Symbols of tolerance in India's Ajmer

It was sometime in the 1560s, a band of wandering minstrels was exhorting Moinuddin Chishti to be their guiding star, when the great Moghul emperor Akbar heard the strains of the melodious music … he knew he had to go to Ajmer.
From then on, every year, for years to come, Akbar wound his way to Ajmer in Rajasthan to pray at the shrine of the Sufi saint and distribute alms among the poor. Whether it was to celebrate a battle or pray for a son, the emperor looked to Moinuddin Chishti. Sometimes he would undertake the journey of 300km from Agra, other times from Fatehpur.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's father did not want him to follow in his footsteps and become a qawwal (devotional singer). Instead, he saw visions of his son being a doctor. But Nusrat had other dreams — they painted another picture. The child did not understand why a white shrine appeared before him as he shut his eyes at night. His relative explained why, and Nusrat knew instantly his calling had come. In 1979, the mighty qawwal Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan from Pakistan realised his dream: he sang at the dargah (shrine) of Moinuddin Chishti.

In early 2011, Bollywood's emperor-in-waiting Shah Rukh Khan travelled to Ajmer. He asked nothing for himself because God had given him enough, but prayed for family and friends. A few weeks later, the emperor, Amitabh Bachchan, journeyed to Ajmer after a 40-year-old wish was fulfilled.

So what pulls one of history's greatest conquerors, one of qawwali's (genre of devotional music) finest exponents and two of Bollywood's biggest giants to Ajmer? What possibly could Akbar, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan have in common? One craved for land, wealth and power, the other longed to be lost in the love of the Almighty through his song and the other two seek to enthrall millions around the world. But then again, what brings the billions of Muslims, Hindus and Christians of India each year to Ajmer?

Moinuddin Chishti was born in 1138-39 in Sistan in Persia. His parents died when he was 15 or 16. The boy inherited an orchard and a millstone to eke out a living, but he was drawn towards spirituality after meeting a dervish Ebrahim Qandoozi. The young Chishti set out to find a guide and was led to Osman Harouni, a scholar of great repute. He stayed with his teacher for many long years, mastering religious studies. And when the time was right, Harouni and Chishti left for Haj and then proceeded to Madinah. It was there that a longing was born to settle in Ajmer.

Rajasthan or Rajputana, as it was then known, was a treasure. Kings and conquerors desired Rajputana. But Chishti wanted nothing of kings and conquerors: he wanted to serve the poor, the hungry, the wretched, the unwanted, the widow, the orphan.
He settled on a hill close to Ana Sagar Lake. Chishti was about 50 then; Rajputana was ruled by the formidable Prithviraj Chauhan; the people of the barren land were suspicious of a fakir, who they did not know was a scholar, a philosopher, a man who had paid obeisance to the greatness of another Sufi, Abdul Qader Jeelani of Iraq. The plot had only begun to unfold.

History is full of stories of how Prithviraj Chauhan grew suspicious of this fakir, and even asked one of his councillors Ajai Pal, supposedly the master of magic, to neutralise him. The fakir won over both king and councillor — not through magic or violence but through his undeterred belief in peace. The path of non-violence and love was the essence of his thought. He was steadfast in his conviction that bringing happiness to the heart was the supreme prayer. No one would go hungry from his doorstep as food was prepared all day. Chishti himself fasted regularly and ate sparingly. And because of his complete devotion to the poor and hungry, he is called Garib Nawaz or ‘helper of the poor'.

Chishti's philosophy is simple: you must be as generous as the river, as warm as the sun and as hospitable as the earth. He set up the Chishti order in India, said to be founded by Abu Ishaq Shami of Syria who introduced Sufism to the town of Chisht, a little distance away from Herat in present Afghanistan
The Indian subcontinent in the 12th century was a cauldron of political tumult. The raids by Mahmud of Ghori, the resistance of the Rajputs and battle for Delhi — the land was turbulent. But Moinuddin Chishti spurned politics, had little time for king and courtier. His sole mission was to soothe human pain. The soul was to be fed through prayer, tolerance and love. Devotional music was an avenue to realise the Almighty. If there was no humanity, no compassion, no understanding, no consideration, there was no life.

Streams of people came to him every day, some looking for spiritual healing, some for emotional sustenance, and some were just plain hungry. Chishti sheltered them all: he healed wounds and fed empty stomachs. For about 40 years, he devoted himself to the people of Ajmer and surrounding areas, and as he grew old, the question was who would fill the void that would be left behind by this larger than life man. Delhi was to be the next stage. Another great Sufi and his favourite disciple — a courtier humoured by his kings, a man of words, a poet with a love of music — were to change the course of history.

