The Real Islam — page 4

The tablighis in Nizamuddin are not Wahhabi, but their beliefs are derived from similar theological traditions. They share the Wahhabis' suspicion of the Sufis, and their effect on the Nizamuddin shrine is the same, as they slowly attempt to undermine Islam's most tolerant and syncretic incarnation just when that face of Islam is most needed in healing the growing breach between Islam and other religions. After leaving Amin at the doors of his Tablighi headquarters, I headed on down into the alleys of Nizamuddin. Taking off my sandals at the entrance of the shrine, I spoke with Hussein, the old man who looks after the shoes of the pilgrims. I asked what he thought of the Tablighis. Hussein's response was passionate: "These people are so extreme and intolerant. Look around you. Everyone in Delhi knows about the power of Nizamuddin. Everyone knows that if your heart is pure and you ask him something, that he cannot refuse you. I have felt his power in my own life. I lost my hut in a slum clearance 10 years ago. I was hungry and I had nothing. But I prayed to the saint, and through him I found a place to stay and a way of supporting my family. I tell you: if anybody abuses Nizamuddin Auliya, I will be the first to defend him—with my knife if need be."

	The cornerstone of Sufi ideology is Love. —NAJAF HAIDER,  Indian historian

It was a Thursday evening when, during the singing of the qawwalis, the mesmerizing love songs of the Indian Sufis, the spiritual life of the shrine was to reach its climax. Huge crowds of pilgrims were already sitting cross-legged in the forecourt in front of the tomb, and the first qawwali singers were beginning to strike up their music. Around them was a press of excited onlookers. Most pilgrims had come with their families—groups of little boys with eyes wonderfully darkened with kohl, little girls who perhaps had been ill and had been brought for healing. At the shrine itself there were young women trying to tie small threads through the lattices of its screens, each one of them with some prayer or petition, usually a plea for marriage or children.

To one side was a huge cauldron of biryani that had just been carried in to feed the poor. On another was a gathering of women who had come to learn to read Arabic in the simple school that operated from the back of the shrine. There were Muslim grandmothers in black chadors from Bengal, Punjabi Sikhs in their blue turbans, Hindu women from South India with the large red bindis on their foreheads, all coming to pray to the saint, all coming to use Nizamuddin as their intermediary to God.

The crowds thickened. The tempo of the music quickened, and some of the pilgrims began to sink into a trance. Old men were swaying now, arms extended, hands cupped in supplication, lost to the world; women were tossing their hair from side to side; and the first of a succession of dervishes rose to their feet to dance. The atmosphere, already heavy with the rich scent of rose petals, grew heavier still, filled with the softly mouthed and murmured prayers, and with the passionate incantations and expectations of 10,000 pilgrims.

I left them there, with their prayers and petitions, still seeking paradise in that most elusive of all destinations, the human heart.

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Aug. 18, 2004	Aug. 19, 2003	Aug. 20, 2003