Institute for the Study of Muslims and Islam in India

By 2050, India is projected to have the world’s largest Muslim population

From about 200 million today to 311 million by 2050.

Today: World Population Review, 2026 (14.6 per cent of India). 2050: Pew Research Center projection, 2015.

ISMII, based in Chicago, studies Indian Muslims through research, teaching and archives.

An institute of

In partnership with

Source: Coastlines Natural Earth

Today

Among the most diverse Muslim communities in the world, and among the least studied

Few Muslim communities anywhere span so many regions, languages and traditions. Fewer still have so little dedicated scholarship.

Places

From Kashmir to Kerala and from Assam to Gujarat, Muslims reside in every state of India, in cities, towns and villages.

Languages

Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Tamil and many more, each with its own Muslim literature.

Traditions

Many schools of thought, spiritual paths and local communities, each with its own institutions, scholars and ways of living the faith.

1 in 10of the world’s Muslims live in India.World Population Review, 2026

0 of 38Islamic and Middle East studies centres in the US and Canada dedicated to Islam in India.The Maydan, “Islamic Studies Centers (US / Canada / Middle East–North Africa)”, June 2020.

4.8 mIndian Americans, among them an Indian Muslim community of uncounted size, in the absence of a religion based Census in the US.Pew Research Center, from US Census Bureau data, 2022

Our response

The study of Indian Muslims and Islam in India deserves a wider place in global scholarship. ISMII was founded to build it.

The scholars of 2050 are already in school. Building the academic infrastructure now gives them stronger resources, better-trained scholars, preserved archives and a more developed body of knowledge. The work is needed, it is achievable, and it has begun.

The Institute for the Study of Muslims and Islam in India will build that infrastructure through research, teaching, preservation and public programmes.

Academic freedom

Consequential ideas are better understood when they can be examined, placed in context, debated and criticised.

Scholarly integrity

We hold our work to a simple standard. What we claim, we can source; what we count, we date; what we expect, we mark as expected, not as settled.

Pluralism

Indian Muslim life was never lived alone. It was shared with neighbours of many faiths, and ISMII studies it in that shared light.

Events

All lectures and events

Lecture Series

Scholars of Faith

Girls’ madrasas in North India have been filling since the 1990s; in some districts of western Uttar Pradesh they now outnumber the boys’. Drawing on her work inside Jamiʿa Nur al-Shariʿat, a Barelwi girls’ madrasa in Shahjahanpur founded in 2003, Usha Sanyal traces the tradition it belongs to, from Ahmad Riza Khan’s Ahl-e Sunnat in Rohilkhand after Mughal decline to the presses, fatwas and allied pirs that carried it beyond Bareilly, and asks what changes when women claim religious authority from inside the tradition.

Details and registration

Date: 24Saturday
October 2026
Time: 12:00 PM Chicago6:00 PM London10:30 PM New Delhi
Where: OnlineFree with registration

Speakers

Dr Usha Sanyal

Coming lectures

The full calendar

Lecture07Nov 2026Sat · 12:00 CST

Online · registration link to follow

The Loss of Hindustan

Manan Ahmed Asif · Columbia University12:00 PM Chicago · 6:00 PM London · 11:30 PM New Delhi

Manan Ahmed Asif on the idea of Hindustan and how it was lost. A thirty-minute lecture, fifteen minutes in conversation, then questions from the audience.

Lecture28Nov 2026Sat · 12:00 CST

Online · registration link to follow

The Gabriel of Madness: Islamic Poetry, Ethics, and Muslim Life in an Age of Hindu Nationalism

Anand Vivek Taneja · Vanderbilt University12:00 PM Chicago · 6:00 PM London · 11:30 PM New Delhi

How Indian Muslims have drawn on Islamic traditions and Urdu poetry to sustain an ethical and plural life under Hindu-nationalist rule. A lecture from his new book, then a conversation with Ali Javed and questions from the audience.

The Institute’s work

The Spring 2027 course The journal

A · Research

Research

built for the discipline

Scholarship, working papers and Indian Muslim, the Institute’s peer-reviewed journal, first issue December 2027.

B · Teaching

Teaching

built for students

University courses and certificate programmes at American Islamic College, doctoral fellowships and mentorship.

C · Preservation

Preservation

built to last

Digital archives and preservation projects: manuscripts, oral histories, recordings and community records, in India and in the diaspora.

D · Public understanding

Public understanding

built for everyone

Public lectures and conferences, publications, podcasts and visual storytelling, for the public in India, in the diaspora and across the Muslim world.

Islam in India

Three moments from the history

Arrival by sea, a producer of knowledge, and renewal in print.

By tradition, 629 CE · Kodungallur

Arrival by sea

Kerala’s tradition dates the Cheraman Juma Masjid at Kodungallur to 629 CE, within the lifetime of the Prophet. Islam reached India’s coast through trade and contact, and was part of the coastal world long before it was part of the political one.

The Indian Ocean from the Red Sea to the Strait of Malacca, with the maritime corridors.Coastlines Natural Earth · routes schematic

Mughal India · the Hijaz · the Ottoman world

A producer of knowledge, not only a recipient

Indian scholars kept close ties with Mecca and Medina, and Indian Sufi lodges stood in Jerusalem, Damascus and Istanbul. A compendium of Hanafi law compiled in Mughal India is still known across the Muslim world as al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya, the Indian fatwas.

The westward network: from Delhi, Hyderabad and the coasts to the Hijaz, Jerusalem, Damascus and Istanbul.Coastlines Natural Earth · routes schematic

1858 – 1899 · Lucknow, Deoband, Aligarh

Renewal in print

After the collapse of Muslim political power, a seminary at Deoband in 1866 and a college at Aligarh in 1875 rebuilt Islamic learning, and the lithographic press carried it to a mass Urdu readership, widening who could hold religious authority.

Read the full history