Religion as Critique

Description

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.

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: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami (2009).

Reviews

‘… [an] incisive book. Scholars of religion and philosophy will find plenty of challenges to assumptions about what counts as critique and who can deploy it.’
-Publishers Weekly

‘Religion as Critique elevates both terms.... With sustained intellectual courage and intelligence, Irfan Ahmad takes the idea of God, prophecy, and reform as constituting a framework from within which the past, present, and future have been, and can be, rethought. The idea of critique that emerges from this book is deeply attentive to the present by articulating a long Islamic tradition that has had the resources to think in concrete and abstract ways. This book is a genuinely thoughtful contribution to the understanding of Islam and to ways in which we can rethink it and the world we live in.’
-Uday Mehta, professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

‘Here is a scholarly and nuanced intervention in the politics of culture—the way the hegemonic West with its Christianity and Enlightenment rationality stigmatizes Islam as the turbulent site of irrationality, orthodoxy, and violence. Irfan Ahmad contests this monologue of the West … and argues that Islam has its own distinctive and immensely meaningful discourse of reason. This brilliantly written book ought to shatter the misplaced confidence of hegemonic modernists as well as orthodox zealots.’
-Avijit Pathak, professor, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

‘Religion and Critique is a remarkably original work aiming to construct a theory of critique and judgment in Islam.... This excellent book, written in a reader-friendly style, stresses for a more informed understanding of Islamic universe of knowledge and action. Irfan Ahmad situates the global anti-Islamic obsession in the Indian context by offering an intelligent criticism of Amartya Sen’s Argumentative Indian.’
-Hilal Ahmed, faculty member, Politics, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi, India.

'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, distinguished professor, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA

'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, Goddard Professor, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, Steinhardt School, New York University, USA

'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, staff, Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies, SOAS University of London, UK.

Table of contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Notes on Transliteration

PROLOGUE
PART I: Formulation
1 INTRODUCTION
2 CRITIQUE: Western and/or Islamic
3 THE MODES: Another Genealogy of Critique
PART II: Illustration
4 THE MESSAGE: A Critical Enterprise
5 THE STATE: (In) dispensable, Desirable, Revisable?
6 THE DIFFERENCE: Women and (In) equality
7 THE MUNDANE: Critique as Social-Cultural Practice

Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index