The Phantom Wahhabi: Liberalism and the Muslim fanatic in mid-Victorian India

Abstract

In the late 1860s and early 1870s the British colonial government in India suppressed an imagined Wahhabi conspiracy, which it portrayed as a profound threat to imperial security. The detention and trial of Amir and Hashmadad Khan-popularly known as the Great Wahhabi Case-was the most controversial of a series of public trials of suspected Wahhabis. The government justified extrajudicial arrests and detentions as being crucial to protect the empire from anticolonial rebels inspired by fanatical religious beliefs. The government's case against the Khan brothers, however, was exceptionally weak. Their ongoing detention sparked a sustained public debate about the balance between executive authority and the rule of law. In newspapers and pamphlets published in India and Britain, Indian journalists and Anglo-Indian lawyers argued that arbitrary police powers posed a greater threat to public security than religious fanatics. In doing so, they embraced a language of liberalism which emphasized the rule of law and asserted the role of public opinion as a check on government despotism. Debates about the Great Wahhabi Case demonstrate the ongoing contest between authoritarian and liberal strands of imperial ideology, even at the height of the panic over the intertwined threat of Indian sedition and fanatical Islam. * I would like to thank

New Perspectives on Ethics in Islam [whole issue]

“…Political journalism was proving an unregulatable mass-mobilizing force. This was not only in the Arab Press, but in the foreign press, largely French and English language newspapers, in Egypt that, as in colonial India, spread news about sectarianisn and 'fanaticism' in support of European colonial policies (STEPHENS 2013;PHELPS 1978: 167, 205;SCAWEN-BLUNT 1922: 132-33, 267). ʿAbduh's "Department of Publications" introduced a new press law on 26 th November that decreed new strict limitations on both Arab and (controversially at the time) foreign journalists, to meet the challenge and protect "public order, religion, and manners (ādāb)": such regulations as each printing press requiring a licence to print from the Interiour Ministry (article one) and the proscription of disseminating any unauthorized text with "political" content (article 18) (TAQLÀ 1881).…”

Translating scholars: Theorizing modern South Asian ‘Ulama’ studies

“…2 His distinguished colleagues included Mohammad Mujeeb (1902Mujeeb ( -1985, Annemarie Schimmel (1922Schimmel ( -2003, Peter Hardy (1922-2013), and Aziz Ahmad (1914-1978.…”

Liberalism's distinctive policy for governing Muslim populations: Human rights, religious reform, and counter‐terrorism from the colonial era until the present

“…As a general principle, imperial discourse identified non‐Western religious “fanaticism” as a security threat and cause of indigenous revolts (e.g., Hindu fanaticism; Mantena, 2010, esp p. 4). Imperial discourse regarded Muslims as exceptionally problematic in this regard, and hence made constant references to Muslims' “fanaticism” (“ fanatisme ” in French, “ Mohammedaansche fanatisme ” in Dutch) (see e.g., Bousquet, 1939, p. 3; Condos, 2016a; Edwards, 1989; 2015; Robinson, 1988; Snouck Hurgronje, 1915, ix, xi, 56, 124; Stephens, 2013). In Muslim contexts, the broad and vague term “fanaticism” connoted zealous attachment to orthodox Islam.…”