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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Saleem Khan
The Shia dominance of the legal profession in British India :A Study of Lawyer-Politicians of Bihar

‘Ulema, religious rituals, sectarian violence and aristocrats have generally been the focus for studies on Shi‘ism and Shi‘as in South Asia, while high caste, upper middle class British educated Hindu Brahmins such as the Sapru-Nehru clan usually provide the focus for studies on lawyer-politicians. Yet some of the best barristers of British India were Shi‘as by origin or choice. A few like the Muslim modernist Syed Amir Ali and Muhammad Ali Jinnah have been the subject of several publications. In particular, the focus of this paper is on the Shi‘a Muslim Barristers of Bihar, who have received much less attention.  Centred on two brothers, Sir Ali Imam and Justice Hasan Imam of Patna, and their distant younger relative Sir Sultan Ahmed of Gaya, they each rose to the apex of both the political and legal professions during the British Raj. The elder brother Sir Ali Imam headed the Muslim League, while Hasan Imam became the leader of the Hindu-dominated Indian National Congress. Sir Sultan Ahmed, in contrast to the Imam brothers, later on came to head the All India Shi‘a Conference. The descendents and relatives of the Imam brothers acquired an elite education, often at British private schools, Oxbridge and the Inns of Law, and were well represented in the Indian Supreme and High Courts until the 1970s. This paper also looks at the relations between these Bihari Syed Shi‘a barristers with the much larger Sunni community, the Hindu majority, and their co-religionists in Awadh.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Hasan Ali Khan
The role of the Auqaf Department in re-defining Sufi and Shi‘a built heritage in Pakistan

This paper describes the general role of the Auqaf Department of the Government of Pakistan in the Islamization era of the 1970s and the 1980s, and its development into a monolith which, along with the affiliated Department of Archaeology, is responsible for the complete management of the built heritage of the country. It will first briefly look at the establishment of the original Auqaf, under British administration after India passed under direct rule, and its early development in the first half of the twentieth century. After partition both India and Pakistan inherited their respective Auqaf departments, along with the colonial-era laws which regulated and governed them. In the case of Pakistan the ministry was quickly restructured to expand, and started taking over shrines not under state control. The process sped up when the Auqaf was subdivided into the Provincial Auqafs, which took direct control of all shrines and mosques in the respective provinces, and the Federal Auqaf, which hence forth dealt only with larger monuments considered to be national treasures, like mosques and forts. In time the provincial Auqafs began a conscious process of dispossessing any shrines not under their control, by deposing the lineal caretakers, and in cases remodelling the monuments on a foreign iconoclastic archetype. This period coincides with the Islamization era of the 1980s, and has resulted in a great loss of Sufi and Shi‘a architectural heritage, especially in the Punjab.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Simon Wolfgang Fuchs
Third Wave Shi‘ism: Sayyid  ‘Arif Husayn al-Husayni and the Islamic Revolution in Pakistan

Struggles over orthodoxy and religious authority have plagued Pakistan’s Shi‘a minority since the inception of the state. Early clashes about proper religious taxation (khums) coincided with an expansion of institutions of religious learning in the late 1950s. From the 1960s onwards, scholars who had studied in the shrine cities of Iraq tried to inject a reformist agenda into Pakistani Shi‘ism which they deemed to be in current form irrational, dominated by meaningless rituals and, worst of all, caught up in the heretical and esoteric ideas of Shaykhism. Yet, the reformists faced substantial opposition from infuential, mostly Lucknow-educated Pakistani ‘ulama who went as far as labelling them ‘Shi‘a Wahhabis’. Additionally, the reformists came under attack from a new generation of students who had graduated in the 1970s from madrasas in Qom, a phenomenon that increased tremendously after the Iranian revolution in 1979.

Even though many scholars have referred to a clear-cut ‘Qomization’ of Shi‘ism in Pakistan since then, the complexity of this process has often been left unexplored, with Iranian infuence in the sphere of theology being more often assumed than actually demonstrated. My paper aims to fill this gap through a close reading of speeches, interviews, and declarations by Sayyid ‘Arif Husayn al-Husayni, who served from 1984 until his assassination in 1988 as the leader of Pakistan’s most infuential Shi‘a organization, the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Fiqh-i-Ja‘fariya-i-Pakistan. After providing a short outline of the major conflicts between the diferent camps of Pakistani Shi‘a scholars in the twentieth century, the paper will discuss al-Husayni’s formation as a scholar (and activist) in Najaf and Qom. Finally, I shall identify how the hallmark themes of the Iranian revolution (taqrib, anti-imperialism etc.) shaped al-Husayni’s worldview, and how he adapted them to his Pakistani context, thus establishing the ‘orthodoxy’ of his views against opponents within his own mazhab.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Justin Jones
Khandan-i-Ijtihad: authority and transition in a family of Shi‘a ‘ulama in north India, c.1850-1950

Scholarship on Shi‘ism in north India has, to a great degree, looked at the religion in terms of its Nawabi incarnations, and its associations with the project of state-building in pre-colonial Awadh. This is perhaps especially true of the so-called ‘Khandan-i-Ijtihad’, the most significant household of Indian Shi‘a ‘ulama over a number of successive generations. Through early mujtahids such as Dildar ‘Ali and Sayyid Muhammad Nasirabadi, this family projected great influence upon the Nawabi court, and epitomised the Usuli Shi‘a revival of late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Lucknow.

