Dec
01
2008
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Sher Shah 1539 |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 01 December 2008 |
In the aftermath of the attacks on Mumbai, some people are waking up to the presence of radical Islam in India.
The intellectual foundations of modern Takfiri Islam can be traced to India through the Deobandi School of study to Hassan al Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood to Sayyid Qtub and the current machinations of Ayman Zawahiri. But the story goes back further than that.
In 1539 an Afghan Khan originally named Farid seized control of the Mughal Empire taking the name Sher Shah.
Afghan rule was nothing new to parts of the subcontinent. Pathan (Afghan) Sultans of one type or another had feifdoms in India since the 13th century. Sher Shah's sweep to power over the remnants of Babur's Mughal Empire in many ways was a restoration of power for the Afghans in India according to the British Diplomat Sir Olaf Caroe.
Afghan Muslims nominally ruled India until a revolt was staged against the British in 1857. The British crushed the revolt and what little left of the Muhgals placing the British Raj in power.
The Deoband school of Islam was founded in 1866 by Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi as the Darl Uloom Seminary. The purpose was to restore Islam to its roots, to what many modern Takfiris including Qtub and Zawahiri call the ways of the "unique Quranic generation." Those would be the ways of Mohammed and his original followers--the prophet and his companions.
The crushing of the Muslims in India was another milestone of the West crushing Dar al Islam, which at one time spread from Spain to Indonesia.
Only with a return to the ways of the prophet and his companions, so the theory goes, would Islam once again rise to power and its rightful position in the world.
(The Pathans in Afghanistan always followed a more conservative version of Islam--at least in form. The British Diplomat Montstuart Elphinstone wrote of women wearing Burquas in 1815, more than 50 years before the Deobandi movement.)
The events of last week were not of the making of the last few years or for that matter the 20th century.
Much of the history of India is that of the Raj versus the Khan or the Shah. The Queen, though having a massive sway for three and half centuries, is but a blip in the sweep of history.
History churns on and to understand a news even today, we must often look deep into the past. If the past is understood well enough, the potential future can be understood as well.
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