Not for Distribution 5 The pattern of Islamic reform in Britain The Deobandis between intra-Muslim sectarianism and engagement with wider society Jonathan Birt and Philip Lewis Introduction The great historian of Islam in India, William Cantwell Smith, remarked that the ulama, the guardians of Islam’s religious disciplines, appeared rather late in the process of Indian Islamization, which, historically, was gradual, even in the areas of military conquest, and whose pioneers were more often than not traders and mystics. 1 This does not hold true for the Muslims of Britain, three-quarters of whom are of South Asian heritage, where some ulama arrived with the fi rst waves of mass migration in the 1960s. For this simple reason, it is better to understand the process of Islamic reform as deeply coloured by its Sub-Continental origins, even if it is now shaped by the British context. This chapter will map the establishment of Islamic seminaries in Britain with a particular focus on the Deoband School (maslak ), which of all the South Asian traditions has been far and away the most successful in this regard. We will look at continuities and changes in the curriculum, as well as new social roles that young British-educated Deobandi ulama are assuming. We will also identify the conditions and contexts in which they are able to free themselves from intra-Muslim sectarian debate to engage with wider society. The continuity of Islamic reformism The movement takes its name from Deoband, a small town a hundred miles north ulum , was founded inع-of Delhi, where the fi rst, college-level madrasah , dar al 1867 ( Metcalf 1982 ). It emerged as part of an effl orescence of religious revival- ism in nineteenth-century India. Although the pattern of reform was not confi ned to the Deobandis, they were its most important exemplars. Their fi rst priority was the preservation and dissemination of the religious heritage, understood in the classical sense of authentic religious belief and practice, the precondition for the transmission to new generations of a true Islamic formation. To this end, they created a network of fi nancially independent seminaries, separate from traditional sources of aristocratic patronage – itself a diminishing asset in the new environ- ment of British India. Their seminaries were designed for mass education and 9780415355926-van Bruinessen-Chap05.indd 91 6/10/2010 7:09:25 PM Not for Distribution 92 Jonathan Birt and Philip Lewis 1 they borrowed selectively from Western educational models, making full use of print and rail to forge new trans-local solidarities. Islam in the reform model was no longer unselfconsciously traditional, sui generis , but rather, in an expanded world, oppositional in character, defi ning itself against the popular custom of the Sufi shrines, other ulama, and non-Muslims, Hindu, and British. In such a context Deobandis were part of a sectarian environment often embroiled in what has been dubbed a fatwa-war ( Metcalf 1982 : 310). A sectari- anism from which they have not been able to extricate themselves in Britain, but which has been exacerbated by currents from the Middle East, especially the Salafi ( Birt 2005b , Hamid 2009 ). Reform was ‘rationalizing’ in the Weberian sense of ‘making religion self- conscious, systematic, and based on abstract principles’ ( Metcalf 1982 : 12). The reform message avoided intellectual complication and local variation in belief and practice in order to appeal widely to scattered Muslim ethnic groups across an India that was opening up through mass communications and transportation. It was furthermore a pattern of self-reliance that enabled Muslims to depend upon themselves, as a newly disempowered minority, rather than upon the comforts of rule. Reformed religion was more insistently a matter of personal responsibility a might noعrather than of intercession, whether political or spiritual. The shari longer be enforced by a Muslim state, but, as the leading western historian of the movement noted, ‘each believer was enjoined to engage in self-refl ection and willed external conformity to proper behavior should desires direct otherwise’ ( Metcalf 1999 : 220). This legacy of reform left an interiorized refl exive religious consciousness, a this-worldly reifi cation of mundane acts with a concomitant disenchantment of the world (the disavowal of the intercessionary power of the saints), and a symbolic religious politics of communal difference that could either focus on the ,at, Deoband, Nadwa, Ahl-i Hadith) or the state (Aligarhعindividual (Tablighi Jama at-i-Islami, Iqbal). 