Darul Uloom Deoband

The Darul Uloom Deoband (Urdu: دارالعلوم دیوبند) is an Islamic school propogating Sunni Islam in the Indian Subcontinent.[2], and is where the Deobandi Islamic movement was started. It is located at Deoband, a town in Uttar Pradesh, India. It was founded in 1866 by several prominent ulama, headed by Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi. The other prominent founding scholars were Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi and Haji Syed Abid Hussain. The institution is highly respected in India and other parts of the Indian Subcontinent.

The scholars at the Darul Uloom Deoband had opposed the establishment of a religious government (such as in Pakistan) and the demands of the Muslim League led by Jinnah^[1]. Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, who was also Sheikh ul Hadeeth of Darul Ulum Deoband and led the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, the most prestigious organization of the Ulema, saw nothing Islamic in the idea of Pakistan. He said: "all should endeavor jointly for such a democratic government in which Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and Parsis are included. Such a freedom is in accordance with Islam." The school, even though it advocates an orthodox version of Islam, has repeatedly distanced itself from religious militancy.

Background

In 1857, the British East India Company put down the independence movement begun by disparate north Indian forces, conducted in the name of the otherwise powerless Bahadur Shah Zafar Durrani. Emperor Zafar became the last Mughal Emperor, for he was deposed the following year and exiled to Burma, with many of his sons put to death. This marked a seminal moment for Indo-Islamic consciousness, specifically for the established Muslim elites of north India, who tended to view 1857 as the end of their political preeminence and the beginning of what could be a dark period of Muslim history in India.

In this situation, a group of learned theologians, led by Maulana Muhammad Qasim Nanautawi, established the Darul Uloom Seminary in the town of Deoband, in order to preserve and train the youth with Islamic knowledge. The pedagogical philosophy of Deoband was focused on teaching revealed Islamic sciences, known as manqūlāt, to the Indian Muslim population, according to the Hanafi tradition. In this seminary, Nanautavi instituted modern methods of learning: classrooms, fixed a carefully selected curriculum, different faculties taught by leaders in the field, exam periods, prizes, a publishing press and so on. He consciously decided to divorce it from political or governmental participation. Instead, the faculty instructed its students primarily in Urdu, which was the lingua franca of the urbanised section of the region, and supplemented it with study of Arabic (the repository of Muslim theology) and Persian (the fountainhead of Indian Muslim culture); in due course, it also unwittingly cemented the growing association of the Urdu language with the north Indian Muslim community.

Its over 15,000 graduates have gone on to found many similar madrassas (schools) across South Asia and further afield; the followers of this school of theology are often described as followers of the Deobandi school of thought.

Pattern of education

Deoband's curriculum is based on the 17th-century Indo-Islamic syllabus known as Dars-e-Nizami. The core curriculum teaches Islamic law (shariah), Islamic jurispridence (Fiqh), traditional Islamic spirituality (known as tasawwuf, which is the focus of Sufism), as well as several other fields of Islamic study.^{[2] [3]}

The current syllabus consists of four stages. The first three stages can be completed in a total of eight years. The final stage is a post-graduate stage where students specialize in a number of advanced topics, such as the sciences of Hadeeth, Fiqh and so on.

Impact of the Deoband School

Many Islamic schools throughout modern India and Pakistan - and more recently in Afghanistan, the United Kingdom, South Africa as well as in hundreds of other places throughout the world, are affiliated or theologically linked to Darul Uloom Deoband. Famous seminaries have been established by its graduates, e.g. Nadwatul Ulama in Lucknow, Madrassah In'aamiyyah ^[4] Camperdown, near Durban in South Africa, and Darul Uloom Karachiand Jama Ashrafia^[5], in Lahore, Pakistan. As the official website of the Darul Uloom proclaims in flowery language, 'the whole of Asia is redolent with the aroma of this Prophetic garden.'

India's Independence Movement

In the meeting of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind at Calcutta, in 1926, the participants included graduates of Darul-Uloom, Deoband and they supported the group which called for complete independence of India from the British rule. Indian National Congress was to declare complete independence as its goal three years later, in its session at Lahore.

Abdul-Gaffar khan, during his visit to India in 1969, during a visit to Darul-Uloom, had said^[6]

"I have had relation with Darul-Uloom since the time the Shaikhul-Hind Maulana Mahmood Hasan was alive. Sitting here we used to make plans for the independence movement as to how we might drive away the English from this country and how we could make India free from the yoke of slavery of the English. This institution has made great efforts for the freedom of this country".

