RELIGION AS CRITIQUE C: Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace

Religion as Critique is an important academic contribution. I especially loved the first part of the book where Irfan Ahmad critiques the western interventions on Islam.His questions on the very premise of the European enlightenment, seen as heralding the global culture of ‘critique’, stressing that it was an ‘ethnic project’ that led to the ‘reconfiguration’ of the ‘West/Christianity/Europe’, thus giving it immunity from the kind of critique that Islam or other cultures are subjected to. His argument that the art of criticism or tanqeed/naqd is as old as civilisation, as Gautama Buddha, Guru Nanak, Abraham, Moses and Prophet Muhammad were all critics, and consequently their messages were critiques of their societies appear so convincing. He is right that Sharia-based Islamicate traditions, tanqeed (critique) is a ‘middle line’ between tanqees (finding demerits) and tareef (praise), aimed at islah (reform).Ahmad employs scholarship and incisive argumentation to unsettle established notions about knowledge production in India, besides the West, before proceeding to build an alternative genealogy of critique.What Ahmad does not answer, though, is why despite these vibrant, intellectual discursive practices, the social norms of Muslims in South Asia largely remain entrenched in the past. Also I found it intriguing that while he does mentions several scholars from the Muslim World, except Shah Valiullah, he does not deliberate in detail on the production of knowledge in the Islamic world.The second part of the book is an extension of Ahmad's previous work and is an ethnographic work on Jamaat e Islami Hind.Overall the book is an important academic intervention and is highly recommended to anyone interested in Islam, especially South Asian Islam.

This is an idea challenging book, beautiful well-written, that makes an important argument about Islam and more generally about religion.You might think that the idea that critique existed before the Enlightenment is, from a multicultural perspective, inevitable. Not so. As the title suggests, other traditions have practiced critique for millenia - but they see critique as not despite but DUE to religion. Ahmad analyses the Buddha, Moses, Jesus and Mohammed as critics of their own plutocratic societies -- hard to imagine that in a Western society today! -- and therefore, he says, excluding religion from critique makes the latter LESS imaginative and politics less interesting. Critique is essential for thought, so it's worth asking how it is shaped.Unlike defensively argued books, this one says that we need to know how Muslims actually think, not just how they are projected/consumed by the West (eg Edward Said's Orientalism). The main Muslim actors in this book doing the critique are not Ivy League educated elites, but average people (reformers, social workers, hawkers).I won't go into too many details --you can disagree with the choice of actors in the book-- but they are doing critique always rooted not in high theory or even literacy but in the rigmarole of everyday. It's a refreshingly democratic concept. This book will likely open up radically new contours for thinking about religion, personhood, citizenship proper, as well as humanity.--Note on style: features quite a few lyrical twists and witticisms. A pleasure to read!