Re: Are there no “castelike” divisions in Islam? [SPLIT FROM:“High caste” Hindu students refuse food prepared by Dalits]
It is Sayyid not Sayeed, Sa’eed means happy whilst Sayyid means Master, two completely different terms Hindi boy…
This concept of Sayyid (‘Muslim’ Brahminism) isn’t from Islam and I’ve not seen it amongst non-SouthAsian Muslims, even SouthAsian Muslims are waking up now and realising the caste system is just Hindu bull crap… Also Sheikh are more often than not Hindus who converted, this title was given to them as a sign of honor and respect for accepting Islam by those who converted them, very rarely does it denote somebody of Arab desvent.
Anyway we’re Muslim now and Muslims are not tied to what their ancestors were a thousand years ago.
As for your question, plenty of Sayyid’s I know are married to people who would formally have been considered “low caste” by Hinduism, my neighbour whose family are Barbers (Nai) by profession in Pakistan is married to a Sayyidah, there are plenty of Pakistanis who are married to people who would formally be known as low castes before embracing Islam.. In my own family there’s intermarriages in all types of Pakistani ethnicities and castes…
The reason foreign Muslims at first didn’t prefer to marry the locals was not because we have a concept of caste but rather because the foreigners were more conservative than the locals, at least that’s from my own family but nowadays things are not like that and intermarriages are very common. It had nothing to do with inferiority or superiority…
In my extended family there are plenty of inter-tribal/caste and inter-ethnic (Punjabi/Pashtun/Sindhi/Mohajir) marriages and these things have never been of any concern to us… All I want my future children to know is that they are Muslim first and foremost with Koranic-Arabic as their spiritual language, Pakistani second with Urdu as their national language, all other identities are irrelevant and unnecessary headache.
I’ve not the faintest clue what caste all my friends are… Caste is a Hindi thing anyway and is irrelevant in our Pakistani culture, peoples castes are usually not apparent from their names anyway because in Pakistani culture the custom is to have the fathers first name (usually Arabic) as his son or daughters surname…