Rahman Baba
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The Nightingale of Peshawar
Rahman Baba, `the Nightingale of Peshawar', was an 18th century poet and mystic, a sort of North-West Frontier version of Nizamuddin Auliya. He withdrew from the world and promised his followers that if they also loosened their ties with the world, they could purge their souls of worries and move towards direct experience of God. Rituals and fasting were for the pious, said the saint. What was important was to understand that divinity can best be reached through the gateway of the human heart -that we all have paradise within us, if we know where to look.
For centuries Rahman Baba's shrine at the foot of the Khyber Pass has been a place where musicians and poets have gathered, and Rahman Baba's Sufi verses in the Pukhtun language made him the national poet of the Pathans. As a young correspondent covering the Soviet-mujahedin conflict in the 1980s I used to visit the shrine on Thursday nights to watch Afghan refugee musicians sing their songs to their saint by the light of the moon.Some of the most magical evenings I have ever had in South Asia were spent in the shrine, listening to sublime Sufi music.
Wahhabi madrasa
Then about ten years ago, a Saudi funded Wahhabi madrasa was built at the end of the track leading to the shrine.Soon its students took it upon themselves to halt what they saw as the un-Islamic practices of the shrine. On my last visit, I talked about the situation with the shrine keeper Tila Mohammed. He described how young Islamists now came and complained that his shrine is a centre of idolatry and superstition: “My family has been singing here for generations,“ said Tila. “But now these Arab madrasa students come here and create trouble.“
“What sort of trouble?“ I asked.
“They tell us that what we do is wrong.They ask people who are singing to stop.Sometimes arguments break out, even fist fights. This used to be a place where people came to get peace of mind. Now when they come here they just encounter more problems, so gradually have stopped coming.“
“How long has this being going on?“ I asked.
“Before the Afghan war there was nothing like this,“ replied Tila Mohammad. “But then the Saudis came, with their propaganda to stop visiting the saints, and to stop us preaching ishq (love). Now this trouble happens more and more frequently .“ Making sure no one was listening, he whispered: “Last week they broke in two the saz of a musician from Kohat. We pray that right will overpower wrong, that good will overcome evil. But our way is pacifist,“ he said. “As Baba put it: I am a lover, and I deal in love Sow flowers, so your surroundings become a garden Don't sow thorns; for they will prick your feetWe are all one body Whoever tortures another , wounds himself.“
Behind the violence lies a long theo logical conflict that has divided the Islamic world for centuries. Rahman Baba, like Rumi or Nizamuddin, believed passionately in the importance of the use of music, poetry and dancing as a path for reaching God, as a way of opening the gates of Paradise. But this use of poetry and music in ritual is one of the many aspects of Sufi practice that has attracted the wrath of modern Islamists. For although there is nothing in the Koran that specifically bans music, Islamic tradition has always associated music with dancing girls and immorality, and there is a long tradition of clerical opposition.
