Theorizing the Individual in Anticolonial Muslim Thought

This article contests the tendency to see Islam as overwhelmingly collective and theorizes the individual from Islamic history and tradition of thought. It does so by recovering and recasting the ideas of Abul Hashim (1905–1974), a prominent South Asian anticolonial Muslim thinker and political actor. It examines how Hashim reconstructs Quranic ideas to oppose modern individualism primarily due to its loss of moral unity and advances a theory of the individual that argues for a unified ethical framework, which binds the individual, God, and others in an embedded relationship of love and care in the community. The article explores a unique trajectory for self-constitution developed within Islamic history and tradition—a trajectory that goes beyond the rise of the autonomous, reflexive, and self-serving individual without compromising the importance of one’s intention and conscience in shaping the self. This theory of the individual from Islamic tradition refutes the Eurocentric framework of theorizing the concept by presenting a distinct framework that transcends the dichotomy between the individual and the community, a battle that is pervasive in contemporary Euro-American political thought.