Human Nature and the Quran and Hadith Are Sufficient To Frame the Set of ‘Natural Law’, Applicable Universally
By
Mushtaq ul Haq Ahmad Sikandar, New Age Islam
27 June
2022
“Any
Religious Concept Would Be Acceptable If It Is Logical, Rational And
Scientifically Verifiable Both To Common Sense Of The Illiterate Common Human
Being As Well As To The Intellectual Of Highest Calibre”
Main
Points
1.
Philosophy has now few takers in the Muslim
world.
2.
Is philosophy essential to understand Islam and
does Islam espouse a philosophy that is different?
3.
The book argues many things but leaves many
debates unaddressed, although its arguments need to be engaged with.
-----
Natural
World Order and the Islamic Thought
Author:
Mohammad Shafi Khan
Publisher:
Not Mentioned
Price:
Rs 120 Pages: 219
-----
Since the
inception of Islam which culminated and reached its zenith with the Prophethood
of Muhammad (SAW), world witnessed the rise, zenith, downfall and revival
attempts of Muslim Civilization many times. This Muslim Civilization like other
civilizations was unique in its various aspects especially when related to
knowledge, learning and its expansion. It was obligatory injunction of Quran
described in the first revealed verse Iqra (Read) which laid foundation of a
knowledge thirsty community who in turn laid foundation of various new
disciplines or introduced radical changes in the existing streams and fields of
knowledge.
Philosophy
which was a forgotten and dead discipline was revived mainly due to the efforts
of Muslim rulers who set up translation centres for rendering the philosophical
texts from Greek into Arabic and Persian. Muslim philosophers added, criticized,
deducted and evolved new philosophy from the edifice of Greek Philosophy. This
eventually led to the rise of a chain of philosophers among Muslims whose
contributions are still counted by the world history and humanity. But as is the case with philosophy it raises
questions and doubts in minds, whirlpools in faith and hair splitting
temperament in the society. Muslim Qaum was no exception to this. Hence giving
rise to scores of philosophers who were trying to justify Quranic Principles on
the basis of Philosophic Dialectics or Logic or others who were trying to
reconcile the same, with philosophy enjoying an upper hand thus a yardstick for
interpreting Quran as understood in the light of Philosophy.
Imam
Ghazali was a product of such times whose Tahafatul Falasifah (Incoherence Of
Philosophers) broke the back of Greek philosophy and Logic until Ibn Rushd
rebutted it in Tahafat Ul Tahafat (Incoherence of Incoherence) which granted
Greek philosophy and Plato a new lease of life for more 100 years to come. This
trend also gave rise to the schools of Mutazalites and Asharaites.
Now the
times have changed and science has replaced philosophy. The present day
Televangelists and religious scholars are using scientific principles and facts
to justify their religion as the ultimate, universal and eternal truth on the
face of earth sent by Divine God. They claim God had prior knowledge of
science, hence kept scientific secrets and miracles present in religious
scriptures. Thus the compatibility of religious scriptures with science is the
eternal proof the religion being true and divine. Thus the yardstick of science
has become essential for any religion to stand in the fray of being taken
seriously as truth.
Meera Nanda in her essay "Making Sacred
How Post Modernism Aids Vedic Science writes: "Closed societies, if you
follow Karl Popper, are societies that do not allow any rational criticism or
falsification of their fundamental moral laws, which treat as having the
backing of inevitable laws of nature put in place by God. As past experience
shows, closed societies are not anti-scientific. On the contrary, they are
hyper-scientistic i.e. they claim the support of existing science for their
dogmas and in turn use these dogmas to constrain scientific research (e.g Lysen
Koisan in old U.S.S.R)."
The present
book under review is also a serious attempt to strike a chord in the same vein
with an exception that both science and philosophy has been clubbed together to
initially derive Natural World order, then name it Islam and depict that it is
what rationality, logic and science wants us to believe in and implement as a
world order. The author in the Preface describes “The individual human being
and the collective social structure” as the primary concern of his endeavour.
The author well describes the present world order basically as “Agnostic and
the social structure which has evolved to encourage agnostic values. Though at
the personal level one is free to practice any faith but has no power to
interfere in the evolution of the agnostic social structure.
