Islamic reform and modernities in South Asia

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 2-3, 2008, Pages 259-281

  Robinson, Francis ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

CULTURAL INFLUENCE; ISLAMISM; MODERNITY; POLICY REFORM; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

AFRICA; ASIA; EURASIA; INDIA; INDONESIA; SOUTH ASIA; SOUTHEAST ASIA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WEST AFRICA;

EID: 40949127012     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: 14698099     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X07002922     Document Type: Article

References (77)

1. This article draws on attempts to consider aspects of Islamic reform and modernity over the past twenty years. See Francis Robinson, 'Secularization, Weber, and Islam' first published in Wolfgang Schluchter (ed.), Max Weber's Sicht des Islams. Interpretation und Kritik (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, Germany, 1985), and republished in slightly amended form in Toby E. Huff and Wolfgang Schluchter (eds.), Max Weber and Islam (Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ, 1999), pp. 231-46;
2. Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800', in South Asia, Vol. XX, 1, 1997, pp. 1-15;
3. 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;
4. Francis Robinson 'Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic Revival', in Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd series, Vol. 14, 1, April 2004, pp. 47-58.
5. Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, 2nd ed. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), p. 457.
6. It should be noted, however, that some sufis adjusted their practices not just to 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 in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (State University of New York Press, New York, 1989).
7. Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860-1920 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 46-260.
8. Muhammad Khalid Masud (ed.), Travellers in Faith: Studies of the Tablighi Jama'at as a Transnational Islamic Movement for Faith Renewal (Brill, Leiden, 2000);
9. Yoginder Singh Sikand, The Origins and Development of the Tablighi Jama'at (1920-2000): A Cross-Country Comparative Study (Orient Longman, Hyderabad, 2002).
10. This is done in book VII titled: On Comportment and Character, Reward and Punishment; Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf'Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary (California University Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990), pp. 177-239.
11. Haniffa emphasises the indissoluble connection between piety and social action. Farzana Haniffa, 'Piety as Politics amongst Muslim Women in Contemporary Sri Lanka', in this volume.
12. Speech of Sayyid Ahmad Khan quote in Altaf Husain Hali, Hayat-i-Javid K. H. Qadiri and David J. Matthews (trans.) (Idarah-i-Adabiyat-i-Delli, Delhi, 1979), p. 172.
13. S. Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi, Life and Mission of Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Mohammad Asif Kidwai (trans.) (Academy of Islamic Research and Publications, Lucknow, India, 1979), p. 108;
14. Huq emphasises the seriousness with which a contemporary women's Islamic student organisation in Bangladesh takes the Day of Judgement. Maimuna Huq, 'Reading the Qur'an in Bangladesh: The Politics of "Belief" Among Islamist Women', in this volume.
15. Barbara Daly Metcalf, 'Weber and Islamic Reform', in T. E. Huff and W. Schluchter (eds.), Weber, pp. 217-29, no. 1.
16. Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800', pp. 108-10;
17. Barbara Daly Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India, p. 2690, no. 4.
18. Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi, Aap Beeti: Autobiography, 2 vols. (Idara Isha'at-e-Diniyat, Delhi, 1993).
19. M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1954), p. 154.
20. For a discussion of this, see Francis Robinson, 'Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic Revival', p. 54, no. 1.
21. 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.
22. Francis Robinson, 'Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic Revival', pp. 54-56, no. 1.
23. S. N. Eisenstadt, 'The Protestant Ethic Thesis in an Analytical and Comparative Framework', in S. N. Eisenstadt (ed.), The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative View (Basic Books, New York, 1974), p. 10.
24. William A. Graham, 'Traditionalism in Islam: An Essay in Interpretation', in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. XVIII, 3, Winter 1993, pp. 495-522.
25. Ibid., pp. 511-22.
26. Francis Robinson, 'Islam and the Impact of Print in South Asia', pp. 80-81, no. 1.
27. Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, 'the Satirical Verse of Akbar Ilahabadi (1861-1921)', in Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 8, 1, 1974, p. 9.
28. Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, Mawdudi & the Making of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford University Press, New York, 1996), p. 138; for a general discussion of Mawdudi's authority, see pp. 126-38.
29. Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary, pp. 1-38, no. 6.
30. Cited in Faisal Fatehali Devji, 'Gender and the Politics of Space: The Movement of Women's Reform, 1857-1900', in Z. Hasan (ed.), Forging Identities: Gender, Communities and the State (Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1994), pp. 35-36.
31. Altaf Husain Hali, Hayat-i-Javid, no. 8;
32. C. F. I Graham, The Life and Work of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, K.C.S.I. new and rev. ed. (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1909).
33. Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800', p. 9, no. 1.
34. W. C. Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1957), p. 89.
