Islam, Reform, and Social Change
By
Mohammad Ali, New Age Islam
9 August,
2022
In The
State Of Stagnation, Islah and Tajdid Require Muslim Intellectuals
to Employ Ijtihad, Reasoning, or Intellectual Endeavours, To Offer New
Interpretations of the Already Established Notions In Order To Propose Reforms
Main
Points
1. This essay
argues for the importance of reform in Islamic thought in times of change
2. It examines
the methodology of reform of one of the most influential modernist thinkers,
Fazlur Rahman
3. It also
employs Fazlur Rahman’s methodology to demonstrate what change in Islamic
thought will look like
-----
Like time,
society and its values are fluid entities. They change over time. For a healthy
society, it is imperative that society progresses in sync with time. If it
fails to keep up the pace with the time, it gets inflicted with stagnation. Its
values and ideas start losing their relevance. If it happens, some agents after
perceiving the chasm between their society and the current time try to bridge
the gap by introducing various reforms to their society. In human history, we
find several such incidents and movements that bring society through the same
process. In Muslim history, these movements are invoked by the concepts of Islah
and Tajdid. Deeply embedded in Islamic imagination, the two concepts are
sought by reformists to justify their actions in changing times. In the state
of stagnation, Islah and Tajdid require Muslim intellectuals to
employ Ijtihad, reasoning, or intellectual endeavours, to offer new
interpretations of the already established notions in order to propose reforms.
Examples of these reforms can be found in the history of Mu’tazilites, and Asharaites,
and in the efforts of the scholars like Ghazali, Ibn Taymiyyah, etc. These
movements and scholars, when confronted with intellectual challenges posed to
Islamic society, developed a systematic methodology, known as Ilm al-Kalam,
which was developed to respond to the intellectual challenges to the Islamic
faith, or refashioned the already established methodology in their own times.
Based on such historical accounts, one can argue that the idea of reform is not
strange to Islam.
In the
early modern period, Muslim scholars, such as Shah Waliullah, an Indian
theologian based in Delhi, realized the intellectual stagnation in Muslim
society which resulted in the deterioration of their religious and moral
values. To counter this stagnation,
Waliullah launched a series of reformative works, the most famous among them is
Hujjatullah al-Balighah, in which he offered a rational explanation for Islamic
beliefs. Waliullah’s tremendous efforts focused on the steeping intellectual
and political decline and predated European colonialism in the Muslim world.
For his rationalist approach and construction of his religious worldview,
Waliullah relies on ‘Greek metaphysics, ethics, philosophy, and logic as
adopted by Islamic tradition.’
Until the
18th century, Muslim thought and religious worldview operated on the foundation
of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, as is manifested in the works of Shah Waliullah
and other scholars of his time as well. However, this approach was challenged
by some reformists during and after the time of colonialism. In the wake of
European colonialism in the Muslim world, the Muslim worldview was challenged
by the European civilization that had developed a new worldview since the age
of Enlightenment. This new worldview had rejected Neo-Platonism, which provided
the intellectual basis for the Islamic worldview. The European worldview
intruded the Muslim societies, through colonialism, and modern educational
systems that the Europeans had introduced to the colonized territories. As a
result, a clash erupted between the two worldviews. This brand new worldview
was grown out of the scientific discoveries that had been achieved during the
time of Enlightenment. On the basis of these discoveries, European societies were
able to establish new meanings for their relationship with the world and the
divine. They claimed that this breakthrough was possible only because of their
rationalist demeanour. The old system/worldview which was based on the
Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic philosophy was rejected by the new-found
knowledge. However, in the Muslim world, the same old system continued. Muslim
intellectuals who were trained in the same system, when challenged by the new
European worldview, tried to defend it. European intellectuals viewed this defence
as an act against rationalism. Ernest Renan, a French orientalist, in one of
his lectures that he delivered on March 29, 1883, argued that since Islam was
opposed to reason and was not compatible with science, it rendered Muslims
abhorrent to science and reason as well. He argued that “starting from about
1275, the Muslim world plunged into ‘the most pitiable intellectual decadence’
whereas Western Europe entered ‘the great highway of the scientific search for
the truth.” In the same lecture, he went on to claim:
All those who have been in the East, or in
Africa, are struck by the way in which the mind of a true believer is fatally
limited, by the species of iron circle that surrounds his head, rendering it
absolutely closed to knowledge, incapable of either learning anything, or of
being open to any new idea. From his religious initiation at the age of ten or
twelve years, the Mohammedan child, who occasionally may be, up to that time,
of some intelligence, at a blow becomes a fanatic, full of a stupid pride in
the possession of what he believes to be the absolute truth, happy as with a
privilege, with what makes his inferiority. This foolish pride is the radical
vice of the Musalman.
