Like millions of Muslims around the world, Huzefa Vajihuddin broke each day’s Ramadan fast this month with sweet dates and milk before turning toward Mecca for dusk prayers. Unlike most other Muslims, Vajihuddin wore a golden skullcap–as he does every day–called a topi.
Members of his Dawoodi Bohra community, a tiny branch of Shiite Islam centered in Willowbrook, wear the boxy cap and loose white clothing called kurta saya as a sign of cleanliness and purity, one of the tenets of their unique Muslim faith.
“It’s one of the things that distinguishes us from other Muslims,” Vajihuddin said.
Like thousands of other Chicago-area Muslims, on Monday they celebrated Eid al-Fitr, the feast that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Their crenellated mosque was built to imitate the grand mosques of 11th Century Egypt. And during Ramadan they served an almond and cashew dish–called kari–similar to Indian curry.
They embrace technology, educate girls equal to boys, shun politics, and consider patriotism a religious obligation. Those are some of the teachings of the Syedna Mohammed Burhanuddin, the 52nd Dai al-Mutlaq, the community’s 95-year-old spiritual leader based in Mumbai, India.
“We’ve been encouraged to be business-oriented, to be self-sufficient,” said Ubai Nooruddin, the Chicago community’s aamil saheb, or priest. “It’s a better way to live.”
A minority of Shiite Muslims, Bohras flourished in 10th Century Egypt, when the country was ruled by a Shiite dynasty. By the 16th Century, they had fled via Yemen to India, to escape religious persecution. Today the world’s 1.5 million Bohras are scattered mainly in India, Pakistan, east Africa, Bangladesh and North America, including about 1,500 in Chicago.
They are a blend of Egypt and India, the ancient and the modern. Most men wear beards. The women wear colorful veils called ridas. They rarely marry outside the faith. But they also were among the first Muslim communities to embrace the Internet in the early 1990s.
“You can look at the Bohras and see the men with beards and the women dressed modestly and you might think they are a very conservative community,” said Jonah Blank, an anthropologist and author of “Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity among the Daudi Bohras.”
“But they are much more open-minded,” Blank said. “They look on people like the Taliban … as stick-in-the-muds who don’t really understand the faith.”
Where other Muslims often blur the distinction between religion and politics, the Bohras say they prefer to concentrate on business matters in the public sphere. In India, they are the bourgeoisie, and their last names often reflect their trade: painter, doctor, merchant, engineer.
“We are a small community,” Aamir Chalisa, a community member, said from the rose-and-sand-colored mosque in Willowbrook. “We strive to keep our culture alive.”
Like other Shiites, who make up a minority of today’s billion-member worldwide Muslim community, the Bohras revere Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Like other Shiites, they consider Ali’s descendants the rightful rulers of the Muslim community.
And like other Shiites, they believe that a descendant of Ali–called an imam–went into seclusion and will return before Judgment Day. But whereas most Shiites concentrated in Iran, Iraq and Lebanon believe the 12th imam will return, the Bohras believe the 21st imam, Tayyib, will return, community members said. The syedna is considered the secluded imam’s representative.
“He’s an ambassador of goodwill and peace wherever he goes,” said Huzefa Vajihuddin, a community elder. “The Dawoodi community revolves around his teachings.”
Although their numbers are small, they appear to be thriving in Chicago, the biggest of the U.S. Bohra centers, which also include New York and California. They are shop owners and well-educated professionals whom other Muslims in Chicago described as well-to-do traders. They keep to themselves, choosing not to join Chicago’s main Muslim umbrella organizations.
But they also pride themselves on maintaining good community relations, extending a neighborly hand to members of the Buddha-Dharma Meditation Center and the Sts. Cyril and Methodius Macedonian Orthodox Church located on either side of their mosque. On Wednesday they will host an interfaith Ramadan feast to which they have invited Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews.
“We are a very close-knit community,” Chalisa said. “We are as much an American community as anyone.”
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dhoran@tribune.com
