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  Syed Ahmed opposed the acceptance of religion as a traditional reality. Religion should have value in terms of current human experience and should help human society in its onward march.48

  Underlying Multiculturalism

  In the nineteenth century, when a distinction between imperialism and progress was almost blurred for modernists like Syed Ahmed, any reference to the contribution of non-European civilizations to the advancement of knowledge should be viewed as admirable. Syed Ahmed raised questions at a very rudimentary level, trying to convey the idea that modern civilization, represented by the Euro-American world, was the outcome of joint human effort, cutting across cultural or religious boundaries. It may be anachronistic to locate the current understanding of multiculturalism or Needhamian ecumenism in his writings, yet he did have a vision of knowledge as premised on a cross-cultural exchange of ideas through the ages.

  The Europe that Syed Ahmed visited in the 1860s was the Europe of the Industrial Revolution, of Victorian England and the Second Empire in France, an age of optimism and belief in progress. His trip came soon after the publication of Darwin’s Descent of Man, and he was impressed by the view that isolated forms of life are relatively backward and that intercourse between species makes for progress. He adopted this idea and applied it to cultural development, stating that the march of civilization was essentially the result of intercultural contact.49 This became the cornerstone of his theory of progress, and made it logically possible to persuade people to adopt such Western traits as would further their own national development. All his efforts to convince people of the legitimacy of modern science were based on a cross-cultural perspective. For instance:

  The blind prejudice of Muslims is preventing them from emulating [Western] education, sciences and technology; Muslim society erroneously admires the blindness of those who are stubborn and haughty and considers all nations except their own inferior.50 There is not a single nation in the world which acquired excellence, material progress, and spiritual happiness entirely by virtue of its own efforts.51

  Zakaullah, his enthusiastic supporter, adopted a similar framework. He too lamented the fact that most Hindus and Muslims in India viewed the achievements of the sciences and their contribution to development as a big hoax: ‘How can you call it knowledge? Most of it is based on the professional skills of blacksmiths, carpenters and cobblers. And whatever little knowledge it can boast has been borrowed from us.’52 For him knowledge or science is an outcome of a cumulative human effort over the centuries and each century added a new chapter to the progress of science.

  Despite Syed Ahmed’s overenthusiastic interpretations and arguments, which often clashed with the rising nationalism and the emerging identity consciousness of late nineteenth-century India, he certainly has a message for the present-day proponents of Islamic science or Hindu science: that fanaticism and taassub, that is, prejudice, can never lead to the promotion of knowledge. He believed that

  nations always benefit from each other; only bigots deny themselves the fruits of their fellow men’s labour. They are like wild animals, happy in (the narrow life of) their own flock, and are deaf to the sweet melody of the nightingale and the chirping of little sparrows, and know not how the garden (i.e. the world) was laid out and what makes the flowers bloom. Prejudice and progress will never mix.53

  Syed Ahmed was voicing a nineteenth-century faith and fascination with science and its achievements. Such uncritical acceptance of science’s magic is impossible to conceive of today after Thomas Kuhn(1922-1996) and Paul Feyerabend (1924-1994). Yet, despite all these criticisms, Syed Ahmed’s cross-cultural perspective is still valid and, after the fall of Eurocentrism, is on the ascendant in the form of a well-articulated and theorized multiculturalism. Under the pretext of challenging Eurocentrism, some proponents of Islamic science are putting forward an Islamcentric alternative, at least for believers if not for all. The most articulate among these is Seyyed Hossein Nasr (1933) who has attempted the re-sacralization of science through his gnosis-oriented approach. Hossein Nasr’s view is seen as anti-democratic, since it involves a denial of the equality of forms of human experiences, while privileging the particular Islamic one he supports.54 Syed Ahmed at least did not believe in the exclusivism of present-day interpreters who envisage an uncontaminated, pure Islamic science, with a distinct epistemology. On the contrary, he proudly referred to that stage of Islamic intellectual efflorescence which took place when the Greek arts, philosophy, and sciences were introduced to Muslims.55 After this early synthesis, an Asharite reaction threw the baby out with the bath water and banned Greek learning, calling it ulum-ul-awail (foreign sciences).56 A similar sanitization and purification is now sought by some in the name of Islamic science.57 Unfortunately, most of these critiques get mixed up with some valid criticism of science and technology which emanates from within science as we hardly need a faith-based castigation. Syed Ahmed’s liberal approach to Islam transcended religious parochialism and involved a larger concept of religious pluralism. This is particularly interesting when viewed against current fundamentalist formulations, not just in science but generally. Referring to the Muslims, he asserted: ‘God sent his prophets for their moral improvement. It is absurd to believe that the prophets appeared only in Arabia and Palestine to reform a handful of Arabs and Jews, and that God condemned the peoples of Africa, America and Asia to ignorance.’58 Going further, he said that whoever followed God’s prophets achieved salvation, and it was immaterial whether the prophet was from China, America, Mongolia, Africa, India or Iran, or if he preached God’s message to savages or civilized men.59 In this way, Syed Ahmed tried to broaden the worldview of the nineteenth-century Indian Muslim, and in the process conveyed an important message in eclecticism to the future. His reconciliation of science with Islam should be viewed against this cultural, civilizational and religious pluralism.

