An Academic Dialogue with Muhammad Din Jauhar

Friday, 28 November, 2025 | 6:00 - 8:00 PM | Auditorium CR 1-06, SAHSOL, LUMS

The Gurmani Centre for Languages and Literature organized an academic sitting featuring a conversation with Muhammad Din Jauhar on his recent book Nibrās-i-Naẓar (Daur-i-Hazir ke Masā’il aur Unkī Mazhabī Tafhīm). The gathering brought together students, faculty members, and scholars for a reflective discussion on the intellectual, cultural, and religious challenges of the contemporary Muslim world. Jauhar began by introducing the central concerns of his book, which brings together essays that critically examine modernity, colonialism, and Orientalism, and the ways in which they have shaped Muslim self-understanding and religious interpretation.

A major part of the discussion focused on the intellectual frameworks required for a meaningful critique of modernity. Jauhar argued that Western modernity, deeply shaped by secular rationalism and the epistemic legacies of the Enlightenment, has become an unexamined normative lens through which many Muslim intellectuals evaluate their own traditions. This internalization, rooted in the colonial displacement of indigenous knowledge systems, has created a profound epistemic crisis marked by the loss of civilizational confidence and the fragmentation of moral and intellectual life. While acknowledging the genuine achievements of modern science and technology, he cautioned against the rise of scientism, where the scientific method is elevated into a total worldview. In his view, this has obscured the holistic, ethically grounded epistemology historically cultivated within Islamic civilization. Jauhar emphasized that the present condition of Muslims is not a failure of Islam as a civilizational project but the result of an intellectual rupture in which neither traditional scholars nor modern thinkers have been able to articulate a coherent synthesis responsive to contemporary challenges. He called for renewed engagement with Islamic moral and epistemic principles and suggested the possibility of an alternative Islamic modernity, one that selectively adopts what is beneficial from modernity without capitulating to its secular foundations.

The conversation concluded with a rigorous question-and-answer session in which participants offered diverse perspectives and raised thoughtful questions relating to modernity, Islamic thought, literary culture, and education. The exchange of ideas added depth to the conversation and underscored the relevance of the themes explored in Jauhar’s book.