Nobody can
deny that the present scientific and technological advancement, abolition of
slavery and progress in education of all sections of societies has taken place
during the present world order. But that does not mean that with some other
world order these achievements could not have been possible. The civilizations
would not have survived if world order had not allowed these achievements.
Unfortunately
the present world order has failed in every other sphere of activity of the
humankind. The most important aspect of human life which has badly suffered
because of the present world order is faith. The present agnostic world order
is responsible for moral degradation of human beings to an extent that it will
be a Herculean task to repair the damage.”
To repair
the damage the author resorts backs to philosophy and science which are
responsible for the sceptical, agnostic and morally degraded behaviour of
Mankind. The book is divided into various chapters and the opening chapter
deliberates on the “Impracticability of Democracy”. Indeed this chapter is the
heart of the book and in the present day world to challenge democracy requires
nerve, verve and out of box intellectual discourse which the author has engaged
in. Leaving democracy aside and searching for alternatives is to rise in
rebellion against the religion of West for whose promotion, evolution and
initiation in every land of the planet they are fighting the ‘Just’ wars even
today under the civilizing mission of Operation Democracy. But before going
into a critique of democracy, Khan describes the Human being, his soul, Nature
and Purpose and derives the factual conclusion that the seeds of vice and
virtue are embedded in every human being and if he takes recourse to the Natural
Order he would surely come to judge whether his action is right or wrong “Every
adult human being has agreed of having the innate knowledge of right and wrong
irrespective of religion and social taboo. Any intelligent reader will agree to
it and he is free to consult any number of people; then he will confirm that
every individual including the children have the innate knowledge of right and
wrong of all his actions and thoughts. This is the most convincing indirect
proof of existence of the ‘energy’ and ‘soul’ to all the people of this world
and resultantly indirect proof of the ultimate failure of Darwin’s theory of
evolution”.(P-14) This vice and virtue seems to be inspired by Greek
Philosophers and even Zoroastrianism where Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu are in
perpetual strife.
The concept
of Afterlife and accountability in the hereafter have been taken as yardsticks
to control the vice. “I have thought over this serious problem for years and
have not left any relevant literature unread, which includes science,
philosophy, political systems and theology and interacted with wide range of
people and reached one and only one conclusion that human being has to be
answerable and accountable for his evil acts after death before the perfect
universal creator. The human being cannot be answerable and accountable for the
content of his vices because the vices are innate in the ‘energy’ over which
human being has absolutely no control of creation. The human being can exercise
control over the acts of vice through ‘soul’ as the human being has the
‘freedom of action’. (P-27) The author then challenges: “This is my challenge
to the whole humanity to unravel any other alternative by virtue will prevail
in the individual lives and the society so that there could be peaceful
existence of mankind on this planet. There is absolutely no alternative.”
(P-28). Then there are three purposes of life as enumerated by Khan:
Answerable
& accountable to perfect Universal Creator.
To be
grateful to the perfect universal creator.
Those who
have means to know and understand the perfect universal creator and all his
creations and educate others.”(P-29)
But despite
knowing, deducting and deliberating all this still Khan longs for “Genuine
philosophers to know the Natural Laws as contained in the ‘souls’ of human beings,
with the help of reason it would not be a difficult task to unravel these
Natural laws”.(P-28). If genuine philosophers are needed to describe the
Natural Law and Order, then I fail to understand what the purpose of Prophets
is, then God should have deputed Philosophers as his messengers. Here Khan
fails to describe and understand this dichotomy or makes us believe that
Philosophers enjoy higher position than prophets??
Then coming
on the issue of democracy Khan says: “Democracy has strong advocates all over
the world and there are many pseudo-scholars of different religions who
advocate democracy as the political system of their religion; forgetting the
fact that the underlying principle of democracy is agnosticism” (P-33-34).
It is a
factual statement but Khan must acknowledge this fact too that underlying
principle of Science and Philosophy as it emerged after Renaissance is not only
agnosticism but atheism and open rebellion against God and verdicts like “God
is dead”; hence negating one and using the other to justify religion and
natural order don’t go well together.
Now coming
to the relation between Islam and Democracy Khan writes “there are some
pseudo-scholars of Islam who think that Islam can be practiced in democracy and
there are also other set of pseudo scholars of Islam who think that democracy
is the Islamic way of life and the Shariat Law could be applied in democracy.
