Description

This book is an attempt to understand the political imagination of South Asian Muslims. It seeks to understand the responses of South Asian Muslims to the new structures of political thought and action produced by the British colonization of India. Traditional ulama and Muslim intellectuals tried to understand and define their position vis-a-vis political modernity. Major scholars and ulama of Twentieth century who responded to political modernity through their scholarly works or actions include Maulana Mahmud al-Hasan, Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Muhammad Iqbal, Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani, Maulana Abdul Bari Farangi Mahali, Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi, and Maulana Abul A la Maududi. Linking their agency to the particular historical conditions, the book captures the responses of these and other important ulama and intellectuals. The diversity and richness of these responses is a testimony that far from being stagnant, South Asian Islam remained a creative tradition. Dr Shahid Rasheed has a diverse range of experiences before joining academia. He did Electrical Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore, LL.B from Punjab University, M.Sc. Sociology from the University of Oxford and PhD in Islamic Thought and Civilization from UMT, Lahore. He also remained part of Civil Services of Pakistan from 1999-2012. He is also founding Director of Zaawiya Trust School Lahore, a residential school based on the principles of holistic education, particularly for the underprivileged children of society. He teaches sociology in a private university. His research interests include sociological theory, studies of modernity, Muslim intellectual tradition, South Asian Islam and Sufism.

About the Author