Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

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Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution - SunniPath Library - Articles

Although I have to say I greatly admire shaheed sayid qutub’s[ra] stance in rising up against the Firaun of his time - Jamal abdul Nasser

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

[quote]
The Islamization process in India, Black Africa, and South-East Asia was carried out largely at the hands of wandering Sufi teachers. Likewise, the Islamic obligation of jihad has been borne with especial zeal by the Sufi orders. All the great nineteenth century jihadists: Uthman dan Fodio (Hausaland), al-Sanousi (Libya), Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri (Algeria), Imam Shamil (Daghestan) and the leaders of the Padre Rebellion (Sumatra) were active practitioners of Sufism, writing extensively on it while on their campaigns. Nothing is further from reality, in fact, than the claim that Sufism represents a quietist and non-militant form of Islam.
With all this, we confront a paradox. Why is it, if Sufism has been so respected a part of Muslim intellectual and political life throughout our history, that there are, nowadays, angry voices raised against it?
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thats 100% true. Islam in Asia specially south asia like india, pakistan,bangladesh , afghanistan even in indonesia and malysia spreaded by non-violent great sufis. Our Urdu teacher himself have a deep study of sufism historical background once told us that Sufis even used to love a dog(Rememeber the famous quote of Bayazid Bastami) thats why low caste oppressed people at the large accepted islam. Thanks to all those great Sufis that we are muslims today.

Regarding angry voices ..they are little but they have plenty of Petro Dollars push, thrust and impetus. You better know in US the total percentage ratio of mosques build by Saudi Government to the mosques build by other muslim countries ! they have thier imams and religious circle of community centres which spread all hatred about such fascinating part of islam. In Pakistan , some people will be surprised to know that according to Election Commission of Pakistan report, Jamat-eAhl-e-Hadees
's budget is the 2nd largest budget after PPPP and may be more surprise to know that in 348 of NA and 100 of Senate , they have only seat of Senator Sajid Mir , head of Jamate Ahle Hadees !

In Lahore, I see how people of Laskra-i-Tayyaba , young boys have damn new cars and Honda 125 , alot of budget, network,though they do relief work also, but where all this money come from, Certainly the big bulging belly Shiekhs sitting in the Gulf are on the way ! Poor Deobandis, Brelvis etc etc are far far behind in this game of money and power thats why their propaganda against Sufism seems successful .

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

^mind-boggling facts! petrol has been nothing but a curse for the Islamic world.

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I think the point that shaykh murad is trying to make is that traditional sufism is not neccesarily non-violent either as many mainstream religious leaders who followed sufi tariqas actively participated in wars against muslims & nonmuslims
What makes them different is that they also keep in touch with the spiritual side of islam at the same time.Obviously it would be totally misleading to say that islam promotes non-violence.

However the "puritannical " islam from saudis had more to do with banditry then spreading the message of faith.

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its a win win situation for the gulf shaykhs and their mercenary pak army.

they use the money to encourage religiously inclined pious men to leave their homes and go and die in foreign wars. This way they keep the religious opposition distracted so that it does not rise up against these corrupt rulers of muslim states.

btw i liked lashkar they were pious men with good intentions.Our munafiq army used them when they needed them for the proxy war in kashmir now has turned their backs on them.
If fighting in kashmir was valid then why was this half a million men pak army which eats 70% budget sitting in barracks while non-combantents with minimal training was sent to face the might of the indian army ?

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iran has a lot of petro-dollars too and they were trying to spread their influence the same way

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thats true but the ratio with which Nizam ud Din Aulia, Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki, Syed Ali Hajveri, Bahuudin Zakria, Moiin ud Din Chishti spreaded the message of islam than muslim warriors

[quote]
btw i liked lashkar they were pious men with good intentions.Our munafiq army used them when they needed them for the proxy war in kashmir now has turned their backs on them.
If fighting in kashmir was valid then why was this half a million men pak army which eats 70% budget sitting in barracks while non-combantents with minimal training was sent to face the might of the indian army ?
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aha, its long debate .We cannot have a tradional war with India now over Kashmir, both have a smart nuke button ! Musharraf was a Munafiq who palnned for Kashmiris the bogus Kargil Plan, failed, fear of Court Martial , so Hijacking puppet comes out the box , the same men then in feet of india in 2004 before Vajpai swept all liberation movement.But now i think , Kashmiris themselves are fighting at a political front with much greater success.

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I think , i live right in that area where all this happens. Muridkle the HQ of Lashkarai Tayyaba is is hardly 30 min drive from Lahore !

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I do not have any problem with anybody trying to increase their influence as long as its done in the right spirit. Be it Saudi Arabia or Iran, they have right to spread their idealogy as long as the ideas are not shoved down peoples' throats.

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[QUOTE]

thats true but the ratio with which Nizam ud Din Aulia, Khwaja Bakhtiar Kaki, Syed Ali Hajveri, Bahuudin Zakria, Moiin ud Din Chishti spreaded the message of islam than muslim warriors

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but none of them preached gandhi like non-violence

[QUOTE]
aha, its long debate .We cannot have a tradional war with India now over Kashmir, both have a smart nuke button ! Musharraf was a Munafiq who palnned for Kashmiris the bogus Kargil Plan, failed, fear of Court Martial , so Hijacking puppet comes out the box , the same men then in feet of india in 2004 before Vajpai swept all liberation movement.But now i think , Kashmiris themselves are fighting at a political front with much greater success
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this has been policy of pak army , so why single out musharraf
zia did the same in afghanistan, bhutto same in 65 war

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

here we go again with typical sunnipath bashing; lol @"salafi burnout" and "salafi mindset". It really shows how badly this haddadi crew is struggling against sunnis. When they can't refute us in the matters of tawheed, they come up with this sort of nonsense every now and then and slander the 'ulama as well.

