Sufi Pluralism in Bangladesh: The Case of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa

28 *Sarwar Alam received his doctorate in Public Policy at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, in 2006. Before moving to the United States, he served in the Civil Service of Bangladesh. He has been a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia since 2007. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XXXIV, No. 1, Fall 2010 Sufi Pluralism in Bangladesh: The Case of the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa Sarwar Alam* (I) The following statement was made by one of the devotees of Maizbhandariyya Tariqa of Bangladesh: “I have been familiar with Maizbhandar Sharif for about 23 years, but I have been attached to it for about the past 12 years. I first heard the name of Shahanshah Ziaul Haque Maizbhandari in 1985/86. During the year 1987, I attended his birthday celebration (Khoshroz Sharif) with the intention of just socializing and eating, but I ended up catching a glimpse of him. I visited the place again with one of my friends in 1991. I went there around ten or eleven o’clock at night. I ate tabarruk (blessed food) and went to the fifth floor of the guesthouse, where I slept on a bamboo mat with a brick under my head. I woke up the next morning and walked around on the main street of the Dargah Sharif, where I enjoyed the morning breeze and felt something in my heart….I felt from my soul an attachment to the Maizbhandar Sharif; and I cried….Everything of mine becomes tranquil when I go there. Everything in me…I mean, how to say, I just simply do not feel the urge to ever return home.” During an in-depth interview, he expressed the process of his interiorization of experience as a devotee as well as of his faith in the Maizbhandariyya Tariqa. This article discusses the influence of Sufism, especially the Maizbhandari Sufis in Bangladesh, in developing a harmonious and pluralistic society. 29 1. Anisuzzaman, Muslim-manash o Bangla Shahitya [Muslim-intellect and Bengali Literature], third edition (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Muktadhara, 1983), 25; Muhammad Enamul Haq, A History of Sufi-ism in Bengal (Dhaka, Bangladesh: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1975), 260; Abdul Karim, Social History of the Muslims in Bengal (Down to A. D. 1538), second edition (Chittagong, Bangladesh: Baitush Sharaf Islamic Research Institute, 1985), 185. 2. Sarwar Alam, ForDomestic Use Only: Muslim Women’s Perception of Power and Powerlessness in a Bangladesh Village (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Arkansas, 2006), 81. 3 Peter J. Bertocci (2002), “Form and Variation in Maizbhandari Sufism.” Available at http://www.sunnirazvi.org/Data/Jan%202005/Bertocci.doc retrieved on May 31, 2007 4 Karim 1985, 185 5 Vincent J. Cornell, “Faqih Versus Faqir in Marinid Morocco: Epistemological Dimensions of a Polemic,” in Frederick De Jong & Bernd Radtke (eds.) Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999, pp. 207-224), 207. The population of Bangladesh is 135 million, out of which 88 percent is Muslim, making Bangladesh the third largest Muslim country in the world. Most scholars believe that the majority of the population embraced Islam through the influence of the Sufis (mystics, holy men);1 but also through the influence of non-Sufi preachers. Both the urban and rural societies in Bangladesh contain four overlapping Islamic traditions: (i) an accommodationist and tolerant tradition of coexistence of different faiths that influence one another on a religio-cultural basis under the influence of Sufis and Pirs (spiritual preceptor); (ii) a scripturally literalist and socially active Islamic tradition derived from the influence of revivalist reform movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (iii) a modern Islamist tradition mostly derived from radical and militant Islamist political parties and organizations ; and (iv) a secularized and modernist tradition of Islam derived from the European education introduced by the British colonial rulers.2 Alongside the non-Sufi Sunni Islamic tradition, Sufi ideologies of different traditions have a great influence upon the daily lives of most Bangladeshi Muslims. Like in the early days of Islam on the Bengal frontier, Sufis still maintain important connections between Islam and the masses. In fact, a large majority of Bangladeshi Muslims perceives Sufis...