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Good evening and welcome to our third Oxford Political Thoughts seminar for this term.

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This is coming to you from St Anthony's College, Oxford, specifically at the Middle East Centre under the Contemporary Climate Studies Program.

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My name is Oussama Azami and I am the co-convenor along with my colleague.

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If I select a special that she will be joining in just a short while.

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And it really gives me immense pleasure to welcome you to a Oxford Political Thought seminar discussion on the notion of friendship.

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And we're delighted to be able to welcome two scholars from often situated in different parts of the world.

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But right now, Newcastle is joining us from London,

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where she is associated with the Institute for Society Studies and also spends time

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at the American University of Sharjah and from across the Atlantic at Franklin,

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Franklin and Marshall College. We have a letter in and as I have mentioned, both of them will be addressing the theme of friendship,

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specifically how they will be talking about friendship in Islamic ethical, political thought, foundations and modern implications.

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And I'll start by giving a brief introduction to yourself and before I ask you to take things away.

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Nuha is an associate professor at the American University of Sharjah and,

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as already mentioned, a scholar based at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London as well.

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She completed her Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge and has taught and engaged in research in a number of institutions,

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from Cambridge to the School of Oriental and African Studies in London to the International Studies Centre at Queen's University in Canada.

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Now has also taught at the Institute for Spanish Studies in London continues to do so,

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and her main interests are in Islamic ethical and political thought and classical Arabic literature,

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as well as ethics in the Koran and the reception of the Qur'an in classical literary studies.

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I think most notably for this particular talk from your numerous publications and you have quite a collection,

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is your 2015 book Ethics in Islam Friendship and Political Thought in the Political Thought of Tahiti and His Contemporaries, published by Routledge.

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So with that brief introduction, I'd like to welcome you to give you a presentation.

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Thank you. Thank you so much, Osama. And thank you for inviting me in to present in this series.

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Surely it's very nice to meet you and I look forward to connecting with you and engaging with your work as we go forward.

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I'll start my presentation in head analysis on of friendship and social networks in post-revolution a revolutionary fringe society.

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Sarah Hurwitz reveals the extent to which politics and the friendship interacted in times of shifting political alliances.

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Here's study also explains how French society responded to and recovered from the upheaval of the French Revolution,

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including the sense of distrust and the division of society along ideological lines.

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Friendship is presented as one bond that could restore trust, connection and cohesion among people.

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Trust and cohesion where necessary for the functioning of the parliamentary life.

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Therefore, many politicians turned to friends for help.

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In my talk, I will present a similar story about friendship in this context.

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But from the pre-modern Islamic perspective, my aim is to introduce the 14th century Muslim thinker, the Aborigine,

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and his concept of Sadako of friendship into the broader development of

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friendship and its importance in the context of politics of his time and beyond.

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I want to begin by defining some of the points that shaped my thinking while exploring

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the subject of friendship in political thought in the 10th century Islamic context.

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My starting point was challenging the receiver and his limits of secular approach on Islamic political thought.

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Modern concepts such as a humanism and political philosophy as applied to authors like itto Haiti and their texts,

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in my opinion, were not faithful to the social and intellectual context in which these sort were produced.

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These approaches impose certain assumed dichotomies, including the religious secular divide,

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which overlook the encyclopaedic system of knowledge that shape their source and the interdisciplinary nature of their work where religious,

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philosophical and literary elements are intertwined.

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As I will show in the course of this book.

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Another area of concern at the time was the contentious debate in earlier scholarship over whether the introduction of political,

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ethical concepts in Islamic thought was the product of the Greek or Arabic renaissance,

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as suggested by scholars such as Ms. and Jeb and Judy Cramer,

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or largely an indigenous product of Muslim thinkers in response to the adverse effects

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of political and social changes and the increasing polarisation of Islamic cultures.

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And so this reminds me also of what Matthew Arnold,

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the great Victorian social and literary critic who offers a valuable context in which to interpret much of premodern Islamic philosophy.

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In 1869, he wrote Hypnotism and Hellenism.

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Between these two points, the influence moves our world.

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So it was important to rethink these categories as a way of helping me understand the Islamic past

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and why certain concepts were proposed and applied in their own social and historical contexts.

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Thus, rather than applying the preset categories to these thinkers and their concepts, or assuming that they are reproduction of previous ones.

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I analysed the complexity of the system of knowledge that shaped the formation of important concepts and terms,

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including friendship that attache d and his contemporaries employed in their historical context.

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And I also tried to identify the moral conceptual changes that I thought had the introduced to the concept of friendship and

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the ways in which they were applied and their significance in relation to the unique historical context of budget society.

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Furthermore, in order to make sense of what authors like Associate you were doing,

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I looked at the scores on friendship in relation or in the intellectual contexts of his contemporaries,

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who also proposed similar concepts and vocabulary, like the brother in ability who spoke about the concept of brotherhood,

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who are or like you have an idea who spoke about also about the concept of insanity and humanity and also Moscow.

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He, Ahmadinejad, by the way, he also spoke about the idea and the and also spoke about the idea of love and the idea of friendship and justice, etc.

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So it was important to contextualise the whole to study or to understand the whole intellectual module of the time and

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to appreciate what the 14th century also wanted to say through their introduction of concepts such as friendship,

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brotherhood and love, as I just mentioned, or whatever types of knowledge they wanted to communicate.

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We should judge them by considering their perspectives and the range of issues that they aim to address within the context of their society,

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which was at the time burdened by substantial social strife,

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political struggle, and shifting political alliances,

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as well as division and heated debate on the nature and form of knowledge that could save society.

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Given the encyclopaedic nature of writing in the 18th century anthology,

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the armour begins to go he and the Brethren ability to produce expositions of ideas,

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to reflect on the nature of political matters and the morality of their society and current beliefs and practices in various places of their works,

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rather than in one specific study devoted to the subject.

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For example, though, she did discusses a number of intellectual themes and political ideas concerning the tensions between different Bouie visitors,

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namely Eben Sabine. They've been, but as well as how best to rule the community.

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These ideas are scattered in his books and especially found in his books.

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And in fact, when I said the book of the of the light and conviviality was needed, I am the moral of the two business,

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as well as a study of a study of friendship and the dissent, which is a lengthy epistle on the theme of the friendship,

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which, though he composed at the request of the boy had visited of Baghdad and been Saddam,

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who seemed to have heard about a discourse on friendship from the famous Zaid,

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then refer to who is supposed to be a member of their brethren of purity.

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This epistle was based on the lectures that he at the Wahidi seems to have delivered

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on friendship and related matters in the philosophical circles of Baghdad.

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At the end of 370 980, which included members of the School of the Christian philosopher Adi and the Muslim philosopher Abu Suleyman said study.

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So in order to set his epistle within the wider genre of intellectual inquiry, and too often if inside then guidance will be brought a boon.

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Previous ideas on friendship. Be they religious or philosophical, as though he and his contemporaries seem to be more.

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When we look at these ideas,

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they seem to be more concerned with methods actually related to everyday experience of Boyd's social and political situations,

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rather than with a coherent analysis of the theory of friendship or polity.

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It is noteworthy that these two scholars shared a consent for collective, harmonious living,

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which could explain their interest in an inclusive approach to knowledge.

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These scholars thought that people need to be reminded of the actions and moral context which enable people to live together.

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They proposed the questions including Why do human need to live in a social framework and what forms of affiliations

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or sociability should exist in order for people to exist harmoniously and maintain salvation and the good life?

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To explain humanity's need for social cooperation.

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These philosophers obviously brought forward several arguments for the need of one or cooperation.

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One of these arguments is the is that they said that the inability of humans to viewed all their needs alone.

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Is what necessitates friendship and cooperation.

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And they cite Aristotle's concept of man as a social animal, an Ensign al-Mahdi or an Highland madani,

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the inability also to reach moral perfection or to purify their soul alone.

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And therefore, concepts like brotherhood, humanity, friendship were seen as both to achieve virtue,

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happiness, and thus at time to cultivate morality, social behaviours and cooperation.

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In his absence. And Sobotka was to be the Frenchman, the French.

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At the hip it. From the outset, he introduces friendship as the highest moral value that links religion.

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Reason. Morals in theory and practice.

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It is also useful to note that Adnan Syed, then, who requested the composition of the epistle,

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was faced by external and internal threats as well as shifting political alliances at the time.

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In this context, the subject of a friendship was a beating.

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Especially the unavoidable friendship with an enemy, which was a major theme running through the epistle of it,

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though he viewed the friendship with an enemy and in order to help keep the danger under control, it.

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And this theme was a very important theme in the episode itself.

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And in circumstances of conspiracy and shifting political alliances.