There's a salafi hizb and there's a salafi daw'ah; the author should have told his readers about the difference but why would he because both of them are equal in their scale. No true salafi supports the extremism and gult of the hizbi salafis because this is not salafiyah. However, one shouldn't paint everyone with the same brush.

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i would even go as far to say that salafi hizb is not neccesarily the forces of dajal as potrayed by many muslims.Its true that their ideology and tactics are very much similar to khawarij but are they not justified to a certain extent in thier actions... the muslim rulers of today have not established the islamic principles in their own countries, so to call islamic opposition to them as khawarij is an exaggration.
Clasic example is the islamic opposition to egypts rulers

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**The Closing of the Muslim Mind
AMEER ALI

** Abstract
Incendiarism, hooliganism, homicide, and even suicide have become the trademark of Muslim protests in recent times. This has seriously damaged the image of Islam and Muslims, especially in the Western world. This unacceptable behavior has no justification in the primary sources of Islamic shariah and is contrary to the spirit of free thinking that was pioneered by Muslim thinkers of the classical era. The rise of orthodoxy has crippled the healthy tradition of dialogue and rational thinking that developed during the early caliphates and has produced an Islam whose mass of believers has been kept deliberately ignorant of this glorious legacy and has been led along a blind alley from where there seems to be no quick return. The institutions that are usually expected to promote enlightenment and socially acceptable behavior are desperately in need of reforms. In a contest between taqlid (imitation) and ijtihad (interpretation), the former appears to have won the day to the detriment of modernity and progress in the Muslim world. This paper looks at the underlying reasons for the unwillingness of Muslims to face criticisms with an open mind and to respond to those criticisms in a rational manner.

Introduction
A predictable consequence of …(the Orientalist) …bias and hostility (towards Islam and its civilization) has been the triggering of a defensive reaction and hardening of attitudes among Muslims so that all critical scholarship tends to get confused with malevolent scholarship. This has led to a certain closing of minds, and has decreased the ability of many Muslims to appreciate the enormity of the crisis which envelopes the Muslim world today.1
When Salman Rushdie published his Satanic Verses on 26 September 1988, the Muslim ulema issued a death warrant on him, and there were riots in India, Pakistan, London and some parts of the Middle East, ending in deaths and destruction. When a couple of cartoonists drew a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad and published them in a Danish newspaper, the Muslim agitators responded again with looting and burning in many parts of Europe, Britain, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Pakistan and Indonesia. And when Pope Benedict XVI quoted a medieval Byzantine monarch who equated Islam with “evil” and “violence,” once again there was violent reaction.
Apart from these instances of open violence there were also other cases where writers and scholars have been forced to flee their country and even abandon their families. In 1994, Taslima Nasrin, a Bangladeshi writer, had to leave her country because of death threats from some fanatics who did not agree with her views that some parts of the Quran needed revision. Two years before that in Egypt, in 1992, Nasr Abu Zaid, a university professor, was conspiratorially taken to court to make him divorce his wife because it was judged that his writings about Islam showed that he had become an apostate. He and his wife had to flee their country to escape the sentence.2 Faraj Fuda, another Egyptian writer, was murdered in June of that year for his supposedly anti-Islamic views.3

One could cite endless instances to show how Muslims have violently reacted against controversial views and ideas. Why do these Muslims burst out with violence and vengeful anger when someone writes, draws, or says something that is allegedly blasphemous? This question is now being asked by many and it strikes at the heart of the Quranic injunctions to Muslims to act with freedom and respect when conducting a debate or discussion. Abdelwahab Meddeb, modelling his analysis on Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, sees in this violence the manifestation of a fanatical "sickness."4 The habitual answer from the community that this violence is the work of a tiny minority who hold extremist views does not satisfactorily resolve the issue, because the silence of the majority when violent protests erupt sends mixed messages to the wider world. The time has arrived for Muslims to confront this question and look critically at their mode of response to alleged blasphemy.
Ali Mazrui, the African thinker and scholar once wrote, that “reason is west and emotion is east.” Whether this statement is universally true or not the latter half of it appears to be a characteristic feature of the followers of Islam. Is this tendency towards emotional outburst to respond to any verbal or visual provocation a new phenomenon in the history of Islam? If it is so, when and where did it start? Or is it innate to the very religion of Islam, as some non-Muslims assert?

To answer the last question first, associating Islam with violence and evil has a Western origin beginning with Europe’s early contacts with Islam in the seventh century. Medieval Christianity viewed Muhammad as an impostor, the Quran as a book of falsehood, and Islam as a force of evil. The conquest of Christian lands by the early Muslim Arabs, the re-conquest and liberation of those lands by Christian powers in later middle ages, a fresh wave of conquest and colonization of Muslim lands by European powers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and Muslim struggle for independence and liberation from European colonialism in the twentieth century, have all left bitter memories on both sides and, in spite of a plethora of new research and tomes of publications that speak of the cordiality and cooperation amidst confrontation that prevailed between Christian Europe and the world of Islam, those memories keep on surfacing now and then whenever an incident like the ones referred to above hurts the feelings of Muslims. The recent episodes of the American bombing of Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq by the so called “coalition of the willing,” all in the name of a never ending and elusive War on Terrorism, have made the situation even worse.

