On October 16, 100,000 Indian Muslims gathered for a “mahapanchayat”—a mass assembly of local council leaders—in Moradabad, a city in Uttar Pradesh, the country’s leading state in population, with about 200 million people, a majority of them Muslim. At a press conference announcing the convocation, Maulana Syed Mohammad Ashraf Kichowchhwi, general secretary of the All-India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB)—a body of moderate clerics and spiritual Sufi leaders—spoke out boldly against fundamentalist Wahhabism. Kichowchhwi denounced the radical doctrine inspired by Saudi Arabia as “a virus for society” and assailed Wahhabis he said had gained control of India’s Muslim communal institutions.