Chapter III - Muslim ideologues of the twentieth century-I

* SHEIKH ALI ABDUL RAZIQ 
*  DR. TAHA HUSSAIN 
* MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD
* ASAF ALI FYZEE
* DR. KHALIFA ABDUL HAKEEM
* MAULANA ABUL ALA MAUDUDI 

SHEIKH ALI ABDUL RAZIQ  [b. 1888]
Sheikh Ai Abdul Raziq, an Egyptian scholar and a disciple of Abdu,   attempted to confine Islam to spiritual functions and free mundane matters from strict religious or priestly hold. He tried to delineate the nature of Islam in a bid to deal with the intricate issue of the relation between Islam and state. He says: "The complete  separation of religion and politics is to be achieved in  the interest of Islam, as a universal faith. The faith could, then be released free from the contingencies of history and power politics. This device can also be instrumental in furnishing the basis of modern state. It thus keeps the option open whether we want, to stick to the 'archaic and cumbersome regime, or weather the time has come to lay the foundation for a new political organization according to the latest progress of human spirit."13

Sheikh Ali Abdul Raziq wrote his book the Islam Wa Us'ul al Hukm"  at a time when attempts were being made to revive the Caliphate. Mustafa Kemal had abolished the Ottoman Caliphate on March 3, 1924. The whole Muslim world was deeply shocked at this happening. The Indian Muslims launched the movement of Khilafat as a protest against this state of affairs. Sharif Hussain of Hejaz for a time dallied with the idea of Caliphate but then gave it up. After him Fuad I of Egypt called a conference of the Muslim ulema with the object of discussing the feasibility of reviving the Caliphate. He himself desired to become the Caliph and the representative of world Muslims. It is at at this time, that Ali 'Abdul Raziq wrote his book disproving the thesis that Caliphate is a necessary institution of Islam.

He argued: "Islam is innocent of this insitution of the caliphate as Muslims commonly understand it. Religion has nothing to do with one form of government rather than another and there is nothing in Islam which forbids Muslims to destroy their old political system and build a new one on the basis of the newest conceptions of the human spirit and the experience of nations."14

Islam, according to him, is a spiritual community, whose disciplinary and religious precepts are binding only on individual conscience and have  nothing to do with power and politics. Thus Din (religion) and Siyasia (politics)  are world apart. The blending of religion and politics in the history of Islam, according to Raziq does not follow from the teachings of Islam which aims at personal salvation and operates within the confines of individual morality. This is why the extension of religion to political domain in the guise of the theory of caliphate is taken by him to be the innovations of the jurists and theologians.

 The real fact is, Ali Abdul Raziq says, as evidencd a by modern and ancient history and as proved by reason,  that the preservation of religion and the maintenance of religious rites does not depend on that particular form of government which the Fuqaha' (legists) call Caliphate or on the rulers whom they call Caliphs. We do not need this kind of Caliphate for looking after our temporal and spiritual affairs. Far from being a source of strength, the historical Caliphate was actually a source of weakness and it gave rise to  many evils. When the Caliphate was centred in Baghdad, the religious condition of the people living under the Baghdad  Caliphate was no better than that of the Muslims who lived in the territories outside the Caliphate nor were the people  living under the Caliphate materially better off than the who lived outside it.15

 DR. TAHA HUSSAIN [b. 1890]
Dr. Taha Hussain, a leading Egyptian scholar,  rejects the theory that the political system of early Islam was prescribed by God through His revelation to the Prophet. He says that there is no doubt that in the addresses of the Caliphs to the people and in the traditions related from them mention is made of the authority of God and the duty of obedience to Him. From this some people have concluded that the political system of Islam was not man-made but God-sent. But there is nothing divine in this system except that Caliphate was a contract between the Caliphs and the general body of Muslims and God has commanded the Muslims to fulfil their contracts. Beyond this, the political system of early Islam had no divine sanction behind it.

