Introduction
This is the most important lecture by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, sixth in the book “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”. In fact the idea behind the whole work put across in the famous work revolves around it. It is in this lecture that Iqbal urges the need for modernization in Islamic thought. “The principle of movement in the structure of Islam” according to the author is Ijtihad, which means to form independent judgments on legal questions. The set of legal principles received from the Qur’an has great capacity of expansion and development according to needs of changing time and environments. Ever since the establishment of four schools of jurisprudence (madhabs), the law of Islam was “reduced to a state of immobility” by the rejection of Ijtihad which had a number of reasons. Firstly there was fear that rationalism would destroy the foundation of Muslim society. Secondly the need of organization felt by the early scholars lead to the exclusions of innovation in the Shari’ah and took away the power of the individual. It is argued by the author that, Qur’an is not only a legal code but its purpose is to awaken in man the higher consciousness of his relation with God and his creations.
Iqbal had no doubt that a deeper study of the enormous legal literature of Islam would rid the modern critic of the superficial opinion that the Law of Islam is stationary and incapable of development. Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of “Fiqh” which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people, and raise sectarian controversies. The founders of our schools never claimed finality of their reasoning and interpretations. Iqbal points out that we should bear in mind that from the earliest times, practically up to the rise of the Abbasids, there was no written law of Islam apart from the Quran. The closing of the door of Ijtihad is pure fiction suggested partly by the crystallization of legal thought in Islam, and partly by that intellectual laziness which, especially in the period of spiritual decay, turns great thinkers into idols.
Iqbal points out that according to Shah Wali Allah… generally speaking, the law revealed by a Prophet takes especial notice of the habits, ways and peculiarities of the people to whom he is specifically sent. The Shari’ah values… are in a sense specific to that people; and, since their observance is not an end in itself, they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations. It was perhaps in view of this that Abu Hanifa, who had a keen insight into the universal character of Islam, made practically no use of these traditions. The fact that he introduced the principle of “Istihsan”, i.e. juristic preference, which necessitates a careful study of actual conditions in legal thinking, throws further light on the motives which determined his attitude towards this source of Islamic law (Shari’ah). Iqbal concludes that we should let the Muslim of today appreciate his position, reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles, and evolve, out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam, that spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.
The book “Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam” is representative of the basic philosophic insights of Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, the great poet, philosopher and thinker. He has proposed an innovative solution to the challenges faced by Muslims of present era through sophisticated philosophical medium using his prose writhing. He critically analyzed the causes of decline of Muslim Ummah and indicated possible ways of renaissance of Muslims. The book is a compilation of lectures delivered by him on Islamic philosophy; published in 1930. In his own words, Iqbal describes the aim:
“In these lectures I propose to undertake a philosophical discussion of some of the basic of ideas of Islam, in the hope that this may, at least, be helpful towards a proper understanding of the meaning of Islam as a message to humanity. Also with a view to give a kind of ground-outline for further discussion, I propose, in this preliminary lecture, to consider the character of knowledge and religious experience.” (Lecture-1)
Iqbal was aware that the new generation of Muslims could not remain aloof from the values of modern Western culture. It was therefore necessary for them to remain Muslim and at the same time to become modern. Iqbal has called for a re-examination of the intellectual foundations of Islamic philosophy. The book is a major work of modern Islamic thought. This innovative will be of great interest to most modern day educated Muslims who are fed up with the extremist, dogmatic outlook of their religion. In brief the four main messages of the book are:
1. This universe is dynamic and so is God. He is the Creator and is constantly busy in creation.
2. God has given man complete freedom of choice and man is not restricted by his destiny.
3. Muslims have made a big mistake by discontinuing the evolution of Islamic law and by confining themselves to four major schools of law. Since the world is constantly changing, we need constant evolution of Islamic law to keep pace with the world (without touching the fundamentals). Modern democracy can go a long way in achieving this goal and the concept of ‘caliphate’ can be replaced by the concept of ‘republic’.[not to the liking of Daesh, ISIS, Taliban and their supporters and sympathizers]
4. Mystic religious experience is not only possible but is the only way to find the Ultimate Reality.
These “Lectures” are a mirror of our national perceptions. Again, as Iqbal himself has said in the “Preface” to the “Lectures” that:
“It must, however, be remembered that there is no such thing as finality in Philosophical thinkings. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other view, and probably sounder views than those set forth in these lectures are possible”. “Our duty is carefully to watch the progress of human thought, and to maintain an independent critical attitude towards it”.
Dr. Muhammad Iqbal viewed the Islamic and Western knowledge with due regard to the growth and development of human thought in his own age, we should also keep a careful eye on the growth and development of human thought of our own times, and should organize the perceptions of today in the light of Allama Iqbal’s scientific intellectual conclusions.
The lectures offer food for thought and courageously challenge the status quo. Its not the last word on the subject but agitates the minds to start thinking from a different angle for change. In this series, this is the fifth lecture delivered by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal.
Special thanks to Dr. Tahir Hameed Tanoli (Iqbal Academy Pakistan) [4] who has graciously permitted to reproduce lectures by to promote and disseminate the study and understanding of the works and teachings of Allama Iqbal [1]. Mr. Muhammad Iqbal Malik has been kind to permit use his “Excerpts” for easy comprehension by common reader [2] and ‘Renaissance’. [4.]
Summary of Lecture
1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
Let’s recapitulate the first four lectures published in previous issue of DJ: [4]
Knowledge and Religious Experience Lecture-1 – Excerpts
In the first lecture “Knowledge and Religious Experience”, Iqbal gives a brief description of the basic structure of the universe and the way we are related to it. Iqbal argues that the traditional method used to interpret religion which he describes as “reading the Qur’an in the light of Greek thought” is not the best way to understand religion properly. Although, he recognizes the fact that in the domain of religious knowledge complete independence of thought is not possible still he emphasizes on the use of rationalism. According to him “the spirit of the Qur’an was essentially anti-classical”. Another method described by the scholar as he calls it is the “mystic experience”. “Mystic experience for the purpose of knowledge is as real as any other region of human experience and cannot be ignored merely because it cannot be traced back to sense-perception. Nor is it possible to undo the spiritual value of the mystic state by specifying the organic conditions which appear to determine it”. Thus, the philosopher finalizes his argument by concluding that religious experience is a state of feeling which cannot be explained. It is just a feeling of cognition, the content of which cannot be communicated.
The 2nd lecture, “The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience”:
In the second lecture, at the beginning Iqbal quoted three arguments for existence of God; the Cosmological, the Teleological, and the Ontological, and has highlighted the flaws in these arguments. He states that the Cosmological argument tries to reach the infinite by negating the finite, which according to the author is a “wrong infinite”, since it excludes the finite. The Teleological argument serves to give us a contriver but fails to give us a creator. Finally, the third argument, Ontological argument, assumes that the idea of an ultimate ego in our mind is enough to prove the existence of the infinite (God).
From here, the philosopher talk about experience. Experience, he says, has three levels namely matter, life and the level of mind and consciousness. While talking about matter, he tries to imply that the things we see and hear, for example, sound waves, colours, gravity and other physical phenomenon in nature are not actual happenings but mere illusions. Time, he says, is not a real movement. Events happening in the future are not new but are already located in an unknown space. Hence the fourth dimension is actually a set of events happening in a definite order. By this, Iqbal states a setback in Einstein’s theory of relativity. Iqbal sees life as planned for purposes that lay deep down the intellect of a living being. The conscious experience is the level of experience, in which we are in direct contact with reality, since our perception of our own selves as quoted in Iqbal’s words is “‘internal, intimate and profound”. Thus the element of purpose and desire moulds the present state of consciousness as well as the future. The conclusion that we are brought to at the end of this lecture is that the Ultimate reality is a “rationally directed creative life”
The 3rd lecture “The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer”:
The philosopher explains various aspects of God. These include Creativeness, Knowledge, Eternity and Omnipotence. Eternity is described by Iqbal using the Ash‘arite theory of Atomism in Islam and the doctrine of accidents. The knowledge of the ultimate ego makes God aware of the entire history as it constitutes quantized events occurring in a definite sequence, and hence divine knowledge is acquired in eternal present. Therefore divine knowledge includes everything in the past, present and the future. Omnipotence is the blind power without any limits. This power is exercised by God while holding all goodness in his hand. Iqbal then raises the question “How is it then possible to reconcile the goodness and Omnipotence of God with all the evil in his creation?” Here he is talking about man as the creation of God. Iqbal then comes to a conclusion that man possesses this quality of improvement, and is destined to overcome evil. Coming to prayer the author describes the meaning of prayer. The meaning of prayer, he says, is an “expression of man’s inner yearning for a response in the awful silence of the universe”. Prayer is a way for that searching ego to discover its own worth as a dynamic factor in this universe.
The 4th lecture “The Human Ego-His Freedom and Immortality”:
In this lecture, Iqbal starts by stating that the Qur’an emphasizes the individuality and uniqueness of man, and has a definite view of his destiny. Then he proceeds to describe the human ego, which, according to him, is the unity of mental states which exist as a whole, called mind. Every ego is unique and is imperfect as a unity of life. The body, he says, is connected to the soul as the body is the medium of action of the soul and is in-detachable from it. The purpose of the soul is depicted by the action of the body. Since acts are connected to the ego by the mode of incentives, therefore, an individual can only be interpreted and understood by his or her judgments and aims. The immortality of the ego is later described by the author. Ego did not exist since eternity, and has a beginning like everything. According to the Qur’an, there will be a day of judgment and there will be a life after death. Ego will then be accountable for its actions.
The 5th lecture: The Spirit of Muslim Culture:
In the fifth lecture Dr. Iqbal talks about the psychological difference between the prophetic and mystic type on consciousness. To judge the value of the Prophets’ religious experience is to examine the cultural world that has been created by them. From here Iqbal proceeds to talk about Muslim culture and the interpretation of Islam against Greek philosophy. No doubt that the ancient philosophy has produced great systems of beliefs, yet the need of modern philosophy and science has become essential in modern times. If an individual believes in divine revelations and prophethood, the divine revelations, according to believers, should come to an end and the traditional system of interpreting Islam should be reconsidered.
It may be remembered that Dr. Iqbal said: “In these lectures I propose to undertake a philosophical discussion of some of the basic of ideas of Islam, in the hope that this may, at least, be helpful towards a proper understanding of the meaning of Islam as a message to humanity. Also with a view to give a kind of ground-outline for further discussion… “It must, however, be remembered that there is no such thing as finality in Philosophical thinkings. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other view, and probably sounder views than those set forth in these lectures are possible”. …… “Our duty is carefully to watch the progress of human thought, and to maintain an independent critical attitude towards it”.
Lecture- 6: The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam
As a cultural movement Islam rejects the old static view of the universe and reaches a dynamic view. As an emotional system of unification it recognizes the worth of the individual as such, and rejects blood-relationship as a basis of human unity. Blood-relationship is earth-rootedness. The search for a purely psychological foundation of human unity becomes possible only with the perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin. Such a perception is creative of fresh loyalties without any ceremonials to keep them alive, and makes it possible for man to emancipate himself from the earth. Christianity which had originally appeared as a monastic order was tried by Constantine as a system of unification. Its failure to work as such a system drove the Emperor Julian to return to the old gods of Rome on which he attempted to put philosophical interpretations. A modern historian of civilization has thus depicted the state of the civilized world about the time when Islam appeared on the stage of History:
It seemed then that the great civilization that it had taken four thousand years to construct was on the verge of disintegration, and that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order were unknown… The old tribal sanctions had lost their power. Hence the old imperial methods would no longer operate. The new sanctions created by Christianity were working division and destruction instead of unity and order. It was a time fraught with tragedy. Civilization, like a gigantic tree whose foliage had overarched the world and whose branches had borne the golden fruits of art and science and literature, stood tottering, its trunk no longer alive with the flowing sap of devotion and reverence, but rotted to the core, riven by the storms of war, and held together only by the cords of ancient customs and laws, that might snap at any moment. Was there any emotional culture that could be brought in, to gather mankind once more into unity and to save civilization? This culture must be something of a new type, for the old sanctions and ceremonials were dead, and to build up others of the same kind would be the work of centuries.
The writer then proceeds to tell us that the world stood in need of a new culture to take the place of the culture of the throne, and the systems of unification which were based on blood-relationship. It is amazing, he adds, that such a culture should have arisen from Arabia just at the time when it was most needed. There is, however, nothing amazing in the phenomenon. The world-life intuitively sees its own needs, and at critical moments defines its own direction. This is what, in the language of religion, we call prophetic revelation. It is only natural that Islam should have flashed across the consciousness of a simple people untouched by any of the ancient cultures, and occupying a geographical position where three continents meet together. The new culture finds the foundation of world-unity in the principle of Tawhid. Islam, as a polity, is only a practical means of making this principle a living factor in the intellectual and emotional life of mankind. It demands loyalty to God, not to thrones. And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature. The ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in variety and change. A society based on such a conception of Reality must reconcile, in its life, the categories of permanence and change. It must possess eternal principles to regulate its collective life, for the eternal gives us a foothold in the world of perpetual change. But eternal principles when they are understood to exclude all possibilities of change which, according to the Qur’an, is one of the greatest “signs” of God, tend to immobilize what is essentially mobile in its nature. The failure of Europe in political and social sciences illustrates the former principle, the immobility of Islam during the last five hundred years illustrates the latter. What then is the principle of movement in the structure of Islam? This is known as Ijtihad.