Yet, these historical encounters, which Meddeb describes as "external factors"5 between the two sides, alone do not explain why Muslims have to respond violently and emotionally to every trigger that threatens to destabilize their peaceful coexistence. The disappearance of these factors may not remove the sickness of the fanatics, even though as Meddeb believes, it may help to eliminate "a climate favorable for the flourishing and propagation of its germs."6 Neither in the Quran nor in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad can one find any exhortation to violent response whenever disputes arise. In fact the Quran is very emphatic when it says, “do not dispute with the People of the Book except in the best of ways” (29:46). Is violence “the best of ways” to dispute? In another context the Quran, by referring to the Christians and Jews, indirectly instructs the Muslims how to approach religious disputes with others. “The Jews said the Christians were misguided; and the Christians said it was the Jews who were misguided; although both are readers of the Book (the Torah and the Gospel). Those who know nothing said the same. Allah will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that wherein they differ” (2 : 113). Thus if one blasphemed Islam, shouldn’t the Muslims leave it to Allah to decide after expressing their condemnation of it?

The Historical Perspective
During the time of the Prophet, a delegation of Christians is said to have arrived from Najran to Medina. They were brought to the mosque to stay, and were allowed to conduct their religious service inside the mosque in accordance with their own customs. It is said that while they prayed in one part of the mosque, the Prophet and his companions prayed in another part. When these people presented to the Prophet their own faith, putting forth arguments in its support, the Prophet is said to have listened to them attentively and gently with great respect.7 Did he burst out emotionally and with violence? The reason why some Muslims behave in the way they do while others remain silent cannot be sought in the primary sources of the Islamic religion, namely the Quran and the sunnah. The answer lies elsewhere in the history of Islam and Muslims. In fact, “the passionate temper” that breaks out in Muslim protests is one of the characteristics of jahiliyah that prevailed in the tribal pre-Islamic Arabia.8

What happened to the tradition of reasoning, rational argument and debate among Muslims? Was there not a rationalist movement in Islamic history which through critical thinking and rational analysis arrived at invaluable truths and contributed immensely to intellectual progress and civilization? If there was such a rationalist movement once, why did it fail to grow and when did it disappear? Was its disappearance accidental or deliberate, and if deliberate by whom? In answering these questions one may throw some light on the present predicament of the Muslim society.

Reasoning, rationalism and critical thinking in Muslim history had a long and tumultuous past. At the outset it was among the Muslims that a group of theologians called the Mutazilites (those who separate themselves, who stand aside) gave birth in the ninth century to a rationalist movement, long before the philosophers of European renaissance and enlightenment discovered rationalism. The Mutazilites were the free thinkers in Islam who utilized the tools of Greek philosophy to renounce taqlid or emulating tradition and embraced ijtihad or "committed critical thinking based on disciplined but independent reasoning, to come up with solutions to new problems."9 These thinkers questioned the dogma that the Quran, like God, is uncreated and has descended from heaven as it is in itself and in eternity. According to them this dogma has installed an Islamic equivalent of the Christian sense of the incarnation of God. They accepted the divine origin of the Quran and argued that all the truth contained in the Quran could be arrived at through logical argument and reasoning. In the course of that argument the Mutazilites introduced the concept of the “duality of truth,” one religious and the other metaphysical.10

The Mutazilites believed that the truth could be reached by using reason based on what is given in the Quran, and in this way they reached answers to the questions already presented. If any contradiction arises between what the Quran said and what reason concluded then, according to these rationalists, the Quranic verses should be interpreted metaphorically and not literally.11 The intellectual revolution initiated by the Mutazilites produced, after the death of its founders,12 a galaxy of Muslim thinkers starting with al-Kindi (c. 801–866), al-Khwarazmi (c. 800–847), al-Razi (865–925), and al-Farabi (d. 950) to Avicenna (980–1037) and Averroes (1126–1198). The last two names are well known to the West but long forgotten by Muslims themselves. The Muslims publicly set fire to their works just as orthodox Christians in the sixteenth century burnt Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) alive accusing him of heresy. During his last days Averroes was virtually under house arrest imposed by the Almohads.13 However, it was the efflorescence of free thinking under the influence of the Mutazilites that ushered in the era of the Hellenization of Islam that was largely responsible for the intellectual and scientific achievements of Islam during the medieval period. Unfortunately, this movement of rationalism came to an abrupt end within a period of roughly 100 years. Averroes was a late comer and he was probably the last of the rational thinkers in Medieval Islam. Thereafter it was the anti-philosophic orthodoxy that reigned supreme in the Muslim world.

The Mutazilite doctrine received even state support for about 40 years under the Abbasid caliphate. In fact, Caliph al-Mamun (813–833) went to the extent of carrying out an inquisition (minha) against those scholars and thinkers who did not support this doctrine. The Hanbalites, the followers of ibn-Hanbal (c. 780–855) and the Hanbali School, fell victim to this repression in particular. Eventually, the Mutazilites themselves had to endure the same fate when another Abbasid ruler, al-Mutawakkil(847–861), withdrew his support to their philosophy. With this and with the gradual ascendancy of religious orthodoxy the doors of ijtihad were said to have been closed perhaps until the nineteenth century, which meant the freezing of “dispersed discourse and diffused opinion” in the interaction with the divine texts. From thereon it was largely taqlid that came to rule Muslim thought and action. The Mutazilite doctrine lingered but marginally for another two centuries before it disappeared totally after the towering influence of al-Gazzali (1059–1111), the most renowned scholar and thinker in orthodox Sunni Islam.

