Contemporary Islam
Merryl Wyn Davies series editor
How We Know
1 2 How We Know
Ilm and the Revival of Knowledge
Edited by Ziauddin Sardar
Grey Seal London
3 First published 1991 by Grey Seal Books
28 Burgoyne Road, London N4 1 AD, England
Copyright 1991 Ziauddin Sardar and contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers or their appointed agents.
British Library Cataloguing In Publication
How we know: ilm and the revival of knowledge. - (Contemporary Islam) 1. Sardar, Ziauddin 11. Series 181.07 IBSN 1-85640-0204
Acknowledgements With the exception of 'The Science Dimensions of Ilm' and 'Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals', which appeared in modified versions in, respectively, The Listener (25 January 1990) and Today's Problems, Tomorrow's Solutions edited by Abdullah Omar Naseef (Mansell: London, 1988), all other articles were originally published in Inquiry.
4 Contents
Contributors vi I Introduction: A Preface to al-Ghazali 1 2 Illuminating Ilm 10 3 The Civilization of the Book 24 4 Studying Islam Academically 40 5 Education as Imperialism 58 6 What Makes a University Islamic? 69 7 The Science Dimensions of Ilm 86 8 Limits to Information 97 9 Re-Educating the Muslim Intellectual 112 10 Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals 130 Index 145
5 Contributors
Munawar Ahmad Anees lectures at the Mara Institute of Technology, Shah Alam, Malaysia. He is the author of Guide to Sira and Hadith Literature in Western Languages and Biological Futures: Ethics, Gender and Technology.
S. Parvez Manzoor is professor of linguistics at Stockholm University and a leading critic and commentator.
Ibraheem Sulaiman is Director of the Centre of Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and the author of A Revolution in History: The Jihad of Usman Dan Fodio and The Islamic State and the Challenge of History: Ideals, Policies and Operation of the Sokoto Caliphate.
Ziauddin Sardar is an independent writer and broadcaster. He is the author of The Future of Muslim Civilization, Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come, Information and the Muslim World: A Strategy for the Twenty-First Century, Explorations in Islamic Science and numerous other books.
6 1
Introduction: A Preface to al-Ghazali
Ziauddin Sardar
'I WONDER HOW one who sought no knowledge can be moved to any noble deed? The thought occurs in one of the countless aphorisms with which al-Ghazali punctuates The Book of Knowledge. A few lines further, al-Ghazali has one of his wise men, ever ready to dispense wisdom, announce, 'Verily I pity no one as I pity the man who seeks knowledge but understands not, and him who understands and seeks it not'. A few lines before this declaration, yet another sage announces, 'The learned men come very near being gods; and all power which is not supported by knowledge is doomed'. In classical Muslim civilization these quips--freely used in scholarly tomes as well as in the more popular 'self-help' manuals for princes and paupers, recited in poetry concerts and related to mass audiences by storytellers--expressed the spirit of the time. Such advice was not only eagerly sought after but also seriously acted upon. Indeed, the flourishing classical Muslim civilization was totally obsessed with knowledge: with seeking it, acquiring it, talking and arguing about it, defining it, building institutions for dispensing it, writing about it, reading about it, collating it, disseminating it. The reason for all this was simple: ilm (knowledge) is one of the most fundamental and powerful concepts of Islam. In its various derivations, it is one of the most frequently
1 occurring terms in the Quran; indeed, only two other words appear more frequently: Allah (God) and Rabb (the Creator, the Sustainer). The Prophet himself emphasized the importance of ilm at every opportunity and gave lavish praise to those who burned the midnight oil in search of knowledge. At the top of it all, the pursuit of Urn was made a religious obligation for every believer. For the Muslims of the classical period, Islam was synonymous with i1m; without it, an Islamic civilization was unimaginable. In its early usage ilm signified accurate knowledge based on the Quran, its exposition and the sayings and examples (Sunnah) of the Prophet. It was contrasted with the results of the independent exercise of intelligence (ftqh), in the absence or ignorance of tradition, which was known as ray (opinion). Gradually the notion of ilm was broadened to mean 'science' (al-alum = sciences), an alim came to signify a scholar in a wide sense and faqih came to mean a specialist in religious law. (Al-Ghazali protests against this change of meaning and argues that the praise given in the Quran to the alim should only be applied to religious scholars, but he has been known to make a serious mistake or two.) The numerous definitions and expositions of ilm produced during the classical period further expanded the notion of ilm. (In his Knowledge Triumphant, Franz Rosenthall outlines eight hundred Muslim definitions of knowledge.) Religious, philosophical and mystical trends merged to expand the boundaries of ilm, which came to signify not just science but also thought and education, the deliberations of the philosophers as well as the mysticism of the Sufis, the endeavours of the calligraphers and illustrators, the art of the poets, and works of literature and belles-lettres. Contemporary Muslim societies have done nothing to broaden the parameters of ilm, nor have they reflected adequately on its central importance in shaping and sustaining the civilization of Islam. For Muslims of today, the notion of ilm appears to have lost its motivational and
2 inspirational vigour. At the end of the twentieth century, Muslim societies are characterized by a total absence of original thought and innovation, dominance of illiteracy, ignorance, parochialism and narrow-mindedness, and the accompanying physical, mental and spiritual poverty that all this has generated. Indeed, contemporary Muslim civilization is like a stagnant lake, slowly but surely being acidified by the blind imitation of obscurantist tradition from the one end, and Western fads, fashions and excesses from the other. The oxygen that can breathe fresh life into stagnant Muslim societies is an unconditional, fully-fledged, contemporary revival of ilm: the pursuit, the generation, the processing, the retrieval, the dissemination, the analysis and the criticism of knowledge must become the prime focus and permanent goal of all Muslim individuals and societies. Once again, Islam must become, and be clearly seen to be, synonymous with knowledge. This reorientation of the umma towards a knowledge based society must start, as Munawar Ahmad Anees argues in 'Revitalizing Ilm', 'with a fresh, critical under-standing of the classical Muslim epistemologies and a creative, contemporary formulation of the concept of ilm'. The object of the exercise is to conserve the best in our tradition and be original at the same time. The tradition needs to be conserved because it is intrinsically linked with our historical and cultural identity; the benefits this tradition bestowed on classical Muslim societies are described in 'The Civilization of the Book'. It was the tradition based on ilm which, within one hundred years of the birth of Islam, made the book the central focus of Muslim civilization as an easily accessible and much sought after intellectual tool, resulting in a thriving book trade and a proliferation of central, public, specialized and private libraries. Books and bookmen played a truly astonishing role in shaping and propelling Muslim tradition and culture. Not everything, however, in our tradition is either good or
3 can meet the demands of contemporary times. The emphasis on originality is not just for the sake of originality, but because certain segments of traditional thought are not totally adequate for the complexity of our times. We cannot, for example, simply equate all scientific knowledge with ilm. As pointed out in 'The Science Dimensions of Ilm', modem science is equally capable of generating perverse knowledge in the shape of eugenics, sociobiology, techniques and technologies of torture and terror, and the production of poisons and weapons that can do damage beyond imagination. Given the intrinsic connection between ilm and ibadah (devotion), we cannot describe the pursuit of any scientific inquiry as ilm. Whereas the Quran repeatedly asks men and women to study nature, it also asks them to study themselves: 'We shall show them our signs in the horizons and within themselves, so that Truth becomes clearer to them-is your Lord not a sufficient witness over everything?' (41:53). The knowledge of oneself is 'scientific' knowledge, for it is based on observation by 'the eyes and the ears'; but it must also 'strike the heart' and kindle a perception in men and women which will transform their scientific and technological skills in accordance with their moral perception. Without this perception, scientific and technological knowledge could be positively dangerous. The Quran makes the point in its critique of materially prosperous Meccans: 'They know well the externalities of the worldly life, but they are so ignorant of the ultimate consequences' (30:7). Science, therefore, cannot simply be equated with ilm, since ilm is that knowledge which takes into account our perceptions of ourselves, or the moral dimensions of our existence. Similarly, the classical separation of revealed knowledge and secular knowledge, attributed largely to al-Ghazah, makes little sense today. As S. Parvez Manzoor argues in 'Studying Islam Academically', 'the dichotomy between "salvational" and "rational" sciences, between essential and superficial knowledge, had fatal consequences for the
4 nourishment of the Muslim mind. In time, everything beyond the comprehension of the scholastics became superficial, ungodly and valueless'. The classical division is too simplistic and does not take into account the fact that values cannot be isolated from any branch of knowledge. As such, all knowledge is 'religious knowledge', no matter what its sources and nature. A contemporary formulation of ilm, therefore, not only has to synthesize the so-called 'religious sciences' with I secular sciences', physics with metaphysics, it must also find a place for inspiration and intuition at the core of knowledge. The Quran often uses synonyms for ilm with many shades of root-concepts like fkr (to think), fqh (to understand), dbr (to consider) aql (to reflect) and fhm (to understand). Ilm therefore must signify the end results of intellectual and inspirational labour and processes. Again, not all intellectual processes can be considered to be good for Muslim people or lead to ilm if the ultimate function of ilm is to promote a just and equitable society as the contributors to this volume argue. For example, the educational systems in Muslim countries according to lbraheem Sulaiman are a colonial legacy designed to produce Westernized elites who continue the work started by the colonial administrators. The products of these systems, which Sulaiman calls 'deluded hybrids', are total strangers to indigenous cultures but 'have continued to hold the reins of government' in Muslim countries 'in cynical and damaging succession'. He identifies five ideological and political consequences that stem from this legacy: it has led to the acceptance of the myth of European supremacy, generated a spirit of enslaved mentality, produced total impotence at solving indigenous problems, marginalized all men of vision and high caliber and substituted 'God with crude and brutal power as the object of reliance and trust'. Clearly, such a system cannot be a powerhouse of ilm. Muslims educated in the West, on the whole, do not fare
5 any better. They have either been too impressed by orientalism and its associated thought, or are so deeply entrenched in modernism that they can understand themselves and their societies only in terms of Western perceptions. This is often an unconscious exercise undertaken with pious overtones. As Manzoor states categorically, it is something that we must recognize and banish: 'before we start searching for an appropriate "method" for the study of Islam, or launch some colossal enterprise for the "Islamization of knowledge", or create fully autonomous disciplines, or reform our outmoded educational institutions, let's first rid ourselves of the secularized mentality. Let us be aware the so-called modem mind is a creation of the West, that it evolved out of a historical experience that is not ours and that by acquiring the modernist perceptions we have been looking at ourselves in the mirror of the West.' The alternative is to look at ourselves, develop OUT perceptions from within Islam; we must look for meaning within our own history and we must seek to unravel the implications of our faith rather than pass value judgements on them from external perspectives. Genuine ilm is that which shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world around us by the sources of our worldview; the concepts of the Quran and sharia must become our basic tools for analyzing and comprehending all reality. Ilm, of course, contains the notion of information, just as it contains the idea of wisdom; information by itself is not ilm, although the pursuit of ilm would obviously require the gathering of information. However, with the unprecedented possibilities for the storage of data, we now face the danger of being duped into believing that the cognitive titbits that fill our data-banks in fact constitute knowledge. As S. Parvez Manzoor argues in 'Limits to Information', the modem cult of information gathering and processing is threatening to replace our traditional notion of knowledge with information.
6 Empirical data does not constitute knowledge and unless some critical principle of selection and omission informs the storage and access of information, no sense can be imparted to the inexhaustible facts around us. Unless we channel the swelling tide of information to the reservoir of our own knowledge systems, we run the risk of being drowned in an ocean of meaningless 'facts'. In order to shift the relevant from the irrelevant, Manzoor purports, Muslims have to develop their own schemes of classification, because the mental effort of 'constructing' facts precedes their collection. Both Manzoor and Sulaiman call for a kind of intellectual jihad to combat colonial legacy and the modem cult of gathering facts. To some extent that jihad has already begun, as evidenced by the global Muslim debate on 'Islamization of knowledge' and the evolution of a number of Islamic universities. 'What Makes a University Islamic takes a critical look at these new universities and offers a model, for debate and discussion, of what a contemporary Islamic university may look like. The arguments are based on the realization that modem disciplinary divisions are arbitrary, that nature does not exist in watertight disciplinary boundaries and that contemporary Islamic universities must be founded on new disciplinary structures that reflect the needs and requirements of Muslim societies and derive their value base from the worldview of Islam. This is a very tall order; it requires both a radical change in our way of thinking as well as in our methods of imparting the worldview of Islam to future generations. Education, of course, plays a key role in introducing new ways of thinking and analyzing the problems of Muslim societies. It is also, as Manzoor points out, 'intrinsically linked with the general intellectualism of a culture, the principle task of which is to provide a forum for self-analysis and criticism'. A prerequisite for the revitalization of ilm in our time is the emergence of intellectuals and intellectual culture in Muslim societies. The almost total absence of
7 criticism and self-criticism among Muslims is due, on the one hand, to the fact that dominant forms of traditional thought, particularly in its fiqhi and Sufi forms, is anti-intellectual; and, on the other, the modernist versions are either irrelevant or devoid of originality. Manzoor looks at the work of two Muslim intellectuals, al-Faruqi and Nasr, and finds that their thought lacks awareness of contemporary intellectual trends, aiming only at the creation of a depoliticized personality. Considering the extent of political suppression and oppression in the Muslim world, this is a peculiar approach, to say the least. The final chapter examines the roles of intellectuals in Muslim societies and argues that reformist ideas must focus on the demands of the real world. Without a firm grasp of contemporary reality--the total marginalization of Muslims from the modem world, the interconnection and interdependence of everything to everything else and the need for diversity as a basic prerequisite for survival-- reformist efforts are little more than bromide sentiments. Whereas Manzoor calls for the re-education of Muslim intellectuals, 'Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals' calls for the emergence of a new breed of Muslim intellectuals who 'are interested in abstract ideas as well as specifics, the real world demands both. Unlike Socrates, they are not interested in ideas for ideas' sake. They search for ideas that lead to reform, but like Socrates they seek propagation of thought, criticism and questioning attitude, a goal for which they would eagerly lay down their lives. They move in a world not of total doubt and confusion, but a worldview well defined by conceptual and ethical parameters. They seek not power but reforms. They do not have acquisitive and analytical minds only, but also critical, imaginative and creative minds. They engage and transform.' Cultural change is always slow and takes a long time to develop social roots. Unless Muslim societies rediscover their love for knowledge, science, an, criticism and
8 intellectual pursuits, which is what their worldview demands of them, as well as love and recognition for scholars, writers, scientists, critics and the traditional ulemas, who are held in high esteem by Islam and its tradition, the process of positive change cannot be set in motion. An ilm-based society must both nurture knowledge and cherish those who pursue knowledge in its numerous dimensions. The alternative to revitalizing ilm in contemporary Muslim societies was spelled out by al-Ghazali some nine hundred years ago. 'Would not the sick die if he is given no food or drink or medicine one of his wise men inquires. 'Yes', says the assembled gathering, to which the wise man replies, 'similarly the heart will perish if it is cut off from wisdom and knowledge for three days'. And al-Ghazali adds, 'whosoever lacks the love of knowledge has an ailing heart and his death is certain'.
9 2
Illuminating Ilm
Munawar Ahmad Anees
ONE OF THE MOST SOPHISTICATED, all-comprehensive and profound notions to be found in the Quran is the concept of ilm. Indeed, in its significance it is second only to tawheed (affirmation of unity), which is the central theme and fundamental concept of the Quran. Its importance is manifest in the fact that the Quran mentions the root word and its derivatives some eight hundred times. The idea of ilm distinguishes the worldview of Islam from all other outlooks and ideologies: no other worldview makes the pursuit of knowledge an individual and social obligation and gives enquiry the same moral and religious significance as worship. Ilm, therefore, serves as the hallmark of Muslim culture and civilization. In the history of Muslim civilization, the concept of Urn permeated deep into all strata of society and manifested itself in all intellectual endeavours. No other civilization in history has embraced the notion of 'knowledge' with such passion and pursued it with such vigour. To translate ilm as 'knowledge' is to do violence, even though it be unintentional, to this sublime and multidimensional concept. It certainly contains the elements of what we understand today as knowledge, but it also contains the components of what is traditionally described as 'wisdom'. However, this is by no means the end of the story. Perhaps we can best understand the notion with reference to
10 other concepts of the Quran to which it is intricately linked. Thus ilm also has some connotation of ibadah (worship); that is, the pursuit of ilm is a form of worship. Similarly, ilm incorporates the quranic notion of khilafa (trusteeship of man): thus, men and women seek ilin as trustees of God, for if ilm is sought outside this framework it will violate the fundamental Islamic notion of tawheed. The means by which ilm is acquired and the final use to which it is put by the individual and society are both subject to accountability: the quranic concept of akrah (the Hereafter) envelopes ilm, to ensure its moral and social relevance. These few of the many dimensions of ilm illustrate the complex and sophisticated nature of the notion. The synthesis of a whole array of principles into a single, unified concept of ilin is one of the basic features of the worldview of Islam. It was this universal synthesis that demolished the artificial boundaries of the so-called religious and secular knowledge. And it was this universal synthesis which ensured that for a Muslim, knowledge was not an isolated, abstract act or thought; it was at the very root of his or her being and worldview. It is not surprising then that ilm, had so much significance for early Muslims, that countless Muslim thinkers were so occupied with the exposition of the concept. Their conceptualization of ilin is perhaps best manifested in the attempted definitions of ilm of which there seems to be no dearth. The seemingly insatiable quest of these scholars to define ilm in all its shapes and forms was inspired by the belief that ilm was nothing more than a manifestation of tawheed; 'understanding the signs of God', being near Him, as well as building a civilization required a comprehensive pursuit of knowledge. As Rosenthal observes: 'a Muslim civilization without it would have been unimaginable to the medieval Muslims themselves, and it is even more so in retrospect. Change was not likely to alter its true meaning. However, since it was so important a concept, a tremendous amount of thought was given to it at all times and
11 all levels of education'-1 Indeed, change did not alter the fundamental meaning of the concept. The new definitions of the idea were not attempts to change its meaning, nor did they entail subscription to a new (and parochial) worldview. They are attempts at understanding the concepts in the light of the new situation, expanding its boundaries to include areas which were hitherto neglected, exploring its meaning and signif- icance from the vantage point of a changing future. There was, however, one exception to this endeavour: the Sufi schools of thought. To the Stifis the definition of ilm was obvious: they tried to manoeuvre ilm away from its holistic structure and confine it to a narrow outlook. Most Sufi scholars practically shunned intellectual exploration of the concept. For example, the following comment by the greatest of Sufi scholars, Sheikh Muhi ad-Din al-Arabi (d. 1148), is indicative of the Sufi attitude towards i1m:
Knowledge is too clear a concept to require explanation, but heretical innovators have wished to complicate the understanding of the term 'knowledge' and of other religious and intellectual concepts, their aim being to lead people astray and to give them the erroneous impression that there exists no idea that can be known. However, these are baseless claims and sophistries.2
This outright criticism of knowledge was made to uphold the cause of the so-called introspective learning in which the concepts such as sharia (Islamic Law), tariqah, (the Sufi way), haqiqah (reality), and yaqin (certainty of faith) were imperceptibly linked. While the ideational validity of these concepts was not challenged by new definitions of ilm, they implicitly rejected sufistic reductionism. Historically the institutionalization of Sufi thought began quite early in Muslim history, but it could not pose itself as an obstacle to the evolution of Muslim intellect at its formative
12 stages. Thus, long before Ibn al-Arabi, we come across a myriad of definitions of ilm, in addition to the free-flowering of Muslim intellect that characterized the first four centuries of Islamic history. Rosenthal argues that the 'mystic trends merged to give these definitions their early start'.3 However, he is self-contradictory by stating later that 'the Sufis, although frequently obsessed with the idea of knowledge, in many instances shied away from its use as a technical term, precisely because "knowledge" in this capacity was preempted by Islam in general'.4 Our argument is that the development of definitions of ilin was not an end in itself, nor was it isolated from the overall evolution of Muslim thought. It was, in a sense, a pan of the broader Muslim attempt to synthesize knowledge. In that respect, the Sufis contributed little. They were the theoreticians of mystic knowledge, and philosophical, speculative or intellectual concepts of ilm remained out of their scholarly domain. An overview of Rosenthal's classification of Muslim definitions of ilm yields that it can be classified as:
1. A process of knowing that is identical with the known and the knower. 2. A form of cognition (marifah). 3. Synonymous with comprehension (ihatah). 4. A process of mental perception. 5. A means for clarification, assertion and decision. 6. A concept or precept subject to apperception. 7. An attribute (sifah). 8. An agent of memory or imagination. 9. Motion. 10. A relative. 11. Defined in relation to action. 12. A product of introspection.
As Rosenthal admits, more definitions could be found and
13 classified accordingly and, contrary to erstwhile common opinion, these and other definitions were not restricted to so called religious knowledge alone. Even if we follow the above twelve categories, we find that these definitions of ilm encompass a wide spectrum of philosophical thinking. There is a clear awareness of both the subjective and objective dimensions of knowledge; even of the fact that from one particular perspective a branch of knowledge may be classified as 'objective', while from another perspective the same branch may be considered to be rather 'subjective'. However, attempts at the delineation of ilm were not confined to mere definition of the concept. While the practice of internal criticism was faithfully followed by Muslim scholars in defining ilm, they consistently moved far beyond this fundamental exercise. This is apparent from the fact that the continuing debate on the definitions of ilm did not end in blind alleys; operational definitions were emphasized and continually sought. The impetus for operationalization of knowledge was provided by the moral imperative that was inextricably meshed into the fabric of ilm. Here again, it was at once a moral obligation to acquire and disseminate ilm. For eight classical scholars, it was at once a moral obligation to acquire and disseminate ilm and operationalize it as a moral discriminant. The classical division of knowledge as praiseworthy and blameworthy, and the role of knowledge as individual and collective obligation is too well known to be explained here. Suffice it to say that amal (action) was declared part and parcel of ilm and ilm without amal was inconceivable. This was indeed the operationalization strategy for ilm and it was guided, in spirit and letter, by the central Islamic concept of tawheed and the moral dictates which this implies. Indeed, the moral imperative, the function that knowledge performed, whether it was 'objective' or subjective', 'praiseworthy' or 'blameworthy', was determined on the sole criteria of its moral worth. Classical Muslim scholars were well aware that while a branch of
14 knowledge, a particular piece of information, may have intrinsic value, it could equally have harmful effects for society as a whole. The pursuit of truth required that it should be pursued within moral boundaries and its fruits should be beneficial for all society. They were aware that the pursuit of truth could become perverse: that when the process of pursuit itself becomes an obsession, then 'truth' loses its moral significance; that 'truth' could be manufactured and made to appear 'objective'; that beyond the absolute truth, judge- ments about truth can be relative. This appreciation of the complexity and multidimensionality of ilm is best found in the thought of Ibn Hazin alQurtubi (d. 1064). A polymath, author of some four hundred known works ranging from belles-lettres to philosophy and medicine, he was an intellectual giant of extraordinary stature. He was a unique witness to the material and intellectual glory of Muslim Spain and could see both of them crumbling under the weight of peny political and sectarian conflicts. Moved by these incidents and inspired to set the Andalusian society on the right course, he opted for a simultaneous political and intellectual activism. Unfortunately, his reformist philosophy did not receive a warm welcome from the decaying Muslim society of Spain: he was ostracized and faced persecution; too often his works were banned. During the period preceding Ibn Hazm, the Muslim debate on ilm had started gradually to ossify. Whatever had become part of ilm by the end of the third century of hijra was taken as precious heritage and little new material was added. As Rosenthal has observed, 'It would happen that some powerful personality, such as, for instance, al-Ashrafi [around 900] or al-Baqillani (d. 1013), incorporated some particular definition in his teaching and writings, and his name thereafter became attached to it, providing it with one of those useful classifying labels which are always much appreciated by philosophical and theological system-makers'.5 Thus, individual creativity had debased into mindless 'guru' worship.
15 More than the menace of cultish practices and intellectual quackery was the emergence of conceptual dichotomies. For example, to a certain extent as a corollary of the Sufic teachings, the operational definitions of praiseworthy (mahmud) and blameworthy (madhmum) knowledge, emphasized religious knowledge at the expense of all other branches of knowledge. This was a major contradiction that produced dangerous consequences in the later period and left indelible cultural marks on Muslim society. It was a contradiction of the spirit of the worldview of Islam on the one hand, and of the Muslim epistemology on the other. Still more, the domain of the moral imperative was confined to religious knowledge while the pursuit of the 'secular' sciences was left to individual discretion with considerable loopholes for moral discernment. This was an intellectual schism of great proportions that created a horrendous fallacy at the civilizational level. Perhaps the Muslim world, slowly but imperceptably led into this catacomb of ignorance, is still gravely suffering from that initial shock. No doubt, at the civilizational parameter, it made a mockery of itself by rigidly adhering to these artificial boundaries. The point to remember is simple: the apparent divisions were not absolute, they were operational and both carried the moral imperative. Such was the philosophical milieu when Ibn Hazin appeared on the intellectual scene. There were religious ' scholars' pitted against the 'secular' scientists who protested against secularization of knowledge. The middle course was nowhere in sight and an arbitration seemed impossible. Yet Ibn Hazin tried to play the role of a mediator on his exposition of Muslim epistemolgy. Prior to Ibn Hazm, the Muslim thinker al-Amiri (d. 922) had felt the heat generated by the alleged secularization of ilm and attempted to argue in favour of the 'secular' sciences by stating that these fields of knowledge conformed to pure reason and did not contradict the principles of the 'religious'
16 sciences. However, it remained to the genius of Ibn Hazm to expound a theory of knowledge that revived the spirit of early Muslim epistemology. Several of Ibn Hazm's works, such as Maratib al-Ulum, 1hkam, al-Fisal fil-Milal wa al-Ahwa wa an-Nihal and atTagrib li-Hudud al-Mantiq, are devoted to an extensive discussion on the concept of knowledge. According to Ibn Hazm, there are four cardinal virtues of knowledge, namely, adl Oustice), najdah (courage),fahm (understanding) andjud (generosity). Knowledge, a multifaceted concept, is a vehicle for the attainment of virtues in this world and the hereafter. He recognizes the differences in the nature of faith and reason, but argues that both are aimed at the same objective: acquisition of fadail (virtues). Thus, at the outset he establishes the moral imperative implicit in the pursuit of knowledge, as expounded by early Muslim thinkers. In this case, his vision, unlike that of some of his predecessors as well as contemporaries, is not blurred by the operational divisions of ilm into praiseworthy and blameworthy sciences. For instance, in his classification of sciences he excluded the occult, alchemy and astrology, not because of religious considerations but because they do not fit any logical or moral criteria. In so doing, he displays his remarkable felicity in retaining the unified conceptualization of ilm and avoids the dangerous pitfalls of disciplinary orthodoxy. Ibn Hazm declared knowledge to be an indispensable entity, its pursuit an obligation and its moral imperative an objective. Thus, knowledge should be pursued in accordance with one's fullest potential but it must not become a tool of material and moral exploitation. 'In essence, knowledge consists of comprehending God's revelations, practicing moral virtues, and knowing the realities of things in this world. The object of knowledge is to please and be close to the Almighty and to attain a world order encompassing humanity at large'.6 In his classification, Ibn Hazm designates a superior status
17 to 'religious' sciences, but makes his point abundantly clear that the so-called 'philosophical' or 'secular' sciences are also indispensable. Thus, he places iman (faith) and aql (intellect) almost at par with each other. He vigorously argues that not everyone is equipped to deal with the philosophical intricacies, and hence, such an individual may find solace in faith. On the other hand, he defends the reliance on aql by stating that faith alone may not provide workable answers to immediate problems of humankind and it is the role of aql to remove scepticism and uncertainties so that a confusion about the faith itself may be put to an end. In such a pragmatic approach, Ibn Hazm does not appear to be making iman subservient to aql, nor does he propose that the affirmation of iman is contingent upon the agency of aql. He explains this delicate balance between iman and aql in these words:
The intellectual faculty (quwat al-aqo is that which helps the discerning soul to make justice triumph, to choose what sound understanding dictates and to be convinced of it, and to make it manifest with the aid of the tongue and other bodily movements in action.7
In assigning such a pre-eminent status to aql, he rejected the claims of those who professed introspection (Sufi methodology), or guru technique (taqlid) for the acquisition of ilm. Ibn Hazm then moves on to a detailed description of the physical basis of integration of the sensory data and how aql manifests itself as the final evolved stage of the cognitive apparatus. For Ibn Hazm, iman and ilm originate from the same source and he considers both as a mawhibah (gift) from Allah. What he does not forget is that a discernment is what is required to maintain a balance between the two. That discernment lies in the recognition of iman as the prime agent and appreciation of ilm as a part of iman. Once again, his argument derives strength from the fact that both are aimed
18 at the same objective. In our opinion, Ibn Hazm, through his incisive classification of sciences (ulum) and his discourses on the common origin and common objective of iman and aql, offers a lucid example of some of the major features of Muslim epistemological thinking that characterized its early period. One example of operationalization of ilm is offered through the history of the evolution of science and technology in the early Muslim era. Muslim civilization made its appearance at a time when the previous civilizations, such as Roman, Byzantine, Egyptian, Greek or Indian, had crumbled and their heritage lay in ruins. Muslims, moving from the confines of the Arabian desert, quickly took custody of that precious heritage and, through a vast network of translations, preserved that store of knowledge. One may aptly ask whether Muslims were unlike previous conquering civilizations in showing a reverence for knowledge, its preservation and dissemination. What gave Muslims this reverence for knowledge? What motivated them meticulously to pursue that knowledge to the extent of making pioneering contributions? To our understanding, there was only one force behind it all: the force of ilm and a desire to make it operational. Thus, the first three or four centuries in the life of Muslim civilization witnessed a spectacular blooming of the intellect through a universalization of ilm. By the same token, we may argue that the Muslim civilization set itself on a course of decay and degeneration by relegating the concept of ilin to a narrow and self-contradictory path. Rosenthal succinctly observed that 'Concepts and functions peripheral to a given civilization may undergo changes with impunity, but when those central to it are subjected to change, it means a loss of identity for this civilization and may even signify the very end of it'.8This is certainly the case with Muslim civilization, where its decay is directly attributable to the obfuscated concept of ilm. With the passage of time, increasing political disunity, factional and sectarian
19 disputes and obscurantism, this degeneration developed more and more rapidly. Thus, by the end of the seventeenth century the Western colonization of the Muslim world had begun, and by the beginning of the twentieth century the last symbolic force of Muslim political strength, Khilafa Uthrnaniyya, had vanished. As we advance towards the twenty-first century, the physical colonization of the Muslim world has apparently ended, though it continues to be plagued by the vested military, political and economic hegemony of the Western powers. But more dangerous than that, the invisible colonization of the Muslim mind continues, still subservient to Western norms, Western values and Western notions of intellectual progress. The academic institutions across the Muslim world hardly offer an innovative atmosphere for learning in the traditional, holistic sense of ilm. There is hardly a noticeable change at the conceptual level that may be expected to define the Muslim response to these challenges. A complete reorientation of the Muslim mind must be declared as a collective responsibility of the entire umma. At the heart of this reorientation must lie an almost obsession like pursuit of ilm. Indeed, there has been a tremendous change in the form and shape of things since Ibn Hazm breathed his last. However, the universality of tawheed, and universality of the worldview of Islam have not changed. What has changed is the mode of production and the systems and structures that generate knowledge. More than ever before, because of a mass corruption of the intellectual pursuits by the forces of parochial Western science and technology, the moral imperative of ilm is needed for the benefit of humanity. However, all our ills are not made by 'foreign' hands. Once we relegated the integrative, unified and universal worldview of Islam and engaged ourselves in parochial pursuits beginning with the ossified view of mahmud and madhmum, sciences, we put the entire umma on a suicidal course.