The word literally means to exert. In the terminology of Islamic law it means to exert with a view to form an independent judgement on a legal question. The idea, I believe, has its origin in a well-known verse of the Qur’an– “And to those who exert We show Our path.” We find it more definitely adumbrated in a tradition of the Holy Prophet (PBUH). When Ma‘ādh was appointed ruler of Yemen, the Prophet is reported to have asked him as to how he would decide matters coming up before him. “I will judge matters according to the Book of God,” said Ma‘ādh. “But if the Book of God contains nothing to guide you?” “Then I will act on the precedents of the Prophet of God.” “But if the precedents fail?” “Then I will exert to form my own judgement.” The student of the history of Islam, however, is well aware that with the political expansion of Islam systematic legal thought became an absolute necessity, and our early doctors of law, both of Arabian and non-Arabian descent, worked ceaselessly until all the accumulated wealth of legal thought found a final expression in our recognized schools of Law.
These schools of Law recognize three degrees of Ijtihad:
(1) Complete authority in legislation which is practically confined to the founders of the schools.
(2) Relative authority which is to be exercised within the limits of a particular school, and,
(3) Special authority which relates to the determining of the law applicable to a particular case left undetermined by the founders.
In this paper I am concerned with the first degree of Ijtihad only i.e. complete authority in legislation. The theoretical possibility of this degree of Ijtihad is admitted by the Sunnis, but in practice it has always been denied ever since the establishment of the schools, inasmuch as the idea of complete Ijtihad is hedged round by conditions which are well-nigh impossible of realization in a single individual. Such an attitude seems exceedingly strange in a system of law based mainly on the groundwork provided by the Qur’an which embodies an essentially dynamic outlook on life. It is, therefore, necessary, before we proceed farther, to discover the causes of this intellectual attitude which has reduced the Law of Islam practically to a state of immobility. Some European writers think that the stationary character of the Law of Islam is due to the influence of the Turks. This is an entirely superficial view, for the legal schools of Islam had been finally established long before the Turkish influence began to work in the history of Islam. The real causes are, in my opinion, as follows:
1. We are all familiar with the Rationalist movement which appeared in the church of Islam during the early days of the Abbasids and the bitter controversies which it raised. Take for instance the one important point of controversy between the two camps– the conservative dogma of the eternity of the Qur’an. The Rationalists denied it because they thought that this was only another form of the Christian dogma of the eternity of the Word; on the other hand, the conservative thinkers whom the later Abbasides, fearing the political implications of Rationalism, gave their full support, thought that by denying the eternity of the Qur’an the Rationalists were undermining the very foundations of Muslim society. Nazzām, for instance, practically rejected the traditions, and openly declared Abū Hurairah to be an untrustworthy reporter. Thus, partly owing to a misunderstanding of the ultimate motives of Rationalism, and partly owing to the unrestrained thought of particular Rationalists, conservative thinkers regarded this movement as a force of disintegration, and considered it a danger to the stability of Islam as a social polity. Their main purpose, therefore, was to preserve the social integrity of Islam, and to realize this the only course open to them was to utilize the binding force of Sharī‘ah, and to make the structure of their legal system as rigorous as possible.
2. The rise and growth of ascetic Sufism, which gradually developed under influences of a non-Islamic character, a purely speculative side, is to a large extent responsible for this attitude. On its purely religious side Sufism fostered a kind of revolt against the verbal quibbles of our early doctors. The case of Sufyān Thawrī is an instance in point. He was one of the acutest legal minds of his time, and was nearly the founder of a school of law, but being also intensely spiritual, the dry-as-dust subtleties of contemporary legists drove him to ascetic Sufism. On its speculative side which developed later, Sufism is a form of free thought and in alliance with Rationalism. The emphasis that it laid on the distinction of zāhir and bātin (Appearance and Reality) created an attitude of indifference to all that applies to Appearance and not to Reality. This spirit of total other-worldliness in later Sufism obscured men’s vision of a very important aspect of Islam as a social polity, and, offering the prospect of unrestrained thought on its speculative side, it attracted and finally absorbed the best minds in Islam. The Muslim state was thus left generally in the hands of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses of Islam, having no personalities of a higher caliber to guide them, found their security only in blindly following the schools.
3. On the top of all this came the destruction of Baghdad– the centre of Muslim intellectual life – in the middle of the thirteenth century. This was indeed a great blow, and all the contemporary historians of the invasion of Tartars describe the havoc of Baghdad with a half-suppressed pessimism about the future of Islam. For fear of further disintegration, which is only natural in such a period of political decay, the conservative thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one point of preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous exclusion of all innovations in the law of Shari’ah as expounded by the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social order, and there is no doubt that they were partly right, because organization does to a certain extent counteract the forces of decay. But they did not see, and our modern Ulema do not see, that the ultimate fate of a people does not depend so much on organization as on the worth and power of individual men. In an over-organized society the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul. Thus a false reverence for past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy for a people’s decay. “The verdict of history,” as a modern writer has happily put it, “is that worn-out ideas have never risen to power among a people who have worn them out.” The only effective power, therefore, that counteracts the forces of decay in a people is the rearing of self-concentrated individuals. Such individuals alone reveal the depth of life. They disclose new standards in the light of which we begin to see that our environment is not wholly inviolable and requires revision. The tendency to over-organization by a false reverence of the past, as manifested in the legists of Islam in the thirteenth century and later, was contrary to the inner impulse of Islam, and consequently invoked the powerful reaction of Ibn Taimīyyah, one of the most indefatigable writers and preachers of Islam, who was born in 1263, five years after the destruction of Baghdad.
Ibn Taimiyyah was brought up in Hanbalite tradition. Claiming freedom of Ijtihad for himself he rose in revolt against the finality of the schools, and went back to first principles in order to make a fresh start. Like Ibn Hazm– the founder of Zahirī school of law– he rejected the Hanafite principle of reasoning by analogy and Ijmā‘ as understood by older legists; for he thought agreement was the basis of all superstition. And there is no doubt that, considering the moral and intellectual decrepitude of his times, he was right in doing so. In the sixteenth century Suyūtī claimed the same privilege of Ijtihad to which he added the idea of a renovator at the beginning of each century. But the spirit of Ibn Taimīyyah’s teaching found a fuller expression in a movement of immense potentialities which arose in the eighteenth century, from the sands of Nejd, described by Macdonald as the “cleanest spot in the decadent world of Islam.” It is really the first throb of life in modern Islam. To the inspiration of this movement are traceable, directly or indirectly, nearly all the great modern movements of Muslim Asia and Africa, e.g. the Sanūsī movement, the Pan-Islamic movement, and the Bābī movement, which is only a Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism. The great puritan reformer, Muhammad Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb, who was born in 1700, studied in Medina, travelled in Persia, and finally succeeded in spreading the fire of his restless soul throughout the whole world of Islam. He was similar in spirit to Ghazālī’s disciple, Muhammad Ibn Tūmart – the Berber puritan reformer of Islam who appeared amidst the decay of Muslim Spain, and gave her a fresh inspiration. We are, however, not concerned with the political career of this movement which was terminated by the armies of Muhammad ‘Alī Pāshā. The essential thing to note is the spirit of freedom manifested in it, though inwardly this movement, too, is conservative in its own fashion. While it rises in revolt against the finality of the schools, and vigorously asserts the right of private judgement, its vision of the past is wholly uncritical, and in matters of law it mainly falls back on the traditions of the Prophet).
Passing on to Turkey, we find that the idea of Ijtihād, reinforced and broadened by modern philosophical ideas, has long been working in the religious and political thought of the Turkish nation. This is clear from Halim Sabit’s new theory of Muhammadan Law, grounded on modern sociological concepts. If the renaissance of Islam is a fact, and I believe it is a fact, we too one day, like the Turks, will have to re-evaluate our intellectual inheritance. And if we cannot make any original contribution to the general thought of Islam, we may, by healthy conservative criticism, serve at least as a check on the rapid movement of liberalism in the world of Islam.
I now proceed to give you some idea of religio-political thought in Turkey which will indicate how the power of Ijtihād is manifested in recent thought and activity in that country. There were, a short time ago, two main lines of thought in Turkey represented by the Nationalist Party and the Party of Religious Reform. The point of supreme interest with the Nationalist Party is above all the State and not Religion. With these thinkers religion as such has no independent function. The state is the essential factor in national life which determines the character and function of all other factors. They, therefore, reject old ideas about the function of State and Religion, and accentuate the separation of Church and State. Now the structure of Islam as a religio-political system, no doubt, does permit such a view, though personally I think it is a mistake to suppose that the idea of state is more dominant and rules all other ideas embodied in the system of Islam. In Islam the spiritual and the temporal are not two distinct domains, and the nature of an act, however secular in its import, is determined by the attitude of mind with which the agent does it. It is the invisible mental background of the act which ultimately determines its character. An act is temporal or profane if it is done in a spirit of detachment from the infinite complexity of life behind it; it is spiritual if it is inspired by that complexity. In Islam it is the same reality which appears as Church looked at from one point of view and State from another. It is not true to say that Church and State are two sides or facets of the same thing. Islam is a single unanalysable reality which is one or the other as your point of view varies. The point is extremely far-reaching and a full elucidation of it will involve us in a highly philosophical discussion. Suffice it to say that this ancient mistake arose out of the bifurcation of the unity of man into two distinct and separate realities which somehow have a point of contact, but which are in essence opposed to each other. The truth, however, is that matter is spirit in space-time reference. The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in regard to what we call the external world; it is mind or soul when you look at it as acting in regard to the ultimate aim and ideal of such acting. The essence of Tawhid, as a working idea, is equality, solidarity, and freedom. The state, from the Islamic standpoint, is an endeavour to transform these ideal principles into space-time forces, an aspiration to realize them in a definite human organization. It is in this sense alone that the state in Islam is a theocracy, not in the sense that it is headed by a representative of God on earth who can always screen his despotic will behind his supposed infallibility. The critics of Islam have lost sight of this important consideration. The Ultimate Reality, according to the Qur’an, is spiritual, and its life consists in its temporal activity. The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular. All that is secular is, therefore, sacred in the roots of its being. The greatest service that modern thought has rendered to Islam, and as a matter of fact to all religion, consists in its criticism of what we call material or natural – a criticism which discloses that the merely material has no substance until we discover it rooted in the spiritual. There is no such thing as a profane world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the self-realization of spirit. All is holy ground. As the Prophet so beautifully puts it: “The whole of this earth is a mosque.” The State, according to Islam, is only an effort to realize the spiritual in a human organization. But in this sense all state, not based on mere domination and aiming at the realization of ideal principles, is theocratic.
The truth is that the Turkish Nationalists assimilated the idea of the separation of Church and State from the history of European political ideas. Primitive Christianity was founded, not as a political or civil unit, but as a monastic order in a profane world, having nothing to do with civil affairs, and obeying the Roman authority practically in all matters. The result of this was that when the State became Christian, State and Church confronted each other as distinct powers with interminable boundary disputes between them. Such a thing could never happen in Islam; for Islam was from the very beginning a civil society, having received from the Qur’an a set of simple legal principles which, like the twelve tables of the Romans, carried, as experience subsequently proved, great potentialities of expansion and development by interpretation. The Nationalist theory of state, therefore, is misleading inasmuch as it suggests a dualism which does not exist in Islam.
The Religious Reform Party, on the other hand, led by Sa‘īd Halīm Pāshā, insisted on the fundamental fact that Islam is a harmony of idealism and positivism; and, as a unity of the eternal verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity, has no fatherland. “As there is no English Mathematics, German Astronomy or French Chemistry,” says the Grand Vizier, “so there is no Turkish, Arabian, Persian or Indian Islam. Just as the universal character of scientific truths engenders varieties of scientific national cultures which in their totality represent human knowledge, much in the same way the universal character of Islamic verities creates varieties of national, moral and social ideals.” Modern culture based as it is on national egoism is, according to this keen-sighted writer, only another form of barbarism. It is the result of an over-developed industrialism through which men satisfy their primitive instincts and inclinations. He, however, deplores that during the course of history the moral and social ideals of Islam have been gradually deislamized through the influence of local character, and pre-Islamic superstitions of Muslim nations. These ideals today are more Iranian, Turkish, or Arabian than Islamic. The pure brow of the principle of Tawhid has received more or less an impress of heathenism, and the universal and impersonal character of the ethical ideals of Islam has been lost through a process of localization. The only alternative open to us, then, is to tear off from Islam the hard crust which has immobilized an essentially dynamic outlook on life, and to rediscover the original verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity with a view to rebuild our moral, social, and political ideals out of their original simplicity and universality. Such are the views of the Grand Vizier of Turkey. You will see that following a line of thought more in tune with the spirit of Islam, he reaches practically the same conclusion as the Nationalist Party, that is to say, the freedom of Ijtihad with a view to rebuild the laws of Shari’ah in the light of modern thought and experience.
Let us now see how the Grand National Assembly has exercised this power of Ijtihad in regard to the institution of Khilāfat. According to Sunni Law, the appointment of an Imām or Khalīfah is absolutely indispensable. The first question that arises in this connexion is this – Should the Caliphate be vested in a single person? Turkey’s Ijtihād is that according to the spirit of Islam the Caliphate or Imāmate can be vested in a body of persons, or an elected Assembly. The religious doctors of Islam in Egypt and India, as far as I know, have not yet expressed themselves on this point. Personally, I believe the Turkish view is perfectly sound. It is hardly necessary to argue this point. The republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam.
