18 Aug 2021
For those who claim that the Taliban movement is Sufi and not Salafi, this article will be an explanation of the true Taliban doctrine and through it we will understand why this group used religious violence and ruled according to the Salafi Sharia that other takfiris raised in the Middle East, including the expired Muslim Brotherhood. Through the article we will see the origin of this movement and its historical roots
One of the manifestations of the Taliban’s lack of association with Sufism is that it forbids the celebration of the Prophet’s birthday and does not depend on visiting shrines and forbidding the building of tombstones. This Taliban behavior is purely Salafi, as its roots go back to the Indian Deobandi movement that arose in the nineteenth century and extended into Pakistan, which was a source for spreading Taliban thought in Afghanistan later
It was the British occupation of India that supported the Deobandi Salafist movement in its infancy, just as it supported the Salafist movement later in the Arabian Peninsula that produced Wahhabism, and it was he who called for the establishment of religious associations in Egypt such as the Legitimate Assembly, Ansar al-Sunna, Muslim youth, Muslim Brotherhood and others with the aim of getting closer to peoples, taming them and persuading them not to revolt against British rule. Either in India or the Middle East in general
The Indian Salafi Deobandi movement is considered the spiritual father of the Taliban movement at that time, Pakistan was part of India at the end of the ninth century The Taliban grew up in an atmosphere of Pakistani Islamic independence from Hinduism, and because the movement established a series of Salafi Islamic schools, one of the most important things they learned was the wars of independence on a religious basis, which is what distinguishes the Taliban The Deobandi Salafi movement originated on the Hanafi Maturidi sect, unlike the Hanbali Pakistani school of the Red Mosque A rivalry took place between the two schools, but it did not reach the point of violence because they had previously participated in the basic Salafi school of thought, which may accept the Hanafis who believe in the application of the literal Sharia that Muslim clerics called for, such as Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab The contemporary Hanafi school of thought is different from the first Hanafi school of thought founded by Abu Hanifa al-Nu’man. Abu Hanifa did not believe in the sanctity of hadith and believed in the authority of reason. However, the later Hanafis turned against this doctrine and followed the methodology of the people of hadith altogether following the issuance of the Abbasid decision in the Qadiri Document in 408 AH
The Qadiri Document was issued by the Abbasid Caliph Qadir by Allah, and it commanded the followers of the hadiths and the criminalization of all their opponents from the Mu’tazilites, the Shiites, and the people of opinion This forced the Hanafis to change their sect and start a revolution in Hanafi thought that saw the necessity of sanctifying the narratives, and the most famous of these revolutions took place at the hands of al-Sarakhsi al-Sarakhsi, who died in 409 AH Turkmenistan was one of the most famous founders of the Hanafi school, but rather is the mayor of contemporary Hanafis in his jurisprudence book (Al-Mabsout). Through this book, Al-Sarakhsi succeeded in inventing a new Hanafi school of thought dominated by the modernists, subject to the decision of the Abbasid Caliph in origin The Taliban movement is indeed Hanafi, but the doctrine it follows does not differ from that of the people of hadith and resembles the methodology of Hanbali thinking, especially in political affairs and their perception of Sharia, governance, the other, women and minorities..etc. The movement was influenced by the thought of Ibn Abd al-Wahhab by promoting the so-called Islamic state and guarding the creed..etc
The chain of religious schools that arose in India and Pakistan was very large and included most of the Muslim lands. From these schools, the Taliban emerged after the Pakistani wars of independence, and the Taliban gained genetic hostility against India on one hand and against everything that violates the Sharia that they learned in schools on the other hand The religious schools that expelled the Taliban were the main fatwa center and not the state. Pakistan as a state was not a religious source for the people nor its official institutions, but the Pakistani people were followed by the Deobandi jurists and the Red Mosque and through them the Islamic group appeared, which is the Pakistan Brotherhood The sheikhs of the Deobandi movement who created the Taliban had ideological battles against the Afghan and Pakistani secularists that reached the point of takfir in the seventies, and when the United States of America declared the Afghan jihad against the Soviets, the movement’s influence developed and took on a popular dimension, which later contributed to their control of Afghanistan in the nineties
The Indian Sufi jurists who saw the interest of the Deobandis in politics and governance rebelled against this doctrine, so they came up with a new group that combines Sufi morals and the doctrine of the people of hadith Deobandi It was the (Tablighi and Dawah) group, which cooperated with the Taliban only socially, but did not cooperate with it in politics The weakness of the Afghan and Pakistani secularists is the secret in the popularity and spread of the Taliban, as the state did not support them in return for the sweeping spread of the Deobandi religious schools similar to what is happening in Egypt when the Al-Azhar religious schools spread overwhelmingly with the support of the state, which led to a Salafi coup that is in control of the Egyptians to this day
Egypt would have been a candidate to repeat the Afghan model had it not been for the jihadists’ haste to kill the symbols of the state, its officials and its elite, in addition to the tourists and the Copts As this created a popular resentment against them, it prompted many Salafists and groups to be wary of expressing their convictions and criticizing the jihadists on the surface, which led to delaying the Afghanization of Egypt for decades After the January 2011 revolution in Egypt, the Brotherhood and Salafis of all their sects and their intellectual and political diversity, in addition to some Azharites, joined forces to establish a religious state along the lines of the Indian Deobandi movement and the Taliban model, but the alliance fell into a series of political mistakes that prompted the army to isolate it and encourage the revolution against it in June 2013
There are thousands of Deobandi schools all over the world that bring out the ideology of the Taliban every day, sponsored by the so-called Association of Islamic Scholars, that is, it is not confined only to Afghanistan, just as there are thousands of Al-Azhar schools that graduate Salafis who believe in the application of the Salafi Sharia and the terrorist craft tradition The Taliban movement was not based on financial and external support, as is common, but was based on local efforts and popular donations. The Taliban’s lack of dependence on foreign funds made it very popular and a distinguished moral presence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Even partial Iranian support for the movement can be observed in its resistance to America and the positive statements of Iranian officials towards its leaders after the departure of the Americans, and that is another different story
Please note that the Indian Deobandi movement that founded the Taliban was not strict in applying its teachings in the beginning, but it became hardened and became more aggressive after the Pakistani wars of independence against India It can be considered that the history of the emergence of jihadist groups in Central Asia in general was related to those wars, and had it not been for the Soviet and then American occupation, the Taliban would not have ruled or appeared in the picture, or the jurists of the Deobandi movement would have any political influence, nor did their schools have any authoritarian influence, but the chaos and injustice that the occupation created is which enabled the Taliban to emerge and then spread and then rule and sovereignty.