Chishti passed away in 1230 and was buried in his prayer room. For centuries later kings, courtiers, leaders, people from all faiths have flocked to Chishti's grave in Ajmer. Two massive cauldrons were presented to his shrine — one by emperor Akbar and the other by his son and successor Jahangir. One of the cauldrons can cook 4,800kg of food, while the other 2,400kg. All the food (langar) is distributed among the poor. In 1911, the British government built a roof over the water tank to commemorate Queen Mary's visit to the shrine.

Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki of Delhi carried on the work of Chishti and he handed the baton over to Baba Farid or Ganjshakr of Pakpattan in Pakistan. Baba Farid believed in the same principles inculcated by Chishti, but as he spread tolerance, love and compassion among his people, he waited for someone to come.
Nizamuddin's affluent family was based in Bukhara, but they had to flee the land because of the constant Mongol raids that grew in ferocity and ruthlessness. They moved to Badaun in central India. Nizamuddin, born in 1238, lost his father when he was a boy and was brought up by his mother, Bibi Zulaikha, a deeply religious woman, who instilled piety in the child. They were impoverished — for days there would be nothing to eat. When Nizamuddin would return from school hungry, he would ask his mother what there was to eat. And she would reply: "Today, we are the guests of God." Nizamuddin knew then there was not a morsel at home.

And just as emperor Akbar had heard of Chishti after a band of minstrels was exhorting him, Nizamuddin heard of Baba Farid through one such singer. He knew he had to go to his master. And when the time was right, he travelled to Ajodhan to see Baba Farid. He stayed with him for months, imbibing the principles of tolerance, love of all human beings across all faiths and compassion. Nizamuddin healed the human heart. His principle was simple: if an enemy places thorns before you and you place thorns in his path, there will be thorns all around. There could be no room for hate.

Nizamuddin finally settled in Ghiyaspur in Delhi on the banks of the Jamuna River. Like Chishti, he led an austere life and propagated the purity of thought. The root of the word Sufi is traced to Safa — Arabic for purity. Some believe it means wisdom, while others say Suf was the woollen cloak worn by ascetics.
Food flowed aplenty as people gave generously. The kitchen of his home was busy through the day, feeding the poor and hungry. He, like Chishti fasted all day and ate very little. Food would not go down Nizamuddin's throat if someone had gone to sleep hungry. His days were spent in prayer and healing the hurt.
He abhorred the politics of Delhi and had little time for kings and emperors. Though several expressed their desire to see him, Nizamuddin would not entertain them. He wanted nothing of king and courtier, save for one: Amir Khusro.

Nizamuddin, like Chishti, Kaki and Baba Farid, believed in Sama, a Sufi practice of listening to music, as a form of prayer. The birth of Sama is credited to another great Sufi Rumi, who also lived in the 13th century. But Khusro was to give Nizamuddin something special — the qawwali. Derived from the Arabic word Qual meaning utterance of the Prophet, Khusro wrote Qawwali in Persian and Hindavi, languages spoken in India in the 13th century. Khusro spoke of divine love — where the lover longed for union with her maker. He once wrote of Chishti: My courtyard is blessed as my love has come home. If two lovers spend the monsoon together, the night is blessed for the bride. The monsoon in which my love doesn't come home, let that monsoon be set on fire.

Nizamuddin was indulgent towards Khusro, who made him his master at the age of eight. Of Turkish descent, Khusro served his political masters, but his heart was with Nizamuddin. Khusro was away in Bengal on a campaign when Nizamuddin passed away. On hearing the news, he rushed back to Delhi and went to his master's grave. Stricken by grief, he said: The fair maiden lies on a bed of roses; Her face covered with a lock of hair; Let us O' Khusro, return home, the dark dusk blankets the four corners of the world.

Such was the love between master and disciple that Khusro passed away of grief within six months of Nizamuddin's death in 1325. They are buried a few metres apart in a shrine in Delhi in an area named Nizamuddin, what was once called Ghiyaspur.
The picture was now complete. Nizamuddin and Khusro were testament to what Chishti professed — the complete love between human beings, no matter what difference there might be. Nizamuddin was an impoverished fakir, who spent day and night in prayer, in healing hearts, in shunning what kings and courtiers pined for — power. Khusro was a courtier who served king after king, and yet there was a primordial bond. There was a meeting point: the love of the Almighty and the love of humanity.
Both Chishti's and Nizamuddin's death anniversaries are celebrated as Urs [an Arabic word meaning wedding celebration] as there is no grief at death because the disciple is finally reunited with his maker. The lover's longing for the Almighty sees fruition. And that is ultimate joy, the Sufi's dream.

