Jihad or Ijtihad Read online

  Nazir Ahmad (1836-1912), another iconic figure from the Delhi Renaissance and, like Zakaullah, a product of Dilli Kalij29, wished ‘the Muslim societies to be purified of their medieval fantasies and to be reborn under the discipline of natural science’. He was of the view that ‘the core issue is not the rejection or repudiation of traditional values, but their harmonization with the challenges of modern society’ and ‘formulation of a doctrine that would conform to Islam’s rational and tolerant spirit’. If he had not studied at Dilli Kalij, he would have been, according to his own admission, ‘a maulvi, narrow, bigoted and rustic’.30 He even gave a call for ijtehad in matters of faith and the use of intellect or reason in both temporal and spiritual matters. More than a hundred years later, Islam is confronted by the worst dilemma, finding itself trapped in the midst of hysterical calls for closure and appeals for reverting to tradition.

  Karamat Ali was born in the early nineteenth century in Jaunpur,31 but spent most of his productive years in Calcutta as a teacher and mutawalli (an administrative head of an institution set up under wakf, endowed for religious and spiritual purpose) of the Hooghly Imambara. His views on history and science are best reflected in his two books: Ma’akhiz-i-Uloom, written in 1867,32 and Mubda-i-Uloom, published in 1870.33 His comments on the state of science and education in the Muslim world, including India, during the nineteenth century are worth reporting before we move onto other questions related to science and Islam. He concedes:

  we, the Musallmans of India, have fallen far behind other nations in art and learning—the main cause of that is that noblemen in this country, whether Hindoo or Mahomedan, pay no regard at all to learning and science and never spend a trifle even on such matters; and other people, though they spend enormous sums on marriage and funeral ceremonies, keep their eyes shut with reference to the education of their children.34

  He termed such conduct of his countrymen and coreligionists all over the world as ‘antagonistic to civilization and to national prosperity’.35

  He begins with a conviction that the Quran formed an intellectual watershed dividing the ancient philosophies from the modern epistemologies, and argued that it could still provide guidance for modern sciences:

  The whole Koran is full of passages containing information on physical and mathematical sciences. If we would but spend a little reflection over it we should find wondrous meanings in every word it contains. The Koran has most satisfactorily confuted all the systems of ancient philosophies; it plucked up from the root the physical sciences as prevalent among the ancients. What a strange coincidence exists between the Koran and the philosophy of modern Europe.36

  Karamat Ali’s faith in Quranic knowledge and its utility in modern times did not go beyond treating it as a guide to progress. He did not look at it as a scientific text that had answers to all the complex scientific problems of today.37 Let me cite a longish quote from Karamat Ali to illustrate his interpretation of Quranic verses and also his reflections on the nineteenth-century European scientific accomplishments:

  In Ruku 14, Part XX, it is mentioned ‘Go through the earth, and observe how He has produced His creatures,’ &c. [sic]. This passage evidently points to the several departments of geography, in which astronomy and geology are included. My countrymen are so far from a [practical] knowledge of this science, that they do not know even the meaning of the word. On the contrary, the nations of Europe never withhold themselves from taking long journeys by sea and land … Every day, new maps of countries and places are drawn, new improvements are effected, and lectures on these subjects are delivered in colleges and universities.38

  The Quran, like all other religious books, including the Vedas, is all-encompassing in its range and it certainly talks about science (though not exactly in the way science is known today). One can find interesting insights in all these sacred books, but the engagement should end there and not in making the reading of science in the Quran or the Vedas a full-time preoccupation, making it an end in itself. Such attempts within Islam received a tremendous boost from the well-funded Saudi project called ‘Scientific Miracles in the Quran’. The project got into comparisons of those verses of the Quran that deal with astronomy and the latest discoveries of modern science. Relativity, quantum mechanics, the big bang theory, embryology—practically everything was ‘discovered’ in the Quran. Unfortunately, this variety is now the most popular version of Islamic science.39 There are some who argue that the work done by such scholars is useful in the sense that this ‘discovery’ of Quranic sanction for scientific research has re-alerted Muslims to the value of their inheritance and rekindled the desire for further research. As a matter of fact, all such attempts have actually exposed Islam to global ridicule, bringing it into conflict with not only science but with all rational thinking itself.40 Sayyid Qutb, describing such an exercise as ‘a methodological error’, has insisted that while the Quran contains guidance on scientific subjects, it is not a textbook of science.41