20 Thus, our soul-searching must not remain limited to our ritual xenophobia but we must put our own very souls and bodies in front of the prosecution fora. The intellectual reorientation of the umma must start with a fresh, critical understanding of classical Muslim epistemology and a creative, contemporary formulation of the concept of ilm. Change must be reinterpreted in terms of its outer, physical structure and the immutable ideational infrastructure of Muslim epistemology must be restored in its entirety. We have seen that our civilization has demonstrated the capability of unified intellect and action at both conceptual and operational level. This capability was imparted as a result of our unflinching quest for the operationalization of ilm and its synthesis with knowledge originating in other civilizations. A reorientation should not be a new and novel experience for us, it should simply be the process of regaining our lost heritage. Thus, a reorientation of Muslim intellect must commence with a redefinition of ilm in the contemporary setting. The cultural and civilizational change must serve as the precursor for this process of redefinition. At present, educational 'reforms' across the Muslim world are much more geared towards erecting replicas of the Western hallmarks of intellect rather than reforming their own store of aql. Physical and structural peculiarities, of necessity, follow the conceptual configurations. Unless we redefine conceptual levels that are compatible with our classical heritage as well as the worldview of Islam, we will be adding insult to our intellectual injuries. Apart from a host of internal inconsistencies and other epistemological fallacies, we must remember that the Western system of the manufacture of knowledge further aggregates the superfluous dichotomy between the 'religious' and the 'secular'. If we blindly imitate that system, without building our own solid conceptual infrastructure, then implicitly we become sleeping partners with the Western
21 intellectual rebels who have done their best to denigrate so called 'religious' knowledge. In this case, we cannot save our necks simply by adding a meaningless modifier --Islamification--to the entire corpus of Western knowledge. Our encounter with the so-called 'secular' sciences is not a new one. In our early history we have faced the greatest challenge of synthesizing a body of knowledge that was, unlike Western systems, based on a variety of value systems and belief structures. We have provided firm historical evidence that the integrative Muslim epistemology was successful in achieving a synthesis of that varied and multicoloured world of facts into a unified concept and structure of ilm. Knowledge, as conceptualized, defined and operationalized in the West is at a banal level when compared with the all-encompassing notion of Urn that remained the hallmark of early Muslim culture. In trading ilm for 'knowledge', we should also remember the perpetual intellectual deficit that we continue to incur. Within the boundaries of ilm, two attributes have served as the guidelines for its operationalization: amal (action), and fadail (virtues). Our reorientation must seek to incorporate these two concepts at operational level. When we imbibe these concepts deeply we will realize that knowledge generated under this conceptual scheme is an agent of universal benefits that channels the great store of human intellect toward universal applications, away from the political hegemony of the few select 'rationalists' or 'rebels of the intellect'. The Muslim umma, by virtue of its adherence to the worldview of Islam, has a dual responsibility in this case. It has a responsibility to itself to generate its own ilm base, a system for indigenous and organic generation of knowledge; and it has a moral responsibility towards humanity and nature to ensure that both are in the best of material and spiritual health. It is at the same time both individual and collective: individual to be attributed to the umma as an organic whole, and collective to extend to humanity at large.
22 References
1. F. Rosenthal. 'Muslim definitions of knowledge'. In Carl Leiden (ed.), The Conflict of Traditionalism and Modernism in the Middle East. Austin: UTP, 1966, p. 117. 2. Sheikh Muhi ad-Din al-Arabi. Commentary on Imam at- Tirmidhi's al-Jami as-Sahih in Aridat al-Ahwadhi 10, p. 114. 3. Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 117. 4. Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 125. 5. Rosenthal, op. cit., pp. 117-8. 6. Quoted in A.G. Chejne. Ibn Hazm. Chicago: Kazi Publications, 1982, p. 67. 7. Ibid., p. 69. 8. Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 117.
23 3
The Civilization of the Book
Ziauddin Sardar
THE WORLDVIEW OF ISLAM furnishes us with a number of con- cepts which, when actualized in all their sophistication at various levels of society and civilization, yield an integrated infrastructure for distribution of knowledge. At least five Islamic concepts have a direct bearing on the distribution of information: adl (justice), ilm (knowledge), ibadah (worship), khilafa (trusteeship) and waqf (pious endowment; charitable trust). An examination of the early history of Islam reveals how these five concepts were given practical shape and generated a highly sophisticated infrastructure for the distribution of information and knowledge. The all-embracing concept of ilm shaped the outlook of the Muslim people, from the very beginning of Islam. Islam actually made the pursuit of knowledge a religious obligation: by definition, to be a Muslim is to be deeply entrenched in the generation, production, processing and dissemination of knowledge. Moreover, the concept of ilm is not a limiting or elitist notion. Ilm is distributive knowledge: it is not a monopoly of individuals, class, group or sex; it is not an obligation only for a few, absolving the vast majority of society; it is not limited to a particular field of inquiry or discipline but covers all dimensions of human awareness and the entire spectrum of natural phenomena. Indeed, Islam places ilm at par with adl: the pursuit of knowledge is as
24 important as the pursuit of justice. Just as adl is essentially distributive justice, so is ilm distributive knowledge. One is an instrument for achieving the other. The ideal goal of the worldview of Islam, the establishment of a just and equitable society, cannot be achieved without the instrument of distributive knowledge. Only when knowledge is widely and easily available to all segments of society can justice be established in its Islamic manifestations. Early Muslim communities were well aware of this interconnection of adl and ilm. To begin with, they faced the question of distributing the Quran and the traditions of the beloved Prophet among the believers. Only when the believers had access to copies of the Quran and authentic collections of the ahadith could they be expected to behave according to their dictates. The first steps in this direction were taken by Uthman, the third Caliph of Islam, who was aware that the total memorization of the Quran, and its preservation in the hearts and minds of the believers, was indeed a manifestation of the distributive notion of ilm. Because the Quran could be easily memorized, its contents could be just as easily distributed. Nevertheless, in view of the variations of dialects, he felt it necessary to preserve it in a written form. As such he took the necessary steps for the preservation of the written text. The next step was taken by the compilers of hadith who evolved a sophisticated process of authenticating the traditions and made them widely available to all segments of society. During the first century if Islam, oral traditions predominated and were the chief vehicle for the dissemination of information. But it soon became clear that memory cannot be relied upon completely, and written notes began to circulate among the seekers of knowledge. Thus, we hear from Sa'd ibn Jubair (d. 714), 'In the lectures of ibn Abbas, I used to write on my page; when it was filled, I wrote on the upper leather of my shoes, and then on my hand'; and 'My father used to say to me, "Learn by heart, but attend
25 above all to writing, when you come home from lectures write, and if you fall into need or your memory fails you, you have your books"'. What did ibn Jubair actually take his notes on? His 'page' was probably papyrus made from the stem of a plant of the same name or a parchment prepared from the skins of goats. Notes gathered like that were freely exchanged among students and scholars. Indeed, quite often such notes were combined to form books. Evidence from ibn Ishaq, al-Wakidi, ibn Sa'd, al-Baladhuri, at-Tabari and al-Bukhari suggests that Urwa ibn al-Zubair (d. 712-13) was the first to collect such looseleaf books. And his student, al-Zuhri (d. 742) collected so many of these books that his house had space for few other things. His preoccupation with collecting these books and studying them occupied so much of his time that his wife was led to complain, 'By Allah! These books annoy me more than three other wives would (if you had them)'. Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen, who during the early 1940s carried out a pioneering study of the emergence of Muslim libraries, considers al-Zuhri's collection as the first Muslim library. She notes, 'Whether the early books were merely a collection of students' notes and little treatises in the form of letters or more formal books, of which there were at least a few, the collecting of them, the recognition that such materials were worth keeping, can legitimately be considered the beginning of Muslim libraries.’1 But even during this period, the book, as a coherent record of thoughts, had made its debut. Indeed, noted men of learning were commissioned to write books and persuaded by students who would take notes of their lectures and transform them into coherent books. Al-Amash abu Mohammed Sulaiman ibn Mihran, (680-765), a fiercely independent and witty scholar of tradition was frequently approached to write books. Not all the commissions he received were worthy of his attention. When Caliph Hisham ibn Abd Allah wrote, asking him to compose a book on the virtues of Caliph
26 Uthman and the crimes of Caliph Ali, AI-Amash read the note and said to the messenger as he thrust the note into the mouth of a sheep which ate it up, 'Tell him I answer it thus'. When a few students arrived at his house early one day and insisted that he teach them some traditions, he eventually came out, greeted them and said, 'Were there not in the house a person [meaning his wife] whom I detest more than I do you, I would not have come out to you'.2 By the time Al-Amash died, the book had become a common and widely distributed vehicle for the dissemination of knowledge and information, due largely to the emergence of paper, thanks to the Chinese. When Muslims came into contact with the Chinese in the latter part of the seventh century, they quickly realized the role paper could play in the distribution of knowledge. The first Muslim town to set up a paper industry was Samarkand, which came into Muslim possession in 704. Thaalibi, in his Lataif al-Maarif, and Qazwini, in his Athar al-Bilad, tell us that the paper industry of Samarkand was established there by Chinese prisoners-of war. From Samarkand the paper industry soon spread to the central provinces and major cities of the Muslim empire. In a matter of decades, paper replaced papyrus and parchment, becoming the main medium for the dissemination of written information, and by the end of the century had even replaced parchment in government documents. Along with paper-making, other industries connected with book production also developed rapidly. The preparation of ink in various colours and the technology of writing and illustrating instruments advanced considerably during this period. Bookbinding, too, acquired a degree of sophistication. Originally the crude bindings of rough leather dressed in lime remained much too stiff and hard. However, a discovery in Kufa led to a more effective way of dressing leather, which used dates to produce softer leather. At the same time, new skills for the ornamentation of bindings and techniques for the illumination of books were developed. The
27 overall result were books which were breathtakingly beautiful, works of art in themselves. Even the oldest extant Arab bindings have tasteful cover designs of simple elegance and beauty all their own. Books of a later date are more elaborate, containing splendid decorations and loving illuminations with a kaleidoscope of colour. Thus, just over one hundred years after the advent of Islam, the book industry had advanced to such an extent that Muslims became the 'people of the book' in the truest sense of that expression; reading, and not just the 'noble reading' of the Quran, had become one of the major occupations and pastimes. The connection between reading and the Quran is important: it enforces the notion that the pursuit of knowledge is a form of worship, that ilm and ibadah are two faces of the same coin. It was hardly surprising then that in the next two centuries the book industry spread to every comer of the Muslim World. Libraries (royal, public, specialized, private), bookshops (small, adjacent to mosques, large, in the centre of cities, in collectives, in special sections of the bazaars) and bookmen (authors, translators, copiers, illuminators, librarians, booksellers, collectors): the entire Muslim civilization revolved round the book. Listen to ibn Jammah, writing in 1273 in his Books as the Tools of the Scholars: 'Books are needed in all useful scholarly pursuits. A student, therefore, must in every possible manner try to get hold of them, He must try to buy, or hire, or borrow them. However, the acquisition, collection and possession of books in great numbers should not become the student's only claim to scholarship.' Furthermore: 'Do not bother with copying books that you can buy. It is more important to spend your time studying books than copying them. And do not be content with borrowing books that you can buy or hire.' Moreover, 'the lending of books to others is recommendable if no harm to either borrower or lender is involved. Some people disapprove of borrowing books, but the other attitude
28 is more correct and a preferable one, since lending something to someone else is in itself a meritorious action and, in the case of books, in addition serves to promote knowledge' 3 Lending books became a vogue throughout the Muslim civilization. Libraries were therefore built in almost every major town. The first were the magnificent royal libraries of the Caliphs. Almost every dynasty, from the Ummayad and Abbasid Caliphs, to the Umayyads of Spain, the Fatimids of Egypt, the Hamdanids of Aleppo, the Buwayhids of Persia, the Samanids of Bokhara, the Ghaznavids rulers and the Moghals of India all established major libraries in their respective seats of government. According to George Makdisi, six terms were used in combination to designate libraries. Three of these designated locales: bait (room), khizana (closet) and dar (house); and three related to content: hikma (wisdom), ilm (knowledge) and kutub (books). These concepts were combined to form seven terms designating libraries: bait al-hikma, khizanat alhikma, dar al-hikma, dar a]-ilm, dar al-kutub, khizanat al- kutub and bait al-kutub. Two others may be added: bait al-ilm and al-khizana al-ilmiya. All possible combinations of these words were, in fact, used. Most of the major libraries thus had tides such as bait al-hikma and dar al-ilm; often the terms were interchangeable. Undoubtedly the most famous of the Muslim libraries was the Bait al-Hikmah, a combination of research institute, library and translation bureau, founded by Abbasid Caliph Hanin ar-Rashid in Baghdad in 830. Many of the translations from non-Arabic languages, such as Greek and Sanskrit, which graced this library are listed in Ibn al-Nadim's Fihrist and Haji Khalifah's Kashf. Harun ar-Rashid's son, Caliph Mamun ar-Rashid is reported to have employed scholars of the stature of al-Kindi, the first Muslim philosopher, to translate Aristotle's works into Arabic. Al-Kindi himself wrote nearly three hundred books on subjects ranging from medicine and philosophy to music, which were stored in the
29 Bait al-Hikmah. Mamun generously rewarded the translators and as an incentive sealed and signed every translation. Mamun also sent many of his men to distant places--India, Syria, Egypt--to collect rare and unique volumes. The famous physician Hunain ibn Ishaq travelled to Palestine in search of Kitab al-Burhan. Bait al-Hikmah had a number of famous Muslim and non-Muslim scholars on its staff: Qusta ibn Luqa, Yahya ibn Adi, and the Indian physician Duban, to name a few. Musa al-Khwarizmi, the illustrious Muslim mathematician and founder of algebra, also worked at Bait alHikmah, writing his celebrated book Kitab al-Jabr wa alMuqabilah there. Bait al-Hikmah continued as the library in the Muslim world until the twelfth century, when it came to be overshadowed by Baghdad's second library. This second library, which boasted a collection of equal quality to that of Bait al-Hikmah, was that at the Nizamiyyah Madrassah, founded in 1065 by Nizarn al-Mulk who was a prime minister in the government of Sa1juq Malik Shah. The collection at the Nizamiyyah library was gathered largely through donations: for example, the historian Ibn al-Athir reports that Muhib ad-Din ibn an-Najjar al-Baghdadi bequeathed his two large personal collections to the library. Caliph an-Nasir donated thousands of books from his royal collection to the Nizamiyyah library. Among the famous visitors to this library was Nizam al-Mulk at-Tusi (d. 1092) whose book on international law, Siyar al-Muluk remains a classic. At-Tusi, during his visits to Baghdad, spent a lot of time at the Nizamiyyah. Nizamiyyah employed regular librarians on its staff who received attractive salaries. Among the famous librarians of Nizamiyyab were Abu Zakariyyah al-Tibrizi and Yaqub ibn Sulaiman al-Askari. In 1116, the library survived a huge fire, and a new building was erected under instructions from Caliph an-Nasir. Still in Baghdad, Caliph Mustansir Billah established an exceptional library at the magnificent madrassah he founded in 1227. Madrassah Mustansiriyah, whose ruins are still
30 visible on the banks of the Tigris, had a hospital attached to it, and the library served both the madrassah and the hospital. The famous globe-trotter Ibn Batutah has provided a vivid description of Mustansiriyah and its library. Through donations, of which some 150 camel-loads of rare books were from the royal holdings alone, the Mustamiyah library acquired a collection of 80,000 volumes. Baghdad, however, was not unique in boasting magnificent libraries. Almost every major city in the Muslim world had a library worthy of being called bait al-hikma or dar alilm. Cairo, for example, housed the Khazain al-Qusu, the splendid library founded by the Fatimid ruler al-Aziz ibn al Muizz. In some forty rooms, over 1.6 million books were stored using a sophisticated system of classification. Cairo also boasted a bait al-hikma which was established by AlHakim, the sixth Fatimid Caliph, during 1005. It had a huge collection, including the personal collection of the Caliph, was open to the general public and free writing materials were provided to all; those who wished to spend time for study also received lodgings, meals and a stipend. But the Caliphs were not the only patrons of libraries. Lesser monarchs, too, were equally busy setting up libraries. For example, the library of Nuh ibn Mansur, the Sultan of Bokhara, is described by the great philosopher and medical scholar ibn Sina in the following words: 'Having requested and obtained permission from Nuh ibn Mansur to visit the library, I went there and found a great number of rooms filled with books packed up in trunks. One room contained philological and poetical works; another jurisprudence, and so on, the books on each particular science being kept in a room by themselves. I then read the catalogue of the ancient authors and found therein all I required. I saw many books the very titles of which were unknown to most persons, and others which I never met with before or since. 4 When Nuh ibn Mansur offered the premiership of Samarkand to the scholar Sahib ibn Abbad, the latter declined, stating that it
31 will require four hundred camels to transport his books to Samarkand. The Sultan understood the difficulty and accepted his apology. Like Nuh ibn Mansur, most regional rulers of that period were great bibliophiles. The library of Abud ad-Dawlah, one of the Buwayhid rulers, for example, was administered by a large staff and impressed al-Makdisi, the famous geographer, who has left a detailed description of it. It survived until the time of al-Hariri (d. 1122). As they were considered a trust from God, the central libraries were completely at the disposal of the public; as such they were truly public libraries, open to individuals from all backgrounds and classes who were invited to use them, to read and freely copy any manuscript they liked. Moreover, these libraries were not just storehouses of books, but working libraries in every sense. Apart from intensive re- search programmes, they were also the focus of assembly for discussions, lectures, debates and other public activities. Indeed, many of the manuscripts in the celebrated book of the tenth century bibliophile al-Nadim were copied from the bait al-hikma, a point that has confused many Orientalists who have suggested that al-Nadim's al-Fihrist, which cites over 60,000 books, may actually be the catalogue of the House of Wisdom. Considerable thought was given to their design, layout and architecture to ensure that the public had easy access to books and appropriate facilities to study and copy manuscripts in the library. Most of these libraries, such as those of Shiraz, Cairo and Corduba, were housed in specially designed buildings of their own. They had numerous rooms for specific purposes: galleries with shelves in which books were kept, reading rooms where visitors could comfortably sit to read books, rooms for public lectures and debates, and in some cases, rooms for musical entertainment. All the rooms were richly and comfortably fitted and the floors were covered with beautiful carpets and mats. Heavy curtains covering windows and rooms created a pleasant atmosphere
32 and maintained the rooms at an appropriate temperature. The description provided by the historian Yaqut of the library of Adud al -Dawlah in Shiraz gives a good general impression of the layout of these institutions: The library consists of one large vaulted room, annexed to which are storerooms. The prince had made along the large room the store chambers, scaffoldings about the height of a man, three yards wide, of decorated wood which have shelves from top to bottom; the books are arranged on the shelves and for every branch of learning there are separate scaffolds. There are also cata- logues in which all the titles of the books are entered.' Larger libraries, such as the bait al-hikma of Baghdad had separate rooms for copiers, binders and librarians. In his extensive survey of libraries, S.M. Imamuddin demonstrates that historic Muslim libraries were designed in 'such a way that the whole library was visible from one central point'.5 The users thus had open access to the books. As befits such institutions, the librarians were of exceptionally high calibre. The Fihrist mentions three librarians, all of whom were noted authors and translated works from Greek and Persian, who served at one time or another as the librarian of the Bait al-Hikma. The library at Subur was headed by al-Murtada, a man of learning and considerable influence in scholarly circles. The Dar al-Ilm in Cairo was headed by judge Abd al-Aziz, who was renowned for his grasp of jurisprudence. The profession commanded high respect and a good salary. Throughout the Filtrist, AlNadim shows clear signs of jealously towards the librarians of the House of Wisdom because of their high standing in society and their scholarship. Apart from the central libraries, there were also numerous public libraries. In a city like Merv, the renown traveller and geographer Yakut found no fewer than twelve libraries. During his three years of residence in the city, he gathered the greater part of the material for his geographical dictionary. He was able to borrow as many as two hundred volumes at a
33 time. Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, Corduba, Fez, Isfahan, Labore, Delhi and Samarkand, major as well as Minor cities, boasted a host of public libraries. Most of these libraries received government subsidies; some were waqfs set up by individuals who wished to promote knowledge. The geographer al-Maqdil-i tells us that during the tenth century, the visitors to the central libraries of Basra and Ramhurmuz received financial assistance to do their work. In addition, the Basra library also had a full-time professor under whom one could study Mutazili thought and ideas. In addition to public libraries, special libraries for the cultivation of various departments of literature and sciences were also founded. Hence, we find collections of medical books in hospitals; works on mathematics, astronomy and astrology in observatories; religious and legal writings in mosques and colleges; and rich and more diverse collections social in several great academies. indeed, almost every social, cultural and scientific institution supported a rich library. Apart from the central, public and special libraries, there were literally thousands of Private collections- During the Abbasid period, Yahya ibli Khalid al-Barmaki's private library in Baghdad was known to be the richest. Each volume in the collection bad three copies and most of the rare works from bait al-hikma were included. During the eleventh century the library of Mahlnud al-Dawlah ibn Fatik, a great collector and scribe, became famous because ibn Fatik spent all his time in his library, reading and writing. His family felt so neglected that when he died they attempted to throw his books away in anger. The library of the noted ninth-century scholar al- Wakidi filled six hundred chests that required 120 camels to transport it from Baghdad to beyond the Tigris. Book collectors took pride in establishing libraries and inviting scholars to use them; indeed, it was the main fashion of the time. A frequently quoted anecdote in the literature of Muslim librarianship illustrates the extent to which private collectors, even non-literates , went to establish their libraries.
34 The historian Makkari relates a story about Al Haddhrami, who says: 'I resided once in Corduba for some time, where I used to attend the book-market every day, in the hope of meeting with a certain work which I was anxious to procure. This I had done for a considerable time, when on a certain day, I happened to find the object of my search, a beautiful copy, elegantly written and illustrated with a very fine commentary. I immediately bid for it, and went on increasing my bid, but to my great disappointment, I was always outbid by the crier, although the price was far superior than the value of the book. Surprised at this I went to the crier, and asked him to show me the individual who had thus outbid me for the book to a sum far beyond its real value, when he pointed out to me a man of high rank, to whom, on approaching, I said, "May God exalt you 0 doctor, if you desire this book I win relinquish it, for through our mutual bidding its price has risen far above its real value." He replied, "I am neither learned nor do I know what the contents of the book are, but I have just established a library, and cost what it may, I shall make it one of the most notable things in my town. There is an empty space there which this book will just fill. As it is beautifully written and tastefully bound I am pleased with it, and I don't care what it costs, for God has given me an immense income."6 Many private collections helped visiting scholars financially and many libraries were made waqfs by their owners. Ali bin Yahya al-Munajim personally received visitors who came to study the books in his library, Khizanat a]-Hikma, and he also provided them with food and lodgings. According to al-Makdisi, 'In Dar al-Ilm of Jafar b. Muhammad al-Mausili, the books were made waqf for the use of seekers of knowledge; no one was to be prohibited from access to the library "and when a stranger came to it seeking culture, if he happened to be in financial straits, he [Mausili] gave him paper and money". Here the books were made waqf for the use of seekers of knowledge without
35 exception, and they were helped financially on an individual ad hoc basis. 7 It was such devotion to books and libraries that permitted the Muslims, in the words of Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen, to develop 'the library as an institution to unprecedented lengths. Not until recent times have libraries been so numerous, well stocked, and widely patronized as they were in Muslim lands'.8 It was hardly surprising that such intense interest in books generated a thriving book trade. The state encouraged this trade; along with armament and horses which could be used in battle, and ornaments for brides, books were exempt from tax throughout the length and breadth of the Muslim World. Consequently, traffic in books between states was exceeded only by essential goods. Agents of rulers, private collectors, booksellers and scholars travelled to different countries, including non-Muslim lands, in search of valuable manuscripts. Adjacent to almost every mosque was a booth of a small bookseller, but it would be incorrect to say, as Khuda Bukhsh seems to suggest, that all bookshops in the golden period of Islam were small.9 Indeed, al-Nadim's bookshop, which contained the books described in his massive catalogue, the Fihrist, itself must have been several times larger than Foyles of London which describes itself as the 'biggest bookshop in the world'. Thus when the historian Yaqubi tells us that there were over one hundred bookshops in Baghdad alone during his time, he is talking about shops of all sizes, from small booths to giant bookstores a la al-Nadim. Almost 0 Muslim cities of the classical period had segments of the central bazaar reserved for book traders: suk al-waraqqan. The book bazaars of Baghdad, Cairo, Corduba, Seville and Samarkand were particularly famous. In addition to bookshops, another institution of this period--ijarah--seems to have been overlooked by Muslim historians. As a legal term, ijarah signifies permission granted for a compensation to use something owned by another person. In the specific context of bookshops, it refers
36 to a book that has been 'hired' not just for study but also for the purpose of copying, and the right to copy it, To the end of the sixteenth century, ijarah institutions were a common sight in Muslim urban centres. Not simply commercial lending libraries, they also served as centres for the dissemination of books. When he was young and poor, Ishaq bin Nusayr alAbbadi went every evening to a certain bookseller in Baghdad and borrowed one book after another for copying. Whenever the bookseller asked him to pay the hire fee that was due to him, Ishaq would tell him to be patient until he had a lucrative position. We do not know whether Ishaq ever paid the owner of the ijarah, but within a few years he had an impressive library of his own. Despite the magnificent royal libraries, numerous splendidly endowed public and semi-public libraries, ijarahs and a thriving book trade, Muslim scholars' appetites for books could not be satisfied. Al-Biruni took forty years looking for and tracking down a copy of Mani's Sifr al-asrar. Ibn Rushd wanted to consult specific Mutazilah works to solve certain philosophical problems, but failed to find them. According to a story by al-Tawhidi, Abu Bakr al-lhsid had for years looked for a copy of al-Jahiz's Kitab Farq Bayn anNabiy wa-l-Mutanabbi, but was unable to secure it; he then performed the pilgrimage and during his stay in Makkah hired a public crier to call out for a copy at Arafat. Even though the congregation at Arafat was the largest ever gathering of Muslims from all over the world, Abu Bakr still did not find the book he desired. This summary of the history of Muslim librarianship and book trade shows how the infrastructure for dissemination of information evolved naturally during the classical Muslim period. In one respect it is quite astonishing that in fewer than one hundred years after the hijra of the Prophet from Makkah to Medinah, the book had established itself as an easily accessible and basic tool for the dissemination of knowledge and information. However, when viewed from the perspectives of
37 ilm, waqf and ibadah, which the early Muslims put into operation at the level of the individual, society and civilization, the phenomenal spread of books and bookmen in early Islam does not look all that astonishing. Indeed, when actualized at all levels of society, the conceptual matrix of Islam would work to produce an infrastructure for the dissemination of information in any society, even if it had serious flaws. The eternal concepts of Islam are for the real world; they do not operate in or have much significance for an idealized society. During the early days of Islam, the dictates of distributive ilm and waqf were institutionalized in a society that had many serious problems, including sectarianism (numerous sects were constantly at war with each other and, indeed, many libraries were established to promote sectarian views), disunity and political divisions. In spite of this strife, the conceptual matrix produced an information infrastructure that took the Muslim civilization to its zenith. The contemporary Muslim umma appears to be facing problems even more formidable than those of early Muslims, including dependency, parochialism, fatalism and economic and environmental disaster. In these circumstances the operation of the eternal concepts of Islam becomes even more significant. It was the internalization of Islamic concepts that saved Muslims of the classical period from their follies and quarrels. Because they have eternal and universal validity, it is the actuality of these very concepts that can save the contemporary umma from the obvious disasters that loom ahead. Only by rooting their information policy firmly in the matrix of Islamic concepts can Muslim countries generate the type of intellectual energy and productivity needed to meet the problems of the contemporary umma.
