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Ghazali confirms that the issue of takfir is indeed a legal one and implicitly suggests that the law can only judge the explicit avowal of a person or group of people in relation their beliefs.1 This has material consequence as Ghazali himself admits despite some scholars attempts to either ignore or dismiss these possible consequences. Sherman Jackson’s claims in in his introduction to the translation of Ghazali’s Faysal that Ghazali’s conception of kufr “is purely a matter of rejecting the truthfulness of the Prophet Muhammad. Beyond this, it reveals, in and of itself, virtually nothing about a person’s moral and religious constitution. On this understanding, the modern Muslim tendency to employ kafir (unbeliever) as a moral, ethnic, cultural, or even civilizational delineator shows itself to be a patent misuse of the category…. For on al-Ghazali’s definition, kafir (qua kāfir) is neither immoral, irreligious, nor exempt from receiving recognition – in this world – for the good he or she commits. As such, it is wholly unnecessary to deny that a person is a kafir simply in order to be able to preserve his or her status as a human being possessed of religion or other laudable qualities”.2 Jackson’s submissions are an incomplete complete reflection of what Ghazali says on the issue. In the Iqtisad Ghazali says the following regarding the meaning of stating that a person is a kafir: “This implies, regarding his place in the hereafter, that he will be in hellfire forever; and, regarding his status in this worldly life, that it is not obligatory to punish the one who kills him, that he cannot marry a Muslim, that his life and property are not inviolable, and the rest of such judgments.”3 Here Ghazali clearly states that the legal consequence of deeming a person an infidel not only has otherworldly affects but theoretically has material effects in this world relating to his (and here Ghazali is referring to a male but the opposite would apply to a female a fortiori) life and property. Where Jackson is correct is on Ghazali’s apparent restrictive test for what constitutes kufr. For Ghazali the test of whether a charge of infidelity?? is justified is

1 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Al-Ghazali’s Moderation in Belief (Al-Iqtisad Fi al-I‘tiqad) (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013), p. 241. This is an annotated translation of Ghazali’s book. Ghazali penned three important texts which deal with heresy and takfir. The first is a treatise within the firaq (heresiographical) genre of literature which was written at the invitation of the Abbasid Caliph – the title in part bears the Caliph’s name – where al-Ghazali’s main aim was to critique Ismaili beliefs in order to demonstrate their erroneous ways and also to place them outside the fold of Islam. This text is titled Fada’ih al-Batiniyya wa fada’il al-Mustazhiriyya translated by Richard Joseph McCarthy under the title Freedom and Fulfilment (Boston, 1980), pp. 175-286. Toshihiko Izutzu provides an analysis of this text in his book The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology: A Semantic Analysis of Iman and Islam (Tokyo, 1965), pp. 23-34. A more detailed examination of Ghazali’s critiques of the Ismailis is Farouk Mitha’s Al-Ghazal and the Ismailis: A Debate on Reason and Authority in Medieval Islam (London & New York: I.B Taurus in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2001). The second text which Ghazali wrote is al-Iqtisad fi al-I’tiqad (Moderation in Belief) which is ultimately a theological defence of the Sunni – particularly Ash’ari – creed. The last chapter of this text which deals with which sects should be charged with infidelity is relevant here. The last book which Ghazali wrote on the subject of heresy and infidelity is a text that has much continuity with the previous two works but where he set out in more detail a systematic method according to which one may determine statements which avoid the charge of disbelief attaching to its originator and those statements which must be considered as warranting the charge of disbelief. This text has been referred to above in footnote 51 under the title of Faysal. 2 Sherman Jackson, Faysal, p. 7. 3 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Iqtisad, p. 241.

