Muslim Reformers - A Peek Into the Past

The most common comments I have received after writing about Muslim reformers is that they are unable to really do much to reform, liberalise or effect change. That is a fair comment and to reply to that, the only way is to look at what happened to the reformers and liberals of the past, and see what has been their impact on life in the Muslim world today, what can we learn from them and what lessons can the modern living reformers take from the wins and losses, threats and opportunities which faced our ancestors. In this first of a series of essays on muslim reformers of the 18th and 19th century, I explore the remarkable story of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a polyglot, agricultural scientist, lawyer, judge, scientist, author, publisher, political leader, and most of all an educator (his greatest achievement which has survived up till now).

Before we talk about Sir Syed (1817 - 1898), a bit of background is important. Sir Syed was born in Delhi, India, the dying and decaying capital of the Mughal Empire, one of the greatest empires in the world. He spent his life in the ever-brightening sun of the British Empire, yet another great empire. It was a time of destruction of a long established order. The arrival of the British changed or affected almost everything in the sub-continent, traditions, infrastructure, religion, political orders, philosophy, economics, farming, industry, you name it. He lived through one of the last spasms of the Mughal Empire against its dissolution, the 1857 first war of independence (viewed from Indian eyes), the Great Mutiny (viewed from the British eyes) and the last throw of the dice (viewed from the Mughal eyes). He was a clear-eyed far-sighted man, who wanted his people to find their path and establish their ground in a changed order. Hate him, loathe him, disagree with him, but rarely does one find people who can understand the changed order of their times and then put it into place to help his people to navigate the future.

Growing up in an upper class Muslim aristocratic family (very good pedigree, claiming descent from the Prophet, maternal grandfather being the Prime Minister to the Mughal Emperor and a very well known personality of his time, another great grandfather was a commander of a thousand men in the Mughal Army, etc.), he was given a typical education of that time. Learning the Qur’an by heart, Arabic, Medicine, Persian, Mathematics, Astronomy and Islamic law were the mental pursuits. Physically, he learnt how to swim, how to wrestle and generally be a good all round egg. However, after his father died in 1938, he was forced to take up a job due to economic reasons, and his choice of job was very illuminating. Instead of becoming one of the useless floating functionaries of the decayed Mughal Court, he became a Clerk of the Court under the British East India Company. He also started writing religious books at the early age of 23, and published a good book on the antiquities and mouldy old buildings of Delhi. Then came the book that brought him to the attention of the British rulers. He wrote a pamphlet about the 1857 revolt and what in his opinion were the British faults and issues in administration and governance leading to this revolt. This pamphlet was circulated everywhere within the British ruling class and the British learnt a lot from this.

In 1858, he established a school in Muradabad and five years later, another one in Ghazipur and finally in 1967, the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental (MAO) School in Aligarh. Moreover, all this while being a judge (he ended up being the head of Small Causes Court). He also established a Scientific Society, which published translations of scientific and educational books as well as a journal. He visited the United Kingdom in 1869-1870 and was very impressed by the collegiate system of education in England (incidentally he was also knighted in the UK by the Queen herself). He came back from the UK, determined to setup an Indian Cambridge and converted his MAO School in Aligarh into a college in 1875 (this college became a university in 1920 after his death). He saw the severe decline and decay of the Indian Muslims after the revolt and resolved that only through western education would the lot of Indian Muslims be improved and poured his life energies towards this objective.

Now we come to the reform. His western outlook and strong identification with western educational mechanisms sat uneasily with his strong Islamic background and training. At that time, the rest of his fellow Indian Muslims were, as Prof. B. Sheikh Ali memorably puts it, “On top of all the events of 1857 branded Muslims as traitors, hunted from door to door, and publicly executed in the bazaars. The Muslims had lost everything except their religion and even that was shrouded in superstition, dogmas and rituals.” To drag them out of this torpor, depression and general all around religious fatalism, he had to battle the religious factor. As one can appreciate, when the only thing left is religion, then that may be the hardest stone to push. So what did he do?

