A. Azfar Moin
· Associate Professor; MES & MELC GSCVerifiedUniversity of Texas at Austin · Comparative Literature
Active 2008–2023
About
A. Azfar Moin is an Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. His academic focus includes Sufism and Sainthood in Islam, Sacred Kingship and Sovereignty, as well as the History, Art, and Architecture of Early Modern Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia. His work encompasses Persian Historiography and Literature, contributing to the understanding of these regions and topics through a scholarly lens. Moin's research and teaching aim to deepen knowledge of Islamic mysticism, political authority, and cultural history within these historical contexts.
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Research topics
- Political Science
- History
- Ancient history
- Sociology
- Archaeology
- Philosophy
- Law
- Theology
- Religious studies
- Epistemology
Selected publications
A heresy inquisition in the National Assembly and the Islamisation of Pakistan
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society · 2023-08-03
article1st authorCorrespondingAbstract The goal of the second constitutional amendment passed in 1974 was to excommunicate the Ahmadis and establish Pakistan as a bona fide Islamic state. The Pakistani state accomplished this goal through an extraordinary process in which the National Assembly conducted a month-long examination of Ahmadi beliefs. Conducted by the attorney general of Pakistan, who was aided by the ulema members of parliament, these proceedings were a type of heresy inquisition in which the leaders of the Ahmadi community served as defendants. This article examines the key religious issues involved in these proceedings from a longer historical perspective that includes the Mughal and Safavid eras. In doing so, it highlights how pre-modern forms of religious persecution and accommodation came to be adapted to serve the ends of a modern constitutional nation-state.
2022-01-01
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingJournal of Law and Religion · 2022-05-30
article1st authorCorrespondingAn abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.
<i>Sulh-i kull</i> as an oath of peace: Mughal political theology in history, theory, and comparison
Modern Asian Studies · 2022 · 6 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Ancient history
- Religious studies
Abstract Sulh-i kull or ‘Total Peace’ with all religions was a policy introduced by the Mughal empire in South Asia in the late sixteenth century. It was a radically accommodative stance for its day, especially when compared to the intolerant manner in which other Muslim and Christian polities of the early modern world dealt with religious difference. This article introduces a new perspective on Mughal Total Peace by arguing that it was meant to solve a long-standing problem created by the monotheistic ban on oaths sworn on non-biblical deities. Such a ban restricted the ability of Muslim kings to solemnize peace treaties with their non-monotheist rivals and subjects. In the second half of the article, I examine two pre-Mughal cases, from the eleventh century (Mahmud of Ghazna) and the seventh century (the prophet Muhammad), respectively, to explore what other, less ‘total’, mechanisms were invented to suspend this ban and enable oath-taking and solemn peace-making between monotheist and non-monotheist. In effect, I use the Mughal case to highlight a specific issue that shaped political theology in Islam over the long term.
Safavid Iran in the South Asian political imagination
2021-05-27
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingAt the turn of the seventeenth century, the Safavid Empire in Iran contained far fewer people than Mughal India and enjoyed considerably less wealth and power. The Iranian dynasty loomed large in the political imagination of early modern South Asia. The Safavids, with their empire located at the center of Muslim Asia, were the only dynasty to share borders with all three of the other Turkic empires of the time, the Ottomans, Uzbeks, and Timurids. An element of Safavid ‘international’ cultural prestige was their control over the premier urban centers of artistic, literary, and philosophical production of the post-Mongol era, namely Tabriz, Herat, Shiraz, and Isfahan. After suffering much humiliation at the Safavid court, Homayun managed to extract material and military aid from the Safavids, but not before he had made pilgrimage to their ancestral shrine in Ardabil. Sufis had begun to play a vital role in South Asian politics well before the advent of the Timurids.
