Abstract
Clerics and madrasa feature in media mostly in negative contexts—allegedly giving fatwa on some frivolous issues, justifying instant triple talaq, questioning the length of skirt of Sania Mirza and so on. If academic and popular narratives are to be believed, at least the South Asian Islam appears to be stagnant, a vestige of medieval, patriarchal and orthodox practices that lack any critical thinking.
A new book by Germany-based Indian anthropologist Dr Irfan Ahmad, Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace, is an important academic contribution that may help clear many misconceptions about purported absence of discursive practices in Islamic belief system and Islamicate culture.
Ahmad’s first book Islamism and Democracy in India (2009) was based on Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, a leading Islamic organisation of South Asia. The book under review is its sequel and is the outcome of his postdoctoral study on ‘Contesting Islamism: Immanent Critique of Jamaat-e-Islami of India, from 1941 to the Present’.
Besides prologue and the epilogue, Religion as Critique is divided into two broad parts: Formulation and Illustration. Ahmad begins with a comprehensive critique of enlightenment that is seen universally as the beginning of critique, positing instead that it was an ‘ethnic project’ that contributed towards othering of Islam and Muslims. He stresses on another less discussed area, the ‘erasure of non-Western philosophy’ by enlightenment thinkers.
Ahmad convincingly connects the Indian scholarships with the Western knowledge production, regarding the former as remnant of colonialism—and imitating them. Citing examples from those regarded as paragons of liberal ideas in India, including Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Amartya Sen, Ramchandra Guha as well as critics of Urdu literature like Shamsur Rahman Faruqi and Gopichand Narang, Ahmad boldly stresses that their projects have been ‘lavishly nationalist’. Critiquing Sen’s The Argumentative Indian, he posits that ‘Muslims have a tradition of inquiry and critique is not Sen’s concern’ (p. 23).
Contrary to the general belief in the mainstream liberal scholarships, the book argues that there exists an ‘alternative geology of critique—tanqid, intiqad, naqd—in Islamicate traditions of South Asia as expressed in the Urdu language’ (p. 63).
He takes the example of poet Mirza Ghalib to show how his ‘broadmindedness’ was explained by his critics in his ‘confession to be a wine-drinker …. (and him being) far removed from Islam, not because of Islam’. He writes, ‘Whatever the difference between Faruqi and Narang might be on other issues, the nationalization of poetry and externalization of Islam make them intimately united’ (p. 78).
After ‘theoretical-conceptual mappings of critiques’ in the first part, in the Illustrations, in part two, Ahmad demonstrates the ‘critique in practice’ spread in four chapters based on his field work in India, each focussing on a particular theme: the Message as a critical enterprise, the State, women and the question of inequality and finally critique as a social–cultural practice.
Although he begins with the eighteenth-century Islamic scholar Shah Valiullah Dehlavi in the prologue, Ahmad’s focus remains on the works of Abul A’la Maududi, founder of Jamaat-e-Islami, and critiques of his works this being an ethnographic work. One instance that caught the reviewer’s eye in particular was when Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, a former Jamaat member turned critic of Maududi wrote to him questioning some of his positions.
Maududi replied,
If you have come to the conclusion that I have entirely misunderstood Islam (din), then dissociate yourself from that viewpoint and positively begin propagating what you deem correct. However, if you consider it necessary to demonstrate mistakes in my interpretation I have no objection. You may publish your book. (p. 131)
Note the reverberation of ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’.
Ahmad also boldly tries to contextualise Maududi’s ideologies in the politics of his time. ‘It was the majoritarian, assimilationist democracy of the Congress, especially the anti-Muslim practices of the 1937 ministries, which drove him to theodemocracy (p. 96)’, he argues.
Being an anthropological work based on ethnographic study, the book does justice to the subject. However, the reviewer finds it little queer that although names of Al-Farabi, Al-Juwayni, Imam Ghazali, Ibn-Sina, as also Hasan al Banna, Rached Ghannouchi and so on are mentioned in passing, their contributions on critique have practically been ignored, although Western scholars on the subject are quoted in abundance albeit critically.
The reviewer found the last chapter most compelling that sketches the life and works of the founder of Khudai Khidmatgar, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in an attempt to shed new insight. Ahmad mentions about Qissa Khwani Bazaar massacre of Peshawar in 1930 where Khan’s volunteers and supporters had gathered for peaceful protest against his arrest during the civil disobedience movement. The police retorted firing, killing at least 200 and injuring several hundred more. This incident can only be compared to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre but is surreptitiously absent from Indian history books.
Ahmad employs his trademark methods of unsettling the generally accepted doxa to question how Khan became the ‘Frontier Gandhi’. To Ahmad, it was done to render him ‘invisible and subservient to Mohandas Gandhi ... (and) is indeed a colonial trope at the service of hegemonic enterprise (p. 182)’. It appears surprising to this reviewer though that Khan is discussed in a chapter on ‘ordinary subjects’ and is not placed among ‘intellectuals’. Ghaffar Khan to me was an organic intellectual at par with anybody, even if not a scholar.
Ahmad also employs muhavare (proverbs) used by common folks to describe the Mullah (that has derogative connotation in South Asia) to reflect upon their positions in society that often uses the oxymoron term Jahil Maulvi (uneducated Maulvi) for clerics. To reflect upon the society, in turn, he uses a contrasting proverb as a commentary on the people who see ulema as such.
The book comes out as a fine work of hard labour on a rather bold theme that is generally ignored in mainstream academic discourse. It is highly recommended to anyone interested in understanding an alternate narrative of Islam in South Asia.