They fail to understand that the underlying principle of democracy is
agnosticism and liberty of religion and conscience and Shariat Law and
agnosticism being contradictory; these two contradictory principles cannot
exist together”. (P-36).
A similar
argument has been made by Abdur Rahman Keelani in his book Jamhuriyat Aur
Islam. Democracy in recent years and before has come under heavy criticism and
this statement well describes it: “would you like to be eaten by hundred rats
or one lion.” Also the dirty nexus between Capitalists, Clergy and Politicians
is defeating the very essence and spirit of democracy and has rendered it
impractical in various societies which the author paints as “degree of
corruption" that "varies from
Nation to Nation but ultimate result of all the democratic governments is
sooner or later the position as is prevailing in the worst and corrupt nations
will spread over other less corrupt nations” (P-47).
Deriving
two conclusions about democracy Khan describes them as:
“In
democracy the laws which impose restrictions on the individual behaviour
(self-regarding actions) where under no harm to others is involved, cannot be
enacted.
The
democracy having agnosticism and liberty as guiding principles, no restrictions
on the basis of religious morality can be imposed. Hence no law can be enacted
which is on the basis of religious morality and challenges the liberty of the
individuals” (P-39).
Though
there is no imposed morality or no boundary between Democracy and Morality but
democracy can’t be described as Immoral but amoral as one is free to practice
his own set of morality as described and laid down by his social norms,
religion or culture. Now the democracy is out of fray and search for an
alternative Political System is on and the pre-requisite for this radical
change is the Philosopher-King as described by Plato. “The world order as such
needs to be changed as it is based on the irrational principle of democracy and
for doing this we need the real philosopher and real
philanthropists”.(P-52-53).
But Khan
seems myopic in his conception because never in the world history the Utopia
envisioned by Plato has been implemented and neither is it possible for a
Philosopher-Philanthropist to rule. Then Khan derives the Natural World Order
and envisions Monarchy as the best system of governance. “Plato assumes that
real philosophers would be virtuous philanthropists as well. Aristotle had not
explained why and how a human being can be virtuous. As already explained there
is one and only one way by which a human being can be virtuous as well as
philanthropist and that is religion; such a religion has to prescribe the virtuousness
as the main condition of faith and belief. Otherwise there can be no
alternative by which virtue can prevail in individual and social lives. This
stands already explained. Thus we are left with one political system and that
is Monarchy and this political system has been declared best by Plato but in
the monarchy we have to adopt the Natural Religion of which the basic axioms
stands derived to make it practicable. The problems faced by Plato and
Aristotle to make monarchy practicable could be resolved only by adoption of
natural religion. Without these axioms of the Natural Religion, one should bear
in mind, the just and peaceful existence of human being on this planet is not
possible. Monarchy is the natural political system and has been declared as
best possible political system by Plato as well as Aristotle due to the
problems already discussed they could not identify the monarchs with his
associates in the society”.(P-64-65)
Then goes
on in the same vein to describe the primary functioning of the State being “Law
making and law making will be very simple and acceptable to the people. The
laws would be framed on the basic Natural Laws which would appeal to one and
all and there would be no disputes about the laws. Otherwise for every law
there will be equal reason for its agreement and disagreement because right is
not defined. After having defined right, the question of challenging the law
would not arise. This is possible when people are educated properly and they
have knowledge of psychology and philosophy. It would not be a difficult task
for making the people to understand the existence of innate natural Laws and as
to how to unravel these Natural Laws”.(P-66)
Who will
impart the knowledge of Psychology and Philosophy to masses?
Who will
select the Monarch? Khan has a way: “A committee of virtuous people could be
formed who will screen the nominations of the monarch, and after the committee
approves the nominations the monarch could be elected or selected. The monarch
could be elected/selected by the representative of the people. The qualities of
the monarch stand already defined. If the monarch is properly selected then the
nation and people should feel secure. If the people are satisfied with the
monarch then monarch could nominate his successor. But successor in no case
should be the heir or close relative of the monarch”.(P-78-79), but who will
select the committee? Should the Shura vote if there are more than one virtuous
persons who are claimants of highest seat of monarchy or is it something which
only virtuous elite can decide (keep in mind Pareto’s theory of elites).