References
1. Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen. 'Arabic Books and Libraries in the
38 Umaiyad Period', American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literature 52:245-53 (1935-36). 2. Ibid. p. 252. 3. Quoted by F. Rosenthal. Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship. Pontificium Institutum Biblicum, Rome, 1947, p. 8-9 4. ibn Sina. The Life of Ibn Sina. Translated by W.E. Gohlman Albany: SUNYP, 1974. 5, S.M. Imamuddin. Some Leading Muslim Libraries of the World. Dakkah: Islamic Foundation of Bangladesh, 1983, p. 71. 6. This anecdote has been related by a number of historians of Muslim librarianship including Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen, Khuda Bukhash and Shaikh Inayatullah, 'Bibliophilism in Medieval Islam', Islamic Culture 12(2):154-69 (1938). 7. G. al-Makdisi. The Rise of Colleges. Edinburgh: EUP, 1981,p. 26. 8. Ruth Stellhorn Mackensen. 'Background to the history of Moslem Libraries', American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures 51:114-25 (1935). 9. Khuda Bukhsh. Islamic Studies. Lahore: Sind Sagar Academy. Reprint of 1926. p. 105-12.
39 4
Studying Islam Academic
S. Parvez Manzoor
'ISLAM, BEING A NORMATIVE REALM Of Values, is dissociable from any reality that is identified with it. Islam is not the Muslim's social system, nor the Muslim's theological, aesthetic or other system, but that which all these strive to realize .... Any criticism, therefore, directed to that reality cannot ever discredit Islam.' claims Ismail R. al-Faruqi.1Were this merely another diversionary tactic by the sophisticated and Westernized intellectual to absolve Muslims of all historical responsibility, were it yet another ideological smokescreen designed to hide the throwing of the Islamic past out of the window of the Muslim present, the above statement would deserve forthright dismissal and condemnation. However, its ostensible endorsement of the historical irresponsibility notwithstanding, it does enunciate the cardinal principle of Islamic epistemology and may, therefore, serve as a convenient starting point for our discussion on the academic study of Islam. Properly understood, al Faruqi's statement implies that any authentically Islamic system of knowledge, even in its theoretical and academic variety, must rest upon the conviction of Islam being a transcendent ideal. All Muslim effort to understand Islam, therefore, is radically at variance with the modem conceptions of valueless and objective knowledge. Needless to say, the indigenous perception of Islam cuts at the root of the
40 fetish of empiricism that is the academic method par excellence today. Even a cursory examination of the modem discipline that purports to study Islam will bear this out.
Islam as a Tool of Western Self-Enlightenment
Islamic studies, Islamology, Islamics, or any other unseemly name by which the academic discipline is known today, let it be made clear at the outset, is not indigenous to Muslim culture. Preeminently, it is a mode of apprehending Muslim reality by the outsider rather than that of relating to the transcendent ideal, which is the meaning of Islam for the Muslim, Historically, the system of knowledge which informs this discipline is the product of anti-Islamic forces. Essentially, its presuppositions and prejudices are unIslamic, inasmuch as the transcendent is not a conceptual nor even reflective category in its discourse (scientism, Marxism). By the force of its own dogmatic convictions, it refuses to recognize that the transcendent may be located within the Islamic commitment (Christianity and biblical exclusivism). At its worst, it is nothing more redeeming than the dressing up of the primitive passion of racial pride and the ideological bulwark of colonialism (Orientalism). That an undeniably fanatical historical enterprise for the subjugation and humiliation of the Muslim world has given birth to the epistemological paradigm for the understanding of Islam, even at our own institutions of higher learning, speaks inexorably of our intellectual bankruptcy and emotional paralysis. However, instead of bemoaning further the historical injustices committed against Muslim peoples, which seems to have become a self-gratifying end with most of our thinkers, let us proceed. As no one need deny that any flowering of genuine intellectual activity among Muslims is contingent upon our ability to free ourselves from the mental manacles of hostile and alien systems of knowledge, let us
41 simply be content here to say that the first step in this direction can only be a Muslim bid to delineate the intellectual parameters and emotional boundaries within which the modem preeminently Occidental, Post-Christian and secularized mind situates Islam and the Muslim historical venture. The discipline of ‘Islamic Studies’, in other words, must itself become a subject of Muslim scrutiny. Leaving aside any attempt to trace the historical lineage of the modem discipline, or to discuss matters of personal preferences and prejudices that influence the choice of individual scholars studying one or other aspect of 'Islam', let us concentrate on some of the implicit ideological assumptions, unproven axioms and a priori value-judgements that inform the motley espistemologies of Islamic studies. To start with the simplest, let us examine the much-maligned Orientalism. At the heart of its historically conditioned vision lie two simple convictions, two dogmatic articles of faith if you prefer. The one is about the Occidental civilization being the norm for all human civilizations; the other, of course, claims the biblical tradition to be normative of all monotheism, indeed of all religion. Consistent also with this prejudgement is the attitude that Islam and Muslims are outsiders to Western civilization and that the Occidental scholar can only become an observer to, but never a participant in, the Muslim enterprise. (By doing this, the parochial epistemology of Orientalism unmistakably reveals its tribal moorings and invites the strictures of other universalists, say Marxist. After all, if your system of knowledge is valid only for you and moreover, if it puts an insuperable barrier between you and the person whom you claim to know than the truth of that knowledge must be severely limited. The above also constitutes something of a valid argument against those Muslims who insist that the insights of Islam are valid for the Muslim community alone. Needless to say, such a tribalized and ghettoized conception of restrictive truth is totally irreconcilable with the universalism of Islam.)
42 It is my contention that all the scholarly output of Orientalism, notwithstanding its umpteen ramifications, may be classified and analyzed constructively under these two main headings. It would be as easy to place Massignon's magisterial La passion d' al Hallaj in this category as Hodgson's revisionist The Venture of Islam. Nicholson's monumental works on Sufism, Corbin's profound medi- tations on Ismailism, Schacht's assaults on Shafiisin and Paret's etymological probings of the quranic vocabulary all fall under the same category. Even such seemingly secular and unrelated Orientalist efforts as Carl Becker's historical reflections on the civilization of Islam, Gibb's insightful exposition of the Sunni theory of politics, Grabar's nitpicking with the formation of Islamic art or Rosenthal's painstaking reconstruction of the Islamic definitions of knowledge also breathe of the same normative spirit of the West. The West, of course, cannot be indicted for following its own norms, nor is there anything anomalous in its example. In fact, to have expected otherwise would have been extremely foolish. Indeed, to probe reality without a priori norms, to study anything without any preconceived notions, without any preconvictions and prejudices, is a possibility denied to the human mind. And yet the claim persists, and is even accepted by deracinated Muslims, that the Western studies of Islam have been objective and historical, that they have clarified and explained many otherwise dogmatically construed facets of Muslim history. Given the ubiquitous prevalence of normative consciousness in all Occidental discourse on Islam, the least one may say of its achievements is that even if Western studies of Muslim history have been expositive and illustrative, they have also undeniably been distortive and derisive of Islam. Given also Orieritalism's inalienable right to safeguard its outsider's uncommitted vision, the disturbing question, whether any culture can be adequately and meaningfully understood from an extraneous vantage point, cannot be easily dismissed either. The point to
43 note at this juncture is that the Western enterprise to understand Islam, perceived and articulated in the main by the epistemology of Orientalism, has been normative through and through. From the Western normative perspective, the adoption of an objective attitude towards the study of other cultures appears preeminently sane and rational. For instance, the rationale behind the Western interest in Islam has been candidly described by one of the more perceptive proponents of Orientalism, Gustave von Grunebaum, as follows:
To cultural research intended to deepen the self-understanding of Western civilization the consideration of Islam commends itself on these grounds: 1. Islam presents the spectacle of the development of a world religion in the full light of history. 2. It presents the further spectacle of the widening of this religion into a civilization. 3. in the development of this Islamic civilization foreign cultural traditions were absorbed, modified and again eliminated. Some of these traditions have also gone into the making of the West. Thus the growth and decline of Islamic civilization ... illuminate almost dramatically the processes of cultural interaction and cultural transformation, as well as the concept of cultural influence as such. 4. Islamic civilization constitutes a complete system of thought and behaviour growing out of a fundamental impulse and enveloping man in all his relations--to God, the universe, and himself. This system is both close enough to the Western view of the world to be intellectually and emotionally understandable and sufficiently far removed from it to deepen, by contrast, the self-interpretation of the West.2
Whatever the validity of these sentiments of self-understanding for Western man, it can hardly be argued that this, ‘devil may take care of the Islamic civilization' attitude can
44 ever serve as a meaningful path towards the secrets of the Muslim heart. This, however, is a matter for the Westerner to decide. What justification is there for our own institutes of 'Islamic studies' to propagate the Islam-indifferent worldview of Orientalism with such murderous efficacy? It cannot be gainsaid that whereas all Western historical discourse on Islam is unabashedly value-laden, valueless and objective, historical research is considered to be the hallmark of methodological sophistication at our own universities. Moreover, in view of the impossibility of the Muslim's subscribing to the axiomatically proclaimed normativeness of the biblical religion or the Western civilization, how is it that some of us still entertain the hopes of reconciling the methodology of Orientalism with the dictates of Islamic commitment? Orientalism, being outrageously colonial, missionary and anti-Islamic, however, has not found much support even in secularized Muslim circles. Moreover, as today it is also the target of polemical attacks from radical Western liberalism and humanism, Muslims have grown bolder in renouncing its nefarious worldview. Yet, there is no pithy Islamic criticism of Orientalism known to me, say in the manner of Edward Said. With very few exceptions, notably Tibawi, Fazlur Rahman, Hamid Algar and some others, Muslim intellectuals have joined the bandwagon of Western self-criticism of Orientalism, be it from the vantage point of liberalism or Marxism, without realizing that the Western counterarguments against Orientalism have nothing in the least to do with the legitimacy of the Islamic commitment. Be that as it may, the complete devastation of the Orientalist's worldview, his method of disinterested observation and his ethos of racial and religious exclusiveness remains the desideratum of the first order for the future Muslim academic effort. Given the prevailing mood of defeatism within the Orientalist establishment itself, this ought not to be too difficult a task for the coming Muslim intellectual. Marxism, however, may be a different matter. As the
45 emerging methodological paradigm for the study of economic modes of production and their impingent ideological systems, including Islam, it has already inspired its ideologues to announce the 'death of Orientalism'. For the Muslim, however, it is a mixed baggage. On the one hand, its uncompromisingly universalist and humanitarian outlook presents a welcome corrective to the ethnocentric Occidental systems of epistemology, promising the rebuttal of the kind of intellectual arrogance so commonly reserved for the currently less 'successful' historic civilizations such as Islam; on the other, its ruthlessly totalitarian doctrine of dialectical materialism merely devalues all pre-modem history and reduces all spiritual doctrines to crass economic factors. In this sense, for all its humanity and universality, Marxism presents itself as a veritable antithesis of Islam. Understandably, then, the Marxist enterprise to 'explicate' Islam is always infused with the twin spirits of humanistic sympathy and spiritual hostility. No one may deny, for instance, that Marxists have done much to break the spell of Orientalism and Occidental ethnocentrism. One need only recall the works of Muslim Marxists such as Abdullah Laroui to notice the benign side of Marxist discourse. Yet it is also incontestable that because of their dogged immanentism, Marxists have also been highly insensitive to the perception of the transcendent in human history. It goes without saying then that Islam, whose sole self-legitimacy is in its unique relationship and uncompromising preoccupation with the transcendent, can never by fully apprehended in the Marxist worldview. Maxine Rodinson's irreverential biography of the Prophet proves this point. Islam, moreover, assumes the garb of 'feudalism' and 'Asiatic mode of production' in Marxist jargon and discourse. Whatever insights such an approach may harvest for global history, it undeniably impoverishes the multidimensional reality of Islam. In sum, Islam shares some ethical sentiments with Marxism but is metaphysically totally at variance with it. Whether there is
46 any scope for the utilization of Marxism's economic insights in a genuinely Islamic discourse must remain an unanswered question for the time being. Suffice it to say that though Marxist ethical congeniality with Islam may promise an attractive venue for intellectual probing, only those with firm groundings in Islamic metaphysics need tread this unholy ground. Any future dialogue with Marxism, it must be reasserted, can only be carried out from the standpoint of Islam's unnegotiable metaphysics. In conclusion, we may say that the West's second major mode of apprehending Islam, Marxism, is even more dogmatically value-laden and normative in its approach and method, The basic tenets of the Marxist dogma, of course, are too well known to need elaboration here. For our purpose, thus, it is sufficient to realize that as it possesses an autonomous and powerful epistemology, Marxism meets Islam on the intellectual ground of its own choosing. In an its intellectual discourse, it totally subdues the reality of Islam, to its own mode of perception, its own terms of reference and its own hierarchy of disciplines. Notable also in this connection is the fact that the basic Marxist unit for the study of 'Islam' is not the Muslim civilization or the Islamic faith, as for instance is the case with Orientalism, but feudalism, medieval civilization and some derogatory mode of production known as the 'Asiatic'. The least Muslims may learn of the Marxist example, however, is that it is quite possible to generate a comprehensive and autonomous system of knowledge which not only is totally normative and value-oriented but which also fully meets the demands of modernity and contemporary life. Here is another argument, if it were lacking before, that the perception of Islam as a worldview and an intellectual commitment stipulates the creation of an alternative system of 'Islamic' knowledge that is normative in its academic approach but contemporary and futuristic in its social relevance. The ideological challenge of Marxism has also forced the
47 West to modify its academic perception of Islam. Without having fully renounced the epistemological axioms and political aspirations of Orientalism, the West today is busy constructing another edifice of knowledge designed to enhance its understanding of the Third World. In accordance with the realities of the post-colonial political order, the velvet-glove approach is also being adopted in the academic world. Gone is the interest in the classical civilizations of the East and in the erstwhile backward-looking history-oriented disciplines. Contemporary politics rather than ancient history, sociology rather than philology, economics rather than literature of the newly liberated countries form the nucleus of modem Western attention today. Colonial ideology has given way to liberal humanism and classical disciplines have been replaced by area studies. The study of Islam has also been subsumed by the academic obsession with the Middle East and the scholarly preoccupation today is more with the price-index of a single barrel of OPEC oil than with all the battles of Saladin. It would be quite easy to chart the relationship between the value-system of liberal, laissezfaire, humanism-informing contemporary disciplines and the pursuance of Western self-interests. What remains indisputable in this case as well, however, is the fact that the epistemological outlooks underpinning new disciplines, i.e., scientism, empiricism and historicism, all have an uncanny relevance for the West's historic situation today. Once again we cannot escape from the conclusion that the Western studies of other cultures and civilizations, Islam included, notwithstanding the veneer of academic respectability, methodological sophistication and scientific objectivity, are all pursued from the normative standpoint of Western values, just as these are designed to serve Western self-interests. In a situation like this, any foreign claims on behalf of value-free and objective studies of Islam smack of sheer hypocrisy, just as all indigenous flirtations with Islamic studies bespeak of the intellectual capitulation of the secularized Muslim mind.
48 Islam In Its Own Mirror
Against this background, it would be fruitful to see how Islam was perceived in early Muslim consciousness, how it was defined in terms of, now normative, intellectual and behavioural categories and what novel academic disciplines grew out of this intellectual perception and value commitment. We would do well to perform some conceptual and phenomenological analysis because, despite general Muslim sentiment for the adoption of an analytical framework, our historical method is still atomistic, reductionist and erratic. What follows is a personal and tentative statement, and it ought to be treated as such. All it tries to accomplish is to underscore the paucity of analytical history in contemporary Muslim thought and points towards the suitability of employing newer methods for Muslim self-analysis and understanding. In dealing with the formative period of Muslim civilization, the first point to note is that Islam then was perceived primarily as a matter of personal conviction, a path to a goal, an effort to an end, and not as a result of that conviction or the fruit of that effort. All Islamic intellectualism thus was a moral quest for the delineation of Islamic norms and values and a committed pursuit for the elaboration of the Islamic worldview. The purpose of Islamic knowledge was the salvation of the individual believer and the Muslim community as a whole and the axioms of Islamic epistemology were then, as now, the cardinal tenets of the faith.First of all, there was (and is) the overall reality of God and the a priori intellectual apprehension and conviction of His existence and unity which is accessible to every human being; second, there was (and is) the specific Divine revelation of the Quran; and third, the statutory behaviours pattern, the Sunnah, of the Prophet. All Islamic intellectual history, thus, is a bid to understand the meaning of Islam within these parameters. Let us see how this search for 'meaning' crystallized in the consensus, or
49 dissent, of the Muslim community. The most essential, fundamental and total consensus in Muslim history is about Islam being the din of Allah. Before anything else and absolutely unnegotiably, every Muslim is in agreement, Islam is the faith in and the knowledge about the certainty of God. This seemingly self-evident fact is of capital importance in any discussion on Muslim epistemology, because it distinguishes Islam from any other immanentalist, this-worldly doctrine, philosophy or ism, such as Marxism, on the one hand, just as it rules out any apotheosis of the Muslim community, say in the manner of Judaism, on the other. For all its intimate, and at times inextricable, relationship with the historical matrix of Muslim existence, Islam is more than the sum total of Muslim thought and experience. From this insight emerges, no doubt, the cardinal principle of Muslim epistemology, namely that the ultimate source and focus of 'Islamic' knowledge is always beyond the contingencies of time and space and could not preoccupy itself exclusively with the affairs of the Muslim community. The meaning of Islamic commitment, as the search for the felicity of all mankind under the sovereignty of God, stipulates that all forms of Islamic knowledge be uncompromisingly universal and human. Islamic knowledge must also be made accessible in terms of universal norms. As all epistemological effort proceeds from universal propositions, as it is forever value-committed, as its concern is the whole of mankind, it is hardly a contradiction that its insights can only be presented as universal prescriptions. The concept of Muslim knowledge or its logical corollary, the restriction of the validity of the Islamic insights to the Muslim situation alone, would, of course, be a contradiction in terms. Unless our academic institutions and disciplines submit themselves to this principle, unless they stop erecting fences around Islamic knowledge, they lose all right to describe themselves as Islamic. The Islamic knowledge that cannot be applied to the human situation, that
50 cannot be shared or imparted to non-Muslims, cannot be Islamic in any meaningful sense of the epithet. Next to its perception as faith, and in many ways always inseparable from it, Islam has been conceived in the Muslim self-consciousness as the sharia, the all-encompassing system of morality and law. Indeed, this interpretation is preeminently and uniquely universal in Islam. The sharia consciousness cuts at the root of all sectarian sensibilities, overarches the historic Shi'i-Sunni divide, transcends the traditionalist-modernist dichotomy and is even indispensable to all mystical systems of Islam. Without doubt, the unique expression of the Islamic genius and the supreme gift of faith in Islam is the sharia. Or, it could be stated with equal veracity, that the greatest achievement of early Muslim intellectuals was their elaboration and distillation of the Islamic vision in the concrete and the practicable dictates and prohibitions of the sharia. In fact, the elaboration and exposition of faith in terms of a single comprehensive, universal and all-embracing system of religion, morality, law, sociology and even politics is far more formidable an achievement of the religious genius than the reductive apprehension of faith as theology. The early Muslim achievement, an unparalleled feat of almost superhuman intellectual interpretation and construction, certainly poses a veritable challenge but also serves as a source of great inspiration to the coming generations of Muslim intellectuals. However, what is the meaning of this formidable Muslim exercise at self-interpretation? What, in short, does the sharia conception of Islam stand for? The perception of Islam as the sharia testifies, first of all, is to the supremacy of morality in Islam. The sharia's conception of the universe and the purpose of man's existence in it is moral through and through. Secondly, the sharia construes the world as events rather than ideas; it is action oriented rather than speculative. All existence is a confrontation of the moral choice; all actions have moral
51 quotients: they are either morally right, commendable, indifferent, reprehensible or wrong. The confluence of these two peculiarities of the sharia world view, morality and history results in a unique epistemology and method. As truth is moral and morality is action, the sharia conceives the truth as correct behaviour. Its goal is to prescribe the morally light deeds for all conceivable life-situations. Its method is to apply the dictates of the Quran and the Hadith, the predecisions of the learned and the tenets of deductive reason, in that order. It creates knowledge that is normative, prescriptive, contextual and existential. One need not emphasize that in its conception and method, the shatia demonstrates an exemplary intellectual understanding of Islam as personal value-commitment. It is little wonder then that it has been considered, even by outsiders, to be the acme of Muslim selfunderstanding and appreciation. Notwithstanding its sterling principles and uniquely moral ethos, the very practical nature of the sharia poses considerable problems to the modem mind.The modernist-Muslim and non-Muslim alike-sees the sharia not in terms of its moral worldview, its problem-solving methodology or its behavioural ethics, but as an unredeeming system of simple do's and don'ts. Clearly, it is fallacious, if not downright sinful, of the Muslim to espouse this view. At the root of such derogatory Muslim conceptions of the sharia normally lie plain ignorance, estrangement from tradition and a not inconsiderable dose of vicious non-Muslim propaganda. Let it be declared firmly that the do's and don'ts of the sharia are the supreme gifts of its intellectual clarity and moral sensitivity. Without any prescriptive behavioural formulae, it ought to be borne in mind, the moral beings do not move beyond the sentiments of ethics. They have no legal framework for concrete action, nor any behavioural criterion for moral judgement. In fact, the goal of all moral systems is to be able to pronounce a judgement and present a prescription in terms of right and wrong acts.
52 That most of them stop half way and never reach the practical realm beyond ethical sentimentality (the nuclear arms debate in our times, for instance) cannot be counted as an argument for the indictment of the sharia, which boldly enunciates its ethical options in terms of concrete do's and don'ts. Unfortunately, the sharia suffers on other counts. Because of the general political decline and cultural decay of the Muslim civilization, the sharia, too, has become an ossified and inactive system of academic morality. Its natural growth having come to a halt at an early stage of Muslim history, its scope and prescriptions have also become severely limited in the past few centuries. It is this restrictive applicability to a minor and, for the contemporary consciousness, negligible segment of human reality that lends its injunctions the impression of obsolete irrelevance. However, from the Muslim point of view, one cannot totally dispense with its prescriptive methodology. What is required of the Muslim at present is not a new method in its entirety but an elaboration and extension of scope of the sharia. In fact, the widening of the sharia's competence to the areas of contemporary moral debate, i.e., disarmament, global politics, environmental hazards, etc., is the primary task of the Muslim academic today. Historically, the Muslim genius has perceived Islam in yet another way, the way of tasawwuf or Sufism. Unlike the sharia, however, Sufism is neither coterminous with Islam nor is there universal consensus about its indispensability to the Islamic enterprise. And yet, the spiritual profile of the Muslim civilization as well as its intellectual landscape has been shaped to a considerable extent by the worldview of tasawwuf. Sufism finds its self-authentication in the affirmation of the eternal truth of Islam and considers itself to be the most perfect and exalted means for the realization of the Islamic commitment. Its ethos is preeminently spiritual, pietistic and mystical. Historically, it presented itself at first as an ascetic protest against the worldly mores and the 'dry
53 legalism' of its times but later absorbed many gnostic and philosophical elements of earlier cultures within its fold. From being a quest for personal piety and spiritual purity, it evolved into a theosophical doctrine and an esoteric method for the acquisition of the 'experiential knowledge' of the ultimate reality. Essentially a mystical path to selfillumination, Sufism in time enriched Muslim culture through a wealth of intellectual and artistic expression. It engendered its own epistemology on the basis of autonomous insights about the human personality, brought forward a host of novel disciplines and gave impetus to the creation of one of the most exalted and sublime literatures in the world. Sufism has also been the backbone of the Muslim intellectualism of the later periods, just as its speculative and philosophic temper provided a welcome complement to the concrete moralism of the sharia. Even in our own days, the Sufi legacy lives on vigorously since its modem inheritors are intellectually quite active today. However, in an age of political activism and civilizational struggle, the quietist ethos of Sufism finds itself out of touch with the general temper of the umma. Complementary to the conceptions of Islam as the transcendent faith, the universal and cosmic system of morality and the sublime path of spiritual elevation to the knowledge of God, the indigenous vision of Islam has also indentified itself with the historic community founded by the Prophet. With the perception of 'Islam as community', however, the Muslim exposes himself to serious inconsistencies. The transcendentalist in him cannot accept the notions of the divinely ordained truth inherent in a body of, often sinful, humans, whereas the Muslim is also conscious that not to claim special privileges on behalf of the Muslim community would be tantamount to depreciating the uniqueness of the revelation on which that community was founded. The realist inside, of course, is content to tread a middle ground between a transcendence that is totally ahistoric and a contingency that
54 is always veracious. For him the umma of the Prophet is a special receptacle of God's truth and will always remain so. Needless to say, the Muslim does not construe this fact empirically but teleologically. It is a matter of hope, nay faith, with him and is best reflected in the sentiment of inerrancy which the famous Hadith expresses as, 'My community will not agree upon error'. It must also be pointed out the most fateful dissent in the history of the Muslim umma--the one between the Shi'a and the Sunnis--is not on matters of din, sharia or tasawwuf, but on who constitutes the rightful community. There is not space to discuss the countless other selfdefinitions of Islam engendered by Muslims. What cannot be neglected, however, is that each of these efforts generated in its own brand of knowledge and gave birth to its peculiar system of disciplines. Each of the paradigms for selfunderstanding, viz Islam as faith, as morality, as piety, as community, was a quest for existential meaning, not a disinterested observation of an objective reality called 'Islam'. Even the Muslim conception of Islam as community was never devoid of evaluational search. Significant also is that all these intellectual efforts to understand Islam, all these countless disciplines to explicate its meaning, all these methods and discourses to realize the conceived goals of its commitment, all of these in their entirety took place within a worldview which may be called 'Islamic'. There was no ob- jective and empirical category known to the Muslims as 'Islam', nor did they study it as a branch of knowledge in their academies. Muslims generated a multitude of Islamic disciplines; they founded the sciences of the Quran; they cultivated the study of the Hadith; theirs was the discipline of fiqh; siyar, kalam, tarikh and tibb were all part of their curriculum; but never once do we come across any science remotely reminiscent of 'Islamology'. Islam determined the content and orientation of every discipline in the Muslim epistemological arsenal, but was never itself subject to
55 disciplinary interrogation. In short, the perception of Islam as an entity is alien to original Islam. That modem Muslims have acquired this sensibility is part of the sad saga of secularism today.
