The Deobandis: Pakistan

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

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Summary

The BBC's former Pakistan correspondent Owen Bennett Jones continues his exploration of South Asia’s Deobandi Muslim movement. He heads across the border to Pakistan, where Deobandi ideology has provided spiritual guidance for both militant groups like the Taliban and a strictly non-violent missionary movement. So how can a single school of thought follow such different paths? Owen explores the role the Deobandi ideology has played in shaping Pakistan's identity, and how the Pakistani state has tapped into the intolerant elements of Deobandi teachings to fuel state-sponsored jihad - be it fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan or the Indians in Kashmir. Empowered by a ready supply of cash and guns, a relatively small number of Deobandi militants have caused havoc across the country, in the form of sectarian violence, and anti-state violence, as violent groups turn their guns on their masters. Pakistan created a monster by endorsing Deobandi militancy - so how can it bring it under control? (Photo: Owen Bennett Jones meets Maulana Sami Ul Haq, leader of the Darul Uloom Haqqania madrassa in Akhora Khattak. Credit: Richard Fenton-Smith)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, this is Owen Bennett Jones, and you're listening to the BBC World Service.
0:07.0	I've been exploring the origins and influence of a Back to Basics form of Islam that was born in India 150 years ago.
0:15.6	It's known as Diabandi Islam and has millions of adherents all over the world.
0:21.8	In part one, which you can hear on the World Service website, the world
0:23.4	service website I visited a religious seminary in the Indian town where it all began
0:29.7	called Deerband and found a branch of Islam which rejected the use of violence
0:35.0	but was so intolerant of other religious views that it had departments devoted to
0:40.3	rejecting them. This week we cross the border into Pakistan where some
0:45.9	deabandis have taken a decidedly more violent path.
0:50.3	I'm now in a place that's very well known in Pakistan, a Kora Hatak.
0:57.0	And there is a Madrasa here, I've just walked into it,
1:01.0	which is known as really the birthplace of the Afghan Taliban.
1:04.0	Many of the early Afghan Taliban leaders were educated here,
1:08.0	religiously educated here.
1:09.0	And this is a place that really symbolizes in Pakistan that strain of dear bandy thought and practice
1:17.9	that favors the violent jihad. Now that I'm just walking through the matrassa and I've got a sort of tail of I would say a hundred of the
1:30.3	talib for the religious students here.
1:34.4	As we go through some of the halls, the dusty corridors,
1:38.4	it's quite interesting coming here
1:39.7	to the Madrasa at the Cora Hatak,
1:42.3	because it's sometimes described as the second most
1:45.6	important deal bandi madrasa in the world the most important obviously being in
	...

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