The The Dilemma of a Triune God: Muslim Polemics of Christian Theology in the Colonial Malabar and Abul Kamal Kaderi’s Critique of Trinity

Abstract

This article examines the nature and motive of religious polemics in the British Malabar taking Maulawi Abul Kamal Kaderi’s works as an example. Two polemical works of Kaderi, traditional Sunni scholar affiliated to Samastha Kerala Jamiyyathul Ulema, are dicussed with regard to his views on Christian theology. The works, Naqd al-Anājīl and al-Ḥusām al-Mashḥūdh, deal with a wide range of topics and this article specially focus on the trinitarian belief. Kaderi’s works are constituted by three predominant themes as follow: (i) He concomitantly acknowledges Christian consensus over trinitarian doctrine, and that they are insurmountably dichotomous in its explanations. (ii) He dismisses the medieval trend of conceiving Godhead as a Substance in philosophical sense. (iii) He questions the illogicity of hypostatic union and hypostatization of divine attributes itself. In a methodological sense, Kaderi throughout his analysis heavily draws upon medieval Muslim apologetics ranging from Ibn Ḥazm to Ibn Taymiyyah while his works also carry an anti-colonial thread. It is, therefore, self-evident that anti colonial discourses have internalised serious religious polemics among the colonised Muslim bodies of Malabar apart from mere political reactions.