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR whether a person is of the view that the Prophet had lied or in the words of Ebrahim Moosa who describes Ghazali’s iman benchmark as “a distorted belief amounts to unbelief (kufr) only when it is tantamount to ‘refuting’ (tadhkib) the authority and incontrovertible teachings of the Prophet.”4 Accordingly, there are three fundamental beliefs that flow from this faith standard: 1.Belief in God; 2. Belief in the Prophet Muhammad as the messenger of God; and 3. Nelief in the Last Day. Following on from this it is also essential to believe in any widely transmitted reports (tawatur), including the Qur’an, that was handed down from the Prophet because such reports equate certainty in that its ubiquitous nature belies any foul play or deception in the content. To reject or display any doubt regarding these things renders one an infidel. Ghazali declares all followers of other religions as infidels who will experience the punishment of hell fire (excluding those infidels who either never heard of the Prophet or who were only subjected to false and hateful rumours about the Prophet). More relevant to our discussion, Ghazali also declares the Muslim philosophers and those Muslims who reject or tacitly doubt tawatur reports as infidels. The former case is the curious one because the philosophers, as Ghazali admits, believes in God and the Prophet, but it is their way of believing that troubles Ghazali. Their belief that the Prophet could not represent the truth explicitly because most people would not be able to comprehend it (except the philosophers and their kind), their denial of the physicality of the hereafter including bodily resurrection, and their claim that God only knows universals and not the particulars of the existential reality and that although God preceded the world in existence, the world will continue to exist forever the same as God.5 While these claims certainly are unsound in terms of Ash’ari doctrine, none of these claims imply that the Prophet was neither a messenger nor truthful. At worst, the philosophers claim that the Prophet explained certain things in a way so that people could understand and use that information in their lives even though such an explanation did not reflect the fullest extent of the actual reality.

The other group who Ghazali vociferously attacks is the Ismailis. In the first treatise he wrote, it is clear that Ghazali employs the same tactic to declare Ismailis as kafir. He states that their denial of the physical resurrection and a physical heaven and hell (as the philosophers claimed) also renders the Ismailis as kafir because the physicality of these things are apparent from the Qur’an and therefore to suggest otherwise is to suggest that the Prophet was lied or covered the truth in relation to these aspects.6 Furthermore, Ghazali is quite strident on the importance of the Muslim community having a leader or Imam and that this leader for Ghazali at the time of writing was the Abbasid Caliph whom Ghazali considered the only qualified

4 Ebrahim Moosa. Ghazali and the Poetics of Imagination (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), p. 194 5 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Iqtisad, pp. 241-250 and Jackson, Faysal, pp. 92-111. 6 Richard Joseph McCarthy. Freedom and Fulfilment, pp. 153-154.

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR person for the office of Imam at the time. To further discredit the Ismaili Imam, Ghazali concentrates on the role ijmaʿ plays in electing and consolidating the Imam of the age. Besides the fact that the Ismaili Imam does not qualify to occupy this position due to his heretical beliefs, the Ismaili conception of the Imam contravened the ijmaʿ since the time of the death of the Prophet and even at the time of writing, the ijmaʿ supporting the Ismaili Imam was numerically insignificant compared to the ijmaʿ of all Muslims who supported the Abbasid Caliph as their Imam.7 This articulation of complete faith in the Abbasid Caliph as a qualified and suitable Imam for Muslims is grounded in realpolitik. In the Iqtisad Ghazali clearly sets out that it suffices for one person who is representative of the community to take the oath of allegiance (bay’a) on the condition that the person has shawka (strength). In other words, the ijmaʿ of the community and the scholars is represented – unilaterally it must be added – by a powerful man, in Ghazali’s time, this being the Seljuq Sultan who in turn appoints the Imam through his political power.8 Ghazali’s construction of orthodoxy and heresy, of right belief and wrong belief and of who is a Muslim and who is not, had as much to do with political expediency as it had to do with any genuine interest in protecting the parameters of orthodox belief. Moosa’s assessment of Ghazali in this respect is rather bleak. He says that Ghazali’s “wish to protect the Abbasid state and, perhaps more important, his impassioned desire to shelter the community from harm got the better of him in political theology […]. In this respect, Ghazali left the theological landscape rather untouched in its substance; cynics might say he left it worse for the wear”.9 The critique, in my view, against Ghazali’s compromised political theology is a valid one. However, in some ways we are all captive to our social and political contexts and we are also limited by these frameworks in important ways. That Ghazali engaged with the context by way of buttressing the Abbasid claim to caliphal power and support for Seljuk rule is a reflection of a man who was as much interested in the political future of the community as he was in the theological integrity of the community. If anything, it provides a complexity to Ghazali the man and his works in a way that lessens the convenient appropriation of his name in contemporary times for one’s own chauvinistic purposes. By appreciating his complicatedness and his limitations we are in a better position to realise the complicated intersection of religion and politics in our own lives and our own limitations

7 Ibid, pp. 170-173. 8 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Iqtisad, pp. 229-239.For an a more detailed discussion on the political nature of Ghazali’s works, including the works he wrote on heresy, see Omid Safi. The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Inquiry (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), pp. 110-124. Safi argues that Ghazali’s was a part – and complied with – the legitimising efforts of Seljuk rule. For a brief synopsis of the Islamic political theory relating to the Seljuk period see Antony Black’s The History of Islamic Thought: From the Prophet to the Present (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2001), pp. 91-110. 9 Ebrahim Moosa. Ghazali, p. 208.