Regarding
Punishment some stain of Rousseau’s General Will can be witnessed in this
statement: “The punishment or compensation has two fold purposes, a deterrent
for the society for indulging in the evil acts and the revenge of the society
against the criminal for the evil act. It now depends upon the society as to
what type of social order they would want.” (P-70-71) Stating the fruits of
Monarchy and its preconditions Khan enumerates them as:
“The
existence of the perfect universal creator is to be accepted;
The
answerability and accountability after death is to be accepted; and
The
existence of the universal Natural Laws in the human being is also to be
accepted.
The ultimate
purpose of the political system has to be to make peace and righteousness
prevail in the individual and collective lives and building a social order
wherein all possible evil actions are easily detected and punished and there is
absolutely no room for any sort of corruption, injustice and exploitation.”
(P-75) But what is the guarantee that Monarchs wouldn’t become despotic and
dictatorial, once they assume the echelons of power because power always
corrupts. How to remove such an erring monarch? Khan is silent.
Describing
the fundamental rights to be enjoyed under monarchy as “Right to live and to
perform religious rituals/duties of the rational religion.” But rational
religion in words of Khan is the following: “The only alternative is to derive
the natural religion on the basis of logic and rationality which would be
acceptable to all the rational human beings on this planet. Then a political
system should have been conceived wherein the natural religion would have been
the guiding principle. This is the precise object of this endeavour besides
encouraging and simplifying the human self-introspection”.(P-84) But who will
decide what is rational and what not because on the basis of rationality,
science, civilization, dominant discourse we have/are witness to the aggression
and hegemony by the Imperialists who describe their own creed as the only
rationality they can understand and must be adhered to while in the process
they put to death other lot of indigenous and more civilized cultures and
rational ways of life.
“Right to
information of everything except the matters of state, defence, mechanism of
vigilance” is one of the fundamental rights too. Describing vigilance as “The
most sensitive organization and the monarchy has to be extremely careful while
appointing the people for this organization. Virtuousness especially honesty
has to be main criteria besides other qualifications. There has to be secret
vigilance over the vigilance personnel through whom every member of this
organization shall be tested from time to time. Any laxity in this organization
will cause failure of the monarchy”. (P-81) Khan here wishes to follow the
footsteps of Machiavelli and Kautiliya while assigning vigilance a dominant
position with dictatorial powers and we have witnessed the use of vigilance
pretext by the State to eliminate the dissidents and strangulate any
opposition. The dark history of Mossad, KGB, CIA are a living proof of the
same. Khan can read “By Way of Deception” by Victor Ostrovesky to have a bird’s eye glance into
the quagmire in which the States have landed by trusting the Vigilance and how
they are running a parallel government shielded from the public eye, so this
monarchy can be no different from Democracy, against which Khan has initiated
his solitary Jihad.
Making a
comeback to his rationality Khan subscribes “Any religious concept would be
acceptable if it is logical, rational and scientifically verifiable both to
common sense of the illiterate common human being as well as to the
intellectual of highest calibre”. (P-91) Khan really needs to understand well
what are the shortcomings of reason, rationality and science in describing the
Eternal World and World beyond senses and observation. Khan then tries to
philosophize Islam by claiming that all the previous attempts in this direction
have failed “Avicenna, Algazel, Averrose did try to correlate the philosophy of
that time with the Quran but could not, because there were inherent problems
with the philosophy of that time as it was based on wrong foundations and also
because of lack of scientific knowledge at that time. Then there were no worth
mentioning attempts to correlate the philosophy with the Quran. Iqbal came on
the scene and instead of accomplishing the task of correlating the philosophy
with the Quran proposed the concept that we need Reconstruction of Religious
Thought in Islam and adapted poetic mysticism as Algazel had done centuries
before. This book is precisely the accomplishment of task of ‘Reconstruction of
Islamic Thought’”.(P-119), but why do we need to philosophize Islam. The
problem of Khan is that he is unable to distinguish and compartmentalize the
domains of Philosophy, Science and Religion and tries to amalgamate all the
three with the result that all of them become the casualties of this unholy
conglomeration. Why do we need Philosophy if Islam is complete and fulfils the
needs, yes we can supplement and infer from Philosophy and Science but there is
no need to make Religion-Philosophy or Philosophy-Science or Science-Philosophy
and the vice versa and this unnatural alliance would have its repercussions and
consequences on all the three.
