Die Welt des Islams (2021) 1–6

Book Review

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SherAli Tareen. Defending Muḥammad in Modernity. Foreword by Margrit Pernau.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020. isbn: 978-0-268-10670-6.
Paperback. Pp. xxiv+482. USD 35.00.

Margrit Pernau, who writes the foreword to Tareen’s book, specializes in the
history of emotions as a proper academic discipline. As such, I do not think
that Tareen could have thought of anyone better to have written the fore-
word, since the entire monograph is essentially a history of the emotions of
South Asian Muslims about the Prophet Muḥammad. In her foreword, Pernau
refers to the fact that, while the debates between Shāh Ismā‘īl and Faḍl-i-Ḥaqq
Khayrābādī, between Ashraf ‘Alī Thānvī and Aḥmad Riḍā Khān, and between
the Deobandis and the Barelvis in general might be crucial to those who have
a stake in the development and practice of Islamic theology, it would be wrong
to imagine them as being low-stake for the general public (p. xii).
Tareen himself begins his introduction with an anecdote from 2006, imply-
ing clearly that these debates from decades ago carry immense relevance for
people whose lives are directly affected by them (p. 1). But, if he were to write
this book today, he would likely have picked the incident that happened in
Khushab/Sargodha, Pakistan, in 2020, in which a security guard at a local bank
is said to have murdered the bank manager on the basis of the manager’s refusal
to accept the Prophet Muḥammad as more than a human being, thereby deny-
ing his supernatural, cosmic existence. While it has now been concluded that
the reason for this action was something much pettier and more personal, the
incident still resonates with the theme of the book since for someone to even
think of giving the incident the Deobandi-Barelvi colour means that this is a
theological and sectarian bifurcation that has strong roots in society. In fact,
it is more telling than the actual incident itself since this earlier explanation
was accepted en masse and therefore implies the continued relevance of the
Deobandi-Barelvi debate.

©  koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700607-61040005

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Both Deobandi and Barelvi schools came into being during the time of
the British occupation of India. Both schools originated in North India. Both
schools considered themselves reformist. And both schools rivalled each other
on the basis of four central questions: (1) the Prophet’s capacity to intercede
on the Day of Judgment; (2) the boundaries of bid‘a/heretical innovation;
(3) the Prophet’s knowledge of the unseen (‘ilm al-ghayb); and (4) the possibil-
ity of God creating another Muḥammad.
In the first part of the book, the central question that Tareen addresses is
how the conception of divine sovereignty changed for the ‘ulamā’ of Muslim
South Asia when, after 1857, their own political sovereignty was severely dam-
aged (p. 50). In order to address this question, he launches into the career of
Shāh Ismā‘īl, an important influence on the Deobandi school. A fascinating
but problematic figure, Ismā‘īl is important because, as Tareen puts it, he was
staunchly against undermining God’s sovereignty and authority through peo-
ple’s belief in the supposed spiritual powers of the Prophet, angels, fairies, and
saints to intercede on their behalf while faced with worldly problems—some-
thing that he saw happening in the North Indian Muslim community
(p. 85). Having said that, it was on the point of the possibility of God creat-
ing another Muḥammad that Ismā‘īl and Khayrābādī went to (verbal and pro-
verbial) battle. Ismā‘īl declared that God could, by a single command, create
“millions of” Muḥammads (p. 97). Khayrābādī took him to task and argued
that even acknowledging the possibility of something like this implies that
God can lie, since He has already declared Muḥammad to be the final prophet.
Ismā‘īl retorted by arguing that, indeed, God does have the capacity to lie and
that, while it was possible for God to create a million other Muḥammads, he
would not actually do it, and therefore even categorizing His declaration as a
lie would be wrong. For Ismā‘īl, this was an “indirect impossibility” since God
would never act upon this, even despite His ability to do it; for Khayrābādī, this
was an “essential impossibility,” something that would never happen because
it could not happen (p. 101)!
Another issue on which Ismā‘īl and Khayrābādī were at loggerheads con-
cerned the possibility of prophetic intercession; it had direct ramifications for
the idea of divine sovereignty. On the point of intercession, “Isma‘il argued that
the aura and majesty of the Prophet depended not on any extraordinary salv-
ific capacities but on the perfection of his humanity” (p. 123). He did face an
uphill task, though, as there are indeed references to the possibility of human
intercession for salvation in the Qur’anic text itself. However, he divided inter-
cession into three distinct categories in order to make his case but, as Tareen
points out, was not very successful in doing so. The rhetorical point about the
impossibility of Prophetic intercession, however, had been made.