Future Orientations
The problem of an academic study of Islam is a problem of the secularized consciousness. Contrary to popular belief, the secularization of the Muslim mind and culture proceeded from indigenous causes. At an early stage of Muslim history, Islam was construed by the traditional ulema as an exclusively narrow and constricted system of salvation. Every branch of human knowledge which was deemed superfluous for the realization of this goal came to be branded as foreign (as opposed to indigenous) or rational (in contrast to revelational). The dichotomy between salvational and rational sciences, between essential and superficial knowledge, had fatal consequences for the nourishment of the Muslim mind. In time, everything beyond the comprehension of the scholastics became superficial, ungodly and valueless. Islamic studies thus never evolved beyond the disciplines of grammar, exegesis, jurisprudence, theology and the like. In contrast, imparting Islamic relevance to contemporary existential issues, in our age largely matters of global political morality, must be the foremost objective of Islamic studies. Before we start searching for an appropriate method for the study of Islam, or launch some colossal enterprise for the Islamization of knowledge, or create fully autonomous disciplines, or reform our outdated educational institutions, let us first rid ourselves of the secularized mentality. Let us be aware that the so-called modem mind is a creation of the West, that it evolved out of an historical experience that is not ours and that by acquiring the modernist perceptions we have been looking at ourselves in the mirror of the West. The West,
56 on the other hand, studies 'Islam' for the sake of enhancing its own self-understanding. It looks at Islam in its own mirror, so to speak. The intellectual categories with which it apprehends our civilization, such as philosophical history, material progress, economic development and empirical objectivity, are all values for the Western person. Our self-appraisal cannot be based on alien values, nor should our destiny be determined by others. The antithesis of the Western and Muslim images of Islam present a cogent argument in favour of an authentic reappropriation of the Islamic commitment. The sooner Muslim academics address themselves to this task, the better. As Muslims, we can only study Islam from within. We can only unravel the implications of our faith, not pass value judgements on it; we can only search for meaning in our history, not be ruled by it; we can only construct a future, not be tied to the past. Our faith bestows on us the inestimable gift of moral arbitration. Our intellectual commitment ought to be to apply this unique gift to all aspects of intellectual effort, all constructions of knowledge, all forms of academic enterprises. The academic study of Islam, in short, is the submission of all human thought to the arbitration of the Quran.
References
1. Ismail R.al-Faruqi. On Arabism: Uruba and Religion. Amsterdam: 1962. p. 172. 2. Gustave von Grunebaum. Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1955. p. 1.
57 5
Education as Imperialism
Ibraheem Sulaiman
ONE OF THE MOST DAMAGING EFFECTS of colonialism has been the creation in all colonized countries, particularly Muslim ones, of a class of 'elite' people who might more appropriately be called the 'deluded hybrids'. Products of the imposed system of education designed to create a class uprooted from its cultural and moral traditions, they were nurtured as alternatives to the ulema who had refused with remarkable consistency to have anything to do with the colonial governments. Knowing that Islam was its most potent political enemy, and indeed its sole ideological rival, colonialism set out in all Muslim countries to destroy Islamic education while nurturing a Euro-Christian system of education in its place. Within just a few decades, Islamic education had all but disappeared, the ulema was systematically eased out of influential positions and gradually replaced by the deluded hybrids, and Muslim society progressively ceased to be its own. Professor Abdullahi Smith, the former director of Ahmadu Bello University's Arewa House, makes an apt observation on this development: 'Education policy pursued in the Muslim countries by the imperialist powers ... usually denied any large-scale government support to Islamic educational institutions, and generally placed obstacles in the way of the expansion of the Islamic school system. This was because it
58 was believed that too much Islamic education might give rise to anti-imperial "fanaticism", "Mahdism" and so on. At the same time it encouraged the development of Western education, partly as a counterpoise to Islam, partly to train subordinate administrative personnel for employment in the imperial administration, and partly to develop an influential class of persons in Muslim countries who, though Muslim to the extent of praying and fasting, possessed a Western cultural orientation- -language, consumption habits, dress, social morality, ideas about government, economy, class, etc.--and therefore a stake in the continuation of the "Western connection". People of this type, or with at least elements of the Western outlook, emerged in all Muslim countries under European imperial rule. In many cases they inherited actual political leadership from the Europeans when, on "independence", colonial status gave way to neo-colonial status.'1 It is this influential class who, as politicians and soldiers, have continued to hold the reins of government in cynical and damaging succession in these countries. This development, when considered from its wider political, moral and ideological perspectives, has had five consequences.
I
Imperialism has led to the acceptance of the myth of European superiority--an essential ingredient of the Euro-Christian educational philosophy--in governmental and intellectual circles in these countries, and consequently to the acceptance of European thought and ideas as possessing universal validity. For that reason successive governments, not only in Nigeria but almost everywhere, have come to accept European notions of government, economy and social reform as final and immutable. And for that reason, our universities have come to peddle Western ideals--capitalism, socialism, marxism, democracy and the rest--as the only valid and
59 universal ideals. The danger is that ideals which are essentially racial and parochial, which have given particular cause for colonialism from which we all suffer and which, moreover, have developed from strictly European experience and are therefore irrelevant to our own experience are taught at the expense of our heritage and civilization. Professor Abdullahi Smith's warning bell is worth noting: 'It is this widespread acceptance of this myth of the essential superiority of secularized European thought and practice in the field of human affairs which constitutes the most formidable obstacles in the way of extricating the contemporary world from the corruption into which it is plunged.' Even when this alleged universal validity of the European system has proved hollow, as in Nigeria, Pakistan, Egypt and Iran, the deluded hybrids do not even possess the courage to disown it; instead they blame themselves for not being sufficiently loyal to the Western system.
II
Because the Euro-Christian educational system in non-European countries is designed purposely to destroy the identity of its victims while at the same time exalting the European race, the elite class who now control the affairs over Muslims have come to exhibit, like their Christian counterparts, a servile spirit, and can only play the role of slaves to European imperialism, even when they claim to be free. This is, of course, in marked contrast to those who are imbibed with Islamic values and educated as Muslims, who have remained intellectually and morally independent and do not exhibit, even for one moment, the sickening servility and moral emptiness from which the colonial elite suffer. Whereas Islamic education, as the celebrated African scholar Edward Blyden has observed, exalts the human
60 personality, the Euro-Christian education, which dominates African education today, degrades the human personality. What produced this difference between Islam and imperialism, Blyden explains, is that 'when the religion [Islam] was first introduced it found the people possessing all the elements and enjoying all the privileges of an untrammelled manhood. They received it as giving them additional power to exert an influence in the world. It sent them forth as the guides and instructors of their less favoured neighbours, and endowed them with self-respect which men feel who acknowledge no superior. While it brought them a great deal that was absolutely new, and inspired them with spiritual feelings to which they had before been strangers, it strengthened and hastened certain tendencies to independence and self-reliance which were already at work.’ 2 On the other hand, Christian influences and other colonial indoctrinations were imposed on Africans when they had already been dispossessed of their freedom and been put in chains. 'Along with the Christian teaching', says Blyden, 'he [the African] and his children received lessons of their utter and permanent inferiority and subordination to their instructors, to whom they stood in the relation of chattels.... Their development was necessarily partial and one-sided, cramped and abnormal. All tendencies to independent individuality were repressed and destroyed. Their ideas and aspirations could be expressed only in conformity with the views and tastes of those who ruled over them.'3 Consequently, those who have gone through this slave education suffer from 'general degradation', and can only play 'the part of the slave, ape or puppet', laments Blyden.4
III
In addition to the fact that the elite in our lands are capable only of playing the part of the slave, ape or puppet in relation
61 to Western imperialism, the nature of their training makes them inherently impotent in serious social crises, and thus socially undesirable to be at the helm of affairs over the people. Professor Abdullahi Smith observed that the many modem universities in the West were established purposely to provide training in science and technology for industrial and business establishments only, and not to produce scholars who could reform society. In a period of social and moral crisis, such as the one in which the West is plunged at the moment, the result is that reforming influences are remarkably lacking and society continues to sink deeper into the moral abyss. 'In the face of this terrible corruption of Western society', Abdullah Smith observes, 'the men of the new learning have little to say. The things they have studied do not fit them to offer solutions to the multiple problems of human affairs, for their training fits them rather to be instruments of the very developments which cause the crisis.' Focusing on Nigeria, he adds, 'There can be no doubt about it that in Nigerian society at the present time we are facing many of the crises which afflict the West. The fact of Western imperialism and neo-colonialism indeed ensures the extension of the Western crises to this country. The excessive Westernization of our education...ensures in turn that our men of learning face these crises with the same helplessness which characterizes the position of scholars in the West.'5 All that the elite leadership has been able to do in the period of moral crisis, which in some countries has been persistent, is to resort to such self-defeating measures as reliance on force, brutality and ruthlessness to solve what is essentially a human problem. This in itself is an indication of the absence of reason and intelligence in governments, as well as an inability to make moral evaluations to ensure permanent solutions. Yet, in spite of excessive reliance on force in dealing with serious issues, governments have continued to be weak and fragile. A week's public demonstration, or even
62 one announcement of a change of government over the radio, is enough to send a neo-colonial government crumbling. Panic, paralysis and pathological fear of practically everyone and everything, as well as impotence and brutal cowardice have become the characteristics in the Muslim world of governments built on the ideals and philosophy of European imperialism.
IV
Another consequence of Western education is its inability to produce men and women of vision, ability and integrity to hold the reins of power. In our universities or military academies, to return to Edward Blyden again, people are given alien 'models for imitation' and in the effort to comply to the norms that are essentially not theirs, the so-called educated elements lose their self-respect, and more im- portantly, are turned into weaklings. That is precisely why we have lost nation builders, visionaries and people of ideas such as Al-Kanemi and Askia Muhammad who deal with other nations, not as beggars and dwarfs, but as men of strength and purpose. Western education has robbed us of our Muslim identity and produced Muslims who have been specially manufactured to ensure the continuation of the 'Western connection'. This Western connection, however, cannot be perpetuated without a severe, impairing cultural influence, where people are brought up, as Blyden has remarked, 'under the blighting influence of caste, and under the guidance of a literature in which it has been the fashion ... to caricature the African, to ridicule his personal peculiarities and to impress him with a sense of perpetual and hopeless inferiority'.6 Thus, even when they claim to be Muslim, they exhibit that gloomy view of themselves, and cannot see any good within.
63 V
The last consequence of colonial education is the virtual substitution of God with crude and brutal power as the object of reliance and trust, which has resulted in a new kind of selfimperialism. The Westernized elite, being uprooted from their culture, have come to view with a most profound awe Western powers and their vast array of weaponry and dazzling technological achievement; hence, they submit to Western interests, even before they are told to do so. This is also the reason why, even when Western ideas are being ques- tioned in the West, our men in government and universities still dread questioning what the white man believes. As Professor Abdullahi Smith has eloquently put it, 'The reason why the new traditions of learning which these [Western] institutions represent, in spite of the way in which they run counter to the grain of human intellectual history ... are so often unquestionably accepted ... is no doubt a function of the enormous material power ... generated in the Western world, and which it is often hoped will be similarly generated here. Whatever we may say about the moral basis of human government in the industrialized world of Western Europe and North America, there is no doubt about its colossal power; the new science, the power of machine technology capable of controlling the forces of nature, capable of transforming the living conditions of the masses .... It is not surprising that many of us wish to possess this power of machines and it is for this reason that we have rejected the philosophy which inspired the mujahidun of Sokoto: that there is no power of might save in God Most High, the Almighty; and that the ability really to transform human society is not to be achieved at all by the study of machines, but by an understanding of the nature of God and the Law that He has ordained for mankind. ‘7 Whereas those who believe that there is no power or might save in God Almighty have been able not only to exercise real
64 power and influence in human affairs and for quite a considerable length of time and have, above all, been able to create with minimum resources great and enduring nations (Borno Empire endured for a thousand years) the new elite who believe in the power of the guns, in oil revenues, in untamed and untailored technology and in brute force are paradoxically the ones that have no power at all in the real sense of the word and cannot even maintain a nation already created for them, let alone create one of their own. At best they are weaklings and creepers as Blyden has described them, or as we arc wont to believe, deluded hybrids perpetually in pursuit of a mirage. The acceptance of secularism as a way of government and as a philosophy of education has meant that the things that matter considerably in national life--politics, the economy, social morality--are deprived of their spiritual content and are, therefore, ultimately trivialized. Politics, we are told, are not a responsibility with far-reaching and profound consequences, but as it is often said 'a dirty game'. Should anyone wonder then that the whole life in so many Muslim countries has been polluted by politics of dirt and vulgarity? The object of secularism is precisely to vulgarize people's attitudes not only to God but to every aspect of life, becoming a decisive force in the shaping of the destiny of nations. It is borne out of human arrogance which promotes the notion that God does not matter, that religion is not relevant in the organization of human life. In the process of banishing religion, however, many other things are desecrated: human life, human freedom, organization of human affairs, politics, knowledge and even religion itself. All these have become cheap commodities, subjected not to higher values but to the whims of those who rule. The overall result is that life in general has been reduced to a mere frivolity. Consider Nigeria, for example. It seems as though the country has not slowed down, in spite of the claims to the contrary, in its journey backwards to pre-Islamic
65 days when life was seen in terms of amusement, pomp and the thrill of the tom tom. 'It is not a fact that when the sun goes down, all Africa danced', says Edward B lydez,, 'but it might be a fact if it were not for the influence of Islam.'8 Thus, when rulers are prevented from performing their salat by the pleasure of watching naked women dance, as occurs frequently in Nigeria, we know that the influence of Islam is not there. It is precisely this submission to pleasure at the expense of weighty and fundamental matters, this absence of moral considerations in the conduct of national affairs, this awful need for a standard to distinguish decency from obscenity and the absence of a definite commitment to Islamic values that has been the bane of Nigeria. The absence of the influence of Islam in determining the course of the nation means that the decisive spiritual and social steps that need to be taken to correct the national ills will never be taken. A clear example is the effort to effect a moral transformation of society, which started in the 1970s in the era of Gowon. This effort has been variously code-named, ranging from 'revolution' to 'war'. One thread unites all these efforts: the secular approach. The belief seems to be that human conduct can be changed by force, but not through a moral transformation, persuasion, education, inspiration or personal example. Secularism thrives on the worst enemies of 'war' or revolution': materialism, alcoholism, prostitution and their attendant evils. As an alternative to religion based on the belief in God and in ultimate human accountability to Him, secularism tends to ridicule even the 'idea of God' and to insist that the best form of life is that which negates the existence of life beyond the present. If that is so, what alternative do people have other than to 'make the best' out of this life? Similarly, the social discontent and frustration which this material outlook inevitably creates is bound to explode into a social revolution unless it is provided with an outlet through alcohol, prostitution and the like. Does one
66 need then to ask why Nigeria has fifty-two breweries which consume the large part of Nigeria's wheat production at a time when drought is starving millions of people? A secular outlook necessarily breeds corruption, both social and moral. A secular Nigeria, therefore, is a corrupt Nigeria, just as a secular leadership is a corrupt leadership and a secular scholar is cynical and corrupt. When we consider that secularism is a system imposed by our experience as a colonized people, then we have to accept that it has to be abandoned as a necessary first step in any attempt to bring about a social transformation of society. Among other things, this requires two basic steps. We must first oust the hegemony of secular thought in our universities and institutions of learning, and once again bring Islam back into all fields of endeavour. The present system of education not only ensures that corruption is provided with a sound technological base, but its sole object, says Abdullahi Smith, is to train people in 'how to make money and to achieve a sound exploitative relationship with one's fellow men'.8 If secular thought, in spite of its being an imposed system, is to have any place in our educational system and the absolute financial and moral backing of the government, then obviously, Islamic thought has a better, greater and more legitimate claim to governmental commitment. We must minimize the peddling of secular thought--be it in the form of capitalist philosophy or marxist doctrine--so as to arrest the drift to corruption and social decay in so many Muslim countries. Secondly, since the secular approach to social transformation is ineffective and, in most cases, deceptive, Muslims, and most especially Muslim scholars and intellectuals, now have the responsibility to move to the forefront in the struggle to save such countries as Nigeria from its ' present 'servile and cringing' attitude and establish the spiritual and moral basis for genuine change. The magic of secular thought is gone and its days of absolute predominance
67 are over. Let Muslim intellectuals follow the advice Abdullahi Smith gave to Nigerian intellectuals: 'For us, this decaying liberalism and this strong materialistic individualism are not natural; they have been forced on us in recent times. Moreover, they run sharply counter to the grain of the Nigerian cultural heritage .... If we want a strong social morality which will carry us forward in development, we do not have to bring it from the other side of the world, from countries we do not know and people we do not properly understand. We can find it here: in the abandoned and forgotten traditions of the cultural heritage of this country.'9
References
1. Abdullahi Smith. Report to the Senate of Ahmadu Bello University. Zaira, Nigeria: unpublished, 1983. 2. Edward Blyden. Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, Edinburgh: EUP, 1887 (reprinted 1969), p. 11. 3. Ibid., p. 13. 4. Ibid., pp. 76-7. 5. Smith, op.cit. 6. Blyden, op.cit., p. 17. 7. Smith, 'The Contemporary Significance of Academic Ideal of the Sokoto Jihad'. In Y.B. Osman (ed.), Studies in the History of Sokoto Caliphate. Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University, 1979, pp. 252-3. 8. Blyden, op.cit., p. 6. 9. Smith, Report to Senate.
68 6
What makes a University 'Islamic'
Ziauddin Sardar
A CLEAR MAMFESTATION of the rise in the intellectual consciousness of the Muslim people is the emergence of a number of new Islamic universities throughout the Muslim world outside the Islamic Republic of Iran, most of these institutions, such as the international Islamic University of Pakistan, the international Islamic University of Malaysia and the planned Islamic University in Niger, are backed by the Organization of Islamic Conference (O1C). But independent efforts to establish Islamic institutions of higher learning are also being made. The most noteworthy being the Islamic Institute of Advanced Studies in Washington, D.C. How do these institutions, both those functioning and those in the advanced stages of planning, differ from such classical Islamic seats of learning as AI-Azhar University Cairo, the Houzas of Qom and Najaf, and the more recent established traditional models Darul Mum in Deoban India, and the Islamic University of Medina? Are the institutions going to perform the age-old function of producing religious scholars or will they have broader objectives? How will they differ from the Western model of a university? Will they focus on traditional learning, concentrate on modern scholarship or develop a synthesis of both? Answers to these and similar questions have emerged over the last decade in two forms: theoretical discussions on the
69 concept of the Islamic university, and the setting up of working models of the institutions. Thus theory and practice have developed almost simultaneously. However, enormous hurdles have to be over come before the theory or the operationalized models come up to acceptable levels. In the new universities it appears that more thought has been given to bureaucratic and administrative procedures than to academic content. For example, in the International Islamic University Ordinance 1985 (Islamabad), out of forty three pages discussing the appointment of directors and subdirectors, only about a page is devoted to academic concerns. While natural emphasis is placed on traditional Islamic disciplines (tasfir, hadith, fiqh, etc.) and on producing scholars of sharia and alims who can spread the message of Islam, there is some awareness of contemporary knowledge and needs. As such, the new universities are not exclusively religious institutions in the traditional sense: they also produce graduates in social and natural sciences. The theoretical basis of the institutional structure of new universities was hammered out in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Much of the theoretical understanding gained in the First World Conference on Muslim Education held in Makkah (31 March-8 April 1977) and the subsequent follow-up meeting, is summarized by Hamed Hasan Bilgrami and Said Ali Ashraf, who have written that the Islamic university differs from the dominant Western model 'in its wide concept of knowledge' which emphasizes the spiritual basis of education. This concept of knowledge is based on tawheed (unity of God) which 'reflects itself in all facets of Muslim life' and integrates the sacred with the profane. They identify three characteristics in the evolution of Muslim civilization which they insist should become the basic building blocks of the Islamic university: tamil (willing submission with the heart and soul to Islam), tazim (loving regard and realization of the greatness of Islam) and adab (reverence and respect for Islamic values). The Islamic university, the authors state,
70 should start with 'the lowest rung of the ladder', that is, adab. Reverence is the 'very door of all knowledge' and the authors quote Carlyle who describes reverence as, honour done to those who are greater and better than ourselves, honour distinct from fear, Ehrfurcht, the soul of all religions that has ever been among men or ever will be'. They then show their reverence for the basic model on which they seek to impose their brand of spirituality: 'The universities of the West in the past few decades have undergone tremendous changes; their technical, nuclear, industrial and other scientific researches have added much to the stock of human learning. If it is being misused, it is not the fault of the universities but of those who are wielding the power. The pity is that all over the world, even today, people are ignoring the real basis of education which is spiritual in nature and not materialistic. The spirit has to be recaptured by the establishment of truly Islamic universities, not only in the interest of the Muslim countries but also for the benefit of the entire humanity.'l Despite the Islamic trappings, the model that Bilgrami and Ashraf are offering differs little from Western universities. In the structural framework of a Western university, they seek a disciplinary topography which is divided into perennial (the Quran, Sunnah, Sirah, fjqh, Arabic, etc.) and acquired (arts, social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and engineering). Within this overall division the students are to pursue their religious and material studies in parallel. There is no real discussion of how genuine integration is to be achieved and a synthesis of traditional and modem outlook is to be developed in the students. Bilgrarni and Ashraf present an excellent example of the widespread school of thought that all we need is to show complete and uncritical love of and devotion to Islam and everything else will fall into place. Those in Sufi mould add the 'inner' ingredient of 'purifying the heart and enlightening the soul'. But on the whole, no one moves, not even marginally, from the well trodden but superannuated path laid down
71 centuries ago by classical scholars. In particular, our understanding of key Islamic concepts has not progressed from the classical period. Most Muslim intellectuals rightly consider that it is the Islamic concept of knowledge, ilm, which must form the basis of the theoretical and institutionalized structure of an Islamic university. In other words, what makes an Islamic university Islamic is the fact that it is based on the truly Islamic notion of knowledge. The concept of ilm, as has been argued by numerous Muslim scholars, integrates the pursuit of knowledge with values, envelopes factual insight with metaphysical concerns and promotes an outlook of balance and genuine synthesis. This is the ultimate difference between the Islamic idea of ilm and the Western notion of knowledge which keeps 'knowledge' and 'values' in two separate, vacuum-sealed compartments and does not appreciate any form of knowledge that is not gained by sense of perceptions. Yet, when the Islamic concept of knowledge is actually given a practical shape by Muslim intellectuals, it almost yields a dichotomous picture of the world. For example, Sayed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas in an essay which essentially reaches the same conclusions as but is much more erudite and powerfully argued than Bilgrami and Ashraf, rightly criticizes the Western notion of know- ledge and Western rational, intellectual and philosophical sciences for:
1. The concept of dualism which encompasses their vision of reality and truth. 2. Their dualism of mind and body; their separation of intellectus and ratio, and their stress upon the validity of ratio; their methodological cleavage pertaining to rationalism and empiricism. 3. Their doctrine of humanism; the secular ideology. 4. Their concept of tragedy--mainly in literature.2
However, when it comes to delineating the Islamic concept of
72 knowledge, al-Attas follows the established path first developed by such classical scholars as al-Kind, al-Farabi and al-Ghazali. Under Islam, he states, knowledge is divided into 'the religious sciences' (the Quran, Sunnah, etc.) and 'the rational, intellectual and philosophical sciences' (human, natural, applied and technological sciences).This division of knowledge, while it was significant and of value in the classical period, unfortunately and unwittingly, introduces the same type of dichotomy which Muslim scholars find so objectionable in Western thought and ideas. It makes 'religious science' appear as though it were less rational and intellectual on the one hand, and presents human, natural, applied and technological sciences as though they had little to do with religious concerns, on the other. It presents two parallel worlds which like parallel lines only meet at infinity. The university based on this theoretical division, therefore, can never really achieve true integration between physics and metaphysics (for they exist in two different faculties with clear demarcations) or synthesize knowledge and values to the level of sophistication needed to solve the contemporary problems of the Muslim world or solve the formidable future problems of humankind. When curricular devel opment is based on this theoretical dichotomy, the result is similar to the courses offered to the Islamic Institute of Advanced Studies in Washington, D.C. The postgraduate programme is scheduled to have a core module on the Quran, Hadith, sharia, Usul al-Fiqh, al-Kalam, Islamic history and social institutions and advanced seminars on Islamic literature, art, philosophy of history, ethics and mysticism. The world outside interferes with this course of study in the form of twenty-eight specialization seminars: Islam and philosophy of science, Islam and economics, Islam and public finance, Islam and management, Islam and political theory, Islam and international relations and so on. This 'Islam and X’ mentality views Islam as some kind of detergent which when used on economics and psychology or architecture or
73 mass communication or logic or whatever cleanses the latter of impurities and somehow yields a purified and Islamic discipline. Moreover, from a disciplinary perspective, this enforced dichotomy between 'Islam and X makes Islam a subspecies of discipline X. Thus, 'Islam and political theory' makes the Islamic approach to political theory a subspecies of political theory which itself is a species of genus 'political science'. Similarly, approaches that seek to study 'Islam and architecture', 'Islam and economics' and 'Islam and science' make Islamic architecture, Islamic economics and Islamic science subspecies of the disciplines architecture, economics and science, respectively. This unintentional subversion of Islamic alternatives to Western disciplines has two serious consequences. First, by making Islamic alternatives a subspecies of Western disciplines it makes the Western discipline and its methodology the arbitrator of what is worthy and of value and what is useless. Second, it denies the independent validity of such Islamic disciplines as Islamic economics, Islamic architecture, Islamic political theory and Islamic science. Of course, in reality all Islamic disciplines arc subspecies of the genus Islam and derive their validity, value orientation and methodology from the worldview of Islam and not from the counter Western disciplines. Some kind of integration and synthesis between 'religious' and 'rational' disciplines can be attempted in the working models of Islamic universities, which is what, in fact, the International Islamic University of Malaysia is attempting to do. Basically the University has two main faculties--law and economics--and a Centre for Fundamental Knowledge where a traditional Islamic curriculum is taught. The faculties of law and economics teach Islamic law and Islamic economics along with Western law and Western economics. The four-year bachelor courses appear to give an integrative perspective on law and economics. However, at the International Islamic University of Islamabad, which is a much larger and more complex institution,
74 'religious' and 'rational' sciences exist in different arenas: there are faculties of sharia and law, Usul al-Din and Shatiah Academy, an institute of Islamic economics and institutes for applied sciences, social sciences, education, linguistics and languages, medicine and health and engineering and technology. The mere fact that both types of disciplines are taught at one campus could lead to the exchange of thought and ideas and may eventually produce some kind of integration, but that would be more a matter of coincidence than considered planning. While the institutional structure of the new Islamic universities appears adequate if not altogether original, in the long run they cannot fulfil the main objectives for which they have been set up. According to the prospectus of the International Islamic University of Malaysia, the main objectives of these centres of learning are to
Revitalize the Islamic concept of learning which considers the seeking of knowledge an act of worship. Re-establish ... the primacy of Islam in all fields of knowledge. Revive the ancient Islamic traditions of learning where knowledge was propagated and sought after in the spirit of submission to God. Widen the scope and options in higher education of the Muslim umma.
The pursuit of a great part of knowledge in our times has become so perverse, so commercialized and industrialized that to consider it as a form of worship is to show an acute lack of appreciation of the ethics of Islam. The primacy of Islam can only be established if it can re-emerge as a complete civili zation which can stand up to the dominant civilization of the West and meet the challenges of the future. Institutions established on artificial divisions of knowledge, where knowledge generated, manufactured and packaged in an alien culture is
75 given an Islamic gloss, where emphasis is given more to a traditional knowledge-base which concentrates on 'esoteric subject matter, authoritarian methodology and learning by memory'3 and on the scholasticism that has not moved a centimetre in a thousand years are hardly likely to transfer the power structures of the globe. We must not, however, be too demanding of the new universities. As Sher Muhammad Zaman, Director-General of the Islamic Research Institute (which has now come under the wing of International Islamic University, Islamabad) says, there are only experimental models to 'be understood, in a context of a formative phase'.4 Zaman, who is one of the few Muslim scholars having some contemporary insight into the whole notion of an Islamic university, also makes an important point that once these primitive models have been perfected they must be adopted by all institutions of higher learning: 'without this all-important understanding of the comprehensive goal, we shall be heading towards a marshy ground and mortally aggravating the existing dichotomy between the traditional Islamic madrasah and the modem secular or quasi-secular school, instead of eliminating (not bridging) the gulf by achieving a truly Islamic synthesis'.5 In other words, the model must be perfected so that eventually it fulfils the needs covered by traditional and secular institutions in Muslim countries and can be universally adopted as the model institution of higher learning for all disciplines. Now, if this is the ultimate goal of an Islamic university, and it seems to me to be the only sensible justification for developing these institutions, then we are really talking about something radically different. Zaman argues that the real task of such institutions is the 'constant cultivation of knowledge in all spheres and disciplines, old and modem, occidental or orient, with the application of Islamic approach to the content of each of them'.6 What is Islamic about an Islamic university then is that it is an uncompromisingly universalist institution where all branches of knowledge are pursued
76 within an ethical and methodological framework that is unquestionably Islamic. It is clear that the existing institutional structures, both those which are indigenous to Muslim countries and those which are imported from the West, do not meet this criteria. Moreover, the new institutions cannot emerge by simply modernizing the traditional sector which, as Zaman points out, amounts to little more than secularizing them or adding 'Islamic' bits to modem universities, or combining two types of institution in any form whatsoever. We need to start, with a clean slate. The main objective of Islamic universities should be to build a comprehensive foundation for the reconstruction of Muslim civilization. As such they are service institutions providing the knowledge base that carries Muslim civili zation forward. Classical Muslim scholars were well aware of the role of knowledge in sustaining a civilization, which is why they paid attention to the concept of ilm and its exposition. When they sought to classify various branches of knowledge, they did it in the spirit of evaluating its needs for Muslim civilization. They sought to identify important branches of knowledge which could not be ignored and to develop the methods by which these branches could be studied. Various classifications of knowledge produced by scholars such as al-Kindi, al-Farabi and al-Ghazali are not based on epistemological divisions as such modem Muslim scholars as al-Attas, Bilgrami and Ashraf project them to be. There is no such thing as religious knowledge and secular knowledge: an knowledge that promotes the goals of Islam--the ideas of tawheed and khilafa, justice and equality, understanding and brotherhood--is Islamic. When the Prophet said the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr, he did not qualify the scholar or the discipline. Or when he gave a higher rank to learning over prayer, he did not put the adjective ‘religious' over it:
77 To spend more time in learning is better than spending more time in praying--the support of the religion is abstinence; it is better to impart knowledge one hour in the night than to pray the whole night.
