Islam in India

Although Hanafism historically was, and remains, the largest school of legio-ritual thought (madhhab) in Islam by number of followers, it has not garnered as much attention in the occidental academe as it's lesser adhered to counterpart Sunni schools of thought.  Amongst contemporary Hanafis there is a debate, which recently emerged about what actually was the ‘true’ early Hanafi legal theory (usul al-fiqh) that was espoused by the eponymous Abu Hanifa (699-767 C.E). A pair of British Hanafis wrote Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith to repudiate contemporaneous Hanafis who allegedly adopted hadith criticism methods from the Shafi’i school (Shukurov 2015). Meanwhile, the accused textualist Ḥanafīs said regarding the book Hanafi Principles of Testing Hadith, “The only thing worthwhile in the book is its binding and the quality of paper used” (Cheema 2016). These polemics are both engaging in ritual critique demonstrating not only the heterogeneity of Hanafism but also how a legio-ritual school in Islam is a series on continuing debates between various Muslim scholars. Hanafism emerged out of early debates between, the Ahl al-Hadith (AH) and the Ahl al-Ra`y (AR). Abu Hanifa, like his teachers, was from the Kufan camp of the AR. This historiographical secondary literature review aims to give a broad history of the madhhab from its inception to contemporary times with an emphasis on ritual theory, ritual practice, the various strains of Hanafi doctrine, and their genealogies. In the terms of ritual studies, ritual theory is the “myth,” or way of explaining why the ritual practice should take place (Dudgeon 2019, 90-92).

Dr. Brannon Ingram has written this review of Da'wa and Other Religions for "Reading Religion"(http://readingreligion.org/books/dawa-and-other-religions). Ingram writes, "Movements for da‘wa have been the subject of much academic work in recent years, with the Tablighi Jama‘at, the world’s largest Muslim revivalist movement, receiving the bulk of the attention. Until now, no scholar has attempted to examine the concept da‘wa itself from the classical period to the present. Matthew J. Kuiper’s Da‘wa and Other Religions: Indian Muslims and the Modern Resurgence of Global Islamic Activism attempts to do so, and succeeds in offering readers a wide-ranging overview of da‘wa. Though it focuses on modern South Asia, this book will be of interest to scholars of Islam in any region or period."

The passage of the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act exemplifies legislative populism in its most ethnic format, the National Register of Citizens being its subservient arm or vice versa. The anti-CAA, NRC movement offers a significant challenge to Narendra Modi’s brand of populism, a challenge that is generative of a “new” vision of democracy. It is my contention that Shaheen Bagh protest contains possibilities for redefining democracy. The meaning of the Urdu word ‘Shaheen’ is ‘eagle’,  and is central to Muhammad Iqbal’s decolonial poetic philosophy.

In this paper I will analyse Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī’s (1703-1762) characterisation of the early divide in Islamic jurisprudence between the aṣḥāb al-raʾy, commonly translated as rationalists, and the ahl al-ḥadīth, the traditionalists who refused to engage in the sophisticated legal reasoning which the former had become famous for, instead vindicating the limitation of law to the evident implication of the scripture. For the sake of brevity, I will confine my analysis to the chapter “Causes of the disagreement between the ahl al-ḥadīth and the aṣḥāb al-raʾy” in al-Dihlawī’s “al-Inṣāf fī bayān asbāb al-ikhtilāf” (Fair Elucidation of the Causes of Disagreement)1. I will compare his portrayal of the conflict with present Islamicist research, examining harmony and variation. Specifically, the legal hermeneutics of both parties will be considered alongside underlying conceptions of the historical environment and course of development. As the chapter at hand further gives many clues about al-Dihlawī’s personal stance on the matter, I will review respective passages as part of the studies on the confluence and later legacy of these two parties. Considering that he is the principal figure of the traditionalist revival in 18th century India, his remarks are important to understand the link between modern Salafi literalism and the early traditionalists of the formation period. To which degree does Shāh Walī Allāh al-Dihlawī’s characterisation of the divide differ from the results of present Islamicist research, and how does his particular framing of the conflict relate to his revivalist thought?  / Term paper in "Hadith", B.A. Islamic Studies course by Olly Ackermann at FUB in winter 2019. Grade: 1,0.

