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Islamic Personalities ( 22 Sept 2022, NewAgeIslam.Com)

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Remembering Sir Syed Ahmad Khan as a Proponent of Hindus and Muslims Being One Nation: His Religious Reform Is As Relevant As His Educational Reform

By Dr. Mohammad Ghitreef, New Age Islam

22 September 2022

O Hindus and Muslims! Are You A Resident Of Any Country Other Than India? Don't You Both Live On The Same Land? Are You Not Buried In This Land, Or Are You Not Burned On The Ghats Of This Land? If You Die On It and Live On It, Remember That Hindu and Muslim Are Religious Words; Otherwise, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians Who Live In the Same Country Are One Nation

Main Points

1.    Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) was a remarkable educationist, social and religious reformer. Regrettably, while his educational achievements are applauded, his religious reform is wholly forgotten.

2.    Contrary to what Pakistanis incorrectly believed, he was a protagonist of the one nation doctrine, not the two-nation theory that created Pakistan.

1.    3- He fervently advocated unity between Hindus and Muslims.

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Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (1817-1898)

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Every year on October 17th, Aligarh holds a grand celebration honouring Sir Syed Ahmad Khan. This day serves as a reminder of both his excellent character and the significant contributions he made to his society and country, as well as the continued applicability of his ideas to contemporary times.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was born on October 17 in Delhi and passed away in Aligarh on March 17, 1898. According to a narration, his forefathers immigrated to India from Herat, Afghanistan, in the reign of Akbar, the great Mughal. His father, Meer Mohammad Taqi, was an special consultant to Akbar Shah 11 in 1838, his father died, and he inherited all the coveted titles. Mughal king Bahadur Shah Zafar gave him another title of Arif Jung too.

Syed Ahmad’s mother, Aziz ul Nisa Begum, gave special attention to educating him. On the tutelage of Maulvi Hameeduddin, his formal education began, which comprised of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, along with traditional theological sciences such as Tafsir, Hadees, Fiqh, etc. Though the traditional Ulama of Delhi taught Syed Ahmad Khan, his education remained incomplete. However, he was very fond of reading, so he gained a good command of these traditional sciences too. From 1840 when he was 23 years old, he began writing essays.

The times in which Syed Ahmad lived were very turbulent and fraught with so many difficulties for Muslims. The popular uprising of 1857, the mutiny for the English, failed, and Muslims were on the receiving end, facing all the brunt of the English outrage, being perceived as the chief instrument of that first freedom movement. Then a statute was passed that put an end to feudalism and land lording. That was a big blow to the already beleaguered Indian Muslim community. Therefore, by all accounts, these were extremely difficult times for Muslims.

 Syed Ahmad moved in the direction of the English in an effort to provide Muslims with a path for reconciliation while keeping all of this in mind. In order to calm the anger and hatred of the English people, he first published his renowned treatise on "The Causes of Indian Revolt." His full attention was then directed at advancing his educational movement among Indian Muslims. His educational theory was maybe an imitation of the governmental policy verbatim, but it was not parochial and limited like that of our clergy. His orbit of education was vast. Once, he explained that as under:

"Education aims to instil in man a capacity for creativity to confront the upcoming problems and comprehend what is good and harmful for him. He can reflect on the divine charismas, make moral improvements, manage his finances skilfully, and consider afterlife-related issues. Therefore, the government claims it has no plans to train all that. We merely keep in mind that it is not at all a good idea to educate people so they can improve economic operations based on geography, accounting, and geometry." (Hayate Javed, p: 85)

Once, he expressed his ambition that with his educational efforts, he aspired to see:

“Every Muslim man holds philosophy and literature in one hand and science and technology in the other. He is also crowned by the Kalima Tayyeba (There is no God but on God).

The most notable aspect of Sir Syed's life was his commitment to improving his community. He had spent a good amount of his life working for the government. His family had a distinguished reputation. Before the English government, his forefathers were in high positions in Mughal courts. Because of his contributions, Syed Ahmad gained the confidence of the English government, and if he so desired, he might lead a comfortable royal life. However, having personally witnessed the failure of resistance movements as well as the helplessness of Muslims following the "failed mutiny," all of this inspired him to write the book we already described. With this book, he tried to convince the English that Muslims were not their enemy number one in India. Instead, they ought to investigate the genuine reasons behind the uprising and eliminate the legitimate grievances that motivated the populace to rebel against the British. He came to the conclusion that "education" might be a useful and helpful tool to serve society and address the challenges and problems it is facing. Then he began his reform work on this line.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was a Muslim social reformer also. In this regard, he is a beacon of light. He is credited with having contrived a new method of Urdu prose writing. His book Khutbate Ahmadiya in response to William Mure, the English orientalist, is a brilliant example of his tremendous love for the prophet (PBUH).

On the occasion of writing this book, he was so excited that he did not hesitate to sell his household assets back at home to meet the requirements for writing this book and its English rendering. Moreover, he did great deeds in the form of reviving the old Islamic historiographical tradition best exemplified by the Asarus Sanadid. With forming Scientific Society, he tried his best to invoke and inculcate a scientific temperament and love of knowledge in the community.

