Tradition (4) – Conclusion and more…

This would be my conclusive post building upon the character of tradition as portrayed in the first three entries of this series (1, 2, 3). I would very concisely highlight few important areas of thought which can be viewed from alternate perspectives by traditionalist and non traditionalist alike if they revisit their notion of the concept tradition.

Belonging to one or multiple traditions would seem totally at place if it is understood as a critical indulgence in our past in order to make our existence meaningful. I have briefly adumbrated in the last post that such a critical enterprise is necessary if we want to create and maintain different forms of knowledge in order to help us understand the world around us.

Which tradition(s) should one associate himself with?
Unless it is understood as a meaningful participation, people do not like to play their parts in keeping a conversation alive. Therefore the responsibility of keeping the tradition(s) alive solely rests upon the soulders of people who are existing in present and haven’t faded away in history themselves. The question above is generally asked when people (or a specific group of people) associate themselves with a particular tradition thereby making a statement that rest of the conversations are not worthy of their attention. Such statements set forth the foundation of a duality with groups of people on extremes deafening the atmosphere in between with noises of their respective conversations. It is very important to understand that different traditions can coexist simultaneously in a person simply because he is unable to understand the world around him in one language.

Traditions within a Tradition.
Sometimes in our effort to preserve a specific tradition we tend to confuse it with the concept of history. A living tradition is not like an event in history but an ever renewed phenomena needing fresh participants. While events in history ‘happen’ tradition has to be ‘created’ and ‘maintained’ if its character is understood as something built on eternal foundations. Such a living tradition should not be understood as a single converstion but a cluster where different conversations keep losing their signifcance and others keep gaining dominance. This nature of tradition should be understood as a normal phenomena. A valid example is of several Muslim Traditions belonging to the same Islamic Tradition and constantly keep enriching it in past as well as present.

The Art of Conversation – Education of Tradition or Traditional Education [1].
Active and meaningful participation in this figurative conversation cannot be attributed to human instinct. In other words its a behavior we have to learn and not something rooted in our creation. The process of this learning comprises of both formal and informal means of education. Keeping this in perspective, ‘education of tradition’ and ‘traditional education’ are two essentially different processes of learning. While former is a way to teach people how to imbibe a particular behavior, latter is way to protect the meanings of a mythical past from being contaminated by the contemporary concerns. This is based on an erroneous assumption that the organic link between the past and the present is broken and many unwanted dualities are imminent.

Conclusion.
I have just tried to provide here a sketch how various dichotomies and conflicts are founded on a false concept of tradition. The brands of dualities within Islam are not mentioned on purpose because the debate on Tradition Vs Modernism is not necessarily an Islamic debate. Though Islam has been at the forefront in prompting that debate at first place. A lot can be built on each of these concepts if we want to shed more light with specific focus on Islam. I leave it as a ceaseless exercise for later, insha’Allah.
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1. Another subtle difference highlighted by Dr. Yedullah Kazmi

Filed under: Philosophy, Series & Sequels

Tradition (3) – Converse to Create Knowledge

To slightly recapitulate what I have touched till now, the character of tradition is of conversation in a figurative sense. Numerous dualities between tradition and not-(understood-as)-tradition exist because of our inability to grasp this specific character of tradition. However the observation may be considered totally subjective, and rightly so, unless the argument is extended and used to have an objective insight into various arenas. The present post is a result of my deliberation on Gadamer’s concept of ‘effective history‘ and Dr. Yedullah Kazmi’s application of that.

If tradition is a necessary conversation with our past in order to make sense of our lives, whether it should be understood as a rigid monolithic structure which is totally uniform or a diverse enterprise rich with inherent multifariousness? More basic questions could be that why there is a need to undertake take this conversation with the past, at all? How one should go about doing it and for how long? All these questions if put in their respective perspectives give clues as to how tradition fits into other impressions and undertakings of human society. To put it differently, objective answers to these questions lead us to mechanisms through which humans create their social reality, which is itself a source of dualities that was touched briefly in first part of this series. Still extending this further, the answers to these questions may help us disentangle the dualities and bring us out of this impasse.

Even if we understand the importance of conversations with past (to give meaning to our selves in present and thus make our flow objective in the temporal continuum), is it just an egoistical endeavour or something superior? The answer lies in what we understand from ‘making sense of our lives‘. This ‘sense‘ is nothing but the sense of the world which we inhabit. Moral, histrorical and sociological are different ways through which this world leaves impressions on ourselves. Expressing these impressions through these ‘languages‘ is actually an exhibition of our sentience. Moreover the world around us is not a unifacial entity which can be efficaciously described in a single language. We essentially need to construct different languages to describe different aspects of the world. Hence we perpetually create languages, maintain them and keep modifiying them in order to keep making sense of our contemporary world. Language of morals, humanities, social sciences and physical sciences are few such languages which came into being through conscious effort with a common objective i.e. an optimum description of the world and consequently our existence.

