Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, Oct 11: The visiting Afghanistan’s Taliban foreign minister Amir Khan Muttaqi on Saturday visited the Islamic seminary Darul Uloom Deoband in Saharanpur district in Uttar Pradesh Saturday as part of his six-day trip to India marking a significant diplomatic development.
“I am thankful to the Ulema of Deoband and the people of the area for this warm welcome… The future of India-Afghanistan relations seems very bright,” Muttaqi said.
The first senior Taliban functionary to travel to India after the return of the group to power following US withdrawal in 2021, Amir Khan Muttaqi arrived in New Delhi on Thursday from Russia. He also met external affairs minister S Jaishankar on Friday.
His visit marks a significant step forward in New Delhi’s efforts to forge a working relationship with the Taliban, though India, like a large part of the global community, till now does not officially recognise the Taliban regime in Kabul. The Taliban leader’s visit to Deoband, however, goes beyond the political, as he too has stressed.
“Deoband is a big centre for the Islamic world… and Afghanistan and Deoband are connected, hence I am going to meet the leaders there. We want our spiritual students to come and study here too,” he had said on Friday.
Muttaqi participated in a scholarly session on Saturday, where he studied a Hadith (Prophetic tradition) under Maulana Nomani in the seminary’s central library. He later sought and received permission to teach Hadith, for which the rector conferred upon him the Hadith Sanad (certificate of authority). Following this, Muttaqi earned the right to use the title “Qasmi,” denoting his academic connection to the prestigious institution. He can now formally write his name as Maulana Amir Khan Muttaqi Qasmi.
Darul Uloom Deoband, an Islamic seminary located in the town of Deoband in Saharanpur district of Uttar Pradesh, has produced Islamic scholars from India and around the world. The seminary was established in the late 1800s by Sayyid Muhammad Abid, Fazlur Rahman Usmai, Mahtab Ali Deobandi and others.
The foundation of the current campus was laid by Muhamad Qasim Nanautawi. The school mainly teaches manqulat, or Islamic education based on the study of texts and traditions from sources like the Quran and Hadith. The Islamic seminary has 34 departments and over 4,000 students pursuing studies.
According to Ashraf Usmani, the seminary’s media in charge at the time, a student gets a degree of maulviet( maulana ) after 8 years of studies and thereafter successful students opt for specialization in literature, fatwa, tafseer (explanation of Quran), Hadith, English, computers etc.
According to Usmani, it was also mandatory for the students to undergo weekly classes about Hindu religion and philosophy to develop a holistic approach about the country’s religions, culture and heritage, including Islam.
According to the seminary’s website, the Darul Uloom Deoband is renowned as a religious and academic centre in the Islamic world. “In the sub-continent, it is the largest institution for the dissemination and propagation of Islam and the biggest headspring of education in the Islamic sciences,” the website says.
“Even as Cairo, after the fall of Baghdad, became the center of Islamic arts and sciences, exactly in the same way, after the decline of Delhi, academic centrality fell to the lot of Deoband,” it adds.
The reason why the seminary is held in high esteem by many Taliban leaders is that several senior commanders and leaders of the group studied at Darul Uloom Haqqania in Pakistan’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, which was founded on the lines of Darul Uloom Deoband.
Maulana Abdul Haq, who founded Darul Uloom Haqqania, studied and taught in the seminary in Deoband before Partition in 1947. His son, Sami-ul-Haq, is referred to as the ‘Father of the Taliban’ because of Darul Uloom Haqqania’s role in grooming Taliban commanders and leaders.
In an interaction with reporters Friday, Muttaqi had highlighted the significance of his visit to Deoband, saying it has a long history with Afghanistan. “Deoband is a significant religious place for us. This place and its people have a long history with Afghanistan. The way our students come here to study engineering and science, they also come here for religious studies,” he said.
