Al Sudais Imam-e-Haram visit to India and Sunni response

The Representatives of majority  sunni muslims ,Raza Academy,All India Ulema Mashiakh Board,MSO of India ,Jamat Raza e Mustafa etc have demanded clarification from the Imam of Wahabi Saltanat to express his opinion on the treaty made between Indian Muslim leaders and between saudi Kingdon in 1925 .In which Saudi king Abdul Azeez had Promised to gave back the control of Haramain  Sharaifain  i.e of Makkah,Madina and Taif (Hijaz ) to the united body of world muslim leaders and that they will return to Najd territory after the establishment of Peace but this treaty has not been followed and performed till now so Muhmaad Saeed Noori of Raza Academy,Maulana Yaseen Akhtar Misbahi of Darul qalam Delhi,Muhamad Ahmed Naeemi of AIUMB,Shahnawaz warsi of MSO have asked Imam to convey the message of Indian Muslims to Saudi king Abdullah.

We also support the views expressed by Mohtarma Sadia Dehlavi in Times of India (below) and would like to tell that Imam does not represents the Sunni Muslims of the world and he is not our leader.

The Wahabi Deobandi nexus to popularize Wahabi extremist Ideology in Indian Subcontinent condemned and it has become clear now that Deoband represents Wahabi Ideology.Indian Muslims have been Sufism followers from the starting of Islam in India and does not support these extremist Ideologies at all.we expressed grave concerns over the false Propaganda run by Urdu Media to show the Imam as most revered personality of Islamic world”.said the statement.

Keeping the inclusive faith

24 Mar, 2011 [ Sadia Dehlvi ]

Imam Al Sudais’s India visit to lecture at the Deoband seminary is sending some sections of the Muslim community into overdrive. I received a card from the India Islamic Cultural Centre (IICC) in Delhi to attend an address by ‘His Holiness’, Imam-e-Haram, Dr Sheikh Abdul Rahman Al Sudais, presently imam of the mosque in Mecca. The accompanying letter details the imam’s achievements including his educational degrees in sharia law. In 2005, he received ‘The Islamic Personality of the Year’ award and stood nominated for the Dubai International Quran Award, which he accepted. 

The ‘His Holiness’ came as a jolt, for no such prefixes have ever been added to Prophet Muhammad’s name or that of his companions, who rank the highest in Muslim piety. As one devoted to Islam, i believe using the Quran to name an award belittles the sanctity of God’s word and borders on blasphemy. Legitimising such an award by its acceptance seems a worse action. The early history of Islam contains no examples of spiritual or religious leaders accepting state or private awards. On the contrary, sharia and prophetic traditions frown upon those who seek or allow public adulation, for all righteous deeds are for God alone.

The Deoband leadership has requested that Al Sudais not be frisked during his visit to Parliament. Due respect must be accorded to the visiting imam, because he leads the prayers at the Kaabah. This reverence flows from ‘where’ the prayers are led and not because of ‘who’ the imam is. To quote Arshad Madani of the Jamiat-e-Ulama-e-Hind, “Sheikh Al Sudais is the highest religious leader of the Muslims”. This is misleading because Al Sudais merely represents the highest-ranking sacred space. The worldwide Muslim majority does not subscribe to the radical Wahhabi ideology propagated by Saudi clerics.

This political, narrow, legalistic and literalist interpretation of Islam emerged from the desert wastelands of Najd in Saudi Arabia from among the followers of the Bedouin Abdul Wahhab, an 18th century self-claimed reformist. The trajectory of the Wahhabi movement is rooted in violence, legitimising jihad as an armed conflict to kill fellow Muslims in disagreement with their vision of Islam by declaring them kafirs, infidels. Related to the ruling family through matrimonial alliances, Abdul Wahhab’s family continues to control the ministry of religion, quashing many reforms desired by the political leadership, particularly by the present moderate King Abdullah.