Languages are nothing but different forms of knowledge and unless what is presented above is found completely obscure, forms of knowledge are embedded in the same process through which we make sense of our own existence. It is necessary therefore to comprehend that knowledge is not created and maintained by an internally isolated logic but part of a larger process to express intricacies of human existence. Knowledge and different traditions of the world are complected at various layers. These layers if appropriately maginified would reveal the true nature of dualities (which I have already highlighted).

For instance, various traditions of the world have their own forms of knowledge and the ‘language‘ which gains dominance in a specific time (due to many reasons) would be used to give dominance to a particular tradition and thus the forms of knowledge it has constructed and maintained. More importantly the dominant language (for instance the language of science presently) may be used to derive validity for existence of other languages. This evaluation of other languages by the dominant language give rise to conflicts and dichotomies.

To summarize this post, tradition is a process to construct forms of knowledge. We need to carryout this critical conversation with awarenesss in order to identify the roots of these forms. This awareness would enable us to manage pseudo-conflicts at higher levels which might not be between traditionalism and rationalism per se but because of giving dominance to one form of knowledge over other.

Filed under: Philosophy, Series & Sequels

Islam in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature

A valuable research by Hafiz Abid Masood, a lecturer in the Department of English, International Islamic University, Islamabad has been published in a recent issue of Islamic Studies, a Pakistan based quarterly journal of Islamic Research.

This is a comprehensive bibliography (approx 50 pages) listing all the publications of English literature that can be understood as 1) pertaining to representation of Islam and Muslims in some capacity and 2) dealing with the influence of Muslim literary traditions on the European.

According to the compiler:

The present bibliography is part of a larger project that aims at compiling a comprehensive list of works dealing with the influence of Islam on, as well as Islam’s representation in, English literature. Two main considerations have guided the choice of material that has gone into the present bibliography. The first was related to the transmission of ideas from Muslim lands to England with specific focus on English literature. The second consideration was to explore how Muslims were depicted in English literature. The types of material that have been identified here range from full-scale books and monographs to articles published in journals, conference papers, dissertations and sometimes even lectures that were delivered at various Eastern and Western universities.

The work has been furnished awesomely with an introduction to all the genres that have been neatly divided into parts, sections and sub-sections. Its a worth keeping reference that should not be missed by any bibliophile.

Filed under: Books & Reviews

Tradition (2) – Conversation Incarnate

The dualities that I arbitrarily highlighted in my last post are significant to hold us here for a moment to identify a station where we presently find ourselves placed. Interestingly in this process of self-specualtion, each one of us may find himself attached to a particular side of divide. However a myriad of individual variances usually based upon noetic inclinations would be readily observable. (Of course for the sake of this exercise, I disregard those who take the understanding of the world around them for granted. Not that they are less important but they follow the lead of others’ intellects to station themselves on a particular side of the divide. At some level all of us do follow leads but that was just a funny subjective distraction). A valid illustration of this fact is that a person living in a modern society may derive intuitively from traditional epistemology rather then a purely rational argument in line with skepticism, empiricism or logical positivism.

Having this as a backdrop that all of us do belong to this network of dichotomies and perfectly placed there, it takes much to sift, sieve and bring out the true character of tradition and its relationship with our lives. Our notions about selves are subjugated by the illations dictated by time. Georgia Warnke, for instance, while explaining Gadamer’s position in Gadamer: Hermeneutics, Tradition and Reason accurately puts forth that human understanding of self is conditioned by the time. Rather then attaching various predicates with itself, it flows in a temporal continuum. Which effectively means that past, present and future are engrafted in such a way that each one of these conditions the other and adds variables to its course. In case of present and future its obvious, however what is the course of past and how it can be logically variant in a temporal structure which is essentially serial?

The answer is that our understanding of the past is shaped up according to the present which is formed in front of and by us. In more concrete terms, events in time do happen according to a serial flow but our understanding of these events does not follow the same course. This understanding of past gives a new meaning to our present or act as a justification for an already held close-to-heart meaning. We take this newly found or subconciously ratified meaning and carry on constructing our future. This in its very nature is a perpetual enterprise and each one of us undertakes it all the time. How I go about living my life is a complete narration of my self representing how I have attempted to build upon the plots and storlylines of the past thereby supplying me with strong cornerstones of present on which I keep on building my future. That is strictly a personal relationship with the continuum in which I was ‘thrown’.

Tradition in the light of above is not merely a point in history which has exhausted its potential. It is not an event or set of events happened in a confined slot. It is rather a phenomena in history which makes our past alive to interact with our present in order to make our existence meaningful while directing the course of our future. In a specific culture or society individuals do help each other by way of spontaneous manifestations of this phenomena to contribute in developing and preserving a collective tradition. In that sense tradition may be understood as our perceptual conversation with phenomena of past [1]. This conversation is essentially a critical enterprise where questions like how? why? and what? are apt to be asked. Where there is an acknowledgement that our exchange is not with a person (figurative) long dead but an enriched and lively being full of potential to impart us with understanding.

We carry out this conversation with all the tools usually emloyed to indulge in a critical enquiry, for instance textual, lingual and logical. However the aim of this enquiry with our past is not only to ingest the validity, soundness and rational coherence of the proposition but to touch the depths and dig out the actual force with which the claim was actually put in a different historical context. However our choice to make this a mechanical relationship, thereby bringing out the claims one after the other without the context in which these were made, would be construed as abandoning the conversation in the middle. As a result we would loose meanings of our present which in turn will give us a wrong impression of our past and would complicate our relationship with history, a topic on which I am going to have my next shot.
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1. I first read about conversational character of tradition quite a while ago in a research paper on Islamic Education by Dr. Yadullah Kazmi published in Islamic Studies.

Filed under: Philosophy, Series & Sequels

Tradition (1) – Key Dualities

In my modest yet well-grounded opinion, the present stalemate between traditionalists and Non-Traditionalists (to include all and sundry) stems from the (mis) conceptualization of the concept ‘tradition’. There is understandably a prevailing proclivity for fear that if Muslims would assay to make sense of their being in time they would loose their connection with tradition. I aim to limn the concept of tradition and what it connects to in a series of posts.

All these views are of course in the light of my readings so far and are subject to be evolved and vary with time and maturity of thought, if Allah may desire so. I contend for the purpose of my present undertaking that any discourse dwelling on what we call ‘Islamic Tradition’ would be premature and may be misleading if we do not attempt to excavate the concept tradition from the core and analyse it in detail.

I tend to purpose below that there are multiple levels of dichotomy encircling the concept of tradition. The spontaneous falsification of language which has found grounds in pseudo-intellectual conversations of our time is at the heart of each such level. Its more of a subtle diversion rather than mere degeneration property of time where words tend to loose their meaning and convey too less, too much or simply nothing.

Epistemological Dichotomy: Traditional Vs Rational Grounds of Knowledge.
One level of this duality is perceived and purported when there seems to be an organic connection between two terms on each side of this divide. Thereby tradition and religion is seen as necessarily opposite to what is understood as modern and secular. In these duality-pairs, only the former i.e. traditional and modern concerns me at the moment. At the root of this dichotomy lies the European Enlightenment Project, the age of reason, where methods like Cogito ergo sum were notably put forward in search of free foundations of knowledge. Avoiding prolixity and making this point rather hastily, I would just say that history at this level of duality is seen as a hindrance and every tradition was understood as a point in history where knowledge was not based on rational grounds. There were criticisms against, for instance by Heidegger and Gadamer but these are not concretely pertinent to the point of contention.

Social Dichotomy: Modern and Traditional Societies.
A further extension of the same argument gave rise to another level of division due to different perception of social reality by humans. Human beings being the author of the reality around them, of which they are a part too, are bound to see reason as a tool for progress and change according to the enlightened view. Societies which fail to do so or were percieved to construct reality through the tools of tradition and hence understood as standpat, frozen in time, nonprogressive and socially stagnant. Regardless of the reality around them and of which they were a part, people who valued traditional socieites were considered traditionalist and those esteeming modern societies considered modernists.

Human Vs Super-human Tradition.
A duality which is hard to be entitled with a jazzy epithet but which is perhaps the easiest to notice is how the concept of tradition is brought down from the perennial Super-human canons to another level which is necessarily human. To my knowledge this duality is best described by traditionalist philosophers like René Guénon (Abd al-Wahid Yahya) in his various writings, for instance Reign of Quantity, where he asserts that nothing that is of a purely human order can for that very reason be legitimately be called ‘traditional’[1] and its only in the profane sense of the language that we have come to use terms like ‘philosophical tradition’, ’scientific tradition’ or ‘political tradition’.

