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In this chapter, the author reflects on his six years of stay in the madrasas of India and how the experience has shaped his view of Islam as both an intellectual tradition and a practice. After pursuing journalism, political activism, and academia, the author found a deeper appreciation of his complex formation in the madrasas. He says that the decision to study in India began with a crisis of faith precipitated by an attack on his religion in high school in Cape Town, South Africa. He also comments on the hostility some Christians harbor toward Muslims before discussing his time with a group called the Tablighi Jama'at, the Madrasa Sabilur Rashad in Bangalore, and Darul Uloom Deoband, along with his study of fiqh or Shari'a as part of the madrasa curriculum.

This chapter examines the birth of contemporary madrasa. It considers madrasas in modern South Asia in relation to two narratives: family franchises and theological disagreement over Islamic reform. The multiple networks of madrasas found on the Indian subcontinent today are the cumulative product of a madrasa tradition fed from two streams: the Farangi Mahall school and the nineteenth-century reform movement linked to the family of Shah Waliyullah. In the late nineteenth century, the Deoband school became the hegemonic player in madrasa franchises. Throughout the twentieth century it evoked theological partisanship, which in turn spawned the rapid growth of diverse madrasa networks. Each theological camp now fostered its own mission for social outreach, religious authority, and most important their distinct brands of political theology.

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.

Much of the recent debate concerning Muslims and Islamic religious education has been confined to security issues. Simplistic reductionism and predetermined assumptions that regard Islam as a fixed religion and Islamic institutions as hotbeds of terrorism disregard the specific and complex local and political histories that have shaped and continued to influence various transformations in the fundamental ideology of many Islamic religious institutions. Through a study of Darul Uloom (House of Knowledge) Deoband, an influential religious seminary in Uttar Pradesh, India, considered next in standing only to Cairo’s Al-Azhar, this chapter analyses various transformations in the approach and concern of a supposedly ‘orthodox’ religious institution. Can an orthodox institution simultaneously play moderate and progressive roles? Does Deoband have a progressive vision for the Muslim community? In this chapter, I have shown the ways a supposedly orthodox institution of Islamic learning has been trying to maintain its religious authority in a rapidly changing world.

The purpose of this chapter is to show how the Pahlavi monarchy (1925-79) has reacted to the creation of the Islamic University of Medina, in 1961, by allowing in Easternmost Iran the development of Deobandi madrasa teaching and reformed Sufism. It suggests that since then, the Hanafi School of Islamic law and jurisprudence has begun to re-emerge during those years as a specifically Persian if not Iranian, tradition that contested Shia hegemony within Iran while opposing cross-border Wahhabi influence. Reconstructing the demographic change and interethnic cum inter-confessional violence that preceded and went with the revolution of 1979 in Iranian Baluchistan, the author shows how, thanks to the region’s Deobandi Sunni religious establishment’s ultimate acceptance of Khomeini’s rule, the new regime paved the way for the Sarbaz nexus to assess their position as guarantors of social peace and intermediaries between the state and a new-brand ‘Sunni community of Iran’.

In the decades after Khomeini’s death, the oases world’s middlemen class of Iran’s Baluch society has produced political figures able to wield nationwide influence. While maintaining pressure on Tehran from within, the Iranisation of Deobandi religious schools (and of the Kurdish-born Muslim-Brother militant networks) helped reinforce Iran’s national cohesion despite periods of sharp tension. This permitted Deobandi leaders and their Muslim-Brother allies to obtain, under Reformist presidents Muhammad Khatami (1997-2005) and Hasan Ruhani (since 2013), concessions in terms of local government and representation of the minorities. At the same time, the underdevelopment of Iran’s Sunni-peopled marches, the continuous degradation of their ecological situation, the confiscation of the revenues of cross-border smuggling by the Islamic Republic’s paramilitary bodies, the limited reforms implemented since 2013 by the Ruhani administration, the June 2017 ISIS/Daesh-claimed attacks in Tehran and the anti-Sunni repression that followed have fuelled new waves of ‘tribal feud’. This growing violence highlights the contrast between the ability shown by the Sarbaz nexus of Deobandi Sunni ulama to develop nationwide influence, on the first hand, and, on the other hand, the limits of these middlemen’s leadership on Baluch society.

