Syed Ahmad Barelvi

"Sayyid Ahmad of Rai Bareli began his career by preaching a return to pure Islam ; he worked to purge the religion of its accretions and corruptions. This aspect of his work was taken up by various other reformers, and spread far ; sects, more or less puritanical, developed throughout North India— Ahl i hadith , Fara’id, and many others. These smouldered on for the rest of the century. The relevant point here is that the accretions which the reformers set themselves to removing from the Muslims’ religion, were practically all borrowings from Hinduism, or superstitious degradations shared with Hinduism. When a religious reformer appeared in a village, he attacked with unrestrained zeal those aspects of the Muslims’ religious practice that they shared with the Hindus, and he emphasized with the ardour of intense con¬ viction the ‘fundamentals’ of Islam— i.e ., the points at which it differed from other faiths. Lower-class Islam emerged from the reform ‘ purer ’ but more communalist."