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Şah Veliyyullah ed-Dihlevi'nin erken dönem ehli rey ve ehli hadis tartışmalarını değerlendirişi.

وصف شاه ولي الله الدهلوي للنزاع التاريخي بين مدرستي الرأي والحديث

Hai Weiliang a.k.a. Badr al-Din (Hayy) al-Sini (1912–?), a Chinese Muslim from rural Hunan, led a deeply transnational life. Hai was the only Chinese Muslim known to have studied in both India and Egypt in the modern period, spending considerable time at the Nadwat al-‘Ulama in Lucknow and al-Azhar in Cairo. After Chinese, he learned four more languages in two decades: Arabic, Urdu, English, and Persian. While the Second World War transformed him into a Guomindang diplomat, his time at the Nadwa and al-Azhar in the 1930s was largely devoted to questions of Islamic unity. Hai first pursued these questions in a doctrinal mode informed by Salafi currents, then in a political mode influenced by his translation of Iqbal’s “Allahabad address.” His move to Cairo brought him closer to the network of al-Fath and its editor Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib, a strong voice on behalf of Islamic unity, but geopolitics soon intervened. Disillusioned by the failure of the East Turkistan Republic, Hai coped by turning toward a cultural-historical mode of imagining Islamic unity, one that required no immediate political action. The eventual result was his Arabic-language opus, Relations between the Arabs and China (1950). Overall, Hai’s story defies both Sino-centric and Arabo-centric understandings of Chinese Islam, showing that early-twentieth-century Chinese Islam can be used to write a highly integrated history of the modern Islamic world. To that end, this article contrasts Hai’s numerous Arabic and Chinese writings to show how he embodied the tensions between national and transnational community felt across the Islamic world during this period.

In this paper, I talk about the works of three Indian writers, namely Sarojini Naidu(1879-1949), Boman Desai (1976-Present), and Anurag Mathur (Probably 1970s-Present) with regards to their unique portrayal of India and its colorful, mind-boggling diversity, and sometimes disappointing habits in their respective works. I have picked Naidu's poem 'The Bangle Seller', Desai's short story - 'Between the Mosque and the Temple' and Mathur's essay - 'Education: Indian and American' for this comparative analysis.

Coming of Islam in India in medieval period brought phenomenal changes in the  society. With the initial fury of the victorious invaders mellowed down, a background was prepared for interaction at different levels. Architecture, food and dress habits underwent changes and religious life also did not remain untouched. Many Hindus became disciples of the Sufis without converting to Islam and there are number of Muslims who were also influenced by the ongoing wave of the Bhakti movement. One such person was Rahim.(A.D.1556-1626). Though Muslim, he used many Hindu symbolism like allegory of Radha and Krishna, as the pinning of the individual soul for the divine soul. Orthodox interpretation of the Koran, do not accept anybody other than Allha as God. But Rahim’s praise of Hindu gods like Krishna, Rama and Shiva proves that during his time, there was an atmosphere of tolerance, which provided space for Rahim to give free expression to his mystic experience.
From his poetry it is obvious that he had good understanding of the Hindu mythology. He refers to the stories from the Puranas. His thoughts are also influenced by traditional Advita philosophy as he says that we are not sure in which form we may meet God. 
Proposed paper is an attempt of understanding the influence of Bhakti movement on Rahim’s poetry.
Key Words- Bhakti, Concept, Liberal, Mystic, Symbolism.

South Asia’s encounter with Western colonialism preceded that of the Arab world, arguably rendering it more sensitive to the intellectual challenges implicit in political subjugation. Consequently, scholars of South Asian Islam, such as Francis Robinson, have highlighted its role historically more as an exporter than as an importer of reformist ideas, particularly during the decades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The subject of this book, Shaykh Abu al-Hasan Ali Nadwi (1915–99), exemplifies both these tendencies through his life and works. First, he confronts head-on the challenges posed to Muslim civilization by Western cultural and political hegemony. Second, through a corpus of eloquent and passionate Arabic publications and frequent lecture tours abroad, he speaks to the trauma of a post-colonial Arab world still reeling with the shock of its inglorious place in the new global political order.