  THE PRAGMATIST APPROACH

  The pragmatists were not really concerned with Quranic reinterpretations like the reconstructionists. They found this a somewhat redundant and arcane exercise. Preferring to treat requirements of religion and faith as essentially unrelated to the direct concerns of political and economic life, or to science and secular knowledge, the pragmatist is satisfied with the vague belief that Islam and modernity are not in conflict.60 Yet there is an essential agreement with the reconstructionist on opposition to fundamentalist thinking.

  Syed Jamaluddin al-Afghani is the most fascinating example of the early pro-modernity and pro-science pragmatist. His ideas, particularly his view of Islam as a unifying force against Western imperialism, deeply influenced the Muslim world. A pioneer of Islamic resurgence, he has been referred to as the Sage of the East.61 al-Afghani, with his Persian upbringing, was deeply under the spell of Ibn Sina’s rationalist thinking, and remained a constant source of worry and discomfort for the orthodox. He was expelled at their behest from Istanbul for pressing for the establishment of a Darul-Funun, a new university to impart instruction exclusively in modern science.62 We will not deal here in detail with his political life, though it was enmeshed with his work as a modernizes It is particularly interesting to explore al-Afghani’s views on science and modernity because, in contrast to reconstructionists such as Syed Ahmed Khan, al-Afghani did not make a serious attempt to reinterpret Muslim theology. His central concern was the mobilization of people against Western colonialism, and Islam seemed the most potent rallying force for this purpose. His advocacy of modernity was also marked by caution. He never emphasized the Western origins of the elements he borrowed, for fear that it might encourage a trend of admiration for the West and feelings of Islamic inferiority and helplessness.63

  We shall refer mostly to the three years that he spent in India (1880-1882). As a matter of fact ‘he acquired in India his first knowledge of the sciences and mathematics of Europe’.64 He spent these years delivering lectures and writing a few insightful articles. The most controversial of these was Al-Radd ala al-Dahriyyin’ (The
Refutation of Materialists or, in its original Persian title, The Truth about the Neicheri Sect and an Explanation of the Neicheries). The ‘Refutation’ can, however, be understood properly only in the context of his other writings. Six of these articles were written for the first issues of a Hyderabad journal Mu’dllim-i-Shafiq, while five more lectures were published along with the original six in the first edition of the collected articles of al-Afghani, titled Maqalat-i-Jamaliyyeh, published from Calcutta in 1884.65 According to Keddie, the three striking features of Jamaluddin al-Afghani’s writings in India, which distinguish them from his writings elsewhere in the Islamic world are: (a) advocacy of nationalism of a linguistic or territorial variety, meaning unity of Indian Hindus and Muslims, with little said about the unity of Indian Muslims with Muslims abroad. Pan-lslamism is shelved and local nationalistic ideas emphasized instead, which might seem at variance with pan-Islam, (b) Stress on the benefits of philosophy and modern science, (c) Attack on Syed Ahmed Khan as a lackey of the imperialist government. All these three features appear, in one way or another, in al-Afghani’s attempts at reconciling science with Islam in India. When he talks of nationalism of a linguistic variety, he emphasizes the cultivation and teaching of modern science in the local language of the people. He goes to the extent of pronouncing linguistic ties as being more important than religious ties. In his words:

  a single people with one language in the course of a thousand years changes its religion two or three times without its nationality, which consists of unity of language, being destroyed. One may say that the ties and the unity that arise from the unity of language have more influence than religious ties in most affairs of the world.66