So why do the millions of Indians — Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs flock to Ajmer? Why do they stream into Nizamuddin's dargah? Why do the rich and the famous, leaders and politicians, make it a point to visit Chishti's grave? Do these shrines soothe troubled souls? Do these shrines fulfill dreams? Do these shrines answer prayers? Perhaps, they do. But what is certain is that the shrines are homes to humanity. The convictions and beliefs of two men born centuries ago are alive and provide refuge to the poor, the hungry, the wretched, the widow and the orphan. Eight centuries on, no one goes hungry from their doorsteps.
The lamps in the shrines will always glow because they are symbols of unity, of religious tolerance. They are symbols of kindness and compassion. They are testimony to hope.
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Sheltering the marginalised: The Pakistani Mother Teresa

LAHORE: Meet Josephine, a 34-year-old divorced mother of two. She runs an orphanage outside Lahore, where she gives shelter to children and has become a saviour to those bonded by labour.

“I visit brick kiln factories, where single parents and the elders of orphans make these little ones work to pay the debt they have taken,” says Josephine
Her task is not an easy one, as she has to convince the guardians that they are better off with her. “I am currently pursuing a mother of five to give her children to me because her husband died and now she has to work day and night along with her children to pay his debt.”
Brick kiln owners are the main hurdle and have threatened her. “They say if I can pay their loan, I can take the children, otherwise they will work till the loan is paid.”

In Pakistan, although illegal, slavery in brick kiln factories is common knowledge and it originates from a vicious circle of debt which sucks in labourers. Josephine has surveyed these factories for a year and has been able to convince almost 20 families to give their children to her.
She only helps the Christian minority currently because she feels they are more marginalised. “Most of the workers at these places are of Christian faith, and that is why I contact the local pastor of the area and take him along too, to get easy access.”

Trained to be a nun but not allowed by her parents to leave the country, Josephine now uses what she has learnt to mother the orphans.
She has rented an upper portion of a house, 20 kilometers outside Lahore, for Rs5,000 per month, where she lives with her own two offspring plus another 10 boys and 7 girls.

“I do not have any funding source. I teach at a local private school, and with whatever money I get, I try to give these children their lives back.” Along with this, she receives help from her brothers and the school principal where she is employed, but things are still hard. “Thankfully the principal has acknowledged my efforts, and has waived off fee for these children.”

Surprisingly, ever since she started the orphanage, she has been asked by a number of parents to take their children away. “People are so poor in these villages that they want to get rid of the children even they are not in debt.”
But she rejects them saying that she doesn’t want those who are orphans to feel different while living with such children who have parents.
The children in Josephine’s care were not allowed to go to school due to their slavery status, Now they have learnt how to read and write.

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Hadith of the Day: Loving the Poor

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said: "O God, grant me life as a poor man, cause me to die as a poor man and resurrect me in the company of the poor." His wife asked him why he said that, and he replied: "Because (the poor) will enter Paradise (before) the rich. Do not turn away a poor man ... even if all you can give is half a date. If you love the poor and bring them near you ... God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection." Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 1376

Necessity Pushes Pakistani Women Into Jobs and Peril

Karachi, Pakistan — Dinner at Rabia Sultana’s house is now served over a cold silence. Her family has not spoken to her since May, when Ms. Sultana, 21, swapped her home life for a cashier’s job at McDonald’s.

Her conservative brother berated Ms. Sultana for damaging the family’s honor by taking a job in which she interacts with men — and especially one that requires her to shed her burqa in favor of a short-sleeved McDonald’s uniform.

Then he confiscated her uniform, slapped her across the face and threatened to break her legs if he saw her outside the home.

Her family may be outraged, but they are also in need. Ms. Sultana donates her $100 monthly salary to supplement the household budget for expenses that the men in her family can no longer pay for, including school fees for her younger sisters.

Ms. Sultana is part of a small but growing generation of lower-class young women here who are entering service-sector jobs to support their families, and by extension, pitting their religious and cultural traditions against economic desperation.

The women are pressed into the work force not by nascent feminism but by inflation, which has spiked to 12.7 percent from 1.4 percent in the past seven years. As a result, one salary — the man’s salary — can no longer feed a family.

“It’s not just the economic need, but need of the nation,” said Rafiq Rangoonwala, the chief executive officer of KFC Pakistan, who has challenged his managers to double the number of women in his work force by next year. “Otherwise, Pakistan will never progress. We’ll always remain a third-world country because 15 percent of the people cannot feed 85 percent of the population.”