FULL BOOK REVIEW CAN BE ACCESSED HERE: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/h4ra9XG7a9gDYEs8Gn5A/full

تهدف تلك الورقة في الأساس إلى دراسة مفهوم العلاقات التجارية والدينية والثقافية بين الهند والعرب قبل البعثة النبوية وبعدها. و تظهر إشكالية الورقة في البحث عن الآليات والطرق التي أسهمت في تقوية تلك العلاقات بين الطرفين إبان تلك الفترة التاريخية. وفي ذلك الصدد ركزت الورقة في دراسة وجود النشاطات التجارية المتبادلة بين الطرفين مع ذكر الطرق البحرية التي كانوا يسلكونها، والسلع التجارية الهندية التي كانت تجلب من الهند إلى الجزيرة العربية وإلى المناطق الغربية الأخرى، وذلك لتبيان حجم التجارة والتعاون الاقتصادي بين الأطراف المعنية. وكذلك سلطت الورقة الضوء على العوامل التي دفعت الخلفاء الراشدين إلى الاهتمام بالفتوحات الإسلامية للهند، فضلًا عن التطرق إلى أي مدى قام الصحابة بدور في تقوية تلك العلاقات المتبادلة وترسيخها من خلال مشاركتهم في الفتوحات الإسلامية الأولى للهند برًا وبحرًا. وانتهت الورقة بدراسة النشاطات العسكرية التي ساعدتهم على الوصول إلى المناطق الهندية الساحلية مثل گجرات والسند مع دراسة دور تلك النشاطات العسكرية في تمهيد الأرضية للفتوحات الكبيرة التي تمت في عصر الدولة الأموية مع التأكيد على أن تلك الفتوحات الأولية كانت بمثابة الخيط الأول لربط المناطق الهندية بالخلافة الراشدة، ثم بالدولة الأموية والعباسية. وقد اتبعت الدراسة المنهج الاستنتاجي والاستقرائي والتحليلي، والقائم عل استخراج المواد من بطون أمهات الكتب التاريخية، ومن ثم العكوف على دراستها وتحليلها، لاستنباط فرائضها واستخلاص نتائجها، دون إفراط،أو تفريط بما يخدم موضوعات البحث ومضامينه.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the commercial, religious and cultural dimensions of the relations between India and the Arabian Peninsula before and after the prophetic mission of Muhammad (SAW). It looks into the mechanism and channels that contributed to strengthening those relations. The paper focuses on investigating the mutual commercial activities between the two parties, describing the maritime routes they used, and the Indian commercial goods that were brought from India to the Arabian Peninsula and other western regions. These accounts show the volume of trade and the extent of economic cooperation between the parties under study. The paper also highlights the factors that led the caliphs to pay attention to the Islamic conquests of India. Furthermore, it deals with the extent to which the companions played a role in strengthening those ties and consolidating them through their participation in the first Islamic conquests of India by land and sea routes. The paper concludes with a study of the military activities that helped them to reach Indian coastal areas such as Gujarat, Bombay and Sind. Moreover, it touches upon the role of the military activities in paving the way for the great conquests which took place in the Umayyad era. It further emphasizes that those conquests were the first thread to connect the Indian regions with Al-Khilafat Al-Rashida, then the Umayyad and Abbasid states later on. The study followed the inductive, deductive and analytical methods of extracting data from the primary Arabic and Indian historical sources and reviewing and analyzing them in order to draw conclusions from those data.

