Lexington Books Islamicate Societies: A Case Study of Egypt and Muslim India Modernization, Colonial Rule, and the Aftermath

The basic contention of this study is that the colonial rule had far more serious consequence than it has been realized. It radically transformed the nature of the Islamic societies of Egypt and Muslim India to that of an ‘Islamicate’societies. This affected the religious, cultural, social, and legal aspects including ethnic and minority relations, gender relations and even their educational system. The phrase ‘Islamicate’ is here borrowed from Marshall Hodgson, who used it in his The Ventures of Islam to indicate the changes that took place due to the modernization under the impact of the West and colonial rule. However, our investigation takes it into a different direction, demonstrating how and what ways this phenomenon of the ‘Islamicate’ has changed the Islamic identity of Egypt and Muslim India. This study analyzes varied aspects such as religious, social, cultural, legal, and other aspects of the Egyptian and Muslim Indian societies through the mechanisms of change that the colonial rule brought to them. Review Professor Kassim's comparative study examines the process in which outside powers, through their colonial policies, change the internal dynamics of Muslims in India and Egypt. The book is an attempt to understand the transition from Islamic to Islamicate identity. The author's creative use of the term 'Islamicate' is most interesting and will surely cause healthy debates among scholars of Islam. As such, the book will surely be of interest to students of history, philosophy and sociology of Islam.--Hakan Özoglu, University of Central FloridaAt a time when Islamic identities are contested in the Muslim world, Husain Kassim's Islamicate Societies argues that, in the cases of Egypt and Muslim India, insufficient attention has been paid to the impact of colonialism. Both modernizing trends that reject the colonial past and attempts to return to pre-colonial forms of Islamic identity are unlikely to succeed. With insight, Kassim sifts and sorts what a sound recovery of the colonial past entails for Islamic identities, a project with implications that reach far and wide within and beyond Muslim communities.--John K. Roth, Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Claremont McKenna CollegeHusain Kassim's study is a much-needed analysis of the question of the relationship between culture, religion, and social structures within Egypt and India. His appropriation of the term "Islamicate" drives a wedge between religious accounts of society and accounts in which religion stands in for forces of modernization and colonialism. His thesis is provocative - that colonialism ushered in a transformation of Islamic social thought through the introduction of Western ideas and modern institutions, and this change produced a crisis of identity in these cultures. This crisis extends to every institution in society, from social and political to legal, cultural, and religious. The result, the 'Islamicate' society, is a new object of social and philosophical analysis and the basis for this compelling and persuasive comparative study. Kassim's synoptic historical and cultural analysis deserves close attention.--Bruce B. Janz, University of Central Florida About the Author Dr. Husain Kassim is an Associate Professor at the University of Central Florida. He has also taught as a Fulbright scholar at the University of Bremen, the Fulbright-University of Salzburg Distinguish Chair in Intercultural Theology and Religion, and as a Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Karachi. Dr. Kassim’s areas of specialization are Islamic Studies, Islamic Law and Medieval Philosophy. He is the author of Sarkhsi: The Doctrine of Juristic Preference in Islamic Jurisprudence, Aristotle and Aristotelianism in Medieval Muslim, Jewish and Christian Philosophy, and Legitimizing Modernity in Islam: Muslim Modus Vivendi and Western Modernity as well as several articles on similar topics.