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"Saiyid Athar Abbas Rizvi, an Indian scholar of Islam, also discusses Sufi involvement in the martial jihad. In his A History of Sufism in India , he devotes part of a chapter to consideration of “warrior saints.” Concerning the role of Shaykh Jalal of Sylhet (d. 1347) in the Islamization of Bengal, Rizvi relates that Shaykh Jalal’s pir blessed him that he might have success in waging war against unbelievers in the Abode of War “in the same way as he had directed him towards success in the higher (spiritual) jihad ” and then commanded a large number of his own followers to accompany Shaykh Jalal. Rizvi writes that the expedition of these Sufi s under the command of Shaykh Jalal was not peaceful and that they gained many spoils from their military victories. Regarding Shaykh Jalal’s efforts to convert the local population of the territories he had brought into the Abode of Islam, Rizvi relates that he would leave Sufi saints in each territory to propagate the faith. Rizvi’s discussion of Shaykh Jalal’s conquest of Bengal emphasizes the complementary nature of the different aspects of jihad, which Sufi s and Muslim scholars writing in Islamic languages discuss repeatedly and extensively."
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Shah Jalal
