The Ahl-e-Hadith movement

The South Asian Ahl-e-Hadith is considered an offshoot of the Tariqat Muhammadiyyah, an intellectual-cum-militant reformist group which was initiated in Delhi by Sayyid Ahmad Barelwi (d. 1831) under the guidance of Shah ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (d. 1824), a son of the celebrated polymath Wali Allah (d. 1762).Footnote ¹⁰ The spearhead of the movement, who popularized its discourse through oral discussions, was Sayyid Nazir Husain Dehlawi (d. 1902), a scholar of the Wali Allah tradition and successor of Shah Muhammad Ishaq Dehlawi (a grandson of Wali Allah, d. 1846). Sometime around the 1850s, Nazir Husain turned away from Hanafism to a more Hadith-centred approach.Footnote ¹¹ A second spearhead, Sayyid Siddiq Hasan Khan (d. 1890), rose to fame through publishing Islamic works in Persian, Arabic, and Urdu. He was based in his adopted city of Bhopal, where he married its queen, Shah Jahan Begum (d. 1901). Siddiq Hasan's father was once a disciple of the Wali Allah school and member of the Tariqat and he himself studied with his father's peers (also members of the Tariqat). Khan's approach too, was Hadith-centred and drew further inspiration from Yemeni scholars from the school of al-Shawkani, some of whom were stationed in Bhopal.Footnote ¹² Both Nazir Husain and Siddiq Hasan inspired a body of Ahl-e-Hadith scholars and proselytisers in what can better be described as an intellectual movement, continuing in the tradition of Wali Allah and Barelwi and sharing elements with al-Shawkani's school.Footnote ¹³ Later Ahl-e-Hadith scholars have insisted that the presence of the Ahl-e-Hadith in South Asia dates back to the seventh century.Footnote ¹⁴

The defining feature of the Ahl-e-Hadith was that it followed the Quran and Sunnah and forbade taqlīd of madhhabs. It would draw its beliefs and practices directly from source texts and relegate manuals of fiqh and commentaries.Footnote ¹⁵ The movement also insisted on a strict code of worshipping God without intermediaries, saintly or otherwise. Despite its common roots and similar teachings, it appears to have developed independently from the Tariqat, which was, during the mid-nineteenth century until its demise, focused primarily on jihad.Footnote ¹⁶ The Indian Mutiny of 1857 illustrates the fine divide between the two trends; members of the Ahl-e Hadith were branded ‘Wahhabis’ by the British colonial authorities and accused of supporting the Tariqat mujahidin in the North West Frontier—a charge which they determinedly denied.Footnote ¹⁷ Nazir Husain and Siddiq Hasan were persecuted for alleged links.Footnote ¹⁸ They and other prominent members of the Ahl-e-Hadith issued fatwas declaring jihad against the British unlawful, and Muhammad Husain Batalwi (a student of Nazir Husain, d. 1920) even petitioned the Punjab government in 1886 and, later, other provincial governments, to remove the word ‘Wahhabi’ from official correspondences and refer to the movement by its preferred name.Footnote ¹⁹ All the while the Tariqat waged an ambitious jihad against the British-Indian government in an effort to re-establish a Moghul-like India.Footnote ²⁰ The Tariqat was eventually routed during the Ambala Campaign of 1863–1864 and fully dissolved in 1883.Footnote ²¹

While distancing themselves from Wahhabism for obvious political reasons, the Ahl-e-Hadith increasingly built ties with the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, on the basis of a shared revivalist discourse—or what has more recently come to be known as Salafism.Footnote ²² By the end of the nineteenth century, the political climate allowed for the Ahl-e-Hadith to publicly host Wahhabi scholars in India and write defensive tracts in support of Al Saud's political ambitions and religious doctrines.Footnote ²³ During the early twentieth century, students of Nazir Husain were instrumental in cementing ties between the Ahl-e-Hadith and the third Saudi state. Emer ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (later king of Saudi Arabia) befriended several prominent students of Nazir Husain, as did his scholarly circle of advisers, and even reconciled with certain members over a theological fallout.Footnote ²⁴ When Saudi forces conquered Mecca in 1924, various Ahl-e-Hadith magazines published tributes. Several Ahl-e-Hadith scholars also settled in Saudi Arabia and co-established religious seminaries like Dar al-Hadith in the Hejaz. Unbeknown to both parties, this alliance, which predates the oil boom that began in the 1940s, would also have mutual benefits in Britain much later (see below).

The majority of the Ahl-e-Hadith remained in India and worked tirelessly in growing the movement in terms of numbers and centres, with Punjab as its stronghold.Footnote ²⁵ A number of members also participated in the movement for India's independence, and others in the establishment of Pakistan. After partition in 1947, some of its scholars settled in Pakistan and established schools and publishing houses in Islamabad, Karachi, and Lahore. Indian Ahl-e-Hadith members did likewise, and relocated their intellectual centre to Al-Jamia-tus-Salafiah in Varanasi; the foundation stone was laid in 1963 by Yusuf al-Fawzan, then Saudi Arabia's ambassador in India, and inaugurated in 1966 by a representative of ʿAbd al-ʿAziz b. Baz (d. 1999), then vice-chancellor of the Islamic University of Medina and later Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia.Footnote ²⁶ Saudi Arabia's newfound oil reserves provided a welcome source of funds which Saudi-based Ahl-e-Hadith and Saudi scholars channelled into projects in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.Footnote ²⁷ The relationship was also reciprocal. The Islamic University of Medina (IUM) was established in Saudi Arabia in 1961 and Ahl-e Hadith scholars from India and Pakistan joined the teaching pool and graduates from Ahl-e-Hadith seminaries registered as students.Footnote ²⁸ Many such students returned to India or Pakistan and established their own centres and this tradition continues to this day. Others went on to establish mosques and organizations in the diaspora. The most organized body of Ahl-e-Hadith outside South Asia is located in Britain and it is to the development of the British Ahl-e-Hadith that we now turn our attention.