The Wahhabis, who call themselves ‘Salafis’, have a limited following in the subcontinent. It includes the Deoband seminary, Tablighi Jamaat, Ahle Hadith and the Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan. Together, they constitute not more than 15 to 20% of the total population. Unfortunately, the government and the public fall prey to media-driven stereotypes. The perceptions of these factions representing majority Muslim opinion are baseless. Muslims are not monolithic communities but adhere to varied interpretations of Islam. In India and Pakistan, the Ahle Sunnat wal Jamaat represented by the Barelvi creed has the largest following.

Saudi clerics, including Al Sudais, face international criticism for inciting passions against the Barelvis, Shias, other Muslim minorities and non-Muslims. The Saudi state outsources its Wahhabi ideology by spending billions of dollars in patronising the building and running of mosques, madrassas, journals and cleric training programmes. It remains the fountainhead of the extremism infiltrating Muslim communities, tearing their local cultures apart. The bombing of dargahs and Shia mosques in Pakistan is one such manifestation.

The Saudi state has robbed all Muslims in the world of their legitimate cultural, historical and spiritual legacy, both in the physical and spiritual realm. In 1925, despite global outrage, all mausoleums including those of the Prophet’s family at Jannat-ul Maali and Jannat-ul Baqi, the sacred graveyards of Mecca and Medina, were demolished. Once reflecting Islamic glory and heritage, the bulldozed compounds are now typical Wahhabi burial grounds with rows of featureless unmarked graves. Several other historical sites continue to be obliterated.

Throughout history, Sufis and their disciples from different parts of the globe inhabited Mecca and Medina, the first centres of spiritual Islam. Now, the constant patrolling by the mutawwah, the religious police, ensures that pilgrims do not participate in collective spiritual gatherings. Forced to follow Wahhabi practices, devotees in Medina are not allowed to face the Prophet’s chamber in supplication. Women face severe restrictions of time and space at the sacred mosques. It is decreed sinful and therefore criminal to write, read, sing or listen to ‘naat’, poetic praise, of the Prophet. Enforcements have washed away these traditions commonplace during Prophet Muhammad’s life. Thirty-five among the Prophet’s poet companions composed ‘naat’, Hassan ibn Thabit being his favourite.

The aims and objective of the IICC is to preserve and promote the composite and inclusive cultural traditions of Indian Muslims. Since its inception, the Centre has been trying to decode which cultural activities are sharia compliant and those that are not. Therefore, it is ironic and worrying that the IICC is one of the venues for the imam’s address. I hope Al Sudais’s discourse triggers a genuine and long overdue intra-faith dialogue amongst Indian Muslims as to what the rightful traditions of Islam are.

( The writer is a commentator and an author.)

Unwelcome in India

Saturday, 26 March 2011 08:11

Point of View: Guest Editorial By Dr. Irfaan Al -Alawi

by Irfan Al-Alawi – 24th March 2011

http://www.lapidomedia.com/supreme-leader-of-wahhabism-gets-royal-welcome-in-india

In a shocking display of heedlessness about the dangers of radical Islam, India has allowed the hate-mongering Saudi imam and Friday preacher at the Grand Mosque (Haram) in Mecca, Abdur-Rahman Al-Sudais, to schedule a journey to the country beginning Friday, 25 March.

Al-Sudais, a prominent exponent of the hard-core Wahhabi ideology, will visit the extremist centre at Darul Uloom Deoband in U.P. Al-Sudais is then planning trips to New Delhi, including a dinner in his honour in the annexe of the Indian parliament, and to Old Delhi, preaching and leading prayer in both cities.

Citizens of India, Muslim as well as non-Muslim, should have no illusions about the intent of Al-Sudais’ tour. He represents the Wahhabi apparatus that holds Muslims and non-Muslims under Saudi rule in a fatal grip of intimidation and enforced conformity, and its alliance with the Deobandi element and the deviant doctrines that produced the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban.

