What's new

Time Pass & Sports POTW : KB

MenInG

PakPassion Administrator
Staff member
Joined
Oct 2, 2004
Runs
217,977
Just another post from our esteemed @KB and yes another POTW!

This time a voice of reason and analysis in a thread which has seen a lot of emotional comments!

Congratulations Sir KB :)


http://www.pakpassion.net/ppforum/s...-against-Prophet-PBUH&p=11182870#post11182870

As Muhammad Qasim Zaman in his excellent work on Islam in Pakistan, pointed to, there is deeper issue: when it comes to Islam, the governing elite lacks intellectual firepower and credibility and has not cultivated a constituency in society that could support its case.

It is worth putting this in some historical context. Islamic modernism has a long history in the subcontinent. Islamic modernists have tended to criticise the ulama for smothering the “spirit” of Islam with their overly formalistic and legalistic interpretations. The modernists instead have insisted on Islam’s dynamism, ethical core and compatibility with modern and liberal values. Take the work of Syed Ameer Ali (d.1928) notably entitled: The Spirit of Islam. First published in 1891 it went through several reprints. He spoke of “The wonderful adaptability of Islamic precepts to all ages and nations; their entire concordance with the light of reason.” He bemoaned the “latter-day professors of Islam” that have created a situation where “The Moslems of the present day have ignored the spirit in a hopeless love for the letter,” having become “slaves” to “outward observance.”

The pioneering figure of Islamic modernism in South Asia was of course Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898). What is interesting about him and that early generation of modernists - in stark contrast to the governing elite of today - is as Qasim Zaman states, that they were of similar social origin and shared a similar cultural background to the ulama.

Take Sir Sayyid and consider the formative phase and the influences in his early life: the Naqshbandi tradition, Shah Wali Allah and the Mujahidin movement. From the Naqshbandi tradition he learned of the importance of inner striving and purity of heart. From Shah Wali Allah he took the idea of the flexibility of the Shari’a. From the Tariqah-i Muhammadiyah he understood the importance of returning to the original sources - the Qur’an and sunnah - and in highlighting and seeking to reform innovations which ran contrary to Islamic belief. Sayyid Ahmad Khan belonged to a family that was dedicated to leading figures of Islam at the time. This was a man clearly immersed in a particular intellectual climate shaped by religious thought. Consider his writings. He spent a great deal of his life writing on matters pertaining to Islam. He highlighted the moral qualities of the Prophet. He wrote on the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians believing them to be relevant when read in the context of the Qur’anic message of tauhid. He wrote extensively on the reliability of Hadith. He expended considerable energy to argue that the divine message could be reconciled to science and that it was wholly within the ambit of reason.

Yet, in the college he established at Aligarh the study of Islam occupied only a marginal space due to the opposition he faced from the ulama. The next generation of modernists were therefore much more distanced from the religious intellectual milieu than the early modernists. There were of course exceptions, most notably Muhammad Iqbal (d.1938) in the inter-war period. But modernism was now being pushed forward more by politicians with a less secure grounding in religious thought but who were nevertheless committed to Islam as a progressive force. The Pakistan movement was indeed headed by the modernists.

As Liaquat Ali Khan, the first prime minister of Pakistan, said in the constituent assembly in March 1949, the idea of Pakistan was “to give the Muslims the opportunity that they have been seeking, throughout these long decades of decadence and subjection, of finding freedom to set up a polity which may prove to be a laboratory for the purpose of demonstrating to the world that Islam is not only a progressive force in the world, but it also provides remedies for many of the ills from which humanity has been suffering.”

During the 1950s and 1960s there were thinkers who could bolster the positions of the modernists. Khalifa Abdul Hakim and his Institute of Islamic Culture produced much output on Islamic literature from a modernist viewpoint. The Institute even employed, as Zaman shows, ulama sympathetic to its modernist position - Hanif Nadwi and Jafar Phulwarvi. In Pakistan, Islamic modernism reached its apogee during the rule of Ayub Khan. He did not seek to erase Islam from public life, but like the modernists before him, he believed that Islam, ‘properly’ interpreted “alone provides a natural ideology that can save the soul of humanity from destruction.” The Central Institute of Islamic Research set up by the government in 1960 reflected modernist principles, with the government explaining that the purpose of the institute was “to define Islam in terms of its fundamentals in a rational and liberal manner and to emphasise…the basic Islamic ideas of universal brotherhood, tolerance and social justice” as well as to “interpret the teachings of Islam in such a way as to bring out its dynamic character in the context of the intellectual and scientific progress of the modern world.”

Yet it was in the Ayub era that we clearly see modernism coming under stress. It was in 1968 that the remarkable modernist intellectual Fazlur Rahman (d.1988) was forced to resign as director of the Institute of Islamic Research. Since then Islamic modernism as an intellectual force has been in retreat.

One of the problems has been that the governing elite have relied on top-down messaging and have done very little to set up institutions that could educate Pakistanis along the lines of Islamic modernist thought. Years of poor governance has also dented the governing elite’s authority. Whilst the modernists used Islamic rhetoric, they have often failed to make a persuasive argument on religious grounds and have been outflanked by ulama and Islamists. On the moral argument, the modernists have ceded ground because of the lack of engagement with the Islamic tradition.


To conclude with Qasim Zaman:

“For its part, modernism’s control of or proximity to the levers of political power has not required a concomitant investment in the bolstering of its intellectual defenses. This need not have been the outcome, of course, and it might yet be different as a result of decisions still to be made. A change in modernist intellectual fortunes would depend, however, upon serious, not wishful, thinking about Islam and on engaging with it as something more than as a tool of political legitimation. It would also depend upon the social, economic, and political conditions in which such thinking takes place.”
 
He should be given a title like Timepass & Sports (or something hopefully better) Hall of Famer or something of the sort.
 
I wonder if pakpassion did a member interview of KB, I'd most certainly read it
 
Brilliant post from a brilliant poster.
 
Think KB should be excluded from POTW awards, otherwise no one else will get it while he is posting.
 
Back
Top