Current Task

Dakhīl Allāh is married and father of an unknown number of children. Currently, he teaches at the Kuliyyat Uṣūl al-Dīn (The Faculty for Teaching the Fundamentals of the Religion) in the Islamic University of Al-Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud in Riyadh, where he has supervised numerous master’s and PhD dissertations.⁴¹⁵

3.4.Writings

For a list of Dakhīl Allāh’s writings, both published and unpublished, see appendix III.

4. Conclusion

All three of these Salafī opponents of the Tijāniyya have forged careers in their own unique ways.

The Malian al-Ifrīqī was born in a Sufi-friendly environment, acquiring an intensive secular training during his childhood and adulthood, in addition to some small degree of religious knowledge prior to his enrolment in the French missionary institution in Timbuktu. He felt the need for more sophisticated religious knowledge in the aftermath of his altercations with Christian missionaries at the institution, and during his subsequent career as a teacher and government employee. These debates, among others, forced him to undertake migration to the holy lands, where he would become acquainted with the Salafī doctrine to which the remaining years of his life were dedicated. His confrontation with the Tijāniyya was not intentional. He even remained a faithful student to a Tijānī shaykh in the Mosque of the Prophet in Medina. However, his zeal for spreading what he knew to be the true creed of the religion among African pilgrims brought him face to face with proponents of the brotherhood. Thus, as will be seen in chapter four, his brief treatise in refutation of the Tijānī doctrines was not intended to be polemical in nature; rather, he

414 For further and detailed information on administrative structure, strategic purposes, history and achievements of the Maʿhad al-ʿUlūm al-Islāmiyya wa-l-ʿArabiyya see its official website http://lipia.org/new/index.php/ct-menu-item-3.

415 Online correspondence with Dakhīl Allāh on 7.11.2017.

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composed his treatise upon the request of his interlocutors, whom he repeatedly addressed as brothers. Such a soft approach is one of a kind in the history of polemical debates between the Tijānīs and their adversaries. Unlike his anti-Tijānism, his adoption of anti-colonial attitude was intentional and intense. The most effective method of fighting colonialism, in his eyes, was the education and training of the new generations. Nothing could prove more effective in the struggle against foreign hegemony over Muslim West Africa than the true Islamic creed. His presence at the centre of an Hijaz-based ʿulamāʾ network played a crucial role in spreading anti-colonial sentiments, attracting the attention of French officials who categorized him as a non-political but extremely dangerous Wahhābī. His relationship with his disciples, based on their own accounts, was sincere and full of love and compassion. Many incidents related in this regard reveal his attitude towards religious authority as embedded in the foundational texts of the religion.

Like his Malian predecessor, the Moroccan al-Hilālī was born in an intense Sufi milieu, resulting in his embrace of the Tijāniyya for no less than nine years. Eventually, he broke up with the brotherhood, occasioned by eye-opening debate with a sophisticated Salafī scholar in Rabat, leading to a radical change in his religious affiliation and the magnificent international career that followed. To deepen his Salafī convictions, the Moroccan travelled to various destinations from the Middle East to the Indian Subcontinent, where he not only established long-lasting relationships with leading religious figures of the time but also gained the empowering knowledge of the sciences of ḥadīth. Unlike al-Ifrīqī, his confrontations with opponents were intentional and strategic. In Egypt, he combatted Sufis of different denominations. In Hijaz, he purposefully attacked the leading Tijānī figure of the region and reportedly succeeded to silence him. Sufis were not the only group among his opponents: in the following years, he faced a wide spectrum of opponents, from rigid followers of the Ḥanafī legal school to narrow-minded Shīʿī scholars, and from Christian missionaries to well-known Orientalists, during his European adventure in Germany. This period of his life was marked by fierce anti-colonial struggle, making him a persona non grata in the eyes of Spanish, French and British colonial authorities in North Africa and the Middle East. He had to go to jail and face various intrigues and punishments at the hands of cruel colonial officers. His stance in favour of textual religious authority in contrast to personified authority is documented on many occasions.

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His struggle against proponents of the Tijāniyya began as early as his own departure from the brotherhood. Nonetheless, his written attack on the order came relatively late, during his teaching years at the Islamic University of Medina. As may will be seen in chapter five, his treatise carries the hallmarks of polemical writings. In it, Tijānīs were attacked for nurturing anti-Islamic convictions; their supreme master, however, was highly esteemed by the Moroccan, who held that his reputation had been destroyed by ignorant Tijānīs themselves. Al-Hilālī’s appreciation of Aḥmad al-Tijānī may be observed in the panegyric qaṣīda (a piece of poetry) he composed in honour of the supreme master of the Tijāniyya, which, although it was composed in his old Tijānī days, was published in issue 538 of the Moroccan journal al-Mīthāq in 1424 /July 1987, shortly after al-Hilālī’s death.⁴¹⁶ The uncompromising polemical style of this extremely confident Moroccan, who went so far as to excommunicate some of his opponents from the realm of Islam, earned him the epithetical nickname of Shaqī al-Dīn (The Miserable Believer) in parallel to his original name as Taqī al-Dīn (The God-fearing Believer).⁴¹⁷

The career of the Saudi Dakhīl Allāh has not too much in common with his African predecessor’s, except for his zeal for the Salafī creed and anti-Tijānism. He was born in a Salafī/Wahhābī dominated milieu. Questions about the the status of the Tijāniyya brotherhood directed to the Saudi House of legal Opinions served as his motivation for following in al-Ifrīqī’s and al-Hilālī’s footsteps, leading to his composition of a refutation of the Tijānī doctrines. When compared to his predecessors, Dakhīl Allāh takes a rigorously methodical approach in his well-organized treatise, as will be seen in chapter six.

416 The poem in included in al-Hilālī, Minḥa al-kabīr al-mutaʿālī, pp.729-731.

417 Henri Lauzière relates that he heard many of al-Hilālī’s detractors in Rabat, Sale and Casablanca derogatively calling him by this title. See: Henri Lauzire, “The Evolution of the Salafiyya in the Twentieth Century”, p. 371.

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