For all that has been assumed about the historic demise of the religious and secular elites tied to the Nawabs, this clerical family have retained their public primacy in India until the present. This paper, then, is an attempt to explore the little understood post-annexation history of this family, who have remained prominent figures in Shi‘a life across modern South Asia. Focusing upon the social milieu and public functions of the key figureheads of this lineage, this paper will explore the family adab (sense of honour and identity), exploring the nature of the household, their ties to both Lucknow and their qasbas of origin, and their response to the socio-political transformations accompanying the collapse of Shi‘a power in 1856. It will argue that the ‘ulama were able to exercise an occupational transition, from being the jurisconsults and state functionaries of the 1850s, becoming important lay functionaries and, later, representatives of their community before the colonial state. The paper thus carries implications for our understanding of the functional adaptability of the Shi‘a ‘ulama, and their ability to re-craft their socio-religious role in changing historical settings.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Sajjad Rizvi 
Establishing the principles of the faith for a new Shi‘i polity: the theology of Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali Nasirabadi

For those familiar with north Indian Shi‘i Islam, Sayyid Dildar ‘Ali (1753-1820) is a well known individual credited with the formation of a rationalising hierocracy in the new Shi‘i polity of Awadh at the end of the eighteenth century. The process by which the elites established Twelver Shi‘i doctrines and their practices, and disseminated them in such a way that they still provide the basic motifs and parameters of modern Shi‘i identity in the subcontinent, has been studied by Juan Cole and others: facets of this process include the development of a political theology, establishment of institutions of learning and commemoration, and the production of literature for disseminating Shi‘i ideas in the scholarly and elite Mughal languages of Arabic and Persian as well as the vernacular of Urdu.

While his polemical works, countering anti-Shi‘i texts such as Shah ‘Abd al-‘Aziz’s Tuhfa-yi ithna ‘ashariya and attacking Sufis and Akhbaris, have some studies associated with them, the broad outlines of Dildar ‘Ali’s philosophical works and philosophical theology, which provided the foundations for these polemics and exchanges, have been rather neglected. A careful (although at this stage fairly cursory) study of Dildar ‘Ali’s major theological text, Mira’t al-‘uqul fi ‘ilm usul al-din, better known as ‘Imad al-Islam, will constitute the main part of my paper. Divided into the classic five-fold scheme of Shi‘i theology, it was written in Arabic for a scholarly audience. It was designed not only to establish his own credentials as a scholar and demonstrate the contribution of the ‘ulama of India to Shi‘i thought, but also to posit the basic metaphysical foundations for the critique of others: whether Sunni scholars of Farangi-Mahall and elsewhere, Sufi pirs, or traditionist Akhbaris. By way of some concluding remarks, I will also raise some of the contestations against his work, particularly focusing on an Arabic critique of Dildar ‘Ali produced by Sayyid Murtaza Nawnihravi, a sayyid from the qasbas like himself but very much outside of the hierocracy, entitled Mira’t al-‘uqul fi sharh du‘a al-mashlul.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Bashir Damji
The Khoja Shi‘a Ithna ‘Ashari communities of East Africa: from newcomers to flag bearers

The Khoja Shi‘a Ithna ‘Ashari community is a breakaway faction of the Khoja Shi‘a Isma‘ili community. The divergence between the two occurred at the advent of the nineteenth century in the Indian subcontinent due to, among other things, jurisprudential transgressions allegedly committed by the leaders of the Isma‘ili community. While these transgressions, real or perceived, gave rise to a new sub-sect within the subcontinent, their effects continue to shape not only the nature of relations between the Khoja Ithna ‘Ashari and Khoja Isma‘ilis, but also their relations with the wider world. While the two communities share much in common in ethnic terms, it is their ideological beliefs and practices that polarise them.  While Isma‘ili Khojas have recorded tremendous achievements in diverse fields including establishing reputable institutes of education, their contribution to the spread of religious education beyond their own community is minimal.

The Khoja Ithna ‘Ashari community, on the other hand, established centres of propagation that spread their ideological beliefs beyond the confines of community. The spread of Shi‘ism in East and Central Africa, contrary to widespread belief, is due primarily to the efforts of the Khoja Shi‘a Ithna ‘Ashari, who established dedicated centres which were/are instrumental in spreading Shi‘ism across the ideological divide in this part of Africa. The spread of Shi‘ism in East and Central Africa in general, and the present level of religious discourse within the Khoja Shi‘a Ithna ‘Ashari community in particular, is testament to the community’s grasp of its ideological beliefs and obligations, and its contributions to religious debate.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Soumen Mukherjee
Of ‘religious and social welfare’ and ‘progress of the community’: religious inspiration, leadership and idioms of welfarism among Shi‘a Imami Isma‘ilis in twentieth century South Asia and East Africa 