The Demise of Free Thought.
What is the link between this short history of free thinking in Islam and current violent reactions to challenges? It is, in fact, in the demise of free thinking that one sees the birth of blind faith; and when faith is based solely on imitating the past meticulously, uncritically and passionately, that faith breeds ignorance and the mind of the faithful stagnates to become a repository of outdated facts and information. The mind loses its creativity and vibrancy. Not only stagnation rules the Muslim mind but even the dogma that is entrenched in it finds its very survival threatened when challenges emerge from outside its cocoon. Without any internal stimulus to act creatively and unable to confront new challenges, the mind reacts with emotional outbursts and violence. This indeed is the tragedy of the Muslim world. How did the Muslim community get to this situation?

The fact that the Mutazilites questioned the uncreated nature of the Quran, the very foundation and essence of an accepted dogma, sent shock waves through the religiously orthodox. Ibn-Hanbal and the followers of his school of thought unleashed a campaign against uncontrolled rationalism. Although Ghazzali’s refutation of the Mutazila doctrine almost two centuries later in his Tahafat al-falasifa (Incoherence of the Philosophers), and Averroes’ rebuttal of Ghazzali after yet another half a century and in another seminal work entitled Tahafut al-tahafut (Incoherence of the Incoherence), marked the pinnacle of rational debate in medieval Islam, yet the tradition set by these savants failed to permeate through the middle and lower layers of Muslim society, contrary to what happened in Europe after the era of Enlightenment. According to Bassam Tibi, the tradition of Islamic rationalism initiated by the Mutazilites "was unfortunately rigid and dogmatic and could not establish itself on a permanent basis"14 and, as Meddeb says, it "failed to develop into an enlightenment."15 Even the attempt by al-Ashari (d. 935) to strike a compromise between rationalism and revealed truth did give more weight to uncritical acceptance of revealed truth than to reason.

Consequently, the Quran and the sunnah of the Prophet, as compiled by various luminaries, soon became, in the words of Muhammad Arkoun, the "Official Closed Corpus"16 and was removed from critical inquiry. The Quran’s opening verse in its longest chapter, “The Cow,” which proclaims that “This is the Book; in it is guidance for sure, without doubt, to those who fear Allah” (2 : 2), reaffirmed to its believing readers that there is no need to question anything in the holy scripture because it is one without any doubt. It is not the idle mind, as the popular adage goes, but the doubting or inquiring mind that became the devil’s workshop in orthodox Islam. It was also taught by the ulema (religious scholars) that every possible interpretation of the Quran and sunnah had been undertaken and completed by the four renowned imams of the classical era in the Sunni school namely, al-Shafii (767–820), Abu Hanifa (c. 699–767), Ibn Hanbal, and Malik ibn Anas (c. 715–795). All that was left to the ordinary faithful is to follow what those imams have instructed in their renderings. The choice to the faithful therefore is to follow one of those four madhahib or schools named after each of the four imams. Thus, uncritical imitation or taqlid became the assured path to paradise to the vast majority of the Muslim masses. Ijtihad remained a monopoly of the elite ulema and was often used to find compliance with the views of the caliphs.

The consequence of this development was tragic. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, a British orientalist of the last century, categorizes from an unknown Turkish source three varieties of Muslim religion: the religion of the Quran, the religion of the ulema, and the religion of the masses.17. Of the three, the religion of the masses or popular Islam "is superstition, obscurantism, fetishism."18 The religion of the ulema or legal Islam "is bogged down with the whole weight of out-of-date legalism …"19 But what happened to the first one?

Whatever Happened to the Religion of the Quran?
The religion of the Quran remained embedded in the Quran, for centuries largely unexplored and beyond the intellectual reach of a vast majority, partly because of the high rate of illiteracy among Muslims and partly because of the Arabic language in which the Quran appeared which was alien to all non-Arab Muslims who are the majority. Even to the Arabic speakers the Quran for all intents and purposes remained a book to be read and not to be studied and critically analyzed.

Tens of thousands of Muslims all over the world, including children as young as ten, committed the entire scripture to memory purely on the belief that memorizing the Holy Book brings the highest reward from Allah. Those who could not become a hafiz (one who memorizes the entire Quran) were expected to memorize at least some parts of it. Reading the Quran itself was taught to be meritorious, and the more often and the more melodiously one read it, the more benefits one was deemed to earn. Rules were stipulated as to the manner in which one should carry the Quran (preferably on one’s shoulder and holding it by the right hand after taking a pre-prayer ablution), the way to place the Quran on a bookshelf (preferably covered with a silk or clean cloth and kept on top of all other books), and the way to respect the Quran (for example, one is not to sit on a chair if the Quran is placed on the floor). When someone was to recite the Quran the listeners were expected to maintain silence because it was told that even listening to the recitation carries thawab or merit. In short, all respect and veneration that an idol worshiper shows to the idol are shown by the Muslims to the Quran. In this sense, the Quran has virtually become an idol to most Muslims.

