157 Tackling Displacement: Akbar Allahabadi’s Islamic Critique of Modernity in the Colonial Subcontinent S H A H Z A R R A Z A K H A N Akbar Allahabadi (1846-1921) was an influential Muslim Urdu-Persian poet of colonial India.1 He was born in 1846 in a town near Allahabad as Syed Akbar Hussain, and he belonged to a socially affluent family that had migrated from Iran.2 In keeping with the practices of the time, he learned Arabic and Persian in Allahabad, where his mother had moved in 1855.3 The name of the city then became the surname by which he is known. In 1856, he also enrolled in the Jumna Mission School, though he dropped out before completing his studies in 1859.4 Meanwhile, he Shahzar Raza Khan is a second-year PhD student in the Critical Studies pro- gram at Vanderbilt University’s Graduate Department of Religion. He received his BA and MA in Political science from Jamia Millia Islamia and the Univer- sity of Hyderabad, respectively. His interests include literature, politics, and philosophy in conjunction with Religion, especially focused on South Asian Muslims. Khan Raza Shahzar. 2024. “Tackling Displacement: Akbar Allahabadi’s Islamic Critique of Moder- nity in the Colonial Subcontinent.” American Journal of Islam and Society 41, nos. 3-4: 159–184 • doi: 10.35632/ajis.v41i3-4.3168 Copyright © 2024 International Institute of Islamic Thought 158  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 managed to learn English, which enabled him to study Western philoso- phy and ensured that he could, with ease, frequently use English words and idioms in his Urdu poetry. He took up a clerkship in a government office after leaving school5 and, in 1866, passed an exam to become a barrister.6 After two years, in 1868, he became a Tahsildar (sub-district collector), qualifying as a lawyer at the High Court in 1874.7 Finally, in 1880, he became a Sessions Court Judge, a position he would hold until 1903, when he retired due to worsening eye-sight.8 This would also be the height of his professional career, and the title of Khan Bahadur was awarded to him by the British Government for his services in 1895.9 After his retirement he resided in Allahabad until his passing in 1921.10 Shamsur Rahman Faruqi11 and Abdul Majid Daryabadi12 write that Allahabadi was the first person in [British] India to understand the reper- cussions of Western civilisation and modernity.13 He wrote extensive critiques of it, albeit in poetry.14 My aim here is to excavate and present his critique of modernity (hereinafter, critique) that, in essence, argued that modernity was displacing Islam and needed to be checked.15 In so doing, I will address why he had those concerns and the strategies he employed. The article has five sections. 1) The Peculiarity of Allahabadi’s Critique and the Usage of Poetry; 2) The Historical and Intellectual Context; The Critique of Abstract Modernity; The Critique of Applied Modernity and 5) The Critique of Political Modernity. The first section argues that Allahabadi is peculiar because he is the first comprehensive critique of modernity among Muslims on the subcontinent. This section compares Allahabadi with other writers from the time, such as Shibli Nu’mani and Maulana Azad, who might lay claim to such a title, in order to show that their critiques are not as comprehensive as those of Allahabadi. The second section, as is clear from the title, discusses the context in which Allahabadi was writing. There are then three sections discussing his critique. This division of Allahabadi’s critique into three sections is based on the treatment of modernity by Allahabadi himself. The first section delineates his critique of modernity’s abstract con- cepts, e.g., method, reason, etc. The second section records his critique of the impact of modernity upon human life, e.g., behaviour, thoughts, f O r U M  159 interpersonal relations, etc. Lastly, the third section discusses his cri- tique of modernity’s political aspects, e.g., sovereignty, legal system, democracy, etc. This is not a clean demarcation, however, and there are overlaps among the three. Broadly though, these distinctions serve the purpose of rendering Allahabadi’s forgotten thought clearer and, there- fore, accessible. And it is this forgotten thought’s peculiarity to which we will turn in the next section. The Peculiarity of Allahabadi’s Critique and the Usage of Poetry Akbar Allahabadi was one of the three most influential Muslim intel- lectuals in the subcontinent in his time, the two others being Shibli Nu’mani (1857-1914) and Maulana Azad (1888-1958).16 Possessing neither traditional nor legal-rational authority,17 Allahabadi manifested a charis- matic personality that moved people across all walks of life.18 Members of the laity often quoted his witty couplets,19 while politicians of stat- ure like Nawab Muhammad Ismail Khan (1884-1958)20 wanted to write his biography. Abdul Majid Daryabadi (1892-1977), a renowned scholar of the Qur’an in the subcontinent, went as far as to credit Allahabadi for his being a Muslim.21 Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), the poet and philosopher considered himself his disciple.22 Allahabdai represents the first comprehensive South Asian Islamic critique of modernity in its diverse forms, i.e., philosophical, cultural, technological, and political. We would have to wait until Muhammad Iqbal himself for another such comprehensive critique. Some would argue that Shibli Nu’mani and Maulana Azad fall in the same category. However, I disagree with the assessment, as I explain below. Nu’mani was more specifically concerned about the intellectual challenges that Islam faced with the coming of modernity. First, he wrote an intellectual history of Ilm al-Kalam, showing that Muslims possess a long tradition of rational inquiry similar to that of modern civilisation.23 Second, in order to show that Muslim rulers had historically fostered intellectual inquiry, Nu’mani wrote a biography of Abbasid Caliph Al-Mamun (786-833).24 Third, he also wrote the biography of Caliph 160  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 Omar to show that Muslims were also well aware of the art of political rule, and that they had overseen an efficient administrative and legal system.25 Lastly, Nu’mani also wrote a multi-volume biography of the Prophet to refute the so-called “sword thesis,” which was completed by his disciple Syed Suleiman Nadvi after his death. My point here, is that these works were not intended to be critiques of modernity as such, but rather where attempts to show that the Islamic tradition also possessed the concepts and categories that modernity claimed to originate. This point has to be understood in the context of colonial allegations at that time, that Muslims were savages with no sense of rational inquiry, or the rule of law and that Islam had spread via “the sword.” Allahabadi also addresses these issues in his poetry. For instance, he writes that “the people who accuse Islam of having spread through the sword, they will also claim that theism spread through death.”26 Moreover, Nu’mani was something of a half-hearted critic. He critiqued empiricism in his work on Ilm al-Kalam,27 which has been an integral part of modern inquiry, but ultimately based his own principles of inquiry on the same modern principles. For example, Nu’mani strongly criticized the pre- vailing idea among