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR particularly in relation to the claims of others who call themselves Muslims but are prevented from being a part of the larger community because of theological and legal positions they hold.

Both the Pakistani state and some Ahmadi advocates manipulate these intersections not for any ethical reasons but rather to denigrate their opponents. The former prohibits Ahmadis the freedom to practice their religion and maintains a state supported institutionalised systemic exclusion of and discrimination against Ahmadis. On the other hand, some Ahmadis expediently use the current political rhetoric that marginalises Muslims and reinforces Islamophobia to recognise Ahmadiyyat as a form of Islam that is non-threatening to Western interests but also an opportunity to intimidate other Muslims into accepting Ahmadis as Muslim without attempting to foster a relationship that is based on trust, mutual agreement and the politics of clement disagreement.

Reading through Ghazali’s works, particularly the Iqtisad and Faysal, one does get the impression that Ghazali was vexed by the sectarian mongering and the casual nature by which allegations of kufr were hurled against each other. While he is ultimately unsuccessful in achieving an Islamic ecumenism, his work does provide a starting point of thinking through the distinction of what constitutes erroneous beliefs according to any particular sect and what should warrant a charge of infidelity, if anything. One aspect of Ghazali’s argument is promising in this regard and has particular relevance to the matter at hand. He is vague on whether the rejection of a belief obtained via ijmaʿ should be sufficient to render a person kafir. What is clear is that Ghazali considers the institution of ijmaʿ to be sound. However, he is extremely reluctant to provide it with the legitimacy and status that tawatur reports have in his schema while at the same time he views ijmaʿ as holding back the development of objectionable beliefs. He provides the following example of one such belief without clearly stating that it warrants the charge of infidelity but rather stating that such a belief only runs afoul of ijmaʿ and not the text and should be judged accordingly. He says:

Someone might say that it is possible for a messenger to be sent after our Prophet, Muhmmad (may God bless him and grant him peace); and he would avert a charge of infidelity [if the binding nature of the principle of consensus is rejected]. The evidence for the impossibility of this, upon reflection, derives inevitably from consensus; for reason does not deem it impossible. As for the Prophet’s reported statement “There will be no prophet after me” and the saying of the Exalted And the Seal of the Prophets, that person is not unable to interpret them non-literally. He might say “‘the seal of the prophets’ is intended to designate the messengers of steadfast determination, for God’s saying ‘the prophets’ is a general term, and it is not unlikely to delimit what is general; and the Prophet’s statement ‘there will be no prophet after me’ is not intended to refer to a messenger, for there is a

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difference between a prophet and a messenger – a prophet has a higher degree than a messenger,” and the rest of such sort of babble.10

Here, Ghazali views such a belief as offensive and nonsensical, which is not the problem. He seems to view the beliefs of the philosophers and the Ismailis in a far more unforgiving light. It is also an inherent part of any sect to also – to some extent – view the beliefs of another group as erroneous. What is promising is that despite the abhorrence held for such a view, it possibly is not sufficient to apply the charge of infidelity much less institute a framework of complete exclusion, systemic discrimination and violence against those who subscribe to it.

To view the issue of heresy from another, more modern, perspective, particularly in relation to the Ahmadi question, the case of Muhammad Iqbal’s position on the Ahmadis,11 orthodoxy and ijmaʿ is important and interesting. Iqbal’s response to Ahmadiyyat has received attention in a book on his political philosophy12 and a more detailed analysis in an article devoted directly to orthodoxy and Ahmadiyyat.13 In order to appreciate Iqbal’s construction of orthodoxy and heresy it is necessary to understand his philosophical weltanschauung. I will deal with the relevant aspects of this worldview here to unpack his opinion on the heresy of the Ahmadis and I will also discuss Iqbal at greater length in the concluding chapter where I attempt to provide some insight into why a Muslim subjectivity unhindered by spectres of heresy is necessary and how it can possibly be actualised. Neither instances provide an exhaustive treatment of Iqbal’s complex political and religious philosophy but I am confident that it does at least bring pertinent facets of Iqbal’s view to the fore so that both the limitations of the edifices he built are recognised and the powerful potential of his interpretations of self, text/tradition and reason are appreciated for the contribution it can still offer to thinking about a Muslim future.