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The practice of defending an enemy based on self-interest and was common actually in the period.

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I'm going to share with you my PowerPoint because I would like it to read one of these citation that I get.

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This is the definition I would like to look at. Very this is a beautiful definition of a friendship.

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So though he starts the epistle by introducing this very unique friendship between a philosopher and the judge and a religious judge.

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And so he introduces this a friendship between the philosopher Ibn Abbasid, a man said Salih, and Ibn, say, Young.

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I'll let you read it. So we can see from this quotation that though Haiti seems to offer the example of the true

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friendship between assiduous study and who is a master of logic and the Greek philosophy.

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And the judge even say Yahoo! Is a learned man in religious law as a model of effective polity.

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Since he is actually addressing of a Z that replaces the baton of competing

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political military commanders or kinship the person centred approach to ruling.

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We can also see, though, he does attempt to seek patronage.

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And to promote the role of intellectuals in society.

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He also seems to be offering a theory and practice of a friendship based on religion and reason to reform the political domain.

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These last points highlight the transcendent character of it,

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though he does this interesting concept of friendship between the philosopher and the judge or a ruler,

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since it exceeds the limitations of the specific categories and combines religion and philosophy in an ideal political framework.

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At the time of adoption, these two disciplines were seen as separate and as two disciplines that cannot be combined.

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And it was a very sort of clever attempt to bring them together through this framework of friendship.

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So he seems to be establishing here a balance between the role of knowledge.

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By introducing the scholars to study and law in reforming and organising society.

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It also seems that the friendship between the man of knowledge and the men of religion and authority remains essential.

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In it, though Haiti's theory of the connection between knowledge and politics.

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Thus, the inescapable relationship between this concept of friendship and politics can be seen also in the role

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of human companionship as a necessary means for ruling wealth by promoting the example of the ruler,

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friend and the need for a ruler to turn to friends for advice.

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He offers insights concerning the bond of political affiliations and addresses the importance of adopting the friendship as a political practice,

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especially in times of trouble and shifting political alliances.

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Which takes us to, in some ways, through the work of said a house that I started with.

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Though his views can also be related to the wider project to persuade people in authority of the indispensability of a wise and just ruler.

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And just to a certain extent, I can see a reference to the platonic notion of a philosopher king and that as the best model for ruling.

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Another point that is noteworthy here is if you can look at my the words that I thought that I highlighted in red.

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You can see that here, though, he is offering like four key elements to his concept of Sadako, which is soon.

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Intellect, nature and morals.

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And these were very important philosophical concepts that were discussed greatly in in the schools of abuse today, Mann said just then.

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If not the and the brethren of impurity. So when we look at these four key components of so that we can see here it is attempts to introduce a

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darker and to make it imply a bit a good little conception to secure a person's perfection and happiness,

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since it consists of the soul that determines a person's morals,

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equality and control and has a control over the body and direct it directs it to goodness.

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So we can see also reason. Nature and morals of friendship can be seen here then as a framework as both the more defined

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in order to address social and political challenges in society and to produce alternative,

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moral and intellectual responses to social disintegration and to the decline in morality which were characteristic of society at the time.

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I would like you now to look at the other quotation, which is Who can be a friend or who can enter?

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This was another important point in Italy.

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This episode is like the theme of What is a friend?

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What should a friend do? Who can be a friend or who cannot be a friend.

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So you can see here a very interesting and lengthy quote he says.

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And these are questions. They are both normative and action guiding ethical questions.

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And these questions also define the nature of this virtual friendship, which is the place of places at the heart of an alternative moral order.

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And if you look at the court, you can see that things according to authority cannot be friends, cannot enter the room of friendship.

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And he excludes them from friendship because of their oppression, passion, and because of their unjust character at times and aggressive character.

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So you can see here also an attempt to link the concept of friendship with the concept of justice,

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which was also extremely important in his conceptualisation of his framework.

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So we can see here also that there are other people excluded from being able to be friends like the the lonely in society,

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like everyone, because of their also lonely characters and lack of ambition, etc.

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And I think something that is of interest to us scholars when he say also when

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writers and with them and who they were the academic group of the time he says,

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when writers and could them and the people acknowledge have withdrawn themselves from competition,

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jealousy, hypocrisy and duplicity, sometimes friendship with them may be maybe becomes sound and they may show fidelity,

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though that is a scarce and this scarcity is due to a scarcity in its origins.

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I'm afraid it's a bit of a gloomy image, but again, what he is trying to say is like trying to say that everything that distracts,

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everything that distracts social harmony cannot be included in friendship,

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cannot be included in what he sees or what he imagines as the framework of friendship.

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So through the framework of who can be included in friendship and who should be excluded.

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Authority links the virtue of friendship to justice and in his view, for the friendship to exist.

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A ruler should maintain justice and should protect people.

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While the lack of friendship brings a deteriorating political, economic and social climate,

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this defines a modern form of ruling as that which preserves the community and establishes social harmony,

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reason and action in opposition to passion and religious.

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I'm just very quickly just mentioned that they also a very important distinction in the way he does

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the framework of friendship is the distinction between friendship and other forms of emotions.

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So for him, friendship is higher than other forms of familial love because it is suited for the purpose of reason.

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And also, I would like very briefly to mention that although it may be like there is a difference

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between this concept of friendship and that of the idea of the three inferior.

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Though he doesn't accept and his as well as his teachers suggest that they both don't accept the friendship that is based on passion and pleasure.

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They only accept this interest, the friendship. So we can see that that he does not take over the Aristotelian understanding Ophelia,

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but he actually excludes certain elements that he doesn't agree with.

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And he brings other elements from other religious sources and citing read a bow.

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It's like a challenge, etc. In order to offer a more harmonious form of friendship that is able to bring to enable people not just to exist,

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but actually to exist in a harmonious way in society.

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I'll stop here and I'm sorry that I exceeded. Thank you so much.

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That was really a wonderful sort of overview and in many respects a comparative overview of

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tahiti's interpretation or conception of the notion of friendship across sort of his own context,

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but also looking at the in some respects,

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the philosophical genealogy of his ideas, because it's fascinating to think about a figure who is in that, of course,

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in some respects the centre of the world at the time, but the of the Muslim world certainly who is grappling with these divergent traditions.

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But there's also the anecdote that you mentioned about the jurist and the I guess, the philosopher and the jurist when those minds are meeting.

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That's two very noteworthy competitors to the intellectual space as well.

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And so I'm sure in the course of the discussion and I'd like to welcome Fazal because he was able

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to join mid-stream and will be able to inquire into those aspects of your fascinating talk.

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So thank you very much. Really appreciate to some. Thank you.

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And you've done all the hard work. Thank you so much.

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And I also want to remind audience members, if you'd like to put in any questions to any of our panellists,

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please feel free to write those in the Q&A and we will take them up in the Q&A portion.

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So let me first introduce you. Sheryl Lee.

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So Sharon is currently associate professor of religious studies and Department Chair of Religious Studies at Franklin and Marshall College.

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He's been there since 2012, and he's he received his Ph.D. in 2012 from Duke University study under Ibrahim Moussa and

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researches Muslim intellectual traditions and debates in early modern and modern South Asia.

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His fantastic and remarkably long book, Defending Mohammed in Modernity,

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is published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2020 and received the American Institute for Pakistan

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Studies 2020 Book Prize and was selected as a finalist in the 2021 American Academy of Religion Book Award.

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So you're now my understanding is working more squarely in a second book project.

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On a second book project. And you have a, I think, a working title, Perilous Intimacies Debate, Debating Hindu, Muslim, Friendship after Empire.

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And so very much squarely both of your books ask in your case, Shirley, your second book squarely in the realm of this week's theme.

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So I really look forward to your presentation,

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which is entitled I'll just read the title words Debating Muslim Hindu Friendship After Empire, and I'll leave it to you.

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Thank you. Thank you so much to Professor Linda Osama for this invitation.

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It really is an honour to be here. Thank you so much. No help for you. Really wonderful talk.

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I learned so much from it.

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I really am honoured to be here, so I just prepared some comments to stay within my 20 minutes and my comments to come from my second book,

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which I've just finished and is forthcoming next October from Columbia University Press.

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As Osama mentioned, it's titled Perilous into the Seas Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire.

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The six chapters of this book look at very discursive and political theatre of intra Muslim scholarly contestations,

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primarily focusing on the thought of prominent, early, modern and modern South Asian or traditionally cleaned Muslim scholars on the

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boundaries of Hindu-Muslim friendships from the late 18th to the 20th century.

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Since the theme of this seminar is Friendship and Politics, this is what I will focus on as well,

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which also forms an important element of the conceptual constitution of this book.

