Islamic Thought in the South Asian Subcontinent The Eighteenth Century

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? ...