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IslamicReform andModernities
in SouthAsia1
FRANCIS ROBINSON
Introduction
1
This article draws on attempts to consider aspects of Islamic reform and
over the past twenty years. See Francis Robinson, 'Secularization, Weber,
modernity
and Islam' first published inWolfgang Schluchter (ed.), Max Weber's Sicht des Islams.
slightly amended form inToby E. Huffand Wolf gang Schluchter (eds.),Max Weberand
Islam (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ, 1999), pp. 231-46; Francis Robinson,
'Religious and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800', in South Asia,
Change
Vol. XX, 1, 1997, pp. 1-15; Francis Robinson, 'Islam and the Impact of Print in
South Asia', in Francis Robinson (ed.), Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Oxford
University Press, Delhi, India, 2000), pp. 66-104; Francis Robinson 'Other-Worldly
and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic Revival', inJournal of the Roy al Asiatic Society,
3rd series, Vol. 14, 1, April 2004, pp. 47-58.
2
Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 2002), p. 457.
259
3
It should be noted, however, that some sufis adjusted their not to
practices just
take account of reform but also to embrace its transformative processes. Nile Green,
'The Politics of Meditation in Colonial South Asia' in this volume, pp. 283-315,
is a good example of the former. The classic study of reform led by a sufi and his
Naqshbandi followers is: Serif Mardin, Religion and Social Change inModern Turkey: The
CaseofBediuzzaman SaidNursi (State University of New York Press, New York, 1989).
4
Barbara Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband,
Daly 1860-1920
(Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 46-260.
5Muhammad Khalid Masud
(ed.), Travellers inFaith: Studies of theTablighijama'at as
a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal (Brill, Leiden, 2000); Yoginder Singh
Sikand, The Origins and Development of the Tablighijama'at A Cross-Country
(1920-2000):
Comparative Study (Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2002).
6
This is done in book VII titled:On Comportment and Character, Reward and Punishment;
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana AshrafAli Thanaw?s Bihishti Zewar: A
Partial Translation With Commentary (California University Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990),
pp. 177-239.
7
Haniffa emphasises the indissoluble connection between piety and social action.
Farzana Haniffa, as Politics amongst Muslim Women in Contemporary Sri
'Piety
Lanka', in this volume.
8
Speech of Ahmad Khan quote in Altaf Husain Hali, Hayat-i-Javid,
Sayyid
K. H. Qadiri and David J. Matthews (trans.) (Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Delli, Delhi, 1979),
p. 172.
9
S. Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Life and Mission ofMaulana Muhammad Ily as, Mohammad
Asif Kidwai (trans.) (Academy of Islamic Research and Publications, Lucknow, India,
p. 108; Huq the seriousness with which a contemporary women's
1979), emphasises
Islamic student organisation in Bangladesh takes the Day ofJudgement. Maimuna Huq,
'Reading the Qur'an in Bangladesh: The Politics of "Belief Among Islamist Women',
in this volume.
10
Barbara Daly Metcalf, 'Weber and Islamic Reform', in T. E. Huff and W.
Schluchter Weber, pp. no. 1.
(eds.), 217-29,
11
Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since
1800', pp. 108-10; Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, p. 2690,
no. 4.
12
Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi, Aap Beeti: Autobiography, 2 vols.
who added his considerable weight for its acceptance.'5 Indeed, the
idea is present inmuch of the movement of reform in the Shia as well
as the Sunni world.'6
Taken together, these key aspects of reform come close to that mix
of aspects of 'Protestantism' that Eisenstadt argued some years ago
gave it transformative potential. They were its 'strong combination
of "this-worldliness" and transcendentalism', its 'strong emphasis on
individual activism and responsibility' and 'the direct relationship of
the individual to the sacred and the sacred tradition', which in South
Asia becomes stronger, the closer the reform moves into the modes of
the Ahl-i Hadith and the Islamists.17
Let us turn to those new facets ofMuslim life and thought that seem
to spring, in part at least, from the religious changes of reform and
represent aspects of what we might associate with modernity.
15
S. A. A. Maudoodi, Fundamentals of Islam (Markazi Maktaba Islami, Delhi, 1979),
p. xviii, and for a disquisition on the role of man as God's trustee on earth, see
pp. 29-30.
16
Francis Robinson, 'Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic
19
Ibid., pp. 511-22.
20
Francis Robinson, 'Islam and the Impact of Print in South Asia', pp. 80-81, no. 1.
21
Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, 'the Satirical Verse of Akbar Ilahabadi
deploying reason rather than rhetoric; and his life inwhich he defined
himself in opposition to traditional authority-'I recognize no king or
ruler above me', he declared, 'nor do I bow before any government;
nor do I view any law as binding on me ... nor do I accept any tradition
or custom'. 22Thus, the reformers, the Deobandis apart, drove a coach
and horses through the old authority resting on a connectedness to
a 'sacred' past and created new forms, future-oriented forms, which
could be regularly remoulded with thematerials then available.
22
Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi & theMaking of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford
Press, New York, p. for a discussion of Mawdudi's
University 1996), 138; general
see pp.
authority, 126-38.
23
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf AH Thanawi's Bihishti
Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary, pp. 1-38, no. 6.
