and their understanding of inter-religious
co-existence.
But more
fundamentally, who told Nadwi that Sanatan Dharm is only about monotheism?
There are strands within this religion which can be linked to monotheism, but
there are other strands, equally valid, who don’t call themselves as
monotheists. The whole Bhakti tradition imagined a personalized God, near to
the self, with or without the image or the idol. Within the Hindu philosophy,
they are manifestations of different attributes of the Almighty, the Creator.
Not just this, Hinduism also has space for atheistic doctrines like Buddhism,
early Jainism and even the Ajivikas, where there is no concept of God or
becomes irrelevant within their larger philosophies. Such spaces of internal
pluralism are simply absent in Islam and would probably attract the charges of
blasphemy. Nadwi’s Islam can only relate to that strand of Hindu religiosity
which imagines God as one. His Islam can only get into a conversation with a
religious worldview which shares its assumption about the creator, not with
those who are coming from a different philosophical location. And that perhaps
is the biggest challenge which Islam, in a diverse society like India, hasn’t
been able to solve.
Ultimately
all mythologies are arbitrary. If Islam can live by the myth that its Prophet
split the moon into two, why can’t it believe in mythologies of Ganesha and
Krishna? Nadwi’s problem, and of many Muslims like him, is that only their
arbitrariness should be valid and all others should be declared as false. Why
should there be just one way of expressing religiosity? What is the problem if
one is believing in many headed Gods or no God at all? And is there any
guarantee that when the whole world become monotheist, problems between
communities will cease to exist. There is a lot of common ground between Islam
and Christianity but they have fought long and bitter battles simply over whose
version of monotheism is the correct one. Nadwi will do well to study the
history of monotheistic religions in order to understand that it is hardly a
recipe for peace.
Nadwi
doesn’t stop there. He argues that those who indulged in arson and looting in
places like Khargone and Delhi should be called hooligans who have come from
the jungle and do not know how to behave in civilized spaces like cities. Since
Muslims are predominantly urban, it does not escape attention that he is trying
to say that Muslims were the first to create cities and civilized spaces in
this country. This is not the place to get into argument about urbanization in
medieval India but the haughtiness underlying the assertion that Muslims
brought civilization in this country needs to be called out. Such a demeaning
understanding of the country’s Hindu civilizational heritage does not augur
well for pluralism.
Nadwi also
gets into the causes of why Muslims are at the receiving end today. He starts
by saying that the subcontinent was ‘given’ to Muslims to bring the light of
monotheism. But given by whom? What he means is that India was gifted to the
Muslims by God to make the Hindus realize the falsity of their religion. This
is not just hubris but also shows the contempt in which Hinduism is held at by
the likes of Nadwi. In a similar vein, he also argues that till the time
Muslims do not openly preach Tauheed (oneness of God) to others, they will
remain a damned community in the eyes of Allah. What really does he mean?
Instead of exchange of religious ideas, Nadwi would very much like Muslims to
invite each and every Hindu to the fold of Islam. This attitude of ‘my way or
the highway’ is one of the many reasons why Islam appears alien and
uncompromising, not just to Hindus but now also to many Muslims.
Nadwi
laments that Muslims couldn’t hold the light properly as they indulged in grave
worship (Yahan Sajda, Wahan Sajda). Here Nadwi, true to his revivalist
leanings, is accusing the majority of Indian Muslim population who are Barelwis
of being too close to Hindus because they visit and pray at the shrines. In
other words, Muslims indulged in shirk (associating partners to God) and hence
God decided to punish them. Apparently, one of the ways that God is adopting to
punish Muslims these days is by unleashing Hindu mobs on their meagre
properties and homes, and even their mosques. It is clear that Nadwi has no
empathy for any Muslim loss of life or property since he has declared them
Mushrik anyway. And yet the irony is that lakhs of Muslims will continue to follow
him.
But what
should worry Indian Muslims most is that despite so many centuries of living
together with Hindus, we haven’t been able to evolve a theology of religious
pluralism. Nadwi is just a crass expression of this failure.
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A
regular contributor to NewAgeIslam.com, Arshad Alam is a writer and researcher
on Islam and Muslims in South Asia.
URL:
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