Ahl-e-Hadith in post-war Britain

In the post-Second World War economic boom in the United Kingdom, the vast majority of Muslims came as economic migrants from South Asia. Communities divided along ethnic and linguistic lines, nestling into the country's major industrial cities.Footnote ²⁹ As the number of mosques grew, imams were also hired from South Asia, replicating the five dominant South Asian Sunni groups: Barelwi, Deobandi, Fultoli, Jamaat-e-Islami, and the Ahl-e-Hadith.Footnote ³⁰ The Ahl-e-Hadith was one of the last South Asian sectarian factions to establish mosques in Britain due to the relatively low numbers of Ahl-e-Hadith-oriented followers at the time.

Fazal Karim Asim (d. 2003), the founder of the first Ahl-e-Hadith organization in Birmingham, was educated in the religious sciences at Madrasah Ghaznawiyyah, a famed Ahl-e-Hadith school in Amritsar, and later at Punjab University.Footnote ³¹ For 27 years, he worked in educational administration for both the British and Pakistani governments. In 1962, he migrated to Britain and became a factory worker in Birmingham. Alongside other like-minded individuals, in 1975 he established Markaz Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith UK (MJAH), which gradually developed into a network of centres and mosques throughout the country; the organization also publishes a magazine in Urdu and English entitled The Straight Path. Asim was instrumental in locating Ahl-e-Hadith families spread out across Britain and helping them to set up their own mosques as branches of MJAH.Footnote ³²

In the summer of 1975, a delegation arrived from the IUM with the intention of visiting various Muslim organizations throughout the country. It consisted of two Arab shaykhs and three Pakistani students from the IUM to translate: Abd al-Wahhab al-Banna, the inspector of schools in Saudi Arabia; Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999), one of the most influential Salafi scholars who then worked in IUM's Faculty of Ḥadīth; Sharif Ahmad Hafiz; Mahmud Ahmad Mirpuri (d. 1988); and Major Muhammad Aslam.Footnote ³³ Asim took the opportunity to ask for financial support and scholars for the nascent Ahl-e-Hadith organization and he was invited to Hajj in December of that same year to meet b. Bāz, then chairman of Dar al-Ifta (a government body tasked with issuing fatwas and religious guidance). After this meeting, b. Baz sent the same two students—Hafiz and Mirpuri—who were part of the 1975 delegation to Britain, in the following year soon after they graduated from the IUM.Footnote ³⁴ During this same period, ʿAbd al-Karim Saqib, also an IUM graduate, migrated to Britain and joined the team. All three became active members of MJAH. Financially, however, at this point b. Baz did not send funds to their organization. Rather, a Kuwaiti business man, Shaykh al-Mutawwa, donated money for their first large mosque in Small Heath, Birmingham, in 1976. Known as Green Lane Masjid, it became the headquarters of MJAH and is still the largest Ahl-e-Hadith mosque in Britain.Footnote ³⁵

Another important figure to arrive in Britain was Suhaib Hasan, who became one of the most senior leaders of the Ahl-e-Hadith in Britain and remains so to this day. Born in Malerkotla in East Punjab, Hasan was the son of ʿAbd al-Ghaffar Hasan, who taught at the IUM.Footnote ³⁶ In consequence, Hasan developed a close relationship with the influential b. Baz. Even after his father moved back to Pakistan from Medina, Hasan recalls regularly meeting b. Baz during his travels. Hasan went on to study at IUM, graduating in 1966.Footnote ³⁷ B. Baz initially sent him to Kenya where he remained for nine years preaching Islam. Hasan then moved to Britain as he wanted to complete a doctorate.Footnote ³⁸ Hasan introduced Shaykh al-Mutawwa to Asim, which resulted in the purchase of the Green Lane Masjid and later to the establishment of the Islamic Shariah Council in 1982.Footnote ³⁹ In 1984 he then co-founded a prominent Ahl-e-Hadith mosque in Leyton, London (known as Masjid al-Tawhid), funded by, as stated clearly on their website, the ‘generous donation’ of b. Baz.Footnote ⁴⁰ Within 10 years, the congregation, which remains active to this day, needed a bigger space and they purchased another building in 1991. ‘The foundation stone of the new masjid’, their website proudly declares with pictures, ‘was laid by the esteemed Shaykh Muhammad bin Abdullah al Subayyil, President of Affairs of the Sacred Mosques of Makkah and Madinah’.Footnote ⁴¹

