Barelvi

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Barelvi. Indian and Pakistani school of Muslim thought with over 200 million followers. The Dar-al-uloom was founded in 1904 by the Qadiri Sūfī master, Imām Ahmad Reza (d. 1921) at Barelvi in N. India. Imām Ahmad Reza perceived the moral and intellectual decline of Indian Muslims at the beginning of the 20th cent. His solution was to strengthen the ordinary person's Islam by having the Hanafi shariʿa propagated through well-respected channels such as Sūfī shaykhs and ʿulamā.

Barelvi is a stronghold of Sunni orthodoxy against the Wahhābī and Ahmadīyya movements. See also DEOBAND.