Reconsidering Islam in a South Asian Context

This is an ambitious book, as M. Reza Pirbhai attempts to lift our understandingof Islam in South Asia, or indeed of Islam anywhere, both out ofthe essentializing straitjacket in which western Orientalist scholarship hasplaced it and out of a similar straitjacket in which many modern Muslims,often influenced by western scholarship, have also placed it. He is concernedto demonstrate that what he calls “doctrinal Islam” ismultidisciplinary and variable within disciplines. Theology includes conceptsof immanent monism, transcendental monism, monotheism andabsolute transcendentalism. Jurisprudence is rooted in four Sunni and twoShi`a schools, most accepting concepts of independent reasoning andconsensus, some extending to notions of public utility, equity and the virtualinclusion of customary law as an additional source of the shari`a.Mysticism ranges from concepts included in theology and jurisprudenceto the addition of anti-nomian and latitudinarian doctrines…. (pp. 337-38)The rich possibilities of the Islamic tradition are set before us – indeed,the potential for there to be many “Islams.” In making sense of these possibilities,he brings forward two particular worldviews: the “Sober Path”and the “Intoxicated Way.” The former divides the world into “Muslim”and “non-Muslim” and has its distinctive forms of hospitality and hostilityto the resources it finds in any locality. The latter also contains a range ofapproaches, some intersecting with the sober path and others leading on toantinomian or latitudinarian ground. What is crucial, he insists, is that allremain equally valid expressions of doctrinal Islam, provided that no valuejudgment is made about what is orthodox Islam ...