This small cluster of graduates from prominent Ahl-e-Hadith institutes in South Asia and the IUM, fluent in both Arabic and Urdu, laid the foundations for Salafism in Britain, thereby including Britain in the matrix of long-standing, transnational connections between Middle Eastern and South Asian Salafism. They provided a platform for Middle Eastern Salafi scholars to give their lectures and avidly translated and distributed their writings. For example, b. Baz would occasionally deliver speeches over the phone, which Hasan would translate, followed by question and answer sessions. Mirpuri also contacted the present Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, ʿAbd al-ʿAziz Al Shaykh, to ask for permission to translate some of the religious verdicts from the Lajnah al-Daʾimah li ‘l-Buhuth al-ʿiImiyyah wa ‘l-Ifta (Permanent Committee for Knowledge and Research), which he was granted (after seeing a sample of the quality of Mirpuri's translations).Footnote ⁴²

But the Ahl-e-Hadith did not perceive themselves as subservient to or an offshoot of Middle Eastern Salafism. They viewed themselves as part of a wider transnational and transhistorical movement of pure Islam, which has existed since the dawn of Islam under different names. In their magazine, they write:

The earliest usage of the term ‘Salafiyyah’ in an official capacity by Ahl-e-Hadith members appears to be in 1918 when Madrasah Ahmadiyyah (est. 1890), a seminary, was relocated from Arah to Darbangah in Bihar, India, and renamed Dar al-ʿand Ahmadiyyah Salafiyyah.Footnote ⁴⁴ Shortly after, a publishing house, Maktabah Salafiyyah, was established in Multan in 1921.Footnote ⁴⁵ It is not yet clear whether the term ‘Salafiyyah’ was borrowed from Egypt, where it gained currency from the onset of the twentieth century. Aside from a few Ahl-e-Hadith scholars who affixed ‘Salafi’ to their names (a practice which continues today), the movement has consistently used the self-designation of ‘Ahl-e-Hadith’ and ‘Salafiyyah’ merely as a synonym. In Britain, the term ‘Salafi’ was adopted from the beginning of MJAH's activities and its official Quran school was named ‘Madrasah Salafiyyah’. However, the Salafism espoused by the Ahl-e-Hadith in Britain was coloured with South Asian cultural mores; they did not promote Arab dress, but wore the South Asian shalwar kameez with the distinctive ‘Jinnah cap’ and spoke in Urdu, thus catering for the predominantly South Asian migrants. From the late 1970s onwards, MJAH also published a magazine in Urdu, entitled Sirat-e-Mustaqim (The Straight Path), perhaps in tribute to the Tariqat Muhammadiyyah, which the Ahl-e-Hadith has since embraced as Ahl-e-Hadith proper and the first anti-colonial movement in British India. Some of its editions included a few pages in English; it was only in 1980 that it began to publish a separate quarterly magazine in English at the behest of Hasan who was already attuned to the necessity of gearing Islamic teachings towards British-born Muslims. By 1982 both magazines had become monthly editions—albeit not published regularly due to finances.Footnote ⁴⁶ Saqib, mentioned above, established The Straight Path along with his wife, and in 1988 founded and became the director of the Al-Hijrah School in Birmingham. The main focus of these magazines was, by and large, the ‘purification’ of theological beliefs from shirk (polytheism) and ritual practices from bidaʿ (innovations). To this end, one of the most oft-repeated topics in The Straight Path pertains to the permissibility of celebrating the Prophet's birthday, which is observed by their most-criticized rival sectarian group, the Barelwis. However, politics is another topic that punctuates the magazines. This coalescence of religion and politics is a characteristic specific to, and embedded within, the historical trajectory of South Asian Salafism.

Politics and the Ahl-e-Hadith

One of the most influential frameworks for categorizing Salafism is Wiktorowicz's typology: quietist Salafis, who focus on educating the masses and shun political engagement; political Salafis, who work within the existing political system to gain power in order to bring about top-down Islamization; and jihadis who work outside the legal system and commit acts of violence to bring about revolutionary change.Footnote ⁴⁷ Although quietist Salafism dominated the scene in the Middle East with only pockets of political strands, recent studies have highlighted how the Arab Spring, which began in Tunisia in 2010 and subsequently spread across the region, has precipitated the rise of new political Salafi movements.Footnote ⁴⁸ For the first time Salafi political parties sprung up in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Morocco, and Gaza after decades of criticizing and steering clear of active political engagement. This sudden shift has garnered much attention and is perceived as a novel and unanticipated development in the Salafi movement. Wiktorowicz's tripartite framework, while useful, is heavily modelled on the Middle Eastern context and presupposes that Middle Eastern Salafism is the epicentre of Salafism, where its paradigms are either replicated across the Muslim world or, at least, dictate the key shifts and debates in the global Salafi movement. This is part of the Arabian Peninsula's overarching image as being the nucleus of both orthodox Sunni and Shia Islam.Footnote ⁴⁹

The South Asian context, however, illustrates that this classification is unhelpful not only in understanding the Ahl-e-Hadith movement but also its expansion in Britain. The Ahl-e-Hadith was born in the British colonial period and, as a result, since its inception has been indelibly marked by the politics of its shifting context. The nineteenth century was marred by anti-colonial struggle, including militancy; as European powers stormed through the Muslim world, intellectuals and scholars reinvigorated the classic doctrine of jihad to legitimate the modern anti-colonial campaign.Footnote ⁵⁰ Against this background, religious revivalist movements were born. The Ahl-e-Hadith was closely associated with the Tariqat movement and some of its pioneers were involved in wider political and militant struggles, including peasant rebellions against landowners and the establishment of sharia courts to undermine colonial administration. Prominent scholars of the Ahl-e-Hadith, such as Muhammad Ibrahim Mir Sialkoti (d. 1956), one of the founding members of the All Ahl-e-Hadith Conference in 1906 and part of its first committee, took part in the heated debates leading up to partition with scholars and intellectuals from other factions.Footnote ⁵¹ Abul Kalam Azad, another notable Ahl-e-Hadith scholar, who, inter alia, was involved in the Khilafat movement in 1925, was president of the All India National Congress in 1940 and was appointed to many prominent positions in the Indian government soon after partition.Footnote ⁵²

After the creation of Pakistan, politics and militancy took on different forms and morphed into debates on national identity and the place of religion. Although secular elites initially took charge, the 1970s witnessed traditional scholars entering into the political arena, fiercely opposing Bhutto's socialist and ‘un-Islamic’ policies.Footnote ⁵³ Each sectarian faction, including the Ahl-e-Hadith, formed a political party and established a growing madrasa base, which taught its particular version of Islam.Footnote ⁵⁴ Limited success in the political arena, however, led to many coalitions with other religious and even secular parties. Moreover, as has been heavily documented, the bitter dispute with India over Kashmir and the American-backed Afghan–Soviet War refashioned jihad once again to provide a strong ideology to fight the ‘infidels’. As Jalal has argued, the issue of Kashmir was, and continues to this day to be, one of the central issues in the self-definition of the Pakistani nation state.Footnote ⁵⁵ So as not to be seen as impotent, each sectarian group formed militias that included its madrasa-educated youth. Even as the state divided and conquered the militant groups according to political expediencies, overall, they covertly supported this jihadi-fuelled industry. In this way, Lashkar-e-Taiba—an Ahl-e-Hadith jihadi organization—gained particular prominence in the 1990s.Footnote ⁵⁶

This is not to say that the Ahl-e-Hadith's political parties, their madrasa networks, and their jihadi outlets are one seamless conglomerate. There are perpetual and fierce internal debates, divisions, and criticisms over the correct strategy by which to Islamize society. Yet, while the meaning of political engagement and militant jihad shifted (and continues to do so), in the South Asian context a tripartite classification does not adequately capture the anti-colonial, followed by the post-colonial, context through which religious instruction, politics, and state-sanctioned jihad became inextricably linked.

The origins of modern Salafism in the Middle East, however, were very different. In eighteenth-century Najd, the heart of the Arabian Peninsula, an alliance was made between a religious theologian, Muhammad b. ʿAbd al-Wahhab (d. 1792), and Muhammad b. Saud (d. 1765), the emir of Ad-Diriyyah, a town that was the original home of the Saudi royal family. A strong ideology coupled with military might eventually led, after its third incarnation, to the formation of Saudi Arabia in its contemporary form in 1932.Footnote ⁵⁷ Religious institutions were swiftly subsumed under the state apparatus and any dissent was crushed, even those who had rallied against the state in the name of Wahhabism, ensuring a firm base of scholars loyal to the regime.Footnote ⁵⁸ Scholars became an integral part of the political system, holding influential positions as judges, ministers, and officials in the religious police or in government-controlled institutions such as mosques and charities. Over time, prominent scholars developed Wahhabism into what is now called Salafism.Footnote ⁵⁹

Perhaps, the most important point is that this region was never colonized and was therefore shielded from the anti-colonial revolutionary fervour that swept through most of the Muslim world. Hence the movement was ‘relatively homogenous’ and ‘parochial in orientation’.Footnote ⁶⁰ Historians pinpoint the turning point to be the 1960s when King Faisal (d. 1975) opened the Saudi borders to those being persecuted by the Baathist and Nasserist regimes in Syria and Egypt respectively.Footnote ⁶¹ Also, the rapid oil-induced expansion and modernization as well as the heightened demand for professional workers led to an influx of Egyptian and Syrian members of the Muslim Brotherhood into Saudi Arabia. Exposure to the broader politics of the wider region sparked the emergence of political Salafism—a blend of Salafi theology and social conservatism with the Muslim Brotherhood's political world view. The key figures of this new offshoot were ʿAbd al-Rahman ʿAbd al-Khaliq, Muhammad Surur Zayn al-ʿAbidin, and the Saudi Sahwah Islamiyyah cohort.Footnote ⁶² While they revered the older scholars due to the depth of their religious knowledge, they criticized them for their unconditional support for the Saudi regime, lack of contemporary knowledge, and myopic concern with ritualistic purity. In return, the senior scholars argued that oppositional political engagement, even through peaceful means, was a Western innovation and correct religious thought and practice was more important, although they accepted advising the ruling elite in private.

Tensions were brewing. The trigger was the 1990 Gulf War fatwa, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the scholars passed a fatwa permitting the United States to establish an army base on Saudi land.Footnote ⁶³ The younger politicized scholars vocally criticized the religious establishment. The Saudi state followed their usual pattern of silencing the dissenters and propping up their loyal supporters; political Salafi figures were either imprisoned or fled to join, influence, or even start other political and jihadi movements in the region. The repression of political Salafism left a void readily filled by the Afghan war veterans, precipitating the rise of Salafi-jihadism from the mid-1990s. Most of these movements were what Gerges has defined as ‘local’ jihadis, fighting against the ‘un-Islamic’ regimes in their respective countries or ‘global’ jihadis, fighting against the West (as opposed to irredentist jihadis fighting for occupied land, such as Kashmir or Palestine).Footnote ⁶⁴ Therefore, in the Middle Eastern context, historians describe Salafism as a linear evolution from quietists to jihadis, where the former dominated the scene and the ‘political’ and ‘jihadi’ versions were by-products that emerged much later.

