International Seminar on Shah Wali-Allah's Thought

Abstract

Ahinad ibn Abd al-Rahim, better known as Shah Wali-Allab of Delhi ( 1703-1762), is perhaps the greatest intellectual figure of Islam in South Asia. An international seminar was organized on his thought (as contained in Hujjat-Allah al-Balighah) on February 20-22, 2001 by the Shah WaliAllah Dehlavi Research Cell of the Institute of Islamic Studies, Aligarh Muslim University, India. Wali-Allah was a prolofic writer in Arabic and Persian and a "synthetic thinker" like Al-Ghazali and ibn-Khaldun. He made his contribution on the eve of the modem (colonial) period. The British in the Bay of Bengal had their eyes set on Delhi, the Mughul seat of Muslim power. Deeply concerned, Wali-Allah understood his mission to be a two-fold reformation of "the religion and the state." With his favorite slogan "Back to the Qur'an", he called for a complete change of the old order and sought to "reopen" the doors of jihad and ijtihad. In his resistance to the growing power of the Mrathas and Sikhs, he is believed to have set a tradition for the subsequent generations of Muslim India. Acclaimed variously by different Islamic groups as a reformer, a purifier, a revivalist and a modernizer, Wali-Allah is considered to be the spiritual and intellectual progenitor to a host of religio-political movements in South Asia, including the Mujahidin movement, the Deoband movement, the Aligarh movement and the Pakistan movement. His influence has also been acknowledged on the subsequent generations of Muslim thinkers in the Indian subcontinent including Allama Muhammad Iqbal and Mawlana Abul Aala Mawdudi. In his magnum opus, Hajjat-Allah al-Balighah (The Conclusive Argument from God), Wali-Allah has worked out an "integrated scheme" of Shari'ah, or a theoretical basis for interpretation and application of Shari'ah against a background provided by his ideas of "human purposefulness" and "beneficial interests". He believed that his (pre-modern) age demanded a projection of Shari'ah with reasoned and convincing "arguments", unraveling the secrets (deeper meanings) of religious symbols and injunctions ...