As such, a religious scholar is no more righteous than an important scientist; under Islam both are equally religious and equally important. The new Islamic universities, therefore, cannot be based on a false dichotomy of religious and secular, rational and non-rational: by the very fact that they provide a knowledge base for Muslim civilization, all knowledge they cultivate, whether based on reason or revelation, must be Islamic. This, however, should not be confused with the Aristotelian fallacy that the pursuit of all knowledge is virtuous: there are certain segments of modem science and technology (research on lethal weapons, sociobiology, bioengineering) and social sciences (Freudian psychology, aversion therapy) which cannot be described as virtuous by any ethical criteria.) Moreover, because the Islamic universities aim to infuse the spirit into every human endeavour, every discipline, they must minimize their artificial disciplinary divisions that are dominant today. Neither nature nor reality comes divided into neat subjects labelled 'physics' or 'economics' or 'design' or political science'. Disciplines, as I have written before, are born with a matrix of a particular worldview: they do not have an autonomous existence of their own but develop within a particular historical and cultural milieu and only have meaning within the worldview of their own origin and evolution. The division of knowledge into various disciplines as we find them today is a particular manifestation of how Western civilization perceives reality in its own problems. As such, to impose the existing disciplinary division of knowledge on Islamic universities is to make them subservient to the Western civilization and its worldview.7 Apart from developing a new disciplinary structure which
78 reflects the needs and requirements of Muslim civilization and derives its value structure from the worldview of Islam, Islamic universities have to be shaped as future-orientated institutions. To function as institutions which serve the knowledge base of Muslim civilization, they must be capable of assessing the changing contemporary and future needs of Muslim people. Assessing and meeting the needs of the Muslim civilization, generating the knowledge from within the worldview, and working towards the primacy of Islam and complete reconstruction of the Muslim civilization are all normative activities; and an Islamic university, therefore, is a normative institution. Let me elaborate. If we say that an Islamic university is a normative institution, we are not saying that it is in any way a biased or prejudiced academy. A normative, goal-seeking institution is not a 'politicized' institution that takes sides with this or that political stance. It does not 'tilt' as the universities in the post-Reformation Europe were expected to tilt towards Protestantism or Catholicism, or during the time of the war they had to tilt against the enemy and the enemy's language and noblest achievements. Nor does it, as universities in the Muslim world and in the West do nowadays, adopt a conservative garb under the conservative board of trustees or when a conservative government is in power, or wear a shirt of collectivization when a Marxist Central Committee takes power. A normative institution is free from such scruffy sell-outs. A normative academy owes its loyalty only to norms and values that shape its outlook and goals. It is the objective and universal values of Islam--those enshrined in the concepts and injunctions of the Quran and about which there is no doubt for believing Muslims--which have the ultimate loyalty of an Islamic university. Within the normative framework of these values, there is complete freedom of inquiry and academic work. At this point those with cold feet would utter something about neutrality, that research is independent of values, that
79 fundamental knowledge recognizes no normative criteria. Just as disciplines have any real significance within the cultural milieu of their origin and development, so too are facts recognized as such within a particular framework and worldview. There is no such thing as a neutral fact or an unaligned truth. Whether the action on a stage of life is determined by theology or biology, logics or axiology, phy- sics or sociology, history or statistics, topography or electronics, architecture or civil engineering, values that guide and shape this action, like the director, are just behind the safety curtain. In a grammatical cast, fact wears the robe of the indicative, value of the imperative; the problem for the philosopher is the undeniable leap, always there, from the indicative premises to the imperative conclusions. As Abraham Edel points out, whether a fact becomes a value, or value changes into fact, is determined by the office that the item is serving, 'whether it is structured as a part of the raw materials of the situation or functions as a guide in the decision-action processes. This can be seen from such complex transformations as that of essence from the value column, where it had a firm grip on the ancient and medieval theological philosophies, to the fact column in modem axiologies that insist on the autonomy of value with respect to all metaphysical-structural elements. As long as every form of existence was seen as striving to express its essence, the essence had a basic guiding role. The theory of evolution destroyed this status of essence; it becomes simply the pattern that happened to be hammered out, and so the nature of things ceased to be regarded as self-justifying.'8 Unlike the Western university, which despite being guided in all its endeavours by hidden values, deliberately swept under the carpet so they may not be noticed, an Islamic university boldly states the values and norms which shape its goals and academic work. This is not only more honest, it is also less dangerous. Consider the stance of those who insist on value neutrality of facts. Edel wrote, 'Think of Kant
80 badgering a mother who loves her child to find out whether she does it from a sense of duty or from natural affection. Or the free man in Russell's early essay, "A Free Man's Worship", brandishing his fist at matter rolling on its endless way. Or of the scientist insisting that when he says that atomic warfare is evil he is saying so purely as an individual and not as a scientist. In all these, we get a sense of an extricated self that waits until the situation is completely mapped out and then reacts, wills, feels, commands--all of his own sweet arbitrary impulse or his own indeterminate fashion.'9 In contrast, if the values underlying the facts are appreciated, then the situation is not all that helpless: one moves in a determined direction, acts, wills, feels, commands as the situation unfolds itself In other words, one can react and take precautions against those facts that prove destructive not just of certain cherished values but of life and of terrestrial environment itself. Thus, a normative institution, the Islamic university is not only a goal-seeking enterprise, but is in the healthy position of being able to guard, to a certain extent, against the type of fact-finding and problem-solving exercise which could lead to disastrous consequences for people, society and the planet. So how do we go about setting up such normative institutions, considering the contemporary disciplinary boundaries are artificial and reflect the worldview of Western civilization? Being the knowledge base of the Muslim civilization, an Islamic university should reflect its essential conceptual nature and characteristics in its institutional and organizational structure. It should be a microcosm of Muslim civilization as well as an instrument of meeting its intellectual and research needs. As such, at the core of each Islamic university must be an outreach research and development programme geared to the study and contemporization of the essential concepts of the worldview of Islam. Traditionally, the worldview of Islam, or rather 'Islamic ideology',
81 has been studied in terms of sharia, Usul al-Din, Kalam, etc. This approach has restricted the traditional content of Islamic thought and traditionalism and, some would say, suffocated the development of innovative thought. Thus, to make traditional thought relevant to contemporary and future times, the outreach programme should be structured on a conceptual matrix: as such, the programme should have departments devoted to the study and contemporary understanding of such key Islamic concepts as tawheed, risala, khilafa, ibadah, adl, istislah and sharia. In these departments all the traditional grounds should be amply covered, as, for example, that which is covered in Faculties of Sharia, Usul al-Din and Dawah Wa al-Ilam at the International Islamic University, Islamabad. But the emphasis now shifts to contemporization: the Departments of Risala, for example, would seek not to produce alims who have memorized all the 5,000 or so ahadith in Sahih Bukhari (one would expect them to have these not so much in their heads but on an ROM compact disc) but to seek their relevances in meeting the needs of modem life with all its complexities. By organizing the core programme in this fashion, the emphasis is shifted from a rigid traditional mould to dynamic conceptual analysis and synthesis which will take Islamic thought forward. Apart from this core outreach programme, an Islamic university would cover all areas of knowledge while conforming to the needs and requirements of the Muslim civilization. To give this institution a structure that can be appreciated in modem terms, we can analyse the contemporary and future needs of the Muslim civilization into certain familiar categories such as ideational, scientific, technological, informational, organizational, social and cultural. These categories should not be understood as conceptual, for they are purely functional. We can build an academic structure around these categories. Thus, for example, an Islamic university could have kulliyyah, faculties, schools, institutes and centres around
82 each of these categories with appropriate departments in each. What, for example, would the Kulliyyah of Ideational Science contain? It could have departments of contemporary ideologies and worldviews, history of ideas, history of religion, natural philosophy, and philosophy of science. Similarly, Kulliyyah of Technical Science could have departments of food technology, health technology, defence technology, environmental technology, material technology, etc. Departments within each kulliyyah will vary from country to country, reflecting local strengths and needs. And needs may present a broad spectrum from flood control to the establishment of a Centre for Control of Paupers and Beggars. We must now address the critic who argues that this is the same old wine in somewhat different but not altogether new bottles. After rejecting the false disciplinary divisions of knowledge, we also rejected the Western type university structure. But now, it appears, that by suggesting the faculty and departmental structure we have brought back the same disciplinary divisions. This is definitely not so. The disciplinary divisions in the Western epistemology are divisions of worldviews: Western epistemology does not have a single worldview. Moreover, within each discipline certain theoretical as well as factual developments generate their own specific worldviews which are sometimes imposed on the entire discipline. For example, the theories of organic evolution and sociobiology have created their own specific worldviews that are extrapolated and imposed on the entire discipline. If one wishes to study parasitology or bacteriology, for instance, one has to study it from the evolutionary perspective; other avenues of exploration are not open. Moreover, the worldview of a particular discipline is often exposed on the entire human existence. To continue our example of biology, the biologist now tells us what evolutionary purpose, if any, religion serves for us. Furthermore, the worldview of a particular discipline may often completely contradict the worldview of another: the worldview of elementary particle
83 physics is not complementary to the worldview of evolutionary biology. As such, disciplines are forced to be mutually exclusive; to enforce this division, the practitioners of each discipline develop a highly mythical language that prevents any form of interaction. Our functional division of areas of knowledge into faculties and departments does not support disciplinary worldviews. There is only one worldview at operation here, and this worldview and its norms and values shape inquiry and academic work in each discipline. If disciplines are deeply entrenched into their own worldview, any notion of interdisciplinary research almost becomes meaningless. But where the operational divisions are part of a unified worldview, real interdisciplinary research has no boundaries. When results of research based on narrow, disciplinary, parochial worldviews are applied generally, they lead to serious social, economic, class, sexual and cultural dislocations. In contrast, the fruits of research derived from disciplines based on unified and universal worldviews are more likely to have universal applications. While on the surface the institutional structure of an Islamic university presented here may appear to retain some of the old forms, a little probing reveals a radically different institution. Finally, what kind of product would this normative, interdisciplinary institution based on a unified worldview produce? A creative individual who not only understands but is also capable of synthesizing Islam to his or her personal and societical needs. An individual who is not only socially responsible but also technically virtuous. An individual who not only appreciates the dictates and complexities of contemporary life but can also adapt to a changing future. What useful function, after all, can an Islamic university serve if it cannot produce individuals of this ilk?
84 References
1. Harned Hasan Bilgrami and Said Ali Ashraf. The Concept of an Islamic University. Cambridge: The Islamic Academy, 1985, p. 42. 2. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas. Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future. London: Mansell, 1985, p. 205. 3. Catalogue of The Islamic Institutes of Advanced Studies, Washington, D.C. 4. Sher Muhammad Zaman. Islamic Studies 24(2):125-38, Summer 1985. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ziauddin Sardar. 'Islamization of knowledge, or Westernization of Islam?'Inquiry 1(7):39-45, December 1984. 8. Abraham Edel. Exploring Fact and Value. London: Transaction Books, 1980, vol. 2, p. 6. 9. Ibid, p. 8.
85 7
The Science Dimensions
Ziauddin Sardar
SINCE THE 1950S, when most Muslim countries acquired their independence, science and technology in the Muslim World has been in a continuous state of flux. A great deal is talked about the importance of science and technology for development, but little is actually done to promote indigenous research and development or otherwise increase the expenditure on science. Scientific and technological education is considered by a large proportion of decision makers in Muslim countries as the key to a non-dependent future, yet no attention is paid either to the quality of science education or developing a research base geared to local needs and requirements. There is, however, a growing awareness among scho- lars, intellectuals and thinkers that science is a double-edged sword. This awareness is concerned with the ethical dimensions of science and technology and its compatibility or non-compatibility with the worldview of Islam. We do not have to raise doomsday scenarios or conjure images of Dr Frankenstein to be concerned about what is happening in science and technology today. As the beneficial or the destructive effects of science affect all of us, we should all be concerned about science. What distinguishes Muslims from other people is the way they ought to be trying to find solutions to these contemporary problems. Most science today is big science, requiring many
86 millions of dollars and tying the work of the majority of scientists to the military-industrial complex. Science may claim spectacular success and amazing results, but its routine by-products and ecological and human disorders are now beginning to concern us all. For the last forty years, most people have looked to science to solve the inequalities of this world--between the rich North and the poverty-stricken South. The argument has focused on getting enough money to pay the way for science in the Third World. Forty years on the trouble is that, though there is some science in the Muslim world, that science is not solving the pressing problems of most people. This is because what counts as good science, the kind that establishes reputations, builds careers and wins international acclaim, is not relevant or even applicable to the daily problems of the disadvantaged and needy in the Muslim world. The question is how this mismatch has arisen. The problem proceeds from the very concept of science, which despite the good intentions of the practising scientist, creates a paradise for the few and a wilderness for the many. Any solution to the problem of science requires that we look for moral and social responsibility outside science, and that is where Islam comes in. Before I explore how the fundamental concepts of Islam can shape and give direction to scientific activity, let me clear away two crucial points. The first concerns what I regard as science. Science is an objective, systematic way of studying nature. Its results are universally applicable and reproducible. Two scientists from two distinct cultures studying a phenomenon and taking readings on a metre would not come up with different readings. The difference lies elsewhere and not in the objective and systematic observations of phenomena. Second, science is a human activity and despite all the efforts to be objective and detached, subjectivity and value criteria do creep into its practice, indeed, into its theory as well. Values, for example, play an important role in deciding the objectives of research, how this research should be funded,
87 what areas should be investigated, how these investigations should be carried out (for example, can experiments be done on animals) and so on. Moreover, as a human activity, science, ideally, is open to all humans. While in today's world science requires a great deal of education and training, it is an activity that is, properly speaking, limited to a select few. I make these points because some Muslim scholars and their followers equate 'Islamic science' with mysticism and elitism, while other Muslim scientists still believe science to be totally neutral and value-free. Many Muslim scientists find it difficult to believe that religion can have any role to play in science. Despite their firm faith in their religion, the integration of the words 'Islam' and 'science' to produce 'Islamic science' sends shudders down their spines. They have learned that ever since Galileo and his telescope, science and religion have become opposite poles. There are two points to be made here. First, Islam has never agreed to this great divide, insisting that everything can and must fit together in a unitary worldview. There is no counterpart in Islamic history of the great war of science and religion that took place in Christendom. Second, Islam is not a religion, or a theology, as the term is understood conventionally. Indeed, Islam cannot be understood simply as a religion. It is also a culture and a civilization of over fourteen hundred years of history; but more than that, it is a worldview, a way of looking at and shaping the world. And it is as a worldview that Islam shapes and gives direction to scientific activity. In the contemporary world, science has itself become an independent and autonomous worldview-, science is not shaped by society, but increasingly society is being shaped by science. Under Islam, science is not an autonomous worldview but a problem-solving and knowledge-seeking enterprise. It does not determine its direction unilaterally, but it is the moral and value criteria of Islam as well as the more practical consensus of the community which give direction to science. As the very questions about science
88 that we are forced to ask today are moral and ethical questions, it becomes a matter of cultural as well as physical survival for us to shape our scientific activities by the principles and values of the worldview of Islam to produce a a morally-, ethically- and socially-responsible science. That is what I call 'Islamic science'. How can the worldview of Islam shape and direct scientific activity? How do we justify the attribute 'Islamic' applied to science? What do we mean when we talk about 'Islamic science'? And how would Islamic science differ from the science of today? The notions of tawheed and khilafa are central to the evolution of a contemporary Islamic science. Tawheed means not only that there is one God but that all his creation is integrated into a unified whole and is equal before His eyes. What khilafa means is that Muslim scientists must approach creation as a trust from God, and as trustees they are accountable for this trust. Misuse of resources, depriving other creations of God of their rights and domination of nature are all abuses of this trust and, hence, from the vantage point of Islam are blameworthy (haram). Thus, a scientist must enter a laboratory in total humility as a trustee of God and not as an arrogant demigod wresting, against all odds, nature's secrets from her, assaulting truth in an attempt to capture the universe in a single equation. As a trustee, he or she approaches nature as sacred, as an equal partner in creation, as a friend and not as an enemy, as something to be respected and nurtured rather than exploited and defiled. The study of nature is akin to worship (ibadah) and the scientist must approach his or her work as a devotee approaches the prayer mat. In such an Islamic framework, science does not yield absolute truth. The notion that defines knowledge in Islam is ilm, which has two components. The first is that the fountainhead of all knowledge is revelation, which actually means the Quran: this is the category of absolute truth. The second is
89 that all systematic, internally-coherent methods of knowledge acquisition are equally valid; they all yield partial fragments of truth and reality, the fragments most useful for solving the problem at hand. In classical Islam, mathematics was referred to as ilumu taffakur or science of reflection. Thus, for classical Muslim scientists, mathematical equations did not represent absolute reality, but were a mere reflection. When al-Khwarizmi invented algebra he knew he was not describing some total, external reality, but simply solving a few problems of inheritance. When Omar Khayyam solved cubic equations for the first time, he knew he was not discovering some absolute truth but simply finding an answer to a complex astronomical problem. Thus for Islam all methods of acquiring knowledge are equally valid: the intuition of the mystic, the insights of the poet, the aboriginal metaphysical metaphors for physical topography (songlines), detailed chemical spectrographic research, computer analysis and rigorous logic. What scientists discover in the laboratory is therefore not somehow superior because of its objective and universal significance. It is not just that scientists themselves must be humble before God, before nature and before other creation, but science itself is only one social obligation and enterprise among many as well as one method among many of knowledge and discovery. To classify as worship a scientist's actions must conform to the Islamic notion of adl (justice), which demands that both the means and ends of science must be just. Experiments must not violate the rights of other human beings or animals. Violence must not be an integral part of experimentation. Moreover, the end products of science must not be destructive for humankind, for the environment that is the abode of our terrestrial journey or for the flora and fauna that enrich our planet. Furthermore, scientific activity must reflect as well as satisfy the needs and requirements of the society, i.e., the requirement of istislah (public interest), which is a source
90 of Islamic law. Finally, science must be backed by the ijma (consensus of society). All this means is that Islamic science is a very special activity. It is a science in the way we understand science: a systematic, objective, rational mode of inquiry whose results can be readily duplicated. It is different in that it operates within a set of a priori notions and values. Thus, Islamic science is not science for science's sake; it is science for the sake of humanity. Islamic science is not the quest for absolute truths or total understanding, it is a mode of reflection on the wonders of creation. It is a way of studying nature without destroying the object of study. In its ultimate sense, it is the glorification of God for the well-being of men and women: their worship. How does this way of practising Islamic science differ from the way science is done today? The first difference shows itself in science policy. The conceptual notions of Islamic science provide an in-built system of priorities and choices. The notions of adl (justice and equity) and istislah (public interest) imply that the needs and problems of the vast majority must be the focus of scientific research. And the notions of ijma (public consensus) means that these needs and requirements are defined by the public itself and not by some external power, including the scientists themselves. What this means is that society directs science; science does not lead society towards some unknown destination. When the late President of Pakistan, General Zia-ul Haq, was presented with this analysis, he was forced to hold an open, public debate on science policy in Pakistan, a debate that raged for months. However, when it became clear that his pet project of building a nuclear facility in Pakistan would be outlawed by the public, he quickly outlawed the whole debate. It also became clear that in this framework, there is no place for 'pure research', research for the absolute sake of research. As an illustration of this point, consider the new particle
91 accelerator at the Geneva Centre for European Nuclear Research (CERN). For several decades we have been told we are getting closer and closer to the structure of the universe, yet no end is in sight. The only thing that is accelerating are the costs; along with the machines, the budgets grow bigger and bigger. As soon as a new accelerator is finished, a new one with more power is needed. The notion of istislah would not allow such research--which I would argue to be an extrav- agant and elitist journey into meaninglessness--at the expense of more pressing needs of humanity. The money spent on particle physics can be diverted to such projects as, for example, the greening of the desert. The resources spent on a single accelerator can transfer the Sahel wasteland into an agriculturally rich paradise. Much of modem research in particle physics is directly related to the development of nuclear weapons. Needless to say, the dictates of khilafa, adl and istislah would outlaw all such research, as well as research on chemical and biological weapons. In clear text it means that over four-fifths of scientific research which is connected to 'defence' would go out the window for a simple reason: how can research on weapons of mass destruction and torture be classified as worship? In Islamic science, these resources would be diverted towards such global problems as bilharzia, river blindness and diarrhoea and the diseases associated with poverty, malnutrition and the like; the discovery of alternative sources of energy such as solar, wind and biomass; the development of easily assembled yet comfortable housing for refugees. While Islamic science closes a number of gates, it also opens many new ones. Vivisection, for example, cannot be justified in an Islamic framework: it negates the idea of khalifa. Unable to reconcile their ethics with their work, Muslim scientists are constantly abandoning fields of research where vivisection is the basic methodology. But if we do away with vivisection, does it also mean abandoning important research designed to find solutions to pressing
92 problems? Islamic science insists that for every door that is closed for ethical or value reasons, another must be opened to solve the necessary problems. Indeed, both the closing of one door as well as simultaneous opening of another is a religious obligation. And as the khalifa of God, human ingenuity knows no boundaries, new doors can be opened, provided research is directed towards them. Islamic science would, for example, promote the use of, and methodological research on, tissue culture as a possible substitute for experiments on animals. Consider another example. In modem medicine radical mastectomy is a common practice. As the human body is a trust from God, unnecessary violence against it is unjust (zulm, the opposite of adl). Radical mastectomy is common not because alternative therapy does not exist, but because invasive surgery has been made the norm. Alternative therapies can be found if medical research is directed towards them. Islamic science would shun both the practice of, and research on, radical mastectomy and focus on research for alternative therapies. Conventionally, it is claimed that discoveries are made for their own sake; research is done because it can be done and not because it ought to be done. The ethical connotations and public relevance of research is considered after the cat has escaped from the bag. Islamic science focuses on the 'ought' before the 'doing'. It seeks to bring the ethical concerns and public interest to the centre of the arena, it explores the ethical questions first and only if the answers have public relevance does it proceed further. Consider, for example, recombinant DNA research which involves a selective insertion or deletion of certain genes and manipulation of the biomolecular structure of genetic material. Recombinant DNA techniques can isolate and identify the eukaryotic genetic structure, insert natural or synthetic genes into the host cells and study genetic functions under strictly controlled conditions. As a result, previously unknown living systems can be produced.
93 Recombinant DNA has awesome power and frightening social implications. Some of its ethical implications include the exploitation of sexual selection, genetic screening for gender specificity and manipulation of genes in artificial insemination for such socially-unjust reasons as racism. Islamic science would unequivocally outlaw such research. It would strictly regulate, after public discussion and participation, the direction of rDNA research towards enhancing the quality of life, towards, for example, the production of antiviral proteins such as interferon and insulin. Critics would argue that Islamic science limits the freedom of inquiry and closes avenues of new knowledge. Exponents of Islamic science argue that it appears limiting only because ethical questions are raised at the beginning, in the heart of scientific inquiry, rather than after the discovery. If ethical questions are left to the end, it is not possible to put the cat back into the bag; in fact, under those circumstances there would be no place for ethics at all. With ethics included we are likely to take a more prudential caring approach, aware of things we do not know how to handle and, therefore, not developing them until we have asked more questions and learned more. Moreover, there is no such thing as 'free' inquiry: all scientific research is limited by such considerations as funding, power groups, secrecy, hidden cultural and social values, metaphysical assumptions about nature, the universe, time and so on. Islamic science is much more honest: it lays its values on the table and defines them as the rules of the game. It may close certain doors but it insists that others should be opened so that the advancement of knowledge does not just continue but brings positive benefits for humanity and our terrestrial environment. The model of Islamic science presented here is, of course, rather primitive. The work on Islamic science, like other areas of the global 'Islamization of knowledge' movement, is still at an embryonic stage. Already it has generated intense debate, as can be seen from the pages of the Journal of
94 Islamic Science (published by the Centre for Studies on Science at Aligarh), which has played a pioneering role in the evolution of thought on a contemporary Islamic science. Of necessity, much of the discussion has focused on theoretical issues. Practical work cannot be done in the absence of a theoretical structure; but at least we now have the makings of a theory of Islamic science which can be used to undertake policy work. It is quite possible to use the model described above to develop pragmatic science policies for such countries as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Iran and Sudan. The movement towards Islamic science does not mean reinventing the wheel, but focusing on those areas of science and technology that promote the values of the fundamental Islamic concepts. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the prevalent view in the Muslim world was that the gap between the industrialized countries and Muslim nations could be bridged simply by the transfer of technology. Technological transfer was the cornerstone on which the development plans, for example, in Saudi Arabia and the Shah's Iran were based. Those efforts have not helped alleviate dependency and the technology transfer view of development has now been totally discredited. We have learned from bitter experience that there is no substitute for indigenous capabilities and promotion of local resources for research and development. Where the Muslim countries have focused on indigenous efforts, real dividends have resulted. As examples, one can cite rubber and palm oil research in Malaysia, agricultural research in Pakistan, industrial research in Turkey and medical research in Egypt, where considerable gains have been made without outside help. It is this kind of self-reliance that the contemporary notion of Islamic science seeks to promote and on which policy work in this area must focus. The principles of Islamic science can become signposts for giving positive help to science in Muslim countries. Equally, we can use the notion of Islamic science presented here to develop a model
95 science policy for the global Muslim community, represented as independent but interconnected nation states. Eventually, we must move on to research on methodology and experimental and empirical work on key areas. Efforts should also be made to incorporate notions of Islamic science in science curricula and text books at undergraduate level. The newly established Islamic universities in Pakistan and Malaysia ought to be exploring this fertile arena of thought and practice. If Islamic science can demonstrate, theoretically as well as practically, that there is more than one way of doing science, studying nature and understanding the physical universe, it will have produced an original synthesis of unparalleled magnitude in recent times. It would also be a watershed in the creation of a genuine pluralistic, multicultural future based on the contributions of all peoples and worldviews.
