Mumbai: Barelvi cleric Hazrat Asjad Raza Khan, who was detained by the Saudi Arabian police early this week while participating in a religious function in Riyadh, has been released from custody.
Khan, a descendant of the founder of the Barelvi (from Bareilly) thought of Sunni Islam, was on Umrah — a pilgrimage to the holy cities in Saudi Arabia during the non-Haj season — when he was taken into custody.
Maulana Shahabuddin Razvi Barelvi, president of the All India Muslim Jamaat, said that Khan is expected to reach India on Friday. “He had returned from Madina and was attending a small religious gathering at night when somebody called the police. The Saudi government is watching every public activity because of the US–Iran war. The gathering was told that they did not have permission for the function,” said Razvi.
Earlier, the Mumbai-based organisation Raza Academy wrote to the Ambassador of Saudi Arabia in India seeking immediate intervention in the reported detention of the prominent cleric in Riyadh.
Khan’s great-great-grandfather, Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi, had founded the Barelvi movement to oppose the literal interpretation of the Koran by the Deobandis (from the Deoband seminary) and Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabis. While there are deep ideological differences between the groups, one distinction is the Deobandi–Wahhabi injunction against praying at the graves of holy figures.
For this reason, the Wahhabi-influenced Saudi rulers, who took control of the country after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, destroyed tombs of figures associated with Prophet Muhammad and his family to prevent devotees from worshipping there. “Barelvis are Sunni Muslims who believe in the intercessional powers of saints,” said Razvi.
This is not the first time a Barelvi cleric has been detained in Saudi Arabia. There were similar incidents in 1972 and 1986. In 2018, Tauseef Raza Khan, grandson of Ahmed Raza Khan Barelvi, was arrested in Abu Dhabi.
