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Islamization of Thought and Society- a Critique of Sayyid Qutub

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Islamization of Thought and Society- a Critique of Sayyid Qutub ISLAMIZATION OF THOUGHT AND SOCIETY- A CRITIQUE OF SAYYID QUTUB ABSTRACT THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF Bottor of $l)tIo!Sop()p IN ISLAMIC STUDIES BY SHAHZADA ASH RAF MAQBOOL Under the Supervision of DR. OBAIDULLAH FAHAD DEPARTMENT OF ISLAMIC STUDIES ALIGARH MUSLIM UNIVERSITY ALIGARH (INDIA) 2007 Abstract The earliest period of Islamic history saw Islam penetrate into and reign supreme in all walks of the lives of the Arabs who happened to be its first recipients. It continued to embody in them in its purest form for about half a century till the demise of the pious Caliphate (khulaf-e-Rashidun) in 650AD. The transformation of Caliphate into Kingship at the hands of Ummayyids was a blow to Islam. In the subsequent ages it witnessed recurrent backlashes, none lesser intricate than the previous one. However, history bears tcslimony to the fact that whenever the declining motion of Islam aggravated, thinkers and reformers appeared and with their painstaking efforts and insightful suggestions they guided the Muslim Ummah to redirect this declining motion of Islam towards its original purity. An intensive study of the history of Muslim revivalist or reformist movements reveals that these thinkers differed in the means and ways they suggested for bringing about the change, the variation being entailed by the different conditions and situations they lived in, and responded to. This variation in the methods and means to be adopted for bringing about Islamization is more noticeable in the movements that appeared after World War I, especially after the abolition of the temporal institution of Caliphate in 1924 at the hands of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. This was a period when the Muslim world came under a heavy influence of the heathen, secular ideals propagated vigorously by the West, which unfortunately colonized a great part of the Muslim world. One such method which reflects the concern of the Muslim thinkers and reformers about the catastrophic influence of western secular ideals over the Muslim Ummah was the one that took the shape of a full-fledged movement in the 1970s under the aegis of Ismail Raji al-Fanqi, namely the Islamization of knowledge movement. Islamization of knowledge was originally suggested by Sayyid Abul Ala Maiwdudi in the 1930s and by Sayed Naquib al-Attas in the 1970s. It was however, al-Faruqi who in co-operation with his colleagues transformed it into a full-fledged movement. This movement was based on the premise that the main problem with the Muslim Ummah of today was with their thought. The 'thought of Ummah' according to the advocates of Islamization of knowledge movement had suffered a crisis owing to the religious-secular dualism existing in the educ£itional system of the Muslim world. Al-Faruqi, the main architect of Islamization of knowledge movement explicitly argued that there can be no doubt that the main locus and the core of "t/mwa/z's malaise" is the prevalent educational system. It is the breeding ground of the disease. It is in the schools and the colleges that self-estrangement from Islam and from its legacy and style are generated and perpetuated. The educational system is the laboratory where Muslim Youth are kneaded and cut, where their consciousness is moulded into a caricature of the West. However, al-Faruqi, believed that the Ummah will be able to rewrite its glorious chapters in the history, once this educational system is revamped and ihe gulf between religious-secular knowledge is bridged. This, he suggested can be done through Islamization of knowledge which involved the recasting of the modern western knowledge in accordance with the teachings of Qur'an and sunnah on the one hand while on the other hand, it emphasized on the renewal and updating of the traditional Islamic legacy to make it more appealing and cater to the more complex problems of today's world. The main branches of knowledge, which al-Faruqi and his supporters identified for Islamization, pertained to the disciplines of humanities and social sciences. The abstract sciences, owing to their value neutral character need not be taken so seriously in their view. But the disciplines of humanities and social sciences being value laden and dealing with the regulation of human life needed to be given priority for their Islamization. Consequently, a number of works relating to Islamic economics, Islamic psychology have come down to us, indicating the urgency which the advocates this movement attached to the Islamization of these disciplines. An important issue with which these thinkers were confronted was the issue of methodology. The process of Islamization of knowledge, I.e. critical evaluation of knowledge both modern western and traditional