The Portable Madrasa

Print, publics, and the authority of the Deobandi `ulama

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3645690
AutoresBrannon D Ingram (0000-0002-3646-0418, Northwestern University, autor correspondente)
Ano2014
Volume48
Fascículo4
Páginas845-871
Data de publicação2014-07-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoModern Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0026749x13000097
OpenAlexW2322042053
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas33

In the first decades of the twentieth century, classically trained Muslim scholars (`ulama) of the influential Deobandi school of North India issued a number of immensely popular, mass-printed 'primers' on Islamic belief and ritual practice. Now ubiquitous in the Islamic bookshops in South Asia and elsewhere, these primers sought to summarize the rudiments of an Islamic education for a nascent lay Muslim reading public. Focusing on three Deobandi`ulama-Ashraf `Ali Thanvi (d. 1943), Mufti Muhammad Kifayatullah (d. 1952), and Muhammad Manzur Nu`mani (d. 1997)-this paper explores how their primers advanced the Deobandi school's well-known critique of popular piety even as they claimed to address Muslims generally, and how their authors negotiated the subtle dynamics of print. Understanding the potentially subversive power of print to open a space for readers to form their own interpretations of minute doctrinal matters and the threat of mass-printed religious texts to their own authority, these`ulamaimplored readers to refrain from forming their own opinions of the primers' content and to consult the`ulamathroughout the reading process. Thus, even as they took advantage of print's possibilities, they remained deeply suspect of its ramifications

Islam · Media studies · Piety · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Publics · Reading (process · Sharia · Sociology · Suspect · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Education and Islamic Studies · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Religious studies