  Like Zakaullah, Karamat Ali was of the view that under Quranic guidance, Muslims had developed the Greek sciences into modern sciences and transmitted them to Europe through their centres of education in Spain. This process of cultural and intellectual diffusion had resulted in the nineteenth-century scientific discoveries of Europe from which the Muslims of India could justly benefit without any sense of inferiority.42 Emphasizing the multiracial and multicultural character of modern science, Karamat Ali, anticipating Martin Bernal, pointed out that science and learning were first introduced into Greece through the instrumentality of the Syrians, the Phoenicians and the Egyptians. Those philosophers and mathematicians, who are generally known as Greeks, were in reality people of the above-mentioned countries who had emigrated to Greece.43 Karamat Ali was not even conscious of the fact that a concerted attempt was underway in Europe at the time to negate this cultural plurality of Greece and convert it into a purely European source of modern Western science. During the nineteenth century the Europeans ignored even Herodotus, the ‘father’ of Greek history, who had acknowledged their strong debt to Egypt. Martin Bernal argues persuasively that the Greek model was a nineteenth-century invention deeply implicated in the rise of European racism and imperialism. In his own words, for ‘eighteenth century romantics and racists, it was simply intolerable for Greece, which was seen not merely as the epitome of Europe but also as its pure childhood, to have been the result of the mixture of native Europeans and colonizing Africans and Semites’.44 Karamat Ali was convinced of the fact that

  the modern nations of Europe have had all scientific writings in the Arabic tongue translated into their own languages, and this translation is being carried on even at the present moment … The Spaniards were perhaps the first among the Europeans who derived knowledge of the above mentioned things from the Arabs, which they were, in short, the medium through which Arab genius made an impression on Europe.45

  One is reminded of D.G. Howarth, the perspicuous observer of Islam, who wrote:

  Arab civilization owes a heavy obligation to the Greek, to the Persian, to the Jewish, but no heavier than are debited to all other greater civilizations. Every advanced human culture must be eclectic and its originality is reckoned by the measure in which it transforms and makes its own what it has seized.46

  Karamat Ali also observes that ‘Charlemagne, following the example of the Arabs, instituted seminaries and colleges in Paris and other cities of the empire … The barbarians soon became alive to the fact that without knowledge nothing could be done, and began to make efforts in its pursuit.’47 However, he conceded that ‘the tables are now turned on the latter, they have contracted a dislike for all sorts of learning and have forgotten that knowledge will not come to any person unless wooed with the utmost assiduity; the Europeans, on the other hand, have become exceedingly alive to this fact’.48 Jamaluddin al-Afghani was also of the view that the Europeans could not find the treasures buried in Greece ‘until Arab civilization lit up with its reflections the summits of t
he Pyrenees and poured its light and riches on the Occident. The Europeans welcomed Aristotle, who had emigrated and become Arab; but they did not think of him at all when he was Greek and their neighbour.’49 It was Islam that rehabilitated Greek learning for the first time and conferred dignity on it once again after the lull that had followed the Hellenistic Age.50 It is necessary to question the epistemologically different Islamic science but the contribution of Islamic civilization to the plurality of civilizations should not be denied its honourable place.51 We need to keep the spirit of the Needhamian project in mind. Needham emphasized the Chinese contribution to science and how their civilization’s cultural values contributed to scientific thinking and growth in knowledge.52 Unfortunately, it was a time when the writing of history was being used to enhance the power of ’the dominant culture by diminishing the value of the history of those people who have been subjugated or who have come under the sway of the dominant culture’.53

  It is clear from Karamat Ali’s writings that he saw continuity in history, particularly in the realm of the progress of knowledge. For him the present had a definite link with the past and the future too was not delinked from the former two. Modern science could not be a product of the Greek mind alone; similarly, Islamic science cannot be imagined in isolation, as a distinct epistemological entity solely inspired by the Quran. Karamat Ali was aware of the history of Islamic intellectual efflorescence in the early centuries and its subsequent decline due to the rise of the ossified religiosity that made it difficult for secular pursuits to exist. He made it clear in his introduction to Mubda-ul-Uloom that ‘persons desirous of diffusing the true sciences would have it taught to children after they have made some progress in alphabetical knowledge that they may not deviate from the right path in secular as well as religious matters’ (emphasis added). He not only emphasized here the crucial distinction between the secular and religious sciences but also pointed out how the ‘true sciences of Metaphysics, Physics and Mathematics [emphasis added] remained unknown to the human race at large. Whoever ventured to direct his attention towards them was at once designated an infidel, and had to pay the penalty of his temerity by being put to death or burnt alive.’54 His comments again emphasize the cross-civilizational character of modern sciences:

  All learning and sciences were annihilated by religious bigotry. Sometimes a family or a race suddenly becomes extinct, and a new one springs up and flourishes; such is the case with learning and civilization, they devolve from one individual to another. When a nation or a family becomes degenerated, knowledge and civilization recede from them and fly for shelter to another in a different country. This is an awful trial (sic) to man from the Creator.55

  Jamaluddin al-Afghani also held the same view when he said that ‘science is continually changing capitals. Sometimes it has moved from East to West and other times from West to East.’ Probably referring to the Asharite reaction to the early Islamic scientific resurgence, often called the ‘Golden Age’ of science in Islam, al-Afghani pointed out that the ‘Muslim religion has tried to stifle science and stop its progress. It has thus succeeded in halting the philosophical or intellectual movement and in turning minds from the search for scientific truth.’56