35. In harmony with Smith's insight, Haniffa emphasises how the women's piety movement in Sri Lanka has made its Muslims into 'a highly energized force of some magnitude within Sri Lanka's polity'. Farzana Haniffa, 'Piety as Politics', in this volume, pp. 347-375.
36. Yoginder Singh Sikand, Bastions of the Believers: Madrasas and Islamic Education in India, Penguin India, (New Delhi, 2005) pp. 218-21.
37. Ibid., pp. 221-22.
38. Ibid., p. 136.
39. Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989), p. 111.
40. Ibid., p. 14.
41. Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary, p. 234, no. 6;
42. Farzana Haniffa, 'Believing Women: Piety and Power Amongst Muslim Women in Contemporary Sri Lanka', no. 7, and Maimuna Huq, 'Reading the Qur'an in Bangladesh: The Politics of "Belief" Among Islamist Women', no. 9, are both excellent studies of projects designed to construct a new Islamic self-hood amongst women.
43. See, for instance, Tom Webster, 'Writing to Redundancy: Approaches to Spiritual Journals and Early Modern Spirituality', in The Historical Journal, Vol. 31, 1, 1996, pp. 35-36.
44. Mohamed 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.
45. W. Montgomery Watt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali (Oneworld: Oxford, 1994).
46. Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800', pp. 24-25, no. 1.
47. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India: A Social Analysis (Gollancz, London, UK, 1946), pp. 64-67.
48. See also Amit Dey, The Image of the Prophet in Bengali Muslim Piety, 1850-1947, PhD thesis, University of London, 1999.
49. Francis Robinson, 'Religious Change and the Self in Muslim South Asia Since 1800', pp. 10-11, no. 1.
50. Christian W. Troll (ed.), Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, 3: The Islamic Experience in Contemporary Thought (New Delhi, 1986), p. 153.
51. Book VI of Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar, for instance, specifically discusses the whole issue of custom; Barbara Daly Metcalf, Perfecting Women: Maulana Ashraf 'Ali Thanawi's Bihishti Zewar: A Partial Translation With Commentary, pp. 89-161, no. 6.
52. 'At every turn', Haniffa records, 'I was told by members of Al-Muslimaat that they were Muslims by choice as well as by birth'. Farzana Haniffa, 'Piety as Politics', pp. 347-375.
53. Francis Robinson, 'Islam and the Impact of Print in South Asia', p. 91, no. 1.
54. Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori, Muslim Politics (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1996), pp. 37-45.
55. Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi, Towards Understanding Islam, (UK Islamic Mission, London, 1980), p. 108.
56. Anthony Giddens, Sociology, 4th ed. (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 200), p. 545.
57. Francis Robinson, Secularization, Weber, and Islam, pp. 236-7, no. 1.
58. Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhlawi, Aap Beeti: Autobiography, Vol. 2, pp. 314-6, no. 12;
59. Marsden makes a similar point about reform-minded Muslims in Chitral. Magnus Marsden, Living Islam: Muslim Religious Experience in Pakistan's North-West Frontier (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005), p. 241.
60. Francis Robinson, Secularization, Weber, and Islam, pp. 239-41, no. 1.
61. Francis Robinson, 'Other-Worldly and This-Worldly Islam and the Islamic Revival', pp. 54-58, no. 1.
62. Francis Robinson, 'Fundamentalism: Tolerance and India's Heritage', in Journal of the Asiatic Society, Vol. XLV, 3, 2003, pp. 5-13.
63. For a sceptical approach to Islamic 'Protestantism' as a preparation for modernity, see Martin Reixinger, 'How Favourable is Puritan Islam to Modernity?. A Case Study on the Ahl-i Hadith (late 19th/early 20th centuries)', unpublished paper.
64. Troeltsch put this argument to the ninth conference of German historians at Stuttgart in April 1906 when he gave the lecture that Weber had been supposed to give on the meaning of Protestantism for the rise of the modern world. Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress; The Significance of Protestantism for the Rise of the Modern World (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, PA, 1986), p. 100.
65. Ernest Gellner, Muslim Society (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1981), p. 170;
66. twenty years later the argument is put much more forcibly by I. M. Lapidus, History of Islamic Societies, pp. 817-22, no. 2.
67. Bruce B. Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age (I. B. Tauris, London, 1990).
68. Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits Of Modern Rationalism: A Work of Comparative Political Theory (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1999), p. 124.
69. Ibid., pp. 45-92, 154-67.
70. See, for instance, B. O. Utvik, 'The Modernizing Force of Islamism', in J. L. Esposito and F. Burgat (eds.), Modernizing Islam: Religion in the Public Sphere in the Middle East and Europe (Hurst, London, 2003), pp. 43-68;
71. B. O. Utvik, The Pious Road to Development: Islamist Economics in Egypt (Hurst, London, 2006);
72. Geneive Abdo, No God But God: Egypt and the Triumph of Islam (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000);
73. F. Adelkhah, Being Modern in Iran (Hurst, London, 1998);
74. Jenny B. White, Islamist Mobilization in Turkey: A Study in Vernacular Politics (University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA, 2002).
75. Farzana Haniffa, 'Piety as Politics', in this volume. This point has also been made at length and to great effect by Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety; The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2005).
76. S. N. Eisenstadt, 'Changing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture.', in Daedalus, Vol. 129, No. 1, Winter 2000, pp. 1-30;
77. Amit Chaudhuri, Changing a Space: Reflections on India, Literature and Culture (Peter Lang, Oxford, UK, forthcoming).