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And in this regard, I am interested in exploring ways in which friendship, especially interreligious friendship,

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emerges as a promise as well as imperative for different stripes of South Asian Ottoman in modern South Asia.

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So this idea of friendship as a promise and a peril will be key to my comments today.

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But before I give you a couple of examples to elaborate on this point,

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we offered a very quick theoretical comparison between discourses on friendship

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and politics in Western philosophical and Islamic intellectual thought,

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broadly speaking. Contemporary philosopher Alexander the Hamas,

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in a probing survey of the idea of friendship in Western philosophical thought, argued that from Aristotle onwards,

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friendship has represented what he called a double face that promises the highest bonds of virtue,

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while also threatening to morally corrupt someone blindly, blindingly bound to a powerful friend.

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Friendship, in other words, is both a promise as well as a predator.

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On a somewhat similar note, friendship as Jacques Derrida in his classic The Politics of Friendship had elaborated,

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is intimately entwined with enmity. While describing German theorist and lawyer Carl Schmidt's thought that it offered a set

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of brief and brilliant comments that captured the key conceptual no to what I'm after.

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Once the enemy had disappeared, Derrida writes, the friend would disappear at once.

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The possibility, the meaning and phenomenon of friendship would never appear unless the figure of the enemy had already called upon them in advance,

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had indeed put to them the question or the objection of the friend.

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A wounding question, the question of wounds and of good.

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They did. It famously continued with this bitterly evocative sentence No friend without the possible wound.

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Friendship and Derrida's words is only possible alongside the wound of enmity.

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Friendship requires enmity, and it's doomed as a condition of its possibility.

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No friendship without enmity. No friend without the possible.

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Good. In another cryptically but productively titled Hospitality, Hospitality Debt.

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It showed that the ideas of hospitality and hostility share a troubling common origin between Hostess as host and hostess as enemy hospitality.

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The linchpin of friendship is always vulnerable to be parties parasitised by its opposite hostility,

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the undesirable guest which it harbours as the self-contradiction in its own body.

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Back to friendship. What then, do I mean by the category of friendship?

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I want to experiment by approaching friendship. And here I would share screen.

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So it's easy for you to follow my comments by approaching friendship as a relationship or encounter of intimacy,

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collaboration, cooperation, or hospitality with the other.

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That vital affording particular benefits, opportunities and forms of power and pleasure.

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Also renders untenable exclusive claims to the purity and sovereign ownership of the self.

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Friendship is an invitation that cannot be embraced without forgoing the claim to sovereign mastery.

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Friendship frustrates sovereignty and is a reminder of its impossibility.

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Friendship, especially interreligious friendship, while holding the promise of engaging in access into the other,

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also invites peril, signalling the inextricable entanglement of the self with the contingencies of the other.

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Friendship offers the possibility of enrichment and expansion, but also carries the threat of influence, corruption or even erasure.

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It is this underlying tension and friction between friendship and sovereignty that most interests me.

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How does the moment of encounter between religious identity and difference present itself as both a promise as well as a threat?

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And what sorts of intra religious negotiations in this case,

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intra Muslim negotiations and forms and modes of politics, does that encounter foster and ferment?

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This is a foundational question that I'm interested in and want to open up for discussion.

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Now the Muslim discursive category corresponding to the idea of friendship most frequently invoked by

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the South Asian actors I focussed on in my book was not so much that of savarkar that had talked about,

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but is that of mobile, not an Arabic term that carries the dual meaning of relationship of friendship,

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intimacy and loyalty, or that of client and patronage, as in that between the state and its subjects, it etymological.

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It shares the roots one day of mystically infused terms like the Friend of God Valley, usually meaning a Sufi master and will air or sainthood.

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Now curiously will air and its Siamese twin. While air can also mean sovereignty, sovereign power and sovereign authority,

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reinforcing the conceptual and linguistic intimacy between friendship and sovereignty.

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For instance, the 11th century Koran executed theologian and author of the famous Dictionary of

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Koranic Terms Alma Afraid that we thought evil could unbreakable is the honey died

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11 to 8 defined and voila as the authority of command the one little other while

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capturing the semantic frame of the roots one up through the following description,

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and I quoting here Intimacy of space, lineage, religion, friendship, loyalty and beliefs and of good.

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Only prudent aliyah carries the meaning of a friend, an intimate as a friend of God or Sufi saint, but also that of a protector,

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master or person with power and authority who can lay claim to the guardianship or alliance layer of the community.

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For instance, Gold described himself as the legal guardian of the faithful.

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In verse 2 to 57 of the Koran, the party reads, God is the guardian of those who established feet.

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Now, the expert of the Arab beat, Michel Djokovic, has succinctly described the etymological duality of this category.

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When he writes, and I'm quoting here, the primary meaning of value is proximity or contiguity.

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And this, in turn, gives rise to two further meanings. One of these is to be a friend, and the other is to direct, to govern, to take in charge.

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Thus, the wealthy, properly speaking, is the friend who is close.

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But as the famous 13th century lexicographer Ibn MANZOOR Date 1311 emphasises in the lesson of the speech of Arabs,

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the holy is also the Nossiter who assists and the he who disposes.

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So the point is this. In this formulation, friendship is fraught with power.

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If cultivated in a salutary fashion, friendship promises the gift of sovereign power and authority.

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Pastoral or territorial, extended by the most absolute of all sovereigns.

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The Divine sovereign.

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But friendship with an undesirable, the other that portends perilous and harmful consequences eviscerates the integrity of the self, and by extension,

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that of the community, unleashing spiritual and political ruin friendship, as does the prize promise, as well as a potentially dire peril.

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Moreover,

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and this is the crucial point the idea of friendship or Moala and connected categories like and voila rely and rely on in Muslim intellectual

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thought include but go much beyond the commonplace notion of congeniality or good relations that one associates with the English word friendship.

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Today, rather, mobile art encompasses and brings together theological, political and everyday intimacies.

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It is a category that connects to political theology, eager to guard a muslim sovereign power with the desired choreography of the everyday

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anxiously invested in preserving Muslim distinction over its various others.

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How is this normative mandate an architecture of interreligious friendship negotiated

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and debated in the context marked by the aftermath of Muslim political assault?

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In other words, how is the promise and peril of interreligious friendship and intimacy, especially in India?

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Muslim friendship and intimacy debated after Muslim imperial sovereignty in contexts like modern South Asia,

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defined by the absence of Muslim political sovereignty.

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These questions are at the heart of my interest. Let me give two interconnected examples for purposes of illustration.

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One of the main arguments I make in my book is that from the late 18th century onwards, the increasingly colonised minority,

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the interpretive galleries that informed South-Asian Muslim scholarly engagements with the question of

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Islam of difference were often deeply anchored in a pre-modern context of Muslim impeded sovereignty.

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This did not mean, of course, that television Muslim scholars were somehow stuck in the pre-modern good to the exact contrary.

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The persistence of an imperial Muslim political theology was intimately bound to the conditions, expectations and pressures of colonial modernity.

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For a deracinated colonised minority.

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This moment was saturated with the anxiety of recovering the distant, yet urgently attractive fantasy of sovereign problem.

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And with the impossibility of publication for prediction.

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And this is a crucial point for me, with the impossibility of political sovereignty,

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this desire for sovereign power was increasingly exercised in the realm of everyday ritual,

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like through the drive to preserve and maintain markers of Muslim distinction, what are called Shariah in Islam.

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Or she ordered Islam to singular meaning,

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ritual practices and affective visions of everyday life that distinguish religious identity and indifference in the public sphere.

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How is this sort of just rubric examples?

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Then I would add one of the most fascinating moments of intra Muslim contest on the boundaries of India was the relations concern,

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the context of the philosopher movement in the early 20th century.

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That, of course, Professor BBG has written extensively and brilliantly about.

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And so whose book I have benefited tremendously from.

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So one of the Khilafat movement's most famous protagonists, the renowned Muslim scholar Abu Mazen, died in 1958 who was among Gandhi's major allies.

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And later, a key intellectual architect of the Indian constitution had called on Indian Muslims to

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actively collaborate with Gandhi and the Indian National Congress non-cooperation movement,

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but severing all civic ties with the colonial state.

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In a detailed Urdu text peppered with Arabic references pointedly titled The Arabian Peninsula Jesuit, an Arab composed in 1920,

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Azhar drew on two intensely contested verses in the Koran, verses eight and nine of Chapter 60 album,

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the relevant parts of which read as follows God does not forbid you from showing

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kindness to those unbelievers who do not fight you on account of good faith,

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and neither to drive you forth from your homes. God only forbids you to stand in friendship towards those unbeliever,

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to fight against you because of your faith and drive you forth from your homes or in others in driving the fort.