In order to understand the Turkish view let us seek the guidance of Ibn Khaldūn– the first philosophical historian of Islam. Ibn Khaldūn, in his famous Prolegomena, mentions three distinct views of the idea of Universal Caliphate in Islam: (1) That Universal Imamate is a Divine institution, and is consequently indispensable. (2) That it is merely a matter of expediency. (3) That there is no need of such an institution. The last view was taken by the Khawārij. It seems that modern Turkey has shifted from the first to the second view, i.e. to the view of the Mu‘tazilah who regarded Universal Imamate as a matter of expediency only. The Turks argue that in our political thinking we must be guided by our past political experience which points unmistakably to the fact that the idea of Universal Imamate has failed in practice. It was a workable idea when the Empire of Islam was intact. Since the break-up of this Empire independent political units have arisen. The idea has ceased to be operative and cannot work as a living factor in the organization of modern Islam. Far from serving any useful purpose it has really stood in the way of a reunion of independent Muslim States. Persia has stood aloof from the Turks in view of her doctrinal differences regarding the Khilafat; Morocco has always looked askance at them, and Arabia has cherished private ambition. And all these rupture in Islam for the sake of a mere symbol of a power which departed long ago. Why should we not, he can further argue, learn from experience in our political thinking? Did not Qādī Abū Bakr Bāqillānī drop the condition of Qarshiyyat in the Khalīfah in view of the facts of experience i.e. the political fall of the Quraysh and their consequent inability to rule the world of Islam? Centuries ago Ibn Khaldūn, who personally believed in the condition of Qarshīyat in the Khalīfah, argued much in the same way. Since the power of the Quraysh, he says, has gone, there is no alternative but to accept the most powerful man as Imām in the country where he happens to be powerful. Thus Ibn Khaldūn, realizing the hard logic of facts, suggests a view which may be regarded as the first dim vision of an International Islam fairly in sight today. Such is the attitude of the modern Turk, inspired as he is by the realities of experience, and not by the scholastic reasoning of jurists who lived and thought under different conditions of life.
To my mind these arguments, if rightly appreciated, indicate the birth of an International ideal which, though forming the very essence of Islam, has been hitherto overshadowed or rather displaced by Arabian Imperialism of the earlier centuries of Islam. This new ideal is clearly reflected in the work of the great nationalist poet Ziya whose songs, inspired by the philosophy of Auguste Comte, have done a great deal in shaping the present thought of Turkey. I reproduce the substance of one of his poems from Professor Fischer’s German translation:
In order to create a really effective political unity of Islam, all Muslim countries must first become independent: and then in their totality they should range themselves under one Caliph. Is such a thing possible at the present moment? If not today, one must wait. In the meantime the Caliph must reduce his own house to order and lay the foundations of a workable modern State.
In the International world the weak find no sympathy; power alone deserves respect.
These lines clearly indicate the trend of modern Islam. For the present every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true and living unity, according to the nationalist thinkers, is not so easy as to be achieved by a merely symbolical over lordship. It is truly manifested in a multiplicity of free independent units whose racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the unifying bond of a common spiritual aspiration. It seems to me that God is slowly bringing home to us the truth that Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members.
From the same poet the following passage from a poem called “Religion and Science” will throw some further light on the general religious outlook which is being gradually shaped in the world of Islam today:
“Who were the first spiritual leaders of mankind? Without doubt the prophets and holy men. In every period religion has led philosophy; from it alone morality and art receive light. But then religion grows weak, and loses her original ardour! Holy men disappear, and spiritual leadership becomes, in name, the heritage of the Doctors of Law! The leading star of the Doctors of Law is tradition; they drag religion with force on this track; but philosophy says: “My leading star is reason: you go right, I go left.”
“Both religion and philosophy claim the soul of man and draw it on either side!”
“When this struggle is going on” pregnant experience delivers up positive science, and this young leader of thought says, “Tradition is history and Reason is the method of history! Both interpret and desire to reach the same indefinable something!”
“But what is this something?”
“Is it a spiritualized heart?”
“If so, then take my last word– Religion is positive science, the purpose of which is to spiritualize the heart of man!”
It is clear from these lines how beautifully the poet has adopted the Comtian idea of the three stages of man’s intellectual development, i.e. theological, metaphysical, and scientific – to the religious outlook of Islam. And the view of religion embodied in these lines determines the poet’s attitude towards the position of Arabic in the educational system of Turkey. He says:
The land where the call to prayer resounds in Turkish; where those who pray understand the meaning of their religion; the land where the Qur’an is learnt in Turkish; where every man, big or small, knows full well the command of God; O! Son of Turkey! that land is thy fatherland!
If the aim of religion is the spiritualization of the heart, then it must penetrate the soul of man, and it can best penetrate the inner man, according to the poet, only if its spiritualizing ideas are clothed in his mother tongue. Most people in India will condemn this displacement of Arabic by Turkish. For reasons which will appear later the poet’s Ijtihād is open to grave objections, but it must be admitted that the reform suggested by him is not without a parallel in the past history of Islam. We find that when Muhammad Ibn Tūmart– the Mahdī of Muslim Spain– who was Berber by nationality, came to power, and established the pontifical rule of the Muwahhidūn, he ordered for the sake of the illiterate Berbers, that the Qur’an should be translated and read in the Berber language; that the call to prayer should be given in Berber; and that all the functionaries of the Church (Mosque) must know the Berber language.
In another passage the poet gives his ideal of womanhood. In his zeal for the equality of man and woman he wishes to see radical changes in the family law of Islam as it is understood and practised today:
“There is the woman, my mother, my sister, or my daughter; it is she who calls up the most sacred emotions from the depths of my life! There is my beloved, my sun, my moon and my star; it is she who makes me understand the poetry of life! How could the Holy Law of God regard these beautiful creatures as despicable beings? Surely there is an error in the interpretation of the Qur’an by the learned.”
“The foundation of the nation and the state is the family!
As long as the full worth of the woman is not realized, national life remains incomplete.”
“The upbringing of the family must correspond with justice; Therefore equality is necessary in three things– in divorce, in separation, and in inheritance.”
“As long as the woman is counted half the man as regards inheritance and one-fourth of man in matrimony, neither the family nor the country will be elevated. For other rights we have opened national courts of justice.”
“The family, on the other hand, we have left in the hands of schools.”
“I do not know why we have left the woman in the lurch?”
“Does she not work for the land? Or, will she turn her needle into a sharp bayonet to tear off her rights from our hands through a revolution.”
The truth is that among the Muslim nations of today, Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained self-consciousness. She alone has claimed her right of intellectual freedom; she alone has passed from the ideal to the real – a transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle. To her the growing complexities of a mobile and broadening life are sure to bring new situations suggesting new points of view, and necessitating fresh interpretations of principles which are only of an academic interest to a people who have never experienced the joy of spiritual expansion. It is, I think, the English thinker Hobbes who makes this acute observation that to have a succession of identical thoughts and feelings is to have no thoughts and feelings at all. Such is the lot of most Muslim countries today. They are mechanically repeating old values, whereas the Turk is on the way to creating new values. He has passed through great experiences which have revealed his deeper self to him. In him life has begun to move, change, and amplify, giving birth to new desires, bringing new difficulties and suggesting new interpretations. The question which confronts him today, and which is likely to confront other Muslim countries in the near future is whether the Law of Islam is capable of evolution – a question which will require great intellectual effort, and is sure to be answered in the affirmative, provided the world of Islam approaches it in the spirit of ‘Umar – the first critical and independent mind in Islam who, at the last moments of the Prophet, had the moral courage to utter these remarkable words: “The Book of God is sufficient for us.”
We heartily welcome the liberal movement in modern Islam, but it must also be admitted that the appearance of liberal ideas in Islam constitutes also the most critical moment in the history of Islam. Liberalism has a tendency to act as a force of disintegration, and the race -idea which appears to be working in modern Islam with greater force than ever may ultimately wipe off the broad human outlook which Muslim people have imbibed from their religion. Further, our religious and political reformers in their zeal for liberalism may overstep the proper limits of reform in the absence of check on their youthful fervour. We are today passing through a period similar to that of the Protestant revolution in Europe, and the lesson which the rise and outcome of Luther’s movement teaches should not be lost on us. A careful reading of history shows that the Reformation was essentially a political movement, and the net result of it in Europe was a gradual displacement of the universal ethics of Christianity by systems of national ethics. The result of this tendency we have seen with our own eyes in the Great European War which, far from bringing any workable synthesis of the two opposing systems of ethics, has made the European situation still more intolerable. It is the duty of the leaders of the world of Islam today to understand the real meaning of what has happened in Europe, and then to move forward with self-control and a clear insight into the ultimate aims of Islam as a social polity.
I have given you some idea of the history and working of Ijtihād in modern Islam. I now proceed to see whether the history and structure of the Law of Islam indicate the possibility of any fresh interpretation of its principles. In other words, the question that I want to raise is:
Is the Law of Islam capable of evolution?
Horten, Professor of Semitic Philology at the University of Bonn, raises the same question in connection with the Philosophy and Theology of Islam. Reviewing the work of Muslim thinkers in the sphere of purely religious thought he points out that the history of Islam may aptly be described as a gradual interaction, harmony, and mutual deepening of two distinct forces i.e. the element of Aryan culture and knowledge on the one hand, and a Semitic religion on the other. A Muslim has always adjusted his religious outlook to the elements of culture which he assimilated from the peoples that surrounded him. From 800 to 1100, says Horten, not less than one hundred systems of theology appeared in Islam, a fact which bears ample testimony to the elasticity of Islamic thought as well as to the ceaseless activity of our early thinkers. Thus, in view of the revelations of a deeper study of Muslim literature and thought, this living European Orientalist has been driven to the following conclusion:
The spirit of Islam is so broad that it is practically boundless. With the exception of atheistic ideas alone it has assimilated all the attainable ideas of surrounding peoples, and given them its own peculiar direction of development.
The assimilative spirit of Islam is even more manifest in the sphere of law. Says Professor Hurgronje – the Dutch critic of Islam:
When we read the history of the development of Mohammedan Law we find that, on the one hand, the doctors of every age, on the slightest stimulus, condemn one another to the point of mutual accusations of heresy; and, on the other hand, the very same people, with greater and greater unity of purpose, try to reconcile the similar quarrels of their predecessors.
These views of modern European critics of Islam make it perfectly clear that, with the return of new life, the inner catholicity of the spirit of Islam is bound to work itself out in spite of the rigorous conservatism of our doctors. And I have no doubt that a deeper study of the enormous legal literature of Islam is sure to rid the modern critic of the superficial opinion that the Law of Islam is stationary and incapable of development. Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of Fiqh, which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people, and raise sectarian controversies; yet I venture to offer a few remarks on the point before us.
In the first place, we should bear in mind that from the earliest times, practically up to the rise of the Abbasids, there was no written law of Islam apart from the Qur’an.
Secondly, it is worthy of note that from about the middle of the first century up to the beginning of the fourth not less than nineteen schools of law and legal opinion appeared in Islam. This fact alone is sufficient to show how incessantly our early doctors of law worked in order to meet the necessities of a growing civilization. With the expansion of conquest and the consequent widening of the outlook of Islam these early legists had to take a wider view of things, and to study local conditions of life and habits of new peoples that came within the fold of Islam. A careful study of the various schools of legal opinion, in the light of contemporary social and political history, reveals that they gradually passed from the deductive to the inductive attitude in their efforts at interpretation.
Thirdly, when we study the four accepted sources of Muhammadan Law and the controversies which they invoked, the supposed rigidity of our recognized schools evaporates and the possibility of a further evolution becomes perfectly clear. Let us briefly discuss these sources.
(a) The Qur’an
The primary source of the Law of Islam is the Qur’an. The Qur’an, however, is not a legal code. Its main purpose, as I have said before, is to awaken in man the higher consciousness of his relation with God and the universe. No doubt, the Qur’an does lay down a few general principles and rules of a legal nature, especially relating to the family – the ultimate basis of social life. But why are these rules made part of a revelation the ultimate aim of which is man’s higher life? The answer to this question is furnished by the history of Christianity which appeared as a powerful reaction against the spirit of legality manifested in Judaism. By setting up an ideal of other-worldliness it no doubt did succeed in spiritualizing life, but its individualism could see no spiritual value in the complexity of human social relations. “Primitive Christianity”, says Naumann in his Briefe über Religion, “attached no value to the preservation of the State, law, organization, production. It simply does not reflect on the conditions of human society.” And Naumann concludes: “Hence we either dare to aim at being without a state, and thus throwing ourselves deliberately into the arms of anarchy, or we decide to possess, alongside of our religious creed, a political creed as well.” Thus the Qur’an considers it necessary to unite religion and state, ethics and politics in a single revelation much in the same way as Plato does in his Republic.