Muslims that the world was governed directly by God. He argued that although God is the Almighty, he has set the world to be governed through causation and not through spontaneous acts.28 Furthermore, this project was to reformulate Ilm al-Kalam as a sort of “Islamic scholastic theology” that (historically) looks for the relation between reason and the “divine text.” To this end, Nu’mani denied the existing methodology for deriving knowledge in Islam, and instead based it on the modern principle of rational inquiry.29 Maulana Azad, for his part, could be categorized as a political writer and, in some sense, as offering a philosophical critique of modernity, but not a critique of the method, science or culture advanced by Allahabadi and, later, Iqbal. Politically, Azad offers a critique because he did not separate religion from politics. For instance, he was one of the lead- ers of the Khilafat movement, a movement that represented the fusion of religion and politics. Philosophically, he offers a critique because, while delineating his method for deriving knowledge from the Qur’an, he calls for a kind of spiritual connection between the reader and the f O r U M  161 Holy book, that is, the understanding the reader gains simply from read- ing through his spirit and dwelling of rational deliberations of what could or, could not, be.30 This argument is a denial of modernity’s claims for a detached perception. However, Azad’s philosophical critique has limits, as his approach and sensibility are distinctly modern, which the preface of his Tarjuman’ul Qur’an neatly represents. While laying out his scheme for translation, commentary, and prolegomena of the Holy Qur’an titled Tarjuman’ul Qur’an, Azad approaches Islam as an idea that was revealed to the Prophet, which has deteriorated since then owing to the (increasing) frameworks and philosophies that act as intermediaries between Muslims and the Qur’an.31 In comparison with his other works, Tarjuman’ul Qur’an is the comprehensive realisation of Azad’s thesis. He calls for, and himself circumvents, these mediating, intermediary texts and figures, directly referring to the Qur’an.32 According to Azad, the motive of Tarjuman’ul Qur’an was to reveal the true Qur’an, which Muslims of the time direly needed.33 To him, a Muslim does not need any intermediary text or person to understand the Qur’an. To understand its true sense, he can and must understand it directly without any frame- work or philosophical mediation.34 Azad claims it is an approach specific to him that has not been proposed before.35 That is certainly an ambitious claim since, in the process, he even argues that the great commentator Fakhr-al-din Razi was at fault in his commentary, and if he had perceived what Azad had come to know, the size of his famous commentary Tafsir al-Kabir would have reduced by two-thirds.36 However, I do not disagree with him since Azad’s approach and sensibility are peculiar to modernity and consequently did not exist prior to modernity. Consequently, one can be almost certain that no thinker approached the Qur’an in the precise way that he did. Moreover, discussing his internment in March 1916, Azad tells us in the preface to Tarjuman’ul Qur’an that it is not a great burden, for he could pass his life in the solitude of reading and writing books,37 a sensibility that is also specific to modernity. Consequently, I argue that we can consider Allahabadi to be the first comprehensive South Asian Islamic to critique modernity as the latter manifests in the subcontinent in its diverse forms, i.e., philosophical, cul- tural, technological, and political. Unfortunately, he has gone unnoticed 162  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 as an intellectual, and has often only been discussed as a satirist.38 The only work to really analyze Allahabadi’s thought is the aforementioned lecture by Shamsur Rahman Faruqi,39 and a compilation of articles writ- ten by Abdul Majid Daryabadi,40 who was a close associate of Allahabadi and a prominent Qur’anic scholar and thinker in colonial India. There are two key reasons why I think Allahabadi’s critical insights have been ignored. First, immediately after him, came the more famous and influ- ential personality in the form of Muhammad Iqbal, who covered much of the same intellectual ground as that of Allahabadi. Second, because he did not write any philosophical treatise, or for that matter, pam- phlets or articles. Instead, Allahabadi chose to convey his ideas through poetry, largely in a language which has remained subaltern. Though Iqbal also utilised poetry in much of his writing, and a significant part of his work was also in Urdu, his sheer reputation dwarfs these seeming disadvantages. I suggest that Allahabadi’s use of poetry to critique modernity was a deliberate choice that warrants further discussion. In contrast to other forms of writing, poetry provides much greater room for veiled attacks and subtle ideas. Allahabadi, being a court judge, would certainly know that poetry is difficult to censure as evidence of a rebellious act, of which there was a very possible chance for a critic of the colonial government in his times.41 In fact, his poetry is dominated by the form of Urdu poetry known as the ghazal. This is an interesting choice, as the nazm form of poetry is better suited for commenting or presenting one’s views about an issue as it is threaded around a central theme, with every couplet related to another and elaborates on the central theme. This contrasts with the ghazal, where the theme is absent, and each couplet is inde- pendent of the other and potentially serves its own theme. The latter, however, serves Allahabadi’s purpose of remaining aloof from any poten- tial legal proceedings as his poetic forms allowed for an infinite number of interpretations given the absence of a single, clear theme. On the other hand, Allahabadi also wished to imitate the style of the the much-re- vered Persian poet Sa’di,42 whom Allahabadi presents as an important representative of Islamic tradition, in contrast to John Milton of the Western tradition.43 Sa’di employed easy and lay Persian ornamented f O r U M  163 with sayings and idioms to convey his thoughts. By using this particular poetic form to convey his critique of modernity, Allahabadi, therefore, achieves his twin motives. First, he is able to position himself as a fol- lower of Sa’di’s literary style, and also as a result, the second motive, which is to root himself in the Islamic tradition instead of modernity.44 Furthermore poetry, especially in the ghazal form, is infinitely shorter than philosophical treatises. Thus, it is easy to read and remember, and therefore, more transportable, and transmittable. In contrast to, say, the treatises of Shibli Nu’mani or Maulana Azad that were written to cri- tique modernity, Allahabadi’s poetry is much more comprehensible and accessible to an Urdu speaking layman and it takes just a few moments to read a couplet that can then be often recited in public in an manner that would be impossible with a treatise. Nevertheless, Allahabadi was also a man of his times, and it is through a more thorough discussion of Allahabadi’s own context that we can better appreciate the form and substance of his work. Historical and Intellectual Context In his work Kulliyat-i-Akbar, Allahabadi writes about the famous story of Shirin and Farhad: “Shirin took the contract of providing milk in the magistrate, Farhad started working on the construction of a railroad in the mountains.”45 This selection of Shirin and Farhad’s story is a highly intelligent choice for pointing out the interplay of Western ideas and their effects on India. The story of Shirin and Farhad was written by Nizami Ganjavi, a 12th-century Persian Poet where Shirin and Farhad are lovers who eventually died for each other. The story goes like this, Shirin was a beautiful daughter of the King of Armenia to whom Khusrau, the King of Persia, sent a proposal for marriage. Shirin accepted the proposal on the condition that she wanted a river of milk dug through the moun- tains to benefit the Persians. Khusrau accepted this seemingly impossible condition and delegated the task to a master sculptor named Farhad and married Shirin. One day Shirin came to see the site, and Farhad saw her. Farhad fell madly in love with her and expressed his feelings to Shirin, who rebuked him. Nevertheless, Farhad continued with the work but 164  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 then chose to tell Khusrau, who wanted to kill him but was stopped by a minister who made the condition that Shirin would be married to him if he completed the river. Farhad was about to complete the work, but on seeing that, Khusrau told him that Shirin had died. Hearing this, Farhad killed himself. When Shirin learned of this, she also fell dead. Returning to Allahabadi’s rendering of the story, the couplet above wittingly satires what happened in the subcontinent after the conflict between tradition and modernity. Through a discussion the ideas generated by the couplet’s analysis, I analyse the historical and intellectual context of Allahabadi’s critique.46 The political change in India changed and displaced various traditional structures,47 which enabled and constrained life in a certain way.48 In the words of Allahabadi, “Whatever are the ways and bent of the ruler, the country inevitably turns to that.”49 Here, he characterises British rule as equally, if not more, particularistic in a clear criticism of their universal-civilizational logic. In several instances, Allahabadi laments the lousy condition of public morality owing to the displacement of the Islamic legal system by the modern system: “Wine is drunk in public, piety is not taken care of, drunkards are having fun since there is none to judge.”50 He adds, “Vanity overwhelms the human; religion is nothing but sectarianism now.”51 Daryabadi, while contextualizing Allahabadi’s times, also provides a dystopian picture where each existing aspect of life in the subconti- nent, e.g., accent, food, cloth, dressing style, hairstyle, sports, means of entertainment, values, morals, beliefs, education etc., had succumbed to, and been changed by modernity.52 This forces Allahabadi to lament that “every disposition has been overwhelmed by the West.”53 In the same context that Allahabadi was writing, Sir Syed took a step towards empowering Islam and Muslims in his own efforts to reconcile “tradition” and modernity by establishing the Aligarh school/movement. Sir Syed simultaneously advised Muslims to relax their “undue preju- dices” and reconcile themselves to modern sensibilities and conditions of life “so that Islam and Muslims can prosper.”54 However, on closer inspection of Sir Syed’s statement, it is clear that the reconciliation in Sir Syed’s mind is, in fact, unilinear. In his struggle to empower Islam and Muslims through accepting modernity, Sir Syed does not call for f O r U M  165 an equal relationship, but rather something that Muslims should adjust to and accept. In this relationship, then, power is unequivocally tilted toward modernity. Indeed, Sir Syed adds, “The old method is completely broken down. It is like a broom, and the string binding the twigs have been broken so that they have all fallen apart and cannot be reunited unless a fresh cord is provided. The times are constantly changing, and the method suited to the past is not suited to the present.”55 Here, the fresh cord and method suited to the present is modernity.56 It is important to note that Sir Syed accepts tradition, but also attempts to use the values of modernity to reunite it and serve Islam. So intense was his conviction in the goodness and restorative nature of modernity that he overlooks the power relationship in this metaphorical allegory of fresh cord and scattered twigs.57 The helpless twigs shall remain useless and be hope- less of becoming a broom until unified by the fresh cord, which, unlike twigs, is a complete thing in itself and makes possible the re-creation of the broom. Nonetheless, Sir Syed was not ignorant of the upheaval generated by his conviction in modernity and tried justifying this rela- tionship of adjustment by referencing a debate around the role of the concept of maslaha (the public interest) in Islamic reasoning,58 which was an important debate of that time.59 For example, Rashid Rida, the editor or Al-Manar, had made a comparable argument.60 The problem, how- ever, was that foregrounding the principle of maslaha61 as a method for interpreting Islamic tradition results in it no longer remaining the divine blueprint but becoming merely an appendage to the context.62 Perplexed by this notion, which meant that the modernity of Allahabadi’s times was given great power, Allahabadi returned to the thinking of the great mediaeval jurist and philosopher al-Ghazali. Al-Ghazali had also sup- ported the principle of maslaha (advocating for change according to the time and context in the name of the public interest) but had argued that, above all, such moves had to safeguard the purposes of the Shariah.63 Therefore, Allahabadi wrote, “I am not against acting according to the maslaha of the time, but remember that faith is also important thing.”64 Allahabadi agreed that modern knowledge, given the present circumstances, was necessary and beneficial for Muslims,65 and to a certain extent, they should learn it. He also praised Sir Syed for 166  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 fostering modern education among Muslims.66 But, he also warned Muslims of its shortcomings, such as deism and lack of spirituality and recommended they should stick to Islam. Meanwhile, he was highly doubtful of Islam’s ability to remain intact in the face of fading tra- dition.67 Therefore, as we have seen and will see below, oftentimes Allahabadi conflates tradition with Islam itself, as he critiques moder- nity and asks Muslims to stick to tradition/Islam. This broad position then reverberates across Allahabadi’s work, and it is this position that I have consider representative of his critique of modernity. In this section, I have argued that Allahabadi’s critique was the result of his radically changing times. Below, I move to consider his critique of modernity, of which his critique of what I call “abstract modernity” is the first element. The Critique of Abstract Modernity By the time Allahabadi was writing, the British had established them- selves as the masters of the subcontinent. Whatever had remained came under British rule after 1857. As part of their claim to an enlightened rule backed by reason and science the British also claimed their superiority over the “savages,” and, of course, attacked Islam for being irrational. At this moment, Allahabadi, unlike