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And of course. Now in the context of colonial India.

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As I argued, Hindus represented the first category of non-Muslims mentioned in these verses since they had never attacked Muslim countries,

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fought them in religion, or been the cause of the expulsion of Muslims from their lands.

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In stark contrast, the British with the designs to colonise Arabia and destroy the Ottoman Caliphate,

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exemplified non-Muslims of the second, but actually those who fought Muslims in religion and expelled them from their homes.

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Assads program of marrying interreligious hospitality with anti-colonial activism, stiff resistance.

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However, for instance, the towering late 19th and early 20th century traditionalist scholar Ahmed Reza Horn,

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founder of the Morality School in South Asia,

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was furious with Assad and his Khilafat movement colleagues and their push for Hindu-Muslim friendship and collaboration.

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He counter argued that to begin, the Ottoman state cannot be understood as a legitimate caliphate,

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since it lacked prophetic lineage or more specifically, the lineage of the Prophet's tribe.

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But most critically, most relevant to the argument I've been trying to develop here can't disagree with what he called

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and saw as the encouragement of Hindu-Muslim intimacy and friendship in the public sphere.

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Not only was that wrong in characterising Hindus as a community that had never attacked Muslims for certain,

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he had done so during multiple episodes of communal violence, but most significantly, legitimating Hindu-Muslim friendship left vulnerable to erasure.

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Public markers of Muslim distinction in Islam era.

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Islam in Urdu. Persian. Khan was especially livid, for instance,

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when leaders of the climate movement once invited Gandhi to a mosque on a certain Friday to address the congregants handing over to a Hindu leader.

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The elevated and coveted site of the summit exemplified an attitude of disregard

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for markers of Muslim distinction that in the absence of political sovereignty,

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indexed sovereign power and the promise of preserving religious identity against the threat of competing ideas.

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So in contrast to Azad,

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who had connected interreligious friendship with a political horizon that exceeded the nation state in the figure of the caliphate,

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Khan located Muslim sovereign power squarely in the realm of ritual practice and the choreography of the everyday.

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For the latter, it was not the resurrection of any notion of a muslim state, colourful or otherwise,

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but the cultivation of embodied markers of Muslim distinction in the public sphere

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that enshrined the imperial fantasy of sovereignty in the ruins of Empire.

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So the point being this for both deep thinkers, friendship, its promise in the case of Azhar or its better.

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In the case of Khan was saturated with power.

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But how to imagine the interaction between friendship, power and politics was diametrically opposed.

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Example two And then I will close another issue of contention that best crystallised this point was that of cow sacrifice,

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arguably the most vexatious subject of dispute among the Indian Muslim scholarly elite in the early 20th century, exactly one century ago.

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For that matter, recently,

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Hindu nationalist discourses in which order dating violence directed against minorities like Muslims and Dalits as part of the protection movement,

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have attracted tremendous scholarly and journalistic attention as well as alarm.

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But investing, affective and political attachment in the body of the cult as an index and

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marker of religious purity and superiority is not a solely Hindu phenomenon.

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The couple has represented a site of tremendous anxiety and opportunity for competing groups of prominent South Asian Muslim scholars as well.

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For at least a century, for instance,

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the leaders of the beloved movement surged abstention from cow sacrifice as a gesture of interreligious hospitality towards the Hindu community.

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This gesture of obedience, they argued, was crucial for forging a robust political alliance with the Hindus against the British,

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though their argument was based not on some abstract appeal to pluralism, but on a specific reading of the Islamic legal tradition.

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Drawing on the observation that CWR sacrifice is not an obligatory rajib,

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but only if permissible mobile practice in Islamic law, hence refraining from it posed no normative pitfalls.

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Indeed, Muslims can easily substitute cows with goat and sheep for adequate sacrifice in everyday life and on devotional occasions like eat.

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This proposal, however, left opposing scholars like Mohammad Reza aghast again.

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Of particular interest is the reasoning that went into his protest.

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Abstaining from power sacrifice, a ritual known to be a distinguishing marker of Muslim identity,

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included India, under the coercion or pressure of Hindus,

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amounted to the shame and humiliation of Muslims,

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an outcome that was and people due to the underlying motif of the Sharia establishing Muslim dominance over non-Muslims.

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Yet I must avert a potential misreading while articulating and presuming an imperial Muslim political theology.

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It is not as if Reza Khan was an unhinged, exclusivist, oblivious to the reality of British colonial power.

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Either. Exactly. To the contrary, he was not only keenly aware of British colonial power,

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but also closely attuned to the opportunities and benefits afforded by that power.

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So, for instance, when arguing for the preservation of Muslim markers of distinction Shahida Islam,

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Khan frequently invoked the colonial promise of tolerance and policy of tolerance towards individual

399
00:45:00,010 --> 00:45:06,650
religious communities and of the commitment of the colonial state to ensuring the freedom of religion.

400
00:45:07,550 --> 00:45:11,090
Pressuring Indian Muslims to abstain from self-sacrifice, he often proclaimed,

401
00:45:11,130 --> 00:45:16,820
and I'm quoting him, represented an abomination to the colonial authorities should never allow.

402
00:45:18,020 --> 00:45:20,180
Similarly, on the other hand,

403
00:45:20,810 --> 00:45:28,340
it is not as if scholars attached to the Senate with movement who argued for Hindu-Muslim collaboration and friendship were some open ended plural,

404
00:45:28,340 --> 00:45:34,550
lives unavailable for an interest or uninterested in the normative potency of traditionalist

405
00:45:34,970 --> 00:45:39,740
hermeneutical logics anchored in the assumption and context of Muslim empire.

406
00:45:40,460 --> 00:45:45,800
Take, for instance, the position of arguably the most intellectually formidable protagonist.

407
00:45:46,370 --> 00:45:53,270
Maulvi Abdul Bodhi died in 1926 who was associated with the famous Ferengi School of Muslim Traditionalism in South Asia,

408
00:45:53,600 --> 00:45:58,090
known for its emphasis on rationalist disciplines like logic and philosophy.

409
00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:02,840
Even by urging abstinence from cow sacrifice,

410
00:46:03,440 --> 00:46:13,910
Abdul body was at pains to emphasise that such abstention should not issue forth under the pressure or coercion of any non-Muslim community.

411
00:46:14,360 --> 00:46:23,810
Why? Because suppressing a public marker of Muslim distinction in voluntarily under any pressure or coercion

412
00:46:24,470 --> 00:46:31,220
contravenes the imperial political theology in forming the normative ethos and parameters of Sharia,

413
00:46:32,270 --> 00:46:41,930
but no normative landmines included. If, for purposes of sacrifice, one replaced cows with other animals like sheep and goats of one's own volition.

414
00:46:42,890 --> 00:46:49,580
The most interesting thing here was that body anchored his whole case for refraining from cow sacrifice

415
00:46:50,150 --> 00:46:56,330
on the very category of oblique markers of Muslim distinction that the opponents of this view,

416
00:46:56,330 --> 00:47:02,150
like Ahmed Rajan, had mobilised to argue for the necessity of sacrifice, including in India.

417
00:47:02,400 --> 00:47:12,620
How? By claiming that the caliphate represented a far more critical and monumental marker of Muslim distinction than Gul sacrifice,

418
00:47:13,370 --> 00:47:20,850
as he bitterly and cunningly put it, and I quoting here What is the cow when put next to the caliphate?

419
00:47:21,980 --> 00:47:26,990
Both these examples I have briefly described highlight a vexing conundrum on which I will end.

420
00:47:27,590 --> 00:47:36,049
That conundrum is this How should one imagine and engage the legacy of dominant, pre-modern,

421
00:47:36,050 --> 00:47:44,240
normative attitudes on Muslim non-Muslim relations and friendship in a world in which the very

422
00:47:44,240 --> 00:47:53,300
political context of Muslim imperial sovereignty that informed those attitudes is no longer available.

423
00:47:54,330 --> 00:48:03,090
But paradoxically, what I've tried to show today is that despite or perhaps because of the absence of Muslim political

424
00:48:03,090 --> 00:48:09,060
sovereignty at stake and work in these interpretive contestations over Hindu-Muslim friendship,

425
00:48:09,660 --> 00:48:16,830
what precisely the logic and promise of an imperial Muslim political commission?

426
00:48:17,460 --> 00:48:22,260
And thank you for your patience. Thank you so much, Shirley.

427
00:48:22,260 --> 00:48:36,080
And you know, like know this has really been a vista into a series of debates on the theme of today's seminar that I mean it really is a

428
00:48:36,120 --> 00:48:44,609
fascinating insight of goings on in the Indian subcontinent in the last 150 years or so in ways that really illuminate,

429
00:48:44,610 --> 00:48:48,390
I think, the, as you put it, the promise and the perils of friendship, as it were.