To the unenlightened, idol worship represents the essence of religion. Any disrespect or insult to an idol could instantaneously provoke riots and violence. The destruction of the Bamian statue by the Taliban created anti-Muslim riots in Buddhist Sri Lanka; Muslim insults to Hindu religious processions that carry idols on a chariot perennially provoke ethnic riots in India. It took a very long time for the Quran to appear in one’s native tongue because, as Arberry says, "from earliest times orthodox opinion has rigidly maintained that … [the Quran] … is untranslatable, a miracle of speech which it would be blasphemous to attempt to imitate."20 In fact the first translation of the Quran in a foreign language appeared not in the Muslim world but in Europe and in the Latin language in c. 1148. Thus, being unable to read and understand the Quran Muslim masses depended for their Islamic knowledge solely on the preaching of the local ulema, and the ulema reduced Islam into what some Europeans describe as "Boy Scout religion,"21 a set of dos and don’ts which the masses are expected to follow without questioning.
The true meaning of the Quran remained hidden to the vast majority and controversial to the elite. Oliver Roy sums up the situation quite succinctly: “A sacred book is not Napoleon’s Civil Code or an insurance policy, where everything is put in unequivocal terms. By definition it has various meanings and is subject to argument and interpretation. If there is still a debate about what the Quran really says, it means that nobody really knows, or at least that the people who think they know disagree among themselves—thus we find ourselves back to square one. The key question is not what the Koran actually says, but what Muslims say the Quran says”.22 With constant disagreement among the ulema about what the Quran actually says and being unable to read and understand the Holy Book by themselves, the Muslim masses found solace by remaining content with the blind piety that merely reciting the Arabic Quran is enough for salvation.

Just as the Quran became an idol to be venerated and paid homage to, the very physical qualities of Muhammad the Prophet also received similar status. "From the moment when Islam began to bring the personality of Muhammad within the sphere of the supernatural, the scenes among which his earthly life had been passed naturally began to assume a higher sanctity in the eyes of his followers."23 True, Islam prohibits any drawing or a statue to be carved representing the figure of the Prophet. Still that has not prevented the Muslims from imitating the physical features of Muhammad. The long dress that Muslim men wear; the beard they grow; their manner of eating (with the right hand) and drinking (at least with three breaks), are all to follow the examples set by the Prophet. While the men try to model themselves after the Prophet, the women do the same after his wives. The fact that one’s dress is partly conditioned by the climate in which one lives and partly by the culture that surrounds one’s life does not enter the minds of many mortals. Imitation is all that matters and any obstacle to that imitation provokes emotional outburst.

From the time of the Fatimid caliphate in Egypt (969–1094), celebrations in memory of the Prophet, his wives and his companions took the form of mawlid (panegyric poems of legendary characters) recitations. In the Ottoman Empire from 1910 onwards, the Prophet’s birthday celebrations became an annual national event. These celebrations have taken a variety of forms in a number of Muslim countries including those where Muslims live as minorities. Public speeches on the life of the Prophet, recitation of mawlid at homes and mosques, religious processions along city streets, and public communal feasts are some of the forms these celebrations have taken. Although this tradition has died down in several places in the wake of puritanical Wahhabism—named after Muhammad ibn Abdul-Wahab (1703–1792),24 it still lingers in many parts of the world. Muslim attachment to the personality of the Prophet is so passionate that even a minor criticism of his character, let alone a malicious cartoon, provokes frenzied reaction.

Models for Reality.
To the Muslims, the Quran is absolute truth, the Prophet is the most perfect model and the shariah (laws of Islam) is immutable. These represent not models of reality but for reality as Tibi convincingly differentiates.25 This implies that there is no room for any change or improvement in the models, and while the reality outside these models has changed and is changing inexorably the models by definition remain impervious to these changes. To accommodate the changes would mean a tacit admission of imperfection of the models which would be outrageous to the orthodox. While legal Islam condemns any changes to the models and denies flexibility, popular Islam reacts to changes with emotional outburst and violence.

Even if one accepts the Muslim belief that the Quran is the word of God, one cannot ignore the fact that the interpretation of that word was not God-given but left to the Prophet. Muslims believe that the life and teachings of Prophet Muhammad were the perfect and practical illustration of the Holy script. However, one cannot escape the truth that the interpretation of God’s word by the Prophet was constrained by the needs and circumstances of his time, companions and community. When questions were raised with the Prophet regarding a particular issue or a particular verse from the Quran, the Prophet explained and elaborated in the light of his prophetic knowledge. This means that in spite of the prophetic knowledge there was a contextual constraint in the textual interpretation. This necessitated further interpretation when time and circumstances changed and the scholars who came later continued that task. Interpretation of the Quran therefore has to be a permanent feature of the faith.

The high rate of illiteracy in the Muslim world and centuries of indoctrination by the orthodox have crippled the ability to rationalize issues. One of the basic objectives of modern education is to develop a critical mind that could approach and analyze problems with rationality and come out with possible and practical solutions. The questions how and why rather than who, what, and when are the bedrock of critical thinking. Whereas the second set of questions demand the brain to function as a mere repository of information, only the first set makes the brain inquire and analyze the information that it receives.

The system of education that developed in the Islamic madrasas for over 800 years worked brilliantly to answer the first set of questions but failed miserably to answer the second. This is why the classical innovative Islamic scholarship and the spirit of Muslim inquiry stagnated and lost their brilliance after the thirteenth century. The seminal works of ibn Khaldun in the fourteenth century should be considered as an exception to this stagnation. As Tibi writes, "The Islamic madrasa is not concerned with a process of investigation or unrestrained inquiry but with a learning process in the sacral sense."26 How did this happen? Why did the Muslims fail to grab the opportunity that was presented to them after the Europeans introduced modern education in the Muslim colonies? Once again orthodox Islam has a lot to answer for this mishap.

