Preface -- Introduction: Islam Is The Ocean / Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal -- Chapter 1: Muslim Universalist Aspirations: Intimacies between the Indus-Gangetic Plain and the Indian Ocean / Ayesha Jalal -- Chapter 2: Islam's Eastern Frontiers: Tamil, Chinese, and Malay Worlds / Sunil S. Amrith -- Chapter 3: Spies in the Hejaz: Colonial Espionage in Jeddah / Eric Tagliacozzo -- Chapter 4: Little Men between Big Empires: Muslim Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Imperial Expansion / Seema Alavi -- Chapter 5: Revolutionaries, Maulvis, and Monks: Burma's Khilafat Moment / Sana Aiyar -- Chapter 6: The Bengali Muslim: language and space-making at the ocean's margins / Iftekhar Iqbal -- Chapter 7: The Meaning of Muslim Emancipation in Late-Colonial Agrarian Bengal / Andrew Sartori -- Chapter 8: South Asian Islam and the Politics of German Orientalism / Kris Manjapra -- Notes on Contributors.
Summary:
The Indian Ocean interregional arena is a space of vital economic and strategic importance characterized by specialized flows of capital and labor, skills and services, and ideas and culture. Islam in particular and religiously informed universalism in general once signified cosmopolitanism across this wide realm. This historical reality is at variance with contemporary conceptions of Islam as an illiberal religion that breeds intolerance and terrorism. The future balance of global power will be determined in large measure by policies of key actors in the Indian Ocean and the lands that abut it rather than in the Atlantic or the Pacific. The interplay of multiple and competing universalisms in the Indian Ocean arena is in urgent need of better understanding. Oceanic Islam: Muslim Universalism and European Imperialism is a fresh contribution to Islamic and Indian Ocean studies alike, placing the history of modern South Asia in broader interregional and global contexts. It refines theories of universalism and cosmopolitanism while at the same time drawing on new empirical research. The essays in the volume bring the best academic scholarship on Islam in South Asia and across the Indian Ocean in the age of European empire to the readers.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.