430
00:48:48,510 --> 00:48:52,850
And I want to open up the floor for any questions.

431
00:48:52,860 --> 00:48:59,550
I just want to remind. So the audience members, if you have any queries, please feel free to ask with yourself here.

432
00:48:59,820 --> 00:49:07,950
I may actually start off by asking if you have any comments that you want to put to either know or share on their wonderful presentations.

433
00:49:08,970 --> 00:49:11,040
Yeah, thanks very much and thank you both.

434
00:49:11,820 --> 00:49:20,580
Jeremy, I'm sorry I missed a bit of Nugent's talk because I was detained in London by a panel that started late and ended late.

435
00:49:21,090 --> 00:49:31,300
But I made it for the substance of it and the really wonderful quality panel iPhones, both presentations on Reading 12 and no.

436
00:49:31,620 --> 00:49:40,349
Let me start with you and I'll move to you, Sean. I love this idea of Sobotka as defining friendship because, of course, in its form,

437
00:49:40,350 --> 00:49:46,049
it's a gift, it's voluntary, it's discretionary, and yet it's also necessary at the same time.

438
00:49:46,050 --> 00:49:53,550
And I want to ask you about the relationship between what is discretionary and voluntarily and voluntarily given on the one hand,

439
00:49:53,550 --> 00:50:00,930
and the necessity that it implies on the other, because friendship, as you laid out, was a necessity for society.

440
00:50:00,930 --> 00:50:04,530
And this seems to be married. And what you're saying about the figure of the king.

441
00:50:04,530 --> 00:50:11,010
So the king. Cannot be a friend, and yet he must exist in order for friendship to exist.

442
00:50:11,310 --> 00:50:15,720
And the King guarantees the possibility of friendship, but is removed from it.

443
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:28,290
In some ways, at the same time and I wanted to ask you whether this removal is also one of the things it does is just it towards the king sovereignty.

444
00:50:29,100 --> 00:50:29,330
You know,

445
00:50:29,400 --> 00:50:39,510
something that Johnny was talking about in a different time and place and the king really needs to be an external force as a sovereign figure.

446
00:50:39,930 --> 00:50:43,140
So he is inside and out at the same time.

447
00:50:43,410 --> 00:50:48,780
But doesn't the king also perhaps not embody the need friends?

448
00:50:48,780 --> 00:50:58,620
Because as far as I can tell, in the kind of medieval tradition of political theory saying the mayors of princes literature,

449
00:50:58,950 --> 00:51:01,980
it's not something I know anything about in my research.

450
00:51:02,100 --> 00:51:08,759
I'm just parroting what I read. The figure of the boon companion, the king's friend, his friends are very, very important.

451
00:51:08,760 --> 00:51:17,339
And I'm just wondering whether these friends are also that were friends of a different variety than the kind of friendship you were talking about.

452
00:51:17,340 --> 00:51:22,499
Your friendship with the king is premised upon something other first.

453
00:51:22,500 --> 00:51:29,399
Of course, it's a problem in its own right. How can you be a friend of the King's if you're unequal and it's a problem for the King because

454
00:51:29,400 --> 00:51:37,230
of the king's possible loss of his own sovereignty by depending on the love or for his friends.

455
00:51:38,160 --> 00:51:42,840
But it just made me think of that when you think about it as all I think about the king and friendship,

456
00:51:43,380 --> 00:51:51,060
whether that kind of friendship that he's talking about is necessarily outside the normative conception of virtue,

457
00:51:51,630 --> 00:51:57,090
that you describe the quality of that, because after all, it requires.

458
00:51:58,590 --> 00:52:02,940
War, wine, drinking, women, all of the things which are not part.

459
00:52:03,300 --> 00:52:06,330
So are they two categories of friendship here. What's the word?

460
00:52:07,350 --> 00:52:14,040
And you may have knocked them out before I arrived. Could you just say some more about it and then I'll come to you, John.

461
00:52:14,460 --> 00:52:20,190
Sure. And thank you so much for this fantastic question.

462
00:52:20,200 --> 00:52:24,149
And this is exactly what I was or what,

463
00:52:24,150 --> 00:52:32,730
though he tries to distinguish between what he what he calls as real friendship or just interest and interest, the friendship and companionship.

464
00:52:33,330 --> 00:52:38,070
And then so or our being a acquaintance.

465
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:41,790
So what he was trying to do is make it obvious. Obviously,

466
00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:49,650
there was an implicit there was an explicit criticism to the institution of friendship that that

467
00:52:49,650 --> 00:52:58,470
became a new institution during the period and the period that we we saw a change in the concept,

468
00:52:58,500 --> 00:53:12,569
the polity, a change of the structure of polity in the period the Abbasid caliphate became weakened and the void which and who were and Shia minority,

469
00:53:12,570 --> 00:53:17,220
they came from the dalam area and Iran and they ruled the Islamic caliphate.

470
00:53:17,700 --> 00:53:25,770
But these boys had the rulers. They couldn't claim their kinship on the basis of prophetic succession.

471
00:53:26,190 --> 00:53:30,720
And they were actually also not very welcomed by the Sunni majority of society.

472
00:53:30,960 --> 00:53:39,900
So they were seen in somewhat as outsiders to the rest of the population or to the rest of the society in Baghdad.

473
00:53:40,410 --> 00:53:43,500
In addition to that, they were not interested themselves.

474
00:53:43,500 --> 00:53:49,980
The kinship, the king or the institute, the institution of kinship in itself.

475
00:53:50,460 --> 00:53:54,870
Things were not interested in making the friendship with the rest of society.

476
00:53:55,170 --> 00:53:57,680
They wanted to be always that outsider,

477
00:53:58,260 --> 00:54:06,510
an institution that can control and manipulate all the other groups and all the other competing groups in society.

478
00:54:07,020 --> 00:54:16,349
So what was that, though he did? Trying to say is like these things we're only interested in their own self-interest in the in

479
00:54:16,350 --> 00:54:28,290
the in well in combining wealth in their own desires in them and it like aggression and power,

480
00:54:28,290 --> 00:54:32,420
it says. So for that, they are not suitable to be friends.

481
00:54:32,430 --> 00:54:38,669
No one can be friends with them because the one important element in his understanding of friendship,

482
00:54:38,670 --> 00:54:43,110
in addition to the social intellect, nature and moral, is the trust.

483
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:54,719
You cannot trust them. You can't have a relationship of intimacy because it's you should be able to reveal your inner self with your friend.

484
00:54:54,720 --> 00:55:00,930
And this is missing from this friendship with these and with these things.

485
00:55:01,200 --> 00:55:06,870
Obviously, they can have companions, they can have acquaintances, but they can't.

486
00:55:07,170 --> 00:55:16,890
They are they are they cannot be qualified or morally elevated to be to reach the rank of friendship that he was talking about.

487
00:55:17,280 --> 00:55:29,940
But he actually and was also promoting his own his own intellectual works, meaning he was trying to argue for the place of intellectuals in society.

488
00:55:30,180 --> 00:55:38,100
So what he was trying to say that if these things like the vizier had been said then were to become interested in knowledge

489
00:55:38,610 --> 00:55:47,580
and where to embrace the people of knowledge and ask for their advice and welcome them and and select the right companion.

490
00:55:48,150 --> 00:55:57,000
They will be able to purify themselves through knowledge and they would get the right advice and then they become a regular friend.

491
00:55:58,140 --> 00:56:02,370
So there is a possibility there is a road now. That's why. Yes, there is a possibility,

492
00:56:02,370 --> 00:56:14,759
but this possibility is somewhat confined or conditioned and on their willingness to control their

493
00:56:14,760 --> 00:56:22,980
passion and to control their self interest and to to yet to control their self interest and passion.

494
00:56:24,050 --> 00:56:32,480
Thanks very much. So turning now to Charlie, you know, again, the discussion of sovereignty and that very rich paper.

495
00:56:33,290 --> 00:56:37,040
I you know, I was wondering, you know, what you was saying.

496
00:56:39,900 --> 00:56:44,410
I mean, you're describing the socialisation of celebrities in the absence of empire.

497
00:56:46,110 --> 00:56:53,489
But do you think something else is happening there as well, in addition to be socialised, that is, as it were, islamised in a certain way.

498
00:56:53,490 --> 00:57:02,030
So it might have been part of the language of siesta earlier, and now it is being made to fit in the language of Judea.

499
00:57:03,690 --> 00:57:08,640
I'm not drawing an absolute distinction between those two categories, but I think it's important nevertheless,

500
00:57:09,570 --> 00:57:16,920
because of the authorities who are making this pronouncements, their authority is not based on anything that a principal thought to be based on.

