ABSTRACT
The age of the complete Islamic man, the scholar and traveller, was long over in the Muslim world; the age of mediocrity had begun. The alim, scholar, would be reduced to the babu, the clerk, myopic and self-righteous; a legacy of the European empire. The scholar would become a bigot and the saint an introvert, and this in spite of the central position of ilm, knowledge, in the ideal. Muslim society in the twentieth century has still to emerge from the ravages of colonialism. Henceforth, a scholar, saint or ruler would tend to work within his own defined arena reflecting the caste and class system of European imperialism. They would condemn each other with shrill voices employing sterile labels taken from Western scholarship and Orientalists.