In Search of Ilm.
It is said that the second most popular word in the Quran after the name Allah is ilm (knowledge); but nowhere does the scripture define or qualify this word. Even the Prophet is said to have urged his followers to seek ilm even if one were to go to China, but he never specified what that ilm was or should be. However, the Arabs took the Prophet’s advice seriously, went to China and learned from that country not religion but the art of making paper, gun powder, ceramic ware and about other things relating to material needs. In the later years, the ulema began to categorize ilm into two parts, ilm al akhira (knowledge for the hereafter or spiritual) and ilm al dunya (knowledge for this world or secular). Unfortunately this division continues even to this day in the Muslim world. The madrasas concentrated solely on the first and shunned the second, and education imparted by the Europeans was perceived largely as secular in content with a Christian bias. Very few Muslim children and only the male children attended the European schools. Until the Muslim countries achieved political independence and until their governments began providing free education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, modern education remained closed to a majority of Muslims. Of course there were centers of higher learning in Muslim countries such as the al-Azhar University in Egypt, Zeituna in Tunis and Qarrawiyin in Fez, but their chief objective was to produce theologians and train religious functionaries rather than to turn out modern scientists and critical thinkers. In spite of some expansion into other disciplines in recent decades, they still remain basically as institutions of religious education.

Whereas institutions such as Al-Azhar, Zeituna and Qarrawiyin produced graduate scholars in Islamic sciences, the majority of Muslims received their basic knowledge about religion at the Quranic schools in the Muslim villages and towns. In these schools children learned how to read the Quran, and learned the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad and the basics of Islamic law from their barely literate teachers. Neither the teachers nor the students had any formal grounding in other subjects such as history, mathematics or geography. Even today many Muslim professionals and qualified people owe their religious knowledge to these village schools. It was also from these madrasas that "God’s invisible soldiers"27 came out to preach and practice the narrow Islam that they had learned.

Islamization of Knowledge.
Since the end of the 1970s, with the publication of Al-Attas’ Islam and Secularism 28 there developed an intellectual movement towards the Islamization of knowledge branching into the Islamization of science, Islamization of economics, Islamization of finance and so on. The International Institute of Islamic Thought based in Virginia, USA,29 and the international Islamic universities in Malaysia and Pakistan have played a leading role in promoting this movement. The writings of some leading Muslim scholars such as the late Ismail Al-Faruqi, Seyyed Hussein Nasr and Ziauddin Sardar, all of whom are émigré’s in the West, helped to advance this cause. The Islamization enterprise criticized both the ultra-secularization of knowledge in the West and the stifling of individual critical thought in the traditional system of Muslim education. The West was criticized for elevating "doubt and conjecture to the ‘scientific’ rank in methodology and (for) regard (ing) doubt as an eminently valid epistemological tool in the pursuit of truth."30 The visionary objective of this movement was to remove the artificial dichotomy created by the orthodoxy between the mundane and the spiritual, to treat knowledge as a holistic unity, and to bring back that intellectual environment which made Islam the torchbearer of civilization during the European Dark Ages. This movement however is only about 30 years old and it is too soon to measure its success or failure.

However, some observations could be made on recent progress. A new phenomenon has emerged in the Muslim intellectual world that is somewhat distorting the original vision of the pioneers of the Islamization movement. Michael Cook describes this as "a widespread and well-funded industry which consists of reading the truth of modern science back into the Koran."31 In fact, one of the key objectives of a large-scale international conference entitled Scientific Miracles of Quran and Sunnah held in Islamabad in Pakistan in 1987 was to prove that "all known scientific facts can be traced back to either the Quran or Sunnah."32 While the world outside Islam has been proactive in pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge and comes out with new discoveries and path-breaking scientific inventions, Muslims, on the other hand, have a tendency to look into the Quran to find a word or a verse or verses that could be interpreted to prove that these discoveries and inventions have already been foreseen by the Holy Book and the Prophet. This tendency towards retrospection has created, on the one hand, a mood of complacency among the believers and even a sense of false pride. On the other, however, the need to interpret the Quran to conform to new realities has led to the re-birth of a set of religious innovations that was a novelty in the classical era of Islam.

In the days of “High Islam” while the Muslim Empire expanded into alien territories and cultures and achieved a level of development that was far more advanced than that in the then contemporary Europe, it faced a novel problem of providing religious sanctity to changes that were taking place simultaneously and were secular in nature. For example, in the field of business and finance, the development of banking brought the issue of riba (usury) into focus. The Quran, the sunnah and the shariah, the immutable sources of Islam, banned riba unequivocally but economic development demanded its necessity and created a dilemma. Just as the Schoolmen in Christianity surrendered to rising capitalism by inventing legal means within Christian theology to permit the practice of receiving and paying usury, so too the religious scholars in Islam came out with legal interpretations to circumvent the issue. Without changing the immutable, a solution was found within the Islamic law through the application of a new type of law known as the hiyal (singular hila), which means legal dodge in Arabic, a way of circumventing legal norms by legal means. The Islamic banking and insurance that is in practice today in certain parts of the Muslim world is made possible through the medieval hiyal.33

On an operational level the Islamization of knowledge project has unfortunately limited itself and not gone beyond the infusion of Islamic moral and ethical values into different academic disciplines. The unrestrained spirit of inquiry that has been the crucible for the trajectory of modern scientific progress lies somewhat muted in the Islamization debate over rationalism and tradition. The arguments advanced by Hoodbhoy to repudiate the claims of the so-called “Islamic Science” could well be leveled at the general notion of Islamization of Knowledge.34 The Muslim world is yet to see the rebirth of “High Islam.”