Islamic, naturally led them to search for a new methodology. In their endeavor to develop a frame work for the process of Islamization, these thinkers identified inadequacies and pitfalls in both the traditional Islamic methodology as well as in the dominant western methodology. The inadequacy of the traditional methodology revealed itself in two diametrically opposed tendencies according to al-Faruqi (i) the tendency to restrict the field of ijitihd to legal reasoning, subsuming all modern problems under legal categories, thereby reducing the Mujtahid to a Faqih and (ii) the tendency to eliminate all criteria based on reason by adopting a "purely intuitive and esoteric methodology". On the other hand the problem with the western methodology is its exclusive reliance on reason and the complete rejection of revelation as the source of knowledge. The new methodology which al-Faruqi and his supporters sought to devise was to avoid the pitfalls of both these methodologies. It was to be chalked out in a manner as to pave the way for (i) the redefinition of the scope oiijitihadXo establish its relevance and use in all spheres of life including social, economic, political and cultural, (ii) classification of the role of the Faqih and (iii) rectification of the relation between reason and revelation. Despite dominating the discourse on Islam for nearly two decades, the movement of Islamization of knowledge could not yield the results which al- Faruqi and others had hoped at the fime they initiated it. This may be attributed to the apparently elitist character of this movement, its appeal being largely limited to only the intellectual section of the Ummah. On the other hand Sayyid Qutb's views regarding the method for bringing about Islamization have remained appealing to a great majority of the Ummah. Qutb's views on Islamization, however, must be seen within the paradigm of his understanding of Islam. To him Islam was a total and complete system and way of life. It did not require any "spare parts" from outside or any change for completion. Man is incapable of adding anything to it or making any correction in it. It is so comprehensive, interdependent and interwoven that it covers all aspects of human life and the various genuine needs of man as well as of his different activities. With such an understanding of Islam, it is not surprising to see Qutb express a kind of detest and fear regarding the pursuit of the modern disciplines of humanities and social sciences. These disciplines pertain to the regulation and development of human life and as such propound models for human life. But what makes them unfit in life of a Muslim is their neglect of any Divine source of knowledge. Qutb stresses it quite forcefully that the basic planning of life must be left to that absolute and complete science which is entirely void of any ignorance. To him the Shariah is so all encompassing that it should govern personal criminal, civil and commercial activity. After an in depth study and analysis of the views and ideas of various prominent thinkers of the field of social sciences, Qutb highlighted the many lacunae of these sciences, as challenging the divinity of Allah by not only suggesting life models but also by projecting a negative and an abstract notion of God. He, particularly gives a detailed description of the gods as conceived by various philosophers including Plato, Aristotle etc. Their gods are found to be abstract ones by Qutb with no will power and knowledge. Qutb also argues that the humanities and social sciences attack the humanity of man by redefining him in terms of mere matter. By redefining man, these disciplines blunred the distinguishing character of human being (from other animals) by reducing him to a creafion that is no longer an agent in possession of a will ad capable of acting and believing, but mere matter, outside the process of making history and completely subservient to its allegedly irresistible forces and patterns. The most manifest consequences of such a redefinition of man, in Qutb's view is the inhumanity perpetrated against man in the name of some man-made ideology or another. Communism is quite often pointed out by him as a man-made system or ideology that does great harm to the dignity of man. He also sees Marxism reducing man to a mere matter, Darwinism reducing him to mere animal and Freudism reducing him to a mere sexual being. In contrast to humanities and social sciences, the pure sciences are seen by Qutb as originally Islamic and facilitating mankind in the achievement of their goals as the vicegerents of God. In fact Qutb does not believe in merely Islamizing the humanities and social sciences for bringing about an overall Islamization. On the contrary, he believes in the intrinsic capacity of the Shariah to cater to all the needs and requirements of the Muslims within the paradigm of their divinely assigned role as the vicegerents of God.
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