96 8
Limits to Information
S. Parvez Manzoor
OVERWHELMED BY THE IMMENSITY of the phenomenal world and the multiplicity of its forms, the Shaikh al-Akbar of Muslim mystics, Ibn al-Arabi, prays in one of his poems, 'Deliver us, 0 God, from the sea of names.' Any modern disciple of Doctor Maximus, however, may also exclaim today with equal anguish, '0 Lord, save us from drowning in the ocean of information', for nothing threatens our sanity, overwhelms our imagination and affronts our intelligence as the meaninglessness of facts confronting us as information. With the interface of computer technology and information theory, the unique capacity of the human mind to synthesize and impose epistemic coherence on factual chaos is being taxed to its limits. Eventually, the toll that the dinosaurian databanks may take of our intelligence will be our ability to impart meaning to our cognition, for to perceive everything without selection and omission is, for the human mind, like the overheating and shutdown of the binary brain. It is the 'China syndrome' of human sanity and the termination point of all its mental activities. Unfortunately, the Information Chernobyl of our age is fast approaching such a point of complete meltdown. The radical realization of human finitude is the most chilling emotional experience and the most compelling intellectual testimony of our modem age. Knowledge, too, has
97 come against the inescapable fact of human finitude. Like everything else, when related to man, it too is seen to have its limitations. Knowledge with a definite article or with a capital 'K' may be the philosopher's touchstone or the theologian's kerygma; in facing the existential and historic human situation, it loses all its unity and infallibility. Paradoxically, however, it is science, the most Promethean of all human endeavours, that has brought home this realization at the moment of its unchallenged triumph. Not only has modem science exposed limitations within the working of reason, and hence of its own method, but it has also brought humans face-- to-face with the prospects of never fully comprehending the world around them. By so doing, it has also actualized the question of its own legitimacy. If the human, perchance, is finite, human reason fallible and human knowledge partisan, how could the 'truth' of science be independent of its human interests? In other words, the finitude of the human situation forces us to choose only that fraction of the empirical reality which concerns our legitimate interests and construct a system of knowledge around it that is proper to our ultimate aims. Thus, instead of the rationality of science we now speak about the sociology of knowledge: all human knowledge has its history and its social interests. If such is the case with the objective, rational and positivistic science, what legitimacy is there for the amassing of all kinds of facts, for the storage of all kinds of information? The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard has made a masterly analysis of the problem of knowledge in the age of computers. Taking note of the technological transformation that has brought about the computerized society, Lyotard feels that the nature of knowledge and learning cannot remain unaffected by this transformation. He asserts that 'along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as "knowledge" statements'. 1 One consequence of the hegemony of computers, Lyotard conjectures,
98 would be that only those categories of learning that fit into the new channels and are capable of being translated as information quantities will become operational. 'Anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way', he predicts, 'will be abandoned and the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language'.2 The usurpation of the traditional notion of knowledge by that of information is thus the first casualty of the computer hege- mony. By all standards, however, it will be an impoverishment and not an improvement upon the traditional concept of knowledge, for neither information nor science may be regarded as a true form of knowledge. The term 'knowledge' covers far more than a set of denotative statements which is the preserve of information science. Indeed, it includes notions of 'know-how', 'knowing how to live' and 'how to listen' (savoir faire, savoir vivre, savoir ecouter). Understood in this way, thus, knowledge is what makes one capable of uttering 'good' denotative statements, but also of forming 'good' prescriptive and evaluative utterances. In the final resort, thus, the problem of knowledge cannot be disentangled from the question of values and any facile equation of knowledge with information appears fatal for the creative faculties of a culture. The most devastating argument against the indiscriminate amassing of information, however, comes from the psychology of perception and its attendant theory of knowledge. It also stems from an erroneous apprehension of the nature of induction and scientific discovery. In the past one might have believed that the classification of facts and the formulation of absolute judgements based on that classification was the province of modem science. Today, however, such a neat dichotomy of facts and judgements would be considered naive, to say the least. Indeed, following Karl Popper, modem the- orists of science deny the possibility of induction altogether. Facts are neither devoid of a priori theoretical premises, nor
99 are they finite in such a way that any practising scientist has the time and patience first to collect the relevant ones for his inquiry and later discover their pattern and significance. It is a basic tenet of the psychology of perception today that hypotheses precede observations, that to 'perceive' something is to impose 'preconceived' mental order upon it. Intents, thus, are prior to actions and there can be no facts without values so to speak. Facts are taken, not given; made, not observed, as even the etymology of the term itself implies. What is true of ordinary perception also holds for scientific inquiry: theory precedes practice and values make facts. In sum, the percep- tion of reality is an intentional mental effort, an act of will in which the active partner is the perceiver himself. It is not accidental, then, that in scientific jargon one now speaks of the 'social construction of reality' and prefers historical, paradigmatic models of science to the objectivist and rational ones. Whatever the novelty of modem scientific theories, however, Muslims, too, were aware of the dialectical relationship between facts and values, theories and observations, and even construed the complementary relationship in terms of the synthesizing and analyzing functions of the intellect. Jalaluddin Rumi, for instance, propounds this insight with clarity in his incomparable style as:
With men of form, the word is synthesis by analysis (tafsilha ijmalha . With men of meaning, the word is analysis by synthesis (ijmalha tafsilha).
Attacking the problem of 'knowledge' by increasing the information content of our social system is like putting the cart before the horse. Increased information, especially if it is of the indiscriminate and imported kind, will not lead to a sharpening of our perception; on the contrary, it might even dull it. Indeed, if we start observing facts through foreign eyes, we run the risk of losing our Islamic personality because the foremost trait of that personality is that its perception of the
100 world, its observation of facts, precedes from its own values. The 'fact' of Islamic cognition and perception is the value-bias of Islam. In as much as other systems of cognition and perception do not presume the value-bias of Islam, their social construction of reality, their observed facts are at odds with those of the Islamic personality. All of this seems self-evident, yet there is a widespread illusion, both in and outside the world of Islam, that empirical facts are independent of ideological value content. Let this illusion be dispelled once and for all, at least within the forum of Muslim epistemological debate, and let it be asserted with unflinching certainty that the basis of all empiricism is subjectivism. Further, Muslim epistemologists must also insist that the Islamic epistemological option in no way implies renouncing the empirical path, but only the resolve to tread one of its own, for there is not one path but many leading to the reality of the world. Islamic epistemology, in other words, demands a carving of the empirical world for its own ultimate goals. Hence, prior to collecting facts that are not Islamically construed, Muslim thinkers must face the intellectual challenge of 'Islamizing' Muslim perception itself We need hardly deny that through centuries of internal sloth and external confusion, the Muslim mind today is unable to perceive the reality of the world Islamically, just as its intellectual tools are incapable of constructing meaningful Islamic facts. As a result, only a genuinely Islamic perception can attack, mentally speaking that is, the immeasurable reality of the world and break it into meaningful empirical facts. Only the collection of the facts of Islamic cognition and perception constitutes information for the Muslim; the rest is merely a sea of names. The task of Islamizing modem Muslim perception, not- withstanding the abstract tenor of the above argument, is t a vacuous academic exercise. No, it relates to numerous practical, down-to-earth projects in which the umma is currently engaged, from the revision of educational curricula to the
101 setting up of information services. In fact, the seemingly abstract, elusive and academic discussion above impinges on so many vital areas of Muslim civilizational activities that deferring the urgent intellectual task that it summons for the sake of attending to 'more immediate and pressing' needs of the umma would be a shortsighted policy which is sure to add more to the plight of the Muslims than to the redressing of it. Intellectual problems of that fundamental prominence are not a matter of academic luxury or a form of black magic reserved only for the practitioners of that unholy craft. No, when the stakes are as high as the survival of the Islamic personality and that of its authentic mode of cognition and articulation in the world, there can be no shirking of the collective responsibility. Nor can there be any debate about the urgency and need of the intellectual effort, for not to engage in it would be fatal for our historical tradition. In short, the seemingly remote problems of perception and cognition must be seriously, earnestly and collectively probed by Muslim thinkers, for they reach to the heart of the Muslim plight: its d-Islamized perception and consciousness. The first point to emerge out of the insight concerning the dialectical relationship between facts and values, observation and judgement, perception and cognition, is that the most paramount intellectual problem facing the Muslim thinker concerns the determination of 'Islamicity', not only of a rational proposition or statement but also that of the act of perception itself. Even if in more abstract terms the task entails articulation of a fully developed epistemology of Islam with all its trappings, in a more practicable fashion, it may also be understood as a project leading to an authentic classification of knowledge. No doubt Muslim thought today is inordinately preoccupied with the problem of knowledge and method. Epistemology and methodology have assumed the role of theology and ethics in its discourse. It is true that it is ultimately symptomatic of the identity crisis of the modem Muslim mind, but it also derives in no small measure from the
102 experience of modernity, along with its spiritual discontents and its epistemological uncertainties, which is universal in our age. In facing the mental challenges of modernity, however, Muslim thinkers today are giving due attention only to the sociological dimensions of the dominant Western paradigm of knowledge and the history of its institutions. Their epistemological probings have yet to take due cognizance of the ideological implications of its classification schemes. However, the way the unity of the human experience is broken into knower and the known and the manner in which it is further segmented into various sciences and disciplines is integral to the ideology of every epistemological system. In fact, classifying knowledge into various disciplines is tantamount to breaking the reality of the world into meaningful facts: it is to epistemology what perception is to cognition. By all standards, thus, it is a theme deserving of urgent Muslim attention. That the classification of knowledge is so fundamental to epistemology, indeed to the dialectics of perception and cognition, may be dramatically illustrated by referring to certain observations made by the late Michel Foucault. Coming across a classification of animals according to a certain Chinese encyclopaedia, Foucault was startled by its total violation of all rational principles of taxonomy known to the Western tradition. According to the Chinese scheme animals are divided into: a. belonging to the Emperor i. frenzied b. embalmed j. innumerable c. tame k. drawn with a very fine d. suckling pigs camel hair brush e. sirens l. et cetera f. fabulous m. having just broken the g. stray dogs water pitcher h. included in the present n. that from a long way off classification look like flies3
103 Quite naturally, the ordered list, giving fourteen subcategories of the category 'animal', has all the trappings of a rational analysis but, by every canon known to us, it subverts reason itself. For Foucault, this was a revelation of the limitations of his own system of thought which could not imagine any kind of space where all these varieties of animals could coexist. It seemed to defy the age-old Western distinction between the Same and the Other. That this discovery was the starting point of Foucault's classic study Les mots et les choses (rendered into English as The Order of Things)4 need not concern us here; what we must take note of, however, is that the perception of 'sameness' and the conceptualization of 'class' or 'category' is the most fundamental fact of cognition and its primary ordering principle. A classification scheme, thus, is the most effective instrument of an epistemological system through which its ideology is propagated and maintained. For Islam most of the subversive influence of alien epistemologies comes just through their classifications, through their categorizations of knowledge and through their hierarchicalization of disciplines. To be oblivious of this fact is to rob the Islamic epistemological enterprise of its critical dimensions. A few concrete examples will amply testify to this. By any standards bibliographical guides ought to belong to the least ideology infected genre of academic writings. And, by and large, they are indeed so. However, bibliographies present us with serious problems of bias that are structural and not personal. Thus, even if we disregard the common practice which accepts the promotion of personal pals and cronies as legitimate, we still have to reckon with the role of classification as the major perpetrator of the ideological bias. One may, for instance, look at one of the standard works of this kind, A Reader's Guide to the Great Religions,5 to realize the extent of the subversive thrust of alien classification schemes. Despite the fact that the work is quite sober and scholarly in every respect and that its editor,
104 Charles J. Adams, is a knowledgeable, even sympathetic, student of Islam, the Muslim reader is more misled than led by this guide. Hence, as the epistemological premise of the work is secular-- humanism, one expects that its treatment of the diverse religious traditions of the world would be evenhanded and equally sceptical of all para-rational, theological and metaphysical claims. Such, however, is not the case. To start with, the classification scheme, indeed the concept of religion and the discipline of comparative religions, has arisen out of the Western experience of Christianity and is ill-suited to the comprehension of other great traditions. For the host tradition as it were, thus, it avoids all the embarrassing questions about the historical authentication of its dogmatic claims, making a tidy compartmentalization between the desk of the historian and that of the theologian. It is not accidental, then, that the believing Christian bibliographer is on the offensive, bypassing the issue of historical criticism with his own categories of the 'Christian view of history' and 'Christian historiography'. Insisting that 'it is also important to know Christians have responded to the demands that Christ has made upon them', he skilfully manipulates the bibliographical data to present all the traditional topics of Christian interest, and as seen by the Christian eyes, one may add. Everything that belongs to the syllabi of the traditional divinity schools is here, but in vain may one search for any critical perspective on the history and dogma of the Church. Even Christian demythologizers, such as Bultmann, are passed over in silence. The uninitiated reader gets the impression that everything is rosy in the Eden of Christian faith. Of the serpent of historical scepticism, there is no trace here. As for those who would rather inhale the air of acute crisis that hangs over Christianity today, that makes modem Christian theologians assert absolutely nothing, the sound guide provides no outlet. The Muslim material, by contrast, is presented by Charles J. Adams himself with much intellectual timidity, emotional
105 strain and apologetic embarrassment. There is a consistent separation between 'Muslim works' and 'critical studies', as if of all the religious traditions of the world, Islamic dogma alone is at odds with the tenets of reason; as if there is no critical dimensions to Muslim discourse and as if Western critical approach is totally devoid of its dogmatic premises. The classification is based entirely on the hierarchy of themes suited to the critical taste of the outsider. Unlike the Christian who insists on presenting 'the Christian response to demands by Christ', what Muslims themselves regard as the salient dimensions of their faith are not deemed worthy of the academic guide. Clearly, behind the academic face and its bibliographical mask lurks the body of an alien whose sense apparatus differs from our own. Two other examples may further substantiate this point. Towards the end of the now classic book Arab Painting, Richard Ettinghausen devotes a few pages to abstract designs which the author calls, 'Beyond the Material World'.6 Similarly, David Talbot Rice's wellknown survey Islamic Painting has its final chapter on 'nonrepresentational painting'.7 This hierarchy of figural painting over abstract painting is part of the European artistic tradition and is exactly the reverse of what Muslims consider as the proper relationship between the two. Had the Islamic artistic tradition been presented from a perception that is indigenous to it, the bulk of the book would have been devoted to abstract designs and only an appendix would have included figural paintings. Indeed, one is not sure whether painting as a subcategory of art constitutes a fact of Islamic cognition; nor can we be certain that the most valuable achievement of the Islamic genius, its abstract designs, should be ranked below figurative paintings (I am not even sure whether the Western notions of design and abstraction faithfully represent the facts of Islamic perception). Obviously, the fact of painting, which is a construct of Western consciousness and a discipline of its art history, is not the same fact for Muslim perception and tradition. Thus, the way knowledge is segmented, classified,
106 categorized and hierarchized is the sine qua non of all epistemology. This brings us to the knotty problem of 'Islamic disciplines'. Muslim civilization's head-on clash with secular modernity, in essence a conflict between God-infused and God-indifferent forms of cognitions, has pushed the problem of knowledge to the top of the Muslim intellectual agenda. Of the most notable epistemological Muslim critiques of modernity, the one advanced by Professor Naquib al-Attas was the earliest and most imaginative. Perceiving the most subversive weapon of modernity to be its doctrine of secu- larism, al-Attas proposed a psychological, albeit fundamental and comprehensive, remedy in terms of a radical 'de-Westernization' of the Muslim mind and of its educational system. The project of emptying Muslim consciousness of its acquired secularized cognition would have to be undertaken at a truly Islamic university was the essence of al-Attas's prescriptive cure.8 Afterwards, the late Professor Ismail R.al Faruqi also sought a solution on similar lines and called his project the Islamization of Knowledge.9 Undoubtedly, there is considerable overlapping of the two epistemological schemes even if, in terms of detail and planning, they exhibit minor differences. Be that as it may, there does exist now among modem Muslim scholars a rudimentary form of consensus about the need to create a comprehensive body of knowledge on authentic epistemological principles. Only minor disagreements persist in this regard, and these only on matters of strategy and priority, not of goals and objectives. Fazlur Rahman, for instance, believes that the task of reforming Islamic education is paramount, 'and unless some solution to this is forthcoming, it is futile even to raise the question of the Islamization of knowledge'. 10 For him the primary focus of Muslim effort should be not on the execution of some abstract project but towards the establishment of an authoritative body because it is 'the upholders of Islamic learning who have to bear the primary responsibility of
107 Islamizing secular knowledge by their creative intellectual skills'.11(The problem of authority in knowledge was the main cause of earlier disputes in Islam and the most cogent rationale for the traditional bifurcation of knowledge into its ‘salvational' and 'secular' categories.) In all these discussions, what is left in abeyance, is deferred to later efforts or only perfunctorily addressed is the issue of classification and the categorization of new disciplines. No doubt, al-Attas offers his updated version of the traditional pair of religious and rational sciences12; al-Faruqi also presents his 'syllabus for a two-year university course in Islamic civilization'13; even Fazlur Rahman makes some profound reflections on 'Reconstruction of the Islamic Sciences'14; nonetheless, the chasm separating these abstract schemes and reflections from any actual classification which the Muslim information scientist may use in his undeferrable work remains unbridged. More than that, most of these insights concern either the traditional (naqliyya) religious disciplines or have to do with the more value-laden social and humanistic sciences. Concerning the natural world, notwithstanding all the furore about Islamic science, Muslim thought finds itself in a complete vacuum. There is neither an inkling of a Muslim classification nor a trace of an Islamic method for the study of the natural world. Given this dreadful epistemological void, what chances are there for the Muslim information scientist to perceive the natural world in terms of the facts of Islamic cognition and store them according to the order of Islamic classification? Obviously, despite all the talk of Islam being a complete way of life, in their heart of hearts Muslim thinkers do believe that the Islamic option to knowledge is valid only for the moral and human spheres. However, not only does such a de-divinized perception, which posits the ethical neutrality of the natural world (after all, the essence of the scientific method is to isolate the is of the universe from its ought), reintroduce the problem of secularism at the very core of Islamic thought, it is also in dire
108 contrast with the earlier efforts of the Muslim thinkers with whom the dichotomy of the traditional and the rational sciences was not a matter of rationality but of authority. Our Islamic tradition justifiably prides itself on our reverence for knowledge. Indeed, the most seminal concept of Islamic civilization is ilm that signifies the comprehensive and unitary notion of knowledge. Early in Islamic history, however, another dimension was added to the concept of ilm: in addition to its pristine sense, it came also to denote specialized disciplines, even individual pieces of information. Thus, we find in the earlier Arabic literature the plural form ulum which does not occur in the Quran. A third notion, that knowledge is the sum total of individual disciplines, also gained currency. Hence, we have Muslim writers constantly enumerating the list of individual disciplines until they reach, as reported by the sixteenth century Turkish encyclopaedist, Tashkopruzadeh, the forbidding number of 316. More notable than the enumeration of ulum was the Muslim tradition of treating the unity of disciplines as axiomatic and constructing systems of classification to preserve the hierarchy and order of sciences. Though nearly every Muslim thinker of repute did propound his own classification scheme, the ones by al-Kindi, alFarabi, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun have come to be regarded as the most notable. Common to all these classi- fications is the bifurcation of all knowledge into revelational or transmitted (ulum naqliyya) and rational (ulum aqliyya) science. Though this division has been uncritically accepted as the classifying principle of all Islamic knowledge, there were indeed many other systems as well. AI-Ghazali, for instance, presented not one but five different systems of classification based on the criteria of (a) methodology, authority and argumentation, (b) epistemic principles on which the disciplines are based, (c) necessity and probability, (d)juristic obligations and (e) ultimate aims. Another work of seventh-century hijra classifies knowledge into seven categories.
109 Others have divided the sciences according to whether these were theoretical or practical, whether their topics were established by sensory experience and deduction or were intuitively apprehended by the soul. Ibn Sina has even arranged knowledge according to an hierarchy of honour. Moreover, as Aziz al-Azmeh has perceptively clarified, the basis of the traditional divide between transmitted and positivist sciences was not rationality but authority. 15 Earlier Muslims, it appears, were more aware of the 'sociology of knowledge' principle than we give them credit for. In their classifications, neither did they deny the principle of rationality within the corpus of transmitted sciences (Al- Ghazali, for instance, contended that reasoning in the field of fiqh was different from reasoning in the domain of 'foreign' sciences), nor did they regard rational sciences to be autonomous of human authorities of the Ancients and earlier 'Masters'. The problem of human authority, thus, is extremely crucial to Islamic thought and is the basis of traditional classification schemes. In the light of this, it would appear that Fazlur Rahman does display a sound Islamic in- stinct when he calls for the establishment of some authoritarian bodies of scholars and educational institutions prior to 'Islamizing secular knowledge', because unless that thorny issue is settled, Muslims cannot hope to proceed with systematic epistemological reforms. Given the significance of this endeavour and the richness of our tradition in this regard, the task of classifying modem knowledge can no longer be deferred. Indeed, it is one strategy by the adoption of which abstract visions and psychological cures can come to fruition in concrete institutional projects. As the act of Islamic perception precedes and presupposes that of the collection of facts, it is the duty of every Muslim thinker to prepare the ground for the information scientist. A Muslim information scientist would need all the creative energies of the umma to fulfil his duty properly. Unless given a perceptive, imaginative and critical
110 classification scheme, the information scientist is bound to be swept away by the flood of information, and we are sure to drown in the sea of endless names.
References
1. Jean-Francois Lyotard. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. Manchester: MUP, 1984. p. 4. 2. Ibid. 3. Michel Foucault. The Order of Things. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971. p. xv. 4. Ibid. 5. Charles J. Adams (ed.). A Reader's Guide to the Great Religions. New York: Collier Macmillan, 1977. 6. Richard Ettinghausen. Arab Painting. Geneva: Skira, 1962. 7. David Talbot Rice. Islamic Painting: A Survey. Edinburgh: EUP, 1971. 8. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas. Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future. London: Mansell, 1985. (Originally published as Islam and Secularism. Kuala Lumpur- Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, 1971. 9. Ismail R. al-Faruqi. Islamization of Knowledge. Washington, D.C.: IIIT, 1982. 10. Fazlur Rahman. Islam and Modernity. Chicago: UCP, 1982, p. 134. 11. Ibid. p. 134. 12. al-Attas, op. cit., p. 202. 13. al-Faruqi, op. cit., pp. 57-8. 14. Fazlur Rahman, op. cit., pp. 147-62. 15. Aziz al-Azmeh. Arabic Thought and Islamic Societies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, pp. 155ff.