When the leading Saudi Wahhabi visits Darul Uloom Deoband, a pact between inspirers of terrorism is affirmed and, in effect, a summit between apologists for bloodshed is advertised. Large numbers of Deobandi adherents are expected to flock to the event, clogging roads and otherwise disrupting life in U.P., which has previously suffered conflict between fundamentalist and traditionalist Muslims.

The arrival of Al-Sudais as the first-ever imam of the Haram to come to India is intended unarguably to impress Indian Muslims with the alleged stability of Saudi Wahhabism and the firmness of its solidarity with Deobandism.

The ‘moderate’ Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind (JUH) has requested that when he goes to the parliament, Al-Sudais be spared a security examination. In an absurd claim, Al-Sudais has been designated by JUH as the supreme world authority for Sunni believers and therefore above the supposed indignity of a security check.

But every aspect of Al-Sudais and his career bespeak his distance from ordinary Muslims: Al-Sudais will reportedly land at Darul Uloom in a helicopter. The authority of this upstart rests upon usurpation of beloved Mecca and backing for Saudi injustices against Islam, the people of the Arabian peninsula, and the world.

A security examination for explosives would not, one must admit, detect the most destructive product of Al-Sudais and his peers: the Wahhabism he learned at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, known to Saudis as ‘the terrorist factory’.

JUH has alleged that Al-Sudais will appear in India as an acolyte of interreligious harmony, but JUH leader Arshad Madani, who arranged invitation of the Saudi cleric, boasted that Al-Sudais would be shown how Wahhabi, Deobandi, and other retrograde interpretations of Islam are ‘flourishing’ in the country.

India, along with Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the South Asian Muslim communities in the UK and U.S., have been targeted by Wahhabis and Deobandis for both recruitment to and commission of terrorism.

Backrgound:

Al-Sudais has been barred from Canada and criticised by Saudi officials for his hateful commentaries. Credibility about his claims of inter-faith dialogue remain questionable so long as he represents the official Wahhabi clerics in the Saudi kingdom.

One one side, Al-Sudais serves a legacy of prejudicial and narrow-minded actions by the Wahhabi ulema. The latter shield the radicals in the Saudi regime who are continuing two centuries’ recent history of vandalism against the Islamic heritage of Arabia, and committing other offences against the conscience and consciousness of the Islamic umma.

With the complicity of Al-Sudais, Wahhabi hard-liners seek new restrictions on the conduct of the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca, including proposals for segregation and compulsory face-covering of women during hajj, that had never before been prevalent within the Islamic umma.

In addition, Al-Sudais supports the anti-Islamic, anti-historical, and anti-cultural plan for the transformation of Mecca, the holiest city of the Muslims, into a cluster of Las Vegas-style high-rise buildings and similar structures.

These gigantic, architecturally inferior projects will dwarf and belittle the sanctity of the Haram and the Ka’bah, which Al-Sudais is supposed to administer. Instead, he participates in selling it off, or destroying it, bit by bit. Such are the perverse ways of the Wahhabis.

Parallel with them, the Deobandi clerics enable terrorist attacks against Sufi shrines in Pakistan and India, the penetration of Bangladesh by radicals, and aggression against traditional Muslims in U.P. They have not yet committed atrocities and demolition on the scale of the Wahhabis, because the Deobandis only exercise limited power.

But accommodation of either form of violent fundamentalism will lead inexorably to more chaos and cruelty. The Taliban destruction of the Buddhist monuments at Bamiyan in Afghanistan represented an imitation of Saudi-Wahhabi devastation in Mecca, Medina, and other peninsular cities.

For India to complacently allow Al-Sudais to meet and conspire with the Deobandi leadership strikes a serious blow against moderate Muslims, including activists for social reform in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

It also harms those in South Asia endeavouring to build barriers against the tsunami of radical exhortation, financing, enlistment, and, finally violence, that is sweeping the subcontinent.

India has already had enough bitter experience with Wahhabism. Its political and religious leaders should say no to Al-Sudais, and send him back to the Saudi kingdom without delay.