Description
Book SynopsisSherAli Tareen explores how leading South Asian Muslim thinkers imagined and contested the boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.
Trade ReviewTareen's book is a learned and thought-provoking contribution to the question of whether there can be friendship between Hindu and Muslim communities in South Asia. It draws intriguingly on Derrida on the fragility of political friendship. For anyone thinking seriously about the problem of secularism and sovereign power, this book is strongly recommended. -- Talal Asad, author of
Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative ReasonPerilous Intimacies is terrific. Tareen is a precise and nuanced thinker and leans into (rather than shying away from) slippery concepts that are often presented by other analysts as uninterrogated, naturalized binaries. This book will be an excellent resource for scholars thinking about tradition and reform, South Asian Islamic history, secular modernity, and political theology. -- Anna Bigelow, editor of
Islam through ObjectsIntra-Muslim debate outweighs external issues and events in considering modern-day Hindu-Muslim friendship. In lapidary prose, SherAli Tareen explores how British rule redefined the parameters but not the particulars of Muslim-Hindu relations in the Asian subcontinent. His is an argument at once bold, eloquent, and compelling, essential for students of critical theory as well as global history. -- Bruce B. Lawrence, author of
Islamicate Cosmopolitan SpiritThis innovative study brings much depth and insight to our understanding of how South Asian Muslim scholars have viewed friendship across religious boundaries. It illuminates new facets of Islamic thought in colonial India and authoritatively introduces styles of argumentation long characteristic of Muslim scholarly culture. Tareen’s book is important, timely, and accessible, and it deserves to be read widely. -- Muhammad Qasim Zaman, author of
Islam in Pakistan: A HistoryTable of ContentsForeword, by Faisal Devji
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
Introduction: The Promise and Peril of Hindu-Muslim Friendship
1. Translating the “Other”: Early Modern Muslim Understandings of Hinduism
2. Deciding the “True” God: Miracle Wars and Interreligious Polemics
3. Friendship and Sovereign Fantasies
4. The Cow and the Caliphate
5. The Contagion of Imitation: A Select Genealogy
6. The Aligarh-Deoband Divide: Competing Rationalities of Reform in Muslim South Asia
Epilogue
Appendix: Suggestions and Discussion Questions for Teaching This Book
Glossary
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