501
00:57:17,490 --> 00:57:29,700
So I wonder if that is also happening and if that is the case, then, you know, you have a new imperium of the faith who created so.

502
00:57:32,150 --> 00:57:40,190
If you could elaborate on that. On the issue of the conflict.

503
00:57:40,250 --> 00:57:49,940
I just found it fascinating that the standard Urdu translation of non-cooperation is stuck in Malala, as you know,

504
00:57:51,260 --> 00:58:01,640
and yet it's used completely differently from the English non-cooperation or any other Indian term, because cooperation is certainly not friendship.

505
00:58:03,020 --> 00:58:10,370
And when Gandhi talks about non-cooperation, he thinks that to non cooperate with the British actually involves the greatest

506
00:58:10,370 --> 00:58:15,949
amount of friendship for the British that in refusing cooperation with them,

507
00:58:15,950 --> 00:58:19,010
you are performing a sacrifice for yourself.

508
00:58:19,190 --> 00:58:26,750
I mean, you lose, you lose out. And in doing so, you offer the hand of friendship to your opponent.

509
00:58:27,860 --> 00:58:35,000
So you give them the opportunity to to claim friendship, but the friendship that you're offering.

510
00:58:35,010 --> 00:58:39,050
So in a way, the refusal to cooperate and friendship go together.

511
00:58:39,230 --> 00:58:50,140
For Gandhi. And I suppose you can read that as another way in which sovereignty gets to be linked in dealing with friendship.

512
00:58:50,150 --> 00:58:51,950
And yet, as I am still close to God.

513
00:58:52,890 --> 00:59:03,720
And uses nothing more than a quite your, you know, and your telling of it in a completely different way in which this issue of refusal to cooperate,

514
00:59:04,110 --> 00:59:08,579
leading to friendship does not seem to be that available.

515
00:59:08,580 --> 00:59:12,280
And I wonder why why that might be the case.

516
00:59:12,620 --> 00:59:15,779
On on the caliph.

517
00:59:15,780 --> 00:59:24,660
In the of course, there's that Gandhi too, as that wonderful saying where he says that the caliph is the most.

518
00:59:25,050 --> 00:59:26,930
So the caliph is the Muslim cow.

519
00:59:27,420 --> 00:59:34,290
So he actually makes a comparison between the holy cow they sound sort of like and because if you keep the same kind of

520
00:59:34,290 --> 00:59:43,410
sound in English anyway and he's not suggesting that the the same thing or the equivalents that would be exchanged,

521
00:59:43,740 --> 00:59:50,100
the commodities exchanges. But precisely because they are unlike each other and an equal,

522
00:59:50,460 --> 00:59:55,450
they can enter into a relationship and that one can be literally exchange for the other.

523
00:59:55,470 --> 01:00:01,140
So again, what strikes me is that I'm a Christian and others will be fighting.

524
01:00:02,050 --> 01:00:10,660
I refuse to look at that kind of reasoning or it seems not to have any weight on them so that they are reading the kind of,

525
01:00:10,900 --> 01:00:14,980
say, Gandhi was the most prominent advocate for this kind of thing.

526
01:00:16,510 --> 01:00:21,250
They are reading him in terms of their own categories, but.

527
01:00:22,720 --> 01:00:27,370
In such a way as not to read him at all. And it's that refusal that I.

528
01:00:28,490 --> 01:00:35,100
Is some standing on both sides for Assad who should have known better and did know better.

529
01:00:35,490 --> 01:00:47,880
And for Assad's own opponents, there's a kind of unwillingness or an inability or a refusal to actually accept the terms of the argument,

530
01:00:48,450 --> 01:00:57,510
even though they are constantly arguing with each other in the most sophisticated and nuanced way, as you describe them both very, very fast.

531
01:00:57,710 --> 01:01:00,840
But thank you so much for that. That's the first point.

532
01:01:01,230 --> 01:01:09,389
You know, one of the things that I've been interested in is precisely this question of these seemingly illiberal actors like Amazon

533
01:01:09,390 --> 01:01:15,719
and other sort of scholars contemporaneous to him who might be in opposing camps like the pioneers of the Deoband movement,

534
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:18,330
who are so invested in these questions of the everyday.

535
01:01:18,690 --> 01:01:27,209
Why does everyday life become so charged by the late 19th century in these questions of the celebration of the Prophet's birthday,

536
01:01:27,210 --> 01:01:32,940
or the question of, you know, distributing food on the 30th, the day seized,

537
01:01:32,940 --> 01:01:40,559
and these questions of intimacies between different religions in the public sphere and this whole question of preserving the markers of Muslim

538
01:01:40,560 --> 01:01:48,510
distinction in everyday life to not see this kind of preoccupation as apolitical or to retreat to the private sphere or retreat from politics,

539
01:01:48,510 --> 01:01:52,140
but rather as deeply political, but rather exactly as you put it,

540
01:01:52,470 --> 01:01:58,110
compensating for that lost political sovereignty precisely in a different domain of politics.

541
01:01:58,320 --> 01:02:05,490
That is, in some ways, Islamism sovereignty. The nice way of putting it in that precisely the everyday becomes a sphere saturated

542
01:02:05,490 --> 01:02:11,100
with the promise of sovereign power in the absence of political sovereignty.

543
01:02:12,270 --> 01:02:18,390
And as you have pointed out in your book on the climate movement, that for many of the political protagonists,

544
01:02:18,780 --> 01:02:22,470
you know, this was not a movement to live under the Ottoman caliphate.

545
01:02:22,770 --> 01:02:26,909
I think that's a very interesting point, that this was not a movement that we want to live under the Ottoman caliphate,

546
01:02:26,910 --> 01:02:35,230
but rather it represented a form of politics that exceeds the nation state and that also exceeds the actual Ottoman caliphate itself.

547
01:02:35,250 --> 01:02:48,360
So these are horizons of politics that that emerged in the in after political sovereignty and the competing articulations of sovereignty,

548
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:53,260
but nonetheless, both grappling with the aftermath of sovereign power on the question.

549
01:02:53,340 --> 01:02:58,139
The second question that you that you raised is very interesting on on a lot and how

550
01:02:58,140 --> 01:03:02,220
it is collapsed with friendship and the thought of someone like Azhar than others.

551
01:03:03,030 --> 01:03:05,580
The interesting thing here is that on this particular point,

552
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:11,190
someone like Gandhi and some others are contractually it's like an agreement in that someone accommodates the harm.

553
01:03:11,340 --> 01:03:20,909
Also, precisely the problem that he has is with this point of collapsing Malala with friendship with the British,

554
01:03:20,910 --> 01:03:26,460
to the point that he makes is that we ought to make a distinction between friendship or substantive friendship.

555
01:03:27,450 --> 01:03:33,909
And mere transactional relations. And you ought to continue beer transaction relations with the British,

556
01:03:33,910 --> 01:03:38,830
taking funding for our schools and all those kinds of things that ought to through which we

557
01:03:38,830 --> 01:03:43,750
ought to maintain our everyday life and our existence as a functioning community of Muslims.

558
01:03:44,200 --> 01:03:46,990
But we don't need to engage in substantive friendship with them.

559
01:03:47,650 --> 01:03:53,889
So when you collapse all out the substantive friendship and start giving away a lot what you're basically is doing,

560
01:03:53,890 --> 01:03:58,840
what basically you're doing is you're inviting catastrophe and socioeconomic hardship on your own self,

561
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:02,190
which will eventually benefit, quote unquote, the Hindu community and Gandhi.

562
01:04:02,200 --> 01:04:08,890
So this basically, he argues, is a catastrophic ruse that has been planted by Gandhi in the minds of people like us all but others.

563
01:04:09,430 --> 01:04:17,030
So he makes an interesting point that we should, in fact, engage in a practice of mosque friendship, a mosque friendship with the British,

564
01:04:17,030 --> 01:04:21,280
in that you're not actually showing substantive friendship and militarily transactional relations,

565
01:04:21,670 --> 01:04:26,860
but mosque a certain kind of friendship that is not it's not but is what you keep it mosque.

566
01:04:27,250 --> 01:04:32,530
In some ways it's close to the idea of a certain kind of a Sunni Turkey of friendship with the British.

567
01:04:33,550 --> 01:04:40,110
So but this is precisely the kind of collapse of this category with substantive friendship that is also bothering someone like Ahmed as a friend.

568
01:04:40,810 --> 01:04:50,350
And this kind of slipperiness of these categories is precisely what makes them ambiguous and productive, but also threatening to the different actors.