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In his critique of Ismā‘īl’s argument, the scholar and poet Faḍl-i-Ḥaqq

Khayrābādī pointed out that Ismā‘īl’s defence of divine sovereignty affected
the stature of the Prophet. In other words, the Khayrābādī/Barelvi response to
the Ismā‘īlī/Deobandi argument was less a criticism of their stance and more
an expression of their love for the Prophet. Khayrābādī used this idea of love to
further build upon his theological construct. For Khayrābādī, the love between
God and his final messenger was so pure and so powerful that it superseded all
logical arguments about the impossibility of prophetic intercession. Among
other things, Khayrābādī argued from a Ḥadīth Qudsī that the love between
God and Muḥammad was all-encompassing and really did not demarcate
any clear barrier between the two entities (p. 142). As a result, according to
Khayrābādī, not only was the Prophet well within his rights to intercede on
behalf of the people of his umma, he could do it whenever he pleased, how-
ever much he pleased, and God would listen to his intercession requests since
the two were—almost, but just not quite, with one notch of separation, per-
haps—one through love.
Another pivotal issue around which the Deobandi-Barelvi argumentation
revolved was the place of mawlid in Muslim South Asia. The Barelvis celebrated
the Prophet’s birthday with pomp and show and believed that Muḥammad
himself appeared in the gathering in which he was being remembered. The
Deobandis, however, rejected such a possibility and argued against celebrat-
ing the Prophet’s birthday in that manner. Furthermore, the later Deobandi
scholar Ashraf ‘Alī Thānvī built on the issue of mortals being the vessels of
blessings and, interestingly, argued that it was not the act itself that was wrong;
it was the context of the place and the intent of those performing the act that
was problematic (p. 205). This demonstrates early on in the development of
Deobandi thought the tendency to declare something wrong because of the
accidental characteristics of the act (where, why, when, how), and not nec-
essarily denouncing the act itself as being forbidden. In Deobandi thought,
certain acts were problematic not because of something essential to the nature
of those acts, but because of the circumstances in which those acts were being
realized and performed.
But what shape would this denouncement take? The Deobandi practice
of excluding one thing after another from the acceptable set of actions and
rituals needed a solid foundation to stand on, lest it be thought of as an exer-
cise in theological pettiness. This theological foundation was provided by the
idea of bid‘a (heretical innovation). If Deobandi scholars wished to discourage
this practice, one of the best methods at their disposal would be the argument
from bid‘a. A central concept in Islamic legal history, it generally applies to
practices that came into being after the death of the Prophet and therefore

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did not get a stamp of approval from him. As a result, these practices were
called innovations and their status in Islamic law, daily life, and polity has been
highly contested. If Deobandi scholars wished to discourage celebrations that
shed a super-human light on the Prophet, all they had to do was to label it a
heretical innovation.
While the Deobandi scholars could use the idea of bid‘a for exclusionary
declarations, there was one issue on which even the theoretical edifice of the
impermissibility of innovation did not fully apply—this was the aforemen-
tioned issue of the mawlid. This is because bid‘a applies only to those prac-
tices that began to appear after the Prophet had passed away and therefore
did not have his stamp of approval. However, it would be odd to label a cele-
bration of the Prophet’s memory an innovation, since the question of whether
Muḥammad himself celebrated his birthday as memoriam would be prima
facie illogical. As a result, the Deobandi framework had to bring within its fold
an idea of the Sunna that included not just the practice of the Prophet him-
self but also that of his Companions after the Prophet’s death. This way, an
argument could have been made that since there was no one who could love
the Prophet more than his own Companions, and since the Companions did
not celebrate mawlid, it was wrong for South Asian Muslim communities to
celebrate it.
However, Tareen rightly tells us that the Deobandi scholars could not out-
law mawlid per se. Because of a multitude of reasons, both religious as well as
political, these scholars could not afford to prohibit something that was prac-
tised by millions of Muslims across India. As a result, another argument had
to be constructed, one that allowed for the popular practices associated with
it to be discouraged. This was achieved by appropriating the theoretical dis-
tinction between obligatory and non-obligatory acts, particularly those non-
obligatory acts that seemed to have become obligatory in the customs of a
given space and time. In other words, the argument went that mawlid is tech-
nically allowed and can even be seen as a blessing for the Muslim community;
however, the way that it had come to be celebrated by South Asian Muslims,
characterized by extreme expressions of passion and an aura of performativity
and class symbolism, created so much harm in the Muslim community that
the act itself had to be temporarily banned, until and unless members of the
community were taught the historical reasons for the celebration of mawlid
and were enabled to see how their practices had corrupted the beauty or the
reason for that celebration. Of course, the argument would also ensure that the
Prophet’s essence came to be seen as one of human-ness.
The Deobandi and Barelvi schools of thought contradicted each other in
several ways when it came to the issue of bid‘a; however, they also converged

