The paper studies Muslim Modernizing discourses that emerged in colonial times in the 19th century and their approach towards the monumental traditional tafsīr works. Tentatively defined, the Modernist Islamic Reform (MIR) as “an effort, driven largely by the desire for ‘progress’ (a loaded concept), to reconcile Islam with modernity through re-interpretation while trying to remain authentic.” The paper seeks to demonstrate that the departure from the tafsīr tradition by the MIR had clearer political aims. For instance, al-Baydāwī’s tafsir was “the crowning achievement” of the tafsīr tradition (Walid Saleh). It is the very nature of Bayḍāwī’s tafsir, its interdisciplinary approach, and the imposing apparatus of commentaries and super-commentaries that it came to embody the tradition, that the MIR could not afford to work with. The exegetes within the MIR, therefore, saw it as necessary to marginalize it, if not deconstruct it. Abū al-Kalām Āzād (d. 1958) the upholder of the ‘unity of religions’ thesis in Indian politics assails the tafsīr of Bayḍāwī and its commentaries as the lowest levels the discipline of tafsīr ever reached in history. Āzād’s work had a disappointing reception in South Asia, and was poorly rated by early reviews of its English translation (Rudi Paret 1969). But a response from within the vicinity came from Mawdūdī (d. 1979) who mostly relied on the grammatical parsing of Bayḍāwī for his Urdu translation. The Later Mawdūdī (post 1947) was thoroughly traditional in his commentary (esp. vols. 3-6 of Tafhīm al-Qur’ān, see F. Abbot and C. Adams), relying on medieval authorities like al-Bayḍāwī and al-Nīsābūrī. Bayḍāwī was once again established as the founding text in South Asia. Scores of Urdu traditional “commentaries” (ḥāshiyyas) on al-Bayḍāwī have appeared in the last century alone. As in Martin Luther’s reforming exegesis, the rejection or marginalization of traditional works is still considered an indication/proclamation of modernization, and in the western academia it has found a remarkable revival, for example, in Angelika Neuwirth, calling for “detaching the Qur’anic text from Islamic tradition” and that the Islamic “tradition must be left out” (Der Koran Band 1 Frühmekkanische Suren). The radical desire that the medieval scholars can be silenced out of any scholarly dialogue does not appear to be much different from the approach of hardliner Muslim exegetes who anathematize the referencing of western academic works as “heretic” or “Islamophobic,” and these trends are likely to provoke an increased reliance on tradition.