569
01:04:51,340 --> 01:04:54,980
But I just the last point I want to make is that even within the climate movement, I think, you know,

570
01:04:55,000 --> 01:05:01,990
as you have what's explored there is this interesting shades of nuance between a figure like Azhar and a figure like Abdul Mahdi,

571
01:05:02,350 --> 01:05:10,570
in the opinion of the body, is much more attentive to addressing the kind of normative sensibilities of the Hanafi traditionalist.

572
01:05:10,900 --> 01:05:17,740
And to make sure that those sensibilities are not traded on and are addressed in a more deliberate fashion.

573
01:05:18,260 --> 01:05:27,550
Whereas someone like other reports of Azhar Ali and all those names of pre-modern figures, he can take certain leaps in certain kinds of licenses.

574
01:05:28,120 --> 01:05:31,570
For example, on the whole question of does the Caliph need to be of operation?

575
01:05:31,930 --> 01:05:37,420
He's very open by saying, no, he doesn't need to be, because it started out as a kind of choice to not have that lineage.

576
01:05:37,630 --> 01:05:41,800
And that is something that does not have historical precedents. That is something anybody would not argue.

577
01:05:41,950 --> 01:05:51,310
So within the movement, that is interesting temperaments that we find those sort of neutral nuances, but also need to be kept in mind.

578
01:05:52,810 --> 01:06:01,000
I just. Just an ending comment that you know which is icons argument in many ways gets to be the argument

579
01:06:02,680 --> 01:06:12,010
in the Pakistan movement which views this movement as precisely a ruse to impoverish Muslims.

580
01:06:13,540 --> 01:06:16,899
You know, they quit the assembly. They quit colleges in schools.

581
01:06:16,900 --> 01:06:20,260
They quit their law practices, and they moved down in the world.

582
01:06:20,740 --> 01:06:22,420
And then they become slaves of the Hindu.

583
01:06:22,840 --> 01:06:36,220
So that with the Muslim League, it's not about this shot at Islam or whatever, but it's about a conspiracy in which they lose they lose power.

584
01:06:36,580 --> 01:06:40,460
And I think. So should I take the opportunity to ask her?

585
01:06:40,900 --> 01:06:49,719
So I had my own set of questions. Now we only have about 15 minutes left, so unfortunately we can't address all of our curiosity.

586
01:06:49,720 --> 01:06:53,709
But I'm sure these conversations will keep on going through well beyond this evening.

587
01:06:53,710 --> 01:06:57,990
I wanted to start with a question for her, which I you know,

588
01:06:58,000 --> 01:07:04,420
I found an amusing sort of moment in your lecture where you were talking about friendship with enemies.

589
01:07:04,900 --> 01:07:08,760
And it made me go back to a line in The Godfather,

590
01:07:09,270 --> 01:07:15,819
which is attributed to I think this is typically a statement of Don Corleone or something like this.

591
01:07:15,820 --> 01:07:18,940
You know, keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

592
01:07:19,390 --> 01:07:24,700
And I was kind of wondering, like, what does friendship with enemies mean in this sort of a context in particular?

593
01:07:26,380 --> 01:07:36,100
Because I assume it's in the context you were speaking about to do with recognising that you need to have relations with people,

594
01:07:36,100 --> 01:07:43,210
with you need to maintain diplomatic relations, perhaps with people who are potential threats to you ultimately.

595
01:07:44,710 --> 01:07:51,760
But it also kind of hearken back in my mind, obviously, to Haiti earlier than a figure like Machiavelli,

596
01:07:52,240 --> 01:07:58,990
but to the kind of, I guess the renaissance, post renaissance and therefore princes literature,

597
01:07:59,320 --> 01:08:06,040
because I think I kind of associate with the sort of person who is hanging out with the court

598
01:08:06,160 --> 01:08:13,120
and in a sense providing as well as entertaining discourse advice of a sort for the court.

599
01:08:13,840 --> 01:08:15,190
So that was one dimension of the question.

600
01:08:15,190 --> 01:08:25,450
And the other dimension is, is there any conception into Haiti that there can be friendship with members of the opposite sex?

601
01:08:26,290 --> 01:08:33,040
And whether there could be friendship with it is one's relation with one spouse too hierarchical in that context,

602
01:08:33,100 --> 01:08:36,490
with one's wife in particular to be a relationship of friendship.

603
01:08:38,020 --> 01:08:44,340
So in a sense, three questions, but thank you. Well, thank you for these very interesting questions.

604
01:08:44,350 --> 01:08:48,160
I'm going to start with the last question, actually, which I also find them.

605
01:08:49,540 --> 01:08:59,559
Yeah, very, very creative. And I think he doesn't address the friendship between a man and a woman in the sense that you're talking about,

606
01:08:59,560 --> 01:09:02,710
that he actually talks about a relationship.

607
01:09:03,160 --> 01:09:06,490
He talks about romantic love. And he says that.

608
01:09:07,090 --> 01:09:14,139
And he talks about it in a in a quote that I don't remember exactly, but I remember the context.

609
01:09:14,140 --> 01:09:22,510
He talks about the Bedouin and a Bedouin love for a woman and that for his wife and this love for his wife should.

610
01:09:22,510 --> 01:09:30,489
And if there is if there is a if if you are faced with a choice between between a choosing romantic love,

611
01:09:30,490 --> 01:09:38,830
your love for the wife and your friend, you have to choose your friend because your relationship with your wife is based on passion.

612
01:09:39,550 --> 01:09:50,320
And while the relationship with with the friend is actually based on reason and based on choice.

613
01:09:50,740 --> 01:09:55,930
So you have made the choice and you have duties towards your friends.

614
01:09:56,980 --> 01:10:03,160
And you have to maintain a friendship. Therefore, you have to choose your friend over your life.

615
01:10:04,540 --> 01:10:07,840
Very counter to what exactly.

616
01:10:08,080 --> 01:10:15,730
And that is actually it is a very interesting view because it reminds me of a story in our dinner by even an author.

617
01:10:15,760 --> 01:10:18,760
If you know the story. The the the.

618
01:10:18,910 --> 01:10:23,330
The monkey and the turtle. Okay.

619
01:10:23,330 --> 01:10:34,670
So it's a very interesting story that there is a monkey that who used to live in an isolated land and like in an oasis and a turtle,

620
01:10:35,390 --> 01:10:40,850
he swim and the monkey every time he would shake the tree and some kind of

621
01:10:40,850 --> 01:10:45,350
fruit will fall down and wool and the turtle will take the food and would eat.

622
01:10:45,360 --> 01:10:51,110
So the turtle assumed that actually the monkey is doing that on purpose to feed him.

623
01:10:51,380 --> 01:10:55,090
So he felt like that the monkey was trying to to have a friendship with the

624
01:10:55,100 --> 01:11:00,440
bears and then the turtle developed a very strong friendship with the monkey.

625
01:11:00,440 --> 01:11:07,730
And to the extent this distracted the monkey from his wife, and the wife became very jealous because of the absence,

626
01:11:08,000 --> 01:11:12,020
the absence of the husband who started to spend a lot of time with the monkey.

627
01:11:12,440 --> 01:11:19,790
And then she should have had anxiety about this relationship between the friendship and the monkey.

628
01:11:19,790 --> 01:11:29,930
And then the neighbour advised the wife to bring the turtle wife to pretend that she is sick and she will only be cured if she eats a monkeys heart.

629
01:11:31,490 --> 01:11:34,670
And then the turtle was in dilemma.

630
01:11:34,820 --> 01:11:37,830
I mean, what how what does he what would he do?

631
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:41,820
He's going to lose a good wife. And is he going to deceive his friends?

632
01:11:41,820 --> 01:11:43,580
So what's the right thing to do?

633
01:11:44,030 --> 01:11:54,080
But then after a period of contemplation, the turtle goes back to the monkey, and then he tries to deceive the monkey.

634
01:11:54,860 --> 01:11:59,060
And to tell him that, okay, I want to take you to visit my house.

635
01:11:59,750 --> 01:12:06,530
And then the monkey jumped on the turtle's back, and then the turtle was going back home with the monkey.

636
01:12:06,740 --> 01:12:09,980
And the idea was to kill the monkey and to make the wife in the hut.

637
01:12:10,310 --> 01:12:15,910
But in the middle of the journey, the turtle became a bit said, how would he kill his friend?

638
01:12:15,940 --> 01:12:22,640
So he started, like, in a way to in order to repent and to ask the monkey for forgiveness.

639
01:12:22,910 --> 01:12:28,190
He told the story to the monkey that what is going to happen. Then the monkey was extremely clever.

640
01:12:28,190 --> 01:12:31,700
And he said, you know, we monkey is when we need our hand.

641
01:12:31,700 --> 01:12:34,430
We don't take our heart with us. We actually leave it there.