For Iqbal, the core components undergirding the entire structure of Islam as a specific historical fact, a moral dispensation and a socio-political philosophy is the belief in God and

10 Aladdin M. Yaqub. Iqtisad, p. 248-249. 11 Iqbal’s relationship with the Ahmadis is complicated one. Towards the end of his life he distanced himself completely from the movement and it is those writings that is under discussion here. However, earlier in his life it seems Iqbal had a closer and non-confrontational role with the movement. It is claimed that Iqbal took the bay’at (allegiance) at the hands of Ghulam Ahmad, sent his son to an Ahmadi administered school in Qadian, made positive statements about the movement. Furthermore, his father and brother are also thought to have been a member of the movement and his teacher Mir Hassan had close relationships with some members of the movement (Iqbal Singh Sevea. The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 120-121; Adil Hussain Khan. From Sufism to Ahmadiyya, p. 122; and Hafiz Sher Muhammad. Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal and the Ahmadiyya Movement (Columbus: Ahmadiyya Anjuman Isha‘at Islam Lahore Inc, 1995). 12 Iqbal Singh Sevea. The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal, pp. 120-125; 171-172. 13 Teena Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression: A Response to Nehru,” ReOrient, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Autumn 2015), pp. 78-92.

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR the divine prophethood of Muhammad as the last Prophet who transmitted a revelation of a path towards spiritual development and the establishment of a socio-political institution.14 The primary actor in this framework who establishes in the present and extends into the future the point of Islam as a spiritual tool-kit and a socio-political order is the individual self or ego or khudu.15 The self-cum-individual is the singular building block of the Islamic aesthetic, after the death of the Prophet. No Prophet or Messiah is to arrive or return which would require the absolute obedience of the self. This arrangement of obeisance terminated with the life of the Prophet.16 The khudi bears within it tremendous power for development and self-realisation which is individualised and distinct from other selves or in the words of Iqbal,

It is in the ego’s effort to be something that he discovers his final opportunity to sharpen his objectivity and acquire a more fundamental ‘I am’ which finds evidence of its reality not in the Cartesian ‘I think’ but in the Kantian ‘I can’. The end of the ego’s quest is not emancipation from the limitations of individuality, it is, on the other hand, a more precise definition of it. The final act is not an intellectual act, but a vital act which deepens the whole being of the ego, and sharpens his will with the creative assurance that the world is not merely something to be seen and known through concepts, but something to be made and re-made through continuous action. It is a moment of supreme bliss and also a moment of the greatest trial for the ego.17

In the same work he says “the end of the ego’s quest is not emancipation from the limitations of individuality; it is, on the other hand, a more precise definition of it”. This khudi through self- actualisation and the entrenchment of its individuality fosters a dynamic, progressive, powerful and action-orientated approach vis-a-vis Islam and not one of resignation and passivity. The influence of Friedrich’s Nietzsche’s philosophy especially his concept of the ubermensch is unmistakable here even though Iqbal reject some of Nietzsche’s positions.18 Accordingly, to some extent khuda-ness or khuda’iyyat (godlikeness) becomes part of the khudi – but not the other way around – by the self-affirming itself before God but the khudi always remaining distinct before the divine Reality as atoms that feel their own light in the presence of the sun.19 At the same time, the liberty (ikhtiyar) of the khudi is only achieved through constraint by confining its actualisation (selflessness or be-khudi) within the limits of Islam as a tradition like

14 Muhammad Iqbal. “Islam and Ahmadism,” in (compiled by A. R. Tariq) Speeches and Statements of Iqbal (Lucknow: Academy of Islamic Research & Publications, 1974), p 126. 15 See: Iqbal Singh Serva. The Political Philosophy of Iqbal, pp. 109-112 and Javed Majeed. Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Postcolonialism (New Delhi: Routledge, 2009), pp. 19-39. 16 Muhammad Iqbal. “Islam and Ahmadism,” p 109-139. 17 Muhammad Iqbal. Reconstruction, p. 198. 18 Iqbal Singh Serva. The Political Philosophy of Iqbal, pp. 111-112 and 118-119 and Muhammad Iqbal. Reconstruction, pp. 187-188. 19 Soulayman Bachir Diagne. Islam and Open Society: Fidelity and Movement in the Philosophy of Muhmmad Iqbal (Dakar: CODESRIA), p. 8.

