Chapter V - Muslim ideologues of the twentieth century-III

 DR. FAZLUR RAHMAN [1919-1988]

Dr. Fazalur Rahman, an eminent Pakistani scholar,  contends that the decline of the Muslim world did not begin with Western penetration in the seventeenth‑eighteenth centuries, but with the intellectual ossification which took root in the aftermath of the collapse of the Abbasids in the thirteenth century. This fact is obvious considering the quantity and quality of original scholarship produced by the Muslims after the collapse of the Abbasids. "The ability of the Europeans to penetrate the Muslim world was the most dramatic evidence of the internal decline of Muslim society, not its cause." Here Rahman is echoing the Algerian thinker Malek Bennabi's thesis that the Muslims became colonized because they had become "colonizable".67

Since the cause of Muslim decadence lies in the adherence to an Islamic methodology which has put a vast chasm between Islamic society and the Quranic principles, Fazlur Rahman argues, the path to revival lies in developing an Islamic methodology which will close this gap.

Rahman proposes a new methodology that strives to draw a clear distinction between "historical Islam and normative Islam". This distinction  has to be drawn both in regards to Islamic principles and Islamic institutions. He states that the multitude of Quranic revelations took place "in, although not merely for, a given historical context". Muslims must recognize the essential feature in the revelation which is meant not only for the specific context in which it was revealed but is intended by the Creator to "outflow through and beyond that given context of history". This can be accomplished by  undertaking a comprehensive study of the Quran to firmly establish the general principles and required objectives elucidated therein. The object of this comprehensive study would be to establish the elan of the Quran. Thereafter, the asbab al‑nuzul (the historical circumstances surrounding a specific revelation) should be used to examine specific pronouncements, to ensure that the pronouncement is in keeping with the elan of the Quran. This will allow for the resurrection of the original thrust of the Islamic message, free from the accumulated debris of tradition, precedent, and culture of the past millennium.

He argues that the examples of polygamy and slavery make it abundantly clear that whereas the spirit of the Quranic legislation exhibits an obvious direction towards the progressive embodiment of the fundamental human values of fieedom and responsibility in fresh legislation, nevertheless the actual legislation of the Quran had partly to accept the then existing society as a term of reference. This clearly meant that the actual legislation of the Quran cannot have meant to be literally eternal by the Quran itself....Very soon, however, the Muslim lawyers and dogmaticians began to confuse the issue and the strictly legal injunctions of the Quran were thought to apply to any society, no matter what its conditions and what its inner dynamics. There is a good deal of evidence to believe that in the very early period, the Muslims interpreted the Quran pretty freely. But after a period of juristic development during the late Ist/7th and throughout the 2nd/8th century, the prominent features of which were the rise of the Tradition and the development of technical, analogical reasoning, the lawyers neatly tied themselves and the Community down to the 'text' of the Holy Book until the content of Muslim law and theology became buried under the weight of literalism."68

In addition to this, he says, the Muslims have to become aware of the historical transformation of important Islamic institutions. Only when they are able to determine the impact of various socio‑political trends upon their legal, intellectual, and political institutions they will be able to distinguish the "historically accidental from the essentially Islamic" 69  This comprehensive study of the Quran and various Islamic institutions would go a long way in clearing up the endemic confusion amongst the Muslims between the general/universal Islamic principles and their specific/historical application in the past. Stopping at this point would be useless, a detailed study of the problem afflicting the Islamic societies should be undertaken. Then the general principles garnered from the study of the Quran would be applied to the particular problems faced by modern Islamic societies in order to come up with a satisfactory solution.

Rahman summarizes his methodology in the following words: "In building any genuine and viable Islamic set of laws and institutions, there has to be a two fold movement: First one must move from the concrete case treatments of the Quran—taking the necessary and relevant social conditions of that time into account—to the general principles upon which the entire teaching converges. Second, from this general level there must be a movement back to specific legislation, taking into account the necessary and relevant conditions now, obtaining."70

He asserts: "But the real problem of the Muslim society is to assimilate, adapt, modify and reject the force,  generated within its own fabric by the introduction of new institutions —of education, of industry, of communication, etc.—  as these forces are purely good, necessary evils, or positively harmful. The new forces have an ethic of their own and a simple return to the past is certainly no way to solve this problem—unless we want to delude ourselves. But recourse to the Quran and Sunnah in order to get therefrom an understanding of, and guidance for, solving our new problems will undoubtedly meet the situation. This is because the Quran and Prophet's activity guided and were actually invovlved in society-building. Besides, therefore, certain general principles that lie enunciated in the Quran and certain Prophetic precepts, their actual handing of social situations is fraught with meaning for us. But the meaning is not that we should repeat that very situation now, which is an absurd task, but rather to draw lessons from this concerete historical pradigm."71

In formulating his Islamic methodology Rahman utilizes various principles from the rich tradition of Islamic epistemology and scholarship. Ijtihad being the foremost among these principles. He defines ijtihad to be: . . . the effort to understand the meaning of a relevant text or precedent in the past, containing a rule, and to alter that rule by extending or restricting or otherwise modifying it in such a manner that a new situation can be subsumed under it by extension. According to Fazalur Rahman ijtihad fulfils the role of contrasting the eternal Quranic principles with "freshly derived inspiration from revelations". Then the knowledge and wisdom gained from this process are to be used to tackle issues and problem facing contemporary society.

In spite of the fact that for nearly a millennium 'official orthodoxy' preached that ijtihad was no longer necessary, there is no Quranic injunction or Prophetic tradition which justifies such a view. A strong argument could indeed be made that closing the gates of ijtihad, by anyone at any point in time,  is against the letter and spirit of Islamic teachings. Fazlur Rahman traces the anti-intellectualism of ulema to their rejection of the Mutazilite position with regard to reason. "Since the orthodoxy first rejected the position of the Mutazila on the role of reason, this anti-rational theological position affected their attitude to legal thought also and their standard works formally deny any role to reason in law-making."72

He goes on to point out that "the majority of theologians even to this day hold that in matters of belief, particularly in the case of existence of God and Mohammad's prophethood (and allied matters), authority alone is not sufficient and that these beliefs must be  grounded in reason. But in the field of law they teach Taqlid (i.e. unquestioning acceptance of authority) at least to the majority of Muslims and in practice to all Muslims."73