Abdul Bari Firangi Mahali

Maulana Abdul Bari 'Firangi Mahali (Urdu: مولانا عبد الباری فرنگی محلی‎), (b. 1878 – d.1926) was a Firangi Mahal scholar.

Quotes

• I thank you for the success of the day of prayer for Khilafat appointed for promoting unity between Hindus and Muslims. The stand you have taken in this matter has made a deep impression on the Muslims, especially on those among them who are religious-minded. Some Ulema have particularly asked me in their letters to convey their congratulations to you. One of them is Maulana Suleman Saheb of Fulwari. He writes to say that he has decided not to kill cows in future and to dissuade others likewise from doing so. If people like you go on working for unity, the country will progress the sooner and the causes of discord will disappear.
  • letter of Maulana Abdul Bari of Firangi Mahal to Gandhiji. quoted in Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

• Mahatma Gandhi may say what he pleases with regard to keeping the subject of cow-protection out of the matter in hand. It is to his credit and to that of our Hindu brethren. Should the Muslims, however, forget the assistance rendered by their Hindu brethren, they will have forgotten their noble traditions. I say that, whether they help us in the Khilafat issue or not, we and they are of one land and, therefore, it behoves us to stop the slaughter of cows. As a Maulwi, I say that, in refraining from cow-slaughter of our own free will, we in no way go against our faith. Nothing else has created so real a spirit of brotherhood between us as the magnanimity shown by the Hindus on the Khilafat issue. I pray that God may preserve for ever this friendship between the two communities.
  • quoted in Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

Quotes about Abdul Bari

• In the important work, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Francis Robinson ascribes Maulana Abdul Bari’s protestations on cows, etc., to an altogether less estimable reason. There had been talk, the book recounts, of a Shaikh-ul-Islam, the leader or head of Islam for all of India. Maulana Abdul Bari coveted this post, and it was to bag it that he offered Gandhiji a bargain.... The boost which the Khilafat agitation gave to the ulema, their increasingly aggressive role, the continuing conversions by force, fraud and allurement gave an urgency to the Hindu Sangathan movement. ‘Abdul Bari, the erstwhile apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity, came to the fore again,’ writes Robinson. ‘Now he spoke the language of the zealot. He urged Muslims to sacrifice cows without regard for Hindu feelings...’
  • Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Francis Robinson quoted in Arun Shourie - The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action (2012, Harper Collins)

• The same Abdul Bari spoke in a different tone in September 1923. Professor Francis Robinson reports: “Abdul Bari, the erstwhile apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity, came to the fore again. Now he spoke the language of the zealot. He urged the Muslims to sacrifice cows without regard to Hindu feelings, and declared: ‘If the commandments of the Shariat are to be trampled under foot then it will be the same to us whether the decision is arrived on the plains of Delhi or on the hilltops of Simla. We are determined to non-cooperate with every enemy of Islam, be he in Anatolia or Arabia or at Agra or Benares.” The immediate provocation for Abdul Bari’s outburst was the Shuddhi Movement started by Swami Shraddhananda in the summer of 1923. Swamiji in turn had been led to pursue this path in response to a book, Fãtimî Dãwat-i-Islãm, by Hasan Nizami... S
  • Sita Ram Goel, Muslim Separitism - Causes and Consequences ISBN 9788185990262 quoting Francis Robinson, Separatism Among Indian Muslims, Delhi, 1975.

• Abdul Bari clean forgot that Swami Shraddhananda had unconditionally supported the Khilafat agitation under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi. It was Swamiji who had bared his breast in Chandni Chowk on March 30, 1919, and dared the British soldiers to try their bullets on him. It was Swamiji whom the Muslims of Delhi had invited to address them from the mimbar of the Jama Masjid on March 31, 1919. Abdul Bari should have denounced Hasan Nizami who had hatched a plot against the Hindus without any provocation whatsoever on the part of the latter. But the self-righteous Mullah and the authoritative interpreter of the Shariat, had done just the opposite. He had joined his voice with that of the other Mullahs in egging upon a Muslim fanatic to murder Swami Shraddhananda. The Mullahs of Deoband had offered special prayers for the soul of the assassin.
  • Sita Ram Goel, Muslim Separitism - Causes and Consequences ISBN 9788185990262