Within my lifetime, the movement had become so big that it is now shaping the destiny of the region. It started on the fringes of society, trying to heavily influence politics and religion; then it became militarized and radicalized, with so many different manifestations.
Kamran Bokhari is a foreign policy specialist and director of analytical development at the New Lines Institute, the magazine’s sister organization. In this episode, he joins host Rasha Elass to talk about his essay in New Lines Magazine on Deobandism, a major Islamic movement with influence across South Asia and beyond. They discuss how it emerged from one of the Sunni tradition’s most liberal schools of jurisprudence — and why so few in the West have heard of it.