He went straight for the jugular and tried to re-interpret Islam. In a speech in Lahore in 1884, he said, "We need a modern elm al-Kalâm (way of knowledge) by which we should either refute the doctrines of modern sciences or show that they are in conformity with the articles of Islamic faith." He pushed for a de-mytholisation of the Qur’an, for example, by stating loudly and clearly that the nature of supplication (du’â), is merely psychological rather than real. As you can imagine, the lumpen mass of the traditional scholars spontaneously combusted. This caused no end of trouble, with the scholars pointing to his lack of formal training in Islamic jurisprudence. Now this is the interesting bit, just like translating the bible from Latin to local European languages immediately removed the power of the priests to control access between the laity and the Divine, this form of logical scientific thought was accepted by a variety of upper class Indian muslims and he became one of the Indian Muslim leaders known far and wide in this vast country.

This lead to his second step to target the traditionalists whose only reaction to his comments, articles and speeches was “this is against Islam”. A small digression, a tafsir is a commentary on the Qur’an, which provides the context around each sura. These tafsirs are one of the building blocks in the vast edifice of Islamic Jurisprudence. So his idea was, if he can aim to remove the basic theological grounding of his opponents, then his ideas of pushing for education will have a better chance of survival (as it did). Also after his research into the other tafsirs, this is what he said, "could only find grammatical and lexicographical niceties, statements concerning the place and time of revelation and descriptions of previous tafsîr". If the previous statement merely sent the traditionalists up in smoke, this attempt to write a new tafsir made them incandescent in fury.

Sir Syed wrote a book in 1892 “Tahrîr fi’l-asûl al-tafsîr” to explain the principles behind his tafsir and one example will suffice to show the dangerous but courageous stance he took, “there could be nothing in the Qur’ân that is against the principles on which nature works… as far as the supernatural is concerned, I state it clearly that they are impossible, just like it is impossible for the Word of God to be false… I know that some of my brothers would be angry to [read this] and they would present verses of the Qur’ân that mention miracles and supernatural events but we will listen to them without annoyance and ask: could there not be another meaning of these verses that is consonant with Arabic idiom and the Qur’ânic usage? And if they could prove that it is not possible, then we will accept that our principle is wrong… but until they do so, we will insist that God does not do anything that is against the principles of nature that He has Himself established.”

I personally found this extremely logical, but needless to say, the traditionalists attacked him and thousands of trees were cut down in an attempt to refute his work in newspapers, pamphlets and books. This was one of the reasons why his appeal to logic and reason mainly resonated within the educated level of the Muslim masses. Also because of his position as an Indian Muslim Political leader, he had to move beyond just his educational pursuits and started taking a broader view. He got involved in the Hindu-Urdu language controversy (which lead to riots where thousands of people died).

A man who previously said, “"I look to both Hindus and Muslims with the same eyes and consider them as my own eyes. By the word nation, I only mean Hindus and Muslims and nothing else. We Hindus and Muslims live together under the same soil under the same government. Our interest and problems are common and therefore I consider the two factions as one nation” slowly changed his view and after the language riots, ended up saying "I am now convinced that the Hindus and Muslims could never become one nation as their religion and way of life was quite distinct from one and other" and "I am convinced that both these communities will not join whole heartedly in anything. At present there is no open hostility between the two communities but it will increase immensely in the future."

That is water under the bridge. Where are we now? His contribution was immense. His towering achievement was his school then college and now a world famous university. This university gave rise, over tens of years, to a western educated Muslim class (incidentally, one can legitimately claim that Pakistan was formed, established and run for much of its early history because of the graduates of this one institution). There were many achievements in this university, a school for girls, a school of law, the first chancellor of the University was Sultan Shah Jahan Begum, (an iron lady, erstwhile ruler of my home town Bhopal and of all things, a sponsor of a mosque in Woking, Surrey), a school for the blind was established, a medical school was set up along with an engineering faculty and school.

It is one of the few institutions, which is taking definite steps in making sure that the Indian Muslim population comes to grips with the modern world. Its alumni include Maulana Mohammad Ali, Liaquat Ali Khan, Khawaja Nazimuddin, Zakir Hussain, Abdur Rab Nishtar, Sheikh Abdullah, Ziauddin Ahmed, Maulana Shaukat Ali, Zafar Ali Khan, who have all left their mark on this world in some shape or form. One would note that, largely, most of the graduates are liberal and are making changes across the world. Yes, there are challenges galore and objections by the ton to Sir Syed, but if one wants to see the impact of a teacher which stops at eternity, one can do worse than look at how Sir Syed became an educator and reformer.