Transnational Islam and Colonial Critique: Jamaluddin Afghani and Amir Abdul Rahman Khan’s Political Activism

This paper explores the political activism of Amir Abdurrahman Khan and Jamaluddin Afghani which reflect some of the modalities of responses to European colonial domination of Muslim countries in the nineteenth century, though many aspects of the political forces of that period exist in the contemporary Muslim world.

The Amir's major preoccupation was to devise a strategy to maintain Afghanistan's dependence and prevent encroachments of Russia and Britain into Afghanistan. Afghani's main concern was to propagate Pan-Islamist thought and practice as a bulwark against colonial occupation and domination of Muslim lands. Afghani, more than the Amir, has been the subject of scholarship and of orientalist vilifications. This is described and analyzed in this paper.