Journal of Islamic Studies Advance Access originally published online on March 2, 2009
Journal of Islamic Studies 2009 20(2):159-187; doi:10.1093/jis/etn060
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Islamic Universalism: The ‘Amritsar
’ Version of Ahl al-Qur
n
South Asia Institute, University of Heidelberg
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Abstract |
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This article looks at the hitherto largely unexplored history of the Ahl al-Qur
n and presents it as an intellectual effort in the ongoing reformist discourse to re-evaluate the contours of Prophetic authority in Islam. That effort entailed a determination to review critically the authenticity of the 
ad
th record and revise the status of Qurn and adth relatively to each other and in their capacities to guide Muslims in matter of beliefs and practice. The polemics of traditional Muslim scholars against the Ahl al-Qurn simply denounce them as munkirn-i adth (‘deniers of adth’). The present article attempts instead to understand the Ahl al-Qurn as different sets of ‘movements’ in a much broader analytical framework rather than subsume them under any narrow definition or ascribe to them a unified body of religious doctrines. By foregrounding the historical context of British Punjab, and especially the city of Amritsar, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, this article focuses on Ummat-i Muslima—one of the several Punjab-based Ahl al-Qurn groups—and details the scholarly contributions made by its ideologue Khwja Amad al-Dn Amritsar (d. 1936).