In this conversation Prof. SherAli Tareen joins Dr. Saad Ismail for a succinct survey of key theoretical motifs in Prof. Tareen’s most recent ground-breaking book which explores how leading South Asian Muslim thinkers imagined and contested the boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendship from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. He argues that often what was at stake in Muslim scholarly discourse and debates on Hindu-Muslim friendship were unresolved tensions and fissures over the place and meaning of Islam in the modern world. Perilous Intimacies considers a range of topics, including Muslim scholarly translations of Hinduism, Hindu-Muslim theological polemics, the question of interreligious friendship in the Qur’an, and intra-Muslim debates on emulating Hindu customs and habits.
Based on the close reading of an expansive and multifaceted archive of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu sources, this book illuminates the depth, complexity, and profound divisions of the Muslim intellectual traditions of South Asia.
SherAli Tareen is associate professor and Department Chair of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College. His research focuses on Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia. He is the author of the much celebrated Defending Muḥammad in Modernity published in 2020, as well as the more recent 2023 publication Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire. It is published by Columbia University Press in the US, and by Permanent Black in India.
Project Noon 