Miracle Wars: Inter-Religious Polemics in Colonial India

Date: 

Wednesday, November 1, 2017 - 4:15pm
Linderman Library, 200

Miracle Wars: Inter-Religious Polemics in Colonial India 

SherAli Tareen, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA 

This talk will explore ways in which the conditions of colonial secular modernity catalyzed and precipitated debates and polemics among colonized religious communities. The focus of this talk will be on late 19th century India and inter-religious polemics between Muslim and Hindu scholars and Christian missionaries. Through a close reading of the terms and stakes of these polemics, on issues such as the authenticity of competing miracles, this talk will raise and engage broader questions surrounding the interaction of religion, history, and sovereignty in the colonial context. 

SherAli Tareen is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. His work centers on Muslim intellectual thought in modern South Asia with a focus on intra-Muslim debates and polemics on questions of law, politics, and theology. He is also interested in the intersection of secularism and Muslim intellectual thought. For more about Tareen, visit https://www.fandm.edu/sherali-tareen