On visiting graves

This is in response to the question: How can one in the right mind suggest that it is not wrong to visit graves. This is a deviant sub-continental practice, now exposed by the Salafis.

There are a couple of points that need to be kept in consideration for a fair discussion of this topic.

1. Most popular sufism practiced in Pakistan is deviant. My experience a great deal of  sufis aren't really. There are certain clear conditions mentioned in scholarly texts which a sufi must meet in order to be one. Our ulema hold that if someone claims to be a sheikh of the sufi order, and he isn't one, then he is a shaytan. Thus they are misleading their followers, who are too ignorant to tell the difference between a true sheikh and a charlatan. Now, whatever these groups do on the graves, just like everything else they do, is usually not halal.

2. While you may look at the situation within the local context, in which practices around the graves sound alarming, from a historical point of view there is another angle. Most of the individuals you see are typically not well-versed in the religious sciences, and do not even know how to perform their basic ibadaat. Islam has not reached them in its proper form. So, just like in other aspects of their belief, they need some margin, otherwise, if we go along with the modern trends of intolerance, they will most likely fall outside the pale of Islam. For example according to classical standards, denying something of religion which is known of necessity will take one outside of Islam. Hijab is necessarily known part of religion, yet many ignorant believers deny that it is a requirement. But when we ask the scholars they try to give all sorts of excuses to explain their behaviour.(Abu Hanifa once said that he would rather err a thousand times on the side of calling a non-Muslim a Muslim, than once in calling a Muslim non-Muslim.) Also, there is a rigorously authenticated hadith that: "If one calls another kafir, then one of them definitely is."

3. I feel, that we have to understand that these people are broken-hearted, with no one to turn to, and they go to these graves. Now just as when we need help we turn to other people, but that does not mean we are not turning to God. Turning to other people is a means, while we know that without God's will nothing can take place. Now people did turn to the Prophet (saw). We know a lot of people came to the Prophet (saw) with something like "O Prophet! help me. I have sinned." Yet I do not know of one instance where the Prophet (saw) refused them, or rejected them on account of an alleged confusion in belief. The question actually turns on this: whether a person who is passed away can in some sense be addressed in one's duas. Here I think the problem is in our materialist culture with its emphasis on the physical and the living, the here and now, rather than the spiritual. If we are primarily physical beings then we indeed meet our end with death, and the matter is finished; but if we are primarily spiritual beings then we merely taste death, and continue to be alive. "They think they will be dead, but they will be alive" (Quran).

4. Some prominent deobandis (the school representing the majority sunnis in Pakistan) have caught on the modern trend of labelling any religious activity which falls outside of narrow wahabi lines as bidaa. This is because of the massive funding this school is receiving from Saudi Arabia. This has shifted the tide of so called scholarly opinion, as well as the general religious culture, against Sufis. While there is some justification, because many sufi orders have deviated, it does not justify blanket condemnation of Sufi practices. Munkir hadith do not delegitimize  the enterprise of hadith collection; similarly, deviant sufis do not invalidate Tassawwuf. And if you look at history of Islam in India, Sufism was alive and thriving in all parts of India, and was the basic impetus behind the large-scale non-violent conversion to Islam.

5. Another problem is that wahabbis have always emphasised the physical, to the point that they have made God physical, with hands, shin, and face. This is because they are illiterate and ignorant and have a lot of money with which they publish their version of Islam, but they possess little imagination. Considering these views, the other wahabi views cannot be trusted and relied upon. One has to make one’s own assessment, and not just become part of the fashionable wahabi culture.