  DEFINING MODERN SCIENCE

  al-Afghani conceived of modern science as a universal science that transcends nations, cultures and religions, though he recognized the role of cultural values in the domain of technological applications.57 To use the words of Farouk El-Baz, an Egyptian geologist at Boston, ‘Science is International. There is no such thing as Islamic science. Science is like building a big building, a pyramid. Each person puts up a block. These blocks have never had a religion. It’s irrelevant, the color of the guy who put up the block.’58 Abdus Salam, the only Nobel Laureate in sciences in the Islamic world, and a great believer himself, categorically held that, There is only one universal science, its problems and modalities are international and there is no such thing as Islamic science just as there is no Hindu science, no Jewish science, no Confucian science nor Christian science.’59 al-Afghani laid great emphasis on the cultivation of a philosophic spirit and the spirit of scientific inquiry itself, which in fact is demanded by the Quran. The loss of this spirit in the Muslim world has resulted in its stagnation and deterioration, whereas the West has prospered and become powerful because it has nurtured this spirit inherited from the Muslims. In learning science afresh from the developed West, the Muslims are actually engaged in recovering their past glory and re-fulfilling the long neglected commandments of the Quran concerning the study of nature.60 The early Islamic scientific resurgence was premised on this spirit based on ijtihad—to exert the utmost effort, to struggle, to do one’s best to know something—which was lost in the battle with orthodoxy and replaced by taqlid—the tyrannical attitude of passive resistance. Ziauddin Sardar concedes that the day taqlid was accepted as the dominant paradigm, Islamic science truly became a matter of history.61 Today, when Seyyed Hossein Nasr and Sardar talk about the glorious tradition of Islamic science as an epistemologically distinct category, one wonders which science or scientific tradition is being referred to. Is it the science of the Islamic Renaissance of the eighth-thirteenth centuries? So far we have little evidence of Islamic science being practised today, including in countries like Saudi Arabia, which invests considerably in promoting the idea of Islamic science.

  Maulvi Obaidullah Ubedi was professor at Hugli College in Calcutta and a close associate of Karamat Ali. His views on modern science are best reflected in his essay titled ‘Reciprocal Influence of Mahomedan and European Learning and Inference therefrom as to the Possible Influence of European Learning on the Mahomedan Mind in India’ published in 1877,62 Before I refer to his views on modern science and Islam, let me talk briefly about his comments on the influence of European learning on the Muslims of India. He believed that the ‘Mahomedan mind has … remained less susceptible than that of their Hindoo brethren to the influence of European learning. Their conceit that they are already possessed of learning and civilization has hindered them from making progress in European science.’ He regretted that most of his coreligionists regarded English education as a means of livelihood and advancing in society, but did not desire it as a means of civilization or mental improvement. He was optimistic that soon his brethren would be convinced of the usefulness of modern science and ‘among us a Newtonized Avicenna or a Copernicized Averroes may spring up; who may be able to criticize even the sons of Sina and Rushd.’ Maulvi Obaidullah underlined the contribution of Arabs to the progress of science, but he believed that a large number of Muslim scholars ‘were led in the path of disquisition only by verbal and dialectic arguments, the uncertain mode of investigating truth, without having recourse to experiments or external observations; they therefore made scarcely any progress in actual practical improvement in learning.’ Those of them who, seeing the futility of the dialectic arguments, were dissatisfied with the existing philosophy as barren and useless, were only led to rejection of the old Aristotleian Organon by showing its contradictions and faults; they could not contrive a new one for themselves. Rather, they were obliged to leave the path of polemic argumentation and embrace that of the mysticism of tasawwuf or Sufism which may be called a branch of Platonism. In short, the Mahomedan philosophers continued hovering over the old rubbish of Aristotle and Ptolemy, without venturing to renounce the wrong system of philosophy which misled their inquisitive minds.

  Ubedi was conscious of the fact that the corpus of Greek knowledge, both scientific and otherwise, had been transmitted to Europe from the Arab world and had helped usher in the European Renaissance. According to him,

  though the influence of Arabic learning upon the European mind at first aroused among them a spirit of verbal discussion and dialectic disputes … it must be acknowledged with commendation that the acute and susceptible minds of the sons of Europe did not long continue under the yoke of authority, but speedily shook it off.

  Maulvi Obaidull
ah acknowledged metaphorically that

  when philosophy was transplanted into our schools, it was in its infancy; there it was brought up into boyhood by the exertions of the Arabian discoverers; and it was afterwards removed into the European schools where it reached maturity by the experimental discoveries of Leonardo, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Francis Bacon, &c.

  The nineteenth-century interlocutor could read the progress of modern science, shifting the burden of progress on history rather than his faith. He could perceive the seminal role of Islamic culture in the flowering of modern science in Europe, emphasizing the ephemeral character of diverse interventions during the evolution and progress of modern science.

  Continuing in the same vein, Ubedi categorically emphasized the plurality and diversity of modern science and its possible reconciliation with Islam: