Maulana Wahiduddin Khan - Presenting Islam as a Complete Ideology of Peace
February
11, 2021
This year’s
Padma Awards had some surprises. Among the awardees are two prominent Islamic
scholars, viz., Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and Maulana Kalbe Sadiq (posthumously),
who have been awarded the Padma Vibhushan and the Padma Bhushan, India’s second
and third highest civilian honour/awards, respectively. The nonagenarian
scholar, Wahiduddin Khan had earlier been conferred the Padma Bhushan in 2000,
and the Rajiv Gandhi National Sadbhavana Award in 2009.
Maulana
Wahiduddin Khan
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To the
extent perception shapes reality, the semiotics of these awards is unmistakable
— few would have expected Islamic scholars to be honoured this way. Therefore,
it can rightly be surmised that the conferment is as much a recognition of the
services of these scholars as the signalling of what the government considers
of value in national life.
India’s
template for a good Muslim is the same as its template for a good Hindu, Sikh
or Christian, etc. Neither is it any different from the Islamic or the
universal model of a good person — that he should be a good citizen who
enriches society by service, charity, peace and amity. It is from this vantage
that Wahiduddin Khan dives into the vast resources of Islamic traditions to
bring to the surface its universal human values.
The axiom
of Islam as a religion whose very name means peace — particularly that which
pervades following the submission to the divine will, by subscribing to the
universal morality, to make the world an ever better place — could be borne out
only if it reflected in the individual and collective behaviour of Muslims. A
religion is only as peaceful as the narratives it spawns and the characters it
shapes.
Ideology
of Peace
Maulana
Wahiduddin Khan is among the very few traditional scholars who undertook to
weave a narrative of peace for Muslims. He runs the Centre for Peace and
Spirituality at New Delhi with the aim of presenting Islam as a complete
ideology of peace. He has authored books such as The Prophet of Peace, The Age
of Peace, and Islam and World Peace.
In his
system of thought, the defining moment in Muhammad’s prophetic career was the
Treaty of Hudaybiyyah (CE 628). To put an end to the incessant warfare with his
Meccan adversaries, the Prophet entered into a treaty with them which, much to
the indignation of his followers, had the appearance of abject capitulation.
But he was determined to buy peace irrespective of the cost. The cessation of
hostilities brought quick dividends as the resumption of social interaction
between the erstwhile foes created avenues for an exchange of ideas in an
atmosphere which conduced reflection on Muhammad’s message. Soon, many of his
prominent adversaries were to come to his side and a couple of years later,
Mecca was won over in what the Koran calls Fatah Mubin (the manifest victory).
The hermeneutical pivot in Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s interpretation of Islam is
verse 41:34 of the Koran which says, “Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil
with what is best, and you will see that the one you had mutual enmity with
will turn as if he were a close friend”.
Political
Narratives
This
understanding of Islam flies in the face of the supremacist theology which is
at the root of Islamism or Islam as a political ideology. Wahiduddin Khan broke
away from Abul A’la Maududi’s theo-fascistic interpretation of Islam as a
totalitarian ideology which sought to instil in the Muslim psyche a sense of
entitlement for the domination of the world. He made a thorough critique of it,
and demonstrated its fallacy, in a tract, The Political Interpretation of
Islam.
Muslim
political narratives, predicated as they are on a sense of entitlement born of
an imperial past, have been brimming with grievances and resentments.
Words Of
Counsel
Wahiduddin
Khan rightly identified the victimhood syndrome to be at the root of the
politics of confrontation and violence. The psychosis of suspecting an
anti-Muslim conspiracy in things as diverse as the American foreign policy and
the Indian security concerns could have a deleterious impact on both the Muslim
community and the world at large. In his book, Indian Muslims: The Need for a
Positive Outlook, he addressed this problem and argued against the penchant for
wallowing in victimhood and regaling in confrontation. He counselled his fellow
Muslims to focus on moral uplift and socio-economic development, and on seeking
the goodwill of their compatriots.
Thus, on
all the contentious issues which have shaped the Muslim identity since the
mid-1980s, Wahiduddin Khan, swimming against the current of popular opinion,
pleaded for sanity, and advised Muslims to eschew the frightening militancy in
their discourse. In face of egregious slander, he reaffirmed the state’s
jurisdiction to legislate for social reforms in matters pertaining to the
Muslim Personal Law. He opposed Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The
said fatwa has since been as good as withdrawn, vindicating the Maulana’s
position that it was neither good in religion nor in politics, and a mix of the
two was an abomination. He courted vicious calumny when he counselled Muslims
to relinquish their claim on the Babri Masjid. Everyone understood that the
matter had transcended the technical rights and wrongs of the ordinary
situation. But only he had the well-cogitated conviction to tell Muslims to let
go of the mosque lest a ferocious maelstrom engulfed them. The Muslim
leadership had stretched its stridency to a pitch from where it was impossible
to climb down. It could not get off the tiger it was riding, and the rest is
history.
Endeavours
That Must Win
In today’s
plural, multicultural and secular world, the Islam which can co-exist with
other religions is the one propagated by the likes of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan.
Its lineage can be traced to the reinterpretation of the Quran done by Sir Syed
Ahmad Khan and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. These two scholars tried to update the
interpretational tradition of Islam to make it relevant for the contemporary
world. They demonstrated that an underlying unity of essence bound Islam with
all other religions, and that their different forms were due to their
culture-specific idioms. Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s endeavours are met with the
same cynicism and hostility as his aforementioned predecessors. In due time, he
will be similarly vindicated. One can only hope that this happens before it is
too late.
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Najmul
Hoda is an IPS officer.
Original
Headline: The portrait of a peacemaker and scholar
Source: The Hindu
URL: https://newageislam.com/islamic-personalities/maulana-wahiduddin-khan-presenting-islam/d/124275