Brief notes:

AK: You've been working on many different topics, in many different areas. How would you describe your work as a whole?

MKM: Law has always been with me. I started working at the Islamic Research Institute in Pakistan, which was involved with the legal question. Islamic law, moreover, is a source for all types of questions, whether you are talking about society or human rights or culture.

AK: A theme that I pick up in your writing is the notion of change. How have you dealt with this notion, and more particularly within the context of modernity or modernization?

MKM: When I embarked upon my M.A. in Islamic studies, the questions that we were dealing with, the discussions that we had, always presumed a question of change. I have come to understand change, I think, gradually. In the beginning my own attitude was to be critical. For instance, questions about whether you should learn English or you should go to college, were my life questions which I had to debate when I was young. My father was not keen on my going to college; he wanted me to go to either to Nadwa or to Deoband. When I was at university, I would come home and sometimes mention certain issues. For instance, one question that bothered me at that time was that according to the al-Hidayah, the testimony of non-Muslims may not be accepted. And the authority for that view came from the Qur'anic verse that God is not going to grant authority to non-Muslims over Muslims. The context in the Qur'an was the war of Badr, and I thought that that was not proper evidence. So I mentioned this and my father was soangry that I was critical of al-Hidayah.

AK: Was your father schooled in Islamic law himself?

MKM: No, he had no formal education in Islam. He was a qualified tabib (traditional medic), but he never went to a madrasa. During the freedom struggle, he spent months and years in jail with scholars like Mufti Kifayatulla. So staying with them, he knew all these discussions and religious debates.