Nu’mani, who himself had tried to prove Islam’s rationality by showing that it also possessed the values of modernity, launched an attack on the most basic premise of modernity, that it allowed for a detached perception which made possible objective rationality. Thus, Allahabadi asks, “why should I see the world by being detached from it?”68 By questioning the very premise of the modern project, Allahabadi opens up a possibility for emotion and positionality to become valid elements of accessing knowledge. This move would make Allahabadi’s claim for the existence of God straightforward, since now he can argue that one only has to feel God’s existence to know it is true. Allahabadi’s declaration that “the only belief that I espouse is Tawhid”69 does not need any additional argument now, since it is his emotions that affirm this.70 f O r U M  167 This strategy could be satisfying for readers on the subcontinent who wanted to believe in God, yet were continuously being subjected to the demands of “rational inquiry” in Allahabadi’s times. Nevertheless, it was a dangerous manoeuvre. This move clearly leads to a moral relativism, while also denying Islam’s claim of being the sole truth. Indeed, polythe- ists could as well claim the rightness of their own position in the light of such conditions. And it also does not solve the ambiguity that had gathered around the nature of Tawhid in the subcontinent in the wake of intense polemical rivalry between Deobandis and Barelvis.71 Under such conditions, Allahabadi wrote, “The philosopher does not find God in debate, he tries to disentangle the thread while being elusive of the end.”72 But this kind of reasoning again raises the question as to why the philosopher cannot find God. For Allahabadi, the philosopher is so involved in disentangling the thread, that is, the effort in laying out the argument, that he is not able to find the end, i.e., God. It means that he/ she should as well focus on finding the end and not simply on disentan- gling the thread, both are necessary. However, in this couplet, Allahabadi also asserted that it is part of the speciality of philosophers to approach the matter this way, that is, to not focus on God. Allahabadi then elabo- rates in another couplet, saying, “Madness is better than such reasoning which does not lead one towards the God.”73 Consequently, Allahabadi fails to present a coherent rebuttal to the challenge of modernity and becomes somewhat self-contradictory. On the one hand, Allahabadi is critical of the approach of the philosophers because they only concern themselves with the means or the argument, and do not concern them- selves with the end result or purpose. Allahabadi, on the other hand, is only concerned with the end result and thus rational or reasoned argu- ments are not allowed to run their course. However, this does simply mean that for Allahabadi the ends for any argument or inquiry justify the means to reach that end. Rather, through a close reading, one finds that he wishes for means, arguments, and inquiries to be structured in such a fashion as to produce the desired end. With this point in mind, Allahabadi declares, “at last, reason is also a creation, to what extent can it support you?”74 Allahabadi recognizes the feebleness of reason, for the search for God through reason cannot happen without any preconceived 168  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 notion of what has to be founded. In other words, how does one maintain a balance between the use of reason, that is, means, and the search for God, that is, the ends? Reason is not an independent entity. Instead, it exists in the mind of a person, who, to an extent, can mould it to reach the desired ends. For Allahabadi, then, reason is feeble, and simply a faculty which is the base of modernity, and not a thing that can be entrusted for everything. Allahabadi’s lack of trust in reason’s ability to reach God is con- trasted by his stance toward intuition. For him, it is not reason, which resides in the mind, but intuition, which resides in the heart, which has the power to grasp the God.75 He adds, “language cannot grasp reality.”76 Therefore, God is inexpressible as well as incomprehensible, because it is the mind that comprehends. Through this brilliant approach, that the absolute God is grasped by the heart and not understood (and that which could be understood is not God), Allahabadi has offered a logical means to affirm the Islamic God and reject deism, a peculiarity associ- ated with modernity in the age succeeding Newton. This was anxiety for Allahabadi generated by modern education, which was one of the primary concerns for Allahabadi and can be found recurring throughout his discussions of modernity in his poetry.77 At the same time, by arguing that God is grasped by the heart, and not understood (and thus , that which could be understood is not God), Allahabadi could evade the diffi- cult situation of appearing to contradict the principle of Tawhid. In other words, to say that one understands a being, one has to comprehend it in consciousness. But to comprehend God in consciousness would mean that God is finite, which would contradict Tawhid. Aside from intuition, Allahabadi regards love78 as a means to bring about nearness to God.79 Here, Allahabadi situates himself in the Islamic mystical tradition where love is considered the essence of God, for it helps gain nearness to God as he is infinitely loving and infinitely loveable.80 But, it can also be seen that love is being treated here as an instrument to gain nearness to God. It is not the love per se which is necessary, as Allahabadi has been careful to mention. Love, cannot automatically pro- vide access to God, but as noted with regard reason (see above), it should be utilized in such a fashion that would enable it provide access to God. f O r U M  169 Chittick also attests to this truism and writes that “Muslim philosophers have never been interested in things per se.”81 Thus, it is the utility of love and not love per se, that is of interest for Allahabadi. Allahabadi does not, however, totally reject reason. He does not shy away from using it to argue for the existence of God and infers,82 “The setting and order of the world are telling that there is a creator of this world.”83 The inference, however, is somewhat weak. The setting and order of the world could as well be shown to infer that there are multiple Gods who carry out their different works in alignment with one another. One would have to reason in a particular way to ensure that it proves the existence of one and only God. For example, one will have to first assume that the world is in order, which itself is a highly contentious assumption. Building upon the first assumption, he/she would then have to argue that the things which conjoin to build this order must have a cause or causes and did not come into existence on their own. It does not take much to disrupt the line of reasoning and disprove Allahabadi’s conclusion. But, as we have seen throughout the discussion, Allahabadi calls for a form of reasoning which must affirm the desired end. So if one’s reasoning goes awry, then it is clearly not the right form of reasoning. One’s rea- soning must affirm the oneness of God to be the right kind.84 Another instance of this point is when Allahabadi criticizes the modern sciences and declares that, “Science is