The important point to note in this connection, however, is the dynamic outlook of the Qur’an. I have fully discussed its origin and history. It is obvious that with such an outlook the Holy Book of Islam cannot be inimical to the idea of evolution. Only we should not forget that life is not change, pure and simple. It has within it elements of conservation also. While enjoying his creative activity, and always focusing his energies on the discovery of new vistas of life, man has a feeling of uneasiness in the presence of his own unfoldment. In his forward movement he cannot help looking back to his past, and faces his own inward expansion with a certain amount of fear. The spirit of man in its forward movement is restrained by forces which seem to be working in the opposite direction. This is only another way of saying that life moves with the weight of its own past on its back, and that in any view of social change the value and function of the forces of conservatism cannot be lost sight of. It is with this organic insight into the essential teachings of the Qur’an that modern Rationalism ought to approach our existing institutions. No people can afford to reject their past entirely, for it is their past that has made their personal identity. And in a society like Islam the problem of a revision of old institutions becomes still more delicate, and the responsibility of the reformer assumes a far more serious aspect. Islam is non-territorial in its character, and its aim is to furnish a model for the final combination of humanity by drawing its adherents from a variety of mutually repellent races, and then transforming this atomic aggregate into a people possessing a self-consciousness of their own. This was not an easy task to accomplish. Yet Islam, by means of its well-conceived institutions, has succeeded to a very great extent in creating something like a collective will and conscience in this heterogeneous mass. In the evolution of such a society even the immutability of socially harmless rules relating to eating and drinking, purity or impurity, has a life-value of its own, inasmuch as it tends to give such society a specific inwardness, and further secures that external and internal uniformity which counteracts the forces of heterogeneity always latent in a society of a composite character. The critic of these institutions must, therefore, try to secure, before he undertakes to handle them, a clear insight into the ultimate significance of the social experiment embodied in Islam. He must look at their structure, not from the standpoint of social advantage or disadvantage to this or that country, but from the point of view of the larger purpose which is being gradually worked out in the life of mankind as a whole.
Turning now to the groundwork of legal principles in the Qur’an, it is perfectly clear that far from leaving no scope for human thought and legislative activity the intensive breadth of these principles virtually acts as an awakener of human thought. Our early doctors of law taking their clue mainly from this groundwork evolved a number of legal systems; and the student of Muhammadan history knows very well that nearly half the triumphs of Islam as a social and political power were due to the legal acuteness of these doctors. “Next to the Romans,” says von Kremer, “there is no other nation besides the Arabs which could call its own a system of law so carefully worked out.” But with all their comprehensiveness these systems are after all individual interpretations, and as such cannot claim any finality. I know the Ulema of Islam claim finality for the popular schools of Muhammadan Law, though they never found it possible to deny the theoretical possibility of a complete Ijtihād. I have tried to explain the causes which, in my opinion, determined this attitude of the Ulema; but since things have changed and the world of Islam is confronted and affected today by new forces set free by the extraordinary development of human thought in all its directions, I see no reason why this attitude should be maintained any longer. Did the founders of our schools (Hanafi, Shafai, Maliki, Hambli) ever claim finality for their reasoning’s and interpretations? Never. The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to reinterpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their own experience and the altered conditions of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified. The teachings of the Qur’an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.
You will, I think, remind me here of the Turkish poet Ziya whom I quoted a moment ago, and ask whether the equality of man and woman demanded by him, equality, that is to say, in point of divorce, separation and inheritance, is possible according to Muhammadan Law. I do not know whether the awakening of women in Turkey has created demands which cannot be met with without a fresh interpretation of foundational principles. In the Punjab, as everybody knows, there have been cases in which Muslim women wishing to get rid of undesirable husbands have been driven to apostasy. Nothing could be more distant from the aims of a missionary religion. The Law of Islam, says the great Spanish jurist Imām Shātibī in his Al-Muwāfaqāt, aims at protecting five things– Dīn, Nafs, ‘Aql, Māl, and Nasl. Applying this test I venture to ask: “Does the working of the rule relating to apostasy, as laid down in the Hidāya, tend to protect the interests of the Faith in this country?” In view of the intense conservatism of the Muslims of India, Indian judges cannot but stick to what are called standard works. The result is that while the peoples are moving the law remains stationary.
With regard to the Turkish poet’s demand, I am afraid he does not seem to know much about the family law of Islam. Nor does he seem to understand the economic significance of the Qur’anic rule of inheritance. Marriage, according to Muhammadan Law, is a civil contract. The wife at the time of marriage is at liberty to get the husband’s power of divorce delegated to her on stated conditions, and thus secure equality of divorce with her husband. The reform suggested by the poet relating to the rule of inheritance is based on a misunderstanding. From the inequality of their legal shares it must not be supposed that the rule assumes the superiority of males over females. Such an assumption would be contrary to the spirit of Islam. The Qur’an says: “And for women are rights over men similar to those for men over women.” (2: 228).
The share of the daughter is determined not by any inferiority inherent in her, but in view of her economic opportunities, and the place she occupies in the social structure of which she is a part and parcel. Further, according to the poet’s own theory of society, the rule of inheritance must be regarded not as an isolated factor in the distribution of wealth, but as one factor among others working together for the same end. While the daughter, according to Muhammadan Law, is held to be full owner of the property given to her by both the father and the husband at the time of her marriage; while, further, she absolutely owns her dower-money which may be prompt or deferred according to her own choice, and in lieu of which she can hold possession of the whole of her husband’s property till payment, the responsibility of maintaining her throughout her life is wholly thrown on the husband. If you judge the working of the rule of inheritance from this point of view, you will find that there is no material difference between the economic position of sons and daughters, and it is really by this apparent inequality of their legal shares that the law secures the equality demanded by the Turkish poet. The truth is that the principles underlying the Qur’anic law of inheritance – this supremely original branch of Muhammadan Law as von Kremer describes it – have not yet received from Muslim lawyers the attention they deserve. Modern society with its bitter class-struggles ought to set us thinking; and if we study our laws in reference to the impending revolution in modern economic life, we are likely to discover, in the foundational principles, hitherto unrevealed aspects which we can work out with a renewed faith in the wisdom of these principles.
(b) The Hadīth
The second great source of Muhammadan Law (Shari’ah) is the traditions of the Holy Prophet. These have been the subject of great discussion both in ancient and modern times. Among their modern critics Professor Goldziher has subjected them to a searching examination in the light of modern canons of historical criticism, and arrives at the conclusion that they are, on the whole, untrustworthy! Another European writer, after examining the Muslim methods of determining the genuineness of a tradition, and pointing out the theoretical possibilities of error, arrives at the following conclusion:
“It must be said in conclusion that the preceding considerations represent only theoretical possibilities and that the question whether and how far these possibilities have become actualities is largely a matter of how far the actual circumstances offered inducements for making use of the possibilities. Doubtless, the latter, relatively speaking, were few and affected only a small proportion of the entire Sunnah. It may therefore be said that . . . for the most part the collections of Sunnah considered by the Moslems as canonical are genuine records of the rise and early growth of Islam” (Mohammedan Theories of Finance).
For our present purposes, however, we must distinguish traditions of a purely legal import from those which are of a non-legal character. With regard to the former, there arises a very important question as to how far they embody the pre-Islamic usages of Arabia which were in some cases left intact, and in others modified by the Prophet. It is difficult to make this discovery, for our early writers do not always refer to pre-Islamic usages. Nor is it possible to discover that usages, left intact by express or tacit approval of the Prophetﷺ were intended to be universal in their application. Shāh Wall Allāh has a very illuminating discussion on the point. I reproduce here the substance of his view.
The prophetic method of teaching, according to Shāh Wall Allāh, is that, generally speaking, the law revealed by a prophet takes especial notice of the habits, ways, and peculiarities of the people to whom he is specifically sent. The prophet who aims at all-embracing principles, however, can neither reveal different principles for different peoples, nor leaves them to work out their own rules of conduct. His method is to train one particular people, and to use them as a nucleus for the building up of a universal Shari’ah. In doing so he accentuates the principles underlying the social life of all mankind, and applies them to concrete cases in the light of the specific habits of the people immediately before him. The Shari’ah values (Ahkām) resulting from this application (e.g. rules relating to penalties for crimes) are in a sense specific to that people; and since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations. It was perhaps in view of this that Abū Hanīfah, who had a keen insight into the universal character of Islam, made practically no use of these traditions. The fact that he introduced the principle of Istihsān, i.e. juristic preference, which necessitates a careful study of actual conditions in legal thinking, throws further light on the motives which determined his attitude towards this source of Muhammadan Law. It is said that Abū Hanīfah made no use of traditions because there were no regular collections in his day. In the first place, it is not true to say that there were no collections in his day, as the collections of ‘Abd al-Mālik and Zuhrī were made not less than thirty years before the death of Abū Hanīfah. But even if we suppose that these collections never reached him, or that they did not contain traditions of a legal import, Abū Hanīfah, like Mālik and Ahmad Ibn Hanbal after him, could have easily made his own collection if he had deemed such a thing necessary. On the whole, then, the attitude of Abū Hanīfah towards the traditions of a purely legal import is to my mind perfectly sound; and if modern Liberalism considers it safer not to make any indiscriminate use of them as a source of law, it will be only following one of the greatest exponents of Muhammadan Law in Sunnī Islam. It is, however, impossible to deny the fact that the traditionists, by insisting on the value of the concrete case as against the tendency to abstract thinking in law, have done the greatest service to the Law of Islam. And a further intelligent study of the literature of traditions, if used as indicative of the spirit in which the Prophet (Pbuh) himself interpreted his Revelation, may still be of great help in understanding the life-value of the legal principles enunciated in the Qur’an. A complete grasp of their life-value alone can equip us in our endeavour to reinterpret the foundational principles.
(c) The Ijmā‘
The third source of Muhammadan Law is Ijmā‘ which is, in my opinion, perhaps the most important legal notion in Islam. It is, however, strange that this important notion, while invoking great academic discussions in early Islam, remained practically a mere idea, and rarely assumed the form of a permanent institution in any Muhammadan country. Possibly its transformation into a permanent legislative institution was contrary to the political interests of the kind of absolute monarchy that grew up in Islam immediately after the fourth Caliph. It was, I think, favourable to the interest of the Umayyad and the Abbaside Caliphs to leave the power of Ijtihād to individual Mujtahids rather than encourage the formation of a permanent assembly which might become too powerful for them. It is, however, extremely satisfactory to note that the pressure of new world forces and the political experience of European nations are impressing on the mind of modern Islam the value and possibilities of the idea of Ijmā‘. The growth of republican spirit and the gradual formation of legislative assemblies in Muslim lands constitute a great step in advance. The transfer of the power of Ijtihād from individual representatives of schools to a Muslim legislative assembly which, in view of the growth of opposing sects, is the only possible form Ijmā‘ can take in modern times, will secure contributions to legal discussion from laymen who happen to possess a keen insight into affairs. In this way alone can we stir into activity the dormant spirit of life in our legal system, and give it an evolutionary outlook. In India, however, difficulties are likely to arise for it is doubtful whether a non-Muslim legislative assembly can exercise the power of Ijtihād.
But there are one or two questions which must be raised and answered in regard to Ijmā‘. Can Ijmā‘ repeal the Qur’an? It is unnecessary to raise this question before a Muslim audience, but I consider it necessary to do so in view of a very misleading statement by a European critic in a book called “Muhamedan Theories of Finance” published by the Columbia University. The author of this book says, without citing any authority, that according to some Hanafī and Mu‘tazilah writers the Ijmā‘ can repeal the Qur’an. There is not the slightest justification for such a statement in the legal literature of Islam. Not even a tradition of the Prophet can have any such effect. It seems to me that the author is misled by the word Naskh in the writings of our early doctors to whom, as Imām Shātibī points out in Al-Muwāfiqāt, vol. iii, p. 65, this word, when used in discussions relating to the Ijmā‘ of the companions, meant only the power to extend or limit the application of a Qur’anic rule of law, and not the power to repeal or supersede it by another rule of law. And even in the exercise of this power the legal theory, as Āmidī– a Shāfi‘ī doctor of law who died about the middle of the seventh century, and whose work is recently published in Egypt – tells us, is that the companions must have been in possession of a Sharī‘ah value (Hukm) entitling them to such a limitation or extension.
But supposing the companions have unanimously decided a certain point, the further question is whether later generations are bound by their decision. Shaukānī has fully discussed this point, and cited the views held by writers belonging to different schools. I think it is necessary in this connection to discriminate between a decision relating to a question of fact and the one relating to a question of law. In the former case, as for instance, when the question arose whether the two small Sūrahs known as Mu‘awwidhatān formed part of the Qur’an or not, and the companion’s unanimously decided that they did, we are bound by their decision, obviously because the companions alone were in a position to know the fact. In the latter case the question is one of interpretation only, and I venture to think, on the authority of Karkhī, that later generations are not bound by the decision of the companions. Says Karkhī: “The Sunnah of the companions is binding in matters which cannot be cleared up by Qiyās, but it is not so in matters which can be established by Qiyās.”
One more question may be asked as to the legislative activity of a modern Muslim assembly which must consist, at least for the present, mostly of men possessing no knowledge of the subtleties of Muhammadan Law. Such an assembly may make grave mistakes in their interpretation of law. How can we exclude or at least reduce the possibilities of erroneous interpretation? The Persian constitution of 1906 provided a separate ecclesiastical committee of Ulema – “conversant with the affairs of the world”– having power to supervise the legislative activity of the Mejliss. This, in my opinion, dangerous arrangement is probably necessary in view of the Persian constitutional theory. According to that theory, I believe, the king is a mere custodian of the realm which really belongs to the Absent Imām. The Ulema, as representatives of the Imām, consider themselves entitled to supervise the whole life of the community, though I fail to understand how, in the absence of an apostolic succession, they establish their claim to represent the Imām. But whatever may be the Persian constitutional theory, the arrangement is not free from danger, and may be tried, if at all, only as a temporary measure in Sunnī countries. The Ulema should form a vital part of a Muslim legislative assembly helping and guiding free discussion on questions relating to law. The only effective remedy for the possibilities of erroneous interpretations is to reform the present system of legal education in Muhammadan countries, to extend its sphere, and to combine it with an intelligent study of modern jurisprudence.
