My extended interview with Mr Noorudeen Musthafa , for Risala, a prominent Muslim weekly published from Calicut, Malabar, Kerala, India. G...
My extended interview with Mr Noorudeen Musthafa, for Risala, a prominent Muslim weekly published from Calicut, Malabar, Kerala, India. Given in English and translated into Malayalam, the language of Kerala, in the interview, I offer my meditations on the reconstruction of the new Muslim epistemology, the question of Muslim reform, the evolving European Muslim identity, the need for achieving balance between the tradition and the innovation in the Muslim society, Islamophobia, etc.
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What you mean by the reconstruction of epistemology, one of the fundamental intellectual reforms that need to be exercises in the Muslim world today?
The reconstruction of Muslim epistemology, in my opinion, is the need of the hour, considering the stagnation and lack of dynamism seen in the current Muslim intellectual space. There is something what we may describe it as the crisis of knowledge that we Muslims are facing today. And this crisis knowledge in the Muslim world refers to our intellectual inability to face, with confidence and dynamism, the multifaceted challenges unleashed by the different forces of modernity, in spite of the fact that we have the two infallible sources of our religion, the Quran and the Sunna of our beloved Prophet (pbuh), and an over 12-century old sound religious, intellectual traditions of masters of the four Madahib (schools of law) and other classical scholars with us.
Here, I want to stress an important point: the problem is within us, in other words, it is closely related to the inadequacy of the intellectual and linguistic discourse that we rely upon to situate Islam in the 21 century globalised world; however, the classical Muslim scholars and the great Muslims teachers of the past not only successfully situated Islam in the world in which they lived but also they left us with their unique heritage of knowledge to help us move forward.
The Quran says: “… Verily never will Allah change the condition of a people until they change it themselves (with their own souls)…” 13: 11.
And it is now the time for us to change, not by cutting ourselves off from our religion or our classical heritage of Fiqh and other traditional religious streams of knowledge; it is rather a change visualised as a constructive return to the Quran and the Sunna, in line with our traditional scholarship, with an intention to come with a new Muslim epistemology; however, as I observed before, such new epistemology or the reconstruction of this proposed epistemology must be rooted in the principles of the Quran and the Sunna and the guidelines offered by our great classical scholars though their lives and the works of great erudition.
2. Muslims have their own numerous in depth textual heritage, in various fields of religious sciences, including the books of fundamental sources of their religion, like the Quran and the Sunna, along with them Fiqh books for various code of conducts and ritual practices are also available. So, how can we deal with these kinds of texts of Islam in relation to the reconstruction project?
The Quran and the Sunna lie at centre of Islam, and our Muslim belief is they are the divine sources, the word of God and the teachings of his Prophet (peace be upon him), and it is based on these two sources that everything in Islam is constructed and reconstructed. And the Quran and the Sunna, as Muslims believe, is both timeless and timely, however, it is the duty of the Muslim scholars, independent of time and space, to have a constant dialogue with these two sources to help the community to actualise Islam in their lives, no matter in whatever atmosphere or situation in which they live. And it is the duty of the true Muslim scholars to help them and guide them in any situations they live. And that is why the Prophet (pbuh), in a widely quoted saying, is reported to have described the scholars as those who inherit the universal legacy of the Prophets.
And secondly, the juridical, theological and spiritual heritage elaborated throughout the centuries by the most intelligent and brilliant minds of the Muslim community should be protected, studied, preserved and used, as we go forward.
As I approach this issue, I want to expand it bit further here. The work and effort of for the reconstruction of the Islamic thought or reconstructing a new Muslim epistemology, whatever convenient term that we employ to describe it, in fact, is a prelude to the renaissance and reawakening of the Muslim community as a whole.
First of all, it is necessary to go back to Quran, the Sunna and the classical heritage of the Islamic thought in a wider sense, juridical, theological and philosophical. The process of reconstruction, however, cannot be an excuse to rescind our classical Fiqhi or spiritual heritage. The knowledge of the past is, in fact, necessary to face the future. What we need to change in the Muslim approach to the reconstruction is the scarce or total absence of the historical consciousness of our heritage. It is important to assume a critical and realistic perspective on the history of the different Islamic thoughts, in order to understand and learn how to differentiate the points of strength from those of weakness in those thoughts, when we move towards future.
The immense Islamic juridical heritage is the result of the brilliant efforts of the jurists trying to solve the issues related to different societies and cultures, as they faced the challenge of situating Islam in their societies, and we must try to differentiate between the universal principles they deduced from the Quran and the Sunna and those principles and the juridical pronouncements (Fataawa) that were given as responses to the specific issues they faced in the light of the social and cultural challenges of the age in which they lived, as they were brought in front of them.
In other words, we must be open to an understanding that there are elements in the thoughts and certain Fataawa of our great religious teachers of classical age that were influenced by their specific history and time. In other words, in my opinion, when working to reconstruct a new Muslim epistemology in the light of the intellectual and spiritual challenges of our time, we must not deny at all our classical heritage, however, we must also try to find an equilibrium by sticking to the fundamental methodologies of our classical scholars, while simultaneously acknowledging that certain aspects of their methodologies and Fataawa could be time bound.
Since several situations in which the Muslim community was living in the past have now changed, moreover, as we face a constantly changing world of today, it is necessary for the Muslim scholars and experts in different disciplines to go back to the source of the Islamic teachings- Quran and Sunna, however, guided by our classical Muslim scholarship and heritage to formulate or reconstruct a new epistemology to face the contemporary challenges.
3. What are the possible practical methods that Muslim world can do in this regard for its upliftment from the intellectual marginal stream to the well crafted mainstream?