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR the essence that is imprisoned in the flower-bud that makes the air more fragrant.20 This relationship is circular. The khudi actualises its dynamic self so that it can rejuvenate Islam through its individual power and distinctiveness only to become selfless within the parameters of the tradition and the community. In other words, all action – even if it is that of reform, change, transformation or improvement – must take place within the context of an Islamic subjectivity. However, this khudi interacts with others around it through love which, in the words of Javed Majeed explaining Iqbal, is “a force which further individualises the self, and is at the root of its assimilating expansiveness. The self seeks to assimilate others through love, but at the same time individualises these others since nothing else can satisfy it […]. It is tied to others in reciprocal bonds of individuality”.21 And it is these reciprocal bonds of individuality which, on a significant level, constitute the solidarity of Islam for Iqbal.

It is to this issue – the solidarity of Islam – that the erstwhile Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru (d. 1964), posed a question to Iqbal in the Modern Review of Calcutta in 1935 while incarcerated at Almora Jail in present-day Uttarakhand in northern India by British authorities for his role in the nationalist and anti-colonial struggle. Nehru refers to an earlier article by Iqbal where he makes a request to the ruling authorities for the Qadiani community to be designated separate from Muslims in the same way that Sikhs were designated as separate from Hindus.22 Nehru asks Iqbal a pivotal question: If it be the case that no unorthodox expressions of Islamic identity are tolerated then where does the solidarity of Islam reside (and does the Aga Khan support Iqbal’s idea of Islamic solidarity)? In this regard, Nehru then cites the state of Muslims and Muslim political leaders in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East and Central Asia who are articulating their future through nationalist and modernist frameworks and not through a transnational Islamic solidarity and furthermore cites a report that the Aga Khan, in London, suggested the idea of an Anglo-Muslim unity which confuses Nehru as to how Iqbal’s solidarity of Islam relates to the a solidary of Islam with Britain.23 In a following article, Nehru then asks a more pointed question regarding this solidarity of Islam and poses a question to Iqbal as to where does one draw the line against “fissiparous tendencies”24 within Islam. The entire article is devoted to one such example, the Aga Khan. Nehru sketches the duplicitous personality of the Aga Khan in the article and poses his question plainly thereafter:

he is the leader of a wide-spread and wealthy sect, and I am told, that almost divine attributes are assigned to him by his devoted followers…. But the really

20 Javed Majeed. Muhammad Iqbal, p. 48. 21 Ibid. 27. 22 Teena Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy,” p. 1. 23 Jawaharlal Nehru. “The Solidarity of Islam,” Modern Review of Calcutta. November, pp. 504-505. 24 Jawaharlal Nehru. “His Highness the Aga Khan,” Modern Review of Calcutta. November, pp. 505.

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remarkable fact is that the spiritual head who supports and encourages these practices is a modern of moderns, highly cultured in western ways, a prince of the turf, most at home in London and Paris…. The question that is troubling me regarding Sir Mohamad Iqbal’s statement on the solidarity of Islam, is how all this fits in with that solidarity. It may be perfectly justifiable to spend the money of the faithful on racing; that after all is a minor matter. But is the Aga Khan’s sect a partner in that Islamic solidarity or not?25

Iqbal’s didactic response to Nehru contains many issues not directly related to the question of heresy of the Ahmadis or Qadianis but which go some way in addressing the questions posed including the shortcomings of the Indian nationalist movement, the modernist movements in India and Turkey and an edifying elaboration on the decline of Muslim power in South Asia. In relation to the Ahmadi question, Iqbal simply states that the requirement to remain within the frontiers of Islam is that a person or group belief (and experience of although this is not required) believes in God and the divine prophethood of Muhammad as the last Prophet in that “no spiritual surrender to any human being after Muhammad, who emancipated his followers by giving them a law which is realizable as arising from the very core of human conscience” is thinkable.26 It is the Qadianis, like the Baha’is – and here Iqbal is careful enough to point out that the Lahoris do not make these claims but it is unclear where that leaves the status of Lahore Ahmadis according to him – who reject this essential component of Islamic belief that makes a solidarity of Islam possible. Furthermore, it is the Qadianis according to Iqbal, that declare other Muslims as kafir which intensifies the threat they pose to Islamic solidarity. One reason why the Qadianis belief in continuing prophecy is problematic for Iqbal is that it detracts from the central role that the khudi plays in the entire edifice of Islam. For Iqbal “prophecy reaches its perfection in discovering the need of its own abolition. This involves the keen perception that life cannot for ever be kept in leading strings; that in order to achieve full self-consciousness man must finally be thrown back on his own resources”. It is this intellectual retrogressive tendency within Qadianism – and Ahmadiyyat more broadly – that effaces the individual power and value of the self which is necessary for Muslim unity and success in the modern period that Iqbal rallies against.27 What is curious and somewhat aslant about Iqbal’s position is his response to the Aga Khan question. Iqbal must have known of the special almost divine status that the Aga Khan enjoys within the Nizari Ismaili community and

