“A dedicated collector of manuscripts on the Islamic sciences, theology, poetry, music, history and literature, Shairani used Stubbe’s manuscript as a political tool for bolstering Muslim nationalist sentiments, in the India Punjab and Abroad, and opposing the anti-Islamic Orientalism that facilitated imperial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth century British India.”
“In his introduction, Shairani is explicit about his anti-imperialist political theology. Reflecting on Stubbe’s political career and his historical account of how the Roman empire imposed the Trinitarian heresy on primitive Christians, Shairani writes, “To us, who are Muslims, these admissions are of deep significance, especially at the present time, when England is sending a army of missionaries to cajole us into accepting these very doctrines [Trinitariannism]” (xiii).”
“His appendix to the manuscript notes that Orientalism which he calls “hostile propaganda” is responsible for the Crusades, the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, and “last, not least, the modern attempt to rob the Muslims of their faith, in order to lure them to the belief in the doctrines of Trinitarianism. (238)”
“In Shairani’s imagination, the Trinitarian heresy enabled Western imperialism’s missionary agenda in fourth century Roman Europe and twentieth century British India. Implicitly, he interprete Stubbe’s account as a corrective to this repressive and faulty political theology, which was enshrined in late Victorian and Edwardian definitions of a progressive Christian modernity.”
Source: Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 By Humberto Garcia
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