Thursday, January 17, 2013

Shibli Academy Orientalist Seminar

In spite of the revelation from Allah (SWT) that you shall found closest to you the people who call themselves Christians the western world, the Christian world, has by and large love to hate you relationship with Islam. Christian crusades against Islam and Muslims in nomenclature might be a thing of past but in practice their physical and intellectual assault on Islam and Muslims continues till date. After European cultural, social, scientific and industrial revolution Christian nations managed to colonize nearly all of Muslim lands physically. This was accompanied by and reinforced subsequently by academic dynamics called orientalism geared for intellectual subjugation of Islam and Muslims.

Though both physical and intellectual over powering of Muslims is a fact of history and can not be out rightly denied but Muslims were quick to realize the deception of Christian intelligentsia and orientalism was engaged head on by the giants of Islamic thought. At the level of debating the Christian preachers  were taken on by Maulana Rahmatullah Kairanvi (RA) and Dr Wazir Khan in India at a great risk to their own well being - so much for the freedom of speech of the Christian west.

At the level of scholarly refutation it was great Sir Syed Ahmed Khan himself who took up the task of debunking the Christian deception about Islam and Muslims. He took a break from his task of institution building to indulge in in-depth analysis of orientalist onslaught. Then it was his protegee Allama Shibli Nomani who carried on the torch and deflated the most deceptive orientalist writings followed by his own student Allama Sulaiman Nadwi (RA). In deed Edward Said with his Orientalism is a very late arrival on the scene in this juggernaut of counter intellectual enterprize against the western Christian movement to undermine Islamic creed and Muslim society.

In recent past we have seen one more onslaught on Muslim world by the very same forces, this time in the name of so called Islamic terrorism. We are so close to these events at this moment that any historical perspective is impossible but one can venture to assert that the Christian west, masquerading as secular ideology, is slowly coming to unpleasant to them realization that neither Islam nor Muslim world is any more pliable for them.

But yours truly is jumping the gun. This series of post is about a seminar that was held in early eighties at Dar-ul-Musannifeen, Shibli Academi, Azamgarh, UP, India. Its proceedings were late to be published but these eventually did see the light of the day and by now at least seven volumes are in possession of yours truly. These posts intend to list an overview of the content, not an in-depth review of the material but only the topics covered, of these volumes.

These volumes are in Urdu.