BOOK REVIEW

(published since 1976 in Urdu and in English since 1984) and many other publications. One thing he does not do is “preach,” in mosques. Because of his stature as a scholar and community leader, he is often invited to give the khutba, a sermon that precedes Muslim congregation prayers on Fridays. However, he never accepts such invitations because, as he related to this author, he is not a preacher type. His long gray hair, flowing beard, and the white traditional Indian outfit, on top of which he wears a rather worn-out greyish white overcoat most times of the year, reveal his Sufistic sympathies. His is a rather monastic look. But there is no monasticism in Islam, as Maulana Khan would say, and so his appearance is perhaps a reflection of his simple taste and pietistic posture. Maulana Khan combines knowledge of the traditional religious sciences (ulum al-dın) with the cultural, socio-political, and ethical discourse of his times. He often draws on his knowledge of contemporary events to highlight the moral plight of our times. His familiarity with the foundational literature on science and religion, ethics, and political discourse informs his writings on Islamic moral theology. Widely travelled, he shows exceptional knowledge of and interest in Western as well as modern ethical concerns. His writings display an eagerness to apply the lessons learned from his explorations to critical issues facing Muslim societies both in India and elsewhere. As founder-president of “The Islamic Centre” established in 1970, (and then Centre for Peace International in 2001) Maulana Khan has presided over a kind of Islamic movement that is fundamentally different from all other movements in contemporary Muslim history. Known as the ‘Al-Risala Movement’, and which Maulana Khan calls ‘mission’, it has gradually influenced and shaped Muslim thinking over the last 40 years, a measure of which can be found in the changing attitudes of the Indian Muslim leadership in the late 1990s. Muslim religious and political leadership for the most part ignored Wahiduddin Khan in the early phase of his mission and dubbed him varyingly as “anti-Muslim,” a “Libyan agent,” and, more recently, the “Hindu agent.” They felt that his conciliatory and self-critical tone was not apropos of Islam’s dignified past status in India. In their view, the solution to Muslims’ problems was to be found in taking a hard-line approach and invoking the law to curb right-wing attacks on Islam and Muslims. Khan, on the other hand, advocated a dialogical approach. By the late 1990s, most of the Muslim leaders had effectively come to realize that their confrontational approach had caused a sharp