Islamic Thought in the South Asian Subcontinent

Abstract

The International Institute of Islamic Thought-Islamabad, the Islamic Research Institute, and the International Islamic University, Islamabad, are conducting ongoing seminars on the history of Islamic thought in eighteenth-century South Asia. What follows is a report of some activities and decisions taken to date. Recent studies of Islamic thought have generally attributed the rise of Muslim reform and revival movements, as well as the intellectual activities undertaken during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to the impact of Europe and the influence of its academic, social, political, and technological advancement. This raises the following question: If the Muslim world had not come into contact with Europe, would it have remained a totally unchanged and unchanging society? In order to answer this question, it is essential to: 1. Study and examine how Muslim thinkers analyzed their society in the precolonial period 2. Explore whether there was any dissatisfaction with the status quo among Muslims; 3. Detemine whether there were any trends of reform, revival, ijtihad or whether there was any significant interest in philosophy and rational sciences. Was there any interest in reinterpreting Islamic teachings in order to meet the challenges of modernity in general and of the western intellectual experience in particular; 4. Study whether the foundations of the political movements, religious organizations, and sects that arose in the subcontinent (i.e., Ahl-i Hadith, Deobandi, and Barelawi) were laid on the emergent attitudes of opposition and resistance to British rule or whether their origins can be traced in the pre-British period; and 5. Investigate principles and concepts (i.e., bid’ah, taqlid, ijtihad, dar al harb, jihad, and hijrah) used by Muslim thinkers for total acceptance, rejection, or adaptation of political, social, and religious ideas and practices and of modern science and technology. How were these developed, refiied, restated, or reconsh-ucted? ...