South Asian Islam and Modernity [Study of Islam Unit]

In this panel, scholars address how South Asian Islamic modernities were (and continue to be) written by Muslims, non-Muslim colonial actors, and in conjunction or opposition with others. Taken together, these papers aim to demonstrate the construction of South Asian Muslim identities through representations, emotive and affective responses, and praxis. These papers similarly ask questions about how writing Islam as or against modernities shaped and reshaped not just Islam but definitions of religion; in each, questions about the study of religion, religious knowledge formation, and boundaries of religion and religions are centered. Each paper addresses a distinctive textual practice--theological writing, newspapers, and colonial treatises--and in so doing make a case for multiple Muslim publics, definitions, and modernities.

Mohsin Ali, University of California, Los Angeles

Imagined Wahhabis: Disentangling British and Indian Representations of Wahhabism in Colonial India

Megan Robb, University of Pennsylvania

Forming Muslim Emotions, Forming Muslim Nations: Writing and Practicing Love and Regret in Muslim South Asia

SherAli Tareen, Franklin and Marshall College

Encountering the "Other": Power, Politics, Political Theology

Responding: Karen Ruffle, University of Toronto