Yet far from being a recent phenomenon, religious-political Salafism has a long-standing history in the South Asian context. For the purpose of this article, this distinction is significant as these porous boundaries in the Ahl-e-Hadith movement transposed itself in the diaspora. From the outset, in Britain the Ahl-e-Hadith punctuated their magazine with political analysis and excerpts from the speeches of prominent Islamist figures. Indeed, Mirpuri's fatwas strongly encouraged voting in Pakistan and being politically active in Britain.Footnote ⁶⁵ They also joined hands with other sectarian factions. For example, at their annual conference in 1991 the organization invited leaders from the Islamic Foundation—a British organization with ties to the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami—to give speeches. Of the six resolutions made, several were overtly political and related to Muslims around the world:

Of course, as noted above, the Ahl-e-Hadith was a minority in Britain and so alliances were beneficial. This should not be seen as an aberration but rather as a continuation of the South Asian Ahl-e-Hadith tradition. However, as shall be seen below, following the Arabization of the British Salafi movement, what was considered normative in the first generation of the Ahl-e-Hadith in Britain—voting, taking part in the political process, and alliances with other non-Salafi groups––became one of the most divisive issues among second-generation British Salafis.

British-born Salafi groups

The 1980s witnessed the rise of second-generation and convert Muslim organizations. Muhammad Manwar ʿAli, who goes by the moniker Abu Muntasir, was an articulate, Bangladeshi-born speaker who could preach Islam to the second-generation youth in English. He settled in Britain in 1975 and immediately began preaching Islam to younger Muslims, connecting them directly to the Quran and Hadith corpus through existing translations. He was soon befriended by an Ahl-e-Hadith family and introduced to Saqib, then a member of MJAH, who had initiated a momentary youth group called Harakat Islah Shabab Al Muslimin (The Movement of Reform of Muslim Youth, HISAM).Footnote ⁶⁷ After a disagreement over direction, Abu Muntasir established a British Salafi organization in 1984, the Jamʿiyyah Ihya Minhaj al-Sunnah (JIMAS), along with a number of like-minded second-generation Muslims and converts.Footnote ⁶⁸ JIMAS was decentralized and, apart from setting up a short-lived centre in Ipswich in 2011, utilized the existing Ahl-e-Hadith mosque network and university Islamic societies to travel throughout Britain preaching Salafi Islam.Footnote ⁶⁹ It established an annual residential weekend conference in Leicester, at which families could attend lectures on a variety of Islamic themes. Additionally, it began to foster connections with North America, particularly with Salafi counterparts, such as the Al-Qurʾan wa Sunnah Society of North America (QSS). QSS also held regular annual conferences, and it was common for the same set of speakers to attend both conferences.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a sprawling network of predominantly Middle Eastern scholars and a few Western-born scholars rapidly developed. Abu Muntasir was eager to invite Arab scholars to Britain and networked with Salafi schools in Jordan and Egypt. For example, two of al-Albani's students, ʿAli Hasan al-Halabī and Salim al-Hilali, regularly attended JIMAS conferences and other Salafi mosques. Western-born speakers were mainly self-taught; a few were graduates from IUM in Saudi Arabia or had spent years under prominent Salafi scholars in the Middle East or South Asia. Initial key figures in this category were Bilal Philips, Anwar al-Awlaki (d. 2011), and Ali al-Tamimi; later Yasir Qadhi, Muhammad Al-Shareef, and Tawfique Chaudhury were also added to this circuit.Footnote ⁷⁰ Alongside lectures, JIMAS also distributed its own literature and media. With its highly respected scholars and lectures in English, JIMAS quickly became one of the most influential organizations in the British Muslim landscape, with its annual conferences attracting several thousand attendees.

Yet the divisions in Saudi Arabia after the Gulf War fatwa (discussed above) directly impacted on British Salafis who split across the same fault lines. Three Salafi trends emerged: first were those who became unquestioningly loyal to the Saudi regime and were harsh critics of the political strand of Salafism. They focused excessively on theological issues and one of their chief advocates was the Saudi scholar, Rabi al-Madkhali, leading his followers to be derogatively called ‘Madhkalis’. This small splinter movement was initially bolstered by the Saudi regime and other Arab secular governments for their unwavering support. Yet its stringent, exclusivist theological beliefs led to its denouncement by high-ranking officials from the Saudi religious establishment and the movement significantly dwindled in the wider Arab world; ironically it is now mainly active among European Muslims. The second trend was the mainstream Saudi religious establishment which remained focused on ‘correct’ theology and educating the masses but was more moderate than the first group in its opposition to political engagement. Third were the political Salafis who were outspoken critics of the Saudi regime and Arab secular governments.Footnote ⁷¹ MJAH, as discussed above, was politically inclined and straddled the second and third trends without any internal fissures. In contrast, British Salafi groups criticized each other, replicating the same debates and discussions that were occurring in the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, by the mid 1990s, the British Salafi scene mirrored the Saudi Salafi landscape and echoed its debates.

