From courts to community: The global resurrection of Islam

For nearly a millennium, from AD 700 AD to AD 1700, the Islamic world was not merely a religious community but a civilisational order where faith and power moved together. Mosques, madrasas, courts of law, Sufi shrines, and networks of scholars were sustained by political authority – from the Abbasids to the Ottomans, from Safavid Iran to the Mughals in India. Religion was not separate from governance; it was embedded in society’s structure.

This long partnership began to fracture dramatically, starting in the late 18th century. The turning points were military and economic: Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, the defeat of Tipu Sultan in 1799, and the steady expansion of European empires across Asia and Africa. By the early 20th century, almost the entire Muslim world had come under Western domination – British in India, French in North Africa, Dutch in Indonesia, Russian in Central Asia, and Anglo-French mandates in the Middle East.

This was not simply a political conquest. It was the dismantling of an entire civilisational infrastructure. State patronage for Islamic education was withdrawn. Madrasas lost endowments that had sustained them for centuries. Scholars trained in religious sciences were excluded from new bureaucracies that privileged Western education. Islamic law was pushed out of the public sphere and confined to personal matters like marriage and inheritance. Even there, it was reshaped by colonial courts applying foreign legal principles.

In some regions, the transformation was more radical. In Turkey, the reforms of the 19th century and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s revolution in the 20th century abolished the caliphate, closed madrasas and Sufi lodges, replaced Islamic law with European codes, and imposed new cultural norms, ranging from dress to script. Religious institutions were nationalised or dissolved. What had taken centuries to build was, in a few decades, stripped away.

The result was a profound crisis. The Islamic world was no longer anchored in political sovereignty. The structures that had once sustained religious life were weakened or erased. As one poet lamented in the 19th century, everything – from governance to education, from economy to imagination – seemed to lie in foreign hands.

Yet this dismantling did not produce disappearance. Instead, it triggered a remarkable transformation. Deprived of State support, Islamic societies began to rebuild themselves from below.

The first response was intellectual and spiritual. Reform movements emerged across the Muslim world, calling for a return to foundational texts – the Quran and Hadith – while questioning accumulated traditions. Reformers inspired a shift from inherited authority to personal engagement with scripture. Religion moved inward, into the conscience of the individual believer, who was no longer simply part of a State-backed order but an active participant in rebuilding society through correct conduct.

The second response was institutional, but outside the State. In South Asia, new madrasas were founded, most famously at Deoband in 1867. Unlike earlier institutions, they relied on public donations rather than royal patronage. They created networks of scholars rooted in society rather than in courts. They used print technology to spread religious knowledge widely in vernacular languages. This model multiplied across regions. Thousands of madrasas emerged in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, offering not only education but also identity and community support. In places where the State failed to provide schooling, they became crucial institutions.

Alongside education came movements of mass mobilisation. The Tablighi Jamaat encouraged ordinary believers to preach and reform themselves and others. Jamaat-e-Islami sought to create disciplined communities that could influence the State. Similar organisations arose in Egypt, Indonesia, and elsewhere, combining religious teaching with social service and political aspiration.

In Turkey, where the State had aggressively secularised society, Sufi networks and intellectual movements quietly rebuilt religious life through study circles, community networks, and education. They emphasised knowledge, discipline, and service, creating new forms of Islamic presence within a secular framework.

What emerges from this history is not a simple story of decline and recovery, but a transformation in the locus of power. Earlier, Islam was sustained by rulers. In the modern era, it is sustained by communities. Authority shifted from courts and empires to classrooms, print networks, voluntary organisations, and individual conscience.

The dismantling of the Islamic world by colonial and modernising forces was real and often devastating. But the response was equally profound. By turning inward and outward at once – into personal piety and social organisation – Muslims across regions reconstructed a sense of continuity without relying on political sovereignty.

The result is a different kind of civilisation: less anchored in empire, more diffused across society; less dependent on rulers, more sustained by believers. This is not a return to the past, but a reconfiguration. What was once built from above now grows from below. And the world is feeling threatened.

The writer works with gods and demons who churn nectar from the ocean of Indian, Chinese, Islamic, Christian, even secular mythologies.

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.