یہ مولانا عبد الحق حقاني دہلویؒ، جو تفسیرِ حقاني، حقانی عقائد الاسلام اور حاشیہ النامی علی منتخب الحسامی فی اصول الفقہ الحنفی جیسی بے مثال تصنیفات اور گران مایہ علمی میراث سے آج تک پڑھے لکھے دینی طبقوں میں جانے پہچانے جاتے ہیں، ان کے متعلق سب سے مبسوط سوانحی ترجمہ ہے۔ عرصہ دراز سے ان کے حالات کی تلاش وجستجو تھی، حسنِ اتفاق سے عقائد الاسلام کے ایک نسبتا جدید اڈیشن میں یہ بطور ضمیمہ ملحق تھا۔ اسے الگ سے صاف کر کے افادۂ عام کی نیت سے یہاں پر آویزاں اور چسپا کیا جاتا ہے۔

ناظرین سے کتابتی اغلاط پر آگاہ ومتنبہ کرنے کی درخواست ہے۔ والسلام۔

The name Rohingya denotes an ethnoreligious identity of Muslims in North Rakhine
State, Myanmar (formerly Burma). The term became part of public discourse in the late
1950s and spread widely following reports on human rights violations against Muslims in
North Rakhine State during the 1990s, and again after 2012. Claims for regional Muslim
autonomy emerged during World War II and led to the rise of a Rohingya ethnonationalist
movement that drew on the local Muslim imaginaire, as well as regional history and
archaeology.

Quote as:
Dressler, Markus, Armando Salvatore and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (eds). 2029. Islamicate Secularities: Past and Present, in Historical Social Research 44(3). 

All papers are accessible through
https://www.gesis.org/en/hsr/full-text-archive/2019/443-islamicate-secularities-in-past-and-present

Partly as a product of encounters with Europe, accelerated in the last 150 years, Islamicate societies developed new epistemic distinctions and structural differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres and practices. This special issue conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations as “Islamicate secularities”, thereby connecting Marshall Hodgson’s notion of the “Islamicate” with the concept of “Multiple Secularities”. The individual contributions address the question of secularity in relation to Islam with a variety of spatial and temporal foci that range from Turkey to China and Indonesia, from the present to the colonial era and even precolonial contexts. The issue thus provides an array of perspectives on how Muslims have engaged with religion in relation to social and political conflicts and how this has led to contested reifications of ‘Islam’ and its boundaries, especially in relation to politics. As preliminary result, a tendency towards ‘soft distinctions’, kept under the umbrella of ‘Islam,’ emerges.

Quote the Introduction as:
Dressler, Markus, Armando Salvatore, A., and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. 2019. Islamicate Secularities: New Perspectives on a Contested Concept. Historical Social Research, 44(3), 7-34.

In the colonial era, new distinctions and differentiations between religious and non-religious spheres took shape within inner-Islamic discourses, partly as a product of encounters with Western knowledge. This introduction
conceptualizes these distinctions and differentiations in relation to Islam, drawing on Marshall Hodgson’s concept of the Islamicate, which we employ for
our heuristic notion of Islamicate secularities. It charts the paradigmatic conflicts that shape the contested fields of Islamic and secularity/secularism studies. The introduction discusses the epistemological and political context of these debates, and argues that theoretical and normative conflicts should not hinder further empirical inquiries into forms of secularity in Islamicate contexts. It also explores promising theoretical and methodological approaches for further explorations. Particular emphasis is laid on the historical trajectories
and conditions, close in time or distant, that have played a role in the formation of contemporary Islamicate secularities.

Keywords: Secularity, multiple secularities, Islamicate secularities, Islam and politics, Marshall Hodgson.

Feb. 2018. Introduction to one of the world's largest da'wa/tabligh movements, with annotated citations to scholarly work on the TJ. Published in Oxford Bibliographies in Islamic Studies: http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195390155/obo-9780195390155-0250.xml?rskey=Ny5Arc&result=182

Scholars of the TJ and of South Asian Islam: Please send me any citations I might have missed! Oxford Bibliographies will allow me to update this article from time to time.

This paper examines enigmatic, small, Arabic-inscribed copper coins that were minted or circulated in the environs of a Hindu cave temple complex in northern Gandhara. Based on legends and typology, most of these issues can be attributed to the Ghaznavid period. This new numismatic evidence calls into question long-standing narratives of the Ghaznavid invasion of Hindustan, which posit that the Ghaznavids pursued a uniformly iconoclastic policy toward Hindu sacred sites. The evidence also suggests that the Ghaznavids embraced diverse modes of interaction with the Hindustani frontier zones. These went beyond the well documented raiding expeditions to realize shortterm fijinancial gains. Rather, the Ghaznavids may also have had long-term economic objectives, which necessitated preserving existing sacred institutions and their administrative and fijiscal machinery and patronage networks.