What began as a split over the Gulf War fatwa gradually morphed into a debate over the role of foreign scholarship and its religious authority over Muslims residing in the West. While Muslims worldwide were reeling from multiple wars, such as the Gulf War, the Bosnian War, and the Kashmir and Palestine crises, mainstream Saudi scholars were largely silent. Furthermore, in the aftermath of domestic issues, such as the Rushdie affair in 1989 and later the September 11 attacks in 2001, followed by the London bombings in 2005, there was a widespread concerted effort to focus more on the challenges of living in the West. This sentiment was not limited to Salafi circles and seemed to reflect the mood at the end of the 1990s. For example, in 1997, the same year that JIMAS held conferences about establishing Islam in the West, the Muslim Council of Britain was established. As a cross-sectarian civic society organization, it was designed to represent Muslim interests to the British government.Footnote ⁷² It was also in this year that the European Council of Fatwa and Research was established to develop fatwas specifically catering for Muslims in the West and their integration.Footnote ⁷³

Against this backdrop, parts of these Salafi networks began to incrementally distance themselves from the Middle Eastern embrace and work self-consciously towards carving out an ‘Islam in the West’. As more graduates from the IUM emerged, in some circuits they began to replace the Arab Salafi scholars. While these graduates showed respect to these scholars, most of whom were once their teachers, they also began to develop their own opinions tailored to Muslims in the West—some even vocally expressed the opinion that foreign-based scholars should not preach to Western Muslims as they do not have a deep understanding of their context and the specific challenges they face.Footnote ⁷⁴ As a reaction to this group, other parts of the British Salafi spectrum remained staunchly loyal to certain Salafi Arab scholars, arguing that their depth of knowledge is far superior.Footnote ⁷⁵

In this way, second-generation intra-Salafi debates centred largely on four topics: first, political engagement and voting in the British system; second, forming alliances with other sectarian groups (including other strands of Salafis) for political reasons or even sharing platforms with them at Muslim events; third, the role and status of foreign-based Salafi scholars; and fourth, adapting to life in the West in terms of social issues and financial matters. These four topics became the subject of debates and schisms, which continue to this day.

To take just one example of voting and political participation, mainstream Salafi scholars and institutions have issued fatwas since the late 1990s stating that it is permissible to vote in non-Muslim countries.Footnote ⁷⁶ This is somewhat in line with other scholars, such as the Wasatis,Footnote ⁷⁷ who have also clearly stated that it is permissible to participate in elections in secular political systems. The subtle difference lies not in the final ruling, but in the tone of acceptance: the former only tolerate it while the latter strongly encourage it. The Wasati scholars, who promote a jurisprudence of minorities which advocates flexible Islamic rulings to aid the integration of Muslims into non-Muslim societies in order to spread Islam (while preserving their religious identity), argue that not only is voting permissible but some even go as far as to say that it is Muslims’ duty to actively participate in order to improve their society, particularly as national politics has an increasingly global dimension that impacts on Muslims worldwide. Political systems, they argue, that do not comply with the Islamic sharia are impermissible, but voting is not an approval of these systems; rather, they stress, that it serves a greater purpose—maslaha (public interest or objective of Islam). Salafi scholars, on the other hand, while they argue similar points (such as the need to protect and promote Islam), are more cautious and place a greater emphasis on the legal Islamic concept of the ‘lesser of two evils’. In 2007 the Muslim World League, led at the time by Saudi Arabia's Grand Mufti, Abd al Aziz bin Abdullah al al-Shaykh, stated that voting is permissible only if it ‘promotes a maslaha, that the vote is effective and that voting does not lead to neglect of religion’.Footnote ⁷⁸ Therefore, while the Wasati scholars highly encourage Muslims to vote, and even call it a ‘duty’, in some cases mainstream Salafi scholars merely state that it is permissible on the condition that it has a positive impact for Muslims.Footnote ⁷⁹

This overall agreement on the permissibility of political participation is reflected in studies that find that the majority of British Muslims (including Salafis) vote and consider it a privilege and civic duty.Footnote ⁸⁰ Yet there still remain pockets of disagreement and the flurries of articles and videos denouncing voting that emerge around each election mainly emanate from two groups. First is a group called Hizb-ut-Tahrir which considers voting impermissible;Footnote ⁸¹ and second, those influenced by the Saudi ‘Madkhalis’ or what is sometimes termed the ‘loyalist’ strand mentioned above, who advocate for strict loyalty to the Saudi regime. This latter group criticizes mainly Western-based Salafi scholars who have moved from basic permissibility to strong encouragement of political engagement in line with the Wasati scholars.Footnote ⁸² They accuse these Salafi scholars of adulterating ‘pure’ Salafism by mixing it with political ideology inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood. Their harsh criticism translates into refutation videos and calls for separation.Footnote ⁸³

These debates, however, did not have much of an impact on the Ahl-e-Hadith generation in Britain. As mentioned above, from the onset they were comfortable with political engagement, forming alliances, and sharing platforms. Their annual conferences host both South Asian and Middle Eastern scholars, representing the close ties that have been built over the centuries. Moreover, key Ahl-e-Hadith figures, namely Hasan and Mirpuri, helped to establish the first Britain-wide Islamic Shariah Council in 1982 alongside other scholars from different sectarian factions; this was also the first sharia council in Europe offering different services, from resolving matrimonial disputes to providing counselling and religious verdicts on new issues facing Muslims in Britain.Footnote ⁸⁴ Firmly embedded inside their own tradition, this sense of stability allowed them to focus on building institutions to further entrench Islam in the West, rather than on intra-Salafi polemics.

The Ahl-e-Hadith in Britain: continuing the tradition

MJAH is still very much part of the Muslim landscape in Britain. Approximately 50 branches-cum-affiliates now exist across the country, varying in size and religious output.Footnote ⁸⁵ JIMAS regularly held classes during the late 1980s and 1990s at MJAH branches. When the split occurred between JIMAS members, MJAH continued work as normal and was unfazed. Already a constitutionalized organization with multiple outlets, MJAH's primary concern became educating the local community through its regular classes in Urdu and English, its children's madrasa, and yearly conferences. Members of MJAH have also appealed to national and international audiences through their participation in non-sectarian satellite channels, including the Islam Channel and Zakir Naik's Peace TV (both its Urdu and English channels). MJAH has also served as an important gateway for young Muslims who aspired to study at IUM.Footnote ⁸⁶ Aside from the prerequisite college education, British applicants were expected to provide two references from religious centres and MJAH's Green Lane Masjid or Masjid al-Tawhid were trusted by IUM staff due to their familiarity with IUM graduates like Hasan.Footnote ⁸⁷ In this way, countless British students have studied at IUM and other Saudi institutions, facilitated by MJAH in its overarching aim to propagate a Salafi-oriented discourse in Britain bolstered by its network of South Asian and Saudi scholars and universities. Equally, British and American graduates have played an important role in disseminating Salafism in Britain within MJAH spaces, including converts like African-American Abu Usamah al-Dhahabi, who has also presented a series on the Islam Channel entitled ‘The Sunnah the Better’.Footnote ⁸⁸

The founding members of MJAH have undeniably fallen back in place of younger members from both South Asia and Britain, such as Qari Zaka Ullah Saleem of Pakistan, who is currently ‘head of English Dawah’, and Ahsan Hanif, a British-born Medina graduate and regular speaker and translator at Green Lane Masjid, which has continued to serve the local and national Muslim community in various ways. Along with five congregational daily prayers and regular classes and conferences, Green Lane Masjid now also provides funeral services and accommodation on site in the form of flats for long-term renters. IslamWise, a project initiated by MJAH members and run by second-generation members of the community, distributes daʿwah literature with a particular focus on converts and beginners. A recent donation from Ihya Turath in Kuwait of 400,000 copies of a Quran translation has since been dispersed to MJAH branches and other mosques.Footnote ⁸⁹ Their projects include social campaigns such as dealing with knife crime, homelessness, and plastic waste.Footnote ⁹⁰ This led to them winning the prestigious title of ‘Mosque of the Year’ at the British Muslim Awards in January 2020.Footnote ⁹¹

Maulana ʿAbd al-Hadi al-Umari, who was amir of MJAH for 10 years and before that, its general secretary, continues to play a part in MJAH behind the scenes. He works in the Islamic Judiciary Board wing located in the masjid, but he rarely makes appearances at talks and conferences. Instead, he states, his role is to ensure that MJAH continues to ‘serve the community especially in matrimonial issues, issuing fatwas, answering their queries and questions’.Footnote ⁹² When asked about Salafism, al-Umari is keen to assert that he prefers to use the term ‘Ahl-e Hadith’ when describing MJAH's religious outlook but still self-identifies as a Salafi. Clearly, past skirmishes with local second-generation Salafis appear to have turned him away from using the term ‘Salafi’, but not from its scholars or dogma.Footnote ⁹³ Green Lane Masjid appears to be a comfortable space for both South Asian Ahl-e-Hadith and British Salafis, offering activities to both Urdu and English-speaking attendees. Several MJAH scholars and imams, some of whom are graduates of universities in South Asia as well as IUM, hold positions in other branches that are less prominent than those run by second-generation and convert cohorts in Birmingham, Luton, and Brixton.

