Ibn Taymiyya’s Worldview and the Challenge of Modernity 509
But it was not the intellectual comfort of the taʿlīm yāfte (those
with a secular education) alone that motivated Thanāʾ Allāh to deviate
from the teachings of Ibn Taymiyya. His prominence among the Ahl-i
Ḥadīth and the high esteem of a larger part of the Muslim public was
also due to his role as a controversialist who successfully confronted
“heretics” like the Aḥmadīs and the Ahl-i Qurʾān (deniers of Hadith)
on the one hand and proselytizing non-Muslims like the Christian mis-
sionaries and the Hindu reformists of the Āryā Samāj on the other in
public debates (munāẓaras).^60 The latter deviated from the traditional
non-proselytism of Hinduism and tried to “reconvert” Indian Muslims
and Christians in a purification ceremony called shuddhī.^61 In order to
achieve this aim they denounced both monotheist religions as assem-
blages of irrational nonsense. In the case of Islam they ridiculed āyas
implying cosmological statements, by suggesting that they were com-
monly understood literally. In his famous munāẓaras the records of
which were published as booklets, he demonstrated that the respective
terms were literary conventions of the Arab language. His most famous
anti-Āryā pamphlet Turk-i Islām ba-jawāb-i Tark-i Islām is a refuta-
tion of many literal interpretations on which his opponents insisted.^62
But Thanāʾ Allāh’s approach to the Āryās was not purely defensive
with regard to cosmology, instead he attacked their core beliefs not
because they are at odds with the Koran but because they allegedly con-
tradict “science” (sāʾins) and “reason”. In order to unmask the idea of
the pre-eternity of matter and the soul he took recourse to the argu-
mentation of classical kalām, according to which everything that carries
a form, has changing qualities or is composed, is contingent and can
60 Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 229–336; actually Thanāʾ Allāh’s frequent
success as controversialist (munāẓir) contributed significantly to the acceptance
of the once despised Ahl-i Ḥadīth by the Muslim community in general.
61 On the Āryā Samāj in general Jones, Kenneth W.: Arya Dharm. Hindu Con-
sciousness in the 19th Century Punjab, Cambridge 1976; Llewellyn, John E.: The
Arya Samaj as a Fundamentalist Movement. A Study in Comparative Funda-
mentalism, Delhi 1993. On the impact of the shuddhī campaigns on Muslim pub-
lic see Sikand, Yoginder: The Origins of Development of the Tablighi Jama’at. A
Cross-country Comparative Study, Hyderabad 2002, pp. 26–32, 50–54, 62–63;
Riexinger, Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī, pp. 281–295.
62 The book is directed against the pamphlet Tark-i Islām by the ex-Muslim
Dharampal, whom Thanāʾ Allāh and his associates could regain for Islam later.
“Turk” stands for the Central Asian soldier spreading Islam in India. At the
same time it alludes to the use of the word as common term of abuse for Mus-
lims among Hindus.
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