not acquainted with the ways of Islam; God is beyond the reach of the telescope.”85 This clearly shows Allahabadi’s thinking. Argumentation and reasoning, although not irrelevant, must be utilized in a particular way in order to achieve the desired ends. However, here Allahabadi seems to have conflated science with empir- icism. Allahabadi takes the telescope as the representative of science, though it is an instrument to see things. Only with this understanding of science can Allahabadi declare that “disbelief has spread its wings in the name of science.”86 It is in this vein of exploiting a particular method to reach an end, i.e., Islam, does Allahabadi declare that “captivity in Islam is better than being free.”87 In the same vein, Allahabadi asserted that “the philosophy which allows everyone to pursue whatever they want is the philosophy of Devil.”88 Thus, the poverty of abstract modernity, e.g., method, reason, etc, as a means to know God and affirm Islam, as 170  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 we can see, is the main issue for Allahabadi as far as what I have called abstract modernity is concerned. However, Allahabadi was also far more skeptical of modernity than simply accusing it of forestalling the human knowledge of God or considering its utility for affirming Islam. In fact, as we will see, he saw (or foresaw) that modernity can lead to the inducing of desires that are at odds with Islam, which he saw as a great danger not only for the subcontinent, but for Muslims worldwide. Critique of Applied Modernity In his The Question concerning Technology, Martin Heidegger points out that the humans who think modern technology is merely an instrument to use in accordance with their wishes are at fault, for modern technol- ogy advances a way of thinking and doing things which dominates the human mind and holds sway over every possible genre, e.g., art, poetry, farming, etc.89 Humans are in an unfree relationship with technology, which hungrily modifies everything that it encounters.90 Allahabadi says something similar, not only about technology, modernity more broadly, albeit in his own poetic way. Allahabadi laments, “The hope of affection is longer there since when the telephone became the medium of conver- sation.”91 The key word in this couplet is muravvat which means affection in Urdu but comes from the Arabic root meaning good etiquettes, ten- der-hearted, and loving. The term is usually described in reference to a person for Urdu-speaking Muslims. For Allahabadi, therefore, tech- nology was conditioning people in a way that was an antithetical to Islam. Similarly, he accused technology of subverting the conception of God in people’s minds.92 However, Allahabadileaves to the imagina- tion if technology refers to the tangible modern machines which are so powerful that humans feel like God or if it is the technology itself, as Heidegger means it, that is responsible for the situation. It could even be both, considering there is a common practice in Urdu poets to make one couplet render multiple meanings according to the need.93 Nevertheless, the couplet does mean that modern technology is fostering values anti- thetical to Islam. In an interesting nazm titled Barq-i-Kalīsā (Light of the Church), Allahabadi satirises (colonial) modernity by enunciating f O r U M  171 its effects on the Muslim community, and analogises it with a lady who is attractive in almost every aspect.94 As he describes her, Allahabadi discusses how she has destabilised Turkey, Egypt and Palestine through her beauty.95 Here, we can notice how Allahabadi considers modernity to be attractive but, at the same time, incompatible with Muslim values and as an element that is unsettling the Muslim territories and spaces by virtue of the attraction that it possesses. Allahabadi further writes that the “lady” (modernity) is so attractive that he would sacrifice everything for her, but on the precondition that she will have to be his alone.96 As Allahabadi sees it, not only did the Muslims at large not resist colonial modernity owing to its attractive- ness, but rather they imitated it to the extent that they lost their own peculiarity. Such was his conviction that it was the Muslims vociferously using their agency to follow their colonial masters by choice, that is, the proud missionaries of modernity in India, that Allahabadi declared, “What do I call it except the ill fortune of the nation? They do not know anything except imitation.”97 Furthermore, in the nazm, in response to Allahabadi’s proposal that one could sacrifice everything for lady modernity, the lady replies that she cannot be affectionate toward the Muslims, for they bravely hold onto their faith and are even willing to sacrifice themselves for it.98 This is interesting to see as, although Allahabadi says that he would be will- ing to sacrifice everything, nevertheless the lady considers his faith, i.e., Islam to an exception to that which he offers to sacrifice. This suggests a rather interesting point that modernity assumes that a Muslim, in any way, will stick to his/her religion and, therefore, cannot be a good follower. Moreover, Muslims will have to especially make it clear that they are willing to sacrifice their religion for modernity. However, this idea of sacrifice does not mean that a Muslim should totally forego her/ his religion but rather will modify his/her values in line with modernity. This is the counterintuitive reply to the lady’s objection that Muslims sacrifice everything for their religion. Allahabadi then tells the reader that lady modernity is not aware of the present conditions of Muslims, for they have abandoned their qualities of bravery and faith for rational- ity and modern culture. As he puts it, “consider Islam a thing of the past” 172  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 (italics mine).99 On hearing this, the lady replies happily that if this is indeed the case, then she will love him.100 For Allahabadi, then, Islamic values are the cornerstone of Islam, and to not observe them means to not observe Islam. One does not have to abandon Islam altogether, but is in essence doing just that by leaving Islamic values and modifying them toward the values of modernity. Only once one’s Islamic values have been suitably modified, will modernity accept them. The obvious objection to this argument could be that these adap- tations and modifications are being done out of the free will, and the colonial modernity is irrelevant. I have two replies to the objection. One is that this nazm is a satire by Allahabadi about the functioning of moder- nity in the colonial setting of India. Here, modernity functions to create and promote desires antithetical to Islam, much like Chomsky’s concept of manufactured consent. Two, the will of the Muslim talking to the lady in Allahabadi’s nazm can be discerned in relation to Rousseau’s view of “actual will” and “real will.” Here, the will to accommodate modernity is the actual will created through modernity’s influence, which needs to be replaced by the “real will” of Islam. This will is the true human dispo- sition, that is, “without any corruption.” My interpretation is supported by Allahabadi’s couplet, where he disregards any kind of personal desire emanating from his own will and sticks absolutely to the Islamic will. He says, “The desire/will is only of God, I do not/will