Islamic Contestations: Essays on Muslims in India and Pakistan (review)

All but one of the chapters in this fifteen-chapter book, which may best be described as the record of Barbara Daly Metcalf's intellectual journeys, are previously published essays that span from 1978 to 2002. The book bears witness to the years Metcalf has spent working with and reflecting upon materials and issues pertaining to modern and contemporary South Asian Islam. In her introduction, she shares the profound insights that can only emerge after one has worked so trenchantly in a specialized field such as hers (Indian subcontinental Muslims), and on a population often marginalized by the Middle East–centric study of Muslim societies. Her objectives are to show first, "Muslims, especially the so-called, 'mullahs,' as engaged with issues of the modern world and not simply as [sic] blind reactionaries, as they are conventionally described" (1). Second, "that the traditionally educated Muslim leadership in the colonial period, far from being 'fanatic', were pragmatically driven in their socio-political activities, acting 'within the complex world of opportunities and constraints, motivations, and tastes they [typically] shared' with non-Muslims as well" (1). These statements are eminently borne out throughout the book, but especially in the chapters constituting parts II and III that examine Islamic cultural and political life.

Noting that the Pakistan movement, which was the largest Islamic movement to emerge in the Indian subcontinent, was a movement focused on internal spiritual renewal, she rightly observes that the emergence of more recent jihad-oriented movements in Afghanistan and Pakistan "should not eclipse what have been more enduring and more pervasive patterns of Islamic activity in South Asia" (2). She suggests, instead, that the stories of the group that has been her own focus of study, the Deobandis, and of other South Asians demonstrate the way in which South Asian Muslims have chosen to guide and justify their behavior, and reveal an astonishing array of diverse opinions ranging from what constitutes correct ritual behavior to which political strategies ought to be adopted at particular historical moments (3). Recognition of such diversity is expressed in the use of the word "Contestations" in the title, which "points both to actual debates among Muslims and to the multiple dialogues with Islamic texts and symbols undertaken by individuals and groups" (3). Indeed, such diversity reveals the sense of responsibility felt by subcontinental Muslims as they sought to address how Islamic institutions and symbols were to be interpreted in a changing historical and social context, despite the oft-held view, articulated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that "Islam" is to be interpreted in a singular manner. For example, the second chapter, "Two Fatwas on Hajj in British India" explores Deobandi attempts to define correct practices within the context of a plurality of available Indian Muslim interpretations on any given issue including the hajj, on the one hand, and on the other, attempts to work out what it meant to be Muslim under British colonial rule.

The essays in the book show then how difficult it is to make generalizations about Islam and Muslims given the proliferation of intellectual positions and ideologies developed within a context of social, cultural, and political change even in as specific a region as the Indian subcontinent. Further, "[T]hey challenge the stereotypes that Islam is inevitably politically militant, that Muslim women are particularly oppressed, or that Islam is a static tradition, sunk in medievalism" (3). Not that militancy, women's oppression, and stasis do not exist, but simply put, they do not tell the whole story. Chapter four, "Reading and Writing about Muslim Women in British India," shows the range of positions taken by traditionalists, social reformers, and Islamists, respectively, in their consideration of women's proper roles and their engagement with western critiques of Muslim women's status and western women as a model for Muslim women. The Deoband or "traditional" position is shown to be surprisingly far more enlightened than other Muslim and non-Muslim approaches towards women's place in...