Haji Shariatullah

Haji Shariatullah (Bengali: হাজী শরীয়তুল্লাহ; 1781–1840) was a prominent religious leader and Islamic scholar from Bengal in the eastern subcontinent, who is best known as the founder of the Faraizi movement. In 1884, the Shariatpur District was formed and named after him.

Quotes about Shariatullah

 * Sharī‘at Allāh’s main message was one of religious purification, since the popular beliefs of Bengali Muslims had strayed far from the purity of early Islam. He wanted a return to the farā’id, “the obligatory religious duties”, such as the profession of faith, the daily prayers, fasting during the month Ramadan, paying the zakat poor tax, and pilgrimage to Mecca. Like Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhab, Sharī‘at Allāh stressed the principle of tawhīd, and denounced bida‘, innovations, and shirk (polytheistic practices and beliefs). As Alessandro Bausani sums up, “besides various para-Hindu customs, he rejected the celebration, with funerary lamentations and special ceremonies, of the martyrdom of Husayn at Karbalā’, the pomp and ceremonial that had been introduced into the very simple, austere rites of Muslim marriage and burial, the offering of fruit and flowers at tombs, etc.; moreover, he prohibited the use of the mystical terms pir and murid (“master” and “disciple”), which at that time conveyed an almost Brahmin-like implication of total devotion of the disciple to his spiritual master, out of keeping with the sturdy Islamic tradition, and instead proposing the two terms ustādh and shāgird (also Persian, but more “secular”); the initiation ceremony common to the various Muslim confraternities, the bay‘a, [oath of allegiance] was also prohibited and replaced by a simple statement of repentance (tawba) and a changed life made by the murīd (or shāgird). Another significant precept of Sharī‘at Allah was the prohibition of communal prayers on Fridays or feastdays, based on the exclusion of British India from the dār al-Islām.”
 * Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd Edn., Vol. 2, s.v. FARĀ’IDIYYA (A.Bausani), 784 a. in Ibn, Warraq (2017). The Islam in Islamic terrorism: The importance of beliefs, ideas, and ideology. ch 14