استشراقی فکر:سرسید احمد خان اور ابوالکلام آزاد کے نقطۂ نظر کا جائزہ

Oriental Thought: An Overview of the Perspectives of Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān and Abū’l-Kalām Āzād

Abstract

One of the most consequential byproducts of Colonialism was the rise of Orientalism. The Orientalists, almost all of whom were Christians and Jews, studied the cultures of the Orient, bringing their own cultural baggage in the process. Needless to say, this generated a variety of responses from the insiders of those cultures. In the Indian subcontinent, Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Khān was one of the first Muslim scholars who critically analyzed and responded to the works of Orientalists on the Sīrah of the Prophet (P.B.U.H.) through his book al-Khuṭbāt al-Aḥmadiyyah. Another prominent scholar of the Indian subcontinent is Abū’l-Kalām Āzād. This paper examines the understanding of these two scholars of the Orientalist scholarship on Islam and compares their responses to it.