The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, Knowledge (By Francis Robinson)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, Knowledge by Francis Robinson Ali Altaf Mian (bio) The Muslim World in Modern South Asia: Power, Authority, Knowledge Francis Robinson Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2020. 419 Pages. This volume attests to British historian Francis Robinson's prolific contributions to the study of Muslim traditions in South Asia and the history of Islam more broadly. This collection of essays and book reviews serves as a companion to two earlier edited volumes of his previously published materials namely, Islam and Muslim History in South Asia, and Islam, South Asia, and the West (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007). Scholars and students of Islam in South Asia will also recall Robinson's three monographs: Separatism among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces' Muslims, 1860–1923 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1974); The 'Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (London: C. Hurst & Co., 2001; New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); and Jamal Mian: The Life of Maulana Jamaluddin Abdul Wahab of Farangi Mahall, 1919–2012 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2017). Other readers will be more familiar with Robinson's Atlas of the Islamic World since 1500 (New York: Facts on File, 1982) or The Cambridge Illustrated History of the Islamic World (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996) or his volume titled, The Mughal Emperors and the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran, and Central Asia, 1206–1925 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007). This brief bibliographical summation of Robinson's multifaceted scholarship serves to highlight an important point that the reader of The Muslim World in Modern South Asia should bear in mind: the author analyzes some subjects as a generalist but others as a specialist. In the latter capacity, he has illuminated two facets of Islam in modern South Asia: (1) the predicaments faced by colonialera Muslim modernists in their struggles to create either a pluralist nationalist society or a separatist Muslim state; and (2) the cultural as well as intellectual world of Lucknow's Farangi Mahallis, a group of religious scholars or 'ulama' renowned for their mastery of subjects such as logic, theology, and legal theory. Robinson's assessments of certain Muslim institutions and figures from colonial and postcolonial South Asia are perceptive and I value the insights I have learned from Robinson the specialist. At the same time, I find problematic some of his reductive generalizations about religious authority and his narrow comparative apparatus, not to mention some historical simplifications (such as the idea that Mustafa Kemal Ataturk abolished in 1924 the same institution that had [End Page 142] embodied the Prophet Muhammad's religious authority since the early days of Islam! (p. 154). While Robinson seeks to situate Islam in South Asia in the broader framework of the history of Islam, his objects of specialization often overdetermine the gestalts he constructs in his capacity as a generalist. In other words, the life-worlds of elite modernist and traditionalist Muslim men mainly from colonial North India do not cover the full range of subject matters that need to be illuminated when dealing with such broad categories as "the Muslim world" and "modern South Asia" or wide-ranging themes such as power, authority, and knowledge. The issue is not just nomenclature, to opt for "Muslim-majority societies" instead of "the Muslim world," for example. The spatial, temporal, and conceptual categories we use and the comparisons we pursue need to be accompanied by a cautious ethical-political analytical sensibility that remains cognizant of the geopolitical implications of our categories and comparisons. Whose analytical objectives and political interests are served through the category, "the Muslim world," and the comparison between the Islamic Revival and the Protestant Reformation? Unfortunately, Robinson does not address such meta-analytical questions. Instead, he takes for granted civilizational blocs, even when trying to counter claims about the clash of civilizations. Let me now examine two problematic assumptions that undergird the substantial essays of The Muslim World in Modern South Asia. First is Robinson's idea that the religious authority of the 'ulama' has waned in modernity, and second is his analogical tying together of the Islamic Revival and the Protestant Reformation. Both...