Ali Usman Qasmi Aziz Ahmad was probably the first scholar to write a cultural history of Islam in India. His 1961 book, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment, is a path-breaking survey of 1,200 years of Muslim presence in the Indian subcontinent. It explores how, throughout this time, there has been opposition as well as accommodation, even borrowing and assimilation, between Muslims and non-Muslims living in this part of the world. Ahmad wrote another pioneering work, Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857-1964, that deals with the impacts of modernity and colonialism on Muslims living in the two countries. Even … Continue reading Divisions, divides and diversity in Islam in South Asia