INTERRELIGIOUS DEBATES, RATIONAL THEOLOGY, AND THE ʿULAMAʾ IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE: MUḤAMMAD QĀSIM NĀNAUTVĪ AND THE MAKING OF MODERN ISLAM IN SOUTH ASIA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theological and Religious Studies By Fuad S. Naeem, M.A. Washington, DC July 14, 2015 Copyright 2015 by Fuad S. Naeem All Rights Reserved ii INTERRELIGIOUS DEBATES, RATIONAL THEOLOGY, AND THE ʿULAMAʾ IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE: MUḤAMMAD QĀSIM NĀNAUTVĪ AND THE MAKING OF MODERN ISLAM IN SOUTH ASIA Fuad S. Naeem, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Daniel Madigan, Ph.D. ABSTRACT The nineteenth century was a time of tremendous change for Islamic intellectual traditions in South Asia in an era of colonialism, the decline of traditional authority, and the transformations of modernity. In spite of these challenges, Muslim scholars, theologians, and intellectuals proved to be particularly creative in this period, laying the foundations for the rethinking and reconfiguration of Islamic intellectual traditions in a modern context. The perspectives adopted by modernist and ‘fundamentalist’ Muslims to these modern developments and new contexts have been widely studied. However, the intellectual responses of representatives of the historically continuous classical tradition, the religious scholars (‘ulamā’), theologians, and Sufis, has received far less attention. Mawlānā Muḥammad Qāsim Nanautvī (1833-1880), among the most important figures of modern Sunni Islam in South Asia, was a prominent religious scholar, philosophical theologian, and Sufi. Although he is best remembered for being the co-founder of the school of Deoband, the most influential South Asian Islamic seminary of the last two centuries, his participation in interreligious debates with Christian missionaries and Hindu reformers, including the first public iii Hindu-Muslim polemics, and his articulation of a rational theology for the public sphere are equally significant. Nanautvī’s career and writings provide an insightful lens onto the ways Islamic intellectual traditions came to be reconfigured by the rise of the public sphere, the emergence of reified and oppositional religious identities in South Asia, and the increasing popularity of modern rationalism and empiricism. Nanautvī’s work demonstrates how a Muslim scholar ‘translated’ classical Islamic intellectual traditions, in his case, Islamic philosophy (ḥikmah) and theology, into a new discourse for modern public and pluralistic contexts where Muslim scholars not only had to engage other Muslim scholars, as they did in the past, but to present and justify ‘Islam’ to new Muslim publics as well as non-Muslim scholars and publics. Such a discourse represented a ‘public theology’ that situated and justified Islam as a rational religion vis-à-vis both the claims of other religions and those of modern thought and can serve as a critical example of how Islamic traditions have negotiated continuity and change in the modern world. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ......................................................................................................................................1 Thematic Overview of the Project and Review of Related Literature .................................2 Chapter 1: Introducing Muḥammad Qāsim Nānautvī ....................................................................14 Problematizing the Historiography of Islam in the Modern Period ...................................15 The Making of Late Nineteenth-Century Revivalism: The Intellectual Trajectory of South Asian Islam in the Early Modern and Colonial Periods ....................................................33 Muḥammad Qāsim Nānautvī in Scholarship .....................................................................52 Muḥammad Qāsim Nānautvī: A Short Biography ............................................................55 Nānautvī’s Works ..............................................................................................................58 Chapter Two: Explaining Revelation through Reason: Translating Classical Islamic Philosophical Theology into the Modern Public Sphere ..............................................................61 Introduction .......................................................................................................................61 The Relationship between Revelation and Rationality in the Islamic Tradition ..............63 Nānautvī and Intellectual Renewal (tajdīd): Muḥammad Ṭayyab’s History of the Islamic Intellectual Tradition ..........................................................................................................86 The Emergence of the Public Sphere in Colonial India ...................................................100 Nānautvī’s Philosophical Theology in Taqrīr-i Dilpazīr .................................................107 Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................123 Chapter Three: Monotheistic Hindus, Idolatrous Muslims: Nānautvī, Dayananda and the Origins of Hindu-Muslim Theological Polemics in South Asia ...............................................................126 Introduction .....................................................................................................................126 What is the Nature of the Relationship between “Hinduism” and “Islam”? ...................128 v The Pre-History of Muslims, Hindus, and Religious Identity in South Asia ..................134 The Construction of a Hindu-Muslim Conflict in Colonial South Asia ..........................144 Religion as a New Discursive Formation in Colonial South Asia ...................................147 Orientalism, Anglicism, and the Christian Missionary Critique of South Asian Religions .................................................................................................152 Nānautvī’s Defense against Dayananda’s Accusation of Muslim Idolatry: Qibla-numā ......................................................................................................................159 Concluding Reflections ....................................................................................................171 Chapter Four: Interreligious Debates and Public Theology: A Description and Analysis of Nānautvī’s Theological Apologetics at Shahjahanpur .................................................................174 Introduction ......................................................................................................................174 The ʿUlamaʾ in the Public Sphere in Colonial India ........................................................176 Interreligious Debates and the Construction of Public Theology ....................................178 The Festival of the Knowledge of God (Mayla-i Khudāshināsī) .....................................184 Nānautvī’s Theological Apologetics at the Festival: On God, Existence, Prophecy, and Humanity..........................................................................................................................187 Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................218 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................221 Bibliography ...............................................................................................................................225 vi Introduction Mawlānā Muḥammad Qāsim Nānautvī (1833-1880) was one of the towering figures of modern Sunni Islam in South Asia. A prominent ʿālim, Sufi, and theologian, he is best remembered for being the co-founder of the school of Deoband, the most influential South Asian Sunni seminary of the last two centuries. His participation in interreligious debates, and his polemical and apologetic writings addressing Hinduism and Christianity are less-well known. Similarly, his chief intellectual project—the articulation of a rational theology for the public sphere—is yet to be studied. This study will aim to introduce these important dimensions of Nānautvī’s thought. The polemical encounter of Muslim scholars with Christian missionaries and Hindu revivalists in the newly-emergent colonial public sphere of nineteenth-century British India was a significant factor in the construction of new discourses and theologies. These discourses and theologies, by responding to the Other, refashioned how Islamic traditions were understood internally and presented publicly in the modern era. Nānautvī sought to utilize the pre-modern tradition of Islamic philosophical theology and philosophy (ḥikma) to develop a discourse to rationally present Islamic ideals and practices in a pluralistic—and often competitive—public context. This was no longer an internal conversation between Muslim elites, as most of the writings of Muslim scholars had been in the pre-modern era; rather it was one in which not only lay and modern educated Muslims participated but also the lay people and scholars of other religious traditions. Such a discourse thus represented a “public theology” that situated and justified Islam as a rational religion vis-à-vis both the claims of other religions and those of modernity. And it can serve as a critical example of how Islamic traditions have negotiated continuity and change in the modern world. 1 Thematic