This article traces the use of a ḥadīth prohibiting women’s literacy during the colonial period. Although rejected by most ḥadīth scholars and ignored by jurists, it gained prominence in the second half of the nineteenth century through the works of scholars who weaponized it as a response to colonial education projects. As debates on the religious permissibility of modern education spread, the ḥadīth accompanied them, empowering scholars who attempted to push back against modernizing national education projects. Through an analysis of the debate around this ḥadīth in British India and Egypt, I highlight the importance of the ḥadīth as a pragmatic – and not simply normative – source within Islamic legal discussions as they articulated responses to colonialism.

In the second half of the nineteenth century in British India, a rapidly-evolving political and cultural landscape drove Muslims to re-evaluate their relationships with other groups in the Subcontinent. Questions regarding proper clothing, inter-sect marriages, the status of the legal system, and even requirements of eating beef were posed to scholars in an attempt to define the contours of Sunnī identity. This article investigates the questions and answers provided to these and other questions in the fatwā collection of Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Ḥayy (1848-1886), the preeminent scholar of the Farangī Maḥall seminary in Lucknow, British India. It focuses on the fatwās issued regarding the interaction with the three largest non-Sunnī Muslim groups in the Subcontinent during this period: Shīʿa Muslims, the Hindus, and the British government. By analyzing the questions posed to ʿAbd al-Ḥayy and his answers, the article argues that he applied a methodology of negotiated adherence to the Ḥanafī School in order to emphasize the differences between the Subcontinent’s diverse communities, while simultaneously encouraging communal cohesion. Through his fatwās ʿAbd al-Ḥayy both moderated and catalyzed the shaping of Sunnī identity, giving religious legitimacy to those who emphasized Muslim difference while at the same time left room for cooperation with other communities. These fatwās would form the backdrop for Muslim political involvement in the Indian independence movement and eventually form the foundations of both India’s unique religious-secular national fabric and calls for Muslim independence as British colonialism came to an end in the twentieth century.

Testing, evaluation, training, and characterization of large, complex information systems is difficult, expensive, and time consuming. Sandia National Laboratories has pursued research over the last 10 years to develop tools and technologies to help address these issues. Enter EmulyticsTM. The goals of this paper are to: (1) describe “EmulyticsTM” (emulation + analytics); (2) bring awareness to some of the current research efforts at Sandia and how they have been employed for a variety projects; and (3) share some lessons learned and success stories. The discussion of EmulyticsTM research begins by outlining the methodology for successfully creating models of large, complex systems using a variety of techniques. These systems include the blending of simulation, virtualization of hardware and software, emulation of devices, and direct deployment of actual hardware and software – that is, live-virtual-constructive (i.e., real-emulated-simulated) environments. Next, the discussion covers the building blocks used to create immersive, high-fidelity, system emulation environments to perform testing in areas such as: test and evaluation of security architectures and security devices; personnel training; course of action (COA) analysis; and application performance. Finally, we discuss some of the current research efforts, deployments and challenges.