(d) The Qiyās
The fourth basis of Fiqh is Qiyās, i.e. the use of analogical reasoning in legislation. In view of different social and agricultural conditions prevailing in the countries conquered by Islam, the school of Abū Hanīfah seem to have found, on the whole, little or no guidance from the precedents recorded in the literature of traditions. The only alternative open to them was to resort to speculative reason in their interpretations. The application of Aristotelian logic, however, though suggested by the discovery of new conditions in Iraq, was likely to prove exceedingly harmful in the preliminary stages of legal development. The intricate behaviour of life cannot be subjected to hard and fast rules logically deducible from certain general notions. Yet, looked at through the spectacles of Aristotle’s logic, it appears to be a mechanism pure and simple with no internal principle of movement. Thus, the school of Abū Hanīfah tended to ignore the creative freedom and arbitrariness of life, and hoped to build a logically perfect legal system on the lines of pure reason. The legists of Hijāz, however, true to the practical genius of their race, raised strong protests against the scholastic subtleties of the legists of Iraq, and their tendency to imagine unreal cases which they rightly thought would turn the Law of Islam into a kind of lifeless mechanism. These bitter controversies among the early doctors of Islam led to a critical definition of the limitations, conditions, and correctives of Qiyās which, though originally appeared as a mere disguise for the Mujtahid’s personal opinion, eventually became a source of life and movement in the Law of Islam. The spirit of the acute criticism of Mālik and Shāfi‘ī on Abū Hanīfah’s principle of Qiyās, as a source of law, constitutes really an effective Semitic restraint on the Aryan tendency to seize the abstract in preference to the concrete, to enjoy the idea rather than the event. This was really a controversy between the advocates of deductive and inductive methods in legal research. The legists of Iraq originally emphasized the eternal aspect of the “notion”, while those of Hijāz laid stress on its temporal aspect. The latter, however, did not see the full significance of their own position, and their instinctive partiality to the legal tradition of Hijāz narrowed their vision to the “precedents” that had actually happened in the days of the Prophet and his companions. No doubt they recognized the value of the concrete, but at the same time they eternalized it, rarely resorting to Qiyās based on the study of the concrete as such. Their criticism of Abū Hanīfah and his school, however, emancipated the concrete as it were, and brought out the necessity of observing the actual movement and variety of life in the interpretation of juristic principles. Thus the school of Abū Hanīfah which fully assimilated the results of this controversy is absolutely free in its essential principle and possesses much greater power of creative adaptation than any other school of Muhammadan Law. But, contrary to the spirit of his own school, the modern Hanafī legist has eternalized the interpretations of the founder or his immediate followers much in the same way as the early critics of Abū Hanīfah eternalized the decisions given on concrete cases. Properly understood and applied, the essential principle of this school, i.e. Qiyās, as Shāfi‘ī rightly says, is only another name for Ijtihād which, within the limits of the revealed texts, is absolutely free; and its importance as a principle can be seen from the fact that, according to most of the doctors, as Qādī Shaukānī tells us, it was permitted even in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet. The closing of the door of Ijtihād is pure fiction suggested partly by the crystallization of legal thought in Islam, and partly by that intellectual laziness which, especially in the period of spiritual decay, turns great thinkers into idols. If some of the later doctors have upheld this fiction, modern Islam is not bound by this voluntary surrender of intellectual independence. Zarkashī writing in the eighth century of the Hijrah rightly observes:
If the upholders of this fiction mean that the previous writers had more facilities, while the later writers had more difficulties, in their way, it is, nonsense; for it does not require much understanding to see that ijtihad for later doctors is easier than for the earlier doctors. Indeed the commentaries on the Koran and sunnah have been compiled and multiplied to such an extent that the mujtahid of today has more material for interpretation than he needs. [Note: Present age of cyberspace and internet has made it available to even common people, literally at their fingertips]
This brief discussion, I hope, will make it clear to you that neither in the foundational principles nor in the structure of our systems, as we find them today, is there anything to justify the present attitude. Equipped with penetrative thought and fresh experience the world of Islam should courageously proceed to the work of reconstruction before them: This work of reconstruction, however, has a far more serious aspect than mere adjustment to modern conditions of life. The Great European War bringing in its wake the awakening of Turkey – the element of stability in the world of Islam – as a French writer has recently described her, and the new economic experiment tried in the neighbourhood of Muslim Asia, must open our eyes to the inner meaning and destiny of Islam. Humanity needs three things today – a spiritual interpretation of the universe, spiritual emancipation of the individual, and basic principles of a universal import directing the evolution of human society on a spiritual basis. Modern Europe has, no doubt, built idealistic systems on these lines, but experience shows that truth revealed through pure reason is incapable of bringing that fire of living conviction which personal revelation alone can bring. This is the reason why pure thought has so little influenced men, while religion has always elevated individuals, and transformed whole societies. The idealism of Europe never became a living factor in her life, and the result is a perverted ego seeking itself through mutually intolerant democracies whose sole function is to exploit the poor in the interest of the rich. Believe me, Europe today is the greatest hindrance in the way of man’s ethical advancement. The Muslim, on the other hand, is in possession of these ultimate ideas on the basis of a revelation, which, speaking from the inmost depths of life, internalizes its own apparent externality. With him the spiritual basis of life is a matter of conviction for which even the least enlightened man among us can easily lay down his life; and in view of the basic idea of Islam that there can be no further revelation binding on man, we ought to be spiritually one of the most emancipated peoples on earth. Early Muslims emerging out of the spiritual slavery of pre-Islamic Asia were not in a position to realize the true significance of this basic idea. Let the Muslim of today appreciate his position, reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles, and evolve, out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam, that spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.
Conclusion
The salient point highlighted by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal in the sixth lecture; “Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam” can be summarized as:
• As an emotional system of unification, Islam recognizes the worth of the individual as such, and rejects blood-relationship as a basis of human unity… The search for a purely psychological foundation of human unity becomes possible only with the perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin
• The new culture finds the foundation of world-unity in the principle of Tawhid (monotheism)… And since God is the ultimate spiritual basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man’s loyalty to his own ideal nature
• The ultimate spiritual basis of all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in variety and change. A society based on such a conception of Reality must reconcile, in its life, the categories of permanence and change. It must possess eternal principles to regulate its collective life, for the eternal gives us a foothold in the world of perpetual change. But eternal principles when they are understood to exclude all possibilities of change which, according to the Quran, is one of the greatest “signs” of God, tend to immobilize what is essentially mobile in its nature
•… the principle of movement in the structure of Islam… is known as Ijtihad
•… partly owing to a misunderstanding of the ultimate motives of Rationalism, and partly owing to the unrestrained thought of particular Rationalists, conservative thinkers regarded this movement as a force of disintegration, and considered it a danger to the stability of Islam as a social polity. Their main purpose, therefore, was to preserve the social integrity of Islam, and to realize this the only course open to them was to utilize the binding force of Shari’ah
•… the destruction of Baghdad – the centre of Muslim intellectual life – in the middle of the thirteenth century… was indeed a great blow… For fear of further disintegration, which is only natural in such a period of political decay, the conservative thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one point of preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous exclusion of all innovations in the law of Shari’ah as expounded by the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social order, and there is no doubt that they were partly right, because organization does to a certain extent counteract the forces of decay. But they did not see, and our modern Ulema do not see, that the ultimate fate of a people does not depend so much on organization as on the worth and power of individual men. In an over-organized society the individual is altogether crushed out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought around him and loses his own soul
• “The verdict of history,” as a modern writer has happily put it, “is that worn-out ideas have never risen to power among a people who have worn them out.”
• The only effective power, therefore, that counteracts the forces of decay in a people is the rearing of self-concentrated individuals. Such individuals alone reveal the depth of life. They disclose new standards…
• The tendency to over-organization by a false reverence of the past, as manifested in the legists of Islam in thirteenth century and later, was contrary to the inner impulse of Islam
• The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in regard to what we call the external world; it is mind or soul when you look at it as acting in regard to the ultimate aim and ideal of such acting. The essence of Tawheed as a working idea, is equality, solidarity, and freedom
• The spirit finds its opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular. All that is secular is, therefore, sacred in the roots of its being… There is no such thing as a profane world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the self-realization of spirit. All is holy ground. As the Prophetﷺ so beautifully puts it: “The whole of this earth is a mosque.” The State, according to Islam, is only an effort to realize the spiritual in a human organization
• … The Turkish Nationalists assimilated the idea of the separation of the Church and the State from the history of European political ideas. Primitive Christianity was founded, not as a political or civil unit, but as a monastic order in a profane world, having nothing to do with civil affairs, and obeying the Roman authority practically in all matters. The result of this was that when the State became Christian, State and Church confronted each other as distinct powers with interminable boundary disputes between them. Such a thing could never happen in Islam; for Islam was from the very beginning a civil society, having received from the Quran a set of simple legal principles which, like the twelve tables of the Romans, carried, as experience subsequently proved, great potentialities of expansion and development by interpretation. The Nationalist theory of State, therefore, is misleading inasmuch as it suggests a dualism which does not exist in Islam
• The republican form of government is not only thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in the world of Islam
• … every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics… It seems to me that God is slowly bringing home to us the truth that Islam is neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for facility of reference only, and not for restricting the social horizon of its members
•… Turkey alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained to self-consciousness… she alone has passed from the ideal to the real – a transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle… most Muslim countries today… are mechanically repeating old values, whereas the Turk is on the way to creating new values
• The question… which is likely to confront other Muslim countries in the near future is whether the Law of Islam is capable of evolution – a question which will require great intellectual effort, and is sure to be answered in the affirmative; provided the world of Islam approaches it in the spirit of Umar – the first critical and independent mind in Islam who, at the last moments of the Prophet, had the moral courage to utter these remarkable words: “The Book of God is sufficient for us”.
• Horten, Professor of Semitic Philology at the University of Bonn, raises the same question in connexion with the Philosophy and Theology… points out that the history of Islam may aptly be described as a gradual interaction, harmony, and mutual deepening of two distinct forces, i.e., the element of Aryan culture and knowledge on the one hand, and a Semitic religion on the other. The Muslim has always adjusted his religious outlook to the elements of culture which he assimilated from the people that surrounded him. From 800 to 1100, says Horten, not less than one hundred systems of theology appeared in Islam, a fact which bears ample testimony to the elasticity of Islamic thought as well as to the ceaseless activity of our early thinkers.
• Thus, in view of the revelations of a deeper study of Muslim literature and thought, this living European Orientalist has been driven to the following conclusions:
• “The spirit of Islam is so broad that it is practically boundless. With the exception of atheistic ideas alone it has assimilated all the attainable ideas of surrounding peoples, and given them its own peculiar direction of development.”
• I have no doubt that a deeper study of the enormous legal literature of Islam is sure to rid the modern critic of the superficial opinion that the Law of Islam is stationary and incapable of development. Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of “Fiqh” which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people, and raise sectarian controversies;
• We should bear in mind that from the earliest times, practically up to the rise of the Abbasids, there was no written law of Islam apart from the Quran.
• From about the middle of the first century up to the beginning of the fourth not less than nineteen schools of law and legal opinion appeared in Islam. This fact alone is sufficient to show how incessantly our early doctors of law worked in order to meet the necessities of a growing civilization… these early legists had to take a wider view of things, and to study local conditions of life and habits of new peoples that came within the fold of Islam… they gradually passed from the deductive to the inductive attitude in their efforts at interpretation
• … the Quran considers it necessary to unite religion and State, ethics and politics in a single revelation much in the same way as Plato does in his Republic
• No people can afford to reject their past entirely, for it is their past that has made their personal identity
• “Next to Romans”, says Von Kremer, “there is no other nation besides the Arabs which could call its own a system of law so carefully worked out”
• Did the founders of our schools ever claim finality of their reasonings and interpretations? Never
• The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to reinterpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their own experience and altered conditions of modern life is, in my opinion, perfectly justified.
• … according to Shah Wali Allah… generally speaking, the law revealed by a Prophet takes especial notice of the habits, ways and peculiarities of the people to whom he is specifically sent.
• The Prophet who aims at all-embracing principles, however, can neither reveal different principles for different peoples, nor leave them to work out their own rules of conduct. His method is to train one particular people, and to use them as a nucleus for the building up of a universal Shari’ah. In doing so he accentuates the principles underlying the social life of all mankind, and applies them to concrete cases in the light of the specific habit of the people immediately before him.
• The Shari’ah values… are in a sense specific to that people; and, since their observance is not an end in itself, they cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations. It was perhaps in view of this that Abu Hanifa, who had a keen insight into the universal character of Islam, made practically no use of these traditions. The fact that he introduced the principle of “Istihsan”, i.e. juristic preference, which necessitates a careful study of actual conditions in legal thinking, throws further light on the motives which determined his attitude towards this source of Mohammedan Law.