Taha Hussain emphasises the fact that in state affairs the prophet used to consult his Companions and this shows that the political system of early Islam was not divinely ordained. The revelation only drew the attention of the prophet and his Companions to their general interests without taking away their freedom to order their state affairs as they liked, of course, within the limits of truth, virtue and justice. The best proof of this thesis is that the Quran did not lay down any political system either in outline or in detail. It laid down only general limits and then left the Muslims free to order their state affairs as they liked. The only condition was that they should not  transgress the limits laid down in the Quran. The prophet himself did not give any specific political system to the Muslims. He did not even designate his successor either by word or in writing, when he fell seriously ill. He merely ordered Abu Bakr to lead the prayers in his absence.16 

Taha Hussain,   in his book On Pre-Islamic Poetry, published in 1926, contended that a great deal of the poetry reputed to be pre-Islamic had been forged by Muslims of a later date for various reasons, one being to give credence to Quranic "myths".  He also cast a doubt on the autehnticity of  the story of Abraham and Ismail of having built the Kaba. "Torah may speak to us about Abraham and Ismael and the Quran may tell us about them too, but the mention of their names in the Torah and the Quran is not sufficient to establish their historical existence, let alone the story which tells us about the emigration of Ismael, son of Abraham, to Mecca and the origin of Arabs there. We are compelled to see in their story a kind of fiction to establish the relationship of the Jews and Arabs on the one hand and Islam and Judaism on the other."17

In  another book entitled "The Future of Culture in Egypt,"  published in  1938, Taha Hussain, advocated that Egypt is cultrually a part of Europe and advocated for the assimilation of modern European culture. He argued that Egypt has always been an integral part of Europe as far as its intellectual and cultural life is concerned in all its forms and branches. "Egypt belongs by heritage to the same wider Mediterranean civilization that embraces Greece, Italy and France". 

In his ripe age, Taha Hussain's apparently had a second thought about some of his early writings and pleaded for blind faith in religion. "Reason does not have that power and penetration which the Greek, Christian and Muslim philosophers thought it had. Human reason is really one of the many faculties given to man. Like other faculties its power is limited. It can understand certain things, but certain others are not amenable to reason," he advocated.18 Taha Hussain also crticised the apologists who try to reconcile the Quran with modern science and said that "it matters little whether Din (religion) is reconciled with modern knowledge or reamins unreconciled. "Din is a knowledge from God which knows no limits while modern knowledge, like ancient knowledge, is limited by limitations of human reason."19 

MAULANA ABUL KALAM AZAD [1888-1958]
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a prominent Indian scholar, argues  that there is nothing more prominent in the pages of the Quran than its declaration that it has not come to institute a new religion but to deliver humanity from the querrals that arise out of divergent religious groupings and to call all men to the same one path which is the agreed and common path of all religions. The Quran did not demand of the follower of any religion that he should accept some new religion. It demanded of every single religious group that it should stick to the real teachings of its religion, shorn of all perversions and interpolations. The Quran says that if you do this my task is fulfilled, because as soon as you revert to the real teaching of your religion, you will be facing the same reality towards which I am calling you. My message is not a new message, it is the same old universal message which all the founders of religion have delivered.20

Abul Kalam Azad says that Islam did not follow the method adopted by the farmers of the French Napoleonic Code who produced a mass of detailed rules and regulations. If it had done this, it would not have been a universal religion, but a religion for a particular nation and for  a particular time. Therefore, it did not involve itself in details but laid down foundational principles, from which detailed laws could be derived as and when the need arose. The Islamic polity started its life in a limited territory and environment. Therefore, its political and penal laws were also very few. As the Islamic territory expanded and new needs arose, the legists of Islam deduced detailed rules from the foundational principles. All these detailed rules and regulations are not, therefore, the direct injunctions of Islam. Therefore, a distinction should be made between the direct teachings of Islam and the laws derived therefrom by the legists.21

Abul Kalam Azad believes that "all religions have two aspects, one of which forms their essence, the hard core of their truth. Another aspect is the outer grab in which they are clothed. The Quran says that the first aspect is Din, the second aspect is Shairah or Minhaj. The Quran points out that in the first aspect, that is Din, all religions are essentially the same. All the differences between religions relate to the second aspect, that is the Shariah or the external texture of religion consisting of laws, customs and modes of worship. It was quite natural that such differences should arise. Religion aims at the welfare of humanity, but humanity has to pass through different conditions in every age and in every country. Different nations are at different levels of culture and intelligence. Therefore, when religion appeared in these nations, it prescribed for them a different set of laws in accordance with their level of culture and intelligence. Thus Shriah or Minhaj differed in each nation and whatever shape it took was appropriate to the conditions of the time and the level of culture attained by each nation, but Din or the essential truth of religion was the same for all. This is the Quranic stand."22

One of the major causes for the dedadence of nations, according to Azad,  has been the exclusive monopoly of power exercised by religous authorities. "To destroy this poison Islam suggested a remedy which was that every individual in the Muslim community should perform the duty of commanding the good (Amr bil M'arouf) so that it should not remain the monopoly of any particular group, and no class of priests like the Brahmans and the fathers of the Catholic Church should exercise authority over the common people in the community. But since many centuries Muslims have bound themselves by the chains they had come to break and the Muslim ulema have claimed a hereditary right over this duty of commanding the good, making it impossibile for the common Muslims to perform this duty."23

Azad believed in divine guidence and says that  the faculty of reason, however, has one important limitation. It deals with material things, powers, laws and modes of thought; in other words, the realm of science. It has nothing to teach about matters of fatih and the life spiritual.