The 1950s and 1960s mark two crucially important decades for the Imami Isma‘ili community as represented by the Aga Khani Khojas; this was true both in South Asia and in Africa, where there had historically been migrations of Khojas from the western parts of the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent. A concatenation of a varied range of forces had momentous repercussions on this community, under the leadership of the Living Imam embodied in the person of the Aga Khan. With more and more countries in Asia and Africa coming out of colonial domination in the post-World War II context, with Shah Karim Aga Khan IV succeeding his grandfather Aga Khan III to the Imamate after the latter’s death in 1957, and with the establishment of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in the 1960s, the Imami Isma‘ilis entered a virtually new phase of social life. Old forms of community ties had to be renegotiated, and the old rhetoric of legitimation of the Imam’s position reassessed. Such reappraisal and negotiations emanated from the Imam’s establishment, addressing audiences both within the Isma‘ili community, as well as beyond it.

It is this latter aspect that most notably distinguishes the AKDN from the pre-AKDN organisations. Evidently, while the basic moral position has remained undergirded with an interpretation of Islam’s strong message of social responsibility and with the Imam at its centre, at the level of praxis the modes of communication have varied depending on the audience. Sensitive to these nuances of the Aga Khani version of social welfarism, often neglected in studies of the AKDN brand of developmentalism, this paper seeks to retrieve some of the idioms of legitimation and negotiation circulating within the community’s social sphere in South Asia and East Africa, dedicated to the ‘religious and social welfare’ of ‘the community’, as opposed to the AKDN’s broader all-encompassing developmental ventures. In so doing, the paper will shed light on multi-faceted aspects of the religio-social welfarist imagination of the Aga Khan’s establishment that is, in a qualified manner, both central to understanding the AKDN’s moral underpinnings, as well as the social landscape of the Isma‘ili community.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011
Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Ludovic Gandelot
Religious and social identities of the Aga Khani Isma‘ilis, as seen through the firmans of Sultan Muhammad Shah at the beginning of the twentieth century

At the end of the 1920s, some of the firmans attributed to Sultan Muhammad Shah (1885-1957), Imam of the Aga Khani Isma‘ilis, were compiled and printed in Bombay. The Imam’s speeches form an insight into the religious community, revealing the intimacy of the meetings occurring in the jama‘at-khana between followers and their religious leader. From the two hundred firmans which composed the re-published Bahere rahemat firmans and Khangi firmans books, we will extract thirty-five of them relating to a crucial historical period for the community. Twenty of them, from the first volume, were delivered in Zanzibar during Sultan Muhammad Shah’s first visit there in 1899. The fifteen others, taken from the Khangi firmans compilation, were given in India, mostly in Bombay, in the early years of the twentieth century. In both places, Sultan Muhammad Shah had to face some internal divisions, with his legitimacy being called into question.

This paper will firstly examine religious identities, principally the vocabulary used by Sultan Muhammad Shah to define the different protagonists in question, discussing how they were perceived and described. We will then analyse the content itself, to conclude that Sultan Muhammad Shah’s talks were mainly directed to two recurrent themes: the raising of the moral behaviour of his followers, and the promotion of the unity of the social group. Finally we will unravel the socio-religious dynamics involved in the building of the community. Some of the devotees, united by vows and secret and specific rituals, composed a new internal stratification. Added to these special practices, a new consciousness of responsibility towards their religious leader and the community was widely diffused among themselves.

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Event Date: 9-10 September  2011

Royal Holloway, University of London

Contesting Shi‘ism: Isna ‘Ashari and Isma‘ili Shi‘ism in modern South Asia

Ian G Williams
Shared and disputed symbols within Twelver Shi‘ite and Ahl-i-Sunnat Traditions of Islam:  an examination of theological constructions and devotional practices amongst leaders and adherents of these traditions, from nineteenth century South Asia to the contemporary UK.

Within post-1857 British India, Muslim groups were engaged in rivalry and competition with each other for adherents, and to some extent in rivalry with Christian missionaries and Hindu revivalists.  In addition, Muslim traditions found themselves in a new political and religious context as a minority.  Movements emerged to create fresh Muslim identities by which to address this situation. Amongst the symbols used in the Muslim intra-faith conflicts were the Prophet, ‘Ali and their family. Drawing upon a scholarly past tradition, Ahmad Raza Khan (1856-1921) led the Ahl-i-Sunnat wa jama‘at movement which, alongside the Shi‘a tradition, emphasised perspectives upon the Prophet and the grace transmitted through his genealogical line.  In addition, Raza Khan held as highly significant another understanding shared with the Twelver Shi‘a: that the Prophet’s light pre-dated the creation of the material and spiritual universes and Adam.  Both the Prophet and ‘Ali also pre-existed Adam, with their light being the source of origin for all other beings.  This paper examines such developments and emphases within both Ahl-i-Sunnat and Shi‘a traditions in India, and their subsequent interactions and transfer of ideas into twentieth and twenty-first century diasporic Muslim communities in the UK.

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