The Difference

Chapter 6 documents vibrant critiques of Maududi’s Janus-like neopatriarchate. It shows how people connected to the Jamaat criticized Maududi’s position on such issues as veiling, women’s participation in the public domain (including work and cinema), questions of eligibility to become head of state, studying in co-educational institutions, and issues of gender and knowledge. It also accounts for the factors enabling Maududi’s critique. It concludes by discussing what such critiques of Maududi’s neopatriarchate mean. Is it theoretically productive to describe such critiques as inaugurating an Islamic feminist discourse? Here, as elsewhere, the chapter reflects on the author’s earlier understanding to signal a reassessment. The key contention here is that the diverse critiques of Maududi’s position on women makes it clear that Islam, contra assertions by many feminists, can also be a critical language for empowering women.

Critique

The main argument of this chapter is: the Enlightenment was an ethnic project and its conceptualization of reason highly local as it pitted itself against a series of Others, Islam included. Evidently, feminist and race studies scholarship offers a critique of the Enlightenment and its universalism. A point less stressed is that the erasure of non-Western philosophy in Enlightenment thinking construed universal as only "to all," not "from all." Consequently, non-Westerners were construed as empirical objects, not thinking subjects. As it disregarded from all, Western universalism claiming that it is for all and to all could only be missionary-like, for the only option it leaves open for those not subscribing to or already within is to convert. The blueprint for conversion stemmed from Enlightenment ideas of "civilizational infantilism" of the non-West and the obligation to "better the world." To substantiate this argument, the chapter discusses the German Enlightenment and the French Enlightenment both of which reconfigured rather than erased Christianity. Building on works, among others, of Talal Asad, the chapter alternatively outlines the possibility of analyzing Islam and reason as interwoven to show how immanent critique has been central to Islamic histories and cultures.

Prologue

The genealogy of critique, received wisdom unequivocally maintains, started with Immanual Kant. Religion as Critique, in contrast, contends that it began much earlier. As a prelude to demonstrate this proposition and enable readers to begin to rethink the whole issue of critique afresh, the prologue presents Shah Valiullah’s (1703 —1763) work as an exemplification of critique preceding, as well as different from, Kant’s. In the precinct of Kaʿba and Prophet Muhammad’s mosque—Hijaz at large—generally construed as the place of mere submission beyond reason and an uncritical devotion to God, Valiullah enacts argumentation and discussion (baḥaṡ). In so doing, he assigns a role to himself—namely to judge one of the meanings of critique as Reinhart Koselleck outlines it. In Valiullah’s text, traces of a Cartesian split or conflict between reason and faith, between heart and mind, between interior and exterior are difficult to fathom; they instead form a connected ensemble. And unlike Kant, who viewed Islam (and other religions) as fanaticism and bestowed rationality solely on Protestant Christianity, for Valiullah Islam was already rational, not in spite of, but due to revelation.

Epilogue

The Epilogue offers a preliminary outline of a theory of critique. Engaging with Abdolkarim Soroush's theory of contraction and expansion (qabz v bast) in knowledge, it addresses the following questions. Is critique simply an intellectual-epistemological exercise? Or, are there extraintellectual factors—anthropological, political, generational, technological, and so on? When and how does the boundary between external and internal, permissible and undesirable, become sharp or porous? What roles do commoners and their practices have in shaping that boundary? The basic contention foregrounded here is that a more plausible theory of critique and change can't be only intellectual-epistemological; it should also account for mundane social-cultural practices, shaped by as well as shaping the political. To demonstrate this contention, the Epilogue sheds light on past and contemporary discussions about the permissibility of images and statues of living beings among ʿulema.

The State

Combining “contextual studies” by anthropologists and “textual studies” by humanists, Chapter 5 discusses comprehensive critiques of Maududi’s understandings of the state. It focuses on critiques by “traditional” former Jamaat members: Manzur Nomani, Vahiduddin Khan, and Abul Hasan Ali Nadvi as well as critiques by five “modern” Jamaat sympathizers. The aim is not simply to show that individuals critique Maududi but to equally demonstrate how critique is undertaken. How ideas, types of knowledge, forms of authority, language capacity, motivations, the (un)sayable, notions about private and public, hair style, readings of past and future, tears, joy, and much else inform and are played out in the enterprise of critique. That is, critique is connected to a form of life. Critics of Maududi are ambivalent, however. Some agree with the spirit of Maududi’s critical enterprise, but find its relevance skewed in the future. Others differentiate universalist Maududi from nationalist Maududi, to extend the former to encompass concerns and aspirations of humanity beyond the divides of faith and ethnicity. For such critics, Maqāṣid al-sharīʿā, among others, is the medium to pursue such a universalism. Yet others continue to underline the relevance of his ideas for a state by re-interpreting him differently.

