Reconceptualizing the Global Transformation of Islam in the Colonial Period: Early Islamic Reform in British-Ruled India and Egypt

Abstract

Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European empires extended their rule over most of the Muslim world. The present article argues that these empires promoted three interrelated political discourses; namely, a discourse on utilitarianism, a discourse on civilizational progress, and a discourse on liberal imperialism. The empires also encouraged Islamic reform movements, which entailed cooperation between Muslim thinkers, European officials, liberal intellectuals, and Orientalists. Reform movements legitimated the three aforementioned discourses in terms of premodern Islamic religious concepts (e.g. ʿaql, maṣlaḥa, maqāṣid al-šarīʿa, iǧtihād, taqlīd). These concepts were reinterpreted and tacitly linked to imperial policies concerning race, technology, industrial capitalism, and authoritarian violence. The article examines this process by considering the British Empire, and its relationship to Islamic reform projects in India and Egypt. The article discusses nineteenth century British political discourses as developed in the writings of Jeremy Bentham, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and Herbert Spencer. The article then discusses Islamic reform in India, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Sayyid Aḥmad Ḫān and Amīr ʿAlī, as well as their relationships with British figures like William Muir and John Strachey. Next the article discusses Islamic reform in Egypt, focusing on the Muslim thinkers Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rašīd Riḍā as well as their relationships with British figures like Lord Cromer and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt.