According to the traditional Muslim lunar calendar we have the 18th day of the month of Shaban today and many Pakistani Muslims consider this day to be the festival of a saint called Lal Shahbaz Qalandar.
Today the town of Sehwan, where the tomb of this wandering dervish is found, hosts many visitors from all over Pakistan, even from all over the world, partaking of both very spiritual and very worldly celebrations.
Lal Shahbaz Qalandar once roamed the Indian province of Sindh (now a part of Pakistan) as a missionary of Islam. Most historical details about his life and his teachings have been lost and gave room to numerous legends but what seems to be certain is that Lal Shahbaz Qalandar preached that the very essence of Islam is love:
Love for God, love for God´s prophet and his family, love for the friends of God and love for each fellow human being.
He gained a reputation of offering heartfelt sympathy and practical help to the ostracized and downtrodden of society and his tomb became a special place of reverence for the poorest of the poor, for members of the lowest castes, for trannies, for prostitutes and for others with a “bad reputation” in mainstream society.
It is also said that he preached the unity of all spiritual paths and therefore his tomb is not only visited by Muslims but is revered highly by Pakistan´s Hindu minority as well.
For the remembrance of this unique personality I want to introduce you to two Pakistani filmi songs, celebrating the miraculous help that Lal Shahbaz Qalandar and his dervishes give to opressed women.
Songs like these used to be very popular in Pakistan and they still are with many people but nowadays the social and religious establishment does not like them too much and there have been repeated tries of eliminating their existence.
You probably guess why: “Pagan saint worship”, “superstition”, “uncovered women dancing in lewd ways” etc. ….
I just wanted to tell you that I enjoyed this post. It is good to see that the only people who do not venerate saints and ask for their intercession are either joyless Calvinists or Wahabi stick-in-the-muds who are more modern than traditional, more anal than devout.
[...] -Leyla Jagiella, who posted this with the video above concerning the miracles wrought by this “Muslim saint” [...]
His name was Muhammad Usman Marwandi, he was a Sunni Syed & a wandering Dervish, became a disciple of Hazrat Bahauddin Zakaria from Multan, who was a saint of the Soharwardi Sufi order, deputy of Shahabuddin Omar Soharwardi [not to be confused with shaykh ul Ishraq, Shahabuddin Yahya also from Soharward].
As instructed by Hazrat Zakaria, Lal Qalander also took as his main teaching text the Awarif ul Mu’arif by his grand shaykh. He moved to Sehwan which was mainly Shi’ite and the first miracle for which he’s famous was getting the local women to leave the Shi’ite practice of Mut’a'- temporary marriage, which was being used as a cover for prostitution.
Hazrat Usman Qalander was thus a fairly orthodox Soharwardi Qalander, [tho' very fond of Sema, like Iraqi, another Soharwardi] and historical accounts of him are well preserved in several Sufi ‘tazkiras’ from the region, by contemporary Sufis, [both Soharwardi & Chishti sources].
some of these books: Mirat ul Asrar, Khazana e Jalali, Tazkira Sufia e Sindh etc.
In recent times his image in popular Sufi poster art has changed from a green robed Qalander with longish white hair and beard, to a young man modeled on Jesus wearing black.
This coupled with the takeover of the shrine in the last 100 years by the ‘Maulai’ sect, dread-locked, black-uniformed, bangle-wearing, Hashish-smoking Alid Faqirs, who have promoted the legend that the Qalander’s name was Ali and that he was a Shi’ite/Alid Faqir.
I know this may not go with the thrust of your blog which is towards heterodoxy, but this seems to be a case of wishful thinking with Hazrat Qalander, as it is with Madho Lal Husayn.
However there are plenty of more actually heterodox Faqirs in India & Pakistan who may interest you. Pir Roshan of Buner etc.
the Noorjahan tribute to lal Shahbaz was great. Really enjoyed listening to this after so many years. if we all become fakirs like Laal shahbaz Qalandar, all our problems will be solved. Pakistan needs the path to FIQR, Pakistan needs the utter bowing to Allah, in the footsteps of Ali, the king of Fakirs. Jeay Ali!