The Mundane

This chapter shows critique among non-intellectuals, as practised in an outstanding peace movement in history—the ḳhudāī ḳhidmatgār (servants of God), led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. It discusses the role of mosques, reference to the Qurʾān, and employment of ṣabr (perseverance) in the pursuit of nonviolent struggle against the British colonialism. The Pathans in the northwestern part of contemporary Pakistan, where ḳhudāī ḳhidmatgār was based, have been depicted as anything but intellectual and critical. The chapter concludes with everyday critique by delineating three proverbs. While the first two proverbs ridicule molvī and mullā— “theologians”—the third one introduces a “shifter” proverb to show how the subalternated view the rich. The alternative portrait it presents is of a hawker as critic. The chapter gainfully utilizes Didier Fassin’s differentiation between reality and truth as productive and tension-ridden at the same time.

Introduction

It begins with a New York Times (2006) story about critique, reason, and religion. Situating the assumptions of that story in the relevant body of works –mainly but not limited to anthropology – the Introduction lays out the four-fold argument the book enunciates. First, Western and the Enlightenment notion of critique is not critique per se but only one among several of its modalities like the Islamic one it foregrounds. The suggestion is to see Islam as critique; indeed, Islam as permanent critique. Second, in and of itself reason is neither sufficient nor autonomous in arriving at judgements. Third, the truncated reason of Cartesian cogito does not resonate well with the Islamic conception of reason that is much broader, nondualistic, and holistic. Fourth, critique ought not to be the sole preserve of salaried professional intellectuals; nonintellectuals too enact and participate in critique. The Introduction mounts a critique of Indian liberalism – exemplified, inter alia, by Amartya Sen, Partha Chatterjee and Ramchandra Guha –for its servility to nationalism and silencing of Muslim thoughts. Showing flaws in conflating political with epistemological borders, the book outlines the path to track the silenced Muslim tradition of critique across the recent, imperially planted borders of the nation-state.

The Message

This chapter presents an anthropological account of the key ideas of Maududi, the founder of Jamaat-e-Islami. It first de-reifies the hegemonic portrayals of Maududi as a “fundamentalist” to see him instead as a political thinker. Central to his exposition on Islam were the use of reason, critique, and ijtihād as opposed to taqlīd. It dwells on Maududi’s educational thoughts and evaluation of past scholars—‘Omar bin Abdul Aziz, Imam Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah, Shayḳh Ahmad Sirhindi, and Shah Valiullah and his successors. The final section outlines Maududi’s thoughts about cosmology, human nature, and civilization to locate the objective behind the formation of Jamaat. It addresses issues such as the meanings of Allah, the message of the Qurʾān, monotheism, prophecy, jāhiliyat (ignorance), and so on. It also discusses Maududi’s citations from the New Testament and references to Christ’s life to argue how Muhammad’s message and his life resembled earlier prophets, including Jesus. Maududi held that his call for a polity resting on divine sovereignty echoed the teachings of prophets preceding Muhammad. Maududi’s invoking of God’s sovereignty was similar to that of the Protestant politician-thinker Abraham Kuyper in Holland, Catholics in Australia, as well as Bellah’s notion of civil religion.

The Modes

This chapter scripts an alternative genealogy of critique—tanqīd/naqd—in the Islamicate traditions of South Asia in Urdu. Building on the works of Martin Bernal, Michael Herzfeld, and John Keane, it interrogates the prevalent views of Greece as the birthplace of anthropology, democracy, critique, and so on. Subjecting canonical works on Urdu literary criticism and taking, inter alia, Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s writings as illustration, it documents the secularist and secularizing premise of Urdu literature and how it was designed as distinct from religion but aligned to territorial nationalism. In contrast, central to the alternative genealogy is the premise that God Himself is the source of critique. God sent prophets for reform (iṣlāḥ). To reform was to critique and to critique was to reform. In the "religious" texts and social practices of "traditional" ʿulema thus a different notion of critique emerges—a notion that doesn't reject the Greek, pre-Muhammad, or Western traditions but which simultaneously can't be subsumed within them. The chapter traces elements of this genealogy through the Qurʾān, prophetic lives, and the early community constituted around Muhammad and his companions. Maududi and his interlocutors read, craft, elaborate, configure, update, and modify that tradition of critique.