The Messages from the Pulpit.
While the Muslim institutions of learning are caught up in this dilemma of how to respond to changes and challenges without losing their Islamic identity, the other major source of knowledge (i.e. the sermons in mosques by the ulema) is appears to be totally oblivious to this predicament and is relentlessly promoting the path of taqlid. The sermons are supposed to be about issues and problems that are relevant to the day-to-day life of the community and the imams are expected to provide guidance to the listeners through their sermons. For a very long time even these sermons were delivered only in the Arabic language and were read from books written hundreds of years ago.

While many did not understand the language of the sermons, those who did saw no connection between what was said and what they experienced in life. While the institutions of higher learning do not impact upon the majority of Muslims but only on a selected few, the mosques, on the other hand, influence the thinking and actions of the masses. The mosques are the bastion of legal and popular Islam, and it is from there and through the ulema that the majority of Muslims receive their stock of religious knowledge. For centuries the message from the pulpit has been the same: taqlid and not ijtihad is the path to follow. The word of God, the model of the Prophet and the immutable shariah are the bedrock of the Muslim path to salvation. Too much questioning and too many doubts are dangerous and could lead the faithful astray. Not to question how and why but to listen and follow was the mantra taught from the pulpit.

Centuries of indoctrination from the madrasas and the pulpit has culminated in producing a voluntary army of Islamic foot soldiers whose mind is closed but emotions are let loose to react when challenges become unpalatable. While a minority takes to the streets to protest violently against any criticism of Islam or an insult to its scripture or its Prophet, the majority remain helplessly passive because enforced ignorance has made them ill-equipped to counter extremism, and as a result the majority becomes the unintended victims of world anger. The "institutionalized ignorance"35 in the Islamic world as Arkoun describes it is paralyzing rational thought.

The Shia’ Perspective.
What has been said so far covers mostly the Sunni sect of Islam but the situation is no better in the Shia’ sect. After all, the death warrant against Salman Rushdie was issued not by a Sunni alim but by the Shia’ imam Khomeini. Street protests and martyrdom are inborn to Shia’ Islam. The annual Ashoura celebrations to commemorate the martyrdom of the Prophet’s grandson, Hussain, killed by the Umayyad ruler Yazid in the battlefield of Karbala in 680, “defines shiism’s ideals” and as Vali Nasr claims, Karbala "is the motif around which faith has been shaped."36 However, unlike in Sunni Islam where the imams are mostly religious functionaries, the Shia’ "mostly rely on the ulema not only to interpret religion but to make new rulings to respond to new challenges and push the boundaries of Shia law in new directions."37 Ijtihad once again is the monopoly of the Shia’ imams and in popular Shia’ Islam, as in Sunni Islam, taqlid is the norm for the vast majority. As Arkoun explains, "taqlid is not only the acceptance by the lay believer in emulating of a living jurist’s rulings (fatwa), in all fields of applied law; it is more significantly the recognition of the spiritual, moral and legal authority attached to the rulings mediated by the marja."38 Thus, the control of the Shia’ ulema over the masses is tighter than in the Sunni world. This is why any call for jihad by Shia’ imams receives spontaneous response from the masses. We are witnessing this phenomenon more clearly in present day Iraq as well as in Iran.

Conclusion.
In conclusion, the Muslim world has to develop modes of response to blasphemy and religious vilification in the true Islamic spirit of tolerance, compassion and understanding. Those with differing views should be listened to or allowed to hold their views, just as Prophet Muhammad did with the Christians from Najran. Violent outbursts have no place in a religion like Islam that condemns compulsion in religion and says “To you be your Way, and to me mine” (Quran, 109 : 6).

