How Can We Be Fair with Tradition? Openness to Criticism and Diverse Opinions Can Generate Grounds for Reform in Islam
By
Mohammad Ali, New Age Islam
2 August
2021
Reforms Must Include Appreciating Diversity and
Incorporating Modern Knowledge into Traditional System
Main
Points:
1. This essay
argues that there has been resistance to criticism and diverse opinions in the
traditional Muslim scholarly behaviour which has thwarted a full-fledged
movement of reform in Islam.
2. In order to
enrich our tradition in the modern world, Muslim traditional scholars should
also benefit from modern knowledge.
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The issue of reform in the Islamic religious and
intellectual tradition has been one of the most discussed and contested topics
during the last century. Among the suggestions that are proposed by scholars to
initiate intended reforms include: First, for Muslim traditional scholars
(‘ulema’) to appreciate diversity and tolerate differences of opinions. Second,
for Muslims to incorporate modern knowledge into their traditional system.
These two propositions have not yet been taken up. Muslim societies in the
colonial and post-colonial subcontinent have been condemning modern knowledge
as a source of heresy and suppressing dissent in order to maintain singularity
within their society. In this essay, I will show how Muslims are still trapped
in this situation, and how such entrapment comes at the expense of the
regeneration of the Islamic tradition.
Suppressing
Dissent
On
September 19, 2019, a Deobandi ‘ālim posted a statement on his Facebook wall
that the book “Khilāfat-w-Mulūkīyat is a source of hostility and
antagonism (among the Muslim community). To protect the future generations from
the harmful influences of the book, it should be torched, and the ashes must
remain buried.” The book he mentions was authored by Syed Abul ’A‘lā Mawdūdī
(d.1979), the founder of Jamā‘t-i-Islāmī, and was first published in 1967. It
deals with the subject of how the Caliphate, an ideal form of governance in the
Islamic tradition, transformed into a hereditary monarchic system of governance
during the reign of Mu‘āwīyah (r. 661-680 AD). What is critical here is that
the Caliph Amīr Mu‘āwīyah designated his son Yazīd (r. 680-83) as his
successor, thus introducing what many saw as an un-Islamic system of
governance, i.e. kingship, into Islam. Prior to Mu‘āwīyah, people ascended to
the throne of the Caliphate either through nomination or election. Mawdūdī saw
these previous procedures as popular and beneficial because they prevented a
family from seizing the Caliphal institution. Mu‘āwīyah set an example for
later generations of rulers by adopting a hereditary system of government
leadership, and thus obstructed the possibilities of the full realization of Islamic “democratic” political
values at its
earliest stage. To Mawdūdī, this innovation of Mu‘āwīyah’s had long-lasting
effects and corrupted major civilizational developments in the following
centuries.
Because
Mawdudi was obsessed with the idea of establishing an ideal Islamic government
based on the ever-cherished memory of the first Caliphate, he lamented and
criticized Mu’awiyah for causing its end. Mawdūdī’s book triggered criticism
from a wide swath of the traditional ‘ulema in South Asia. Their conventional
position is that the companions of the Prophet Muhammad are just and beyond any
reproach and criticism. Therefore, Mu’awiyah, being the companion of the
Prophet, must also be saved from any condemnation. Maududi’s views were
rejected and a number of rejoinders were published. One of the most famous
among them is Hazrat Mu’awiyah aur Tārīkhī Haqāiq (Mu’awiyah and the
Historical Facts) written by Taqi Usmānī, a celebrated Deobandi ‘Alim from
Pakistan. Usmānī based his argument on the unanimous opinion of the
’Ahl-i-Sunnāh, which held that all the companions of the Prophet (including
Mu’awiyah) were the most pious people on the earth after the prophets and could
not be subjected to criticism. Furthermore, Usmani condemned Mawdudi for
constructing his criticism of Mu’awiyah on anecdotal accounts which are mostly
dubious and cannot be equated with the authenticity of the Qur’an and Hadith.
He argued that since the historical reconstruction of the conflicts among the
Companions is a delicate project, it should not be undertaken. If one insists
on doing so, he claimed, he/she must tread carefully under the guidance of the
Qur’an and Hadith, and seek assistance of ‘ulema’ in this heavy task. In other
words, he believed that an authentic history of the early period of Islam could
only be constructed if it is based on the evidences provided in the Qur’an and
Hadith.
The purpose
of the previous paragraphs is to highlight how traditional Muslim religious
circles treated and have continued to treat dissent as unacceptable. The
quotation from the Facebook post is an example of this general attitude of
Muslim ‘ulema towards dissent. I would argue, however, that while it is true
that dissent disturbs the order of a tradition, it also offers a fresh
opportunity to look into matters which may have been neglected and causing
severe internal damages to the tradition. Dissent cultivates healthy
discourse. Suppression of dissent through censoring, vilification, and
sometimes anathematization, has caused the emergence of schismatic sects or
groups in Islamic history. It has also curtailed positive mutations in the Islamic
tradition.
