South Asian Muslims, European Orientalism, and the Academic Study of Islam

My postdoc project focuses on systems of knowledge production and transfer with regard to Islam and the history of the Muslim world in colonial and postcolonial South Asia. It engages with the work of local Indian scholars and thinkers who were part of new colonial educational institutions and analyzes their contribution to the field of Islamic Studies from the mid-19th century onward. A central theme is the engagement with and reception of European-type methods of the study of Islam, especially the history of Orientalism. The project aims to demonstrate that instead of passively receiving knowledge, or merely acting as “native informants”, local academics produced new and innovative research on Islamic history, Muslim thought and religious practice. In addition to tracing the intellectual impulses which drove academic discourses about Islam and important paradigm shifts, the project also investigates the broader social and cultural function of these scholars and institutions, as well as translocal scholarly networks and the flow of ideas between South Asia, Europe and the Middle East. By that, my research sheds new light on the history of religious ideas, modern Islamic thought, conceptions of history, contestations over religious authority, and the impact of political ideologies on academic scholarship in South Asia and beyond.