{"id":6600,"date":"2020-09-28T07:58:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-28T07:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/habib.edu.pk\/HU-news\/?p=6600"},"modified":"2025-07-25T15:32:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T10:32:23","slug":"webinar-khilafat-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/habib.edu.pk\/HU-news\/webinar-khilafat-movement\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Khilafat Movement’: A Discussion on the Impact of Colonial Rule on Islam"},"content":{"rendered":"
The webinar was the first in a series, ‘Islam after Colonialism’, initiated by Habib University and the University of Exeter<\/h6>\n

KARACHI: Habib University in collaboration with the UK\u2019s University of Exeter organized a webinar on \u2018The Khilafat Movement \u2014 Islam, India and the First World War\u2019 in which eminent historian Prof. Faisal Devji was the main speaker.<\/p>\n

Prof. Devji, who was introduced to the audience by Dr. Nauman Naqvi, giving a historical description of the movement, said it began in the aftermath of the First World War in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated along with Germany. There was an immediate move by the victorious powers, Britain and France, to divide up the large parts of the empire. Indian Muslims were sufficiently outraged by these moves. This unprecedented mobilization of Muslims was seen as both imperialist and anti-imperialist, nationalist and anti-nationalist (there were people who accused it of politicizing religion).<\/p>\n

It was not an exceptional movement because Khilafat was one of three such movements which occurred around the same time, all of which had a religious dimension to them. The other two being: the rise of Indian diaspora (Gandhi was not averse to using religious language in his activism for Indian diaspora) and the Ghadar movement.<\/p>\n

One of the great objectives of the movement was to protect the shrines in Arabia and Iraq<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Prof. Devji said they were interesting because they addressed the British Empire\u2019s global reach. The British Empire was very large, scattered across the surface of the earth, and had no geopolitical integrity. It couldn\u2019t be imagined the way the Ottoman Empire was imagined which was why it tended to justify [itself]in humanitarian terms. (Quoting a Western scholar the historian gave the example of the abolition of slavery.)<\/p>\n