Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace

by Irfan Ahmad

Overview

Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and modes for self-critique as well as critique of others are inherent in Islam--indeed, critique is integral to its fundamental tenets and practices. Challenging common views of Islam as hostile to critical thinking, Ahmad delineates thriving traditions of critique in Islamic culture, focusing in large part on South Asian traditions. Ahmad interrogates Greek and Enlightenment notions of reason and critique, and he notes how they are invoked in relation to "others," including Muslims. Drafting an alternative genealogy of critique in Islam, Ahmad reads religious teachings and texts, drawing on sources in Hindi, Urdu, Farsi, and English, and demonstrates how they serve as expressions of critique. Throughout, he depicts Islam as an agent, not an object, of critique.

On a broader level, Ahmad expands the idea of critique itself. Drawing on his fieldwork among marketplace hawkers in Delhi and Aligarh, he construes critique anthropologically as a sociocultural activity in the everyday lives of ordinary Muslims, beyond the world of intellectuals. Religion as Critique allows space for new theoretical considerations of modernity and change, taking on such salient issues as nationhood, women's equality, the state, culture, democracy, and secularism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469635101
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	11/20/2017
Series:	Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Irfan Ahmad, an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Studies in Gottingen, Germany, is the author of Islamism and Democracy in India.
Irfan Ahmad, an anthropologist and senior research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Studies in Gottingen, Germany, is the author of Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In this enlightening and impressive examination of Islamic thought, Irfan Ahmad investigates a part of the Muslim world too often regarded as marginal but which ought to be recognized as central. Ahmad argues that Islam has its own form of religious criticism carried out by believing Muslims with reference to their own traditions. Will be of interest not only to those who study modern Islamic thought but also to scholars of religion and postcolonial studies and to anthropologists beyond area specialists." —Talal Asad, Is Critique Secular?



This important and passionate book is filled with original ideas. Two of the most striking ones are that Enlightenment thought is deeply indebted to Christian thought, and that Islam has its own tradition of critique that precedes the Western idea of critique but continues to be marginalized in contemporary scholarly and public debate. A significant book for scholars of Islam, Europe, and the Enlightenment." —Arjun Appadurai, author of The Future as a Cultural Fact



Provocatively examines the relationship of the Islamic tradition to critique. This timely reflection on the ways in which reason, criticism, and reflexivity are not exclusive to the Enlightenment pointedly addresses how the practice of Westernized notions of critique are deeply constituted by and through political and anthropological contexts." —Ruth Mas, BGSMCS–Free University Berlin

Editorial Reviews

10/09/2017
Anthropologist Ahmad (Islamism and Democracy in India) argues against the common Western view that Islam is inherently opposed to reform and critique in this incisive book. Ahmad writes that Western criticism draws deeply from Protestant belief and sharply splits feelings from rationality and literature from philosophy, but that Muslim thinkers feel freer to blend revelation, emotion, and tradition. As a result, the scholarly dialogue between educated voices who seek to apply Islam to changing scenarios is often misinterpreted by non-Muslims. After this broad argument, he narrows in on Maududi, a proponent of political Islam from mid-20th-century India. By looking at Maududi’s writings and their critical reception (such as his regressive views of women’s roles and the response of Muslim feminists), Ahmad offers an example of criticism arising among Islamic viewpoints before offering case studies of recent debates among faithful Muslim scholars; the depth of specifics sometimes drags. His underdeveloped last chapter looks at proverbs as a means of everyday critique by laypeople. Scholars of religion and philosophy will find plenty of challenges to assumptions about what counts as critique and who can deploy it. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

[Irfan] Ahmad has written an important, sophisticated, and provocative book. This book stands in the best tradition of contemporary Islamic studies.—Marginalia: Los Angeles Review of Books



Religion as Critique is literally a tour de force that combines different objectives around the central axis of showing how believers in Islam act as 'dynamic agents . . . of critique'.—South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies



Original and compelling . . . This important text will be of interest to a wide range of scholars from the social sciences to the humanities committed to better understanding what a postcolonial ethic toward scholarship on Muslims and Islam in the context of rising Islamophobia might look like.—Nova Religio



The book is written in a passionate and engaging style and can easily persuade the reader to finish it at a sitting as its vocabulary is rich and varied and its rhetoric well-crafted, illustrated with poetry, proverbs and personal anecdotes. . . . This book is at once a challenging and exciting work.—Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations



Thoughtful, nuanced, questioning, exploratory, Religion as Critique: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace is a brave book and a timely one.—The Hindu



Ahmad writes as both a philosopher and an anthropologist. . . . What Ahmad does in assessing Abdul Ghaffar Khan is nothing short of revisionism at its most extreme, and daring, pinnacle. . . . Irfan Ahmad deserves the acclaim that . . . Khan has been denied, but may now regain, in part thanks to this lucid, imaginative analysis of his life, his movement, and his legacy.—Critical Research on Religion



Scholars of religion and philosophy will find plenty of challenges to assumptions about what counts as critique and who can deploy it.—Publishers Weekly



Offers an interesting opposition to the West-and-the-rest narratives of an European Enlightenment radiating outwards from Greece and Germany into the backward corners of a darker world.—Al Jazeera



Expands the idea of critique itself. [Ahmad] offers new theoretical considerations of modernity and change, taking on such salient issues as nationhood, women's equality, the state, culture, democracy and secularism.—Islamic Horizons



A bold academic contribution that presents an alternative narrative of India and Islam that is seldom discussed in mainstream academic discourse and . . . is recommended not only to readers of anthropology and religion, but also to those interested in philosophy and discursive practices."—Open

From the Publisher