INTRAMUSLIM POLEMICS TO DEBATING HINDU-MUSLIM FRIENDSHIP DURING & AFTER RAJ

[PLEASE NOTE - The course is BOTH in person ONSITE in London and for those who can not attend in person can purchase the LIVE ONLINE STREAMING ticket to watch it from their device and those coming in person, should you not decide to attend person on the day or half the day, you will still recieve a link to the live online streaming, irrespective but are encouraged to attend in person if you have registered for that ticket, as this helps with allows room allocation, respectively for fellow participants].

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Islamic Courses present:

'FROM BARELVĪ-DEOBANDĪ POLEMICS IN BRITISH INDIA TO DEBATING HINDU-MUSLIM FRIENDSHIP AFTER EMPIRE'

Presenter: Dr SherAli K Tareen*[Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Department Chair of Religious Studies, Franklin & Marshall College, USA]

Host chair: Sidi Andrew Booso**[Advisory Board of the Al-Salam Institute (Oxford and London),UK]

Date: Saturday 13th July 2024

Time: 9am - 6pm

Venue: Ebrahim College, London

Taking selective chapters from his award winning book 'Defending Muhammad in Modernity' and recently, 'Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship after Empire', this course will further dvelve and discuss the complicated intra-Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia, Hindu-Muslim relations and the British Empire and what it means today for both Muslims in South Asia and communities of South Asian heritage in the West.

In Defending Muhammad in Modernity, SherAli Tareen presented the most comprehensive and theoretically engaged work to date on what is arguably the most long-running, complex, and contentious dispute in modern Islam: the Barelvī-Deobandī polemic. The Barelvī and Deobandī groups are two normative orientations/reform movements with beginnings in colonial South Asia. Almost two hundred years separate the beginnings of this polemic from the present. Its specter, however, continues to haunt the religious sensibilities of postcolonial South Asian Muslims in profound ways, both in the region and in diaspora communities around the world. Defending Muḥammad in Modernity challenges the commonplace tendency to view such moments of intra-Muslim contest through the prism of problematic yet powerful liberal secular binaries like legal/mystical, moderate/extremist, and reformist/traditionalist. Tareen argues that the Barelvī-Deobandī polemic was instead animated by what he calls “competing political theologies” that articulated—during a moment in Indian Muslim history marked by the loss and crisis of political sovereignty—contrasting visions of the normative relationship between divine sovereignty, prophetic charisma, and the practice of everyday life. Based on the close reading of previously unexplored print and manuscript sources in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu spanning the late eighteenth and the entirety of the nineteenth century, this book intervenes in and integrates the often-disparate fields of religious studies, Islamic studies, South Asian studies, critical secularism studies, and political theology.

In 'Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship after Empire': After the end of Muslim political sovereignty in South Asia, how did Muslim scholars grapple with the possibilities and dangers of Hindu-Muslim friendship? How did they negotiate the incongruities between foundational texts and attitudes toward non-Muslims that were informed by the premodern context of Muslim empire and the realities of British colonialism, which rendered South Asian Muslims a political minority? In this groundbreaking book, SherAli Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim thinkers imagined and contested the boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. He argues that often what was at stake in Muslim scholarly discourse and debates on Hindu-Muslim friendship were unresolved tensions and fissures over the place and meaning of Islam in the modern world. Perilous Intimacies considers a range of topics, including Muslim scholarly translations of Hinduism, Hindu-Muslim theological polemics, the question of interreligious friendship in the Qur’an, intra-Muslim debates on cow sacrifice, and debates on emulating Hindu customs and habits. Based on the close reading of an expansive and multifaceted archive of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu sources, this book illuminates the depth, complexity, and profound divisions of the Muslim intellectual traditions of South Asia. Perilous Intimacies also provides timely perspective on the historical roots of present-day Hindu-Muslim relations, considering how to overcome thorny legacies and open new horizons for interreligious friendship.

About the presenter: Dr SherAli K Tareen*[Associate Professor of Religious Studies, Department Chair of Religious Studies, Franklin & Marshall College, USA], who has been teaching at F&M since 2012. He received his PhD in Religious Studies from Duke University in 2012. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. He has also written extensively on the interaction of Islam and secularism. His book Defending Muhammad in Modernity (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020) received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award. His second book called Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship after Empire published in August 2023 in Columbia University Press' prestigious Religion, Culture, and Public Life series. His various articles have appeared in the Journal of Law and Religion, Muslim World, Political Theology, Islamic Studies, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, ReOrient, among many other journals. SherAli also co-hosts the popular podcast New Books in Islamic Studies that operates online through the New Books Network and features interviews with authors of important new books in the broader field of Islamic Studies.

Host chair: Sidi Andrew Booso**[Advisory Board of the Al-Salam Institute (Oxford and London),UK] is originally from London. He read law at the London School of Economics, and pursued traditional Islamic learning with a variety of teachers in a private capacity. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Al-Salam Institute (Oxford and London). He edits for a number of publishers specialising in the Islamic disciplines, and has produced works related to Quranic exegesis, spirituality, ethics, Islamic law and theology.

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AUDIENCE: Open to the general public but aimed at intermediate and advanced students of Islamic Sciences, Islamic Studies, post-graduates and academics, Muslim Dar Uloom educationalists, policy makers from think tanks and Ulema/Imams and Muslim community activists and those involved in dawah. Also those interested in Hindu-Muslim relations in South Asia.

PRE-REQUISITES: A basic requisite of Islamic Thought and the history of Islamic Thought in India, as well as Islamic Movements of South Asia is recommended but not essential.

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All welcome, limited spaces, pre-registration required!

DEADLINE FOR BOOKINGS APPLY after which prices increase

For more information call/tel: 07956735301 or email: [email protected]

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* Please note, time and resources have been set aside to ensure the programme runs in a smooth and professional manner for the maximum benefit of participants and thus unless the programme has been postponed or cancelled, there are NO REFUNDS as part of the terms and condition policy.

*Lunch and refreshments can be purchased at cafe's or restaurant's near to the venue and NOT included in ticket price.

*The course is BOTH in person ONSITE in London and for those who can not attend in person can purchase the LIVE ONLINE STREAMING ticket to watch it from their device and those coming in person, should decide not to attend person on the day or half the day, you will still recieve a link to the live online streaming, irrespective but are encouraged to attend in person if you have registered for that ticket, as this helps with allows room allocation, respectively for fellow participants

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Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Ebrahim College, 57 Greatorex Street, London, United Kingdom