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PA rtecipazione e CO nflitto * The Open Journal of Sociopolitical Studies http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco ISSN: 1972-7623 (print version) ISSN: 2035-6609 (electronic version) PACO, Issue 7(1) 2014: 152-169 DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v7i1p152 Published in March 15, 2014 Work licensed under a Creative Commons At- tribution-Non commercial-Share alike 3.0 Italian License RESEARCH ARTICLE THE ROLE OF SUFISM IN THE IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION, MOBI- LIZATION AND POLITICAL ACTIVISM OF THE BARELWI MOVE- MENT IN PAKISTAN Alix Philippon Univiersity of Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence, France ABSTRACT: This article intends to analyze the forms of political activism of the Barelwi movement, one specific Sufism oriented religious movement rooted in the 19th century, which has gradually politicized through Pakistani history. It has played a widely ignored role in the politics of Pakistan, may it be in party politics, social movements, or through the islamization of society. There are today about forty Barelwi or- ganizations differently located on a scale of politicization, protest and radicalization. These “neo Sufi orders” have constructed a distinct Sufi identity and evolved different strategies to defend their version of Islam and fight for an Islamic State, an endeavor which they call the system of the Prophet (Nizam-e Mustafa). The organizational form they adopted is a mixture of a Sufi order, an activist associa- tion and for some, a political party. In the framework of the “War against terror”, mainly targeting their more reformist doctrinal challengers, the Barelwi presence in the public sphere has increased. The differ- ent groups of the movement have organized many conferences and demonstrations aiming both at de- nouncing the “talibanization” of Pakistan and at reasserting the role of Sufis in the promotion of an Islam of “peace, love and tolerance” in contemporary Pakistan. Paradoxically, this movement has also under- gone a process of radicalization, thus blurring the lines between peaceful activism and violent direct ac- tion. KEYWORDS: Sufism, Islamism, identity politics, mobilization, activism, Pakistan CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Alix Philippon, email: [email protected] PACO, ISSN: 2035-6609 - Copyright © 2014 - University of Salento, SIBA: http://siba-ese.unisalento.it Partecipazione e conflitto, 7(1) 2014: 152-169, DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v7i1p152 1. Introduction Since its inception, Pakistan, created in 1947 in the name of Islam, has always been an arena of a heated competition concerning the “assets of salvation” (Max Weber). In its bid to instru- mentalize the religious reference to build a modern State, Pakistan, long before the Iranian rev- olution of 1979, was already a “paradigm of Islamic revivalism » (Esposito 1987, ix). This country is a political laboratory eloquently demonstrating that there is no such thing as an “Islamic es- sence” leading to a single interpretation of dogma and which might serve as an independent variable determining the nature of political debates or the morphology of the State. Because of its symbolic monopoly, the religious reference plays the role of a “natural” ideological resource from the State or against it, and operates in the mode of a “nationalist discourse » (Blom 2002, 100). Indeed, the mobilization of religious referents concerns both State and non State actors, political action from « the top down » and from « the bottom up », social conservatism as well as protest action, hailing from both Islamist groups and Sufi groups. The omnipresence of the Islamic reference on the Pakistani political scene as well as the fight for the monopoly of its in- terpretation have indeed generated a “fragmentation of authority” (Eickelman and Piscatori 1996, 59) and thus a struggle between multiple actors appropriating religious symbols to define “real Islam”. Far from being a monolith, Islam covers a wide and often contradictory spectrum of practices and beliefs. Within the broad pool of resources which “Islam” is, Sufism, as the mys- tical trend within Islam, has been repeatedly invoked by different actors in the conflicting pro- cess of defining Pakistan’s cultural and political identity. As early on as the reformist Moham- med Iqbal1, who reinterpreted it in a more dynamic idiom able to inspire and mobilize the Indi- an Muslim community in the 1930’s, Sufism has naturally become part of the ideologization of Islam in Pakistan and hence of the language of Muslim symbolic politics. In the 1930’s, Iqbal started defining his idea of Muslim nationalism. His contribution to the formation of the Indian Muslims’ collective consciousness seems unequalled (Malik 2005, ix). In his eyes, the reform of Islam must have socio-political aims: his goals are to restore the dynamism of Islam, to exhume its original truths in order to reconstruct the great Islamic concepts and reconnect them with their initial universality. He tried to redefine the role of Sufism in the modern world in order to achieve his reformist and modernist mission. Since then, Sufism has often been tapped as a po- litical resource and instrumentalized as a legitimizing tool by both state and non state actors. As the contested “mystical” aspect of faith, its very definition has become increasingly the locus of arguments within the Pakistani public sphere. But delineating it only as the mystical trend with- in Islam does not enable one to understand the more social and political dimensions of this di- verse phenomenon. Given the “polyphonic” heritage (Bruinessen and Day Howell 2007, 14) and 1 A poet and a philosopher, he is considered as the main designer of the idea of Pakistan and as the spiritual father of the country. 