• It is, however, impossible to deny the fact that the traditionists, by insisting on the value of the concrete case as against the tendency to abstract thinking in law, have done the greatest service to the Law of Islam. And a further intelligent study of the literature of traditions, if used as indicative of the spirit in which the Prophetﷺ himself interpreted his Revelation, may still be of great help in understanding the life-value of the legal principles enunciated in the Quran.
• Ijma…, perhaps the most important legal notion in Islam… while invoking great academic discussions in early Islam, remained practically a mere idea, and rarely assumed the form of a permanent institution in any Mohammaden country… It was, I think, favourable to the interest of the Umayyad and the Abbasid Caliphs to leave the power of Ijtihad to individual Mujtahids rather than encourage the formation of a permanent assembly which might become too powerful for them.
• The transfer of the power of Ijtihad from individual representatives of schools to a Muslim legislative assembly which, in view of the growth of opposing sects, is the only possible form Ijma can take in modern times, will secure contributions to legal discussion from laymen who happen to possess a keen insight into affairs.
• The Ulema should form a vital part of a Muslim legislative assembly helping and guiding free discussion on questions relating to law. The only effective remedy for the possibilities of erroneous interpretations is to reform the present system of legal education in Mohammedan countries, to extend its sphere, and to combine it with an intelligent study of modern jurisprudence.
• The closing of the door of Ijtihad is pure fiction suggested partly by the crystallization of legal thought in Islam, and partly by that intellectual laziness which, especially in the period of spiritual decay, turns great thinkers into idols.
• Humanity needs three things today – a spiritual interpretation of the universe, spiritual emancipation of the individual, and basic principles of a universal import directing the evolution of human society on a spiritual basis. Modern Europe has, no doubt, built idealistic systems on these lines, but experience shows that truth revealed through pure reason is incapable of bringing that fire of living conviction which personal revelation alone can bring. This is the reason why pure thought has so little influenced men, while religion has always elevated individuals, and transformed whole societies.
• The idealism of Europe never became a living factor in her life, and the result is a perverted ego seeking itself through mutually intolerant democracies whose sole function is to exploit the poor in the interest of the rich. Believe me, Europe today is the greatest hindrance in the way of man’s ethical advancement.
• Let the Muslim of today appreciate his position, reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles, and evolve, out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam, that spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.
Iqbal tried to agitate the minds of Muslim intellectuals and theologians, in his words: “In these lectures I propose to undertake a philosophical discussion of some of the basic of ideas of Islam, in the hope that this may, at least, be helpful towards a proper understanding of the meaning of Islam as a message to humanity. Also with a view to give a kind of ground-outline for further discussion (Lecture-1)
Iqbal was aware that the new generation of Muslims could not remain aloof from the values of modern Western culture. It was therefore necessary for them to remain Muslim and at the same time to become modern. Iqbal has called for a re-examination of the intellectual foundations of Islamic philosophy.
References/End Notes
Lecture 6: The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam
The Qur’an maintains the divine origin of man by affirming that God breathed of His own spirit unto him as in verses 15: 29; 32: 9; and 38: 72.
Constantine the Great was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. He was converted to Christianity, it is said, by seeing a luminous cross in the sky. By his celebrated Edict of Toleration in 313 he raised Christianity to equality with the public pagan cults in the Empire. For his attempt at the unification of Christianity, cf. Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, pp. 655-61, and The Cambridge Medieval History, vol. 1, chapter i.
Flavius Claudius Julianus (331-363), nephew of Constantine, traditionally known as Julian the Apostate, ruled the Roman Empire from 361 to 363. Studying in Athens in 355, he frequented pagan Neoplatonist circles. As emperor, he at once proclaimed himself a pagan, restored fiefdom of worship for pagans and began a campaign against the orthodox church. Cf. Alice Gardner, Julian and the Last Struggle of Paganism against Christianity, and Will Durant, The Age of Faith, pp. 10-19.
See J. H. Denison, Emotion as the Basis of Civilization, pp. 267-68.
The principle of Divine Unity is embodied in the Qur’anic proclamation: lā ilāha illa Allāh: there is no god except God. It is a constant theme of the Qur’an and is repeatedly mentioned as the basic principle not only of Islam but of every religion revealed by God.
Reference is to the Qur’anic verse 29: 69. During the course of his conversation with one of his admirers, Allama Iqbal is reported to have made the following general observation with reference to this verse: ‘All efforts in the pursuit of sciences and for attainment of perfections and high goals in life which in one way or other are beneficial to humanity are man’s exerting in the way of Allah (Malfūzāt-i Iqbāl, ed. and annotated Dr. Abū ’l-Laith Siddīqī, p. 67).
Translating this verse thus: ‘But as for those who strive hard in Our cause– We shall most certainly guide them onto paths that lead unto us’, Muhammad Asad adds in a footnote that the plural ‘paths’ for subul used here is obviously meant to stress the fact– alluded to often in the Qur’an– that there are many paths which lead to a cognizance (ma‘rifah) of God’ (The Message of the Qur’an, p. 616, note 61).
Cf. Abū Dāwūd, Sunan, ‘Aqdiyā’: 11; Tirmidhī, ‘Ahkām’: 3. and Dārimī, Kitāb al-Sunan, I, 60; this hadīth is generally regarded as the very basis of ijtihād in Islam. On the view expressed by certain scholars that this hadīth is to be ranked as al-mursal, cf. ‘Abd al-Qādir, Nazarah ‘Āmmah fī Tārikh al-Fiqh al-Islāmī, 1, 70 and 210, and Sayyid Muhammad Yūsuf Binnorī as quoted by Dr. Khālid Mas‘ūd, ‘Khutubāt-i Iqbāl men Ijtihād ki Ta‘rīf. Ijtihād kā Tārīkhī Pas Manzar’, Fikr-o-Nazar, XV/vii-viii (Islamabad, Jan.-Feb. 1978), 50-51. See also Ahmad Hasan (tr.), Sunan Abū Dāwūd, I11, 109, note 3034 based on Shams al-Haqq, ‘Awn al-Ma‘būd li halli Mushkilāt Sunan Abī Dāwūd, III, 331.
These three degrees of legislation in the language of the later jurists of Islam are: ijtihād fi ’l-shar‘, ijtihfid fi ’l-madhhab and ijtihād fi ’l-masā’il; cf. Subhī Mahmasānī, Falsafat al-Tashrī‘ fi ’l-Islām, English trans. F. J. Ziadeh, p. 94, and N. P. Aghnides, Mohammeden Theories of Finance, pp. 121-22. For somewhat different schemes of gradation of the jurists (for example the one laid down by the Ottoman scholar and Shaikh al-Islam Kemāl Pāshazādeh (d. 940/1534) in his Tabaqāt al-Fuqahā’ and minor differences in nomenclature in different schools of law (Hanafis, Shāfi‘ī and others), cf. Zāhid al-Kawtharī, Husn al-Taqādī fī Sīrat al-Imām abī Yūsuf al-Qādī, pp. 24-25.
It is the possibilities anew of the first degree of Ijtihād– complete authority in legislation– that Allama Iqbal proposes to consider in what he calls (and this is to be noted) ‘this paper’ rather than ‘this lecture’ as everywhere else in the present work. This is a manifest reference to a ‘paper on Ijtihād’ that he read on 13 December 1924 at the annual session of Anjuman-i Himāyat-i Islām. Cf. M. Khālid Mas‘ūd, ‘Iqbal’s Lecture on Ijtihād’, Iqbal Review, XIX/iii (October 1978), p. 8. quoting in English the announcement about this Lecture published in the Daily Zamīndār, Lahore, 12 December 1924; and also S. M. Ikram, Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan, p. 183, note 19 where the worthy author tells us that he ‘was present at this meeting as a young student’.
Among Allama Iqbal’s letters discovered only recently are the four of them addressed to Professor M. Muhammad Shafi‘ of University Oriental College, Lahore (later Chairman: Urdu Encyclopaedia of Islam). These letters dating from 13 March 1924 to 1 May 1924, reproduced with their facsimiles in Dr. Rana M. N. Ehsan Elahie, ‘Iqbal on the Freedom of Ijtihād”, Oriental College Magazine. (Allama Iqbal Centenary Number), LIII (1977), 295-300, throw light, among other things, on the authors and movements that Allama Iqbal thought it was necessary for him to study anew for the writing of what he calls in one of these letters a paper on the ‘Freedom of Ijtihād in Modern Islam’. A few months later when the courts were closed for summer vacation Allama Iqbal in his letter dated 13 August 1924 to M. Sa‘īd al-Dīn Ja‘farī informed him that he was writing an elaborate paper on ‘The Idea of Ijtihād, in the Law of Islam’ (cf. Aurāq-i Gumgashtah, ed. Rahim Bakhsh Shaheen, p. 118). This is the paper which when finally written was read in the above-mentioned session of the Anjuman-i Himāyat-i Islām in December 1924; the present Lecture, it is now generally believed, is a revised and enlarged form of this very paper.
Cf. M. Hanīf Nadvī, ‘Mas’alah Khalq-i Qur’an’ in Aqliyāt-i Ibn Taimīyyah (Urdu), pp. 231-53, and A. J. Arberry, Revelation and Reason in Islam, pp. 23-27.
References to this hotly debated issue of the eternity or createdness of the Qur’an are also to be found in Allama Iqbal’s private notes, for example those on the back cover of his own copy of Spengler’s Decline of the West (cf. Descriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library, Plate No. 33) or his highly valuable one-page private study notes preserved in Allama Iqbal Museum, Lahore (cf. Relics of Allama Iqbal: Catalogue, I. 26). It is, however, in one of his greatest poems ‘Iblīs ki Majlis-i Shūra’ (‘Satan’s Parliament’) included in the posthumous Armughān-i Hijāz that one is to find his final verdict on this baseless scholastic controversy:
ہیں کلام اللہ کے الفاظ حادث یا قدیم؟
امت مرحوم کی ہے کس عقیدت میں نجات
کیا مسلماں کے لیے کافی نہیں اس دور میں
یہ الہیات کے ترشے ہونے لات ومنات؟
Are the words of the Qur’an created or untreated?
In which belief does lie the salvation of the ummah?
Are the idols of Lāt and Manāt chiselled by Muslim theology
Not sufficient for the Muslims of today?
Cf. Ibn Qutaibah, Ta‘wīl Mukhtalif al-Hadīth, p. 19.
Cf. Development of Metaphysics in Persia, p. 54, where it is stated that rationalism ‘tended to disintegrate the solidarity of the Islamic Church’; also W. M. Watt, ‘The Political Attitudes of the Mu‘tazilah’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, (1962), pp. 38-54.
Cf. Muhammad al-Khudari, Tārikh al-Tashrī‘ al-Islāmī, Urdu trans. ‘Abd al-Salām Nadvī, p. 323; Ibn Qutaibah, Ma‘ārif, p. 217, and J. Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, p. 242. According to A. J. Arberry, Sufyān al-Thaurī’s school of jurisprudence survived for about two centuries; cf. Muslim Saints and Mystics, p. 129 translator’s prefatory remarks.
On the distinction of zāhir and bātin, see Allama Iqbal’s article “Ilm-i Zāhir wa ‘Ilm-i Bātin” (Anwār-i Iqbāl, ed. B. A. Dar, pp. 268-77) and also the following passage from Allama Iqbal’s article captioned as ‘Self in the Light of Relativity’ (Thoughts and Reflections of Iqbal, ed. S. A. Vahid, pp. 113-14): ‘The mystic method has attracted some of the best minds in the history of man-kind. Probably there is something in it. But I am inclined to think that it is detrimental to some of the equally important interests of life, and is prompted by a desire to escape from the arduous task of the conquest of matter through intellect. The surest way to realize the potentialities of the world is to associate with its shifting actualities. I believe that Empirical Science– association with the visible– is an indispensable stage in the life of contemplation. In the words of the Qur’an, the Universe that confronts us is not bātil. It has its uses, and the most important use of it is that the effort to overcome the obstruction offered by it sharpens our insight and prepares us for an insertion into what lies below the surface of phenomena.
The founder of Zāhirī school of law was Dāwūd b. ‘Alī b. Khalaf (c. 200-270/c. 815-884) who flourished in Baghdad; Ibn Hazm (384-456/994-1064) was its founder in Muslim Spain and its most illustrious representative in Islam. According to Goldziher, Ibn Hazm was the first to apply the principles of the Zāhirite school to dogmatics (The Zāhiris: Their Doctrine and their History, p. 112); cf. also Goldziher’s articles: ‘Dāwūd B. ‘Alī B. Khalf’ and ‘Ibn Hazm’ in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, V, 406 b and VII, 71 a.
Cf. Serajul Haque, ‘Ibn Taimiyya’s Conception of Analogy and Consensus’, Islamic Culture, XVII (1943), 77-78; Ahmad Hasan, The Doctrine of Ijmā‘ in Islam, pp. 189-92, and H. Laoust, ‘Ibn Taymiyya’, Encyclopaedia of Islam (New edition), III, 954.
Cf. D. B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, p. 275.
Suyūtī, Husn al-Mūhadarah 1, 183; also ‘Abd al-Muta‘āl al-Sa‘idī, Al-Mujaddidūn fi ’l-Islām, pp. 8-12. Cf. also Allama Iqbal’s ‘Rejoinder to The Light’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal. pp. 167-68) wherein, commenting on the tradition that mujaddids appear at the head of every century (Abū Dawūd, Malāhim: 1), he observed that the tradition ‘was probably popularised by Jalāl-ud-Dīn Suyūti in his own interest and much importance cannot be attached to it.’
