The following is an extract from “Holy Warriors” in which Fernandes meets the Vice Chancellor of Darul Uloom madrassa. The House of Knowledge was established in 1866 with the aim of becoming a centre of Islamic purity and sharia law for the Muslims of the subcontinent. Over 150 years its influence has spread beyond the small Indian town of Deoband to become the second most important Islamic academic institution in the world. It is the spiritual birthplace of the Taliban. Taliban Afghanistan was Deobandi Islam made real. Among its admirers is the militant messiah himself, Osama bin Laden:
Mr Siddiqui stopped before a steep narrow staircase, leading up to the vice-chancellor’s chambers and administrative offices including the Department of Preaching and Propagation. “Come,” he said, mounting the stone stairs carefully. “The VC will see you now.”
The VC did not look like a terrorist, to use Mr Siddiqui’s phrase. He was in his eighties, his body bent from age. He looked remarkably frail as if he had just recovered from an illness. He wore a topi and his white beard fanned out to the top of his chest. His eyes had a slightly rheumy quality and he spoke in a slow, deliberate fashion, each word carefully judged. He was wrapped up in a floor length dark green velvet dressing gown, tied at the waist with a sash. It looked like something Noel Coward might have worn over evening cocktails. On his feet, the VC wore socks and red velveteen slippers.
Maulana Marghoob Rehman had just returned from a grueling tour of Arab countries and South Africa, where he no doubt sought endowments to boost the school’s coffers. The school has 3,500 students, including ones from across India, the UK, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh and Burma. Its alumni’s reach ranged from Africa and America to the West Indies and Yemen. But in recent years, the school said the Indian government had clamped down on visas for students from certain countries including part of the Arab world and Russia. Once again, terrorism lay at the heart of India’s fears.
Deoband was not a normal academic institution: it was an academy which shaped the minds of future leaders on the religious questions which invariably influenced Islamic countries’ search for political solutions. But Deobandi theology was not interested in the building blocks of a modern nation, such as a liberal market economy or democratic principles. As one of the world’s leading Islamic institutions, Deoband was in a position to influence the reaction of the global Muslim community to these difficult times, either helping it to enter a quest for understanding and accommodation with the West or retreating into defensiveness and anger.
(Text © Copyright Edna Fernandes, 2007)
