Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyse Chiragh ‘Ali’s political and legal thought, especially his work "The proposed political, legal, and social reforms in the Ottoman empire and other Mohammadan states" (Bombay: Education Society Press, 1883).

Paper long abstract:

After the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858 and the end of the Mughal Dynasty, many were the Muslim political intellectuals who sought to reform and revitalize Islam in India and as a whole. The responses were various and the debates would surpass geographical boundaries, anticipating questions which are relevant nowadays, like gender relations, new forms of religious institutionalization and the role of religion in politics.

Chiragh 'Ali (1844-1895), an associate of Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) and of his Aligarh Movement, often refuted, in his writings, missionary and Orientalist criticisms of Islam as being hostile to reason and incapable of reform. He rather argued that the Islamic legal system and schools were human institutions capable of modification.

While defending that the Qur'an ("Mohammadan Revealed Law") taught religious doctrine and rules for morality, Chiragh 'Ali was of the opinion that it did not support a detailed code of immutable civil law or dictate a specific political system. His arguments on interpretation of hadith and the possibility of ijtihad drew on an examination of the traditional sources of the Islamic law and methods to overcome the rigidity of the traditional theologians. Rejecting all classical sources of jurisprudence except the Qur'an, Chiragh Ali attempted to construct a new basis for the law - for him there were certain points in which the Shari'a ('Mohammadan Common Law') was irreconcilable with the modern needs of Islam and required modifications, always using the Qur'an as a source.