The raging controversy around Hijab is taking disturbing proportions. In Udupi Karnataka Muslim girls alleged that they were denied entry in to the classroom if they wear Hijab. Then we saw the gates of the institute being shut on the hijab wearing girls. Also we witnessed the shameful-despicable act of the vigilantes wearing saffron turban and shawls obstructing the lone girl Muskan, and aggressively shouting ‘Jai Shri Ram’. She in turn resorted to ‘Allahu Akbar’ and went on to submit her assignment. The Muslim girls approached the High Court, which has put a stop on saffron shawls and Hijab in the schools in the interim order.

This article focuses on how the Bombay Scottish missionary-Orientalists John
Wilson (1804–1875), John Stevenson (1798–1858), and John Murray Mitchell
(1815–1904) understood the concept of religion, Christianity, and the structure,
similarity and dissimilarity of “India’s religions.” It examines the foundational
assumptions and methods through which they and other Bombay-based missionaries
denominated some phenomena as religions and as “genuine” expressions of
the religions and used non-Christian religions as instruments to convert Bombay’s
population to Christianity. Such a religiously heterogeneous locale as Bombay
enables one to elucidate: (1) the formation of a taxonomy of world religions
that, with some modifications, remains regnant to this day; and (2) the ways in
which the presuppositions and structural features of the religion concept, Christianity,
and the interpretation of Roman Catholicism as both a false Christianity
and a distinct non-Christian religion helped to fashion particular formations of
language, texts, and practices into isomorphic species of the religion/dharma
genus: Roman Catholic dharma, Jewish dharma, Muslim dharma, Hindu
dharma, Buddha dharma, Jain dharma, and Parsi dharma. An examination of
the Bombay Scottish missionaries’ writing on the religions and their interaction
with Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Jains, Parsis, and Adivasis
reveals patterns and presuppositions of religious understanding to a greater
degree than if one were to study how an individual religion alone was imagined.

The Islamicate traditions of South Asia, a unique phenomenon resulting from the cohabitation and mutual influences of non-Muslim and Muslim societies, are the focus of the fourteen articles presented in this volume. The texts, written by invited specialists in different fields, cover a large array of themes. The main issues discussed by the authors refer to the widely understood cultural environment of South Asian Muslims, including their language, literature, history, thought and traditions. Divided into four sections ("Places & Images", "People", "Ideas & Notions", and "History & Language"), the volume also presents different research directions and methods followed by leading scholar authorities investigating various aspects of the Muslim presence and Muslim-influenced heritage in South Asia. This book is important for those who are dealing with the problematic of Islam and Islamicate cultural traditions in the form in which these features are present in the vast and differentiated area of South Asia. It will also prove to be a useful reference tool for students of humanities in general, and of South Asian studies in particular, especially those interested in Muslim history, culture and literature. Moreover, it should be helpful in researching the questions of intercultural communication as well as studying the confluences of cultures and languages not necessarily and exclusively in the South Asian context.

Ibn Baṭūṭah (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد بن عبد الله اللواتي الطنجي بن بطوطة‎, ʾAbū ʿAbd al-Lāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Lāh l-Lawātī ṭ-Ṭanǧī ibn Baṭūṭah), or simply Ibn Battuta (ابن بطوطة) (February 25, 1304 – 1368 or 1369), was a Moroccan explorer of Berber descent. He is known for his extensive travels, accounts of which were published in the Rihla (lit. "Journey"). Over a period of thirty years, Ibn Battuta visited most of the known Islamic world as well as many non-Muslim lands. His journeys included trips to North Africa, the Horn of Africa, West Africa and Eastern Europe in the West, and to the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and China. Ibn Battuta is considered to be among the great travellers of all time.

If Islamic televangelist Zakir Naik is symptomatic of religious fundamentalism, we have to pin which part of his rhetoric accounts for it, and how it is different from other secular
affirmations of truths. Any attempt to rerun the old narrative of the irrationality of religion, and of Naik’s supporters being blinded by unexamined religious passion, falls flat on its face. Naik’s religion, in fact, is an embarrassingly evolved version of how a rational religion was conceived post-Enlightenment, and his justification of punishment and justice in Islam strikingly mimics the operation of the modern secular world. This is
also how he has been able to gain legitimacy amidst an audience which sees itself as modern.