  Ironically, even his bete noire in India, Syed Ahmed Khan, began as an enthusiastic campaigner for Urdu as a medium of instruction for science. He turned into an Anglophile after his trip to England, and also due to an unfortunate Hindi-Urdu controversy in the 1880s.

  For someone better known for his pan-Islamism, Jamaluddin al-Afghani’s emphasis on a non-religious nationalism is an apt reflection of his pragmatic approach. His address at Calcutta in 1882 was directed primarily at a Muslim audience, yet it had affinities with extreme Hindu nationalist sentiments. This cultural nationalism was not based on sifting of symbols and ideas on religious lines.67 He said:

  Certainly I must be happy to see such offspring of India, since they are the offshoots of that India that was the cradle of humanity. Human values spread out from India to the whole world. These youth are from the very land where the meridian circle was first determined. They are from the same realm that first understood the zodiac … Thus we can say that the Indians were the inventors of arithmetic and geometry … the Code Romain, the mother of all western codes, was taken from the four Vedas and the Shastras. Greeks were the pupils of the Indians in literary ideas, limpid poetry, and lofty thoughts.

  (The Indians) reached the highest level in philosophic thought. The soil of India is the same soil; the air of India is the same air; and these youths who are present here are fruits of the same earth and climate.68

  al-Afghani exhorted the Indian Muslims to take pride in the Hindu past. He did the same in Egypt, where he appealed to the Egyptian Muslims to seek inspiration from pre-Islamic Egyptian greatness. Jamaluddin al-Afghani’s glorified Vedic civilization is a conscious attempt to forge Hindu-Muslim unity through the message of composite nationalism. However, some scholars have placed him in the classical Islamic scholarly tradition of al-Biruni and al-Jahiz and deem it anachronistic to find any allusions to nationalism in his work.69 His reconciliation of science with Islam was premised on the belief that science was not something alien to non-European cultures or an exclusive domain of the white man. His underlying nationalist agenda constantly sought for indigenous sources of intellectual and cultural inspiration. al-Afghani was not very different from Syed Ahmed Khan in stressing the benefits of philosophy and science. In his Calcutta lecture in 1882 titled ‘On Teaching and Learning’, he emphasized the importance of modern science and philosophy. He was passionate in his desire to convince the nineteenth-century conservatives to embrace modern science and philosophy. Though he desired intensely to modernize, he strongly emphasized the need to avoid identification with the West. Syed Ahmed, on the contrary, had resolved this contradiction. He had no hesitation in openly conceding the superiority of modern Western civilization and the need to borrow and learn from its advancements in knowledge.

  Despite his opposition to the West, al-Afghani went on to say that all great empires had been supported by science, up to and including the European conquerors of his time. Ignorance is always subjugated by science, which is the basis of advanced technology in all fields.70 According to him, it was not the French or the English who had colonized the non-European world, but rather the greatness and power of science. In his lecture at Calcutta, al-Afghani discussed the medieval philosopher’s concept of philosophy as the organizing soul of the sciences: ‘the science that has the position of a comprehensive soul and the rank of a preserving force is the science of falsafa or philosophy, because its subject is universal… It applies each of the sciences in its proper place.’ He was critical of the Indian ulema who, he said were still busy reading and teaching Mulla Sadra, a sixteenth/seventeenth century Persian scholar and Shams-i Bazegha, a seventeenth-century Indian text by Mulla Mahmud Jaunpuri. They Vaingloriously call themselves sages, and despite this they cannot distinguish their left hand from their right hand, and they do not ask: who are we and what is right and proper for us? They never ask the causes of electricity, the steamboat and railroads.’