Within the
Muslim tradition, traditionalists have developed ways to resist new
interpretations that go against the status quo. One way includes burning books
or prohibiting followers from reading them. For instance, in her seminal work
on the life of Ibn ‘Arabī, Quest for the Red Sulphur (1993), Claude Addas
recorded an event illustrating the attitude of Ibn ‘Arabi towards Muhammad
al-Fārābī (d. 950). Once Ibn ‘Arabī visited one of his acquaintances. At the
home of his host, he found The Ideal City by Al-Fārābī. He glanced through the
book, and upon reading the sentence, “In this chapter I wish to examine how to
postulate [the existence of] a divinity in the world,” he got offended by the
use of the word “divinity,” which al-Fārābī used instead of “Allah,” and threw
the book at its owner’s face (108). He did not read the whole book because of
its linguistic preference and condemned its author. As a Shaikh-i Akbar, his
attitude was to be followed by his disciples and devotees as well. Because of
this, the impact of his reaction was magnified immeasurably.
The attempt
by Deobandi and Barelvi ‘ulema’ keep “harmful” influences from impacting ulema’
also speaks to this issue. At the Darul Ulum Deoband seminary in North India, a
prescribed curriculum for studying the refutation of Mawdudi along with
Christians and Ahmadiyas (Qadianis)—a sect of Islam founded by Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad in 1889 in the Punjab, India, and considered heretical by Sunnis and
Shiites—is the part of the curriculum for senior students. Furthermore, the
Barelvi sect, who anathematizes non-Barelvi sects like Deobandis and Ahl-i
Hadith, (a South Asian sect which rejected the canonical authority of the four
schools of jurisprudence), prohibit Barelvis from studying with non-Barelvi
teachers, for fear that his/her “heretical” ideas will influence the student.
The
attitude of many Muslim scholars in South Asia described here suggests a belief
that contending/dissenting ideas or views are contagious. Such ideas
could infect students in classrooms as well as the masses on the streets if
they are not contained. This position has created a gulf between different
intellectual and ideological systems among Muslims in India and Pakistan.
Groups have grown suspicious and become ignorant of the beliefs and practices
of other groups. To bridge the gap between them, Muslims from different
ideological groups must better find ways to better understand one other. With
better understanding, the Islamic tradition will be enriched.
The
categorization of scholarly opinions into general/majority opinion (Rā’i
Al-Jamhūrī) or an idiosyncratic opinion (Tafarrud), is another
mechanism to keep the isolated scholarly opinion from becoming the part of
tradition, and hence reduces the chances of change within a tradition. An
isolated opinion of a scholar may be a creative interpretation of tradition
under special circumstances. It is isolated because it is new and no one has
propounded it before. However, unless it is integrated into tradition it
remains isolated. It does not matter if it is postulated by al-Ghazali
(d.1111), Shah Waliullah (d. 1762), or any other scholar. When an opinion is
isolated it can always easily be rejected. If the Islamic tradition is to go on
it must accommodate such isolated and creative opinions.
Rejecting
Modern Knowledge Systems
So far, I
have been discussing Muslim traditionalist approaches to suppressing or dodging
dissentious/contentious views. I have argued that this behaviour is detrimental
to the very nature of a discursive tradition. Discursivity describes the
ongoing debates and contestations that make up a tradition. Due to temporal
progression and geographical dislocations, a tradition perpetually needs to
employ various means to comprehend how it has understood itself in the past and
how it should understand itself in the present. The continuation of a
discursive tradition requires the creative and thorough accumulation of not
just new knowledge, but also the application of new knowledge to current and
past human experiences. Therefore, it becomes necessary to assess the role of
‘ulema’ with regard to the appropriation of modern knowledge systems as
hermeneutical tools for interpreting the scriptural and traditional texts of
Islam. As the scope of the essay does not allow me the space to discuss the
issue under consideration in full detail, I will provide a few examples to
highlight the challenges the ulamā’ are facing in dealing with new social
forces.
