`What Taliban have done is horrifying, un-Islamic but you need to ask why'

`What Taliban have done is horrifying, un-Islamic but you need to ask why'
SANKARSHAN THAKUR

Deoband, March 13: The bombarded Buddhas of Bamiyan lie far north-west of Delhi. We headed north-east of the capital looking for fault-lines that could have triggered the distant plunder. It had to be a horribly misdirected quest. From the angry voices of Deoband's Dar-ul-Uloom, one of Islam's most hallowed seminaries, it was also a malintentioned one.

``Must we stand in the dock everytime someone in the Islamic world does something?'' asked Qaari Mohammed Usman, his white saucepan beard quivering with anger, ``Must we answer for everything? Why?''

The acting mohtimeem (rector) of the Dar-ul-Uloom saw no cause to be answering questions this morning on the whys and wherefores of what the Taliban had done in the Bamiyan Valley; he had reason to be asking some of his own. ``Why must we be called upon all the time to bare our hearts to prove we are clean? Why must we be asked to protest our innocence all the time? Why must we be the ones to be forced to condone or condemn and then be judged on that? Why is what we say on the Taliban so important?''

Perhaps because of Dar-ul-Uloom's pre-eminence among madarsas of the world? Perhaps because the Taliban pride themselves as a force alchemised in madarsas quite like the Dar-ul-Uloom? Perhaps because Deobandis and the Taliban both follow the same Hanafi sect of Islam? Perhaps because Deoband has age-old ties with Afghanistan? Perhaps because Deoband could be one of the wellsprings of the Taliban's inspiration?

``Ah, yes,'' says Qaari Usman sardonically, ``So you think we train terrorists here and you want me to clarify we don't.'' He looks out of the tall windows of his first-floor office, down into Dar-ul-Uloom's central courtyard where skull-capped students have begun to eddy under the sun. Then he smooths his beard and says, "Ask these students about the Taliban and Bamiyan and they would not even know the names. We are into religion, not politics. Politics has killed the Bamiyan Buddhas, not religion."

Adil Siddiqui, another of the Deobandi pantheon, says the seminary did have an old Afghan connection, older than many thought. The first government in exile during the British was established by a bunch of Deobandis in Kabul early last century, teachers and students used to travel to and fro, King Zahir Shah visited Deoband during his reign. One of the seminary's old gates is named after him: Bab-uz-Zahir. It is, like most of the seminary and most of Deoband town webbed around it, in poor repair and marooned in the squalor of sewage and flies.

On the little tour he took me through Deoband's warren, Siddiqui used a kafiyeh-like scarf to swat flies and keep the stench out. But his impassioned discourse continued uninterrupted. ``You see, the Bamiyan Buddhas have lived with Islam much longer than Deoband's relationship with Afghanistan. Deoband was born in 1866. Islam was born 1400 years ago. The Bamiyan Buddhas perhaps have been there for 2000 years. Islam didn't hurt them. Islam isn't the reason for their destruction, politics is. The attack on the Buddhas is an un-Islamic act, but the Taliban have their own reasons for doing what they have done.''

Deobandi scholars like Usman and Siddiqui hold no defence for the Taliban's mayhem in Bamiyan but when it comes to apportioning blame, they are looking further afield. ``What the Taliban have done is wrong but you have to look for reasons why,'' said Siddiqui, ``The world has isolated them, there are sanctions against them, they were looking for attention and they got it by bombing the Buddhas. People who are leading the tirade against the Taliban have done worse, they have killed living apostles of non-violence, destroyed places of worship with no less brutality.''

So if they must be made to feel like they are in the dock, they are eager to put others there too. ``We have repeatedly said what the Taliban have done is condemnable, un-Islamic, horrifying,'' said Ahmed Shah Kashmiri, teacher of Arabic and the Hadees at the Dar-ul-Uloom, ``but look at how some people are trying to use the Taliban brush to tar the whole Muslim community They have killed Gandhi, they have demolished the Babri Masjid. It does not lie in their mouth to criticise what the Taliban have done because they have done the same. And we condemn both.''

On the way out, we came across a cluster of Deobandi students gathered on a streetcorner just outside the seminary. They looked grim and were sewn together by a transistor, the root of their common concern. It would have been another misdirected quest to wonder whether a commentary on the Bamiyan was what occupied their attention -- it was only the demolition of the Indian cricket team at the Eden Gardens.