waiting for an Islamic Reformation

by Ishtiaq Ahmed

Comment on this article
Read other comments on this article

An Islamic Reformation has yet to materialize, but without it the Muslim world is seriously handicapped, intellectually and materially, in facing the challenges of the present and future.

The current wave of fundamentalist Islam conveys a distorted image of the highly variegated Muslim heritage. From quite early times diverse and pluralistic approaches existed among Muslims for understanding their religion. Some schools approached the Quranic text as a multilayered discourse comprising literal as well as symbolic and esoteric messages. On the other hand, populist movements insisted that each word should be understood in the literal sense. The latter tendencies gave birth to anthropomorphist doctrines about God's detailed intervention in all matters and came to represent the fundamentalist strand.

Rationalism, as a movement of free thought, also made an early appearance and between the 9th and 13th centuries it constituted a robust intellectual activism with adherents in many parts of the Muslim world. The first statement in favor of rationalism was presented in the following words by Al-Kindi (801-66): "We should not be ashamed to acknowledge truth from whatever source it comes to us, even if it is brought to us by former generations and foreign powers. For him who seeks the truth there is nothing of higher value than truth itself" (Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, 1991: 76).

The general assumption upon which Muslim philosophers built their rationalism was that if reason was applied correctly it could furnish reliable and certain knowledge about the universe but it was necessary to believe that some knowledge comes only through revelation. The Spanish-Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (1126-98) emphasized the preeminence of human intelligence and philosophical reflection over the apparent meaning of Quranic verses. He asserted that in case of a contradiction between the truths discovered by philosophy and what the Quran appeared to state, the discoveries of the philosophers were to be relied upon and the Quranic verses interpreted metaphorically.

For various reasons the rationalist movement could not consolidate itself and the intellectual leadership passed into the hands of Imam Ghazzali (d. 1111). With the help of a simple formula that revelation was superior to reason, he established the lasting hold of scholasticism over Muslim intellectual activity. As a result dogmatism became permanently entrenched in Muslim intellectual discourses. It is therefore not surprising that the syllabi of the contemporary Islamic madrassas are based on scholasticism and dogmatism.

In societal terms the implications were that the Fuquha (jurists) and ulema seemed to have tacitly reached the conclusion that all matters deserving to be explained or regulated in law had been covered by Fiqh rulings; the world had reached its ultimate development which would last till such time that decline sets in and the whole universe declines into chaos, as predicted in the sacred sources, culminating in the Day of Reckoning or Qayamat. Belief in such teleology allowed medieval scholars of Islam to be complacent that in future all that was needed was to apply the rulings of Fiqh to specific circumstances. Such assumptions resulted in the doctrine, 'closing-of-the-gates-of-ijtihad'.

It was in the 18th century that the 'closing-of-the-gates-of-ijtihad' doctrine began to be questioned. The new reformers were the Wahabis of the Arabian Peninsula. They denounced the cult of sufi-saints, visits to shrines in the hope of intercession of dead masters on behalf of a supplicant and a host of elaborate ceremonies that had taken root in Muslim societies. Instead the Wahabis subscribed to a strictly Unitarian interpretation of Islam and sought to employ ijtihad to purify contemporaneous Islam of 'unIslamic accretions'.

In one sense, the Wahabi reforms were not different from the Reformation that Luther and Calvin had successfully led in Europe. They too strove to restore pure, unadulterated Christianity, but it was purely fortuitous that the scientific discoveries of that time undermined the Aristotelian physics upon which the church had built its view of the universe. Such a confluence of religious reform and scientific change did not underpin the Wahabi attempts at reformation. Consequently it became a reactionary rather than a progressive intervention in Muslim affairs.

Muslim encounters with science and modernity came via the colonial intervention. Following Napoleon's landing at Alexandria in 1798 Muslim modernism began to take shape. However, under the influence of Jamaluddin Afghani it reaffirmed the supremacy of revelation over reason. He wrote a famous pamphlet denouncing 'materialism', the term he employed for describing science and the scientific method.

A more sophisticated position on reform was taken by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan. Deeply impressed by the achievements of English rule and English education, Sir Syed adopted a rationalist-scientific approach to phenomena by arguing that Islam was not only a religion based on reason as Afghani had asserted but also on nature. Hence the name of his intellectual movement, the Nechari (naturalist) School of Thought. Thus he not only supported a study of Western natural sciences but also economic methods and theory. In a bold reinterpretation of the Quran, Sir Syed came to the conclusion that the ban on usury was not applicable to modern banking and commercial practices. His followers however failed to sustain the Nechari School which slipped into oblivion soon after his death.

The intellectual leadership of the Muslim world passed on to Allama Iqbal who reverted to the scholastic position of Ghazzali and Afghani, asserting that reality was spiritual and therefore science, which could only deal with material data, was inadequate for fathoming true reality. His notion of 'spiritual democracy' charmed Muslim League leaders such as Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan who translated it into a constitutional principle by declaring God and not the people of Pakistan sovereign. Such formulations opened the market for Abul Ala Maududi's 'theo-democracy' and Ghulam Ahmad Pervaiz's 'Quranic democracy' and many other novel but bogus terms. Their disciples continue to churn out even more confused and contradictory notions of science, democracy and a modern economy of growth.

The government of Gen Ziaul Haq whose fundamentalist leanings were proverbial caused the greatest harm to rationalism. Elsewhere in the Muslim world too fundamentalism became a prominent state ideology in the 1980s and this situation persists. The result is that an Islamic Reformation has yet to materialize, but without it the Muslim world is seriously handicapped, intellectually and materially, in facing the challenges of the present and future.

Comment on this article
Read other comments on this article