The implications of the above analysis may be subtle but gain importance when imported into the context of various forms of communication and corrupt them. Those who call themselves ‘traditionalist’ may easily get duped without even knowing they they are merely questers being emotionally attached with a particularly retained perception of tradition. In my view identifying these dualities is not merely a quiddity of words but significant if kept at the backdrop of analysing relationship between tradition and history or tradition and knowledge.

Before dwelling into these relationships and Islamic tradition’s in particular I have to compose the true character of tradition as I understand it after sifting these duality-pairs. That would be my next entry insha’Allah.
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1. Rene Guenon, The Reign of Quantity and The Sign of Times, Suhail Academy, P.254

Filed under: Philosophy, Series & Sequels

A Unique Coalescence of Paradoxes

1. A Resolute Citizen…

Hercharn Singh became the first Sikh officer to be inducted into Pakistan Army. There is already a precedence for officers from Christian and Parsi community but no Hindu or Sikh was able to make it to the ranks of Army yet. The news reports say that the cadet was skeptical that he would not be able to get through the preliminary phase even. Failing in the first attempt he kept his hopes alive and got selected in second attempt.

2. His Pride and Patriotism…

It was the happiest moment of my life when I came to know about my selection in the army. I am privileged to have this honour which none of my predecessors could ever achieve. My mother wants me to earn a good name for the country. Being the first Sikh cadet, I wish and pray also to be the first one to be a shaheed.

3. A Misplaced Shibboleth…

The motto of the Pakistan Army reads: ‘Iman, Taqwa, Jihad fi Sabilillah‘. I dont know if everyone can appreciate the comical side of it but the slogan is 30 years old. Prior to that Army worked on ‘Unity, Faith & Discipline’.

4. An Ideology still being Probed…

It is extremely difficult to appreciate why our Hindu friends fail to understand the real nature of Islam and Hinduism. They are not religious in the strict sense of the word, but are, in fact, different and distinct social orders, and it is a dream that the Hindus and Muslims can ever evolve a common nationality, and this misconception of one Indian nation has troubles and will lead India to destruction if we fail to revise our notions in time. The Hindus and Muslims belong to two different religious philosophies, social customs, litterateurs. They neither intermarry nor interdine together and, indeed, they belong to two different civilizations which are based mainly on conflicting ideas and conceptions. Their aspect on life and of life are different. It is quite clear that Hindus and Mussalmans derive their inspiration from different sources of history. They have different epics, different heroes, and different episodes. Very often the hero of one is a foe of the other and, likewise, their victories and defeats overlap. To yoke together two such nations under a single state, one as a numerical minority and the other as a majority, must lead to growing discontent and final destruction of any fabric that may be so built for the government of such a state. [source]

5. Conventional Wisdom…

The emphasis on religion is hard to miss. At the main entrance to the academy, an Arabic-lettered sign proclaims: ‘Victory Awaits Those Who Have Faith in God.’ Fallen war heroes are honored in a Martyrs Gallery. The curriculum includes a six-month course in Islamic studies.’Our basic route is Islam,’ says Manan Abdul, 20, an army officer’s son from Punjab province who will soon graduate from the academy as a second lieutenant. ‘When we have to command, when we have to make decisions, for that we have a role model: the prophet, peace be upon him.’

Senior officers caution against reading too much into the Army’s embrace of religious symbols and slogans — including its 28-year-old motto (now 30), ‘Faith, Piety and Jihad in the Way of Allah‘ — which they describe as a ‘motivational tool’ rather than a battle cry against the West.

To motivate men to sacrifice their lives and take others’ is probably the most difficult profession of the world. I am happy that Hercharn Singh achieved his goal fulfilling his mother’s wishes; and for this I wish him a prosperous future. On a more realistic note however, I doubt that he would ever be able to navigate his way cleanly through the present labyrinth which is a product of 60 years old history of his motherland. While he will constantly search for his identity in a challenging career ahead I am still finding footsteps in the mire.

Filed under: Land of the 'Pure', Sociology of Religion

Education and Modernity

These bleary thoughts are by no means a meaningful formulation of one of the most knotty problems describing the crisis of modernity. Its just that my good friend thabet’s enquiry on his blog stuck with me a little longer and prompted me to ponder consistently on related and a wider range of subjects.