not desire anything; I will try my best to be God’s slave.”101 In the same vein, however, more absolutely, he had declared, “be content with God’s will; why this word of desire, God is the creator and the sovereign, command is of God, you are nothing.”102 This couplet, apart from rejecting human desires inconsis- tent with Islam, also marks the political aspect of Allahabadi’s thought. It ensures that he will not be accepting the idea that there could be any other sovereign or lawgiver other than God. This makes him a critic of political modernity, and it is to this aspect of his critique that we now turn. The Critique of Political Modernity The subcontinent had enjoyed a long period of Muslim rule before the British. British rule eventually came to subside the “Islamic” structures f O r U M  173 that the earlier regimes had established. For example, the education system was displaced by Wood’s Dispatch of 1854 and was replaced by modern education. The Shariah legal system was replaced by 1864 through codes like the Indian Penal Code of 1860.103 This replacement initiated a lot of changes in the subcontinent (see above) and also gener- ated anti-Islamic values in the society. As Allahabadi was quick to note, “Wine is drunk in public, piety is not taken care of, and drunkards are having fun in the absence of Islamic Judges.”104 This change in the polity made Allahabadi dispel the notion that a political modernity was possible while simultaneously launching a bid to re-assert the Islamic political system.105 As he notes, “If the religion does not have rulership, then it is nothing but a mere philosophy.”106 This is because religion for him is a socio-political system.107 Hence, backing Islam’s bid for rulership, he wrote “God is the creator and the sovereign, command belongs to God, you are nothing.”108 As he makes these argu- ments, Allahabadi affirms the sovereignty of God along with His legal superiority in the face of the modern conception of human sovereignty and its lawmaking powers, which had become the norm post-1857 as the British Parliament claimed the power to make law according to the usual practice of the Westminster system.109 In another instance, Allahabadi more clearly declares Islamic law, that is, the Shariah, to be superior and argues, “The exquisite dictum is of Qur’an, the matchless law is of Rahman.”110 It is worth noting that of all ninety-nine names given to God in Islam, Allahabadi chose to cite the name Rahman, which means “the most merciful,” thereby reasserting the moral superiority of Islamic laws. This point is further emphasized in Allahabadi’s following couplet, “he who abides by the conceptions of Halal and Haram will be safe from punishment in the sky.”111 Allahabadi’s claim is made in the face of modernity’s perception of Shariah, which considers it inefficient and dogmatic and declares it in need of “modernising revision.”112 In this wake of these “modernist revisions,” Allahabadi argues that the subcontinental Muslims should “not change one’s position even if there is change of fortune, and be immovable like a stone in the ring is immovable.”113 To demonstrate his intention of not succumbing to these modernist demands revision, in the very following couplet, Allahabadi 174  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 states (while also reminding himself), “O Akbar! The only people who got the pleasure of God’s remembrance are those who understood dis- belief and stayed away from it.”114 Here, Allahabadi considers modernity to be a kind of disbelief, and asks Muslims to remain aloof from it. He also asks Muslims to be perceptive enough to recognize the disbelief, which could be veiled, and be wary of it. How one might recognize this disbelief, Allahabadi does not say. Rather, he simply issued a warning to the (subcontinental) Muslims writing, “[the Muslim] community is from the Qur’an, if the Qur’an is abandoned, [the Muslim] community is lost.”115 If the foregoing couplet is a strategy to reassert the legitimacy of an Islamic political system, then it undoubtedly fulfils that task effi- ciently. Indeed, in the words of Wael Hallaq referring to the centrality of the the Qur’an for the first Muslims, “The Qur’an represented the rallying doctrine that shaped the identity of the conquerors, thereby distinguishing and separating them from the surrounding communi- ties.”116 In the face of identities generated by ethnicity, language, territory, which could dampen the communal feeling among Muslims, Allahabadi’s aforementioned couplet marks a rejection of modern (secular) identity as well as asserting the primary of an Islamic political community, the Ummah. Through the aforementioned couplet, Allahabadi also rejects the modern conception suggested by figures like Bilgrami that Muslim could be a solely secular-cultural identity,117 since Allahabadi inextrica- bly links the Muslim community to the Qur’an. Allahabadi would have been quite dismissive of Bilgrami’s commitment to being called Muslim even though he found “Islamic theological doctrine wholly non-credi- ble.”118 For Allahabadi, as he writes to Daryabadi, it was upsetting to see Muslims not being committed to [Islamic] piety and focusing only on the political part of Islam,119 and he said that leaders must be pious as well.120 What is also important for Allahabadi, besides his unwillingness to recognize modernity’s view that humans are sovereign and have law-making powers, are his attacks on the institution of democracy, which is so cherished by modernity. Allahabadi declares, with a mor- alistic tone that “although the angels of Rahman are very sacred and pious, the majority is still with the Devil.”121 Through his revealing of the deplorableness of democracy, the two parties at each polar extreme f O r U M  175 come to be pitted against one-another, the Party of God (represented by Angels), and the Party of the Devil. For Allahabadi, even the Party of God is bound to lose in the democratic system when pitted against the party of the utterly despicable Devil, as the latter commands a major- ity. The fact that there is a clear perception of good and evil and even then, the latter wins in Allahabadi’s eyes, shows his negative opinion of democracy. Democracy, according to Allahabadi, is not merely prone to favour the rhetorician (as Socrates argued), but is definitely bound to favour the evil on the basis of its reliance on the numbers in place of authority and piety. Allahabadi seemed to have formed this idea of democracy following the Young Turk Revolution, which was a topic of discussion among Indian Muslims at the time.122 In Allahabadi’s view, the revolution, the toppling of the regime of Caliph Abdul Hamid II (in the name of serving the country), proved to be a disaster in wake of the Libyan War and Balkan Wars, and thus Allahabadi said, “if one wishes to serve the country, there is no need of council.”123 Apart from arguing for the devilishness of democracy, Allahabadi also claimed a certain otiosity in reference to British Indian democracy.124 He drew an analogy between the condition of voters in the General Elections,125 and to a “puppet is dancing in a cage.”126 Although reductive, it is interesting to see that Allahabadi clearly views the lopsided power relationship between the natives and their colonial masters. If the British creation of an Imperial Legislative Council in India ostensibly meant