يدرس هذا الكتاب شخصية السلطان فيروز شاه تغلق المتوفى 790هـ/1388م الذي كان ينتمي إلى الأسرة التغلقية التي حكمت بلاد الهند فيما بين القرن الثامن والنصف الأول من القرن التاسع الهجريين؛ وذلك من خلال ترجمة رسالة قصيرة وضعها السلطان فيروز شاه بعنون "فتوحات فيروز شاهي". كما يدرس الكتاب أوضاع الدولة التغلقية وخفايا أخبارها وأحوال المجتمع الإسلامي والهندوسي في ضوء مضامين تلك الرسالة المعنية.

Mauritian Muslims have undergone a long process of religious standardization and sectarian segmentation. How have sharp religious boundaries such as those that separate Muslims from Hindus and Christians, as well as those that divide Muslims internally along sectarian lines emerged in a creole society such as Mauritius? This article traces how religionization has supplanted race as the chief category of incorporation of people of Indian origins in the creole society of Mauritius. Religionization emerged as a shared project among Mauritians of Indian origins who subsequently became known as Hindus and Muslims. Given the historical interconnectedness of Christianization and creolization in plantation societies such as Mauritius, the shift from race to religion as modes of incorporation among Mauritians of Indian background offers a distinct angle on the question of creolization and religion. It requires a distinction between creolization in a broader sense, and creolization in a deeper sense, the latter inseparable from racialization and Christianization, pointing to the difficulties of the creolization concept in coming to terms with settings of profound religious diversity.

With the death of Annemarie Schimmel on the 26th of February 2003, an epoch has truly come to an end in the dialogue between Germany and the Islamic world. This doesn’t mean that cultural dialogue as such will come to an end or break off, but rather that it will take on completely new, hitherto unknown forms, possibly differing greatly from our previous understanding of such involvement. These new aspects will be outlined after an attempt at more precise delineation of how cultural dialogue was comprehended during the epoch that has now concluded, an epoch initially shaped at the start of the 19th century with Annemarie Schimmel as its last great representative.

Tra il 1027 e il 1028 d.C. il sovrano turco-islamico Mahmud di Ghazna conia una serie di monete con iscrizioni in arabo e in sanscrito, che costituiscono uno straordinario esempio di interazione culturale tra civiltà islamica e mondo indiano. Questo libro racconta la loro storia.

This essay discusses the strength, structure and orientation of Muslim leadership in India as of August 2020. In view of the changes over the last 10 years, it is an update of an earlier essay of 2010, "Muslim grassroots leaders in India: national issues and local leadership," also accessible on academia.edu. The essay will begin with an introduction to the historical context of Muslim India from which current popular leaders emerged. Three subsequent sections will discuss traditional, local or regional, and modern leadership, which are three categories into which Islam in India can be conditionally divided, keeping in mind that these areas also overlap. A final section on the role of social media for the mobilisation of Indian Muslims examines important new trends in social and political activism that are challenging and shaping India’s Muslim leadership.

L’articolo esamina gli insegnamenti attinenti l’invocazione dei nomi divini (dhikr) nei centri sottili (latā’if), esposti in alcuni trattati sulla dottrina e la via mistica del sufismo tradotti e redatti in urdu nell’India d’epoca coloniale. L’autore si sofferma sul nesso stabilito in questi testi fra la dottrina dei centri sottili e i principi del sapere metafisico e cosmologico, indicando al contempo come le sintesi e le classificazioni del sapere qui presentate siano per molti e sostanziali aspetti influenzate delle esposizioni del tema già consolidate nella precedente letteratura mistica indo-persiana d’epoca Moghul (1526-1858). L’articolo analizza inoltre i fattori che nel controverso dibattito religioso d’epoca coloniale indussero i sufi indiani all’uso dell’urdu nella redazione dei trattati in prosa sulla dottrina mistica.