Female employment at KFC in Pakistan has risen 125 percent in the past five years.

Several chains like McDonald’s and the supermarket behemoth Makro, where the number of women has quadrupled since 2006, have introduced free transit services for female employees to protect them from harassment and to help persuade them take jobs where they may face hostility. “We’re a society in transition,” said Zeenat Hisam, a senior researcher at the Pakistan Institute of Labor Education and Research. “Men in Pakistan haven’t changed, and they’re not changing as fast as our women. Men want to keep their power in their hand.

“The majority of the people here believe in the traditional interpretation of Islam, and they get very upset because religious leaders tell them it’s not proper for women to go out and to work and to serve strange men.”

More than 100 young women who recently entered service jobs told of continual harassment.

At work, some women spend more time deflecting abuse from customers than serving them. On the way home, they are heckled in buses and condemned by neighbors. It is so common for brothers to confiscate their uniforms that McDonald’s provides women with three sets.

“If I leave this job, everything would be O.K. at home,” Ms. Sultana said. “But then there’d be a huge impact on our house. I want to make something of myself, and for my sisters, who are at home and don’t know anything about the outside world.”

So far, the movement of women into the service sector has been largely limited to Karachi. Elsewhere across Pakistan, women are still mostly relegated to their homes, or they take jobs in traditional labor settings like women-only stitching factories or girls’ schools, where salaries can be half of those in the service industry. Even the most trailblazing of companies, like KFC, still employ 90 percent men.

Pakistan ranked 133rd out of the 134 countries on the 2010 Global Gender Gap Report’s list of women’s economic participation.

While there is no reliable data on the number of women who specifically enter the service sector, Pakistan’s female work force hovers around 20 percent, among the lowest of any Muslim country.

Some women, like Saima, 22, are forced to lead secret lives to earn $175 a month. Her father’s shopkeeper’s salary does not cover the family’s expenses. Without a university degree, the only job Saima could find was at a call center of a major restaurant’s delivery department. But she impressed the manger so much that he offered her a higher-paying waitress job at a branch near her home.

She reluctantly agreed, but pleaded to be sent to a restaurant two hours away so she would not be spotted by family members and neighbors.

After three years, her family still thinks she works in the basement of a call center. On several occasions, she served old friends who did not recognize her without a head scarf. Her confidence has soared, but she is overwhelmed with guilt.

“I’ve completely changed myself here,” she said in the corner booth of her restaurant before her co-workers arrived. “But honestly, I’m not happy with what I’m doing.”

The women interviewed said they had to battle stereotypes that suggested that women who work were sexually promiscuous. Sometimes men misinterpret simple acts of customer service, like a smile. Fauzia, who works as a cashier at KFC, said that last year a customer was so taken with her smile that he followed her out the door and tried to force her into his car before she escaped.

Sunila Yusuf, a saleswoman who wears pink traditional clothes at home but skintight jeans at the trendy clothing boutique in the Park Towers shopping mall, said her fiancé had offered to pay her a $100 monthly wage if she would stay at home.

“He knows that Pakistani men don’t respect women,” she said.

Hina, who works the counter at KFC, said her brothers, who also work fast-food jobs, worried that she had become “too sharp and too exposed.”

“They can look at other people’s girls,” Hina said with a grimace. “But they want their own girls hidden.”

Mr. Rangoonwala, the KFC Pakistan executive, said: “Unfortunately, our society is a hypocritical society. We have two sets of rules, one for males and one for females.”

For Fauzia, the hardest part of the day is the 15-minute walk through the narrow alleys to reach her home. She wears a burqa to conceal her uniform, but word of mouth about her job has spread. Neighbors shout, “What kind of job is this?” as she briskly walks by with her head down.

As a solution, some companies spend up to $8,000 a month to transport their female workers in minivans.

A federal law, citing safety concerns, prohibits women from working after 10 p.m. It was extended from a 7 p.m. deadline last year.

Most companies, however, are unwilling to absorb the extra cost of employing women. Even most stores that sell purses, dresses, perfumes and jewelry do not employ women.

Kamil Aziz, who owns Espresso, the city’s most popular coffee chain, said he made it a point not to hire “the other gender” because women could not work the late shift and the turnover rate among women was higher. He said he also did not want to invest in separate changing rooms.

Nearly all of the 100 women interviewed said marriage would end to their careers. But many of them saw benefits along with the hazards.

Most women said that they had never left the house before taking a job. Many spent the first five months missing buses and getting lost. When they first arrived at work, they stuttered nervously in the presence of men.

Now they know better.