642
01:12:35,940 --> 01:12:42,349
So so the turtle took the monkey back and this is the bottom of the study is like it's a dilemma.

643
01:12:42,350 --> 01:12:48,040
Like what? What would you choose? But then someone like a lady would choose a friend over.

644
01:12:48,590 --> 01:12:49,850
Over a romantic love.

645
01:12:50,910 --> 01:12:59,850
So your second question, if I have time to answer, I'm sorry I spent time with this study, but it's just like if you can just remind me again,

646
01:13:00,420 --> 01:13:04,850
I was just thinking in terms of like, you know, the notion of keeping one's enemies close.

647
01:13:04,860 --> 01:13:09,700
What does that mean? It sort of struck me as maybe somewhat Machiavellian as it were.

648
01:13:09,730 --> 01:13:19,760
Yes, it was actually a very this notion was extremely important in the think in the context of boys and girls, because boys society was bullied.

649
01:13:19,900 --> 01:13:25,810
Governance was divided across courts in different areas, like in very Shiraz like that.

650
01:13:26,020 --> 01:13:31,090
So they were different. Boy, it was years in these course and they were competing relationship.

651
01:13:31,390 --> 01:13:34,580
And there was a particular was Brazil called the Sahaba,

652
01:13:34,600 --> 01:13:44,050
not that he was in in constant competition with bin Laden and had been then always wanted to know about what's going on at the court about that.

653
01:13:44,410 --> 01:13:51,410
And apparently Toheeb knew the court of Ibn Saddam inside out and therefore had been said that the

654
01:13:51,450 --> 01:13:58,899
brutal head wanted to know about the court of about bed and wanted to send the correspondence.

655
01:13:58,900 --> 01:14:04,060
He was always sending correspondence to the court in an attempt to keep.

656
01:14:05,090 --> 01:14:12,020
A kind of diplomatic relationship and friendship with them in order to understand what is the next move by Ibn Abed, etc.

657
01:14:13,030 --> 01:14:16,120
So this kind of friendship were necessary at the time?

658
01:14:16,630 --> 01:14:23,320
Absolutely. And I think, yeah, that would that would make a lot of sense to contemporary sensibilities as well, I think.

659
01:14:23,590 --> 01:14:27,700
Just very briefly, surely this idea of, you know,

660
01:14:27,700 --> 01:14:32,739
Muslims cannot be humiliated into adopting the abandonment of of sacrifice is really

661
01:14:32,740 --> 01:14:38,440
fascinating because on what basis of Muslims effectively abandoned slavery in our times?

662
01:14:38,860 --> 01:14:44,290
And I wonder if people like, you know, there was a Han if they were alive today would be saying that.

663
01:14:44,320 --> 01:14:47,680
But actually we need to re-establish slavery.

664
01:14:48,580 --> 01:14:54,430
And so yeah, I can wonder and that's more or less my question to you or sort of like,

665
01:14:54,430 --> 01:14:58,570
how do you think there's an analogy or am I missing something here in the way that they would have seen this?

666
01:14:59,970 --> 01:15:03,420
What's the slavery connection between sort of, you know, in the sense that, you know,

667
01:15:03,420 --> 01:15:09,090
if we're saying, okay, slave account sacrifice is not a word yet, it's more back in the Shariah.

668
01:15:09,330 --> 01:15:13,799
So you can abandon that. So that is a very common argument against slavery.

669
01:15:13,800 --> 01:15:18,240
It's a common against, for example, multiple marriage for men.

670
01:15:19,020 --> 01:15:22,770
And so there are a whole host of areas where you can say, well, this isn't an obligation technically.

671
01:15:22,770 --> 01:15:25,910
So we can abandon it because it's better for us in this context. Right.

672
01:15:27,510 --> 01:15:29,940
So the argument there is that in this particular context,

673
01:15:29,940 --> 01:15:34,750
it's a marker of Muslim distinction that our sacrifice distinguishes Muslims from non-Muslims.

674
01:15:34,800 --> 01:15:39,840
So if you were to abandon it under the coercion or the pressure of a non-Muslim community,

675
01:15:39,840 --> 01:15:44,970
that would mean to eliminate that would mean undermining your own position in relation to the other.

676
01:15:45,510 --> 01:15:49,080
So interestingly, even someone like Abdel Bari of the economic movement,

677
01:15:49,620 --> 01:15:58,169
he in fact argued that if Hindus insist that Muslims abandon cow sacrifice at that point,

678
01:15:58,170 --> 01:16:01,440
in fact, it will become obligatory for Muslims to engage in sacrifice.

679
01:16:02,010 --> 01:16:08,310
So, in fact, he tells his compatriots and the Indian National Congress also that don't insist on this point,

680
01:16:08,700 --> 01:16:15,929
because the more you insist, the more I would also become legally obligated to tell my community that you must undertake this practice,

681
01:16:15,930 --> 01:16:23,820
because in terms of a classical legal sort of dime dropping, the insistence will allow me then to tell them that okay,

682
01:16:24,090 --> 01:16:30,120
at least on everyday matters at this, at least on Eve, you can at least drop the sacrifice.

683
01:16:30,120 --> 01:16:33,450
And I will not engage in sacrifice either on either side at least.

684
01:16:33,810 --> 01:16:39,180
So in order for this to happen, both sides have to temper their insistence on this matter.

685
01:16:39,810 --> 01:16:47,160
But even someone like Abdel Bari is very insistent that the the the that this should not come from the

686
01:16:47,160 --> 01:16:53,040
pressure or the insistence of a non-Muslim community or else a marker of Muslim distinction will be erased.

687
01:16:53,310 --> 01:17:02,190
So that is the kind of what I'm interested in, how the kind of power relations and assumptions of power dynamics coming from the

688
01:17:02,430 --> 01:17:08,340
pre-modern Muslim imperial framework of law is informing both groups of scholars,

689
01:17:08,550 --> 01:17:14,940
and hence this intra Muslim debate is not really about for or against pluralism or foreign against inclusiveness of an exclusive,

690
01:17:15,600 --> 01:17:21,270
but rather it's really a negotiation of a pre-modern framework of law in a radically

691
01:17:21,450 --> 01:17:26,480
new set of conditions and how that negotiation leads to new forms of politics.

692
01:17:26,490 --> 01:17:28,500
And that's all connecting friendship politics.

693
01:17:28,950 --> 01:17:38,220
Just to add a tag on to this, I mean, what's interesting is that some of the Ottoman opponents to European pressure to emancipate slaves.

694
01:17:38,580 --> 01:17:45,600
Right. This was their argument as well, that interesting Western powers are insisting and in some respects undermining our sovereignty,

695
01:17:46,350 --> 01:17:49,560
that that makes it all the more important for us to maintain this practice.

696
01:17:50,140 --> 01:17:54,480
So I guess it's not it's not a salient issue in South Asia, right?

697
01:17:54,840 --> 01:17:57,960
Slavery in particular, but in other parts of the world, it may well be.

698
01:17:59,550 --> 01:18:04,900
That's interesting. Thank you so much to both of you to thank you.

699
01:18:05,400 --> 01:18:11,940
Giving so much of your time and really sharing your the latest research you've been engaged in.

700
01:18:12,420 --> 01:18:17,000
And it's really been eye opening so many levels. I wish I always feel this way.

701
01:18:17,090 --> 01:18:19,650
I wish we had so much more time to engage in these conversations.

702
01:18:20,130 --> 01:18:29,760
But I hope that this encourages our listeners and future sort of viewers of the podcast to get their hands on your books at least,

703
01:18:29,910 --> 01:18:33,210
and, you know, benefit from from that experience.

704
01:18:33,810 --> 01:18:41,549
Before we conclude, I just wanted to mention that we do have our final session for this term of the Oxford Political Thought Seminar on Wednesday,

705
01:18:41,550 --> 01:18:45,310
the 30th of November. And this session will be on Secularity.

706
01:18:45,330 --> 01:18:53,910
And we'll be joined by Amanda Salvatore and Winfred Fuller Sullivan, both dealing with the theme of secularity.

707
01:18:54,330 --> 01:18:59,310
So we'd really welcome you to join at that point. But until then, we look forward to seeing you.

708
01:18:59,340 --> 01:19:02,850
I want to thank you again, Sheryl Lee, yourself. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.

709
01:19:03,630 --> 01:19:07,860
Thank you so much. Salman, thank you. Thank you. It's a true pleasure.

710
01:19:07,930 --> 01:19:13,070
Thank you so much. Nice meeting you, Sheryl Lee. Wonderful meeting with Robert Patterson.

711
01:19:13,990 --> 01:19:18,270
Take care. Good luck. Good evening to everyone.