اسلام اور سائنس کا مکالمہ: انیسویں صدی کے نوآبادیاتی ہندوستان میں مسلم علمی مباحث

Negotiating Islam and Science: Muslim Intellectual Discourses in Nineteenth-Century Colonial India

Abstract

This paper investigates the intellectual strategies employed by Muslim thinkers in nineteenth-century colonial India to address the epistemic disruptions caused by Western scientific thought and colonial modernity. It posits that translation, far from being a mere linguistic conversion, served as a deliberate intellectual tool. This tool facilitated critical engagement, religious reform, and the revival of rational traditions within Islam. The study primarily focuses on princely centres such as Hyderabad and Awadh, demonstrating how collaborations among scholars, religious elites, and patrons fostered a vernacular scientific culture in Urdu. Figures like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan and institutions such as the Scientific Society are analysed not simply as conduits for European science, but as active agents who sought to harmonize modern rationalism with Islamic epistemology. This often-involved reinterpreting core concepts through the lenses of reason, nature, and language. Drawing upon primary sources and recent historiography, this paper argues that these translation endeavours constituted a form of cultural and intellectual resistance against colonial narratives of Muslim decline. Furthermore, they laid the groundwork for a distinct South Asian trajectory of Islamic reform, one rooted in the synthesis of tradition, reason, and modern science.