111 9
Re-Educating the Muslim Intellectual
S. Parvez Manzoor
EDUCATION FORMS THE MOST IMPORTANT LINK between man's past and future. In fact, it constitutes that process of evaluation and transmission, of coping with the present and planning for the future, which determines a community's survival. It is through education that the cultural heritage, knowledge and values of a social group are preserved and the continuity of its collective life ensured. In short, education imparts meaning to the existence of a culture and helps it sustain its worldview. As such, it cannot be equated with a mere inventory of the paraphernalia and instruments of instruction, including even institutions and external structures. On the contrary, in every constructive way, education is inextricably linked with the general intellectualism of a culture, the principal task of which is to provide a forum for selfanalysis and criticism. Educational philosophy, therefore, not only shapes the identity and destiny of a community but in its function as the guardian and cultivator of values it is also the very basis of all culture and civilization. The future of Islam will to a large extent be determined by the ability of the Muslim umma to provide or deny its young the kind of education that is in alignment with its ultimate aspirations. Thus, at a time when every Muslim fervently hopes and probably strives for 'Islamic revival', one cannot but agree with Fazlur Rahman when he insists that it is the
112 growth of a genuine, original and adequate Islamic thought that must provide the real criterion for judging the success or failure of an Islamic educational system.1 The revival and renaissance of Islamic intellectualism is both the essence and goal of higher Islamic education. Given this objective, therefore, it becomes imperative that Islamic educational thought begins by re-educating the Muslim intellectual. Unfortunately, all our toils at the cultivation of a new crop of Islamic intellectuals must start on thorny and barren ground. At the outset of any such effort is the painful reali zation that the one proverbial unity of Islamic thought has unquestionably been severed in modem times. Though to blame this on Islam's encounter with modernity is de rigueur, the seeds of this disruption lay already in premodern times when a kind of pernicious secularism made its appearance in the Muslim world, no doubt as a result of the general stagnation of Islamic thinking. What started as no more than an insignificant fissure in the bedrock of Islamic intellectualism, however, has developed into an unbridgeable divide in our own times. The dichotomy of 'religious' and 'worldly' sciences, though ultimately of early origin in our history, today haunts us as a great schism in our soul. On the one side of this dividing gulf is the ulema with their unimpeachable historical credentials, their impeccable sharia methodology and their unchanging notions of societal justice; on the other we have the so-called intellectuals more in communion with the modem world, daring and innovative in their thinking but without the authority and responsibility of tradition. Will the twain ever meet, is the question of our times. Until recently, the intellectuals have often criticized the ulema (at least in the Sunni world) for being conservative, rigid and narrow-minded in their approach to contemporary problems. In fact, it has frequently been claimed that their vision of Islam itself is outdated and that they cling to the emotions and thought-pattems of an age long made obsolete by the onward march of civilization. Islam, so argue their
113 opponents, is eternal not because of the fixity of its legal rulings and injunctions as the ulem a would have it, but due to the universality and adaptability of its values and precepts. The ulema's lack of acquaintance with the modem world is further adduced as proof against the relevance of their approach to Islam. Ziauddin Sardar, for instance, indicts both Abu Ala Maududi and Syed Qutb for paying no attention to , epistemology and science, technology and environment, urbanization and development-- all burning, indeed pressing issues for contemporary Muslim societies as well as the dominant West'.2 Even more outspoken in his censure of traditional scholarship is Fazlur Rahman, who speaks of the 'intellectual bankruptcy' of the modem 'religious establishment'.3 Other equally critical but well-meaning and earnest voices are not lacking. Whether the ulema actually deserve these strictures, whether they in fact are the pious simpletons that their critics paint them to be, whether they really are incapable of guiding the faithful in the maze of modernity, must remain unanswered for the time being; what will concern us here is the performance of the intellectuals themselves. How successful have they been in interpreting the forces of the modem world and translating their insights into positive guidelines for coping with these forces? How penetrating and compelling, in short, is their perception of modernity and how genuine and authentic is their vision of Islam? What are the moral imperatives that ensue from their approach to Islam and what promises, or perils, does their vision hold for the umma? And finally, what may be expected of them in the future? Or, in other words, when they exhibit intellectual and moral disarray and disorientation, how may they be re-educated? To trace the ideological, philosophical and spiritual pedigree of the Muslim intellectual and to pinpoint the sources, whether indigenous or foreign, of his or her inspiration would, indeed, be a task beyond the scope of this chapter. Such references as are necessary will, therefore, be made
114 only in passing, just as their internal squabbles will be largely glossed over. Moreover, even if the very notion of 'Muslim intellectual' remains somewhat problematical from the standpoint of our historical legacy, nonetheless for our purpose we shall define him or her as the 'Islamically-minded and motivated thinker who, for the propagation and dissemination of his or her ideas, writes principally in a modem Western language'. Though this definition does give rise to certain anomalies (many a traditional alim has been translated into Western languages), it has the merit of positing an easily verifiable standard which is also relevant to our enquiry. After all, the firsthand knowledge of any modem Western language is of capital importance in determining one's knowledge of, and hence one's attitude to, the modem world. This practical criterion thus successfully captures the dividing proclivities of current Islamic thought and may unhesitatingly be employed for our purpose here. In the year 1213 of the hijra, the Egyptian scholar and historian, Abd ar-Rahman al-Jabarti, had his personal encounter with modernity. This hijra year, it may be recalled, corresponds to June 1798/June 1799--the year in which Napoleon invaded Egypt and, by all scholarly consensus, brought Islam face-to-face with the might and ideas of Western civilization. It is instructive that for al-Jabarti this encounter had the force of a personal educating experience. In his monumental work on history, Ajaib-al-Athar fit-Tarajim wal-Ahbar, however, Al-Jabarti seizes the import of this event which essentially entailed Egypt's loss of power to France in terms of the religious calamity that befell the whole umma:
So reached this year its close. Among the unprecedented events that occurred in it, the most portentous was the cessation of the Pilgrimage from Egypt. They did not send the Holy Draperies (kiswah) for the Kaabah and they did not send the Purse (surrah). The like of this had never happened in the present age
115 and never during the rule of the Banu Uthman [the Ottomans]. Surely, the ordering of events lies with God alone.4
Dismayed by his civilization's humiliating encounter with the more powerful foreigners, the Muslim savant, nonetheless, was receptive enough to begin immediately his own personal re-education. The new rulers of his native land were to help him in this in a strange way. After occupying Cairo, one of the first acts of the French was to stage a scientific exhibition. The Cairene were treated to all the marvels of science, including practical demonstrations, and the inquisitive Muslim historian was one of the visitors. The awesome display of technical wizardry, however, did not impress him. He recorded that 'the French evidently mistook Muslims for children who could be impressed by such monkey-tricks',5 but that this rather reflected childishness on the part of the French themselves. Instead, it was his exposure to French justice that made a deep impression on his mind. The first instance involved the misdeed of the foreigners themselves. Some French soldiers were found guilty of house-breaking with violence and, on the personal orders of Napoleon, were made to pay for the crime with their lives. The second incident was more disturbing: it concerned the assassination by a Muslim of General Kleber, Napoleon's successor and the commander of the occupation army in Egypt. Al-Jabarti, who was present at the trial and even reproduced verbatim in his account documents replete with the French chancery's defective Arabic, was deeply stirred by the fair trial. Honest and conscientious as he was, he does not shirk wondering whether his fellow countrymen, in similar circumstances, would have risen to the same moral level. Clearly, in the Muslim his- torian's moral scheme, there was no stipulation for according a higher place to the Ottoman form of justice simply because the latter were Muslims. Herein lay al-Jabarti's personal reeducation; for he became painfully aware that the standards of justice of his times, as practised by the Muslims of his land,
116 had fallen below those of other nations. This is how all genuine modem intellectualism of Islam may be understood: as a search for the quranic meaning of justice and the creation of a universal moral order in the world of today and tomorrow. Justice is the key word for all Islamic intellectualism and all Islamic education. The most challenging problem for Islamic thought today is quite simply to delineate, in the light of the quranic consciousness, the contents for justice within the socio-political framework of modem civilization--and, where these demands for universal justice cannot be met, supply rational arguments for challenging modernity itself. The gruesome and excruciating problem for the Muslim intellectual is that whereas the moral imperatives of his faith are quite explicit and not negotiable, the traditional remedies for implementing these imperatives, indeed all inherited answers to societal justice, in his perception, have lost their efficacy in the changed realities of today. The ulema on the other hand and quite naturally are adam ant in discrediting any such notions that claim the redundancy of their authority or the incompetence of their tradition. Notwithstanding these discordant visions of tradition and modernity entertained by the ulema and the intellectuals, the heart of the problem for Islamic thinking for both lies in the search for a contemporary socio-political definition of justice. So has it also been throughout all the trying years of political dependency and intellectual stupor. It goes without saying that at the height of their political might, when Muslim societies lay humbled before them, European powers could not have had a high regard for Islam, especially so when the culture they encountered and defeated was already decadent and moribund. The unfortunate historical legacy of perpetual strife between dar al-Islam and Christendom, moreover, left no room for any sympathetic understanding on a reciprocal basis. At the moment of her triumph, Christian Europe's contempt for her old foe was total, while the vanquished Muslim world was in the throes of
117 doubt and despair. It is at this 'darkest hour of Muslim history' that the modem intellectual enters. The traits the intellectual then displayed endure to this day: normally the intellectual has a firsthand knowledge of Europe (or the West), is aware of her strengths as well as her weaknesses, but at the same time also holds a genuine admiration for her professedly liberal and humanitarian values. One such figure who fits well our definition of a Muslim intellectual was Syed Amir Ali of India, who deserves to be called 'the father of modem intellectualism'. Syed Amir Ali (1849-1928) was an eminent jurist who held many important positions in the colonial administration of British India. His claim to fame, however, is due to his learned, enthusiastic and, to some, incomparable book, The Spirit of Islam, which was first published in 1891 and has since seen numerous re-prints.6 At a time when the morale of the modernized Muslims was low, when the Christian missionary was zealously delivering hammering blows and when it had become the fashion of the day to assert that Islam was the antithesis to civilization, Amir Ali appeared like a knight in shining armour. His work is indeed a tour de force; it is confident, resilient, full of contagious idealism and written in a language of great beauty and majesty that still enthrals the reader. The Islam it presents is liberal and humane, the ideals it cherishes are among the highest in the world and the truths it embodies are as everlasting as those found in any other moral tradition. The Spirit of lslam, so says even a fastidious Christian critic, 'needs to be read for its fullness, its exuberance, its sweep of confidence to be appreciated'.7 Certainly, no Muslim can afford to miss it. Notwithstanding its sterling qualities--indeed in certain respects it has never been equalled, let alone surpassed--Amir Ali's study of Islam also displays all the reprehensible traits of modem intellectualism. Even such a confident presentation has its nervous side; it is not altogether free from the occasional jarring note of apology--this despite the notable
118 fact that its erudite and generous author, unlike any of his followers, does not suffer from offended sensibility and hurt pride. Given the paradigm established by Amir Ali's pioneering study, and with the benefit of hindsight, we are forced to conclude that apology is an essential and inevitable ingredient in all modem intellectualism. There appears, thus, more than ample justification for accepting the traditionalist's common allegation against the intellectual, namely that the latter is a person of split loyalties and perhaps of less than firm faith. True enough, the ubiquitous presence of apology in all intellectualist discourse does point towards a failure of nerve and a loss of confidence. Nevertheless, it is also true that the intellectual is also a rationalist defender of Islam. In fact, intellectuals display more than a perfunctory resemblance to the mutazila of classical times, their preference for mutazilite theology being well-known. The most damaging charge against Amir Ali and all intellectuals after him, however, is moral. Often with perspicacity it has been observed that for the apologizing intellectual, Islam provides the pain and ecstasy but is not a moral imperative. Thus, intellectualist Islam is sublime and beautiful, but it makes no ethical demands on the Muslim and inspires no action. One may just as well sit anywhere, admire it and be captivated by its ethereal beauty and truth. The essence of faith, however, is not self-admiration, and the essence of Islam is moral dynamism. The intellectual has not so far given any convincing reply to the allegation of the ethical poverty of his image of Islam. The principal task before anyone desirous of re-educating the Muslim intellectual, therefore, is to imbue the intellectualist Islamic vision with the fervent and vibrant moral dynamic of the Islamic faith. A modem Orientalist describes what to him is one of the attractive qualities of the author of The Spirit of Islam : 'Amir Ali stands practically alone among Muslim modernists in that he does not attack the West on political grounds and in that he does not intimate a temporal resurgence of Muslim power'.8
119 Thus, besides apology and ethical quietism, the third most conspicuous trait of Amir Ali's thought is its political aquiescence to the power of the West. It is my contention that even in this, the modem intellectual walks in Amir Ali's tracks. At first such a statement sounds strange, especially so in our own days when everyone is clamouring for the resurgence of Islam. Indeed, one normally assumes that all modem intellectualist discourse, because of its lukewarm interest in matters of religion, is preeminently involved with the problems of power and that the issue of the political resurgence of Islam is foremost on the intellectual's agenda. Nonetheless, very little that one finds in the actual writings of the intellectual lends support to this belief. Our analysis will try to bring out quite clearly that, with respect to power and politics, the intellectual is not a knight but a hermit of Islam. Before we examine our more notable contemporaries whose writings are available in Western languages and who thus according to our definition belong to the category of Muslim intellectuals, a recapitulation of the main characteristics of their corporate thought is in order. Taking our cue from Syed Amir Ali and the lesser known pro-Western figures of the last century, we come to the conclusion that besides his deployment of Western concepts and vocabulary, the intellectual distinguishes himself from the traditional alim in three respects: first, the tenor of his thought is incontestably apologetic; second, his Islam is an ethically undemanding doctrine; and third, in terms of political philosophy, he is a quietist. There is indeed a fourth characteristic, namely that compared to the standards of traditional scholarship, the intellectual's knowledge of Islam is shallow, just as his sensitivity to Islamic symbols and images, both in terms of intellectual comprehension and emotional loyalty, leaves much to be desired. A worthy successor to Amir Ali, exhibiting the same kind of high intellectual acumen but also similar apologetic proclivity, is the late Ismail Raji al-Faruqi. Equally a man of
120 great erudition, argumentational flair and crusading zeal, alFaruqi emerged as one of the most cogent spokesmen of Islam in Western academic circles. More than that, he has had a considerable following among students and other sections of the intelligentsia throughout the Muslim world, partly because he is first and foremost a debater and his numerous writings are in English (his stray Arabic articles seem to be mostly translations from the English originals, his Palestinian origin and his proficiency in the classical language notwithstanding) but partly also because he actively guided and monitored nearly all the semi-official Muslim organizations. To give an adequate analysis of al-Faruqi's total intellectual output is, of course, beyond our scope; suffice it to say that only those aspects of his thought that impinge upon our theme will be briefly discussed. For a lifetime of devotion to education in its various ramifications, from pure academism to formal leadership of various youth organizations, the most surprising aspect of al-Faruqi's thought is its frustratingly abstract character. Despite our genuine admiration for the always inspiring and gratifying quality of his intellectual approach to Islam, we must reproach it for its glaring lack of concreteness and its total disregard of empirical realities. That his vision is always directed towards the ideal is no consolation for those who are in search of moral imperatives within the inescapable context of modernity. Thus from an educational perspective, for all its sublimity and beauty, al-Faruqi's Islam remains painfully estranged from history; it has no immediate design for the remaking of this world and carries no conviction for sacrifice or martyrdom. No doubt, it is a total system of thought, coherent and logical to the utmost detail, just as it possesses absolute spiritual perfection; unfortunately, it is also its own reward. A purposeful examination of al-Faruqi's Tawheed: Its Implications for Thought and Life,9 which is a choice collection of essays that have appeared over a long period of time
121 and thus marks a conscious synopsis of his thought, would bring home the point I have been making. Despite the forbidding diversity and variety of its themes, its argumentational thrust is buttressed by a single, uniquely unifying motif: tawheed. No doubt, it is the genius of Islam which is ultimately responsible for this unity and clarity of intellectual vision; nonetheless, it is also a tribute to al-Faruqi's perception to have delineated that vision with such eloquence and splendour. However, it remains a vision which may be beheld only, and not a charter to which may be given formal allegiance, let alone a plan or a programme which may be enacted. Out of the thirteen times, each elucidating a fundamental and universal concept from the clarifying vision of tawheed, the one dealing with political order ranks tenth, succeeding such protean entities as history, knowledge and metaphysics. The really astonishing fact, however, is not the relative insignificance or subservience of the political to the metaphysical in al-Faruqi's scheme, but that his political thought is not political at all. The two primary units of his political order, like those of any other Muslim thinker today, are khalifa and umma. However, it is my contention that by no stretch of the imagination can umma and khalifa be considered as political units. The vagaries of history have depleted them of all their political content. For vindication of this view, let us listen to al-Faruqi himself.
The vision of the umma is one; so is the feeling or will, as well as the action. There is consensus in the thought of the umma's members in their decision, in their attitude and character, and in their aims. The umma is an order of humans consisting of a tripartite consensus of mind, heart and aim. It is a universal brotherhood which knows neither colour nor ethnic identity. In its purview, all men are one, measurable only in terms of piety. If one of its members acquires knowledge, power, food or comfort, his duty is to share it with others. If anyone achieves establishment, success and prosperity, his duty is to help others
122 do likewise. It is an order of human beings who opt to govern their lives and seek to govern the lives of all other humans, by the umma values and principles. 10
Unfortunately, not even al-Faruqi's bombast can hide the abject poverty of his political thought. Indeed, he inadvertently lays bare with merciless clarity the pathetic impasse in which contemporary Sunni Muslim political theory finds itself. The cynic may wonder, with the membership of this transcendental body granted to every Muslim gratuitously as it were, what is left for an individual Muslim to do but sit back, relax and feel ecstatic about belonging to it. Moreover, whatever the idealized umma of al-Faruqi's description may be, it is certainly not a polity. Nor is it an historical entity beyond the consensual Medina state. Such a body-politic (al-Faruqi would perhaps like to call it body-ummatic), assuming that it is indeed so, could never defile itself with the profanity of power and rule. But, by this very sublimity it would also forfeit its Islamic duty to bring about justice in the world, for all human pursuit of justice must of necessity take place within an historical, perforce political, context. Such indeed is the tragedy of apoliticized conscience that, contrary to its perception and ethos, there exists no apolitical being. To aspire for justice is therefore to strive for power, for there is an ethics of power, just as there is its immorality. This is the lesson which the Prophet of Islam first learned himself and then taught to his umma. Could there be any teacher more worthy of emulation than the Prophet himself? And, could there be any other re-education for the Muslim intellectual than to follow the Sunnah of the Prophet? Fortunately, such is the legacy of the Prophet that Islam can never acquiesce to a totally apoliticized ethos, nor can any individual Muslim become completely depoliticized. Of course, al-Faruqi is no exception. Nonetheless, the significant fact is that the political impulse in him, as in other intellectuals of similar persuasion, finds its outlet either in
123 nostalgia or in utopianism. Unfortunately, from the standpoint of political morality, both these are nefarious emotions; they either lead to lethargy and inaction or to anarchic activism but never to any disciplined and constructive action which is the essence of a stable social order. For instance, the very widespread and in its own right perfectly justified sentiment prevailing today, which claims that all contemporary Muslim rule falls short of the true Islamic standards and hence is illegitimate and unworthy of a Muslim's allegiance, has been instrumental in inculcating, even among otherwise sincere, devoted and active Muslims, an ethos of quietism and recluse that is the very negation of Islamic faith. Despite the nobility and piety of this emotion, therefore, such an attitude must be condemned forthwith as being a perfidious betrayal of the Prophet's legacy. The most pernicious outcome of this withdrawal of the conscientious Muslim from the public sphere is that the vacuum left by him is filled by every kind of scoundrel and hypocrite. Since no form of political discourse in a Muslim society can be carried out without the use of Islamic symbols and concepts, for such still is the pervasiveness and emotive force of Islam in its own milieu, Islam thus becomes an empty political metaphor to be used and abused by anyone irreverent and unconscionable enough to disregard its sanctity. No doubt, if Islam is to rise above sheer demagoguery and the vagaries of day-to-day politics, Muslims must be educated to channel their sacred emotions into creative socio-political activities. To provide a cogent link between higher ideals and mundane deeds is the primary task of all intellectual thought. But as long as Muslim intellectuals have the propensity to distill a vision of Islam which is all ideal and no activity, which is all thought and no deed, they cannot fulfil their paramount duty. If they intend to play any worthwhile role in Muslim society, Muslim intellectuals therefore have an obli gation to re-educate themselves. And that goes equally for alFaruqi, because, despite the ostensibly and even self-consciously
124 political terminology and rhetoric of his discourse, his thought aims at the cultivation of a thoroughly depoliticized personality which cannot be the aim of Islamic education. In this discussion of education, we have dwelt on the problem of power and politics at some length simply because any worthwhile discussion of politics is totally missing in contemporary educational thought. Education is simply assumed to be the development and perfection of an individual's character and, unlike the central concern of Western civilization for instance, it is assumed to have little to do with the obligations and rights of the individual as a citizen. Personality rather than society, psychology rather than politics, individual rather than community thus form the nucleus of the Muslim intellectual's educational interest. Of course, it is the prevalence of the Sufi ethos, always strong in the Muslim world, that accounts for this propensity of Islamic intellectualism. Sufism, moreover, seems to have a firm hold on the mind of the Muslim intellectual, since the number of intellectuals displaying Sufi loyalties in some form or another is disproportionately large. As the intellectual is, in all practical reality, the only knowledgeable Muslim interpreter and transmitter of the ideational currents of modernity, it is not surprising that modem thought reaches Muslim youth only after it has been filtered by the Sufi mind. Sometimes the results are quite disappointing. Not only do the vigorously concrete issues assume the garb of metaphysical niceties in the process of Sufi reinterpretation, but the generation of alternative Islamic criteria for the assessment of alien thought is also hampered by the Sufi monopoly of Muslim intellectualism. A most pertinent case in point is the apprehension of Western science and technology in recent Islamic thought. That modem science and technology is the real basis of the West's power today, just as it has been and still is the most effective means of spreading Western domination throughout the globe, need no longer be contested by anyone on any
125 grounds. Moreover, for Islam's part the growth an expansion of Western science holds special interest, and perhaps affords an edifying lesson, not least because it is an outgrowth of what the Muslim possessed and practised one day. Hence, a proper study and close scrutiny of the nature and activity of modem science should form the most paramount topic of Muslim intellectualism, and by extension, of its educational thought. Needless to say, such has not been, nor is, the case. The ulema, though conscious of the detrimental effects of Western science on Muslim societies, do not have any profound knowledge of its worldview or ethos. They have thus displayed an ambivalent attitude towards it, at times considering it a morally neutral instrument of knowledge and power, at other times opposing it on instinct or due to the generally anti-Western thrust of their ideology. No doubt countless Muslims have become involved with it as practising scientists or as passive consumers; nonetheless, the Muslim world's knowledge of modem science as an autonomous worldview, ethos, culture and value-system is very shallow indeed. Some of the blame for this confusion, no doubt, goes to S. Hossein Nasr who has established himself as the indisputable Muslim authority on both Western and Islamic science. Before anything adverse may be said about Nasr's perception of science, let it be stated without equivocation that I am a great admirer of Nasr and indeed hold that but for the depth of his vision, the general content of modem Islamic intellectualism would be poor. Nevertheless, it is also my belief that Nasr's influence, especially in terms of this educational impact, has been, by and large, quite negative. It is not that there is anything intellectually wrong with Nasr's approach to science. No, it is the mystical bend of his mind which, despite its comprehension of vision, has beclouded the social issues of modem science, especially for his immature and gullible readers. Nasr's interest in science, both modem and Islamic, is essentially in its metaphysical and
126 epistemological aspects. Though such a stance unquestionably is quite rewarding for the ultimate evaluation of science as a doctrine, it also has its limitations. Most important among these is Nasr's disregard of science as a set of social activities, or as a problem solving paradigm, even as an agent of acculturation. Such an approach to science would have been more easily accessible and culturally meaningful to Muslim youth. That Nasr has shown no interest in these aspects of science merely confirms that the metaphysician in him takes precedence over the teacher. This is regrettable. In conformity with the apolitical temper of the Westernized intellectual, Nasr too has largely ignored the role of science as the generator of power. Among his numerous insights, there never occurs an analysis of the affinity of scientific institutions with the centres of political power, a phenomenon which in our own times has acquired ominous implications. During the 1976 exhibition 'Science and Technology in Islam', which was essentially conceived and monitored by Nasr, I received this shocking lesson. The exhibition, which was part of the 'Festival of Islam' euphoria that followed in the wake of the OPEC boom, was held in the Science Museum, London. The whole repertoire of the science of Islam was housed in a small room, containing mostly such innocuous objects as astrolabes, Qiblah indicators, balances, quaint alchemical apparatus, even maps and astronomical tables. Outside, the monstrous beauties of modem science, mostly steam engines and other machines of early industrial society, were endlessly pounding their gigantic hammers in a mock display of feverish activity. The discrepancy in size alone was sobering: a single machine of modem science could have encompassed all the trophies of bygone scientific culture, just as one blow could have pulverized the entire display of Islamic technology. For such a disquieting experience, Nasr's vision of science had no explanation. We have tried to show that the crucial problems of modem civilization, namely politics and science, have been appropriated in
127 the thought of the Muslim intellectual in such a fashion that they do not offer any constructive educational guidelines for the Muslim youth, indeed for the umma in general. The third most important issue of modernity, which incidentally is the favourite of Muslim intellectuals, namely that of knowledge and epistemology, is also bereft of educational promise. For instance, Naquib al-Attas, another giant among Muslim intellectuals, conceives the problem of knowledge in purely mental terms. His 'all is in the mind' approach, however, cannot serve as the basis of concrete action. Even he must re-educate himself. Despite the explicit injunction of the Prophet that there is no mockery in Islam, the modem Westernized intellectual has been educating and training us for entry into his holy order. To reeducate the youth of Islam and its intellectuals from hermits to mujahids is the most challenging task of Islamic education today.
References
1. Fazlur Rahman. Islam and Modernity. Chicago: UCP, 1982. See particularly, chap. 3, 'Contemporary Modernism'. 2. Ziauddin Sardar. Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come. London: Mansell, 1985, p. 62. 3. Fazlur Rahman. op.cit. 4. Abd ar-Rahman al-Jabarti. Ajaib-al-Athar fit-Tarajim walAhbar. 4 vols. Cairo, 1322 A.H.; French translation, Cairo and Paris, 9 vols., 1888-96. vol. vi, p. 121. 5. Ibid., vol. vi. p. 75. 6. Syed Amir Ali. The Spirit of Islam. 1891. (Reprinted in 'University Paperbacks'. London: Methuen, 1967.) 7. Kenneth Cragg. Councils in Contemporary Islam. Edinburgh: EUP, 1965. p. 55. 8. Gustave E. von Grunebaum. Islam: Essays in the Nature and Growth of a Cultural Tradition. London: Routledge and Kegan
128 Paul, 1955, p. 193. 9. Ismail Raji al-Faruql. Tawheed: Its Implications for Thought and Life. Kuala Lumpur: Wyncote, 1982. 10. Ibid., p. 170.
129 10
Reformist Ideas and Muslim Intellectuals
Ziauddin Sardar
ALL REFORMIST WORK must start with recognition of the world as it is. We must see and understand the world as it exists and not as we would like it to be. Only when we appreciate the true dimensions of contemporary reality can we contemplate reforms that will create the world we want. Most Muslim scholars and professionals view the world not as it is but as a rosy-hued mirage which is largely a figment of their own minds. They cannot see that their disciplines are an arena of power politics, where objectivity and neutrality are rhetorical rationales for control, and integrity is simply another name for expedient self-interest. The world of intellectual disciplines, natural or social sciences, is not a world of dispassionate rationality, Platonic pursuit of truth or moral virtuosity. It is a world where ideational and ideological battles are fought and where thought and tradition are demarcated for domination and control. In this game, the Muslim scholar, scientist and economist is very much an outsider: unless he or she understands and appreciates this, any attempts to Islamize this or that discipline will not only fail to usher in any reforms, but can, indeed will, surrender even more intellectual territory to the ideational universe of Western civilization. There are three aspects of contemporary reality that ought to be appreciated by anyone engaged in Islamization efforts
130 or working on legal, social and economic reforms in Muslim society. The first aspect is the most obvious, and perhaps the most painful. Muslim thought is completely marginalized in the modem world. As it has made no input into the physical and intellectual pool of contemporary knowledge, it should harbour no illusions that it will be accepted on equal terms by and allowed to participate in the global knowledge industry. The corollary of this is that Muslim people are also totally marginalized and, despite an illusion of independence, are dependent on the dominant civilization, an even more painful fact. That Muslim people will be allowed to determine their own destiny cannot be taken for granted in a world where the umma has a dependent status. This aspect of contemporary reality has a direct bearing both on reform movements and the Islamization debate. Any country wishing to introduce the sharia will face systematic opposition from the industrialized countries, as was so obviously the case with Sudan. Any discipline that Muslim scholars may Islamize, if it is of any significance and presents a threat to the dominant discipline, will be simply co-opted. The second stark feature of our time is interconnection and interdependence. In the modem world everything is connected to everything else and is dependent upon developments in other spheres. Things do not exist in isolation; problems cannot be removed as it were from this interconnected, interlocking reality and tackled in isolation. In such a world, it makes little sense, as S. Parvez Manzoor points out, to establish the sharia without introducing social, economic and educational reforms. Or, as Muhammad Arif argues, introducing Islamic banking without doing anything about the unequal distribution of resources, would not solve much. Economics is intrinsically linked to land reform, which is linked to politics. And politics itself is linked to science, technology, medicine, social formation and so on. Reform or Islamization, therefore, cannot be undertaken in isolation. The enterprise can succeed only if it is syste
131 matically tackled on a number of different fronts, when disciplines are allowed to merge and cross-fertilize, when a new universe of disciplines, geared to the needs of the Muslim people and culture and subordinated to the worldview of Islam, emerges. The present disciplinary structure, as I have noted elsewhere, has evolved in the cultural and intellectual milieu of Western civilization: it is a direct response to its needs and worldview. Its boundaries are artificially maintained by the intellectual power and rigour that this civilization commands. The third feature of our world is that diversity is the essence of survival. Contrary to Darwinian myth, it is not the fittest who survive, but those who use plurality of means. Monocultures dominate, isolate, alienate, decimate and finally bore themselves to death with uniformity. The analogy is most clearly demonstrated in agriculture: too heavy a reliance on a single crop ends in famine, monoculture has a limited future. But a multiplicity of crops produce abundance. Similarly, pluralistic societies have a higher chance of cultural survival and normally thrive. What does this mean in terms of reform and Islamization? It means that monolithic approaches to reform are doomed. The zeal of the righteous and the fanaticism of the revolutionary end in tyranny. All revolutions in history, even the one carried out in the name of Islam, end by replacing one tyranny with another. Iran is a shining example. Reform has to evolve, and be attempted consistently and constantly by a number of different means and methods. A reformist is not a revolutionary; he or she is not foolish enough to believe that the world can be put right by a single act of political violence. Changes can be brought about and reforms introduced only by the methodology of the Prophet: by consistent and planned work, step-- by-step, allowing time for adjusting to change, taking stock of the changing situation, occasionally sidestepping for strategic reasons, with unshaking will and determination. Any other method is pure euphoria, a daydream of
132 a card-carrying imbecile. For Islamization, the diversity of modem reality has a special significance. It means that if Islamized disciplines become an appendage of Western disciplines, they will be co-opted and swallowed up by the monolith. As such, they, like the dominant disciplines themselves, will have no real future. But if the Islamized disciplines develop independently of Western disciplines, they have a real chance of flourishing in themselves and genuinely enriching the Western ones. On this basis, Islamic economics, supposedly the most Islamized of contemporary disciplines, has nowhere to go. Once we have moved into the world as it is, we can begin to shed the fallacies that have enveloped our thought and action. The prime illusion we must abandon is that we can solve our problems by borrowing from others, or tackling them in isolation, or that every Muslim country is an independent, self-sufficient, self-reliant, sovereign state. It is the indigenous and the whole that is the key to our intellectual and physical survival in the modem world. Only when Muslim countries begin to see themselves as a civilization and start relying on their indigenous capabilities and intellectual heritage can the umma solve its pressing problems and present a viable change to the dominant civilizations. Contemporary reality demands that the Muslim umma, the many and varied nation-states, act as a single, autonomous civilization. Only by presenting a civilizational front can the umma halt the advance of Western civilization at its boundaries and undertake reforms within it. An individual state seeking to adopt the shari a would therefore have the protection and support of the entire Muslim world. Isolationism is out, says the stark reality of our time. The same goes for parochialism and sectarianism. Nothing has forced the Muslim world into subjugation and borrowed solutions more than parochialism and sectarianism. On the physical level, ethnic and sectarian identities have been overblown and turned into civil strife and
133 national conflicts. Those who seek to assert their ethnic identity at the expense of unity are planting the seeds of their own destruction. Those who suppress or persecute ethnic minorities in the name of a national majority, are mortgaging their future. Ethnic diversity is a source of cultural strength for Muslim societies. The motto of our time, we can read out there in the real world, is live and let live. Parochialism is a widespread feature of Muslim thought. Narrow adherence to fiqh (classical jurisprudence), to the dictates of this or that school of thought, whether it has any contemporary relevance or not, is one manifestation of this parochialism. The real world takes no account of the glories of bygone ages, rulings of historic times, outmoded thought and ideas. Its message is simple: adapt or perish. Muslim people have been on the verge of physical, cultural and intellectual extinction simply because they have allowed parochialism and petty traditionalism to rule their minds. We must break free from the ghetto mentality. This means thinking imaginatively, boldly and universally. Islam is a universal worldview: it transcends all cultural boundaries and is not limited by a single parochial outlook. This is stating the obvious, but the significance of this truism is seldom appreciated. For example, if Islam is a universal worldview, an economic system based on its principle should also be universal. Islamic economics therefore is universal economics, not Muslim economics. Thus Western economics, which is based on a particular culture and parochial (Eurocentric) outlook, should be an appendage to it and not vice versa. This means further that Islamic economics has to be based on its own axiomatic structure and not be derivative of Western economic thought and its institutional apparatus. However, to develop an entire economic structure from first principles is so formidable that no Muslim economist has the courage to undertake the exercise. And what is true of economics is also true of other social sciences as well as science. A universalist worldview, by its very nature, must be
134 dynamic and constantly absorbing change. The real world is changing rapidly; indeed it is changing at a rate unparalleled in history--the rate of change is itself changing. Under such circumstances, we cannot rely on static or premodernist formulations of the shari a. Yet this is the spectacle that we are faced with: obscurantist rulings are dragged out from history as though they were eternal principles and forced into circumstances where they clearly do not belong. We must gain a fresh insight into the shafia based on the factors that confront us.1 Why is it that most Muslim scholars fail to understand the dynamics of the real world? Perhaps it has something to do with the traditional nature of their education. Possibly it has something to do with their Westemized outlook which militates against breaking free from the dominant civilization. It could even be that they do not want to see: 'We found our fathers on a course and by their footsteps we are guided' (Quran 43:22). Whatever the reason for the present state of Muslim scholars, the real world demands a totally new kind of thinker. In a given period of history, a civilization is judged by its dominant thought, by the prevalent trends in its cultural life as expressed in politics and morality, science and technology, economics and business, arts and crafts. Intellectuals are the voice of this thought and the pulse of the prevalent trends; they are also their instigators, their critics and their bodyguards. A civilization, a country, a community, cannot exist without intellectuals and a constant stream of new ideas. They cannot exist without constant criticism and selfcriticism, without those who formulate and express it. They cannot exist without a body of devoted people whose sole concern in life is ideas and their significance. Indeed, a society without intellectuals is like a body without a head. And that, precisely, is the position of the contemporary Muslim world. The Muslim world today is totally devoid of intellectuals.
