Challenging common views of Islam as hostile to critical thinking, Irfan Ahmad makes the far-reaching argument that potent systems and modes for critique are inherent in Islam. Demonstrating the Enlightenment’s Indian liberal notions of reason and critique as ethnic and drawing on south Asian Muslim traditions, he drafts an alternative genealogy of critique. He broadens critique to encompass everyday sociocultural activity beyond the world of intellectuals. Religion as Critique allows space for new theoretical approaches to modernity, religion and change.