a greater say for natives in the colonial government, which was a common feeling among the political elites,127 Allahabadi disagreed saying that “some are praying to God, some are equipped with swords, only we are the ones believing in the folly of resolutions.”128 He deemed participation a folly as he saw the backing of coercive power as essential and central to any political space, which only the British had.129 Allahabadi, since he recognized that even limited reforms still entailed a certain kowtowing to the British, protested against the idea of self-gov- ernmance, saying that “Nothing could be done in this country through self-government, someone should end the poison itself, temporary relief will not help.”130 The poison, here, is the colonial government, which, as a missionary of modernity, seeks to foster a way of thinking, values, 176  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 and political structures antithetical to Islam. How, Allahabadi, can it be ended and permanent relief achieved? By reasserting Islamic thinking, values, and political structures.131 Conclusions In the article, I have discussed Allahabadi’s critique of modernity in three aspects: the abstract, the applied and the political. First, I showed that Allahabadi declined to grant modern methods of detached perception and rationality any greater validity and argued that any crticial method must be selected with the end goal in him, i.e., God, which he takes for granted. In the second part, I discussed how Allahabadi saw (colonial) modernity as shaping people in a way that was antithetical to Islam by fostering modern values. Finally, in the third part, we can see Allahabadi challenge modernity’s established sway in the political realm by reas- serting the validity of an Islamic political system. Broadly, Allahabadi was concerned about modernity displacing Islam and was critical of modernity itself, from the normative vantage point that Islam was the truth. However, he did not consider modernity and Islam to be two categories which could not coexist. Rather, as we have seen in this article, Allahabadi’s concern was the unequal power rela- tionship between modernity and Islam. He was willing to accommodate modernity and modern values to the extent that it does not estrange one from Islam. We can see this view, in the following quadruplet “Study in college with ardour, blossom in parks, fly in the clouds and swing in the sky; but, remember an instruction of this slave, do not forget Allah and your reality.” Ultimately, Allahabadi preferred Islam and its tradition,132 which he presumed to be the normative truth. f O r U M  177 Endnotes 1 Case, Margaret H. The Social and Political Satire of Akbar Allahabadi. Mahfil (1964), 1(4), p. 11; Rajmohan Gandhi says that in the 1900s, Muslims of India were under the influence of three people. One Among them was Akbar Allahabadi, the two others being Shibli Nu’mani and Maulana Azad (Gandhi, Rajmohan. Eight Lives, A study of Hindu-Muslim encounter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 67). 2 Husain. Iqbal. Akbar Allahabadi and National Politics, Social Scientist (1988), 16(5), p. 29. 3 Ibid 4 Ibid 5 Ibid 6 Case, The Social and Political Satire of Akbar Allahabadi, p. 29. 7 Ibid 8 Ibid 9 Ibid 10 Ibid 11 Faruqi. Shamsur Rahman. Akbar Allahabadi: Nai Tehzibi Siyasat aur Badalte huye Aqdar, (New Delhi: Zakir Hussain Yadgar Khutba, 2002), p. 17. 12 Daryabadi, Abdul Majid. Zikr wa Fikr Akbar Allahabadi (Uttar Pradesh: Fakhruddin Ali Ahmad Memorial Committee, 1951), pp. 19-23. 13 The concept of modernity in Urdu is referred to through numerous words. Although I am unable to provide an exhaustive list since the meaning of the word, at times, also depends upon its usage in the sentence, I will point out some prominent/ common words that refer to modernity. Jadidiyat and nayapan mean modernity. Simply Jadid or Naya means modern. Nai roshni, Tehzib or Nai Tehzib (depending upon the context) refer to modern civilisation, while Maghrib or Maghribi tehzib, which literally means West or Western civilisation, also refer to modernity. 14 Allahabadi could also be among the first thinkers in the Muslim world who engaged critically with Western civilisation. The Young Ottomans group that reacted against the modernist Tanzimat reforms was formed in 1865, which is roughly the time around when Allahabadi started writing his satirical poetry regarding Western civilisation. 15 One can also see that Allahabadi not only sees Islam as a religion but also as a tradition embodied in figures such as al-Ghazzali and Sa’di, and it is how the usage of the terms Islam and tradition should be understood in the article. 16 Gandhi, Eight Lives Matter, p. 67. 178  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 17 Although he was a judge in a colonial institution, Allahabadi’s influence did not rest on those legal-rational foundations. As we will see, he was very critical of the modern legal-rational authority of the time. 18 Daryabadi, Abdul Majid, Khutut-i-Mashahir in Abdul Majid Daryabadi, ed., (Lucknow: Nasim Book Depot, 1969), p. 34. 19 Ibid. 20 Nawab Muhammad Ismail Khan was the President of United Provinces Muslim League and is considered one of the founding fathers of Pakistan. 21 Daryabadi, Khutut-i-Mashhir, p. 35. 22 Gandhi, Eight Lives Matter, p. 67. 23 Nu’mani, Shibli. Ilm al-Kalam (Āzamgarh: Matb’a Ma’arif, 1903). 24 Nu’mani, Shibli. al-Mamoon (Lahore: Karimi Press, n.d). 25 Nu’mani, Shibli. al-Farooq: Life of Omar the Great, the Second Caliph of Islam (Lahore: Sh. Muhammad Ashraf, 1939) 26 Allahabadi, Akbar. Kulliyat-i-Akbar (New Delhi, 2011), p. 114. 27 Nu’mani, Shibli. Al-Kalam (Azamgarh: Dar-ul-musannifin Shibli Academy, 2016). 28 Ibid., pp. 21-31. 29 Nu’mani, Al-Kalam. 30 Azad, Abul Kalam. Qur’an Tarjuman’ul Qur’an: Volume 1 (Lahore, n.d), pp. 45-52. 31 Ibid., pp. 45-7. 32 Ibid., pp. 45-6. 33 Ibid 34 Ibid., p. 47. 35 Ibid., p. 52. 36 Ibid., p. 47. 37 Ibid., p. 40. 38 Faruqi, Akbar Allahabadi, p. 4. 39 Faruqi, Akbar Allahabadi. 40 Daryabadi, Zikr wa Fikr. 41 The Gagging Act was in force from 1857 to 1878 to quell the criticism of the British Empire in India, but the Vernacular Press Act of 1978 was especially oriented towards the “Oriental Languages” and penalised the criticism of the British gov- ernment in India in “Oriental languages.” 42 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 32. 43 Ibid., p. 253. f O r U M  179 44 This shows that Allahabadi not only saw Islam as a religion but also as a tradition embodied in the Islamic figures such as Sa’di. 45 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 340. 46 I must clarify beforehand that Allahabadi never critiqued modernity systematically. My intellectual pursuit makes me relate to and tease his answer from his poetry and present it in the form of a systematic argument. 47 Daryabadi, Zikr wa Fikr Akbar Allahabadi, pp. 19-23. Three major changes that colonial rule fostered was the replacement of the traditional educational structure after Macaulay’s reforms, the replacement of the Shariah legal structure with the modern English legal structure, and the replacement of the hand-loomed textile with the mechanically loomed textile imported from Britain. 48 Daryabadi, Zikr wa Fikr Akbar Allahabadi, pp. 19-21. 49 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 233. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., p. 253. 