This chapter examines the influence of Westernization, industrialization, and modernization along with the increasingly visible presence of socialism on Urdu literature. A political background of 1900–1930s is provided, including several important events on the world arena and the developments on the eve of, and in the aftermath of, the Khilafat movement, each of which had a profound effect on Indian politics. This is followed by a description of the ways in which creative writers the world over gave expression to the sense of disquiet over the repression unleashed by the colonial government and how their sentiments were echoed, with equal vigour by Urdu writers; it also establishes how the nationalist trends in the country as a whole strengthened the growth of socialist thought, and how socialistic ideas had begun to influence a cross-section of Urdu writers and how the establishment of the Communist Party of India (CPI) channelized the anti-imperialist sentiments into a pronounced nationalist wave. Then the circumstances that lead to the publication of Angarey in 1932 are reviewed, unfolding the linkages between the literature of this period, nationalism, and socialism. While enumerating the fears and insecurities of India’s Muslims, it also concludes that the Muslim community was not without its own shortcomings.

This chapter presents the history and background relevant to understanding the Pakistani Taliban as a movement and an ideology. It describes the main events that led to the creation of the neo-Taliban movements in Pakistan and identifies the distinctive features of the Pakistani Taliban. It also displays the fragmented nature of the movement and the few ideological and religious characteristics that unite the movement. Finally, it places the Pakistani Taliban in the broader context of the country’s politics and the battles over the role of religion since Pakistan’s creation in 1947.

Several centuries old, the relationships between contemporary Central Asia and South Asia—mainly the Indian subcontinent—have been consolidated through the Moghul dynasty, founded by Central Asian conquerors. After a long period of non-relations between the two regions, the collapse of the Soviet Union permitted new Islamic exchanges between Central Asia and India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This new Islamic link is mainly the work of a very influential and transnational organization, called Jama’at al Tabligh. Its members work for the diffusion of faith and piety in their country, promoting an Islam influenced by the Deoband school of India.

The Introduction gives an account of the thematic scope and method of the work, and the rationale for the arrangement of its different elements. It discusses the nature and value of the sources on which the work is based, and its departures from, and contributions to, the existing scholarly literature. It notices the different forms of Muslim religious leadership (eg. ulama and Sufi) that were available in colonial north India and how each tradition created new avenues for change under the colonial presence. The Sufi reactions to colonial pressures and revivalist upsurge in India are compared with some major studies looking at similar responses outside of South Asia.

Chapter 5 charts the intellectual dynamism of the Sabri mystic traditions and the breadth of their influence. It is devoted to a study of Haji Imdadullah, a key figure of the nineteenth century. Imdadullah was successful to a remarkable degree in establishing his authority within his immediate community of South Asian Muslim scholars and Sufi masters, who had come to form an interwoven community. In spite of his physical absence from the subcontinent following his migration to the Hijaz in 1860, he exerted a lasting influence on the north Indian ‘ulamā and held together a dispersed disciple community. He emerged as a spiritual forefather of many seminaries in Deoband, Saharanpur, and Lucknow; or movements such as Jamiat-i-Ulama-i-Hind or Tablighi Jamat. Based on his writings and rich letter collections, the chapter shows how the Chishti-Sabris discussed questions of internal reform and identity, maintained connections with their pre-modern antecedents and tried to accommodate to the changing realities of early British India.

The Conclusion sums up the main arguments of the work. It reiterates the process of gradual transformation in the Chishti-Sabri traditions as the order shifted from Awadh to upper Doab and established connections with the Waliullahi scholars in Delhi. It summarises the different responses which Sufi institutions offered towards the revivalist upsurge in the eighteenth century and explains how the reactions of the Chishti-Sabris offer an interesting case of study. It also sums up the debate on ‘neo-Sufism’ from the Indian context and points towards a reformulation of the mystical heritage while utilising the terminologies of classical Sufi authors and particularly of Ibn Arabi. It stresses the need to re-look at the Sufi-alim interaction in colonial period to highlight a more conciliatory attitude between the two.

After the crushing of the 1857 Revolt (also known as the Indian Rebellion) the Muslim elite reacted in two different ways. The modernists, behind Syed Ahmed Khan, initiated a westernization of the education of their community, which culminated in the Aligarh Movement, the crucible of the Muslim League. Other reformists, who created the Deoband madrassah, tried to revive a “purer” Islam.