Religious moderation is the basic principle of Islam. The Quran calls Muslims as the community of wasat (moderate/middle way). According to the Islamic teachings, every kind of extremism and exaggeration is a deviation from the right path for the Ummah. The akabir (elders) of Dar al-Uloom Deoband follow the same Islamic methodology of religious moderation that is devoid of extremism. They have written a number of tracts/ books on intra-religious issues and have tried to unite the various thoughts and scholars of Islam under one banner of tawhidi light.
Dar al-Uloom Deoband is a great traditional Islamic institution established by Maulana Mohammad Qasim Nanautvi in 1868. This institution emerged as a Muslim response to colonialism and western cultural incursion. The deconstruction of western imperialistic structure and the promotion of the Quranic fundamentals was its pivotal strategy. The tradition of Dar al-Uloom Deoband is based on the historical weltanschauung of salaf-e saliheen swathed with divine knowledge, wisdom and gnosis. Its founder endeavoured to dismantle the charade of modernity and made a great contribution to the flourishing of Islamic values, ethos and culture among Muslims of the Indian subcontinent. Maulana Mohammad Qasim Nanautvi himself was a great Islamic theologian and a philosopher. Dr Atif Suhail Siddiqui, one of the leading scholars of Islamic thought of Dar al-Uloom Deoband, writes that Maulana Qasim Nanautvi accepted post-renaissance thought as an intellectual challenge and held that revelation is already sufficient and persuasive while the purpose of logic and philosophy is to explain the claims of revelation.
The attitude of the grand masters of Deoband tradition, like allama Anwar Shah Kashmiri and Maulana Thanvi, was not sectarian but all-embracing spiritual-cum-intellectual within the framework of the Usool of Shariah. Their hermeneutical approach was traditional in nature embellished with love, kindness, spirituality, and tolerance in ilm al-khilaf. The legends who were affiliated with this great institute always appreciated the scholars/ works of other thought. Allama Anwar Shah Kashmiri, for example, called Mulla Sadra, one of the top Shia philosophers, as a muhaqiq, and Maulana Thanvi used the Avicennian principles of rationality against the fuss of modernism despite knowing that Ibn Sina was declared as heretic by Imam Ghazali. The faqih al-nafs, Maulana Rashid Ahmad’s positive comments along with the important treatise of Maulana Manzoor Nomani on Shaykh Mohammad bin Abdul Wahab, the precursor of modern Salafism, is an eye-opener for sectarian polemicists. The later scholars of Deoband tradition, like Mufti Taqi Usmani, also defended the intellectual patrimony of Imam Ibn Taimiyah.
The essential teaching of the elders of Deoband tradition is to promote the pristine form of Islamic thought devoid of innovations and religious deviation. They always discouraged sectarian debates. According to Mualana Thanvi, sectarian discourses create hatred among Muslims. They diminish the spiritual aura of the Heart. He expounds that the way debates are conducted today is not the way of the predecessors (salaf). The Quran debates with the disbelievers in many places, but its style is amazing. It is nothing like the noisy quarrels of today. He further argues that the sectarian debates promote the people of falsehood even more and they have no positive result. However, to break the influence of the falsehood, explaining the truth and spreading it repeatedly and in different places is undoubtedly very beneficial. But using uncivilised/ uncultured language as we see nowadays is against the very basic principles of religion (Din).

The writer is a research scholar. [email protected]

Jafflah Ibrahim