@SinghSong
What do you think of the idea that Malerkotla was spared the horrors of the Partition of Punjab because in 1705, the Nawab of Malerkotla had opposed the execution of the 7 and 9 year old sons of the Sikh Guru?
I think it's overly simplistic, and that this sole incident was a relative non-factor, with the core reason for this going back farther than that. It does tie in quite neatly with the mentions I gave the
Chishti Order of Sufism in the previous thread though; since
Sheikh Sadruddin, the Sufi saint who founded the town of Malerkotla more than 500 years ago was a member of the
Suhrawardiyya Order and a close personal friend of Great Sufi 'Baba Sheikh Farid' (
Farīduddīn Mas'ūd, the Sufi saint whose teachings and verses are included in the Guru Granth Sahib, and who led the Chishti Order), with both espousing near-identical teachings. Sheikh Sadruddin's lineage branched into two groups. One of these started ruling the state of Maler Kotla, and were later given the title of Nawab when the Mughal Empire arose; the other branch lived around the Khanqah of Shaikh Sadruddin, controlling its revenue from pilgrims and implementing his teachings. The State of Malerkotla itself was established in 1657, when Bayazid Khan was granted the right to construct a defensive fort to protect the shrine, which he named Maler Kotla, from which the state took its name; with Shah Fazl Chishti, a Sufi saint of the Chishti Sabiri branch, and Damodar Das, a Hindu sadhu, invited to lay down the fort's foundation stone together, in a gesture symbolic of the values upon which Maler Kotla was founded.
And Maler Kotla was among the loudest in their condemnation of Syed Ahmad Barelvi's
Ahl-i-Hadith Indian Jihadi movement, which called for a popular jihad against not only the Sikhs, but themselves as well in equal measure; becoming one of the primary centers of organisation for what'd later came to be known as
Ahl-e-Sunnat movement in South Asia, defending a more traditional South Asian version of the faith centered on the practices of Sufi mysticism against the increasingly violent and radicalist Wahabbi, Deobandi and Salafi movements' escalating persecution. The followers of the Ahl-e-Sunnat or Barelvi movement are also known as 'Sunni Sufis', and are today estimated to comprise over 2/3rds of Indian Muslims and 3/5ths of Pakistani Muslims (including large majorities of the population in the Punjab, Sindh and Azad Kashmir regions, the majority of whom and their descendants are still followers of the Chishti 'Sunni Sufi' Order to this day). However, the core difference between how things panned out in Maler Kotla, and how they did in places with similar histories of inter-religious harmony and tolerance like Pakpattan, can ultimately be traced back to the schism which took place in the 1880s, when
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian founded his Ahmaddiya Movement, proclaiming himself to be the Mahdi.
This was on the basis of his having espoused a view on the Prophets of God, and the Quranic term
Khatam an-Nabiyyin, fundamentally different from that espoused by mainstream Islam. In mainstream Islam, this is interpreted as pertaining to chronological order, and thus asserting that there could be no other Prophets after Muhammad's delivery of religious law to humanity in the form of the Quran. Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, however, espoused the alternate view that it merely pertained to the order of the Prophets' importance and precedence, thus asserting that prophets could continue to appear within Islam provided that they were non-lawbearing prophets dependent upon the sharia of Muhammad, that the hadith issued by Muhammad that "124,000 Prophets came before his advent" related to all of those past, present and future prophets who ranked beneath Muhammad (and Jesus), and proclaiming himself to be one of these prophets in this context. Nonetheless, this proclamation created great uproar and outrage in the wider Ahl-e-Sunnat Muslim community, and a reactionary counter-movement coalesced, with the goal of protecting their belief in the finality of prophethood of Prophet Muhammad based on the mainstream interpretation of the concept of the Quranic term Khatam an-Nabiyyin.
Over two hundred religious scholars across the British Raj joined this counter-movement, signing the Fatwa (decree) of disbelief that was issued against Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, which declared him and all his followers to be Kafirs, and proclaimed it to be legal in accordance with Sharia law to kill them all; launching several nationwide campaigns and protests against the Ahmadiyyans. And over the next couple of decades (with the British largely trivializing Ghulam Ahmad's proselyting, which only served to greatly extend and increase this counter-movement's legacy), they increasingly violently and radically incited the persecution and forced conversion of the Ahmadiyyans (in much the same manner as the Wahabbis had incited their own persecution and forced conversion); demanding the changes that'd uphold blasphemy as the highest crime, endorsing the strictest punishment for not only the Ahmadis, but all other 'blasphemers against Islam', which went on to be adopted wholesale by the majority of Ahl-e-Sunnat Muslims, and enshrined in the Pakistani constitution.
However, the rulers of Maler Kotla and their relatives (who'd expanded their operations over the centuries to establish and govern the overwhelming majority of the Khanqah, Muslim Darbars and mosques across the state of Maler Kotla's territories), were perhaps the most influential leaders in the Ahl-e-Sunnat community who'd refused to sign the Fatwa against Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and the Ahmadiyyans, and discouraged these protests; acknowledging Ghulam Ahmad's right to his alternative interpretation of the Quran, and his claim to propherthood per this differing interpretation. Because of this, the anti-Ahmadiyyan reactionary movement, which eventually expanded the targets it deemed guilty of 'blasphemy' to any and all people who criticized or disagreed with their leaders' own interpretation/s of Islam's teachings just as the Wahabbis before them had, never took root in Maler Kotla, and it was spared the violence which accompanied the Partition of the Punjab (and British India as a whole) predominantly for this reason.
Basically, to draw analogies with goings on in contemporary American history, the situation which wound up playing out, resulting in the creation of Pakistan and the numerous discriminatory programs against all non-Sunnis there to this day, is kind of like if
Joseph Smith, after having published the
Book of Mormon and organized his
Church of Christ in 1830, had decided to stick around with his growing band of Mormon followers and attempted to establish his 'Millenial Kingdom of
Zion' in Western New York instead of moving out west. Challenging all of the other Christian leaders of the
Second Great Awakening to 'preach-offs'/prayer duels which he and his congregation would always proclaim that he'd won; establishing multiple Zions across the heartland of the Eastern USA; with the US government protecting him, and even dismissing a lawsuit filed against his followers' own acts of violence, taken to the US Supreme Court; with his audacity only increasing further with his success, and dozens upon dozens of unsuccessful attempts on his life, for a full 19yrs until he dies of natural causes in 1849. At which point, the 'floodgates break' so to speak, and equivalents of the
Mormon War break out in pretty much every state and territory with a Mormon presence, with the consequent
Mormon Extermination Order being issued across the entirety of the United States, and ultimately used as the basis for future edicts against all who "openly blaspheme the Most High God, and cast contempt on His holy religion" becoming enshrined in the US constitution.
How much more reactionary, extremist and puritanical do you think that the
Third Great Awakening (which already had plenty of reactionary, extremist and puritanical elements IOTL) would've been in such a TL? And looking at the timeline, with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad having only died in 1908 (115yrs ago, a full 69yrs later than Joseph Smith in this hypothetical scenario), how (much more than IOTL) hardline Christian Fundamentalist do you reckon that the USA would still be in 1954? Does this make it a bit easier to contextualize why Pakistan's still as hardline Islamic Fundamentalist as it is today?