Muslim Kingship and the Problem of Un-Conversion
Political Theology · 2021-12-29
article1st authorCorrespondingThe transcendence of divinity in Islam along with submission to God as the ultimate sovereign created a host of challenges for Muslim kings in their formal, legalistic interactions with non-monotheists, especially those communities who perceived the divine as immanent in nature and did not make a distinction between the veneration of kings and the worship of gods. While the preferred biblical mode for smoothing such engagements between the believer and non-believer was “conversion” of the latter, this approach was often neither possible nor desirable from the perspective of Muslim rulers in Asia. Thus, in many cases, Muslim kings practiced a transgressive form of boundary crossing and translation across religious divisions erected by biblical monotheism, what I call “un-conversion,” by deliberately bypassing or overriding the scriptural requirements of Islam. This essay examines the theoretical implications of such un-conversions for our understanding of sovereignty and political theology in Islam.
Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East · 2020 · 1 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Sociology
- Political Science
- History
Abstract Why did Shahab Ahmed treat Islam as a puzzle to solve in his book What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic? Moin examines this question in light of the historical changes that gave shape to the milieu that Ahmed refers to as the Bengal-to-Balkans complex.
Journal of Islamic Studies · 2020-06-18 · 1 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingIntellectual Networks in Tīmūrid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters By İlker Evrim Binbaş Intellectual Networks in Tīmūrid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters By İlker Evrim Binbaş (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [ 2016] 2018. Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization), xviii + 340 pp. Price PB £29.99. EAN 978–1107689336. A Azfar Moin A Azfar Moin University of Texas E-mail: amoin@utexas.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Islamic Studies, Volume 31, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 410–413, https://doi.org/10.1093/jis/etaa026 Published: 14 September 2020
Millennial Sovereignty and the Mughal Dynasty
Oxford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 1 citations
1st authorCorresponding- Political Science
- Ancient history
- History
Abstract A distinguishing feature of the Mughal (or Timurid) Empire is that several of its most powerful rulers styled themselves not only as temporal sovereigns but also as sacred beings, and claimed authority over matters of religion. This aspect of Mughal sovereignty was institutionalized by Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605) when he publicly proclaimed his spiritual lordship close to the turn of the first Islamic millennium and protected all religions and sects under a “universal peace” (sulh-i kull). This article connects and compares this style of Mughal sacred kingship to religious developments in Iran and Central Asia after the Mongol conquests led by Chinggis Khan. There the destruction of the caliphate and the strengthening of Sufi orders had given shape to saintly and messianic forms of sovereignty as exemplified by the Safavid dynasty of ‘Alid and Sufi origins. Less tolerant than the Mughals in India, the Safavids forcibly converted Iran to Shi‘ism.
Messianism and the Constitution of Pakistan
2019-07-24 · 1 citations
book-chapter1st authorCorrespondingThis essay examines how messianism shaped the practice and conception of sovereignty in Pakistan. It focuses on the minority Ahmadi community, which was initially protected by the state against discrimination but was then excommunicated as non-Muslim by constitutional decree and, subsequently, persecuted and criminalised by law. As such, the Ahmadi community gradually but steadily became central to the constitution of Pakistan as a state that saw itself duty bound to demarcate and defend the boundaries of Islam. I explore how messianism played a role in this dynamic in two interlocking ways, as an explicit religious doctrine of the expected arrival of a savior and as a sociological phenomenon of a leader who implicitly assumes the charismatic role of a savior in a moment of cataclysmic crisis. The politician who fit this latter schema was Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who, after the violent civil war of 1971 in which East Pakistan broke away as Bangladesh, amended the constitution to define the Ahmadis as non-Muslims. Overall, this essay attempts to shed new light on how overlapping religious, sociological, and political processes transformed Pakistan constitutionally into an Islamic state.
Frequent coauthors
- 314 shared
Robert Oppenheim
- 314 shared
Johan Elverskog
Southern Methodist University
- 314 shared
Sumit Guha
The University of Texas at Austin
- 294 shared
Iza Hussin
University of Cambridge
- 294 shared
Norbert Peabody
Southern Methodist University
- 294 shared
Eleanor Newbigin
SOAS University of London
- 1 shared
M. R. Ghanoonparvar
- 1 shared
Jalāl Āl Aḥmad
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