In Social
Change and Early Sunnah, Fazlur Rahman argued that if a society which is under
massive pressure to change reacts self-confidently to new social forces “by
necessary assimilation, absorption, rejection and other forms of positive
creativity, it will develop a new dimension for its inner aspiration, a new
meaning and scope for its ideals” (205). Though his article focuses on how a
Muslim society should accommodate modern social changes, it also advances a
methodology that makes it possible to synthesize the Islamic tradition with
modern knowledge systems. The absence of such a creative methodology results in
a crisis in thinking. What is needed, therefore, is an interdisciplinary
methodology, much like that devised by early Muslims in Islamic history. As an
example of how to adapt such a methodology, we can turn to a 2017 lecture given
by Ebrahim Moosa in New Delhi, India. There he argued to his audience (many of
them were ‘ulema) that an interpretation of the Islamic tradition, whether in
medieval or modern times, requires an interdisciplinary approach that confronts
contemporary knowledge. He invoked the example of Abul Hasan al-Māwardī (d.
1058), who not only drew from the Qur’an and the Sunna, but also “drew on the parables
found in the writings of philosophers and the literary insights found in the
work of the rhetoricians and poets.”
Scholars like Māwardī were confidently exploring new dimensions of
knowledge and innovation by delving into philosophy, social and natural
sciences, and humanities, while nonetheless maintaining their ideals. However,
contemporary ‘ulema who take up the Islamic intellectual tradition are not as
innovative as their predecessors were.
One can
find very few examples of colonial and post-colonial Indian ‘ulema who employ a
multidisciplinary approach to synthesizing their inherited knowledge with the
constantly expanding knowledge of the modern world. In fact, since the
establishment of the first modern madrasa in Deoband in 1866 in colonial India,
‘ulema have been apprehensive and hesitant to use knowledge that has roots in
the western world. This is evident in the fact that even after a more than
century-long discourse on reforms in madrasa education, ‘ulema in and outside
of madrasas still seem neglectful of modern knowledge. Instead, they have grown
more and more insular and reductionist in their approach. Their insularity is
illustrated by their distrust not only of the Western scholarship on Islam
(including by both Muslims and non-Muslims) but also of the ‘ulema’ who do not
subscribe to their institutional identity, such as Barelvi, Deobandi, or Ahl-i
Hadith. Evidence of their reductionism can be found in their hesitance to draw
on hermeneutical tools from pre-modern and modern literatures produced outside
of the Quranic sciences, Hadith sciences, and fiqh. One of the most important
reasons for this detachment is that they no longer believe that the sciences,
whether classical or modern—other than those deriving directly from the Qur’an and
Hadith, like poetry or philosophy—can be sources of wisdom and illumination.
However, their suspicion towards the modern knowledge, which is considered
“western” by ‘ulamā’, is because of the academic projects that orientalists
became involved in during the colonial period. It is also because of scientific
theories, like that of evolution. These developments in the colonial and
post-colonial era convinced the class of ‘ulema’ of the
anti-Islamic/un-religious nature of modern/western knowledge systems. Their
suspicion is validated by anti-orientalist literature, which is mostly
polemical in nature, and is available in Arabic and Urdu languages. Let me
provide a brief example of this attitude. Once I suggested that an
undergraduate student in Jamia Millia Islamia, who also graduated from a
madrasa, read Jonathan Brown’s, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and
Modern World (2009). After having a look at the book, he asked me whether the
author was an orientalist. For, he did not want to read a book on Islam
authored by an orientalist.
Another
example that demonstrates how ‘ulema are suspicious of the knowledge presented
to them in the western outfits, is an incident that occurred a few days ago at
the Department of Islamic Studies of Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. I met a
PhD candidate at the department during an unofficial discussion of Fazlur
Rahman’s book, Major Themes in the Quran. The discussion was led by some
students. In the discussion, to substantiate a point that I made, I referred to
Plato’s Apology. She objected to my reference, saying that Plato could not
claim knowledge as he did not receive revelation. Only we Muslims can claim
knowledge as the receivers of the last revelation. Another student emphasized
this point by saying that using Plato trapped us in an epistemology that is not
our own. Among the participants, some of the students had studied in madrasas
and some had not. Nonetheless, they shared the ‘Ulema’s suspicion of the
“other.”
For a
modern ‘Alim (scholar), the challenges are far more complex than those of
his/her predecessors. He/she must develop a curriculum compatible with the
modern sciences. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by my colleagues’ reactions
described above, students trained in the traditional framework are not
encouraged to read modern scholars, or scholars from different traditions, who
discuss Islam. In their atomistic approach to reading Islam, the previous and
the present generations of ‘ulema’ have failed to produce a complex and robust
discourse that deals with the contemporary intellectual questions pertaining to
the Islamic tradition. They need to react confidently to dissent and other epistemological structures. Doing so will also to establish a
methodology of healthy and ethical criticism, in the absence of which they will
find no option but to give into fear based on uncertainty and distrust.
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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://www.newageislam.com/ijtihad-rethinking-islam/tradition-reform-modern/d/125171