Darul Uloom Deoband
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The Darul Uloom, (dārul ulūm devaband in Hindi and Urdu) is an Islamic madrassa or seminary. It is located at Deoband, a town in Uttar Pradesh, India.
It was founded in 1866 by several prominent ulema, headed by Al Imam Mohammad Qasim Nanotwi. The other prominent scholars were Allama Rashid Ahmed Gangohi, Haji Syed Abid Hussain etc.
In 1857 CE the fall of the Mughal Empire marked the despotic and awful end to the one millennium old Muslim regime in India. The British Colonialism took over the entire nation under its flag and it was seemed that India will repeat the history of the Muslim Spain where Islam and the Muslim community were totally eradicated by the tyrannical executions of the intellectuals and the forceful conversion of the Muslims in Christianity. After the failed mutiny against British Colonialism in India the Muslim scholars were brutally massacred and the Catholic priests were provided all possible support to convert Muslim community in Christianity.
In this awful condition the very first intellectual reform aroused in 1283AH (1867CE) in Deoband under the pious leadership of Hujjatul Islam Imam Mohammad Qasim Naunautavi who had felt that rather than fighting with sword this is the most sensitive period to protect the faith of the general Muslims from distortion and conversion. The only way was assumed to spread the network of Islamic scholarship throughout the country and to liberate common Muslim mind from the intellectual corruption. It was aimed that Deoband will provide the spiritual as well as intellectual feedings to the common Muslims throughout the nation to defend their faith and to stand them proudly and confidently which finally led towards the biggest and a successful Islamic educational revolution in India’s history ever. Now Deoband has become not only an institute but it is known as the complete thought of school which brought its intellectual and spiritual effects over the entire Islamic world; now Deoband is known as the biggest center of learning of Islamic Sciences with the interpretations of Hanafi Jurisprudence.
It teaches a traditional Islamic education, based on the age-old traditional curriculum known as the Dars-e-Nizami. Its students have gone on to found many other maddrassas across modern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and farther afield. The school of the Islamic religion promulgated here is often described as Deobandi, and has had great influence on the Taliban of Afghanistan. Deobandi thought is an Islamic revivalist movement that developed as a response to British colonialism in India. Their approach has often been likened to Salafism, but the Deobandi movement is much older and fundamentallly different in many respects from Salafism, especially those pertaining to Sufism and traditional Islamic spirituality.
Many of the school's Ulema had taken active roles in the "Indian Mutiny" or "War of Independence of 1857". The leader of mission, Al Imam Mohammad Qasim Nanoutavi, Popularly known as Hazrat Nanautavi turned lack of official support into a virtue, establishing the principle that the religious schools be run with public contributions from "the poor masses alone" rather than accepting the donations of governments and organisations and along with it their conditions.
The Dars-e-Nizami curriculum followed by Darul Uloom Deoband teaches Islamic law (shariah), Islamic jurispridence (Fiqh), traditional Islamic spirituality, known as tasawwuf, which is the practice of Sufism, as well as several other fields of Islamic study. The current syllabus consists of four stages. The first three stages can be completed in a total of eight years. The final stage is a post-graduate stage where students specialise in a number of advanced topics, such as the sciences of Hadeeth, Fiqh etc.
Many Islamic schools throughout the Indian subcontinent, and more recently, Afghanistan, the U.K. and South Africa, are affiliated or theologically linked to Darul Uloom Deoband, such as Nadwatul Ulama (Lucknow), Madrassa Inaamiya (South Africa) and Darul Uloom Karachi (Pakistan) as well as hundreds of others, notable and small, throughout the world.
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