In 1875 Sir Syed founded Anglo-Mohammadan College, which transformed into Aligarh Muslim University in 1921 after the death of Sir Syed. And thus the dream Sir Syed dreamed to fulfil a community need comes true in this great seat of learning, from where generations came out armed with knowledge and intellect and who served their community and the country.

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan established his educational policy based on a mix of religious and secular values, because he was born and grew up in a traditional religious milieu. Then by working with thinking, moral and spiritual imagination, he discovered a new religious consciousness. Along with that, on an academic plane, he was the first to think about the need for a new theology, which he observed thus in one of his lectures:

“Our ancestors were at ease that sitting in their mosques and in the inner wards of their monasteries, they could break hypothetical problems with hypothetical arguments and hit at analogical reasons by the same arguments. But in this age a new situation has arisen. Which is very different from the philosophical reasoning of that period. Today the problems are being solved by physical experiments and shown to us, and they are not to be refuted by analogical reasoning.

(Collection of Sir Syed’s Lectures p.82)

Sir Syed Ahmad Khan's One-Nation Theory: Although he undoubtedly advocated Muslim rights, Sir Syed was a fairly impartial person at heart. He thought that other Indian communities had advanced significantly while the Muslim community had fallen behind, so it required particular attention. He opposed the Congress because he wanted Muslims to focus solely on advancing education rather than fighting the British authority. Then, as the nation's circumstances started to change, he also drafted a plan for the Muslim political empowerment in his last days, but he passed away soon after. However, on this basis, to call him the founder of Two Nation Theory (as taught in Pakistan) who worked for discrimination among Hindu-Muslims, is a great abuse and injustice to him. Contrary to that image he was not only a supporter of Hindu-Muslim unity, but also a strong supporter of one-nation theory. We can see his position in his own words:

“By God's grace, two communities are currently residing in India, and they have come face to face in each other's homes. One's wall casts a shadow that lands on another's home. They are a partner in the climate and use the same rivers or wells to get their water. We share each other's joys and sorrows in life and in death. ……………. It has been observed and heard in old writings about ancient history, and it is still observed that the term "nation" is used to refer to a country's citizens. Afghanistan's diverse population is referred to be one nation. Despite having a variety of ideologies and religions Europeans are considered one nation. Although people from other countries also come and settle in there, they are one nation. Therefore, since ancient times, the word nation has been spoken about the country's inhabitants, even though they have specific characteristics.

Hindus And Muslims Are One Nation.

 "O Hindus and Muslims! Are you a resident of any country other than India? Don't you both live on the same land? Are you not buried in this land, or are you not burned on the Ghats of this land? If you die on it and live on it, remember that Hindu and Muslim are religious words; otherwise, Hindus, Muslims, and Christians who live in the same country are one nation. When all these groups are called one nation, they should all be united in the national interest which is called the country of all of them." ---

(An excerpt from Sir Syed’s lecture on 27 January 1848 AD)

Sir Syed also advocated religious reform. It is safe to say that he boldly took some first steps and inspired stoic Islamic thought in this regard. The popular view of majority opinion has been transformed by Ulama into a kind of deity. They have also been abusing the Ijma (consensus) tool. Sir Syed vehemently denounced all of these things and continued on to rediscover the true religious consciousness.

As part of his efforts to bring about peace and interfaith harmony, he authored a thesis on Taam Ahle Kitab (Dining with the People of the Book), which was followed by a commentary on the Bible (Tabyenul Kalam). His ideas about jihad and the abolition of slavery were likewise relevant and timely. These initiatives of Sir Syed could be termed the first steps toward reconciliation and interfaith understanding. Notwithstanding all that, If I suggest that Sir Syed was not as well-prepared for the job as was required, I will not be far from the truth. For instance, he was unable to access modern Western philosophy directly. Hence he lacked a thorough understanding of it. Due to this deficiency, he was overcome by the storm of reason and made severe errors in his attempts to explain certain theological postulates, like miracles, the angel, and the spirit.

Additionally, he occasionally spoke carelessly and made mistakes in his commentary on Quran. He visited England and was so moved by the civilizational values and culture of the English people that he would not have been if he had studied the West first-hand. Nevertheless, it was a remarkable achievement in itself that he first realized the need for a fresh interpretation of the Qur'an and a fresh exposition of Islamic doctrine. Because of this, Sir Syed was highly appreciated by the philosopher-poet Iqbal, who claimed: "Most likely, Sir Syed was the guy who had seen a positive glimpse of the approaching times." His true grandeur resides in being the first Indian Muslim to understand the necessities of the present in the context of Islam's real spirit.

Sir Syed was unfairly attacked by the chief ideologue of Islamism, Maulana Maududi, who claimed that Sir Syed's writings were the source of all the aberrations and deviational departures from mainstream Islam in the subcontinent. However, Iqbal chose to place the blame for failing to understand Sir Syed's ideas and see their significance in modern times on the clergy and their narrow-minded followers.

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A regular columnist for New Age Islam, Dr. Mohammad Ghitreef is a Research Associate with the Centre for Promotion of Educational and Cultural Advancement of Muslims of India, AMU Aligarh.


URL:   https://newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/-sir-syed-khan-hindus-muslims-religious-reform/d/127999


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