Apart from
the European intellectuals, Muslim beliefs and practices were also attacked by
the Christian missionaries and the so-called modern Muslims who were educated
in the western education system. When threatened by these challenges, Muslim
responses formulated into three discourses. M K Masud categorizes these
discourses as revivalist, non-religious, and modernist discourses. The
revivalist insisted upon the Ihya (revival) of the pristine Islam that
was practiced and propounded by the Salaf. They rejected various
practices, such as visiting shrines, seeking intercession, observing Taqlid,
etc., that had been popularized and practiced in Muslim societies for
centuries. It rejected the new Western worldview altogether. The non-religious
discourse sought Western secularism and modernism as an idea to salvage Muslim
societies from stagnation. They argued that the age-old religious system was
the main reason for the decline of Muslim societies. However, the third tried
to find a middle course to tread on. These modernists argued that the current
intellectual, theological, and jurisprudential methodology of Islam has been
rendered obsolete against modernity or the worldview provided by the West.
Therefore, they advocated for developing a new theology to meet the modern
challenges. The approach of the modernists is described as,
It aims to
root ‘modernism’ in Islamic tradition. it shares with the other two discourses
the urge to reform Muslim society but disagrees with their rejection of
modernity or tradition. Instead, it affirms that modernity (the Western
worldview) is compatible with Islam.
The
above-mentioned revivalist and modernist approaches are still visible in Muslim
intellectual discourses and are invested in trying to formulate an authentic
Islamic tradition for modern times. However, the two discourses, revivalist,
and modernist, have failed to generate a robust and complex methodology in
order to produce the desired results. The revivalist approach is often reduced
to mere literalism and failed to be inclusive of the modern knowledge system, on
the one hand, and the modernist approach tends to be apologetic, on the other.
During the late 20th century, a new strand to the modernist approach was
introduced: historicism, which argued that Muslim intellectual and social
institutions should be analysed in their historical context. Fazlur Rahman is
considered one of the foremost proponents of this approach.
Before
moving forward with the discussion, I would like to briefly discuss the theory
of social change. According to the Encyclopaedia of Britannica, social change
is a theory that is propounded by Western sociologists. The theory proposes the
idea that the mechanisms within the social structure go through an alteration
when changes appear in cultural symbols, rules of behaviour, social
organizations, or value systems. Various theories are employed by experts to
understand the process of change in society. In the late 19th century, when
Darwin proposed the theory of evolution to understand biological change,
sociologists prepared a model based on Darwin’s theory to analyse the change in
ideas. Marx believed that changes in modes of production can lead to changes in
the class system, which would result in creating a new class in society leading
to an inevitable conflict between the new and the old classes. Ultimately, this
conflict would be resolved by reaching the integration of the new system in
society. There are other means that facilitate change in society, including
‘contact with other societies (diffusion), changes in the ecosystem (which can
cause the loss of natural resources or widespread disease), technological
change (epitomized by the Industrial Revolution, which created a new social
group, the urban proletariat), and population growth and other demographic
variables. Social change is also spurred by ideological, economic, and
political movements.’