52 Daryabadi, Zikr wa Fikr Akbar, p. 102. See also pp. 102-04. 53 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 255. 54 Ahmad, Syed. Writings and speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Bombay: Nachiketa Publications Limited, 1972), p. 94. 55 Ahmad. Writings and speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, 115. 56 Ibid. See also 198. 57 Ibid., p. 113. 58 Ibid., p. 5. 59 See Zaman, Muhammad Qasim. Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 112-13. 60 Ibid 61 Masalihat or Maslaha is a theological concept in Islamic jurisprudence and discourse that seeks to know and decide on a matter that does not have any direct-specific reference in the Qur’an and Hadith. Masalihat-i-waqt is slightly different from simply Masalihat; it is deciding on matters with respect to time and space in the light of scripture in order to benefit humanity. 62 Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age, p. 113. 63 Zaman, Modern Islamic Thought in a Radical Age, p. 115. 64 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 36. 65 Ibid., p. 238. 66 Ibid., p. 188. 180  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 67 Ibid., p. 365. 68 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 417. 69 Ibid., p. 393. 70 Later, Wittgenstein attacked Cartesian doubt on the same point and questioned the (logical) necessity of doubting if there is no need. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. On Certainty (Oxford, 1969), p. 41. 71 Deobandis and Barelvis, two major sects of South Asian Islam, engaged in an intense polemic on the matter of boundaries and the normativity of Islam. See Tareen, SherAli. Defending Muhammad in modernity (Notre Dame, 2020. 72 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 151. 73 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 87. 74 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 13. 75 Ibid., p. 408 and 502. 76 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 390. 77 Ibid., p. 365. 78 The word used by Allahabadi is ishq which literally translates to love, albeit that is also translated/translatable to passion owing to the feature of love turning to passion. Hence, I will use love and passion accordingly. 79 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 9 and 361. 80 Chittick, Divine and Human love in Islam, pp. 171-2. 81 Chittick. William C. The Heart of Islamic Philosophy: The quest for Self-Knowledge in the teachings of Afdal al- din Kashani (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 41. 82 See Daryabadi, Zikr wa Fikr Akbar Allahabadi, p. 25. 83 Ibid. 84 By this position, Allahabadi, at once, established himself in the tradition of al-Ghaz- zali whom he refers as the representative of Islamic tradition. 85 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 318. The invention of the telescope also signifies the power of human intellect; thus, here, he also points toward the limit of intellect. This echoes al-Ghazzali’s view of the relation between God and intellect as he said, “Praise be to the God, alone in His majesty and might, and unique in His sublimity and His everlastingness, who clips the wings of intellect well short of the glow of His glory, and who makes the way of knowing Him pass through the inability to know Him.” See Imam al-Ghazzali. The Ninety Nine Beautiful Names of Allah (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2007), p. 1. 86 It is very possible that science in his times meant empiricism and that is the reason he takes the telescope as representative of science which is an instrument to see things. Shibli Nu’mani also critiques empiricism in Jadid Ilm al-Kalam. f O r U M  181 87 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 150. 88 Ibid., p. 164. 89 Ibid., p. 18. 90 Ibid., p. 3. 91 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 403. 92 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 156. 93 W. Pritchett, Frances Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and its Critics (London:  University of California Press, 1994), pp. 106-23. 94 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, pp. 181-82. 95 Ibid., p. 182. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., p. 230. This attests to Fanon’s famous argument in his Black Skin White Masks that colonised inevitably reject his/her customs/traditions and tries to be like the coloniser. See Franz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (London: Pluto Press, 2008). 98 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 182. 99 Ibid. 100 Ibid. 101 Ibid., p. 407. 102 Ibid., p. 405. 103 Dhulipalia, Venkat. Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2015), p. 355. 104 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 291. 105 Allahabadi wrote in a period when the memories of the Mughal rule were fresh, and to critique the modern political system was simply to restore the earlier system rather than advocate of some kind of modern Islamic state, which became a fashion in the 20th century. 106 It should be recognized that here the word philosophy has been used pejoratively. Also, several instances show that Allahabadi does not regard philosophy in high esteem. He declares elsewhere, “We call philosophy the cause of depravity.” See Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, pp. 81, 196. 107 Ibid., p. 315. 108 Ibid., p. 405. 109 I consciously chose the word lawmaking over legislating since legislation typically deals with creating and enacting laws in a legislative assembly, while lawmaking is the broader word and is not ordinarily restrained to any institutional setting. 182  A M E r I c A N J O U r N A L O f I s L A M A N d s O c I E t y 4 1 : 3 - 4 110 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 363. 111 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 281. 112 Hallaq, Wael B. Sharia: Theory, Practice, Transformation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 3-4. 113 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 312. 114 Ibid. 115 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 348. Following Allahabadi, whom Iqbal called his teacher (Gandhi, Eight Lives, p. 67), had also said the same, “Community is from religion, if there is no religion, there is no community.” See Iqbal, Muhammad. Kulliyat-i-Iqbal (Lahore: Iqbal Academy, 2018), p. 229) 116 Ibid. 117 Akeel Bilgrami, Secularism, Identity and Enchantment (London: Harvard University Press, 2014), pp. 217-40. 118 Ibid. 119 Akbar Allahabadi, Khutut-i-Mashahir in Abdul Majid Daryabadi, ed., (Lucknow: Nasim Book Depot, 1969), p. 165. 120 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 357. 121 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 405. 122 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p.383. 123 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, 373. 124 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, 528. 125 There is no date given for the elections. However, the only council elections for self-government that happened in Allahabadi’s lifetime were in 1909 and 1920. 126 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, 528. 127 Bandhopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition, pp. 279-84 128 Daryabadi, Zikr wa Fikr Akbar Allahabadi, p. 59. 129 Ibid., p. 57-9. 130 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 393. 131 Ibid., p. 367. 132 Allahabadi, Kulliyat-i-Akbar, p. 333.