Abstract
This article focuses on one of the important books of Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī—Ḥujjat al-Islām. Many of his 32 books, epistles and letters are written in response to Christian and Hindu missionaries. From the perspective of neo-ʿilm al-kalām (Islamic scholastic theology) they have great importance. These are the works through which a lay reader can understand Nānawtawī’s methodology in polemics and his various dialectical aspects, which are based on propositional logic and pragmatic philosophy and differ from the early discourses of ʿilm al-kalām. Most of his works include his critiques and strong refutation of both Christian theological anthropology and Hindu mythology. This article examines a limited part of Nānawtawī’s dialectic discussions which include the existence of God, His essence, meaning of the monotheism, including evidence in support of monotheism and his refutation of the Trinity.
Highlights
Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī’s unique discourses yielded a new approach in the Muslim study of religion
The last particle will always be an indivisible existent. This proves that existence itself is simple and that nothing can surpass this boundary of existence.[82]
Christians claim that the Bible calls God the “father” and Jesus His “son”, but Nānawtawī argues both that the authenticity of the present biblical text is altogether questionable[98] and that the use of such terms, if and when they occur, is metaphorical rather than literal
Summary
Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī’s unique discourses yielded a new approach in the Muslim study of religion. 1878), a prominent hadith teacher who was the intellectual successor of Shāh Walī Allāh of Delhi in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.[6] In 1866, Nānawtawī founded the seminary Darul Uloom Deoband, launching the eponymous Islamic revival movement.[7] His vibrant intellectual abilities, competence in comparative religion, and his tireless activities as an apologist earned him the titles Ḥujjat al-Islām (proof of Islam) and Ḥujjat-Allāh fī al-Arḍ (proof of God on earth) He earned a reputation as a master of Islamic religious philosophy and Islamic scholastic theology in the Urdu- and Farsi-speaking Muslim world. Politics was formally excluded from the curricula of these institutions, Nānawtawī and his colleagues kept alive the spirit of struggle for independence and a robust theologico-political understanding.[30]
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