These
agents of social change have heavily been influencing the progress of human
society since the beginning of the modern age. A wholesale alteration of the
social institutions forced intellectuals around the world to review and
reconstruct the values and ideals of the past. Fazlur Rahman conceptualizes this
social change and the proper Islamic response to it in order for establishing
the viability of Islam in the modern world. He eloquently puts it,
When new
forces of massive magnitude—socio-economic, cultural-moral or political-occur
in or to a society, the fate of that society naturally depends on how far it is
able to meet the new challenges creatively. If it can avoid the two extremes of
panicking and recoiling upon itself and seeking delusive shelters in the past
on the one hand, and sacrificing or compromising its very ideals on the other,
and can react to the new forces with self-confidence by necessary assimilation,
absorption, rejection and other forms of positive creativity, it will develop a
new dimension for its inner aspirations, a new meaning and scope for its
ideals. Should it, however, choose, by volition or force of circumstance, the
second of the two extremes we have just mentioned and succumb to the new
forces, it will obviously undergo a metamorphosis; its being will no longer
remain the same and, indeed, it may even perish in the process of
transformation and be swallowed up by another socio-cultural organism. But more
surely fatal than this mistake is the one we have mentioned as the first
extreme. Should a society begin to live in the past—however sweet its
memories—and fail to face the realities of the present squarely—however
unpleasant they be—, it must become a fossil; and it is an unalterable law of
God that fossils do not survive for long.
In this
long passage, Fazlur Rahman criticizes the two reformist approaches which I
have mentioned above, the revivalist and the anti-religious, as detrimental to
Islam and Muslims. For Fazlur Rahman, these two approaches represent two
extremes that end up in either giving up one’s identity or imposing the past on
our present societies. Instead, he argues that Muslims must critically and
creatively engage with their historical tradition and try to differentiate
between normative and historical Islam.
Falzur
Rahman is one of the most ardent proponents of the historicist approach to
studying the evolution of Islamic tradition. Historicism as an intellectual
movement began in the West in the nineteenth century. Many Muslim modernist
scholars also tried to employ the approach to construct a new methodology to
study Islam. Historicism, in general, refers ‘to the recognition of the impact
of specific socioeconomic and political circumstances on any given cultural
formulation, including the formulations that comprise religious heritage.’ Historicism views that the socioeconomic and
political conditions of the past were determined by their specific time, and
argues that with the passage of time things need to be changed. It views the
past transitioning from one period to another. With these transitions, change
occurs in society. Therefore, in order to study social change, the methodology
of historicism becomes an important means. Even though historicism as an
intellectual idea originated in the West in the modern period, Fazlur Rahman
employs the Quranic methodology of Naskh in order to substantiate the
authenticity of his approach and methodology. The very idea of Naskh
presupposes a change in circumstances according to which certain verses were
abrogated by others. For example, the verses and injunctions revealed in the
Quran in Mecca are very different from those that were revealed in Medina.
Fazlur Rahman gives an example of jihad. The meaning of jihad had changed
during the time of the revelation of the Quran. Its first usage in the Quran
was to refer to the efforts of polytheist Meccans who attempted to stop people
to convert to Islam, and to the efforts of Muslims who tried to remain
steadfast in their faith. According to the concept of naskh, injunctions that
were abrogated later pertained to specific circumstances. And when those
circumstances changed, a new message was revealed.
The
methodology Fazlur Rahman proposes comprises two important aspects. The first
one is his reconceptualization of the notion of Asbāb-E-Nuzūl. He argues that
limiting the meaning of the Quranic verses to a particular context is
tantamount to restricting the universal meaning of the Quran. Fazlur Rahman’s
idea of the Quran is that the holy book contains universal principles
underlying its verses. Muslims need to engage in a thorough study of the Quran
to find out those principles. In order to do so, he states that we need to
change our methodology. Fazlur Rahman argues, ‘the multitude of Quranic
revelations took place “in, although not for, a given context.” Muslims must recognize
the essential feature in the revelation which is meant not only for the
specific context in which it was revealed but is intended by the Creator to
“outflow through and beyond that given context of history.”
Another
aspect of Fazlur Rahman’s methodology pertains to the idea of distinguishing
the essential and historical Islam. According to Fazlur Rahman, Islamic
institutions, like kalam or Fiqh, arose in their historical context.
