Broadly speaking, this dissertation examines how traditionally trained Muslim jurists respond to changes brought on by modernity. More specifically, this dissertation focuses on a group of traditionally trained jurists (Ḥanafīs) who belong to a social/religious reform movement (Deobandīs) that arose in a colonial context (British India) and is currently operating in a postcolonial state (Pakistan). The main case study is a recent, as yet unconcluded, debate among contemporary Pakistani Deobandīs regarding the legitimacy or otherwise of Islamic banking. The dissertation uses this case study to answer two sets of questions, one pertaining to flexibility in Islamic law and the other regarding the relationship between legal education and legal reasoning. The dissertation thus has three major parts dealing respectively with Deobandī education, Deobandī economic thought, and the Deobandī approach to fatwa-giving. One of the central arguments of this study is that even a strict taqlīd regime (adherence to a single school of law) like the one that Deobandīs follow contains within it tools for flexibility as exemplified by Muftī Taqī ʿUsmānī’s approach to Islamic banking. These tools are the principles governing deviation from the standard opinion (muftā bihi) of the Ḥanafī School such as ḍarūra (necessity), ḥāja (need), ʿumūm balwā (general affliction), ʿurf (custom), etc. Deploying these tools, however, requires a jurist to exercise his subjective judgement which is what separates Taqī ʿUsmānī from his critics. A jurist’s subjective judgment on any issue is a function of his education, experience, and research. Whereas Deobandī madrasas provide excellent training in Islamic sciences, the average Deobandi graduate suffers from weaknesses in the other two areas, i.e., limited exposure to the world and reliance on anecdotal research as opposed to social scientific research. This is a consequence of the heavier focus on transmission of knowledge in Deobandī madrasas as opposed to production of new knowledge. Moreover, these madrasas developed a religious vs. worldly knowledge binary during the colonial period that persists to this day. The result is an educational system that is not designed to produce intellectuals. Part of the reason why Deobandī approach to knowledge and education has been slow to change is the extremely important role senior scholars, called akābir or elders, play in the movement. More than the ʿulamā as a whole, it is these akābir who are the custodians of change among Deobandīs, and they have yet to practically embrace the idea of integration of medieval and modern knowledge. As a result, Deobandīs as a group have still not fully understood the modern condition especially in so far as some areas of fiqh such as economics and finance overlap with national-level legislation or policymaking and thus require one to engage in system-level thinking as opposed to piecemeal fatwas. Although Taqī ʿUsmānī is more cognizant of this need than his critics, he is the exception that proves the rule. Consequently, not only is there a disconnect between the critics’ arguments against Islamic banking and their other fatwas on economic and financial matters, Deobandīs’ overall approach to education and fatwa-giving also handicaps them in their self-assigned mission to implement Islam in Pakistan as a comprehensive way of life.