A telling conversation in starting pages of Solitaire Mystery reaches its pinnacle when the father replies to his son who is in love with philosophy that he cannot teach him philosophy purposefully but if he is observant enough of his father’s thinking patterns, he might learn how to think philosophically. The example crudely highlights the difference between learning and gathering information and how each of these specifies the context of an experience we loosely call ‘education’. Learning about something means much more than garnering facts about the subject of our learning. It is an identification of the particular way how the thought behind that subject or object proceeded, sometimes by a deliberate effort to relive that thought process and at times an awareness when one happens to be a part of that process. This failure to differentiate between these fine experiences, all relating to that larger experience education at some level, is the major reason why we incessantly harp on the philosophies that shaped up the modern world without ever posing questions with the same unflagging resolve regarding the products of the same modernity.

This striking inability to ‘experience’ is closely related to commodification of knowledge in modern times. Many thinkers associate this commodification to Theodore Shultz’s seemingly maiden views about economics of education. According to other opinions including mine, this understanding is only a logical extension of laws of market economy to the production, processing, acquiring and sharing of knowledge. Moreover in our times, education can be theorized more easily if it is described as one of the means to invest in human capital rather than other epistemological reasons to ‘know’. The current education system fits perfectly in place if modern economic theories are kept at the backdrop of any such enquiry. For instance, semester system is nothing but breaking down a process into manageable sizes in order to achieve more efficiency. Student will be able to process more information as a result, similar to any productive industry which produces more if process is efficient. The underlying aim is not to ‘learn more’ about how a particular thought proceeds but to ‘acquire more’ in terms of information.

Moving along same lines of thinking, a valid question may arise regarding what kind of knowledge one should acquire. We are apt to face this question frequently in modern times because knowledge is not understood as a personal configuration of meaning which facilitates one’s faculties to pass judgements anymore. Everything related to education is now an industry and the outcome of this demand-supply phenomena can easily be seen in university where faculty of engineering is paid handsomely as compared to that of philosophy. Moreover when we are in the process of celebrating exponential growth of information which can be safely alluded to its inherent quality ‘to move’, the means to find justifications for this act of production itself are quickly being put into the dustbin of history.

We need to remind ourselves, while being actively creative in doing wonders with knowledge as it is infered in modern times, that education is an intimate relationship between ‘a being and being’ or ‘a being and the Being’. To get educated about something means effectively to possess a personalised configuration of meaning in order to evaluate its importance. This configuration is basically an understanding which one learns to acquire through developing a relationship with one’s object of learning. Without being equipped with the zeal and intention to experience this relationship, its like learning a football game through a coaching book with graphics. One may become completely ‘informed’ about the complexities of the game but can’t claim that he has ‘learnt football’. The analogy of the game could be extended to all fields of learning though dynamics of each would be considerably different than the other.

This brief enquiry is not an epsitemological one primarily but just a pseudo-ontological drive to find a compass with the shift in nature and existence of our being in modern times. Keeping this motive in perspective, knowledge in Islam in pre-modern times was strictly situated at a personalised level. A teacher is not merely a ‘facilitator’ as we have come to understand in modern times, who merely teaches abstract skills to access, process and retain information but a being who used to teach his life. He used to teach a text depicting a particular thought and mastering that text actually meant to learn the complete thought process behind that text. To put it simply, it was a way to embody knowledge and all the participlants in that learning relationship were completely aware of this ultimate goal. Besides the intent to live what one learns, it was completely a moral and spiritual quest. Every indulgence to educate self ultimately led to make one wise regarding another sign of Allah. The emphasis of that understanding was more on the world here then the world hereafter because knowledge acquired here can only be emodied while we are here. The manifestations of this knowledge were not understood in isolation with the process that ultimately led to it. It was not some disposable experience but once acquired became part of the self.

In modern times there are efforts to retrace the ‘traditional’ pathways leading to an ideal destination without replacing the old signposts. However the language of signs that spirit relates to is changed and crisis of modernity is not the contemporaneousness of the experience itself but the inability of the self to create new guideposts. The terminus, the path and the spirit still share the same origin but the mobility of intellect is hindered and needs new tools to navigate. Perhaps the most important enterprise that Muslims should indulge into is the effort to understand the requirement of a fresh compass in the light of modern philosophies. But this undertaking would only be valid if Muslims become aware of the fact that they are the keepers of an eternal epistemology which is capable of encompassing and validating all the contemporary trends. Moreover the claim of this awareness should not be mere lip service but a spontaneous and ad-lib manifestation. Identification of ways that can bring about such a sentient being may take us to the heart of our forgotten tradition and make our conversations with history current.

