Abdul Bari Firangi Mahali Quotes (1878-1926)

“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...’”

“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”