135 There are plenty of academics and bureaucrats, professionals and researchers, even a modicum of scientists and technologists, but intellectuals are conspicuous only by their total absence. This is partly because traditional societies, drawing their sustenance as they do from classical and historic scholars, are anti-intellectual. Many of the dominant modes of thought in Muslim societies, like Sufism, are aggressively anti-intellectual. A society dominated by taqlid (blind imitation), both of its own past and Western civilization, cannot tolerate intellectuals. The acute absence of intellectuals in Muslim societies is also explained by the fact that the few who do exist have let their constituency down: they are much more concerned with fashionable ideologies such as Marxism, secularism and Westernization than with the physical, intellectual and spiritual needs of the community. But who are the intellectuals, anyway? And why are they important? A simple definition would be that an intellectual is someone who gets excited by ideas. In his classic study, Intellectuals in Developing Societies, Syed Hussein Alatas defines 'an "intellectual" as a person who is engaged in thinking about ideas and non-material problems using the faculty of rcason'.2This is a somewhat misleading definition, for while an intellectual may or may not think directly about material problems, all his or her thought has a bearing on the material world. In defining the Muslim intellectual, we must first point out that we are not discussing a creature who inhabits Western sociology where, over the last hundred years, his or her social meaning has shifted and changed a number of times. Neither are we talking in the French sense of the term where intellectuals arc that section of the educated class which aspires to political power, either directly or by seeking the influence and companionship of the country's political rulers. Muslim intellectuals are interested in abstract ideas as well as in specifics; the real world demands both. Unlike
136 Socrates, they are not interested in ideas for ideas' sake; they search for ideas that lead to reform. But like Socrates, they seek propagation of thought, criticism and a questioning attitude, a goal for which they would eagerly lay down their lives. They move in a world not of total doubt and confusion, but within a worldview well defined by conceptual and ethical parameters. They seek not power but reforms. They do not have acquisitive and analytical minds only, but also critical, imaginative and creative minds. They engage and transform. Intellectuals are important because they do the work that other segments of society either do not know exist or are not equipped to handle, they tackle the problems which cannot be managed by specialists, academics and professionals. As Alatas points out, 'to lack intellectuals is to lack leadership in the following areas of thinking: (a) the posing of problems; (b) the definition of problems; (c) the analysis of problems; and (d) the solution of problems. Even the posing of problems is in itself an intellectual problem. A society without effective intellectuals will not be in a position to raise problems.'3 Intellectuals are, therefore, the only group of people in a society who are capable of moving away from the narrow confines of specialism or professionalism to see problems in their holistic and real perspective. Alatas also points out that 'the area of intellectual activity cannot follow any demarcation laid down by any particular discipline' and is therefore trans-disciplinary and interdisciplinary. Moreover, 'the intellectual attitude cannot be created by formal and disciplineoriented training in terms of syllabus and fixed number of years study'; 'the object of the intellectual activity is always related to the wider context of life and thought, penetrating into fundamental values and commitments'; 'the intellectual pursuit is not a profession and therefore not subject to the son of factors which determine the emergence and development of professions'; and 'the intellectual interest involves the past, the present and the future'.4 Intellectuals are the only group in any society which
137 systematically and continuously, in sharp contrast to the specialist and the profession, try to see things in wider perspectives, in terms of their interrelations, interactions and totality. This is why intellectuals have always been at the forefront of new synthesis and thought. Most of the major changes and reforms in Western civilization, for example, have been brought about by intellectuals. The Enlightenment, which laid the foundation of modem science and thought, was a purely intellectual movement. The intellectuals who conceived and perfected the Enlightenment-Montesquieu, Fontenelle, Diderot and Voltaire--are still widely read today and have a profound influence. The European Reformation, too, was the work of intellectuals. Without the thinking and writing of Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, around whom people rallied in breaking away from the Roman Catholic Church, it is difficult to believe that the Reformation could have taken place. And what better evidence of the importance of intellectuals and their powerful influence can one give than by simply pointing out that the Soviet Union rules in the name of a single intellectual, Karl Marx, who spent most of his life in libraries and whose works over the past century have been studied by countless other intellectuals. In turn, Das Kapital did not spring spontaneously from Marx's head; what he was doing in libraries across Europe was absorbing the thinking of many earlier intellectuals. There is, perhaps, no more poignant example of how an intellectual who was influenced by other intellectuals finally reaches down even to the most remote peasant. All this is simply by way of example. In Muslim civilization the role of the intellectual is even more important, considering that the words 'read, ponder and reflect' are some of the most often repeated exhortations of the Quran, itself 'the Noble Reading'. At its zenith, Muslim civilization was a civilization of intellectuals: names such as al-Farabi, al-Kindi, alKhwarizmi, al-Biruni, al-Razi, alMasudi, Abdul Wafa and Omar Khayyam come so easily to mind because they dominated entire spans of centuries. When
138 Muslim civilization faced a crisis, and no one was capable of defining its nature, discovering its cause or assuming the responsibility of formulating a solution, it was rescued by a single intellectual: al-Ghazali. Indeed, without the intellectuals, Muslim civilization in history is inconceivable, and there cannot be a living, dynamic, thriving Muslim civilization of the future without a body of critical and creative intellectuals. At a time when the Muslim world is engulfed in parochialism and sectarianism, when imitation and blind following is the norm, when kindness and tolerance are under retreat everywhere, when the globe is culturally and intellectually dominated by jingoist and chauvinist Western logic and social grammar, the umma needs its intellectuals as it has never needed them before. Much of the desolation of the contemporary Muslim panorama is the result of the almost total absence of vigorously independent and devoted intellectuals. There are, however, indications that intellectuals who are true to the worldview of Islam are coming to the fore, but their number is below the critical mass for takeoff. However, if the Islamic movement ideologues who dominate the reformist scene and the Islamization debate could change a few of their character traits, the number of genuine Muslim intellectuals would swell beyond the critical mass and they could begin to make their presence felt both in Muslim society and contemporary Muslim thought. Three basic features of these ideologues suppress thought and hinder the emergence of the genuine intellectual. The first is their marked tendency to dominate and control: they feel they have a monopoly on reason and judgement. This stems from their belief in their innate superiority and presumed righteousness, which itself is a result of a narrow minded and blinkered outlook. Movement ideologues are shunned and avoided by many young thinkers and intellectuals because of their tendency to argue from authority and to dominate and control the activities of non-movement groups
139 and societies. A second and related trait is the guru mentality, which reveals itself in the dictum that the mentor, the teacher or the spiritual leader is always right, even when he is blatantly in error and experience has shown him to be wrong. Even the Prophet, when it was pointed out to him that cross-pollination brings beneficial results, corrected himself. The guru mentality plays a great part in subverting critical and analytical faculties as well as the Imagination. Many devotees would rather edit and translate poor works of the master than produce original scholarship of their own. And as the guru is beyond criticism, his mistakes and fallacious arguments are perpetually repeated. The third and related trait of the movement ideologues is their inability to take criticism. Most movement scholars regard criticism of their work in terms of personal attack; as a result they either isolate their critics or seek revenge. When faced with arguments, the stock responses are, 'How can I be wrong? I have been working on this problem for ten years'; or, 'You are not an economist, or a specialist in the field; you do not know. I know'; or, 'You are trying to discredit me and spread fitna (strife)'. Admitting error is a virtue, a strength, not a weakness; this is how knowledge is advanced. Entrenching oneself in an increasingly untenable and irrational position, and defending one's weakness as a matter of honour, is destructive both for the individual concerned and for the contemporary Muslim scholarly tradition. Masaba (criticism and self-criticism) must become a cornerstone of Muslim intellectual endeavour. In addition, the body of Muslim scholars have to modify a few of their characteristics, too. Prime among these is the over-the-top trust and reliance on expertise, Islamic or otherwise. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in the contemporary scholarly and academic landscape that is beyond the comprehension of a good intellectual. It is true that contemporary knowledge is so vast and, in certain areas,
140 so deep that it is beyond the capabilities of a single individual to master. But one does not have to understand all aspects of every discipline. Moreover, once the jargon which is designed to mystify the outsiders is stripped away, one finds a methodology and a thought process which can be mastered by anyone determined to understand it. In this respect, the true intellectual is a polymath: his basic tool is a sharp mind and a transdisciplinary methodology which can lay bare any discipline, any subject, any segment of human knowledge. Quite often the best and most devastating criticism of issues within a discipline comes from intellectuals outside the discipline. Expertise is a shroud behind which professionals hide their shortcomings. The more shallow and intellectually shambolic the foundations of a discipline, the more it is defended by a priesthood of experts.5’You are not an expert, a scientist, an economist, a sociologist, a heart specialist, and therefore you do not understand,' is the last ditch defence of a poor professional. Muslim scholars and ideologues, who aim to become true intellectuals and participate in the genuine introduction of reforms and evolution of strategies for change, need to penetrate the shell of disciplinary expertise. As modem ecology teaches and Western science is rediscovering, nothing in nature behaves as an isolated system. Everything is connected to everything else: in the real world an all pervasive principle of interconnectedness is in operation. There is therefore no such thing as pure physics or economics devoid of social, political, cultural, environmental and spiritual concerns. As a purveyor of ideas, a true intellectual ought to have mastery of more than one discipline. And as Islam also permeates every sphere of life, we cannot allow Islamic studies to become the sole preserve of experts. By definition, a Muslim intellectual must understand the major elements of the worldview, culture, history and thought of Islam. But a self-respecting Muslim intellectual would go much further: he or she would aim to become a truly inter
141 disciplinary scholar.6 This brings us to the second reason why Muslim intellectuals have to break disciplinary boundaries. Contemporary Muslim thought is not about reinventing the wheel; where there is a great deal to be discovered and rediscovered, from the perspective of Islam, there is an equal amount of knowledge that we can draw upon and synthesize with the worldview of Islam. But synthesis is not an easy task; it is not a question of mixing this with that. As S. Parvez Manzoor has pointed out, synthesis is presented in the Hegelian scheme as conciliation of two antitheses. And this is exactly how both the Muslim and Western civilizations have perceived each other in history: as two real and irreconcilable antitheses. 'Any facile amalgamation of the two traditions will not lead to synthesis but to "confusion".’7 Synthesis, therefore, requires knowledge of the real world. A strong dominant intellectual tradition cannot be synthesized with a weak, ineffectual one; it would simply be co-opted. Synthesis therefore is a hazardous exercise; at the very least it requires knowledge of more than one discipline. Many problems in the whole question of the Islamization of disciplines arise, as I have pointed out in Islamic Futures: The Shape of Ideas to Come and Merryl Wyn Davies has shown in Knowing One Another: Shaping an Islamic Anthropology,8 from the fact that Muslim scholars try to cast disciplines based on Western axioms and intellectual heritage in Islamic moulds. These problems arise mainly from their inability to synthesize, for synthesis involves axiomatic analysis and examination and raising of fundamental questions. Only true synthesis can make proper use of existing knowledge and generate new ideas and pragmatic solutions. All this requires the re-emergence of the classical polymath. Contemporary Muslim intellectuals must become the counterparts of the polymaths who shaped Muslim civilization at its zenith. Muslim civilization of the classical period was remarkable for the number of polymaths it
142 produced.9 The motives and driving force behind poly-mathy were not based on just a deep love and respect for knowledge but also on a paradigm which emphasized the interconnection between the sacred and the profane, between physics and metaphysics and between thought and reality. This paradigm also pointed out that the material universe was not inferior to the spiritual, both of which as manifestations of Allah's bounty and mercy were equally valid and worthy of study. Moreover, the methods of studying the vast creation of God-from the mystic's ecstasy to the mother's love to the flight of an arrow, the circumference of the earth, the plague that destroys an entire nation, the sting of a mosquito, the nature of madness, the beauty of justice, the metaphysical yearning of man--were all equally valid and could not be deprived of eternal values and human concern. Method-ologies, deeply rooted in the conceptual and ethical parameters of Islam were the essence of enquiry, and classi-cal polymaths were masters of methodology. It was this para-digm that the polymaths used to synthesize the learning of earlier civilizations, transforming it totally--for synthesis always produces something entirely new which is like neither one nor the other of the original components--and integrating it completely into the worldview of Islam. Contemporary Muslim intellectuals have to rediscover this paradigm and develop into the kind of polymaths who can perform the great synthesis that is needed. In a world that is shaped and controlled by another civilization, the real task facing the Muslim umma is the creation of an intellectual space which is a genuine embodiment of the worldview and culture of Islam. Without this intellectual space, reformist ideas and programmes will bear no fruit. Muslim civilization has a dire need of genuine intellectuals; unless Muslim societies cultivate the barren lands of today's intellectual vacuum, the umma's marginalized existence will be institutionalized. The real world offers us no choice but to start our homework immediately.
143 References
1. For an insightful analysis of this problem, see Muhammad Asad, The Law of Ours and Other Essays. Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus, 1987. Asad wrote these essays just before the creation of Pakistan. It is a pity that no one paid any attention to his warnings. 2. S.H. Alatas. Intellectuals in Developing Societies. London: Frank Cass, 1977, p. 8. 3. Ibid., p. 15. 4. Ibid., p. 10. 5. For a brilliant exposed of the myth of expertise, see Paul Feyerabend, Against Method. London: New Left Books, 1975; Science in a Free Society. London: Verso, 1978; and Farewell to Reason. London: Verso, 1987. 6. A number of brilliant interdisciplinary studies, showing the limits of undisciplinary enquiry, include: a. William Irwin Thompson. Time Falling Bodies Take to Light. New York: St Martin's, 1981. b. Gregory Bateson. Mind and Nature. New York: Dutton, 1979. c. Douglas Hofstadter. Godel, Escher and Bach. New York: Basic Books, 1979. Hofstadter's dazzling synthesis integrates the principles of music, art, mathematics, biology and metaphysics and illustrates the limits of all logical and other symbolic systems. 7. S. Parvez Manzoor, 'Islam and the West: Synthesis or Confusion?' In Ziauddin Sardar (ed.), The Touch of Midas. Manchester: MUP, 1984, p. 234. 8. Mansell: London, 1985; and Mansell: London, 1988. 9. For a more detailed discussion of the role of polymathy in Muslim civilization, see Ziauddin Sardar, Arguments for Islamic Science. Aligarh: Centre for Studies on Science, 1985.
144 Index
al-Abbadi, Ishaq bin Nusayr 37 Arnir Ali, Syed 118-20 Abbasid 29 al-Arniri 16 Abd al-Aziz 33 Andalusian society 15 Abdul Wafa 138 aql (intellect) 18 Abu Bakr 37 Arab Painting 106 Abud ad-Dawlah 32 al-Arabi, Sheikh Muhi ad-Din adab (reverence and respect) 70 12 Adams, Charles J. 105 Arabian desert 19 adl Oustice and equity) 17, 24, Arafat 37 82,90-2 Arif, Muhammad 131 Adud al-Dawlah library 33 Aristotelian fallacy 78 Agricultural research in artificial insemination 94 Pakistan 95 Ashraf, Said Ali 70-2, 77 Ahmadu Bello University 58 al-Ashrafi 15 al-Akbar, Shaikh 97 al-Askari, Yaqub ibn Sulaiman akrah (the Hereafter) 11 30 Alatas, Syed Hussein 136-7 Askia Muhammad 63 Algar, Hamid 45 Athar al-Bilad 27 Ali 27 Al-Attas, Sayed Muhammad alim (scholar) 2 Naquib 72, 77, 107-8, 128 Allah (God) 2 aversion therapy 78 amal (action) 14, 22 Al-Azhar University, Cairo 69 al-Arnash abu Mohammed Aziz al-Azmeh 110 Sulaiman ibn Mihran 26-7 l-Aziz ibn al-Muizz 31
145 bait (room) 29 Calvin 138 bait al-hikma (wisdom room) Carlyle 71 29 Catholicism 79 Bait al-Hilanah, Baghdad 29 Centre for Control of Paupers bait al-kutub (bookroom) 29 and Beggars 83 al-Baladhuri 26 Centre for Fundamental Bangladesh 95 Knowledge 74 al-BaqiUani 15 Chernobyl 97 Becker, Carl 43 Chinese encyclopacdia 103 Bilgrarni, Flamed Hasan 70-2, Chinese paper 27 77 Chinese taxonomy 103 bilharzia 92 Christian Billah, Caliph Mustansir 30 influences 61 bindings, ornamentation of 27 view of history 105 al-Biruni 37, 138 Civilization of the Book 3 Blyden, Edward 60-1, 63, 65 classification book bazaars of Baghdad, of knowledge 102 Cairo, Corduba, Seville of sciences 17 and Samarkand 36 colonial book industry 28 education 64 Book of Knowledge I ideology 48 bookbinding 27 indoctrinations 61 bookmen (authors, translators, colonialism 60 copiers, illuminators, damaging effects of 58 librarians, booksellers) 28 Corbin 43 Books as the Tools of the Corduba 35 Scholars 28 bookshops 28 dar (house) 29 Borno Empire 65 dar al-hikma (house of wisdom) al-Bukhari 26 29 Bultmann 105 dar al-ilm (house Of Buwayhid 32 knowledge) 29 Buwayhids of Persia 29 Dar al-Ilm, Cairo 33 dar al-kutub (house of books) Cairo 116 29 calligraphers 2 Darul Ulurn, Deoband, India 69
146 Darwin, Charles 132 fadail (virtues) 17, 22 Das Kapital 138 fahm (understanding) 17 Davies, Merryl Wyn 142 faqih (specialist in religious diarrhoea 92 law) 2 Diderot 138 al-Farabi 73, 77, 109, 138 disciplines based on Western al-Faruqi, Ismail Raji 8,40, axioms 142 107,120,123,124 diversity, essence of survival Fatimids of Egypt 29 132 Fazlur Rahman 45, 108, 110 Doctor Maximus 97 feudalism 47 Duban, Indian physician 30 Fihrist 29, 36 fiqh (intelligence) 2 economics 131 First World Conference on Edel, Abraham 80 Muslim Education 70 education Fontenelle 138 colonially imposed 58 Foucault, Michel 103-4 Euro-Christian system of 58- Foyles of London 36 61 France 115 Islamic has disappeared 58 French justice 116 links past and future 112 Freudian psychology 78 philosophy 112 Geneva Centre for European Egypt 30, 60, 115, 116 Nuclear Research 92 elite leadership 62 al-Ghazali 1, 2, 9, 73, 77, 109, Enlightenment 138 139 Montesquieu in 138 Ghaznavids rulers 29 ethnic Grabar 43 diversity 134 guru mentality 140 minorities 134 Ettinghausen, Richard 106 al-Hakim 31 Europe 118 Hamdanids of Aleppo 29 artistic tradition 106 haqiqah (reality) 12 contempt for Islam 117 haram 89 Reformationl38 al-Hariri 32 slave to imperialism 60 Harun ar-Rashid, Abbasid superiority, myth of 59 Caliph 29 expertise, faults of 141 Hegel 142
147 hijra 15 ilm (continued) hikma (wisdom) 29 religious obligation 2 Hisharn ibn Abd Allah, Caliph science dimension of 4 26 secularization of 16 Hodgson 43 universalization of 19 housing for refugees 92 without vigour 2 Houzas of Qom and Najaf 69 ilm-based society 9 Imamuddin, S.M. 33 ibadah (worship) 11, 24, 82, 89 iman (faith) 18 Ibn Abbad, Sahib 31 imperialism 59 Ibn Abbas 25 India 30, 118 Ibn Adi, Yahya 30 industrial research in Turkey 95 Ibn al-Arabi 97 ink preparation 27 Ibn al-Athir 30 intellectual Ibn Batutah 31 bankruptcy 114 Ibn Fatik, Mahmud a]-Dawlah domination 139 34 jihad 7 Ibn Hazrn al-Qurtubi 15-18,20 reprehensible traits of 118 Ibn Ishaq, Hunain 30, 26 intellectuals 137 Ibn Jammah 28 Intellectuals in Developing Ibn Jubair, Sa'd 25-6 Societies136 Ibn Khaldun 109 interdependence 131 Ibn Luqa, Qusta 30 International Islamic University Ibn a]-Nadim 29 of Islamabad 74 Ibn Rushd 37 International Islamic University Ibn Sa'd 26 of Malaysia 69, 74, 75 Ibn Sina 31, 109-10 International Islamic University Ibn al-Zubair, Urwa 26 of Pakistan 69, 76 ihatah (comprehension) 13 International Islamic University ijarah, signifies hiring a book to Ordinance 1985 copy 36 (Islamabad) 70 ijma (public consensus) 91 Iran 60, 69, 95, 132 illustrators 2 of Shah 95 ilin (knowledge) 10, 24, 29 Islam conceptualization of 17 and Christendom strife 117 operationalization of 19 oral traditions of 25
148 Islam (continued) Islamic University in Niger 69 resurgence of 120 Islamic University of Medina synonymous with ilm 2 69 value-bias of 10 1 Islamization 130, 133 Islamic of knowledge 6 banking 131 of modem Muslim classification 108 perception 101 commitment 41 Ismailism 43 disciplines: subspecies of istislah (public interest) 82, genus Islam 74 91-2 economics 133 educational system 113 Jabarti-al, Abd ar-Rahman intellectualism 125 115-16 personality, survival of 102 al-Jahiz 37 postgraduate programme 73 Journal of Islamic Science 94 science 88 jud (generosity) 17 limits of 94 justice standards 124 keyword 117 studies 42, 56 Ottoman form of 116 tradition 109 Islamic Futures: The Shape of al-Kanemi 63 Ideas to Come 142 Kashf 29 Islamic Institute of Advanced Khalifah, Haji 29 Studies in Washington, Khazain al-Qusu library 31 D.C. 69,73 khilafa (trusteeship of man) 11, Islamic Painting 106 24,77,82,89,92 Islamic Research Institute 76 Khilafa Uthmaniyya 20 Islamic universities khizana (closet) 29 main objective of 77 khizanat al-hikma (closet of working models of 74 wisdom) 29,35 different from dominant khizanat al-kutub (book closet) Western model 70 29 product 84 Khwarizmi-al, Musa 30,90, microcosm of Muslim 138 civilization 81 al-Kindi 29, 73, 77, 109, 138 structure of 72 Kitab al-Burhan 30
149 Kitab al-Jabr wa al-Muqabilah libraries (continued) 30 royal, 28 Kitab Farq Bayn an-Nabiy wal- Shiraz, 32, 33 Mutanabbi 37 specialized, 28 Kleber, General 116 Subur33 Knowing One Another: Luther 138 Shaping an Islamic Lyotard, Jean-Francois98 Anthropology 142 Knowledge Triumphant 2 Mackensen, Ruth Stellhorn 26 knowledge madhmurn (blameworthy) 16 religious 5 Madrassah Mustansiriyah 30 religious obligation of 24 mahmud (praiseworthy 16 revealed 4 Mahmud al-Dawlah ibn Fatik secular 4 ibrary 34 Kulliyyah of Ideational Science al-Makdisi, George 29, 32, 35 83 Makkah 37 Kulliyyah of Technical Science Makkari 35 83 malnutrition 92 kutub (books) 29 Mamun ar-Rashid, Caliph 29 Mani 37 Laroui, Abdullah 46 al-Maqdisi 34 Lataif al-Maarif 27 marifah (cognition) 13 librarians 33 Marx 138 libraries Marxism 42,45 Baghdad 30, 33, 34 ideological challenge of 47 Basra, 34 Marxist Centi-al Committee 79 Cairo 31, 32, 34 masaba (cifticism and self Corduba 32, 34 riticism) 140 Damasacus, 34 Massignon 43 Fez,34 Masua Abdul Wafa 138 Isfahan, 34 mathematics, science of Lahore, 34 eflection 90 Merv 33 Maududi 114 private 28, 35 Mausili-al, Jafar b. Muhammad public,28,33 35 Ramhunnuz 34 mawhibah (gift) 18
150 medical Nasr, S. Hossein 8, 126 books in hospitals 34 neo-colonialism 62 research in Egypt 95 Nicholson 43 medieval civilization 47 Nigeria 59, 60,62, 65,66,67 Medina state 123 Nizamiyyah Madrassah library Merv 33 30 Moghals of India 29 Nuh ibn Nlansur, the Sultan of monocultures 132 Bokhara. 31-2 Muhib ad-Din ibn an-Najjar al aghdadi30 observatories, books in 34 Mujahidun of Sokoto 64 Occidental civilization 42 al-Mulk, Nizarn 30 Occidental ethnocentrism 46 al-Munajjim, Yahya 35 Omar Khayyam 90,138 al-Murtada 33 OPEC 48,127 Muslim Order of Things 104 civilization 139 Organization of Islamic classical 1 Conference (OIC) 69 formative period 49 Orientalism 6,42 epistemology2l, 50, 101 epistemology of 44 information scientist 110 Islam-indifferent worldview intellectuals 115, 135 45 lack of 136 Western arguments against knowledge, concept of 50 45 librarianship, history of 37 Orientalists 32,43, 119 libraries, design of 33 library, first 26 Pakistan 60, 91, 95 Marxists 46 Palestine 30 people, marginalized 8, 131 palm oil research in Malaysia scholar, an outsider 130 95 scientists 88 paper industry 27 Mutazili thought 34 Paret. 43 parochialism 133 al-Nadirn 32, 3 3, 36 Passion d'al Hallaj 43 najdah (courage) 17 people of the book 28 Napoleon 115,116 pluralism 132 an-Nasir, Caliph 30 poets 2
151 politics 131 righteous zeal 132 Popper, Karl 99 risala 82 post-Reformation Europe 79 river blindness 92 private libraries 35 Rodinson, Maxine 46 Prophet Roman Catholic Church 138 cross-pollination of 140 Rosenthall, Franz 2, 11, 13, 19, methodology of 132 43 protestantism 79 Rumi, Jalaluddin 100 public libraries 33 in Baghdad, Damascus, Sahe192 Cairo, Corduba, Fez, Sahih Bukhari 82 Isfahan, Lahore 34 Said, Edward 45 Saladin 48 Qazwini 27 salat 66 Quran Samanids of Bokhara 29 memorization of 25 Samarkand 27, 31 noble reading 28 Saudi Arabia 95 Qutb 114 Schacht 43 quwat al-aql (intellectual Science faculty) 18 and Technology in Islam, 1976 exhibition 127 Rabb (the Creator, the Museum, London 127 Sustainer) 2 policy in Pakistan 91 racism 94 today 86 radical mastectomy 93 sectarianism 133 Rahman 112,114 secular thought in universities ray (opinion) 2 67 Razi138 sexual selection 94 Reader's Guide to the Great Shaffism 43 Religions 104 Shah, Sa1juq Malik 30 recombinant DNA techniques sharia (Islamic Law) 12, 82,131 93 135 religious and legal books in sharia-consciousness 51 mosques and colleges 34 Shia 55 revolutionary fanaticism 132 Sift al-asrar 37 Rice, David Talbot 106 Siyar al-Muluk 30
152 Smith, Professor Abdullahi 58, umma, responsibility of 22 60,62,64, 67-8 Ummayad 29 Socrates 8, 137 universalist worldview 134 Soviet Union 138 Uthman, the third Caliph of Spain, Muslim 15 Islam 25, 27 Sudan 95 Sufis 2, 12 Venture of Islam 43 Sufism 43, 53-4, 125 vivisection 92 Sunni 55, 113, 123 Voltaire 138 synthesis 142 Von Grunebaum, Gustave 44 Syria 30 al-Wakidi 26,34 at-Tabari 26 waqf (pious endowment; tamil (willing submission to charitable trust) 24 Islam) 70 Western taqlid (guru technique) 18 ideals--capitalism, socialism, tariqah, (the Sufi way) 12 marxism, democracy 59 tasawwuf 53 imperialism 62 Tashkopruzadeh 109 self-interests 48 tawheed (affirmation of unity values48 with God) 10, 20, 70, 77, writing and illustrating 82,89 instruments 27 Tawheed: Its Implicationsfor Thought and Life 121 al-Tawhidi 37 Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki's tazim (loving regard for Islam) private library in Baghdad 70 34 technological transfer 95 Yakut 33 Thaalibi 27 yaqin (certainty of faith) 12 The Spirit of Islam 118 Yaqut33 Third World science 87 Tibawi 45 Zaman, Sher Mubammad76 al-Tibrizi, Abu Zakariyyah 30 Zia-ul Haq, General 91 at-Tusi, al-Mulk Nizwn 30 al-Zuhri 26 zulm (unjust) 93 Umayyads of Spain 29 Zwingli 138
153 Typography by Little Red Cloud
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154 In the flourishing classical Muslim civilization, Islam was synonymous with knowledge (ilm). Contemporary Muslim civilization, however-, is like a stagnant lake, slowly but surely acidifying. The oxygen that can breathe fresh life into it is a fully-fledged revival of ilm: the pursuit, the generation, the processing, the retrieval, the dissemination, the analysis and the, criticism of knowledge must become the prime focus of all Muslim individuals and societies. In this book, four Muslim academics dissect the problem--what has happened to ilm since the classical period? what has been the effect of imperialism? is there a way to revive the civilization of the book? how do we learn Islamically?--before setting down, plans for re-educating Muslims so that all of them might recover the true meaning of knowledge for their own lives.
M.A. Anees lectures at Mara Institute of Technology, Malaysia, S.P. Manzoor is professor of linguistics at Stockholm University, I. Sulaiman is director of the Centre of Islamic Legal Studies, Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria. Z Sardar is an internationally published scholar, information scientist, journalist and futurist.
For educators, philosophers and all thinking people concerned about the current state of Islam,
Write to the publishers for a list of other titles in the Contemporary Islam series.
ISBN 1-85640-020-4
£6.95
Grey Seal Books 9 781856 42 6 28 Burgoyne Road London N4 I AD England
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