2 In other words, the Deoband reform movement, despiteعJama an insistence on tradition, was modern in important ways, if not strictly speaking modernist in its outlook. Again, in other words, in the judgement of Francis Robinson, there was a shift in all these reform movements, which was particularly true of the Deobandis, towards a ‘this-worldly’ or willed Islam that had four themes: self instrumentality , the idea of the individual human being as the active, creative, agent on the earth; self-affi rmation , the autonomy of the individual, to which is connected the affi rmation of the ordinary things of the self, the affi rmation of ordinary life ; and fi nally, the emphasis on self-consciousness , the refl ective self, which in the Western experience is referred to as the ‘inward turn’. ( Robinson 2000 : 112–13, our italics) While the Deoband movement has not been slow to engage in the formal politics of Islamic republics as seen with the Taliban experiment (1994–2001) and Deobandi- inspired sectarianism in Pakistan over the last fi fteen years, the Deobandis have 9780415355926-van Bruinessen-Chap05.indd 92 6/10/2010 7:09:27 PM Not for Distribution The pattern of Islamic reform in Britain 93 1 always been able to recognize, in a de facto sense, the division between secular public order and the private religious sphere, and to function perfectly well as a minority in a liberal democratic context. Participants in the Deobandi movement (and its offshoots) have, for the most part, sought personal goals, aloof from formal politics, of the attainment of piety, religious self-knowledge, and even ‘moral sociability’, and have been more concerned to confront other Muslims than the ‘West’; where the ‘West’ is seen as a source of corruption to Muslim individuals rather than as a supranational entity to be resisted through collective political action.3 The establishment of Islamic seminaries in Britain At the heart of Islamic reform in Britain has been the emergence of Islamic ulum s). Table 5.1 lists twenty-fi ve seminaries in the Unitedع-seminaries ( dar al Kingdom from a survey we undertook in 2003, defi ned for our purposes here as ulama-led educational institutions training students in the traditional Islamic sciences. One was established in the 1970s, three in the 1980s, eighteen in the 1990s and three in the fi rst few years of the new century. All except one are Sunni. This is a conservative estimate mostly compiled from seminaries that are formally registered as they provide statutory education up to sixteen years of age. However, there is no requirement of registration for those that only provide formal seminary studies for students older than 16. If this latter category is included, then there are at least four other mosques in the North of England that are training small numbers of ulama, three Deobandi and one Barelwi, and, if informal circles of higher learning are included, then the fi gure would increase further still. A sectarian analysis immediately reveals the domination of the Deobandi movement – sixteen Deobandi seminaries, fi ve Barelwi, one Azhari, one Nadwi, one Shiite, and one Ikhwani (Muslim Brotherhood) – and the list as a whole largely refl ects the predominance of Muslims in Britain with roots in South Asia, 74 per cent of the total in the Census of 2001. The seminaries refl ecting traditions other than the main South Asian ones have smaller constituencies and therefore struggle to fi nd broader acceptance. The Muslim College (Azhari) enjoys an infl uential political role because of the national profi le of its founder, the late Sheikh Dr Zaki Badawi (d. 2006). Its initial funding, some fi ve million pounds, came from Libya, and while it has subsequently allied itself to the popular Barelwi tradition, its British Muslim intake is still small. The Muslim Brotherhood Centre in Wales uses Arabic as the medium of instruction and thus largely caters for an Islamist constituency in Britain and Europe. The director of the Nadwa centre in Oxford admits that it is as yet more a virtual Islamic seminary without a permanent building. Its clientele are full-time students at Oxford who spend their spare time studying, 60 per cent of whom are women. The Hawzah Ilmiyyah in Willesden, London, established in 2003 (growing out of the Imam Hussain Institute founded in 1998) intends to develop a comprehensive eight-year course for students over the age of eighteen. Affi liated with the Islamic College for 9780415355926-van Bruinessen-Chap05.indd 93 6/10/2010 7:09:27 PM Not for Distribution 9780415355926-van Bruinessen-Chap05.indd 94 Table 5.1 Survey of Islamic seminaries, 2003 No. Est. Name Location Gender No. of students Affi liation Notes 1975 Darul Uloom al-Arabiya al-Islamiya Holcombe near Bury boys 410 Deobandi Saharanpuri Mother madrasah to fi ve (DUAI) other UK seminaries 1981 Institute of Islamic Education Dewsbury boys 300 Deobandi Tablighi Centre for Tabligh in Europe 1987 Jamia-tul Imam Muhammad Kidderminster then