Stain Your Prayer Rug with Wine 219encouraging Muslim cooperation with the British colonialists who
were just then beginning to take a more aggressive role in the political
affairs of the Subcontinent.
On the other hand, Wali Allah’s emphasis on orthodoxy sparked a
number of so-called “puritan” movements in India, the most famous
of which is the Deobandi School, whose students—taliban in Arabic—
played an active role in opposing the British occupation of India, and
whose ethnic Pashtun contingent would eventually seize control of
Afghanistan in order to impose their radically orthodox theo-political
philosophy upon the state (though that story must be reserved for
another chapter).
Considering the tragic effects of the colonialist experience in India, it
should be obvious which vision of Shah Wali Allah’s theo-political
views most successfully captured the imaginations of India’s oppressed
Muslim population. As will become apparent, throughout the colo-
nized lands of the Middle East and North Africa, the voice of mod-
ernism and integration with the Enlightenment ideals of the European
colonialists was consistently drowned out by the far louder and more
aggressive voice of traditionalism and resistance to the insufferable
yoke of imperialism. Thus, a new generation of Indian Muslims, born
into a country that had become the exclusive financial property of the
British Empire, no longer shared the popular Sufi sentiment that “if
the world does not agree with you, you agree with the world.” They
instead preferred the version offered by the great mystical poet and
philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938)—a disciple of the Qadiri
Order and a devotee of Wali Allah—who exclaimed, “if the world
does not agree with you, arise against it!”