Surmising
that “The rigidity of all the different law systems will eventually evaporate
once there is proper discussion on the proper forum. This forum has to be under
the proper theocentric political system which at present exists nowhere. After
the basic allegoric verses of Quran have been understood the task of derivation
of the set of ‘Natural Law’ will be a very simple and easy task. The source of
the ‘Natural Law’ is the human beings and the Quran and Hadith (after testing
it on the touchstone of the Quran). I am of the opinion that human nature
contains the ‘Natural Law’ in the human beings and wherever humankind may face
problems in framing the ‘Natural Law’ the solution shall have to be sought from
the Quran and Hadith. The human nature and the Quran and Hadith are sufficient
to frame the set of ‘Natural Law’ which could be applicable universally”
(P-144). It is a question of faith alone and what Khan proclaims that he has
unveiled the allegories of Quran can’t be accepted as the Gospel truth.
Describing
why the Law system of Islam couldn’t function properly Khan says “Since instead
of Monarchy (Khilafat) patriarchy had stolen the power, they were neither
interested nor could have been interested in this most important foundational
work of the political system, so to say every Tom, Dick and Harry sat and
framed the ‘law’ forgetting the fact that thereby they were violating the very
Quran and dividing Muslims” (P-145). Khan seems ignorant that the Quranic Law
especially related to Personal Law were never violated and remained so even
during colonization plus if any ruler had tried to violate the same he was met
with bitter opposition, the struggle of Ahmad ibn Hanbal (RA) stands as a
testimony to the same and the present day Muslim agitations regarding the ban
on Hijab or age of marriage point to the same.
Committing
mistakes after mistakes in his blind appreciation and passion for what Zaiuddin
Sardar describes as Buccaillism and in case of Khan I would call it Platonism,
he writes “Let it be clear to one and all that the actual Islamic Thought could
have been understood and presented by the genuine philosophers only; which only
Prophet Mohammad (SAW) had understood and given. There are many secrets and
hidden knowledge in the Quran which only Prophet Mohammad (SAW) can claim to
have understood and known. These secrets and hidden knowledge is in the
allegories which Prophet Mohammad (SAW) had tried to convey in understandable
allegories, which for one reason or the other have been misunderstood. These
allegories are so complicated and complex that ordinarily these allegories
cannot be understood but these allegories could be understood only with the advancement
of science and philosophy. Thus I have been calling the Quran the living book
because with time only humankind could unravel what the Quran is all about. I
am aware of the fact that there have been people who devoted their whole lives
for this purpose but they were unsuccessful because science and philosophy had
not advanced so much so as to understand the actual Islamic Thought as
contained in the Quran” (P-169). If only Quran is meant and understood by
Philosophers only, then what is its essence and need for common masses? As it
is meant for whole humanity not for the elite philosophers only, plus if other
like “Algazel devoted his half-life to identify the problems with Greek
philosophy and presented his work in his book ‘Incoherence of Philosophers’ but
still the Islamic Thought as contained in the Quran had the inherent problems
which could not be explained. Algazel realized this fact and finally adopted
mysticism in the later part of life. Unfortunately the time was not ripe for
Algazel to give the Islamic Thought because science was not advanced enough so
as to unravel the Islamic Thought from the Quran”(P-170), couldn’t too
understand the same as the science and philosophy hasn’t developed much as it
is today but have they reached their zenith? No after some decades they will
advance more and Khan who today rejects Ghazalli and Iqbal would surely be
rejected by the future philosopher and scientist because we can’t put pace on
their progress and evolution.
