When the Other Speaks: Ismāʿīl Gasprinskii and the Concept of Islamic Reformation

Through analysis of the Russian-language writings of the prominent Crimean Tatar Muslim educator Ismāʿīl Gasprinskii, this article engages in unpacking the term ‘Islamic Reformation’. Gasprinskii’s membership of various, not necessarily overlapping social groups, including Russian conservative circles and international Muslim liberal networks, gave rise to the multitude of complex, often mutually exclusive meanings that the term enjoyed in his work. Despite clear references that Gasprinskii made to European and global Islamic discourses on civilisation and progress, his texts remained highly sensitive to Russia’s own insecure stance vis-à-vis Europe. Responding to the nation-building rhetoric of Russia’s elites, Gasprinskii conformed to and simultaneously challenged dominant cultural codes concerning Russia’s ethnic and religious minorities in many subtle ways. His case thus invites a reconsideration of the modes of conversation that existed between the coloniser and the colonised at the turn of the twentieth century, whereby we see them not as instances of uncontested domination by and imposition of European models, but as a complex and multidirectional process in which Muslim figures, like Gasprinskii, could exercise a significant degree of agency.