However, he criticizes their methodology of reading the Quran and the Sunnah.
To introduce reform in Islam, Fazlur Rahman argues that there is a need for the
reassessment of these institutions, which could be possible once Muslims are
able to glean the Islamic principles by applying the methodology we talked
about above.
Tamara Sonn
summarizes the main features of Fazlur Rahman’s neo-modernist approach, which
she calls, ‘Islamic methodology’, in the following words,
Fazlur
Rahman’s approach to Islamic reform calls for a critical assessment of the
intellectual legacy of Islam, with a view to: (1) understanding how it happened
to assume the form in which we have inherited it; (2) distinguishing in the
process between essential Islamic principles and their particular formulation
as a result of specific needs of specific—and probably now
outmoded—socioeconomic and political contexts; and (3) determining how best to apply the essential principles of
Islam in the contemporary context (which itself must be critically assessed.)
Since past
about two hundred years, Muslims have been trying to establish the viability of
the principles of Islam in modern times. As we discussed, multiple approaches
have been suggested to study the causes that brought about the decline of
Muslims, and the possible means that could revive the community. Fazlur
Rahman’s methodology can be counted among those approaches. However, there are
some merits to this approach. It is more complex and robust than those the
three approaches that I mentioned earlier. When applied, it could bring
solutions to some of the major theological issues that Muslims have been trying
to resolve in the modern period. By applying his methodology, Fazlur Rahman has
tried to give some answers to some of the most debatable questions regarding,
for example, the status of women in Islam, jihad, etc.
I would
like to present a case study here in order to demonstrate the efficiency of
Fazlur Rahman’s methodology in understanding what is essentially Islamic and
what is not. For example, for many Muslims, child marriage is allowed in Islam.
In 1929, when the British government in India passed an act, Child Marriage
Restraint Act, also known as Sharda Act, fixing a certain age for marriage for
boys and girls. Muslim organizations of that time, such as Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind,
viewed this act as anti-Islamic and an assault on Shariah. They argued that in
Islam marriage is a religious issue, therefore, interference in it would be
regarded as interference in Islam itself. In protest of the act, these Ulama
organized child marriages across the subcontinent and appealed to their
followers to do so. They reacted this way because they were confused between
the essentials of Islam and social norms.
Many
Muslims would not support such protests, as they did almost a century ago
because our perception regarding the issue had changed over the years. Fazlur
Rahman distinguishes between the prescriptive verses and Sunnah and the
descriptive verses and the Sunnah. Many practices that are mentioned in the
Quran and described in the Sunnah, he argues, are prescriptive and many of them
are descriptive. The prescriptive category defines the principles, and ideals
of the Quran whose values are universal. But the descriptive category refers to
those practices and injunctions that were the norms of the time. As time changes,
these practices would change as well. Thus, the age of marriage, Fazlur Rahman
would say, belongs to the descriptive category, meaning it is decided by the
norms of society. In previous times, child marriage was allowed, but today, due
to the change in society, this norm has also been changed. If a society or a
state decides to limit the minimum age for marriage, it does not go against the
injunctions of the Quran.
This was
just one example to demonstrate the efficacy of the methodology of Fazlur
Rahman. It is important that we critically explore it further. The Islamic
jurists and theologians also need to seriously engage with socioeconomic and
political theories of modern times, so that they could be able to understand
the world they live in. This holistic approach to studying Islam and society
will help them derive complex solutions for the reform of the Muslim society.
----
Mohammad
Ali has been a madrasa student. He has also participated in a three years
program of the "Madrasa Discourses,” a program for madrasa graduates
initiated by the University of Notre Dame, USA. Currently, he is a PhD Scholar
at the Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His
areas of interest include Muslim intellectual history, Muslim philosophy, Ilm-al-Kalam,
Muslim sectarian conflicts, madrasa discourses.
URL: https://newageislam.com/ijtihad-rethinking-islam/islam-reform-social-change/d/127679
New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism