APOLOGETIC MODERNITY - Faisal Devji

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Muslims have been deeply concerned with the idea of modernity and it place inIslamic thought.  The term 'Modernity' was itself to Muslims and their thought and is taken from English or French through translation.

Some Pertinent Questions that Mr. Faisal Devji Asks in the initial Part of this Essay are:

🔺was this language of modernity wholly or Partially Foreign ?

🔺Was it a sign of Christian or European Dominance? 

🔺Was there anything neutral, Universal or Islamic about the modern? 

In a way, it is this kind of characterised questions which have shaped Modernity and Islam to define in a form of relationship which resulted in the question of accepting, rejecting, or compromising with modernity.

🔺The argument that Faisal Devji put forth in this article is " The dictated character of this debate, However, made the emergence of a systmatic modernism  in control of its own terms of argument Impossible, For Muslims were neither able to participate in European discussions about their modernity, nor to beacknowledged in them, even if these discussion formed the basis of their own sense of modern."

Devji argues that modernist debate among muslims continued to revolve around historical opposition rather than giving it a possible attempt to engage it intellectually.  As it was thought to be partial and fragementry like East and West, Islam and Christianity. He says "The closeness of modernity thinking to European thought, together with its inability to engage with and integrate the modernity intellectually made muslim midernism essentially apologetic".

It is this impartial and unsystematic nature of of this apologetic modernity that Mr. Devji wanted to explore in the context of colonial India to understand the its intellectual and political limitation. Devji says that, scholars of islam have accepted to the fact of its apologetic character but have spend little time to engage with modernity. 

He represents that, Islams' engagement with modernity was a response to the questions that have been raised by western scholars in the 19th century. He argues that the " Muslims ideas of Islams modernity  were neither independent nor systematic, but plotted according to European concerns, themselves partial in every sense of the world. On the other hand, there was no attempt to develop a coherent theory of modern within Islam. 


Citing Fazlur Rahmans " Islam and Modernity: transformation of an Intellectual Tradition"  He argues that islam have not had an opportunity to reform its canonical law as the muslim did not have control over their society which they lived as it was mainly under colonial domination.

 Faisal Says " If their dependence on European categories of modernity made muslim societies modernists partial and their inability to put into effect a project for Islam's Modernization made them unsystematic as well".

Subsequesntly, Mr. Devji Makes two arguments, the initial argument being the islams weakness viz a viz European allowed muslims to think of modernity intellectually unlike political terms.

The second argument is this apologetic modernism was produced in the name of islam as a new historical entity designating a moral community transcending the particularity of royal, clerical or mystical authority.

He brings up our attention of the practice of using the term 'Islam'  in essential totalitarian sense in 19th century. Unlike the past in which was obedience (islam), Deen (religion), school (mahab) where you had different terms and concepts rather than this identity of embracing all in one package of Islam.

He even points out that, both emergence of both 'Islam' and the question of modernity were birn at the same time. He further points out  that ' it would not  have been possible to talk about the spirit of Islam before the nineteenth century , because islam itself  had not yet come to exist as a singular culture or civilisation, the sum total of Muslim beliefs and Practices.

He also make a point that by claiming that weakness of muslims allowed them for an intellectual rather than political approach to modernity, he do not mean to say that Muslims modernists in colonial India had no community building agenda, but this have permitted them a thoughtful reflection upon the notion of authority.

And this change was reflecting upon a universalistic realm as the identification of Islam have ended up in displacing the earlier category of authority.

Faisal takes the case of Aligarh Movements of Northern India to analyse the case of muslim modernism in the context of colonial India. He problematize the Aligarian movement by citing historiographic description of Aligarh movement faltering between the categories of religious reform on the one hand and social reform on the other and have presented that movement as a hybrid  that achieved neither a complete religious reformation for Islam nor a complete social reform of it.

First general critic of Aligarh movement is being that, it 's basic mission was simply to inculcate english education and victorian morals among the muslim gentry in order to equip them for positiions within the colonial bureaucracy. To give a better sense of sir sayyid ahmad khans understanding of Islah (Betterment) through reformation, he quotes sir sayyid ahmad khan's from journal of Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq.  Faisal argues that the understanding of Sir Sayyid was a succinct example of what came to be the standard account's of Islam's modernity, one whose apologetic modernity endlessly repeated to this day. 



Faisal critic that such claims of modernity by Sir Sayyid is defined in the usual loose terms of rationality, science, and the like emerged with islam was forgotten and must bow be rediscovered in Europe.  Faisal argues that this particular reasoning by sir sayyid is apologetic because its concept of modernity is taken from European thought in a partial or unsystematic manner and read back to early Islam.

He says that the term modernity in the understanding of Aligarh movement is seen to emerge directly from Islam but passing by a European debate that would oppose or even reconcile these two.

One important point that he brings out is the hegemony or dominance that colonial modernity have achieved on Muslim Intellectuals with the inability of these men's (muslim intellectual) to resolve the political problems facing Muslims in British India.

Although Faisal agrees to the point that that, Aligarh movement as a reform movement tend to concentrate on its instrumental or nation - building character, but he seeks to look at the non instrumental nature of its thought which is very much in contradiction with the Islam , as it is a hybrid between European morality and Islam and also these movements have not contributed with intellectual originality of islam.

Taking Aligarh movement  as his  reference point for analysis about Islamic modernity, Faisal tries to point out that , the idea of modern or modernity in Aligarh movement through process of social reformation is partial, unsystematic but not intellectual. As this movement did not follow the real intellectuality in its effort to transform muslims according to the contemporaneousness (Assriyat).

He also points out that, the studies in the past have only tended to look Aligarhrism as a reform movement through instrumental or nation building character, where as he wishes to study it from non instrumental nature of its thought.


In the final part of the article, Faisal says " It is a mistake to see Islamic Modernism's relationship with European thinking in terms of a dailogue." He says that colonial administration like colonial narratives did not tried to  have an intellectual dialogue, although they tried to understood it.


Faisal brings up a writing of sir sayyid titled " Life of Mohammed and subjects subsidiary thereto" as a response and to refute the book written by Sir William Muir's " Life of Mohamet'. Faisal says, though it seems to be a model of intellectual dialogue that sayyid tries to have with western scholars, but is not a dialogue. Even though this book by sayyid was written in English and  published in England. He states the reason for this  that no intellectual engagement with Aligarh modernism on the part of  British European writers or intellectuals in that period of time.

He finds the problem in approach that an intellectual transformation which derived from a logic of accommodation will only apologetic in character and argues that it should be a dialectical dialogue with the west. Such a failure of not having a dialectical encounter with west had resulted in ensuring that Islamic modernism failed to develop a system of thought or even ways of thinking systematically. I agree to the point that  this accommodation were not developed intellectually and therefor had no histories.