Reference may also be made here to Allama’s letter dated 7 April 1932 addressed to Muhammad Ahsan wherein, among other things, he observes that, according to his firm belief (‘aqīdah), all traditions relating to mujaddidiyat are the product of Persian and non-Arab imagination and they certainly are foreign to the true spirit of the Qur’an (cf. Iqbālnāmah, II, 231).
For Allama Iqbal’s statements issued from time to time in clarification of meanings and intentions of pan-Islamic movement or pan-Islamism see: Letters and Writings of Iqbal, pp. 55-57: Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal. p. 237; Guftār-i Iqbāl, ed. M. Rafīq Afdal, pp. 177-79 and 226– the earliest of these statements is contained in Allama’s letter dated 22 August 1910 to Editor: Paisa Akhbār reproduced in Riaz Hussain, ‘1910 Men Dunyā-i Islam ke Hālāt’ (Political Conditions of the Islamic World in 1910), Iqbal Review, XIX/ii (July 1978), 88-90.
In three of these statements Allama Iqbal has approvingly referred to Professor E. G. Browne’s well-grounded views on ‘Pan-Islamism’, the earliest of which were published (s.v.) in Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century, ed. F. Kirpatrick (Cambridge, 1904).
It may be added that Allama’s article ‘Political Thought in Islam’, Sociological Review, I (1908), 249-61 (reproduced in Speeches, Writings and Statements, pp. 107-21), was originally a lecture delivered by him in a meeting of the Pan-Islamic Society, London, founded by Abdullah Suhrawardy in 1903– the Society also had its own journal: Pan-Islam. Incidentally, there is a mention of Allama’s six lectures on Islamic subjects in London by his biographers (cf. Abdullah Anwar Beg, The Poet of the East, p. 28, and Dr Abdus Salām Khurshīd, Sarguzasht-i Iqbāl, pp. 60-61) which is supported by Allama’s letter dated 10 February 1908 to Khwājah Hasan Nizāmī, listing the ‘topics’ of four of these lectures as (i) ‘Islamic Mysticism’, (ii) ‘Influence of Muslim Thought on European Civilization’, (iii) ‘Muslim Democracy’, and (iv) ‘Islam and Reason’ (cf. Iqbalnāmah, II, 358). Abdullah Anwar Beg, however, speaks of Allama’s extempore lecture on ‘Certain Aspects of Islam’ under the auspices of the Pan-Islamic Society, which, it is said, was reported verbatim in a number of leading newspapers, the next day (ibid.).
Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb’s date of birth is now more generally given as 1115/1703; cf., however, Khair al-Dīn al-Ziriklī, Al-A‘lām, VII, 138 (note) and A History of Muslim Philosophy, ed. M. M. Sharif, II, 1446, in support of placing it in 1111/1700.
It is significant to note that whenever Allama Iqbal thought of modernist movements in Islam, he traced them back to the movement of Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Wahhāb; cf. Letters and Writings of Iqbal, pp. 82 and 93. In his valuable article ‘Islam and Ahmadism’ Allama Iqbal observes: ‘Syed Ahmad Khan in India, Syed Jamal-ud-Din Afghani in Afghanistan and Mufti Alam Jan in Russia. These men were probably inspired by Muhammad Ibn Abdul Wahab who was born in Nejd in 1700, the founder of the so-called Wahabi movement which may fitly be described as the first throb of life in modern Islam’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements, p. 190). Again, in his letter dated 7 April 1932 to Muhammad Ahsan, Allama Iqbal, explaining the pre-eminent position of Jamāl al-Dīn Afghānī in modern Islam, wrote: ‘The future historian of the Muslims of Egypt, Iran, Turkey and India will first of all mention the name of ‘Abd al-Wahhāb Najadi and then of Jamāl al-Din Afghānī’ (cf. Iqbālnāmah, II, 231).
Cf. article ‘Ibn Tumart’ in Encyclopaedia of Islam (New edition), III, 958-60, also in Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam and R. Le Tourneau, The Al-mohad Movement in North Africa in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, by Index.
This is a clear reference to the well-known saying of the Prophet : innama ’l-a‘mālu bi ’l-nniyyāt, i.e. ‘Actions shall be judged only by intention’. It is to be noted that this hadīth of great moral and spiritual import has been quoted by Bukhārī in seven places and it is with this that he opens his Al-Jāmi‘ al-Sahīh.
For this hadīth worded: al-ardu kulluhā masjidun, see Tirmidhī, ‘Salāt’: 119; Nasā’ī, ‘Ghusl’: 26; ‘Masājid’: 3 and 42; Ibn Mājah, ‘Tahārah’: 90, and Dārimī, Siyar: 28 and ‘Salāt’: 111. This superb saying of the Prophet also found expression in Allama’s verse, viz. Kulliyāt-i Iqbāl (Persian), Rumūz-i Bekhudī; p. 114, v. 3, and Pas Chih Bāyad Kard, p. 817, v. 8:
تاز بخشش ہاے آں سلطان دیں
مسجد ما شد ہمہ روے زمیں
Through the bounty of the ruler of our faith,
the entire earth became our mosque.
مومناں راگفت آں سلطان دیں
مسجد من ایں ہمہ دوے زمیں
The King of the Faith said to the Muslims:
‘The whole earth is my mosque’ (trans. B. A. Dar).
Cf. The Muqaddimah, trans. F. Rosenthal, I, 388-92.
For the Khawārij’s view of the Caliphate, see Allama Iqbal’s article ‘Political Thought in Islam’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 119-20); also W. Thomson, ‘Kharijitism and the Kharijites’, Macdonald Presentation Volume, pp. 371-89, and E. Tyan, Institutions du droit public musulman, ii, 546-61.
Cf. F. A Tansel (ed). Ziya Gokalp kulliyati: Surler ve halk masallar. p. 129. On Allama’s translation of the passages from Ziya Gokalp’s kulliyati, Dr. Annemarie Schimmel observes: ‘Iqbal did not know Turkish, has studied his (Ziya Gökalp’s) work through the German translation of August Fischer, and it is of interest to see how he (Iqbal) sometimes changes or omits some words of the translation when reproducing the verses in the Lecture’ (Gabriel’s Wing, p. 242).
It may be added that these changes or omissions are perhaps more due to August Fischer’s German translation as given in his Aus der religiosen Reformbewegung in der Turkei (Religious Reform Movement in Turkey) than to Allama. The term ‘esri’, for example, has been used by Ziya Gökalp for ‘secular’ and not for ‘modern’ as Fischer has put it. Again, a line from the original Turkish text is missing in the present passage, but this is so in the German translation.
For this comparative study of the German and English translations of passages from Gokalp’s kiilliyati I am very much indebted to Professor S. Qudratullah Fatimi, formerly Director: Regional Cooperation for Development, Islamabad.
This is a reference to the Qur’anic verse 49: 13.
Cf. Ziya Gökalp kulliyati, p. 112. According to the Turkish original, the second sentence in this passage should more fittingly have begun with ‘in this period’ rather than with ‘in every period’ as rendered by A. Fischer. Again the next, i.e. the third sentence, may be said to be not so very close to the text; yet it is quite faithful to its German version.
Cf. ibid., p. 113; also Uriel Heyd, Foundation of Turkish Nationalism: The Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp, pp. 102-03, and Allama Iqbal’s statement ‘On the Introduction of Turkish Prayers by Ghazi Mustafa Kemal Pasha’ published in the Weekly Light (Lahore), 16 February 1932, reproduced in Rahim Baksh Shaheen (ed.), Mementos of Iqbal, pp. 59-60.
On Ibn Tumart’s innovation of introducing the call to prayer in the Berber language, cf. Ibn Abī Zar‘, Raud al-Qirtās, Fr. trans. A. Beaumier, Histoire des souverains du Magreb, p. 250; I. Goldziher, ‘Materalien zur Kenntniss der Almohadenbewegung in Nordafrika’, ZDMG, XLI (1887), 71, and D. B. Macdonald, Development of Muslim Theology, p. 249. This practice, according to Ahmad b. Khālid al-Salāwī, was stopped and call to prayer in Arabic restored by official orders in 621/1224; cf. his Al-Istiqsā li Akhbār Duwal al-Maghrib ’l-Aqsā, II, 212.
Cf. Ziya Gökalp külliyati, p. 133. The word ‘sun’ in the second sentence of this passage stands for Günum in Turkish which, we are told, could as well be translated as ‘day’; some allowance, however, is to be made for translation of poetical symbols from one language into another.
Cf. ibid., p. 161. It is interesting to note how very close is late Professor H. A. R. Gibb’s translation of this passage as well as of the one preceding it (Modern Trends in Islam, pp. 91-92), to that of Allama’s, even though his first reference is to the French version of them in F. Ziyaeddin Fahri’s Ziya Gi Gökalp: sa vie et sa sociologie, p. 240.
Cf. Bukhārī, ‘I‘tisām’: 26; ‘Ilm’: 39; ‘Janā’iz’: 32; ‘Maradā’: 17, and Muslim, ‘Janā’iz’: 23 and ‘Wasīyyah’: 22.
For further elucidation of Allama’s observations on Luther and his movement here as also in a passage in his ‘Statement on Islam and Nationalism in Reply to a Statement of Maulana Husain Ahmad’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 254), see his most famous and historical ‘All-India Muslim League Presidential Address of 29 December 1930’, ibid., pp. 4-5. Cf. also the closing passages of the article: ‘Reformation’ in An Encyclopaedia of Religion, ed. Vergilius Farm, p. 642.
Cf. Subhī Mahmasānī, Falsafah-i Sharī‘at-i Islām, Urdu trans. M. Ahmad Ridvī, pp. 70-83.
This acute observation about the development of legal reasoning in Islam from the deductive to the inductive attitude in interpretation is further elaborated by Allama Iqbal on pp. 140-41. It may be worthwhile to critically examine in the light of this observation the attempts made by some of the well known western writers on Islamic law to analytically trace the historical development of legal theory and practice in Islam, viz. N. J. Coulson, A History of Islamic Law, chapters, 3-5; J. Schacht, Introduction to Islamic Law, chapters, 7-9 and his earlier pioneering work: Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, by General Index especially under ‘Medinese’ and ‘Iraqians’.
This is a reference to a passage in Lecture I, p. 7.
Cf. M. V. Merchant, A Book of Qur’anic Laws, chapters v-vii.
Cf. Briefe über Religion, pp. 72 and 81. The passages translated here are as under:
Das Urchristentum legte keinen Wert auf die Erhaltung von Staat Recht, Organization, Produktion. Es denkt einfach nicht über die Bedingungen der Existenz der menschlichen Gesellschaft nach.
Also entweder man wagt es, staatslos sein zu woollen, man wirft sich der Anarchie freiwillig in die Arme, oder man entschliesste sich, neben seinem religio-sen Bekenntnis ein politisches bekenntnis zu haben.
Joseph Friedch Naumann (1860-1919), a passage from whose very widely read Briefe über Religion (‘Letters on Religion’) has been quoted in Lecture III, pp. 64-65, was a German Protestant theologian, socialist politician, political journalist and a champion of Mittel- Europa plan. He was on the founders and the first president of German National Socialist Party (1896) which both in its name and its policy in according great importance to the agricultural and working classes in the development of the state adumbrated Hitler’s Nazi Party (1920). His Mittel-Europa published in 1915 (English translation by C. M. Meredith in 1916) stirred up considerable discussion during World War I as it revived, under the impulse of Pan-Germanism, the idea of a central Europian confederation including Turkey and the Balkan States under Germany’s cultural and economic control. It also contemplated the expansion of the Berlin-Baghdad railway into a grandiose scheme of empire extending from Antwerp in Belgium to the Persian Gulf.
Except for the year 1912-13, Naumann was the member of Reichstag (German Parliament) from 1907 to 1919. Shortly before his death, he was elected as the leader of Democratic Party. Naumann, known for his wide learning, acumen and personal integrity was very influential with German liberal intellectuals of his day. For the life and works of Naumann, cf. the two articles: ‘Naumann, Friedrich’ and ‘National Socialism, German’ by Theodor Heuss in the Encyclopaedia of Social Sciences, XI, 310 and .225a; also The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (Micropaedia), VIII, 561. For some information given in the above note I am deeply indebted to the Dutch scholar the Reverend Dr. Jan Slomp and his younger colleague Mr. Harry Mintjes. Mr. Mintjes took all the trouble to find out what he said was the oldest available edition of Briefe über Religion (Berlin, Georg Reimer, 1916, sixth edition) by making a search for it in all the libraries of Amsterdam. Dr. Jan Slomp was kind enough to mark the passages in Briefe quoted by Allama Iqbal in English and mail these to me for the benefit of all Iqbalian scholars.
Hence, The Introduction of Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act or Indian Act VIII of 1939. Cf. Maulāna Ashraf ‘Ali Thānawī, Al-Hīlat al-Nājizah lil-Halīlat al-‘Ājizah, p. 99 and Asaf A. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law, pp. 153-61.
See Al-Muwāfiqāt, II, 4: also Ghazālī, Al-Mustasfā, I, 140.
Cf. al-Marghīnānī, Al-Hidāyah, II, Kitāb al-Nikāh, p. 328; English trans. C. Hamilton, p. 66.