**NOTES
**1. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science, London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1991, p. 51. The first part of the title is derived from Pervez Hoodbhoy’s reference to the ‘closing of minds’.
2. Caryle Murphy, Passion for Islam, New York: Scribner, 2002, pp. 200–211.
3. Ibid., pp. 227–228.
4. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Islam and its Discontents, London: William Heinemann, 2003, pp. 6, 12.
5. Ibid.,p.7.
6. Ibid.
7. Dr Mustafa Siba’I, The Islamic Civilization, Milpitas, CA: Awakening Publications, 2002, p. 79.
8. Toshihiko Izutsu, Ethico Religious Concepts in the Qur’an, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002, p. 29.
9. Omid Safi, ed., Progressive Muslims, Oxford, England: One World Publications, 2003, p. 8.
10. Bassam Tibi, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation of Social Change, Boulder, CO, San Francisco, CA, and Oxford: Westview Press, 1991, pp. 38–39. Also see, Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples, London: Faber and Faber, 1991, pp. 63–64; Karen Armstrong, A History of God, New York: Mandarin Paperback, 1993, pp. 198–241. Also, D. Gimaret’s comprehensive account in Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edn, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1993.
11. Albert Hourani, A History, op. cit.
12. On the founders of Mutazilism, see W. Montgomery Watt, Islamic Philosophy and Theology, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1962, pp. 58–71.
13. On Averroes, see Maria Rosa Menocal, Ornament of the World, Boston, MA, New York and London: Little, Brown and Company, 2003, pp. 208–214.
14. Bassam Tibi, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation, op. cit., p. 104.
15. Abdelwahab Meddeb, Islam and its Discontents, op. cit., p. 17.
16. Mohammed Arkoun, Islam: To Reform or Subvert, London: Saqi Essentials, 2006, p. 81.
17. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957, p. 180.
18. Ibid.
19. Ibid.
20. Arthur J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted, London: Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. ix–x.
21. Gai Eaton, Islam and the Destiny of Man, Kuala Lumpur: Islamic Book Trust, 2001, p. 28.
22. Oliver Roy, Globalised Islam, London: Hurst & Company, 2004, p. 10.
23. Encyclopedia of Islam, New Edn, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991.
24. The followers of Wahab do not call themselves Wahhabis as popularly understood, but call themselves, often self-righteously, muwahiddun, literally meaning unifiers. See, As’ad Abukhalil, The Battle for Saudi Arabia, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2004, p. 52.
25. Bassam Tibi, Islam and the Cultural Accommodation, op. cit., p. 8.
26. Ibid., p. 103.
27. Ahmed Rashid, Taliban, London: Pan Books, 2000, p. 31.
28. Syed Muhammad Al-Naquib Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, Kuala Lumpur: Muslim Youth Movement of Malaysia, 1978.
29. International Institute of Islamic Thought, Islamization of Knowledge, Islamization of Knowledge Series No. 1, Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1989.
30. Syed Muhammad Al-Naquib Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, op. cit., p. 127.
31. Michael Cook, The Koran, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 29.
32. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science, op. cit.,p.46.
33. On hiyal literature, see J. Schacht’s contribution in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Leiden, E. J. Brill, Vol. III, 1971, pp. 510–513.
34. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Islam and Science, op. cit.
35. Mohammed Arkoun, Islam: To Revert or Subvert, op. cit., pp. 314, 333.
36. Vali Masr, The Shia Revival, New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006, p. 49.
37. Ibid.,p.69.
38. The marja’ are the living supreme legal authority. Mohammed Arkoun, Islam: To Revert or Subvert, op. cit., p. 259.


**Raju’s Roses Club **
Live Well, Love Much, Laugh Often
Smile is an inexpensive way to improve your looks

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

DAWN.COM | Books and Authors | An Ongoing Debate

Untitled Document

http://ravi.lums.edu.pk/sabieh/science-islam.pdf

REVIEW: Rewriting history -DAWN - Books and Authors; January 13, 2008

Insan kab marta hai?
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DAWN.COM | Books and Authors | An Ongoing Debate

Untitled Document

http://ravi.lums.edu.pk/sabieh/science-islam.pdf

REVIEW: Rewriting history -DAWN - Books and Authors; January 13, 2008

@@@@Sanam-Bewafa@@@
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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

You can't really justify or defend a movement based on people who CLAIM to practice it. Which is what you're doing. Just because certain historical figures claim to have embraced sufism doesn't mean their lives were a living illustration of what it really means to be "sufi". You forget the human component. Most people who subscribe to any given movement X, will take what they will of X and mix in with it some of their own style of existence. If you want to analyze sufism, or any other practice of Islam, you have to go by the definitions in place for it.

This same logic is what everyone in the world is using against muslims worldwide, currently. We're all being painted out to be jihadi war-mongers desperate to strap ourselves with bombs and blow ourselves up. So will you do the same injustice by b*****ng people with a stereotype based upon some figures out there who claimed they were sufists, just as terrorists today claim they are muslims?

You mentioned one thing that disturbed me: that Islam is far from non-violent. Please clarify, lest even more people walk away from your commentary believing muslims are horrid people.

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

great article posted. i’ve been saying essentially what the article says for years here, and everyone thinks I’m some kaafir or something. :rolleyes:

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

^ the article was posted to give a different perspective on the salafi movement , but as i clarified i dont agree with everything that abdul hakim murad writes.
What he has forgotten is the fundamental islamic principal of "enjoin good and forbid evil" but which the salafi militants carry out to the other extreme

btw PCG how would u define a sufi or sufism ?

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so only good people are "non-violent" others are horrid , well maybe the staunch buddhists or jains can say so ....

what i meant was that islam in NO WAY preaches gandhi or MLK style non-violent methods.In any case neither MLK nor gandhi every really had a "day job" so much of their ideology is simply theoratical.
Furthermore gandhi and MLK were both blessed with very humane enemies who would tolarate their protest without much opposition.I wondered how they would have fared against an enemy like pol pot or stalin

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Re: Islamic Spirituality - The Forgotten Revolution

^^ ^^ islam should not either preach Gandhi's non-violence though we know How much Ganhdi originally non-violent when he could not stop while sitting in Bhangi Colony of Delhi, his interior minister Patel was eliminating muslims from Darya Gunj, Lodhi Colony,Pahar Gunj, Narain Gunj, Qarol Bagh of Delhi etc. Even Abul Kalam Azad and DC of Delhi Qadwai, a muslim could not stop it . Gandhi went to Bihar after 1946 riots but did not take any action against Congress Central Command in which few memebers were involved in this mayhem.

Islam spreaded mostly from wars , in Umar(ra) era like Jordan,Palestine , Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon area and after in Usman(ra) to Makran("Pakistan) and in Ummayyads to Multan , Karachi , Deebal in Africa dnd Spain and thats not bad after all one of the most famous Hadees of Prophet(pbuh) says:

Al-Jannatui Tahtu Zilalal-ul-Sayyoof

Jannat is below the shadow of swords