Filed under: Islam & Modernity, Philosophy

Amal-e-Ahle Madina (2) – Argument against itself

I analysed the rationale behind Imam Malik’s reliance on Practice of Madinites as a juridical source in one of my previous entries. Skipping the extension and application of this principle carried out by Malik considering it to be a distraction from my present scope, I intend to furnish the basic argument against the use of this principle in this post.

Just a frugal look at Malik’s times can make a reader wise about the dynamics of jurisprudence being neatly dovetailed with regional tradition of opinions. An insight into the sources of these opinion can be a good exercise for yet another essay but it would suffice to say that my readings do not agree in general with the assertions of Schacht for instance, regarding the roots of these regional practices. The fact however, that juridic opinions in those times tended to distinguish the practice from region to region is fairly conspicuous. Opinions not only belonged to the regions but used to get famous by the cities which were the hub of knowledge in that region. Moreover cities were famous to station scholars who were considered to be specialists in a particular branch of theology.

For instance, Basra was more famous for discussions regarding beliefs and foundational impressions as compared to jurisprudence. Kufa was the center of Iraqian Fiqh (jurisprudence), primary source of which were the teachings of Ibn Masud (r) and opinions of Ibrahim al-Nakhai. Hammad bin abu Suleyman and Abu Hanifa carried this tradition forward. Damascus was famous for less reliance on Qiyas (analogy) or Istihsan (preference). The source of Syrian jurisprudence was primarily the athar (traditions) of Companions and their students. The dominating school in Syria belonged to Awzai and he was not a Muhaddis like Malik. Madina stood out uniquely among all these cities. It contained knowledge of Hadith, athar (traditions) of Companions and opinions of their students. To put it more incisively, Madina was the converging as well as originating point of Hadith, practice and opinions.

Fortunately the correspondence between Malik and al-Laith bin Saad, from which I have drawn previously as well, not only describes Malik’s deductive reasoning but equally illuminates the argument against it. Malik’s position was concise enough, enabling me to render it completely into English from the sources. The counter argument from Laith is a fine piece of literature as well as an excellent presentation of mannerism and respect among classical scholars even when their disagreements are too obvious. Its an extended response and can be found completely in Ailaam al-Muwaqieen of Ibn Qayyim. I would only try to transcribe the salients here in fear of making this entry too prolix.

Laith acknowledges the receipt of Malik’s missive, expresses his gratitude on this effective and sincere advice and explains the reason for opining against Malik’s decisions which are presumptively in complete concordance with practice of Madinites:

You have been informed about my legal opinions contrary to people of Madina. Fact of the matter is that I completely trust the opinions of those who have preceded me. I totally agree with what you have written regarding superiority of knowledge in Madina among cities. All the prior scholars are highly stationed and I have no objection over which their consensus is established.

Among the first of Muhajireen and Ansaar, who are the vanguard of Islam as you wrote, there were many who went away from Madina responding to the call of Jihad. They established their Halaqahs (circles for imparting knowledge) in different cities and people flocked there to learn the Book of Allah and Sunnah of Prophet. They exercised Ijtihad (independant reasoning) and gave decisions where they found no evidence from Quran and Sunnah. Abu Bakr, Umar and Uthman and those who were trusted by people (with rule) carried forward the same practice. These three caliphs were not going to abandon the community of Muslims, neither they were oblivious of their condition (prevailing practices). Rather they used to write regarding minutest of details in relation to religion and were instantly mindful if there were small diversions from the injunctions of Quran and Sunnah. Therefore they have not missed a ruling which was explained by Quran, practiced by the Prophet or discussed later. Whenever a matter came up which has precedence from practice of Companions, they sanctioned it, adopted it and never commanded to act against it. Hence we do not find it permissible for a group of Muslims to adopt a practice which was not practiced by Companions and their students. [I usually translate the word 'Tabieen' as Companions' students. I dont think second or third 'generation' of Muslims is always a right rendition].

However disagreements among the Companions is a certain fact too and they differed with each other in many cases. Let me write to you if you have no knowledge of these matters. After the Companions, their students differed a lot, for instance people like Saeed Ibn Musayyib. These differences continued to next generations and Ibn Shihab and Rabia bin Abdul Rahman are the leaders (leading examples) now a days.

