Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, also spelled Sayyid Ahmad Khan, was a Muslim reformer, philosopher, and educationist in nineteenth-century British India.
Syed Ahmad Khan
Nawab Mohsin-ul-Mulk, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Justice Syed Mahmood, he was the first Muslim to serve as a High Court judge in the British Raj.
First issue of the journal Muhammadan Social Reformer dated 24 December 1870, it was a pioneering publication initiated by Sir Syed to promote liberal ideas in Muslim society.
The court of Akbar, an illustration from a manuscript of the Ain-e-Akbari
Islamic modernism is a movement that has been described as "the first Muslim ideological response to the Western cultural challenge," attempting to reconcile the Islamic faith with modern values such as democracy, civil rights, rationality, equality, and progress. It featured a "critical reexamination of the classical conceptions and methods of jurisprudence", and a new approach to Islamic theology and Quranic exegesis (Tafsir). A contemporary definition describes it as an "effort to re-read Islam's fundamental sources—the Qur'an and the Sunna, —by placing them in their historical context, and then reinterpreting them, non-literally, in the light of the modern context."
Islamic Modernism and Fundamentalism Genealogy
Ottoman intellectual and activist Namık Kemal (d. 1888)
Indian educationist and philosopher Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898)
Egyptian Islamic jurist and scholar Mahmud Shaltut