Continuing
his bashing against scholars, Khan writes: “These scholars fail to fulfill the
very definition of scholarship because scholarship is perfect understanding of
the matter and presenting it, on the whole, in the simplest possible manner and
explaining the complexities of the matter in the simplest possible manner. They
complicated the simplest issues and brought in irrelevant, insignificant and
irrational issues. This endeavour will prove that they have made no
contribution whatsoever and instead have rendered disservice to Islam by complicating the
religion. Had they simply conceived the political system which is contained in
the Quran they would not have dared to present the Islamic legal opinions for
which they had absolutely no authority. Framing of laws and forming of the
Islamic legal opinion was and is the task of monarchs, with the assistance of
those who have sufficient knowledge for doing so, because it is the monarchs
who had and have to rule with the help of the laws thus framed. These so called
scholars gave their schools of law and legal opinions without realizing this
simple fact that it is the task of monarchs. Once the Islamic thought is
conceived in true perspective the rigidity of ‘Mohammedan Law’ of which there
are several sources (more than four) will evaporate once the monarch takes
over.”(P-179-180) But he fails to understand that even if the monarchs would
interpret the law still there would be chances of difference of opinion which
in turn would lead to the sectarianism? Also the whole Muslim history bears
testimony to the fact that monarchs never formulated laws and philosophers
never ruled. This compartmentalization still holds good though Khan tries to
bridge the divide which would prove futile.
Thus he
suspects the Muhadditheen “Since at the time of compilation and writing of the
hadith the patriarchy had replaced the monarchy (Khilafat) which being one of
the primary messages of the Quran. In case the authors of the Hadith had
written about the Hadith concerning Islamic Political System and the governance
on those principles then thereby the patriarchs simply would have been
challenged. Thus some self-contradictory hadith reached us which firstly
created sectarianism and systems of Islamic theology.” (182-183) But he forgets
that a whole new branch of Ilm ul Rijal came into existence because of the
Muhaditheen and to doubt their authenticity means to put a doubt on whole of
Islam. Khan seems to have been inspired by the reactionary interpretation of
Islam when he claims that “the establishment of the Islamic states should be
the first and foremost priority of every Muslim wherever there is majority of
Muslim population. After Jihad Bil Nafs the Jihad for Islam should be the
priority especially when the Islamic Political System has been conceived
herein. Presently the sectarian differences have to be forgotten because
logically these differences are based on irrelevant and insignificant issues
and are against the very Quran and Islam and once Islamic states are
established and the monarch takes over all these differences will evaporate
without any confrontation”. (P-199)
There is no
concept of State in Islam as conceived by Khan and other Islamist Ideologues
like him, Islam has a concept of Ummah which traverses the States based on
regionalism, linguism or culture. Khan takes the argument well off by seeking
an alternative to democracy but he fails to arrive on any concrete conclusion.
Bracketing Khilafat with Monarchy (P-145) is totally wrong. There is no place
of Monarchy in Islam. But there is a Caliph who considers the Ummah as one body
and his rule only a benediction by Allah about which he would be questioned.
Islamic Ummah is no Nation-State with well-defined boundaries about which and
for which the States will fight and conquer. It’s fight is only for Social
Justice and Political reformation not for perpetuating the rule of monarchs who
would be handicapped without a vigilance. Khan then takes this hilarity to an
end when he writes “these so called scholars have misled the Muslims of the
world about the actual meaning of Zakat. So far it is understood that Zakat is
the property tax on the Muslims who possess the property beyond a certain limit
which Muslims have to pay to the poor, orphans etc. Zakat actually is the
property tax which Muslims having the property beyond a certain limit, are
supposed to pay to the state to manage the affairs of the state. This is called
Jizya in case of the non-Muslims living in the Islamic State:’ (P-207)
To quote Khan
“It is not the false facts which are injurious to the progress of science
because sooner or later science will prove false facts to be false. But false
views, if supported by some evidence about some obscure matter are more
injurious to the progress of science. The views whether false or true views
continue till the obscurity of the matter is solved”.
These lines
sum up the whole attempt of the author, though Khan has tried but failed in his
attempt to describe natural world order and an alternative to democracy. He
confuses a reader first by deriving Natural World Order, then imposing Monarchy
and then labelling them as Islam and interpreting Quran as the source of
legitimacy for the same. Though being a maiden attempt by the author he is
successful in raising some questions but fails to answer the same, but the book
is priced low hence everybody can buy, read and debate about its contents.
----
Mushtaq
Ul Haq Ahmad Sikander is Writer-Activist based in Srinagar Kashmir
URL: https://newageislam.com/books-documents/human-nature-quran-hadith-law/d/127329
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