I visited you (in the past), listened and grasped you position. I came to know later (when I met Rabia) that Rabia’s opinion is not in accordance with preceding opinions. His opinions were even against those who were considered people of ra’y (opinion as opposite to tradition in principle) in Madina, for instance Yahya bin Saeed, Ubaidullah bin Umar and Katheer bin Farqad. Finally you abandoned Rabia’s circle due to these differences. I discussed with you my concerns about these opinions (Rabia’s opinions) which I didn’t approve and you agreed. (Despite of that) It is an undeniable fact that Rabia enjoys good language, sound vision, exemplary conduct and love for his Muslim brothers. May Allah reward him abundantly for his efforts. I met Ibn Shihab also and there were many differences with him too. One of us wrote to him (later) and he explained his position from three different angles which is a proof of his well-grounded knowledge.

All these exchanges invited me to abandon which I did not consider to go against before. The underlying fault of my prior refusal was revealed to me as a result.

Laith continues to give examples hereafter regrading his various differences with Malik’s decisions. The first example is of combining two prayers in the night of rain. He reasons that Syria has high rainfall as compared to Madina and scholars of different regions never gave a decision to combine prayers of Maqhrib and Ishaa. He cites precedent from the conduct of Abu Ubaida, Khalid bin Waleed, Yazid bin Abu Sufyan, Abuzar, Saad bin Abi Waqas, Ma’az bin Jabal and many more from different regions. Some of the other examples (that he gives) are regarding decisions in court based on single witness, delaying the dower of women, the issue of Eelaa, Khutaba of Istasqa’a (prayer for rain) and mutual obligation of zakah on busines partners. He ends his letter with prayers for Imam Malik and asks him to continue giving him advices showing him the fallacies in his opinions.

Laith’s argument against practice of Madinites seems sound and unflawed. As shown above in his reasoning, he counters the argument using the practice and opinions of Madinites against themselves. The bottom line of his assertion is that its wrong to bound other regions by practice of Madinities even when there are different practices in Madina itself. The same contention was put differently by Shafii who said that the consensus of Madinite scholars is a prerequisite to any claim of consensus. The pivotal point of Shafii’s disagreement with Malik is again practice as a legal source, however there are few more dimensions to it which I would present in my next entry of this series, insha’Allah.

Filed under: Ilm al-Ikhtilaf, Traditional Islam

Institutionalized Disagreement

Dr. John Walbridge whose primary area of research is Illuminationist Philosophy (specifically the school of Suhrawardi) has succinctly shared some valuable insights regarding some larger issues which, according to him, have puzzled him for years.

The issues[1] in question keep most of us flummoxed and need persistent attention from various angles in order to simplify the present variety of impasses that we have found ourselves in. A very short summary and evaluation of Walbridge’s main points is presented here:

Endorsement of Diversification. The first phenomenon that Walbridge mentions is the acceptance of diversity since the formative phase of Islam. He rightly observes that by the time of al-Ghazali, the notion that there are atleast four equally acceptable versions of Islamic law, was firmly placed in theological framework of Islam. Besides acknowledged multifariousness in variant readings of Quran and differences of opinion in authenticity of Hadith, the most striking case is of seemingly contrary conclusions in different disciplines. Ghazali can be cited as a valid example whose Mishkat al-Anwar (Niche of Lights) has been questioned because its doctrines do not appear elsewhere in his other works. There are so many inconsistencies in his endeavour in variety of disciplines, for instance logic, philosophy and theology, that it is difficult to locate the real Ghazali. It would be approproate to quote Walbridge as he describes the gist of his assertion:

It is a remarkable phenomenon: a willingness to tolerate equally authoritative alternative versions of religious truth.

A Curriculum Emphasizing Form without Content. Walbridge observes that Muslims developed a curriculum that mainly stresses the form over content. He cites Dars-i Nizami, the traditional curriculum of South Asia as a case study. This is a classical curriculum which was developed in 12th century and still being taught in various madrassas (religious schools). The main emphasis is upon the improvement of dialectical skills of students. Instruction is based on concise historic text books where a student goes through courses of traditional logic, grammar and rhetoric. The study of pure religious texts is relatively less in a given period, for instance various interpretations of Quran and Hadith and their subsequent and constant evolution into legal theory. Students are taught how to understand religious texts through a deep knowledge of logic and language but there’s relatively little or no focus on extensive teaching of the sacred texts themselves.

Failure of Consensus in Modern Times. Walbridge’s primary concern is the underlying role that unanswered questions and disagreements play in contemporary Islamic society as compared to medieval and early Islamic society. He accurately puts it:

…observer cannot fail to be struck by the sense that something has changed. In the middle ages the Islamic acceptance of institutionalised disagreement took place in the context of general consensus about the structue and functioning of Islamic society. In the contemporary Islamic world, the range of disagreement is far broader, and there is not even agreement about the extent to which the disagreement should be tolerated.

