Abbas Siddiqui-led ISF will fill the Political vacuum of Muslim leadership in Bengal.

Written By:- Affan Nomani, Editor & Research Scholar.

For the first time in the history of West Bengal, the influential religious place Furfura Sharif is in the news for political reasons because   pirzada of Furfura Sharif contesting the Assembly election in West Bengal.

Furfura Sharif is in the news because pirzada  Abbas Siddiqui, the 35-year-old who has floated the Indian Secular Front (ISF) ahead of the Bengal polls.
Abbas Siddiqui-led ISF, a formation suddenly embraced by the Left Front and the Congress ahead of the Bengal polls.
The main reason behind the alliance between ISF, Left front and Congress is that Furfura Sharif is very influential in Bengali Muslims and its effect on more than 90 seats.
Furfura Sharif was home to Pir Hazrat Abu Baqr Siddique, a 19th-century Sufi saint. Abbas Siddiqui is his great-grandson and the first pirzada to join politics.

Pir Abu Bakr Siddique ( 1846-1939) was not only a religious or spiritual Pir but also an educationalist and philanthropist. Moreover, he is known as a great social and religious reformer of 20^th century Bengal.
Pir Abu Bakr has gone beyond the traditional framework of Sufism and Pir-ism where Sufis generally confined within the religious and spiritual realm and least involved in the economic and political issues. He, on the contrary, was very conscious and active regarding the social and political situations of the Muslim community. 
Pir Abu Bakr established hundreds of educational institutions throughout Bengal where people could receive both religious as well as secular education. For instance, he built Furfura Fatheia Senior Madrasah at Furfura Sharif in the memory of his Pir, Sufi Syed Fateh Ali Waisi on the eve of the non-cooperation movement against British imperialism. ( Shariat-e-Islam, vol.8, Bengali year: 1337 pp.169-173 ).
His understanding of ‘nation’ is quite similar to the idea of ‘Muttahida Qaumiyat’ (composite nationalism or united nationalism) as proposed by Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani of Deoband Islamic school.

The narrative of Muslims suddenly changing from Mamta Banerjee-led TMC  to Abbas Siddiqui-led-ISF because Furfura Sharif covers at least 90 Assembly constituencies in a state in which Muslims constitute about 27 percent of the population.

In the past, come election time, politicians would come here to offer prayers and meet the Pirzada, or direct descendants of Pir Hazrat, and seek their blessings and support.
But this year Pirzada himself in the Election.

I watched many past videos and TV Interviews of Abbas Siddiqui. I observed that he is not a conservative and fundamentalist. He always talks about the education, employment, and jobs of Muslims and other backward classes.
BJP MP Swapan Dasgupta, also a columnist with The Telegraph, offers a more balanced analysis. Says Dasgupta, “A significant chunk of the Muslim vote plus the transferable vote of the CPI(M) would make the third formation more winnable and catapult the ISF to a position where it could claim to be the foremost representative of Muslims in the state... Abbas would become the Bengal counterpart of Assam’s Badruddin Ajmal.”
In an interview of Telegraph Abbas Siddiqui said that " The situation was never so bad. Never before have Muslims, Dalits, or minorities faced such atrocities like the NRC or the CAA. Never before were Indian citizens driven into detention camps or threatened with deportation. The situation forced me. Even Babasaheb Ambedkar has said, “We will no longer beg for our rights but grab them.”