The Real Islam - By William Dalrymple

To one side lay the destination to which the crowds of pilgrims were heading: a warren of alleys and bazaars leading toward the shrine of India's most revered Sufi saint, Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya. Nizamuddin was a 14th century Muslim mystic who withdrew from the world and preached a message of prayer, love and the unity of all things. He promised his followers that if they loosened their ties with the world, they could purge their souls of worries and directly experience God. Rituals and fasting were for the pious, said the saint, but love was everywhere and was much the surest route to the divine.

Yet only a short distance from the shrine towered a very different Islamic institution, one that embodied a quite different face of Islam. The merkaz is a modern, gray, concrete structure seven stories tall that houses the world headquarters of an austere Islamic movement called Tablighism, to which Amin belongs. The Tablighis advocate a return to the basic fundamentals of the Koran, and greatly dislike the mystical Islam of Sufism, which they believe encourages such un-Koranic practices as idolatry, music, dancing and the veneration of dead saints. This was certainly the view of Amin, who, when I met him, had been busy trying to persuade passing pilgrims to turn away from their destination. "I invite these people who come to Nizamuddin to return to the true path of the Koran," he said. "Do not pray to a corpse, I tell them. Go to the mosque, not a grave. Superstition leads to jahannam—hell. True Islam leads to jannah—paradise."

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Here, it seemed to me, lay some sort of crux—a clash of civilizations, not between East and West but within Islam itself. Between the strictly regulated ways of the orthodox Tablighis and the customs of the heterodox Sufis lay not just two different understandings of Islam but two entirely different conceptions of how to live, how to die, and how to make the final and most important, and difficult, journey of all—to paradise.

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From the very beginning of Sufism, music, dance, poetry and meditation have been seen as crucial spiritual strides on the path of love, an invaluable aid toward attaining unity with God—true paradise. Music, in particular, enables devotees to focus their whole being on the divine so intensely that the soul is both destroyed and resurrected. At Sufi shrines, devotees are lifted by the music into a state of spiritual ecstasy.

Yet these heterodox methods of worship have divided Sufis from many of their Muslim brethren. Throughout Islamic history, more puritanical Muslims have claimed that Sufi practices were infections from Christianity and Hinduism, quite alien to the original principles of Islam. As Najaf Haider, professor of medieval history at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, tells it, such conflicts were inevitable: "In orthodox Islam the object of creation is the worship of God; God is the master and the devotee is the slave. The Sufis argue that God should be worshipped not because he has commanded us to but because he's such a lovable being. The cornerstone of Sufi ideology is love, and all traditions are tolerated because anyone is capable of expressing love for God.

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The tablighis in Nizamuddin are not Wahhabi, but their beliefs are derived from similar theological traditions. They share the Wahhabis' suspicion of the Sufis, and their effect on the Nizamuddin shrine is the same, as they slowly attempt to undermine Islam's most tolerant and syncretic incarnation just when that face of Islam is most needed in healing the growing breach between Islam and other religions. After leaving Amin at the doors of his Tablighi headquarters, I headed on down into the alleys of Nizamuddin. Taking off my sandals at the entrance of the shrine, I spoke with Hussein, the old man who looks after the shoes of the pilgrims. I asked what he thought of the Tablighis. Hussein's response was passionate: "These people are so extreme and intolerant. Look around you. Everyone in Delhi knows about the power of Nizamuddin. Everyone knows that if your heart is pure and you ask him something, that he cannot refuse you. I have felt his power in my own life. I lost my hut in a slum clearance 10 years ago. I was hungry and I had nothing. But I prayed to the saint, and through him I found a place to stay and a way of supporting my family. I tell you: if anybody abuses Nizamuddin Auliya, I will be the first to defend him—with my knife if need be." The Real Islam - By William Dalrymple

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