25 Ibid, pp. 505-506. 26 Iqbal’s criteria for entry into Islam is a minimal one but he differs from Ghazali explicitly in that he admits the philosophers (whom Ghazali rejected) and he explicitly rejects those who expound a theology of continuous prophecy, which Ghazali was somewhat reluctant to clearly and absolutely pronounce on because the orthodox understanding of the doctrine of finality of prophethood for Ghazali is neither explicit in the text nor part of tawatur reports. 27 Iqbal sees Ghulam Ahmad’s mission as a successor the Magianism which for him is, in the words of Teena Purohit, “the prominence of prophet-types such as Mirza Ghulam Ahmad and the rise of “backward” beliefs that precluded the rationalization necessary for Muslim unity.” (“Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy, p. 91)

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR the general separation of this community in prayer and festivities from other Muslims as well as the community’s belief in a special esoteric knowledge that they have access to through the messianic figure of the Aga Khan. His claim that the Aga Khan according to Ismailis “is not a recipient of divine revelation” but “only an expounder of the law” is inaccurate and his citation of a farman by the Aga Khan that enjoins his community to integrate with other Muslims28 by praying with them and treating them as brethren and subscribe to the same beliefs as other Muslims is disingenuous. Teena Purohit reads Iqbal’s defence of the Aga Khan and Ismailis Muslim belief by offering a utilitarian explanation. According to Purohit, Iqbal viewed the Ismaili ta’lim and the Ismaili Imamate favourably for making progressive interventions to the history and future of Islam by effectively neutralising the problem of Magianism in the classical period and secondly, the former Aga Khan circumscribing his charismatic role to his own Ismaili community (which is not a missionary one) and more importantly the Aga Khan’s political vision cohered for the most part with that of Iqbal’s and both could sit well within the boundaries of the Islamic solidarity that Iqbal envisioned.29

For both Ghazali and Iqbal, these men were part of constituting communities of truth that involved a complicated hermeneutics of the self, the text and/or tradition and the use of reason in demarcating the boundaries of such a community. The communities for both these men are constituted by formulating what orthodoxy is, however restricted or boundless it may be. In doing so, they were a part of an organic and noninstitutionalised community of scholars that applied their mind to the question at hand through both engaging with scholars of the past and their contemporaries over time and space. However, a major factor in both men’s construction of orthodoxy was the political context and what each thought at the time to be non-negotiable ideological positions. Accordingly, constructions of orthodoxy and heresy are to some extent indispensable in constituting a community but at the same time these formulations are dynamic and are effectively human expressions and interpretations of how a community, and/or the elite group that represents the community, resolve the philosophical, social and political challenges that arise at the nexus of the self, the text and reason. Epistemological and onticismal change transpire gradually, sometimes with less difficulty than at other times but usually facing some protest. Charges of heresy are common during these processes of change as there is always a fresh or new interpretation of how things ought to be. However, as vital as this exercise is, the human effects of exclusion, excommunication and anathematising are regrettably rarely explicitly discussed or taken into consideration when such a determination is made. The integrity and protection of the boundaries of a community of truth are seen as more important than the security and dignity of human beings, which has

28 Muhammad Iqbal. “Islam and Ahmadism,” p. 139. 29 Teena Purohot

DRAFT NOTES: NOT FOR CIRCULATION OR REFERENCE WITHOUT PERMISSION FROM THE AUTHOR the tendency to manifest itself in partial and unfair social, legal and political structures – almost always discriminatory and at times violent. The following two chapters will examine how legal institutions and public activism are both invoked and utilised instruments and sites where religious identity is determined.