Redeeming lost glory
aude
Feuilleton
Prof Khwaja Masud
Ideology is born, develops and has its being in dialectic — that is,
dynamism fuelled by the struggle to overcome contradictions which come to
the fore in its onward march. It is through constant questioning,
argumentation and dialogue that the issues are threshed with the
consequence that the grain is sifted from the chaff.
It is not by re-examining old problems with old terminology that an
ideology can save itself from ever-threatening anachronism. It renews
itself by occupying itself with the questions that are the stuff of
everyday social life.
The question is: Why have the Muslims proved themselves to be incapable of
tackling their intellectual, social, economic and political problems?
Is Islam a bundle of rites and dogmas as visualised by our religious
leaders? Or, is Islam a permanent revolution, ever inspiring its followers
to intellectual, cultural and spiritual regeneration? Can Islam give a
befitting response to the scientific and technological revolution? As the
electronic highway is piercing through all geographical and ideological
frontiers, can we present a culture, which may withstand this onslaught?
If the answer to all these questions is in the affirmative, then how do we
explain the prevalent hibernation of the ummah?
So far as the ummah is concerned, the trouble began when the priests
claimed that they had monopoly over truth and the rulers claimed that they
had monopoly over power. Not only people who claim infallibility in
religion or power do immense damage to society but they also impoverish
human knowledge and understanding by the systematic suppression of
supposedly subversive ideas.
Human creativity takes a marvellous diversity of forms. To a closed mind,
dissent is anathema. Dogmatism flourishes and fanaticism deals a fatal
blow to the flourishing of culture. The spiritual authoritarianism breeds
intolerance of the most pernicious kind, considering the slightest dissent
to be punishable with death.
Nietzsche says: "Gaze not too deeply into the abyss lest the abyss gazes
unto you." Those who claim to be the bearers of absolute truth are people
who have gazed too deeply into the abyss. They have committed the sin of
hubris i.e. overweening pride. This hubris enslaves people spiritually. It
breeds bigotry and intolerance, leading to violence, chaos and anarchy and
even to terrorism.
As W.B. Yeats puts it:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the worlds.
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere.
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
Iqbal says: "Tapping nature and history as the source of knowledge, Islam
ushers in the modern outlook." Unfortunately, under the malignant
influence of orthodoxy, turning their back on nature and history, the
Muslim intelligentsia has lost its grip on reality and hence the ability
to change it.
No wonder the Muslim intellectuals have sealed their minds to the
philosophical, sociological and scientific discoveries of the modern
world. They have set aside the dictum of Iqbal: "Life is a process of
progressive creation and necessitates that each generation, guided but
unhampered by its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own
problems."
According to Iqbal, "For purposes of knowledge, the Muslim culture fixes
its gaze on the finite and the concrete." If we were to follow this rule,
we must find the concrete and finite truth by meeting headlong the burning
problems of the ummah. Had it not been the perennial temptation of our
ulema to escape from reality, from the present, from history and modern
science? Little wonder the ummah which gave the world Bu Ali Sina, Ibn
Rushd, Razi, Omar Khayyam and Rumi, is so deficient in science and
philosophy.
We must learn to distinguish between modernism and modernity. Modernism is
a narrower term, referring to specific movements in modern culture.
Modernity is a much broader term. It refers to the period stretching from
the Renaissance to the present. The three pillars of modernity are:
rationality, objectivity and empiricism. Modernity started when Descartes
proclaimed: "I think, therefore I am."
Mohammad Arkoun, Professor Emeritus of Islamic Thought at the Sorbonne
University, in his book "Rethinking Islam" makes a strong plea for
integrating Islam with modernity. He believes that the essence of Islam is
tolerance, liberalism and acquiescence to modernity. As Iqbal puts it in
one of his six famous lectures: "The only course open to us is to approach
modern knowledge with a respectful but independent attitude and to
appreciate the teachings of Islam in the light of that knowledge even
though we may be led to differ from those who have gone before us."
Arkoun argues that the philosophical and cultural achievements of the
early Islamic era in bringing together Qur’aanic revelations and Greek
rational humanism have long been abandoned. Today, many Muslim regimes
control, suppress and manipulate Islam opposition movement have a
vocabulary of religious references, slogans and cliches without a genuine
religious vision.
Arkoun’s own vision of Islam is individualistic and intellectual. He
believes that the Qur’aan must be re-experienced as a religious revelation
that brings about an inner transformation of the individual and inspires a
devotional love of God that transcends all ritual, legal sectarian and
institutional forms.
While Arkoun is a devout believer in the message of the Qur’aan, he says
that its spiritual transformative power over the hearts and minds of the
Muslims has been obscured. In his view, the covenant between God and man
has been allowed to deteriorate into legal codes, rituals and ideology of
domination in the interest of religious and political elites.
The renewal of the Qur’aanic revelation, according to Arkoun, depends on a
renewal of the philosophic, scientific and humanistic culture of the
classical era — a Muslim renaissance that would allow for an assimilation
of the scientific, technological and information revolutions. This would
establish the foundation for a critical formulation of Islamic modernity.
Arkoun makes a strong plea for a renewed Islam that transcends the current
wave of rejection of modernity among Muslims. The Muslims must approach the
West with the Qur’aanic dictum: "Take hold of that which is pure and reject
that is impure."
It is by critical acceptance of modern knowledge that can and must give
birth to Islamic renaissance, enabling the ummah to redeem lost glory.
Nusrat
>Redeeming lost glory
What or where exactly was glorious period of Islam?
What did these 5 individuals accomplished that may have any bearing on
us today?
BTW, if you have to rely on a prostitute murdering philosopher like
Iqbal to buttress your argument then you are indeed on highly shaky
grounds.
You quote number of Westerner to support Islam's dubious philosophy
yet totally ignore Churchill's warring of Islam being worse than puke
but rather a cancer on humanity.