19th Century Polemic at Shahjahanpur: Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī's Philosophy of Khilāfat‐Allāh and his Response to the Critics of Islam in regard to Kaʿbah

Abstract

This article1 is focused on Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī's two important books Ḥujjat al‐Islām and Qiblah Numā. These books are Nānawtawī's response to Christian missionaries and Hindu critic of Islam. Nānawtawī's polemics led the foundation of neo‐ʿilm al‐kalām (neo‐Islamic scholastic theology) in South Asia. This article is an effort to trace Nānawtawī's corpus in polemics and the dialectics, which he covered in these books. Most of his works include his critiques and strong arguments against Christian and Hindu critics of Islam. However, this article is concise and covers a limited part of Nānawtawī's dialectical discussions. This article focuses on a precise response to a Hindu critic of Islam, man's merits and his status among all creatures and thus, man's selection by God as His khalīfah (vicegerent) on the earth.