Now the same madrasas which had so radically and successfully challenged the Sufi traditions of the Frontier were beginning to spread their web around rural Sindh. Lal Peri had told me about a new Deobandi madrasa that had just that month opened on the edge of the Sehwan bazaar, so after leaving her at Lal Bagh that evening, I went and met its director, Maulana Saleemullah.
The madrasa was located in an old haveli, recently renovated at some expense in gleaming marble, but still only semi-furnished. The twenty or so children in residence were still sleeping on mats and bedding on the floor, and the only furniture in the classrooms where the kids sat cross-legged chanting the Quran was a single desk for the teacher.
Saleemullah turned out to be a young, intelligent and well-educated man, who received me warmly. He was articulate in debate; but there was no masking the puritanical severity of some of his views.
For Saleemullah, the theology of the dispute between the Sufis and the orthodox was quite simple. “We don’t like tomb worship,” he said. “The Quran is quite clear about this, and the scholars from the other side simply choose to ignore what it says. We must not pray to dead men and ask things from them, even the saints. In Islam we believe there is no power but God. I invite people who come here to return to the true path of the Quran. Lal Shahbaz is dead, I tell them. Do not pray to a corpse. Go to the mosque, not to a grave.”
“Do the people here listen to you?” I asked.
“Sadly this town is full of shirk and grave worship,” he replied, stroking his long, straggling black beard. “It is all the Hindu influence that is responsible. Previously these people were economically powerful in this area, and as they worshipped idols, the illiterate Muslims here became infected with Hindu practices. All over Pakistan this is the case, but Sindh is much the worst. It is like what happened with Moses and Pharaoh. The children of Moses were influenced by the children of Pharaoh, and when Moses left them to go and speak to God, a magician made an idol of a calf, and the children of Moses began to worship it. Our job is to bring the idol and grave worshippers from kufr [infidelity] back to the true path of the Shariah.”
“And what about the drumming and the music and the qawwalis they play in the shrine?”
“Music is also against the law of Islam,” he replied. “Musical instruments lead men astray and are sinful. They are forbidden, and these musicians are wrongdoers. With education we hope they will change their ways.”
“So you think there is nothing Islamic about what goes on in the shrines?”
“Sufism is not Islamic,” replied Saleemullah. “It is jadoo: magic tricks only. It has nothing to do with real Islam. It is just superstition, ignorance, perversion, illiteracy and stupidity. This town is full of fools—if people here were less stupid we could have filled this madrasa. We can accommodate 400 here, but only ten families have sent their children. Have you talked to the fakirs in the shrine? They are all illiterate. Really—what do they know of the Quran? Yet the people go to them and seek their opinion as if they were scholars. We have a long way to go here. At the moment only the poor will send their children to us, and then only because we feed them. We just have to be patient and explain to the people here that their superstition leads to Jahannam—hell—but the path of true Islam leads to Jannah—Paradise.”
“And what of the Sufi idea that Paradise lies within you?” I asked. Here it seemed, lay a small but important clash of civilisations, not between East and West, or Hinduism and Islam, but within Islam itself. Between the strictly regulated ways of the Wahhabis and the customs of the heterodox Sufis lay 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.
“Paradise within us?” said Saleemullah, raising his eyebrows. “No, no: this is emotional talk—a dream only. Is there evidence for this in the Quran? There is nothing in the Quran about Paradise within the body or in the heart: the heart is too small for God. Paradise is outside, a physical place in the heavens which God has created for his people. According to our beliefs there will be many levels of Paradise, eight in all, with a place for each believer. There will be couches to lie in the shade, and rivers of milk and honey and cool, clear spring water. To get there you must follow the commands of the Almighty. Then when you die, Insh’Allah, that will be where your journey ends. On Judgement Day the seas and oceans and earth will be turned into hell, but those Muslims who follow the law and do good deeds will be transported up to Paradise.”