Islamic civilization, which was built for the reasons that, if it [that
civilization] ever suffered a reverse it [that civilization] may then take
refuge in it'.24
The new emphasis on human will heightened ideas of human
instrumentality in the world. Indeed, it runs through all the
manifestations of reform, often laced with a sense of urgency. The
very life of Sayyid Ahmad Khan is testament to his belief that he, as
an individual, must take action for the good of the community and of
Islam.25 Reformers from Ashraf 'AliThanwi toMawdudi emphasised
that if a man knew what he should do, he must do it. Knowing
meant doing. They were depicted as terrified by the thought that they
might not be doing enough to be saved. Thus, Hasan Ahmad Madani,
principal of Deoband in the mid-twentieth century, would weep at
the thought of his shortcomings. And, of course, no one laid as much
emphasis on theMuslim as aman of action as Iqbal.Man as the prime
mover in God's creation would by his repeated effort bring the world
closer and closer to being a Qur'anic society. Thus, the reforming
vision empowered Muslims on earth.26 Thus, too, that most sensitive
observer, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, in his Islam inModernHistory (I1957)
referred to the extraordinary energy that had coursed through the
Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, talking of
'dynamism, the appreciation of activity for its own sake, and at a level
of feeling a stirring of intense, even violent, emotionalism.. .'.27
Women, too, have felt empowered, although almost invariably it
has been at the cost of enduring the tensions generated between
their desire and capacity to act, on the one hand, and the demands
of patriarchy and the symbolic requirements of community on the
other. Historically, these tensions have been most acute amongst
women from well-off families, but as time has gone by, they should,
in all likelihood, have become more widely spread. In his recent
book, Yoginder Sikand has surveyed some of the women's madrasas
24
Cited in Faisal Fatehali 'Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement
Devji,
of Women's Reform, in Z. Hasan (ed.), Forging Identities: Gender,
1857-1900',
Communities and the State (Kali for Women, New Delhi, pp. 35-36.
1994),
25
Altaf Husain no. 8; C. F. I Graham, The Life and Work
Hali, Hay at-i-Javid, of Sir
new rev.
Syed Ahmed Khan, K.C.S.I., and ed. (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1909).
26
Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since
1800', p. 9, no. 1.
27
W. C. Smith, Islam inModern
History (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ,
p. In harmony with
Smith's insight, Haniffa emphasises how the women's
1957), 89.
piety movement in Sri Lanka has made its Muslims into 'a highly energized force of
some within Sri Lanka's Farzana Haniffa, as Polities', in this
magnitude polity'. 'Piety
volume, pp. 347-375
28
Yoginder Singh Sikand, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in
33
Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ali ThanawVs Bihishti
Ashraf
Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary, p. 234, no. 6; Farzana Haniffa, 'Believing
Women: Piety and Power Amongst Muslim Women in Contemporary Sri Lanka',
'
no. 7, and Maimuna the Qur'an in Bangladesh: The Politics of "Belief
Huq, 'Reading
Islamist Women', no. 9, are both excellent studies of projects to
Among designed
construct a new Islamic self-hood women.
amongst
34
See, for instance, Tom Webster, 'Writing to Approaches to Spiritual
Redundancy:
Journals and Early Modern Spirituality', in The Historical Journal, Vol. 31, 1, 1996,
PP- 35"36
35Mohamed Ali and Afzal Iqbal (ed.), My Life: A Fragment: An Autobiographical
Sketch (Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, Pakistan, 1942). Syed Mahmud's spiritual
reflections may be found in the Farangi Mahall Papers, Karachi.
36
W. Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali (Oneworld: Oxford,
!994)
37
Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since
Rationalisation
39
Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since
41
Book VI of Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar, for instance, specifically discusses the whole
issue of custom; Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashrof Ali Thanawi's
Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary, pp. 89?161, no. 6.
42
'At every turn', Haniffa records, 'I was told members of Al-Muslimaat that
by
were Muslims as well as as Polities',
they by choice by birth'. Farzana Haniffa, 'Piety
PP- 347-375
43 no. 1.
Francis Robinson, 'Islam and the Impact of Print in South Asia', p. 91,
44
Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996), pp. 37-45.
45
Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi, Towards Understanding Islam, (UK Islamic Mission,
London, 1980), p. 108.
Secularisation
46
Anthony Giddens, Sociology, 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge,
2001), p. 545.
47
Francis Robinson, Secularization, Weber, and Islam, pp. no. 1.
236-7,
48
Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi, Aap Beeti: Autobiography, Vol. 2,
pp. 314-6, no. 12; Marsden makes a similar about reform-minded Muslims in
point
Chitral. Magnus Marsden, Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North
West Frontier (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 241.
2005),
49 no.
Francis Robinson, Secularization, Weber, and Islam, pp. 239-41, 1.
50
Francis Robinson, 'Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic
51
Francis Robinson, 'Fundamentalism: Tolerance and India's Heritage', mjournal
of theAsiatic Society, Vol. XLV, 3, 2003, pp. 5-13.
52 as a preparation
For a sceptical to Islamic 'Protestantism' for
approach
see Martin 'How Favourable is Puritan Islam to Modernity?
modernity, Reixinger,
A Case Study on the Ahl-i Hadith (late I9th/early 20th centuries)', unpublished
paper.
53
Troeltsch this to the ninth conference of German historians at
put argument
in April when he gave the lecture that Weber had been to
Stuttgart 1906 supposed give
on the of Protestantism for the rise of the modern world. Ernst Troeltsch,
meaning
Protestantism and Progress; The Significance of Protestantism for the Rise of theModern World
55
Bruce B. Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against theModern
57
Ibid.,
pp. 45-92, 154-67
58
for instance,
See, B. O. Utvik, 'The Modernizing Force of Islamism', in J. L.