153 Alix Philippon, The Role of Sufism in the Identity Construction, Mobilization and Political Activism the great hermeneutic plasticity of Sufism, it seems best here to use the word in a descriptive way to avoid getting trapped in one ideological discourse or another. However, ever since the awakening of Muslim self-consciousness in the 18th and 19th centu- ries which gave rise to various movements of reformism, Sufism, in Pakistan as elsewhere, has played an ambivalent role in the Islamic revival. A rhetoric of decline, decadence and at times, downright condemnation, long dominated the public discourse on “Sufism”, and particularly concerning the system of meaning and practices centred around shrines and pirs (the Sufi saints and their much criticized descendants), and still more specifically the cult of the saints, whose sanctity had been naturalized in popular culture. But analyzing the harsh criticisms on Sufism and pirs only as a doctrinal position would probably be incomplete. Indeed, if there is rivalry be- tween competing interpretations of Islam, the issue seems also to revolve around the stakes of competing authorities searching for popular legitimacy, and attempting to constitute their own clientele. Carl Ernst has rightly pointed out that whereas the controversy is formulated in a doc- trinal language, the struggle is actually a political one (Ernst 2000, 79). If the Islamists, among others, have often identified Sufis as their “enemies”, it might also be because the latter have been some of the most powerful institutional actors within Muslim societies and hence some of their most potent rivals in their bid to reform the sociopolitical order. Sufism has thus gradually emerged as a newly disputed category and was largely constructed in academic as well as public discourse as antithetical to Islamism, understood as the emer- gence of new forms of organizations using Islam both as a political ideology and as a religion (Roy 1992). Many in Pakistan deplore the fact that “Sufi Islam”, which for the majority consti- tutes the matrix of the subcontinent’s Muslim identity, has been gradually eclipsed by more “fundamentalist” versions of Islamic faith averse to the mystical trends, such as Abu Ala Mawdudi’s Islamist party, the Jama’at-e Islami. In the context of the war on terror in which Pa- kistan has played an ambiguous role as a front-line State since 2001, the universe of Sufism, deeply embedded in Pakistan’s ethos, has come to be seen as the natural symbolic ally of power and been promoted as an alternative to counter the “forces of extremism”. However, the Paki- stani State does not hold the monopoly of the interpretation of Sufism. For this heavily charged signifier encompasses doctrines, forms of organization as well as practices performed by actors belonging to the whole of the political spectrum- including the Islamist field. As a matter of fact, the hegemonic “Sufi Islam versus fundamentalist Islam” narrative appears to be just one ideolo- gy among others once confronted with the complexity of Sufi politics in Pakistan. Within the Islamist field, where all actors are fighting for the setting up of an Islamic State, doctrinal positions on Sufism are ambivalent and range from enthusiastic acceptance to com- plete rejection. The movement which has the most loudly trumpeted its affiliation with the Sufi identity is the Barelwi movement. Often overlooked by scholars, this theological school was founded in the 19th century by the scholar and Sufi Ahmed reza Khan Barelwi (1856-1921), and is often presented as a form of traditionalist reaction to more reformist movements (mainly Deobandi and Ahl-e Hadith) critical of some contentious aspects of Sufism. If the rhetorical and doctrinal conflicts between contending sectarian groups in the Indian subcontinent could be in- terpreted in the 19th century less as a sign of the division of the Muslim community than as one 154 Partecipazione e conflitto, 7(1) 2014: 152-169, DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v7i1p152 of “a substantial homogeneity among Muslims » (Metcalf 1982, 358), a different interpretation seems necessary today. The doctrinal conflicts between Barelwis, Deobandis and Ahl-e hadith are indeed not new. But their scope has gradually broadened and has given way to mobilization on the basis of religious identities which have endorsed a political function.

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