The core principles of Islam are rooted in Al-Ghayb (the realm that lies beyond the ordinary human perception), however, as a community, we Muslims, like any other communities, live in a world of causes and effects (Dar Al-Sabab) or in the ordinary world, created by Allah, with its own rule, instituted He Himself. And the challenge for a Muslim is to live in this world in its fullness, while remaining fully connected to the world of our faith (Alam Al-Ghayb), adhering to the rules and regulations of Islam.
Here, it is extremely important that the Muslim thinkers and scholars learn how to reconcile and harmonise between innovation and tradition. A healthy society, ready to respond in a positive way to the challenges of the future should be able to reconcile the element of conservative tradition of Islam with that dynamic and innovative nature of the human life.
Unfortunately, however, Muslim community, due to several reasons, seems to have failed in this regard, thus it suffers passively the consequences of the intellectual and cultural atrophy, formed on basis and premises extraneous to the genuine Islamic teaching.
The Muslim community now, in a very critical historical moment, must reflect again, without any barrier, on its own origins, on the peculiarity of its own identity and how to actualize its multilayered identity, religious, spiritual, intellectual, cultural and civilisation, in our complex world of today which is both multireligious and multicultural.
In other words, the deep metaphysical bond between God and human beings, universe, as Islam envisions it and wants to see it realized in the human history, as the balanced community raised for the entire humanity, must be applied and actualized in the concrete historical conditions.
The balanced and harmonious relation between the tradition and the innovation, between the eternal and the temporal is essential for the development and the progress of the Islamic world. In their history, Muslims, living by the principles of Islam, have achieved this balance, undoubtedly during the time of the Prophet (peace upon him) and his Companions, and in their own special way during those several classical centuries in Spain and elsewhere in the Muslim world when Islamic civilisation preserved and expanded knowledge, in the field of science, arts and in so many other branches of knowledge, thus successfully bridging the gap between the world and Islam.
In this process of bridging the gap between Islam and the world in which we human beings live, with all our genuine needs and longings ( after all, we Muslims believe that Islam is the religion which in complete harmony with human nature, as Allah created it), our Muslim scholars must play their role fully, backed up by their deep and solid insights into the sources of Islam and the various disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, economics, linguistics, comparative religion, cultural and post colonial studies.
In other words, our future Muslim scholars (Ulema) must be trained in various sciences of Islam, and at least, they must have some form of insights into some of the modern disciplines like those mentioned above. And these combined insights will help them to articulate the eternal truths of Islam in a language graspable to the modern audience, with all its complexities.
I am not definitely arguing here that we must philosophise or articulate Islam in the language of an anthropologist or a linguist, rather my point here is that we must examine the premises of modern humanities to articulate an Islamic discourse which, while remaining completely adhering to the principles of Islam, must possess enough philosophical and linguistic tools to articulate or reconstruct a modern, timely epistemology to fill the gap between the world of Islam and the rest of the world, besides, addressing the challenges posed by the our rapidly changing today’s public space.
We have today so many Muslim scholars deeply trained in various branches of classical Islamic sciences such as Tafsir, Hadith, Fiqh and Tasawwuf, however, in spite of the depth of their knowledge many of them (though not all, I must stress) find it difficult to articulate Islam in the contemporary multicultural world; and sadly, this gap is filled by some people with almost no insights into Islam (as they are not trained in any of the traditional Islamic sciences), simply because they are able to deliver their message in a contemporary discourse, often misrepresenting the message of Islam or even trying to deconstruct the Islamic in a discourse that is seemingly Islamic.
And one of the ways out of this situation is to have traditionally trained scholars with deeper insights into modern humanities and social sciences. Practically, this means Islamic universities, colleges and other institutions, established to produce and train Muslim Ulema (scholars), adopting humanities and social sciences as part of their syllabus, along with various Islamic sciences.
Our emerging new religious scholars must be also properly trained in their local languages, along with Arabic and at least one modern European language, especially English. The knowledge of a foreign language or even Arabic is not for the sake of knowing an additional language; it is rather to equip the scholars with enough linguistic tools and idioms to articulate the worldview of Islam by creating their own oeuvre.
We know that most of our classical scholars were trained in philosophy, logic, literature, linguistics, etc. And this training helped them enormously to face the challenges of their space and time. An almost universally accepted success story of Muslim scholarship in this regard is that of Imam Al-Ghazali. Faced with the challenges from people who almost made philosophy like a religion, Al-Ghazali embarked on an inspiring mission of learning or presenting the views of philosophers, followed by their refutation, using the very tools of philosophy that philosophers used, and then finally, boldly stating truth of the faith, supported by logic.
And, as known to many scholars, Al-Ghazali does this in his three classics : Maqasid Al-Falasifa (The Aims of the Philosophers, a book that clearly states the main arguments and aims of the philosophers), Tahafut Al-Falasifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers, a classic that refutes certain theories of some Muslim and other ancient philosophers), and finally in his classic theological work Al-Iqtisad fi al-Iitiqad (Moderation in Belief), he restates and defends the Ashʿari stream of theology by the process of building thoughts, and if we can say so, it was a new epistemology, rooted in his deep insights into philosophy, logic and the principles of Islamic faith.
Hence, there is the process of deep study, followed by the refutation of conflicting epistemologies and then finally the completion of the process by constructively stating the Muslim epistemology, as Al-Ghazali does in his different oeuvres.
Of course, it might be almost impossible for a scholar, given the complexities of our modern life, to be as insightful as Al-Ghazali now; however, our emerging scholars can find inspirations from scholars like Al-Ghazali, if they want to do anything substantial in the field of reconstructing the new epistemology. And from my personal experience, as a trained philosopher in ancient Greek philosophy, it was inspiring for me to study Tahafut Al-Falasifah of Imam Ghazali.