ASAF ALI FYZEE [b. 1899]
Asaf Ali Fyzee, an Indian Moslem thinker, agreed with Abul Kalam Azad  that the object of religion was service of humanity and that a static law was unsuitable to a progressive society. He thought that Islam had two sets of rules, one that do not change and the other that cannot stand against change. Fyzee called for the interpretation of the tenets of Islam in terms of twentieth century thought. "It is the duty of the scholars of each age to interpret the faith of Islam in their own times," he suggested.24

Fyzee argued: "On a truer and deeper examination of the matter, it will be found that  certain portions of the Shariah constitute only an outer crust which encloses a kernel - the central core of Islam - which can be preserved intact only by reinterpretation and restatement in every age and in every epoch of civilization. The responsibility to determine afresh what are the durable and what the changeable elements in Islam rests on us at the present time. The conventional theology of the ulema does not satisfy the minds and the outlook of the present century. A re-examination, reinterpreation, reformulation and restatement of the essential principles of Islam is a vital necessity of our age."25

He questioned the authority of the traditional Muslim schools of thought who had closed the door of Ijtihad in islam. "It must be asserted firmly, no matter  what the ulema say, that he who sincerely affirms that he is a Muslim, is a Muslim; no one has the right to question his beliefs and no one has the right to excommuncate him. That dread weapon, the fatwa of takfir, is a ridiculous anachronism. Belief is a mtter of consience, and this is the age which recognizes freedom of conscience in matters of fath. What may be said after proper analysis is that a certain peron's opionions are wrong, but not that 'he is kafir."26

According to Fyzee, the rules of Muhammadan jursiprudence (usul) and Muhammadan law (furu) should be studied in their relation to social conditions. In such study, historical, political and cultural factors should not be neglected, and the material studies should be exhaustive: it should not be confined to Arabic sources, but Latin and Greek, the four Semitic languages - Arabic, Hebrew, Syriac, Ethiopic - and Urdu and Persian and Turkish should also be laid under contribution. With such an equipment the following five stage study should be attempted:

1. What was the condition of society in relation to a particular legal doctrine prior to Islam?
2. What was the rule of law laid down by the Prophet?
3. What was the result of such legislation?
4. Today, after fourteen centuries, how is the rule interpreted in the diverse countries in which Islam subsists?
5. Can we not, always keeping the spirit of Islam before us, mould the rules of law so that healthy reforms can be carried out? 27

In his view, Shariah embraces both law and religion. Religion is based upon spiritual experience; law is based upon the will of the community as expressed by its legislature, or any other law-making authority. Religion is unchangeable in its inermost kernel - the love of God for His own sake is sung by sufis and mystices throughout the world.28 

Fyzee said that "the separation of civil law from the moral or religious law can now no longer be delayed in Islam. We must in the first instance distinguish between the universal and particular moral rules.  And then we must deal with the law. The first task is to separate logically the dogmas and doctrines of religion from the principles and rules of law. The essential faith of man is something different from the outward observance of rules; moral rules apply to the consience, but legal rules can be enforced by the state. The innter life of the spiriti, the "Idea of the Holy," must be separated to some extent from the outward forms of social behaviour. The separation is not simple; it will even be considered un-Islamic. But the attempt at a rethinking of the Shariah can only begin with the acceptance of this principle." 29

"Religion should place emphasis on devotion to God, cleanliness of spiriit, orderliness of life, and not be enmeshed in the minuiae of particular do's and don'ts. Apart from everything else the Islamic virtues of generosity, humility, brotherliness, courage and manliness should be taught by examples drawn from early Muslim history. Additionally, the ethics and morality of Islam should be fortified by the teaching of the ethical and philosophical teachers of the modern world. ......We cannot make the Koran a book "which imprisons the living word of God in a book and makes tradition an infallible source."30 

He believed that the divinely-revealed laws are necessary only for peoples in a primitive stage of moral and social development while the secular man-made legal systems are the sign of a mature and advanced civilization. "The sources of law and religion being the same (in Islam), the fusion is complete; the lessons of history, the changing conditions of society, the ever-varying pattern of civilization and the evolutionary process in the economic structure of modern world have not been taken into consideration sufficiently by the Shariah and the result is that by and large Islamic law remains backward and undeveloped in many parts of the world."31 

