218 No god but God
“remembrance of God” is best expressed through rapturous spiritual
concerts called sama‘, which Bruce Lawrence describes as “a dynamic
dialogue between a human lover and the Divine Beloved.”
Of course, music and dance—both of which are absolutely forbid-
den in traditional Islamic worship—have a long history in the Indian
subcontinent, and part of the reason for the rapid spread of Sufism in
India was the ease with which it appropriated both into its worship
ceremonies. In fact, early Chisti evangelists would often enter a town
playing flutes or beating drums so as to gather a crowd, before launch-
ing into the tales of their Pirs. So the sama‘ is not only a means by
which the Chistis experience the suprasensible world, it is also a valu-
able evangelical tool. And it is not unusual for the sama‘ to function as
a political rally. Indeed, unlike most Sufi orders, which tend toward
political quietism, Sufism in India has always been intertwined with
the social and political machinations of the state, especially during the
reign of the Mughal emperors (1526–1858), when, in exchange for
providing spiritual prosperity and moral legitimacy to the Empire, a
select number of Sufis enjoyed enormous influence over the govern-
ment.
Perhaps the most influential of these “political Sufis” was the
eighteenth-century writer and philosopher Shah Wali Allah (d. 1762).
A fervent disciple of the traditionalist Naqshbandi Order, Wali Allah
strove in his books and lectures to strip Sufism of its “foreign” influ-
ences (e.g., Neoplatonism, Persian mysticism, Hindu Vedantism) in
order to restore it to what he considered to be an older, unadulterated
form of Islamic mysticism, one inextricably bound to traditionalist
Sunni orthodoxy. However, Wali Allah was far more interested in
reasserting fundamental Islamic values in the social and economic
spheres of the state than in merely purifying Sufism. As a result, his
theo-political ideology, though interpreted in widely divergent ways,
had a profound effect on succeeding generations of Muslim theolo-
gians and philosophers.
On the one hand, Wali Allah’s emphasis on the resurgence of the
Islamic sciences and his enlightened socioeconomic theories influ-
enced Islamic modernists like Sayyid Ahmed Khan to form his Ali-
garth movement, an intellectual society dedicated not only to
establishing a European educational system in India, but also to