Alumni scholars

The Deoband school of Islamic Sciences has been producing great scholars across the globe. It rose to become the most esteemed institution in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Some of the notable ones are as follows:

• Shaykh ul Hind Maulana Mehmood Al-Hasan
• Imam Al-Asar Allamah Anwar Shah Kashmiri
• Shaykh Ul-Islam Allamah Shabbir Ahmad Usmani
• Shaykh ul Islam Maulana Husain Ahmed Madani
• Hakeem ul Ummah Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanwi
• Maulana Bodrul Alam (second principal of Jamia Tawakkulia Renga Madrasah, Sylhet, Bangladesh)
• Maulana Abdul Haleem Rajanpuri (Darul Uloom Usmania, Ubauro in Northern Sindh)
• Qari Abdul Rasheed Ajmeri
• Maulana Raza Ahmed Ajmeri
• Shaykh Yunus (Lecturer of Hadeeth Mazahir e Uloom Saharanpur)
• Mufti Kifayatullah
• Mufti Muhammad Shafi (Mufti-e-Azam Pakistan)
• Allamah Syed Muhammad Yusuf Binori
• Maulana Ahmad Ali Lahori
• Qari Muhammad Tayyeb Qasmi
• Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhelvi
• Amir Ul Hind Maulana Syed Asad Madani
• Maulana Syed Manazir Ahsan Gilani
• Maulana Muhammad Idris Kandhlavi
• Maulana Margoobur Rahman (Principal of Darul Uloom Deoband)
• Maulana Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi
• Maulana Badr Alam Merathi
• Mufti Muhammad Hasan Amritsari
• Maulana Mufti Rasheed Ahmad (Karachi, Pakistan)
• Maulana Ubaidullah Sindhi
• Maulana Salim Qasmi
• Maulana Muhammad Hasan Bodhanvi,Walsall,United Kingdom (President of Markazi Jamiat Ulama Britain & Wifaq ul Ulama UK)
• Qari Tahir Qasmi
• Maulana Khurshid Sahib
• Maulana Salim Qasmi
• Muhaddis-E-Asar Maulana Anzar Shah Kashmiri
• Mufti Said Ahmad Palanpuri(Lecturer of Hadith Darul Uloom Deoband)
• Maulana Syed Arshad Madani (Lecturer of Hadith Darul Uloom Deoband)
• Maulana Mufti Zain ul Abideen (Faisalabad,Pakistan)
• Qazi Habib-ur-Rehman (Haripur)
• Maulana Ikram Ali Bhagalpuri (Lecturer of Hadith Jamia Islamia Dabhel)
• Maulana Wajid Hussain Deobandi (Lecturer of Hadith Jamia Islamia Dabhel)
• Maulana Abullah Saleem (Chicago, Illinois)
• Maulana Qazi Mujahidul Islam Qasmi (Muslim Personal Law Board)
• Maulana Minnatullah Rahmani (Founder Muslim Personal Law Board)
• Maulana Manzoor Nomani (Al-Furqan, Lucknow)
• Maulana Hifzur Rahman Sewharwi
• Maulana Khalil Ahmad Saharanpuri
• Maulana Badruddin Ajmal Qasmi (founder AUDF)
• Tuan Guru Datuk Nik Aziz Nik Mat (The Menteri Besar (Chief Minister) of the Kelantan state, Malaysia)

Recent developments

The Darul Uloom has expanded its activities and started new departments during the last decades. In view of great challenge from the Ahmadiya Movement (Qadiyanism), Darul Uloom convened the All India Tahaffuz Khatm-e-Nubuwwat Conference and established a special department to refute Qadiyanism. It started the Shaikhul Hind Academy for publishing books and training students in Urdu journalism. in 1996, the Computer Department was opened came which was later extended and an Internet Department also added. The Darul Uloom has also introduced a two-year fulltime Diploma in English language and literature for students wishing to pursue higher education in universities.

Condemnation of terrorism

In February 2008, an "Anti-terrorism Conference" organized by the seminary Darul Uloom in Deoband, Uttar Pradesh, denounced all forms of terrorism, saying "Islam prohibits the killing of innocent people," and "Islam sternly condemns all kinds of oppression, violence and terrorism." The conference also denounced widespread attempts to blame religious Muslims for terrorist incidents.^[7]

See also

• Online Islamic Fatawa www.darulifta-deoband.org

[[Online Islamic Study]http://www.darululum.org]

• Deobandi
• Tablighi Jamaat
• Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind
• Markazul Maarifwww.markazulmaarif.org

References

1. ^ ISLAMIC PAKISTAN: ILLUSIONS & REALITY, by Abdus Sattar Ghazali
2. ^ The System Of Education
3. ^ Mawlana Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Shariat and Tasawwuf pg. 11, 112, 113
4. ^ In'aamiyyahMadrassah In'aamiyyah
5. ^ http://www.ashrafia.org.pk/index.html
6. ^ http://www.darululoom-deoband.com Official website of Darul Uloom Deoband
7. ^ Muslim clerics declare terror "un-Islamic" Times of India Feb. 25, 2008

External links

• Official website of Darul Uloom Deoband
• Darul Ifta website of Darul Uloom Deoband
• Sunni News
• Indian Muslim News and Views
• Deobandi Islam
• "Traditionalist" Islamic Activism: Deoband, Tablighis, and Talibs
• "Darul Uloom, Deoband issues anti-terrorism fatwa
• Darul Ishaat UK - House Of Propagation - Online Islamic Store
• Hardline takeover of British mosques
• Two faces of British youth in thrall to sinister Muslim sect
• Our followers ‘must live in peace until strong enough to wage jihad’
• Ulema's progressive stand on Yoga, terrorism, other issues needs to be praised
• Online Books By Ulama E Deoband
• Radd E Batilah

Coordinates: 29°41′32″N 77°40′39″E / 29.69222°N 77.6775°E / 29.69222; 77.6775