DR. KHALIFA ABDUL HAKEEM [d. 1957]
Dr. Khalifa Abdul Hakeem, an eminent Pakistani scholar, maintains that only the fundamental principles of Din (religion) laid down in the Quran are eternal. Whatever else there is in the Quran is of the nature of a temporary Ijtihad which can change with times. If Islam is an eternal religion, it can not lend support to details that were related to a particular form of culture and civilization. Some of the reforms effected by Islam related to the needs of contamprary society.  He says:  "It is a matter of vital importance to understand the attitude of Islam to legislation that must suit time and circum­stances and must vary from nation to nation and from epoch to ep­och."32   

In his view, Islam originally had brought no extensive and comprehensive code of laws with it but gave only the fundamentals of civilized life which could secure for the individual and society total well-being. "The most authoritative, if not the only authoritative, book is Quran, but in the entire holy Book, the code of laws would not cover more than ten pages. So Islam is really not burdened with a heavy code of which by its immutability could stand in the way of any progressive legisla­tion."33

Essentials of legislation shall be derived from the basic principles of the Quran and the practice followed by the Prophet; otherwise almost the entire field of legislation shall be left unhampered, to be molded as circumstances demand by men of knowledge who know and can evaluate the actualities of a situation. Legislation shall proceed ac­cording to the principles of logical and analogical deduction and the demands of public welfare and an assembly of the learned shall, by a practical consensus, legislate for all changing situations.34 

The theocratic basis of Islamic jurisprudence should not, therefore, scare away the progressive rationalists who really hunger and thirst after social justice and the gradual creation of a classless society. The Quran teaches only fundamentals of morality and social justice and ordains it as a duty to wage war only against persecution or intol­er­ance. The Quran is the real basis of Islamic life and its actual legisla­tion is very limited. Muslims are free to legislate as needs arise, in the spirit of social justice. The few laws in the Quran are often per­missive and give large latitudes to suit any change in circumstances. Its theocratic basis grants equal civil liberties to the non-Muslims who live as loyal subjects of a Muslim state; their personal laws are respected and even a Muslim judge must decide the cases of non-Muslims according to their own laws, provided they do not violate the general principles of social justice on which all laws and orders are based. 35

Original Islam was neither theocratic nor secular in the modern meaning of these terms. Secularism in the West was a revolt against the absolutism of Church and priesthood. Islam had abolished these institutions; so there was no need of freeing secular life from the clutches of retrograde theocracies. Between God and man there are no intermediaries.

A truly Muslim state would possess all the good qualities of a secular state without being secular in the modern sense. It would be theocratic without having the narrowness of outlook generally asso­ciated with theocracies. A truly Muslim state would synthesize the­ocracy with healthy secularism as Islam has synthesized so many traits which were considered by the world to be contradictory and ir­reconcilable.36 

Khalifa says that it is a misconception to  regard the codified Fiqh as beyond reform and alteration. It is wrong to think that the whole of this collection is Islam, and therefore it can not be changed even in its details. He argued that "a religion ceases to be alive when its concepts and customs, rituals and conventions become so rigid that all new experiences and experiments are shunned as dangerous innovations."37 

He further explains this point by saying that : "The prophet himself and his immediate successors varied the application of these fundamental principles as the circumstances changed, but always within the framework of the essentials of Islam, because they had fully imbibed the spirit of Islam. The Later jurists had to elaborate the science of jurisprudence and also to compile comprehensive codes to deal with actual or hypothetical cases. These schools of jurisprudence, later on, became the back-bone of Muslim orthodoxy and were considered as fixed and immutable as the essentials of Islam itself. Such fossilised orthodoxies are the result of the political stagnation of the Muslim states when all creative genius, adaptive urge and free inquiry were curbed by autocratic un-Islamic rule and dynastic struggle."

Islam was a movement of liberation of the human spirit and owed its phenomenal success to its liberalizing outlook. There is no doubt that the Quran and the Prophet gave the Muslims a few laws but the Prophet was averse to the multiplication of laws. .. Islam was afraid of instituting a priesthood or establishing a church for fear that they would being to act as intermediaries between God and man, curbing the freedom of human spirit. ..... The Mullah claims now to be the repository and custodian of eternal truths. For every vital question he has a ready answer on the basis of some old authority; no new thinker or reformer is authoritative because free thinking is anathema to all orthodoxies.38 However, he was against the Muslim apologists. "Muslims shall have to rethink about the fundamentals of Islam. They should cease to suffer from that inferiority complex which tries to conform Islam to whatever the West brings forth."39

Khalifa asserts that Islam can advance again only by recovering its pristine liberal spirit and rediscovering its eternal values. Muslims have to develop a theistic democracy with a respect for the liberty and dignity of the individual. Original Islam was an attempt to end all exploitation of man by man, religious, social, political or economic. Muslims advanced when the pursuit of all knowledge and truth was considered a religious duty. They made an attempt to create one humanity by abolition of castes and classes. Freedom of conscience and equality of civil rights were the basic principles of faith. Muslim society was open to all cultural influences that did not run counter to the basic principles of Islam.40 

MAULANA ABUL ALA MAUDUDI [1903-1979]
Maulana Abul Ala Maududi, an eminent scholar of Pakistan,  was highly critical of the apologetic approach of the Modernists, which he believes, started as a result of the Western domination over the Muslim societies during the colonial rule. He sees modernization together with the different character traits and norms associated with it, e.g. rationalism, positivism, nationalism, and scientism, essentially as deeply rooted desire of man to dominate man by the ever-shifting ideological concepts.

Maududi declares that Islam stands in absolute opposition to all these ideologies since in Islam man is taught, as his prior most article of confession, to submit only to God and to discard all other masters. "To dominate is to play God and to accept domination is to worship a Golden Calf," insists Maududi. "Whenever, man finds himself in a position from which he can dominate, tyranny, excess, intemperance, unlawful exploitation and inequality reign supreme."41

Modernism, therefore, appears to Maududi as an ideology of domination by the scientifically and technologically advanced nations of the world of the rest of mankind; and so he stands vehemently opposed to it. In his view, God's revelation is essential as the highest normative, universalistic link between mankind.

He castigated the Western educated class for its lack of understanding of the meaning of religion. Maududi declared that these earlier writers had accepted the Western notion of religion without realizing that the Western viewpoint on religion had been obtained from Christianity and not Islam. Without any critical analysis they had accepted the Western proclamation that religion was in actuality a private matter and had nothing to do with the experience of society as a whole. According to Maududi, the Islamic apologists had taken Western philosophies and ideologies to be the criteria of truth and therefore, had started remaking Islam. They had attempted to shape everything in Islam to agree with Western criteria and whatever could not be shaped had to be deleted from history and if it was unable to be eradicated excuses had to be advanced for it before the world.42 

Maududi also did not spare the traditionalist Muslims from his criticism. He maintained that there was a second group in Muslim society that had attempted to conserve the earlier heritage of the Islamic disciplines without any consideration of good or bad elements in it. These traditionalists did not embrace any influence from the modern successful civilizations. they did not think it was useful to understand the West, nor did they try seriously to analyze their own past legacy and discover what was worth preserving and what was to be discarded from it. Similarly, they failed to study the nature of Western civilization to recognize what could be gained from it and try to find out the weaknesses in Muslim thought and performance. According to Maududi, the traditionalist Muslims also ignored the force of science that had the British the ability to dominate in India. Rather than understand the new circumstances these Muslims exhausted themselves in preserving the past with a system of education that was the same as in the beginning of the nineteenth century. he deplored the thinking and the way of life of these traditionalists and remarked that it remained the same as it was before the impact of the West.43

On the question of the need to transform the traditional Islamic interpretations, the Maulana insists that Islam is a perfect religion and a way of life that must be re-lived rather than re-stated. Fanciful reinterpretation of the Revelation, he warns, is misleading. According to Maududi, Muslims are weak and backward because they have strayed from Islam.  He, therefore, staunchly and sincerely preaches for the true understanding and application of Islamic concepts in individual and social life today not only for the Muslims but also for the Westerners. "If the West had ever to face true Islam, the Westerners rather the Muslims would have been conquered to it."44

He cautioned Muslims that if they wanted their well-being then there was no option at all but to surrender and behave as the Quran required them to function. In fact there was no way out. To prove his point, Maududi quoted the Quranic verse (3:83) "Seek they other than the religion of Allah, when unto Him submitted whosoever is in the heavens and the earth, willingly or unwillingly and unto Himself they will be returned."

He was for borrowing Western technology and machines but not the Western cultural influences, and he is sanguine that such a selective borrowing is possible. Maududi was a staunch opponent of both Western secular democracy and socialist doctrines. He thought that both secular democracy and socialism were based on the assumption that men were free to decide their worldly affairs independent of religion.