Cf. Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, p. 194, where, while making an appraisal of Ataturk’s ‘supposed or real innovations’, Allama Iqbal observes: ‘The adoption of the Swiss code with its rule of inheritance is certainly a serious error. . . . The joy of emancipation from the fetters of a long-standing priest-craft sometimes derives a people to untried courses of action. But Turkey as well as the rest of the world of Islam has yet to realize the hitherto unrevealed economic aspects of the Islamic law of inheritance which von Kremer describes as the supremely original branch of Muslim law.’ For some recent accounts of the ‘economic significance of the Qur’anic rule of inheritance’, cf. M. A. Mannan, Islamic Economics, pp. 176-86 and Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad, Economics of Islam, pp. 154-58.
Marriage has been named in the Qur’an as mīthāqan ghalīzan, i.e. a strong covenant (4: 21).
Cf. M.V. Merchant, op. cit., pp. 179-86.
Cf. I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien, English trans. C. R. Barber and S. M. Stern, Muslim Studies, II, 18f. This is the view held also by some other orientalists such as D. S. Margoliouth, The Early Development of Mohammedanism, pp. 79-89, and H. Lammens, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions, pp. 65-81. Iqbal did not endorse the views of the early Orientalists on the issue as transpires from his correspondence and the incomplete projects that he had visualized to refutation of these views.
This is the closing paragraph of chapter III of Mohammedan Theories of Finance: With an Introduction to Mohammedan Law and a Bibliography by Nicolas P. Aghnides published by Columbia University (New York) in 1916 as one of its Studies in History, Economics and Public Law. A copy of this work as reported by Dr. M. ‘Abdullāh Chaghatā’i was sent to Allama Iqbal by Chaudhry Rahmat ‘Ali Khan (President: American Muslim Association) from the United States and was presented to him on the conclusion of the thirty-eighth annual session of Anjuman-i Himāyat-i Islām (Lahore), i.e. on 31 March 1923 or soon after. Dr. Chaghatāi’s essay: ‘Khutbāt-i Madrās ka Pas Manzar’ in his Iqbāl kī Suhbat Men and the section: ‘Six Lectures on the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam’ with useful notes in Dr. Rafi ‘al-Din Hāshimīs Tasānīf i Iqbāl kā Tahqīqī -o-Tauzīhī Mutāli‘ah throw light on the immediate impact that Aghnides’s book had on Allama’s mind. It seems that Aghnides’s book did interest Allama and did play some part in urging him to seek and study some of the outstanding works on Usūl al-Fiqh such as those by Āmidī, Shātibī, Shāh Walī Allāh, Shaukānī, and others. This is evident from a number of Allama’s letters to Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī (Iqbālnāmah, I, 128-36, 160-63) as also from his letters from 13 March 1924 to 1 May 1924 to Professor Maulavī M. Shafi’ (Oriental College Magazine, LIII (1977), 295-300). It is to be noted that besides a pointed reference to a highly provocative view of Ijmā‘ alluded to by Aghnides, three passages from part I of Mohammedan Theories of Finance are included in the last section of the present Lecture, which in this way may be said to be next only to the poems of Ziya Gökalp exquisitely translated from Fischer’s German version of them.
This is remarkable though admittedly a summarized English version of the following quite significant passage from Shah Walī Allāh’s magnum opus Hujjat Allah al-Bālighah (I, 118):
This is the passage quoted also in Shiblī Nu‘mānī’s Al-Kalām (pp. 114-15), a pointed reference to which is made in Allama Iqbal’s letter dated 22 September 1929 addressed to Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī. There are in fact three more letters to Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī in September 1929, which all show Allama’s keen interest in and perceptive study of Hujjat Allah al-Bālighah at the time of his final drafting of the present Lecture (cf. Iqbālnāmah, pp. 160-63).
From the study of these letters it appears that Allama Iqbal in his interpretation of at least the above passage from Hujjat Allāh al-Bālighah was much closer to Shiblī Nu‘mānī than to Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī.
It is to be noted that Allama Iqbal was always keen to seek and study the works of Shāh Walī Allah, whom he considered to be ‘the first Muslim who felt the urge of a new spirit in him’ (Lecture IV, p. 78). Some of these works have been referred to by titles in Allama’s more than 1200 letters and it is noteworthy that their number exceeds that of the works of any other great Muslim thinker; Ghazālī, Fakhr al-Din Rāzī, Jalāl al-Din Rūmī, Ibn Taimīyyah, Ibn Qayyim, Sadr al-Dīn Shīrāzī, or any other. In his letter dated 23 September 1936 to Maulavi Ahmad Ridā Bijnōrī (Iqbālnāmah, II, 241-43), Allama reports that he had not received his copies of Shah Walī Alllah’s Al-Khair al-Kathīr and Tajhiināt supposed to have been dispatched to him through some dealer in Lahore. He also expresses in this letter his keen desire to have the services on suitable terms of some competent Muslim scholar, well versed in Islamic jurisprudence and very well read in the works of Shāh Walī Allāh.
Cf. Aghnides, op. cit., p. 91. This is the statement which, according to Dr. ‘Abdullah Chaghatā’ī (op. cit., pp. 300-04) and Dr. Rafi ‘al-Dīn Hāshimī (op. cit., pp. 313-14) occasioned Allama Iqbal’s fiqhī discussions with a number of renowned religious scholars which finally led to his writing a paper on ijtihād in 1924; the present Lecture is said to be only a developed form of that paper. On the impossible question of Ijmā‘s repealing the Qur’an, one is to note Allama’s two inquiring letters to Sayyid Sulaimān Nadvī and more importantly a letter also to Maulānā Abūl Kalām Azād (Iqbālnāmah, 1, 131-35).
Āmidi, Ihkām fi Usūl al Ahkām, 1, 373.
Shaukānī, Irshād al-Fuhūl, pp. 65-72.
Mu‘awwidhatān are the last two surahs of the Qur’an, i.e. 113 and 114; they are called so because they teach man how to seek refuge in God and betake himself to His protection.
This is summing up of Karkhī’s somewhat longer statement as quoted by Aghnides, op. cit., p. 106; cf. also Sarakhsī, Usūl al-Sarakhsī, II, 105.
For Allama’s views on Persian constitutional theory see his articles: ‘Political Thought in Islam’ and ‘Islam and Ahmadism’, Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 118-19 and 195.
For Allama’s practical guidelines to reform the present system of legal education in the modern Muslim world especially in the subcontinent, see his very valuable letter dated 4 June 1925 to Sahibzadah Aftab Ahmad Khan (Letters of Iqbal, p. 155); also the last paragraph of his Presidential Address at the All-India Muslim Conference on 21 March 1932 (Speeches, Writings and Statements, p. 43).
For Shāfi‘ī’s ‘identification’ of Qiyās and Ijtihād, cf. M. Khadduri, Islamic Jurisprudence: Shāfi‘ī’s Risālah, p. 288 and J. Schacht, The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence, pp. 127-28.
Cf. Shaukānī, op. cit., p. 199; Āmidī, op. cit. IV, 42 ff; and Mahmasānī, op. cit., Urdu trans. M. A. Ridvī, p. 188.
Cf. Mohammedan Theories of Finance, p. 125. This is the observation, in fact, of the Shāfi‘ī jurist Badr al-Din Muhammad b. Bahādur b. ‘Abd Allah al-Zarkashī (d. 794/1392) of eighth century and not of Sarkashī of tenth century of the Hijrah, as it got printed in the previous editions of the present work (including the one by Oxford University Press in 1934). ‘Sarkashī’ is a palpable misprint for ‘al-Zarkashī; Aghnides in the above-cited work spells it ‘Zarkashi’ but places him in the tenth century of the Hijrah. None of the Zarkashīs, however, given in the well-known biographical dictionaries, say, ‘Umar Ridā Kihālah’s fifteen volume Mu‘jam al Mu’allifīn (V. 181; IX, 121; X, 22, 205, 239 and XI, 273) is reported to have belonged to tenth century– except, of course, Muhammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Lulu’ al-Zarkashī mentioned in VIII, 214 who is said to be still living after 882/1477 or as Al-Ziriklī puts it to have died sometime after 932/ 1526 (op. cit., V, 302); but this Zarkashī, though he may be said to have made name as an historian of the Muwahhids and the Hafasids, was no jurist.
It is to be noted that the passage on the future prospects of Ijtihād quoted by Allama Iqbal is only a more significant part of Zarkashī’ s somewhat longer statement which Aghnides gives as under:
If they [i.e. the people entertaining this belief] are thinking of their contemporaries, it is a fact that they have had contemporaries like Al-Qaffāl, Al-Ghazālī, al-Razī, al-Rāfi‘ī, and others, all of whom have been full mujtahids and if they mean by it that their contemporaries are not endowed and blessed by God with the same perfection, intellectual ability and power, or understanding, it is absurd and a sign of crass ignorance; finally, if they mean that the previous writers had more facilities, while the later writers had more difficulties, in their way; it is again nonsense, for it does not require much understanding to see that ijtihād for the later doctors (muta’akhirūn) is easier than for the earlier doctors. Indeed the commentaries on the Koran and the Sunnah have been complied and multiplied to such an extent that the mujtahid of today has more material for interpretation than he needs.
This statement on ijtihād which Aghnides ascribes clearly to Zarkhashī, albeit of the tenth century of Hijrah, is in fact, as may be seen, translation of the following passage from Shaukānī’s Irshād al-Fuhūl:
From the study of the section of Irshād al-Fuhūl dealing with the ‘possibility of there being a period of time without a mujtahid, it becomes abundantly clear that the views embodies in the above passage are those of the Shāfi‘ījurist Badr al-Dīn Zarkashī of the eight century of Hijrah and not of Sarkashī, nor of Zarkashī of the tenth century. For an account of the life and works of Badr al-Dīn Zarkashī, Cf. Muhammad Abū’l-Fadl al-Rahīm’s ‘Introduction’ to Zarkashī’s well-known, Al-Burhān fi ‘Ulūm al-Qur’ān.
It may be added that the Persian translator of the present work Mr. Ahmad Ārām considers ‘Sarkashī’ to be a misprint for ‘Sarakhsī’, i.e. the Hanafī jurist Shams al-A’immah Abū Bakr Muhammad b. Abī Sahl al-Sarakhi, the author of the well-known thirty-volume al-Mabsūt who dies in near about 483/1090; and referring to ‘many errors and flaws’ that have unfortunately crept into the Lahore edition of the present work, he is inclined to think that ‘tenth centruy’ is another misprint for ‘fifth century’ (Cf. Ihyā-i Fikr-i Dīnī dar Islām, pp. 202-03, note)
Ahmad Ārām admittedly takes his clue from a line in Madame Eva Meyero-vitch’s French translation: Reconstruire la pensee religious de I’Islam (p. 192) and perhaps also from the Urdu translation: Tashkīl-I Jadīd Il āhiyāt-I Islāmīyah (p 274) by the late Syed Nadhir Niyāzī who corrects the name (Sarakhsī) but not the date. This is, however, better than the Arabic translator who retains both the misprints without any commects (Cf. ‘Abbās Mahmūd, Tajdīd al-Tafkīr al-Dīnī fi’l Islām, p 206).
Cf. article ‘Turkey’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, XXII, 606-08. the French writer alluded to by Allama Iqbal is Andre Servier whose work L’Islam et la psychologie da Musulman translated under the intriguing title Islam and the Psyhology of Musulman by A.S. Moss Blandell (London, 1924) aroused the curiosity of many. It is in the last chapter of his work dealing with French foreign policy that Servier makes some observations on Turkey such as the following:
‘The Turks constitute an element of balance…they form a buffer State between Europe and the Asiatic ferment’ (p. 267) (Italics mine.)
‘Our interests, therefore, make it our duty to protect them, to maintain them as an element of equilibrium in the Musulman World’ (p. 268). (Italics mine.)
This may profitably be compared with the following passage from Allama’s famous ‘Statement on Islam and Nationalism in Reply to a Statement of Maulana Husain Ahmed’: ‘This history of man is an infinite process of mutual conflicts, sanguine battles and civil wars. In these circumstances can we have among mankind a constitution, the social life of which is based upon peace and security? The Quran’s answer is: yes, provided man takes for his ideal the propagation of the Unity of God in the thoughts and actions of mankind. The search for such an ideal and its maintenance is no miracle of political manoeuvring: it is a peculiar greatness of the Holy Prophet (Pbuh) that the self-invented distinctions and superiority complexes of the nations of the world are destroyed and there comes into being a community which can be styled ummatan muslimata ’l-lak (a community submissive to Thee, 2: 128) and to whose thoughts and actions the divine dictate shuhadā’a ‘alā al-nās (a community that bears witness to the truth before all mankind, 2: 143) justly applies’ (Speeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal, pp. 262-63).
References
1Iqbal Academy Pakistan – http://www.allamaiqbal.com/works/prose/english/reconstruction/03.htm
2Muhammad Iqbal Malik – http://letsstartthinking.org/Iqbal/knowledge-religious-experience.php
3http://www.renaissance.com.pk/OctBore2y5.htm
4Dr. Waheed Ishrat, Tr. Dr. M.A.K. Khalil – www.allamaiqbal.com
5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
6http://aftabkhan-net.page.tl
To be continued …. Next; Lecture (Last) – 7: Is religion possible?
