Ahle Hadith (Salafi) Contemporary history The modern day reformist movement was revived in the mid-nineteenth century in Northern India, drawing much of its membership from the educated upper-class. Syed Nazeer Husain from Delhi and Siddiq Hasan Khan of Bhopal drew primarily on the work of hadith scholars from Yemen in the early years of the movement, reintroducing the field into the Indian subcontinent. Their strong emphasis on education and book publishing has often attracted members of the social elite both in South Asia and overseas;University of Paris political scientist Antoine Sfeir has referred to the movement as having an elitist character which perhaps contributes to their status as a minority in South Asia. Folk Islam and Sufism, commonly popular with the poor and working class in the region, are anathema to Ahl al-Hadith beliefs and practices. This attitude toward Sufism has brought the movement into conflict with the rival Barelvi movement even more so than the Barelvis perennial rivals, the Deobandis. In the 1920s, the Ahl al-Hadith opened a center for their movement in Srinagar. Followers of the Hanafi school of law, forming the overwhelming majority of Muslim in Jammu and Kashmir, socially boycotted and physically attacked Ahl al-Hadith followers, eventually declaring such followers to be apostates and banning them from praying in mainstream mosques. From the 1930s the group also began dabbling in the political realm of Pakistan, with Ehsan Elahi Zaheer leading the movement into a full foray in the 1970s, eventually gaining the movement a network of mosques and Islamic schools. Following other South Asian Islamic movements, the Ahl al-Hadith now also administer schools and mosques in the Anglosphere. In the modern era, the movement draws both inspiration and financial support from Saudi Arabia,now being favored over the rival Deobandi movement as a counterbalance to Iranian influence. During the rule of the British Raj, no accurate census was ever taken of the movements exact number of followers. In the modern era, the number of followers of the movement in Pakistan constitute 4% of the Muslim population,[citation needed] 25-30 million followers in India,and 27.5 million in Bangladesh. In the 19th century, the Ahle Quran formed in reaction to the Ahle Hadith, whom they considered to be placing too much emphasis on hadith instead of Quran. In the United Kingdom, the Ahl al-Hadith movement maintains 42 centers and boasts a membership which was estimated at 5,000 during the 1990s and 9,000 during the 2000s. Although the movement has been present in the UK since the 1960s, it has not been the subject of extensive academic research and sources on the movement are extremely limited and rare. While the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba has recruited followers of the Ahl al-Hadith movement in the past, the organizations views on jihad are thought to alienate the mainstream of the movement.
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 05:29:09 +0000
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