One ‘student of knowledge’ who tows both lines is Naveed Ayaaz, based in Nelson. As well as visiting mosques up and down the country, he now works alongside Saleem in planning daʿwah tours in which a mixture of IUM graduates of multiple ethnicities visit MJAH branches and provide lectures in English on shifting and sometimes topical themes. Ayaaz is also the co-founder of a website that regularly promotes national events and study circles.Footnote ⁹⁴ While Ayaaz is keen to promote Salafism and cleanse the term from typologies which allow for jihadis and politicos, he is adamant that it is not an exclusive group or sect and he regularly delivers talks at non-Salafi mosques (provided he is not censored). Ayaaz admits that prior to studying in Medina, he viewed the Ahl-e-Hadith as separate to the Salafis because the former was ‘very inward looking’ and largely focused on its own community. Nonetheless, he believes that MJAH will endure in Britain because it is attracting outsiders as well as growing internally with the arrival or growth of Ahl-e-Hadith families.Footnote ⁹⁵ Ayaaz is just one of several IUM graduates who fosters a brand of Salafism in Britain which accommodates the South Asian Ahl-e-Hadith as well as newer, growing communities such as Somalis, Sri Lankans, and North Africans. Another activist is Ali Hassan Khan of Cambridge. While not a Medina graduate, he studied at a popular Ahl-e-Hadith centre in Lahore, Pakistan, and since moving to Britain in 2001, he has published books and online articles in English for the Pakistan-based Umm al-Qura Publications.Footnote ⁹⁶ His South Asian Ahl-e-Hadith background is unmistakable due to his focus on ‘hot’ topics abroad between Ahl-e-Hadith and their antagonists, the Deobandis and Barelwis, as well as his references to South Asian scholars over and above their Arab counterparts. Khan co-established a small mosque in Cambridge which joined MJAH as an affiliate, although he admits that so far it has not developed further than an inauguration by al-Umari.Footnote ⁹⁷ More significant is Khan's active promotion of South Asian scholarship. He recently published a translation of 40 biographies of South Asian Ahl-e-Hadith scholars, adding an extra 10 individuals and connecting some of the early Ahl-e-Hadith scholars to contemporary Salafi activists in Britain today.Footnote ⁹⁸ At the mosque's 2019 English Winter Conference, Khan invited 11 members of MJAH, including al-Umari and Hasan, to speak on topics concerning ‘Khatm-e-Nubawwat’ (the Finality of Prophet Muhammad). Khan also invited the Hanafi scholar and head of Oxford Islamic College, Mohammad Akram Nadwi, to speak on the topic of the Nadwat Ulema's efforts in countering Qadianism, demonstrating a more inclusive stance towards non-Salafis as practised by MJAH from its inception.Footnote ⁹⁹ He notes that ‘third-generation’ Ahl-e-Hadith in Birmingham, for example, are inclined to Arab Salafism more than they are to their own heritage and, as a result, have become more ‘Saudified’ and ‘Hanbalified’. While he sees no contradiction in someone being both a Hanbali-madhhab adherent and a Salafi, he is conscious of Salafism being reduced to the views of one contingent of scholars from a particular region over the past century.

Khan acknowledges the power that mediators, such as translators like himself, can wield. He admits to posting counter-responses online on multiple issues, like political participation and voting in democratic states, in order to enlighten those Salafis who are unable to engage with Arabic and Urdu sources that Salafism is diverse in culture and accommodating on subsidiary issues (masāʾil al-farʿiyyah). He bemoans the fact that the books of Wali Allah are taught in Pakistan whereas in Britain such scholars are virtually unknown among Salafis; he wishes ‘the youth could see the richness’ of their South Asian heritage as well as that of other regions like North Africa.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Through his efforts, Khan is reasserting a place for the Ahl-e-Hadith in twenty-first century Britain.

Al-Dhahabi, Ayaaz, and Khan demonstrate what the future of the Ahl-e-Hadith in Britain might look like. One is an African-American convert, while the other two are British-Pakistani. Two were trained in Medina and the other in Gujranwala. All work with MJAH as well as on their own terms. Ayaaz states that the Ahl-e-Hadith have something which younger Salafis generally do not—‘assets’, by which he means mosques and centres.Footnote ¹⁰¹ These assets enable younger, English-speaking Salafis like himself to concentrate on teaching future generations Salafism and not on more mundane tasks like the financial upkeep or bureaucracy of a mosque. For the Ahl-e-Hadith, this means a realistic future. The extent to which the Ahl-e-Hadith will maintain its South Asian heritage in Britain will largely fall on activists like Khan who can bridge the gaps between British Salafis and South Asian scholars just as Al-Dhahabi and Ayaaz bridge them with Arabs.

Yet not all Salafi mosques have a reciprocal relationship between the elder members of Ahl-e-Hadith and the youth. One such example is the Jamia Masjid Ahl-e-Hadith Halifax (JMAH). Established in the 1980s at the behest of Mirpuri, it was one of the first mosques built in the northern industrial town of Halifax—home to a large concentration of Muslims predominantly from Mirpur, Pakistan.Footnote ¹⁰² As the congregation and demands grew, they expanded three times and now have accommodation for the imams, a conference hall, and funeral facilities.Footnote ¹⁰³ However, when younger members wanted to organize more of their own events in English, differences led to the establishment of another Salafi-centre called ‘Islam Halifax’ in 2009.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Reaching out to other like-minded organizations in the vicinity, they followed the successful model of ‘Islam Bradford’, another second-generation Salafi masjid established in 2004. Through these contacts they managed to tap into the transnational network of scholars from the Middle East and English-speaking graduates from the IUM. They also hosted Ahsan Hanif, who, as mentioned above, is a British-born IUM graduate who regularly speaks at GLM. This is not to say there is a strong divide: the JMAH is used for services, such as the daily prayers, while the Islam Halifax building is mainly used for English-medium events which it is able to organize freely without any constraints from the ‘mosque elders’.

It is interesting to note that maintaining the South Asian flavour of Islam and its scholars in Britain is not of concern to the Ahl-e-Hadith. They mainly perceive themselves in global, universal terms, linking back to the time of the Prophet. At the annual MJAH conference in 2017, which was hosted by JMAH, Mahmood Al-Hassan, the imam of the main Ahl-e-Hadith mosque in Halifax, opened the ceremony with passionate words in Urdu:

In the same vein, al-Umari states that ‘culture is not emphasized’ and that importance is to be given to the sharia. Thus, for example, he states that some of the children of South Asian migrants in Britain no longer enjoy the traditional foods their elders eat, but ‘the important thing is that the food is halal’. He admits that, based on its Islamic ideals, which are not constrained by borders, MJAH may be very different in 50 years from now.Footnote ¹⁰⁶