Legacy of a Divided Nation - pg. 9

Consider Kashmir. In the valley, where most muslims live, Islam absorbed many social and cultural practices of pre-Islamic origin, which are today attacked by the Ahl-i Hadith and the Jamaat-i Islami. And in the neighboring Punjab, a territory divided into two unequal halves in 1947, it provided a repertoire of concepts and styles of authority which served to encompass potentially competing values, including the values of tribal kinship, within a common Islamic idiom. In Bengal, an area far removed from the centre of imperial power, Islam took many forms and assimilated values and symbols which were not always in conformity with the Quranic ideals and precepts. The religio-cultural idioms underwent a rapid change, giving birth to a set of popular beliefs and practices which in essence represented the popular culture of rural Bengal rooted in the pre-Islamic past. The local syncretic beliefs and practices, predating the advent of Islam in the region, thus formed the popular culture in Bengali Islam from the beginning.