Islam as Critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge of Modernity

229 Pages·2019·9.986 MB·English

by  Khurram Hussain

Islam as Critique
Islam of the Global West
Series editors: Kambiz GhaneaBassiri and Frank Peter
Islam of the Global West is a pioneering series that examines Islamic beliefs,
practices, discourses, communities, and institutions that have emerged from
“the Global West.” The geographical and intellectual framing of the Global West
reflects both the role played by the interactions between people from diverse
religions and cultures in the development of Western ideals and institutions in
the modern era and the globalization of these very ideals and institutions.
In creating an intellectual space where works of scholarship on European and
North American Muslims enter into conversation with one another, the series
promotes the publication of theoretically informed and empirically grounded
research in these areas. By bringing the rapidly growing research on Muslims
in European and North American societies, ranging from the United States and
France to Portugal and Albania, into conversation with the conceptual framing
of the Global West, this ambitious series aims to reimagine the modern world
and develop new analytical categories and historical narratives that highlight
the complex relationships and rivalries that have shaped the multicultural,
poly-religious character of Europe and North America, as evidenced, by way
of example, in such economically and culturally dynamic urban centers as
Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Madrid, Toronto, Sarajevo, London, Berlin, and
Amsterdam where there is a significant Muslim presence.
Amplifying Islam in the European Soundscape: Religious Pluralism and
Secularism in the Netherlands, Pooyan Tamimi Arab
Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires,
Xavier Bougarel
Sacred Spaces and Transnational Networks in American Sufism,
Merin Shobhana Xavier
Islam as Critique
Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the Challenge
of Modernity
Khurram Hussain
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in Great Britain 2020
Copyright © Khurram Hussain, 2020
Khurram Hussain has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Hussain, Khurram, author.
Title: Islam as critique: Sayyid Ahmad Khan and the challenge
of modernity / Khurram Hussain.
Description: New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, [2019] |
Series: Islam of the global west | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019018776 | ISBN 9781350006331 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781350006355 (epdf) | ISBN 9781350006348 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic countries–Relations–Western countries. |
Western countries–Relations–Islamic countries. | Islamic modernism. |
East and West. | Aòhmad Khan, Sayyid, Sir, 1817-1898–Criticism and interpretation.
Classification: LCC DS35.74.W47 H87 2019 | DDC 303.48/2176701821–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019018776
ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-0633-1
ePDF: 978-1-3500-0635-5
eBook: 978-1-3500-0634-8
Series: Islam of the Global West
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To my father
vi
Contents
Prologue viii
Introduction 1
1 The Language of Reform 19
2 Modernism and Humanism 47
3 The Meaning and End of Time 61
4 The Viva Activa 103
5 Knowledge and Wisdom 137
Epilogue: Can the Muslim Speak? 157
Notes 169
Bibliography 194
Index 204
Prologue
Only a year into his presidency, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran sent a curious
letter to George W. Bush. Curious not so much in its content but in the very fact
of its existence. No direct communication had taken place between executives
of Iran and the United States in almost thirty years. And whatever indirect talk
there had been was more of kin to Japanese kaiju movie titles than international
diplomacy: The Great Satan versus The Axis of Evil, Death to America versus
Tehran Terror Theocrats, and so on. It was an odd sort of thing then, this personal
letter, from one head of state to another when the states they presided over had
persisted, for so long, in carefully preserving a perpetual state of reciprocal enmity.
Tensions with Iran had only intensified in the preceding years with the American
war on terror grinding on in neighboring Afghanistan and Iraq. And now, in
2006, the international community was becoming increasingly apprehensive
about Iran’s nuclear energy program and debating possible sanctions at the UN
Security Council. The letter was an exceedingly polite litany of complaints to
Bush about US foreign policy, Western imperialism, and international double
standards that ended with Ahmadinejad highlighting their common Abrahamic
monotheism as a possible source of détente between their two societies and a
peaceful new world order. But it landed amid all the rancor as a feisty snowflake
on oozing lava, preserving its form for the barest of moments before being
obliterated. Bush quickly rejected any future official response from his office. The
press reported state department officials (anonymously) deeming it “a window
into Iranian mentality . . . [an] inclination to dwell on myriad grievances of
the past rather than . . . [deal] with its intransigence over the nuclear issue.”1
Condoleezza Rice was the only cabinet member to even minimally address the
letter, calling it a calculated distraction from “issues we are dealing with in a
concrete way.”2 The American media took turns being flabbergasted and amused
by it. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page likened its “philosophical depth to
the Unabomber’s soliloquies.”3 Some even declared it a Trojan horse, a “peaceful
overture” which when analyzed using ancient Islamic precedence, “is in fact
a declaration of war.”4 Late night talk show hosts briefly played up its length
(eighteen pages), its obscure language, and its religious references for laughs.
Like all curiosities, this letter too faded quickly from public memory. It didn’t
Prologue ix
lead to any détente between the West and Iran, nor did it make the situation
any worse. It provided occasion to ridicule Ahmadinejad for his naivete or his
lunacy, an unnecessary addition to the brimming annals of the bizarre from the
Orient. Other than that, this curious letter accomplished nothing.
Still, even as a faded curiosity, this letter deserves attention. It may have
fizzled out abruptly and ignominiously in the West, but it received far more
salutary and sustained attention in the Muslim world. Pakistan’s paper of
record (Dawn) lauded Ahmadinejad for his pragmatism in trying to break the
old taboos of directly addressing the Great Satan, a move to which the only
opposition and derision appeared to be coming from Iranian hardliners and the
US administration.5 Lebanon’s Daily Star seriously jumped the gun in declaring
that “for the first time in years, there is cause for hope.”6 Writing for Hurriyet
Daily in Turkey, Professor Alon Ben-Meir of New York University suggested that
although his letter did not address the nuclear issue, it was clearly meant as an
opening, and only by directly engaging the Iranians can Washington establish its
own agenda for discussion. If it chooses not to, the administration, to the utter
dismay of its friends and allies, will forfeit the chance afforded by a great opening
to de-escalate tensions in the Middle East.7
An editorial for Egypt’s Daily News called it “one of those moments of clarity that
show the huge gap between how the United States and the West see the world
and how Muslims in the Middle East perceive it.”8 No one was laughing and nary
a soul was confused.
This makes sense. Nothing in Ahmadinejad’s letter was particularly obtuse.
I will not regurgitate the entirety of the letter’s contents here; meriting the
seriousness of its substance, the letter deserves a more considerable précis than
space permits. The salient points raised were the various different ways in which
Western powers have continuously asserted their power over Muslim majority
societies (Latin America also earned a brief mention) in exploitative, oppressive,
and restrictive ways that render any claim to a moral high ground not just bogus
but also constitutively corrupt. His tone is questioning and polite throughout,
but critical, with an edge. He demands common standards of evaluation and
judgment. He seeks underlying frameworks of shared vintage for understanding
and dealing with the problems of the world. This last concern leads him to an
emphasis on the traditions of the prophets and Jesus Christ and their shared
monotheism as a possible basis for a conversation with the Christian Bush.
Other than the unfortunate (and unfortunately obligatory) brief mention of
Israel and the Holocaust, Ahmadinejad stays on message throughout. If in fact