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in places. Tareen informs us that while Aḥmad Riḍā Khān Barelvī differed with
his Deobandi counterparts on the hermeneutics of bid‘a, he too was “trench-
antly critical of the manner in which the masses engaged in particular rituals
and customs” (p. 283). This is reminiscent of the Deobandi discomfort with
practices that they thought were agreeable in principle, but were practised
in ways that were deeply harmful. (Tareen is quick to point out that some of
these agreements between the two schools, while aesthetically agreeable, were
deeply troublesome, for instance on matters concerning women, p. 285).
While Tareen does not elaborate on this, the argument that the common
Muslims had to be taught and trained about what was permissible (and why)
went against some other assertions made by the Deobandi school, thus giving
rise to intra-Deobandi contradictions (or at least difference in emphases). On
the one hand, Deobandi scholars argued that Muslims had to be told about the
history of certain practices. According to Deobandi religious authorities, then,
only the most accomplished Islamic legal jurists could determine whether or
not something ḥalāl could be temporarily forbidden to prevent harm to the
religion or to the community. This, too, establishes a hierarchy where religious
knowledge was transferred from the elite of religious authorities to common
Muslims. However, one longstanding Deobandi principle, Tareen tells us else-
where in the book, is that non-specialists (i.e., common Muslims) can also
understand and interpret religious sources (p. 177).
But this difference of opinion within Deobandi thought, concerning who
embodies religious authority, teaches us something more fundamental about
Islamic reasoning—namely, not only were there problems and tensions
between Muslim and Hindu religious assertions, there were tensions between
Muslim legal and theological approaches (intra-Muslim), and that, more
importantly, there was no such thing as a monolithic, standardized Deobandi
manual of legal and theological positions that froze at some point in time. The
Deobandi, the Barelvi, the Ahl-i Ḥadīth, and the Ahl al-Qur’ān movements (all
major South Asian Muslim intellectual movements in their own right) evolved
over several decades and were rife with internal battles and contradictions
which in large part got resolved over time to develop into somewhat coherent
legal and theological systems.
Tareen’s rather voluminous book is difficult to summarize in a few words.
It tries to do several things at once, and the fact that it succeeds in doing so
testifies to the author’s ability to express complicated ideas clearly. The book
is essentially about the Deobandi-Barelvi dichotomy in modern Muslim South
Asia. By diving deep into the textual material of the prominent leaders of both
schools, Tareen is able to amply demonstrate the futility of binary catego-
ries—Ṣūfī/legal, inclusivist/exclusivist, etc.—in explaining the two centuries

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of theological dispute between the two schools. And at the core of this dispute
is the debate about the nature and the charismatic authority of the Prophet.
It is apt to point out two statements that Tareen makes within a space of
eight pages, which demonstrate how entangled this whole textual tradition
is, how its categorization of ideas defies mutual exclusivism, and how we are
beginning to realize that we don’t even have the organic vocabulary to talk
about it. On page 283, while talking about ways of popular Muslim devotion,
Tareen writes: “[Aḥmad Riḍā Khān] was no inclusivist Sufi.” On page 290, he
writes: “Khan was far from an absolute radical exclusivist.” If we are able to
appreciate the fact that these two statements are not contradictory, then I
believe we can begin to appreciate how sophisticated and complex this tradi-
tion is and that it does not give itself up for neat, binary analyses.

Ateeb Gul
Boston University Graduate Program in Religion, Boston, Massachusetts,
United States
ateebgul@bu.edu

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