Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 495
this equation is common among both their members and local outside
observers.^6
Apart from the fact that the connection between Protestantism and
modernization in Europe is less certain than the plethora of unreflect-
ed reiterations of Weber’s thesis on the connection between Protes-
tantism and capitalism suggest,^7 the alleged affinity of Ibn Taymiyya
to modernity is rather problematic. One reason for this is an hitherto
neglected aspect: his theology and his interpretation of the Koran.
The conflict among the Ahl-i Ḥadīth on the interpretation of certain
verses of Koran (āyāt) in early 20th century British India may serve as
instructive example. The emergence and expansion of this school of
thought coincided with the colonial penetration of the subcontinent
by the British, but it was promoted by traditional scholars who paid
little attention to intellectual developments outside the Islamic realm.
However the conflict discussed caused repercussions among circles
who consciously adopted Ibn Taymiyya’s thought in their attempt to
come to grips with the challenge of Western civilization.
1. The Ahl-i Ḥadīth: Origins and Doctrines
The Ahl-i Ḥadīth emerged between the 1830s and the 1860s out of a
larger puritan trend in South Asian Islam that had begun with Walī
(eds.): Studien zur Semitistik und Arabistik. Festschrift für Hartmut Bobzin zum- Geburtstag, Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 363–384, here pp. 373–384; Peters (Peters,
Rudolph: Islamischer Fundamentalismus. Glaube, Handeln, Führung, in: Wolf-
gang Schluchter (ed.): Max Webers Sicht des Islams. Interpretation und Kritik,
Frankfurt/Main 1987, pp. 217–241, here p. 229) takes the opposite approach and
presents the parallels between puritan Islamic movements and Protestantism as
counter-evidence for the latter’s pivotal role in the making of capitalism.
6 For Subsaharan Africa see Loimeier, Protestant Islam, pp. 217–219; I myself heard
this remark in conversation with the foremost collector of Ahl-i Ḥadīth materials,
Ziaullah Khokhar in Gujranwala as well as from Muhammad Khalid Masud.
7 The counter-evidence for Weber’s thesis is summed up by Hamilton, Richard F.:
The Social Misconstruction of Reality. Validity and Verification in the Scholarly
Community, New Haven and London 1996, pp. 32–107; recent scholarship on
the Reformation tends to stress that it was rather the “taming” of puritan tenden-
cies that turned the Netherlands into the laboratory of modernity: MacCulloch,
Diarmaid: The Reformation. A History, London 2003, pp. 371–373, 590; Rein-
hardt, Volker: Die Tyrannei der Tugend. Calvin und die Reformation in Genf,
Munich 2009, pp. 249; Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob: Islam og vulgær-weberian-
isme, in: Kritik 10 (2010), pp. 20–28.
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