This week’s issue of SSRN’s Islamic Law & Law of the Muslim World eJournal includes:
“Muslim Nationality in Late Colonial India: From Law to Sacrifice” by Adeel Hussain
By way of retracing the 1935 Shahidganj mosque dispute, this paper explores how Indian Muslims transformed their vision of community from one seeking moral legitimacy within colonial law to a vision geared towards political action outside of the colonial legal order. This represented a radical departure from Muslim politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century where liberalism – while circulating around ideas of mysticism and moral community – remained largely deliberative. By piecing together the legal micro-history of the Shahidganj mosque dispute and by mapping native responses to colonial law, this paper shows how Indian Muslims, under the leadership of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, located and shaped their political identity by moving beyond colonial legal prescriptions of legal pacts based on interests.