  In today’s context, his most serious criticism of the ulema is quoted in the beginning of this chapter, al-Afghani was surprised that the ulema had divided science into Muslim science and European science and thus forbidden the teaching of some of the useful sciences. For him all ‘those who forbid science and knowledge in the belief that they are safeguarding the Islamic religion are really the enemies of that religion’. The terms ‘rational’ and ‘revealed’ sciences were also used by the ulema, emphasizing a methodological distinction between the so-called Muslim sciences and the non-Muslim sciences. For while the awail sciences or the present-day European sciences were the products of the human mind, the Islamic sciences were based on revealed truth, that is, they had sprung out of the Muslim religion or were closely connected with it. According to Montgomery, a distinction

  was made by the conservative clerics between ‘native’ and ‘foreign’ learning, and this allowed sides to be drawn over the conflict between traditional allegiances to a purer (and more parochial) Islam vs. the new hopes for a more international Islam. Greek knowledge was perceived by all to be a tool for the latter. It was seen by the orthodox clerics as a threat to ‘Islamic science’, whose grouping of studies (law, philosophy, rhetoric) were deeply grounded in the Quran.71

  This dichotomy of knowledge, Aydin Sayili believes, naturally implied a distinction of value, which led to the Islamic sciences, in fact, being termed the praiseworthy sciences, while the awail sciences were at times referred to as the blameworthy sciences.72

  al-Afghani, however, was convinced that the Islamic religion is the closest of all religions to science and knowledge and there was no incompatibility between them. Hence he did not find the need, like Syed Ahmed, to reinterpret Islam to make it compatible with the requirements of modern science. For him the culprits were the leaders of Islam—the maulvis, who needed a radical change in their attitude towards not only science, but the world in general, which had made rapid strides in the past few hundred years. The minds of the Muslim logicians in India, according to al-Afghani, were full of superstition and vanity and there existed no difference between their ideas and the ideas of the masses of the bazaar. He went so far as to say that the ulema at this time were like a very narrow wick on top of which is a very small flame that neither lights its surroundings nor gives light to others.73

  Despite his anti-imperialist stance, he wa
rned the Indian ulema against the rejection of foreign sciences and innovation, saying that while ‘the desire to protect fatherland and nationality (watan wa jins) and the wish to defend religion and coreligionists, that is, patriotic zeal, national zeal and religious zeal’ are essential and a lot can be accomplished through them,

  the Muslims in India have applied the desire to defend religion, or religious zeal, in a very bad way. For they have carried zeal, through misuse, to a point where it has become a cause of hatred for knowledge and the sciences, and a reason for aversion toward industries and innovation. They believe they must, out of religious zeal, hate and abominate what was connected with the opponent’s faith, even though these things were sciences and arts.74

  According to al-Afghani, for the Indian ulema, anything not mentioned in Ibn Sina’s Shija or in the Illuminist philosophy of Shahab ad-Din Suhrawardi was to be ignored and condemned. This led them to abandon the investigation of innovations like the phonograph,75 the camera, the telescope and the microscope. Given al-Afghani’s evolutionist perception of Islam, which will be taken up in some detail in the following section, the Indian ulema’s understanding appeared to him not only un-Islamic but ahistorical as well. Ahmad Dallal, in his recent work, alludes to the fact that ‘this unquestioning understanding of science as a positive value was prevalent throughout the period and continued unabated into the modern period.’76 Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, wrote a letter to the Egyptian King and his prime minister in 1947 where he reiterated the importance of science saying ‘Just as nations need power, so do they need science, which will buttress the power and direct it in the best possible manner… Islam does not reject science; indeed, it makes it as obligatory as the acquisition of power, and gives its support… The Quran does not distinguish between secular and religious science, but advocates both,’ and ‘God commands mankind to study nature and He prompts them to it.’77 In contemporary Islamic context, it is significant to recall the perspective put forth by al-Banna that the Quran did not make any distinction between the pursuit of secular and religious sciences, contrary to what is being pronounced today by some Islamic scholars as well as scientists.