Episode 90 - How colonialism redefined "Islam" and how Muslims are moving beyond it | Faisal Devji | UNAPOLOGETIC

UNAPOLOGETIC with Ashfaaq Carim · Aug 25, 2026 · 1h 36m

In the latest episode of UNAPOLOGETIC we sat down with Faisal Devji in Oxford. Devji is a widely acclaimed scholar of both South Asian history and the history of intellectual thought.

In his latest book, Devji presents a novel idea: that "Islam", as many of us commonly use the word today, meaning a single thing with a will and a direction of its own, rather than the faith Muslims practise, is barely 150 years old.

Sometime in the mid nineteenth century, people increasingly started using the word Islam not to describe the faith that Muslims follow, but as the name of something that acts. Islam…