The examples from Pakistan can be the intolerant voices in the society, legal schools not being mentioned at all in religious text books and portrayl of a legal system ‘that sprang full grown and uniform from the brows of Companions of the Prophet’. There are organised efforts to opine that Islamic law should be adopted as the basic law of state without even slightest of efforts to restore the part of law that needs specific attention of individuals themselves. Naturally, a pious ruler would attempt to exercise his powers in accordance with Islamic norms and vice versa. Another glaring source of disagreement is the question of derivation of cultural norms and their various manifestations from the Islamic tradition.

Classical Islamic Attitude to Disagreement. Professor identifies some major attitudes that come into play in order to interpret disagreements in medieval times. He recapitulates his main theme:

Medieval muslims were able to maintain religious unity by the device of systematically tolerating diversity and disagreement within a certain range. This tolerance was based on an honest understanding of the tentativeness of each of the great legal schools, as well as of the scope for disagreement in other areas of Islamic religious scholarship. Eventually, the understanding of the bases of this disagreement in effect became the central theme of Islamic education. The fact that Islamic law influenced the state but was not usually enforced by the state allowed this state of affairs to continue without violating the consciences of individual scholars and thus forcing schism. The fact that travel was slow and Muslims were isolated from each other made such tolerance easier to maintain, especially since there was also usually a tolerance of local custom.

Based upon this extremely sketchy yet profound examination, Walbridge diagnoses the breakdown of traditional education, educated laity bringing naiveté about the interpretation of texts alongwith fresh questions, ease of communication bringing along conflicts, rising trend in favor of pseudo-literal interpretations and intolerant attitudes towards legal schools as well as other cultures as the root cause of this unmanageable conflict.

The presentation, may be due to its abbreviated nature, is surely lacking in few areas besides being immensely valuable and accurate in some of the assertions. In early and middle ages of Islam tolerance was not embedded in the acceptance of alternative versions of religious truth. The truth in religious epistemology of Islam has always been understood as eternal. It would create a paradox within the Islamic theory of knowledge if we believe that truth manifests itself in alternative forms. In my humble opinion, bounds of disagreements among early Muslims were dictated by the recognition that everybody has the right to question the extent to which Law-giver makes the application of truth abundantly clear. This continous search to find the application of truth in different settings became a timeless expression of inherent dynamism of Islam.

Modern as well as relatively pre-modern generations got influenced by many other variables, including the changed nature of rhetoric itself, lost the track of this inherent dynamism. Its a combined effect of innumerable agents but modern man’s conscience is unable to be satiated with a coarse presentation of Islam. His struggle to surrender, which is nicely embedded in his kernel, moulds itself into a unique inquisitiveness. This inquisitiveness is usually misunderstood with sheer skepticism or deliberate disbelief and delivers disagreements.

Walbridge rightly asserts that colonization and modern education system affected the traditional system in a variety of ways. But traditional curriculum’s inability to evolve itself constantly with time should equally be held responsible for this unbridgeable gap. People having background of modern education were not accepted as ‘traditionalists’ and forced to remain on sidelines. A conscious effort was not made to bridge the gaps and traditional and modern education became completely compartmentalised as a result. Knowledge got enclosed in these compartments and people started refering to ‘their scholars‘ rather then ‘all those who are better in knowledge then themselves‘.

Dr. John Walbridge has provided a sound outline to build a stronger modern foundation. In a way, this small paper should prove to be a reminder of medieval times when ikhtalaf (disagreement) was merely understood as jurisprudential antonym to ijmaa (consenus). Classical literature is full of some great books on ilm al-ikhtalaf (the knowledge of disagreements) for instance ikhtilaf al-Fuqaha (The difference among jurists) by Tabari and al-Insaf fi Bayan Asbab al-Ikhtilaf (The Fair Explanation of the Causes of Differences) by Shah Wali Ullah. In recent times, Taha Jabir al-Alwani has written a good work titled Ethics of Disagreements in Islam. However there is still a need to do persistent professional work in this forgotten field of Islamic sciences. Tolerance and acceptance can only be taught through examining the past where disagreements were intelligently structured to put them on a positive course.

1. John Walbridge, Islamic Art of Asking Questions, Ilm al-Ikhtalaf and Institutionalisation of Disagreement, Spring 2002, Islamic Studies.

Filed under: Ilm al-Ikhtilaf, Traditional Islam