Speech at IBA: Academic cautions against placing scholars in ‘opposing camps’

KARACHI: In a talk at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) a noted academic stressed the need to read scholars’ religious writings closely in order to appreciate the nature of their arguments more accurately, rather than placing them in vague categories of traditionalists and modernists, etc.

In his address titled “Competing Movements of Reform in Muslim South Asia: The Aligarh-Deoband Divide”, Dr Sher Ali Khan Tareen, associate professor of religious studies at the Franklin and Marshall College, USA, discussed the theological and hermeneutical divisions between the founders of the two most significant Muslim higher educational institutions of South Asia in modern times — Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, who founded the Aligarh Muslim University, and Maulana Muhammad Qasim Naanautvi, who founded the Deoband Madressah.

The speaker’s book, ‘Defending Muhammad in Modernity (2020)’, received the American Institute of Pakistan Studies 2020 Book Prize, besides being selected as a finalist for the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award.

In his talk, Dr Tareen conducted a close reading of a dense but immensely profitable exchange of letters between Syed Ahmad Khan and Qasim Naanautvi in 1874 that engaged some major questions of theology, hermeneutics, and the boundaries of Islam as a normative religious tradition.

Through this analysis, he presented the conclusion that differences between the two scholars on matters of religious interpretation were not as extreme as is typically imagined, and that there is clear evidence of a respectful and scholarly intellectual exchange between them. He remarked that on many points, the Deoband founder differed from the Aligarh founder in demanding greater methodological caution in matters of theological interpretation, rather than any extreme difference between modernism and conservatism, or reform and stagnation. Dr Tareen argued that Syed Ahmad Khan’s style of argumentation in his letters shows that in many ways he was also a traditional scholar in the same tradition as Qasim Naanautvi, a fact that Maulana Naanautvi recognised and appreciated.

He emphasised the need for academics to read scholars’ religious writings closely in order to appreciate the nature of their arguments more accurately, rather than categorising scholars into vague, orientalist boundaries of legalist vs ‘Sufistic’, traditionalist vs modernist, etc., as has been the regrettable practice in many academic studies on religion.

During the talk IBA students and faculty members appreciated Dr Tareen’s eloquence and diligence. Dr Syed Jaffar Ahmed, director of the Institute of Historical and Social Research, Karachi, praised Dr Tareen’s work and its thoughtful approach in engaging the work of diverse kinds of religious scholars in a thorough way.

Dr Ahmed pointed out the importance of respectful academic debate between people from different segments of society. He also highlighted the need for more such forums and discussions at Pakistani universities where serious scholars of diverse ideologies may converse with each other in a polite manner to bridge unhelpful and extreme divides.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023