“I’ve learned never to take what husbands say at face value,” said Sana Raja Haroon, a saleswoman at Labels, a clothing boutique where men sometimes slide her their business card.

But the employed women are also approached by admiring young women who want to follow their lead.

“Girls envy us,” said Bushra, a KFC worker. “We are considered the men of the house, and that feels good.”

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Here’s a Woman Fighting Terrorism. With Microloans.

An old friend of mine here fights terrorists, but not the way you’re thinking. She could barely defeat a truculent child in hand-to-hand combat, and if she ever picked up an AK-47 — well, you’d pray it was unloaded.

Roshaneh Zafar is an American- educated banker who fights extremism with microfinance. She has dedicated her life to empowering some of Pakistan’s most impoverished women and giving them the tools to run businesses of their own. The United States should learn from warriors like her.

Bullets and drones may kill terrorists, but Roshaneh creates jobs and educational opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people — draining the swamps that breed terrorists.

“Charity is limited, but capitalism isn’t,” Roshaneh said. “If you want to change the world, you need market-based solutions.” That’s the point of microfinance — typically, lending very poor people small amounts of money so that they can buy a rickshaw or raw materials and start a tiny business.

Roshaneh grew up in elite circles here in Lahore and studied business at the Wharton School and economics at Yale. After a stint at the World Bank, she returned to Pakistan in 1996 to start her microfinance organization. She called it the Kashf Foundation.

Everybody thought Roshaneh was nuts. And at first nothing went right. The poor refused to borrow. Or if they borrowed, they didn’t repay their loans.

But Roshaneh persisted, and today Kashf has 152 branches around the country. It has dispersed more than $200 million to more than 300,000 families. Now Roshaneh is moving into microsavings, to help the poor build assets, as well as programs to train the poor to run businesses more efficiently. She is even thinking of expanding into schools for the poor.

Microfinance is sometimes oversold as a silver bullet — which it’s not. Careful follow-up studies suggest that gains from microloans are often quite modest.

Some borrowers squander money or start businesses that fail. Some micro-lenders tarnish the field because they’re incompetent, and others because they rake in profits with sky-high loan rates. Microfinance has also generally been less successful in Africa than in South Asia.

Yet done right, microfinance can make a significant difference. An outside evaluation found that after four years, Kashf borrowers are more likely than many others to enjoy improved economic conditions — and that’s what I’ve seen over the years as I’ve visited Kashf borrowers.

On this trip, I met a woman named Parveen Baji, who says she never attended a day of school and until recently was completely illiterate. She had 14 children, but five died.

Ms. Parveen’s husband, who also never attended school, regularly beat her and spent the family savings on narcotics, she says. The family’s only possessions were four cots on which they slept, crammed three or four to a cot, in a rented apartment.

“One night all my children were hungry,” she remembered. “I sent my daughter to ask for food from a neighbor. And the neighbor said, ‘you’ve become a beggar,’ and refused.”

Then Ms. Parveen got a $70 loan from Kashf and started a jewelry and cosmetics business, buying in bulk and selling to local shops. Ms. Parveen couldn’t read the labels, but she memorized which bottle was which. As her business thrived, she began to struggle to learn reading and arithmetic — and proved herself an ace student. I fired math problems at her, and she dazzled me with her quick responses.

Ms. Parveen began to start new businesses, even building a laundry that she put her husband in charge of to keep him busy. He no longer beats her, she says, and when I interviewed him separately he seemed a little awed by her.

Eventually, Ms. Parveen started a restaurant and catering business that now has eight employees, including some of her daughters. She bought a home and has put some of her children through high school — and a son, the brightest student, through college. She has just paid $5,800 for a permit for him to move to London to take a health sector job.

Ms. Parveen tried to look modest as she told me this, but she failed. She was beaming and shaking her head in wonder as she watched her son speak English with me, dazzled at the thought that she was dispatching her university-educated son to Europe. “Microfinance has changed my life,” she said simply.

That’s an unusual success story. But the larger message is universal: helping people start businesses, create jobs and support education is a potent way to undermine extremism.

We Americans overinvest in firepower to defeat extremism and underinvest in development, and so we could learn something useful from Roshaneh. The toolkit to fight terrorism includes not only missiles but also microfinance and economic opportunity.

The antonym of “militant” is often “job.”

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Hadith: Love the poor

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) recommended the prayer: "O God, I ask You for the ability to do good, to avoid evil and to love the poor."

Fiqh-us-Sunnah, Volume 4, Number 13A


The Prophet also told his wife: "If you love the poor and bring them near you. . .God will bring you near Him on the Day of Resurrection."

Al-Tirmidhi, 1376