The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

by Dr. Muhammad Iqbal

Preface Knowledge and Religious Experience The Philosophical Test of the Revelations of Religious Experience The Conception of God and the Meaning of Prayer The Human Ego - His Freedom and Immortality The Spirit of Muslim Culture The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam Is Religion Possible? Notes and References Bibliography Index

PREFACE
The Qurn is a book which emphasizes deed rather than idea. There are, however, men to whom it is not possible organically to assimilate an alien universe by re-living, as a vital process, that special type of inner experience on which religious faith ultimately rests. Moreover, the modern man, by developing habits of concrete thought - habits which Islam itself fostered at least in the earlier stages of its cultural career has rendered himself less capable of that experience which he further suspects because of its liability to illusion. The more genuine schools of Sufism have, no doubt, done good work in shaping and directing the evolution of religious experience in Islam; but their latter-day representatives, owing to their ignorance of the modern mind, have become absolutely incapable of receiving any fresh inspiration from modern thought and experience. They are perpetuating methods which were created for generations possessing a cultural outlook differing, in important respects, from our own. Your creation and resurrection, says the Qurn, are like the creation and resurrection of a single soul. A living experience of the kind of biological unity, embodied in this verse, requires today a method physiologically less violent and psychologically more suitable to a concrete type of mind. In the absence of such a method the demand for a scientific form of religious knowledge is only natural. In these Lectures, which were undertaken at the request of the Madras Muslim Association and delivered at Madras, Hyderabad, and Aligarh, I have tried to meet, even though partially, this urgent demand by attempting to reconstruct Muslim religious philosophy with due regard to the philosophical traditions of Islam and the more recent developments in the various domains of human knowledge. And the present moment is quite favourable for such an undertaking. Classical Physics has learned to criticize its own foundations. As a result of this criticism the kind of materialism, which it originally necessitated, is rapidly disappearing; and the day is not far off when Religion and Science may discover hitherto unsuspected mutual harmonies. It must, however, be remembered that there is no such thing as finality in philosophical thinking. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other views, 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. M.I

THIS LAW OF OURS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

Muhammad Asad
DAR AL-ANDALUS
GIBRALTAR

Published by Dar Al-Andalus Limited 3 Library Ramp, Gibraltar First Printing 1987 Copyright, 1987, by Pola Hamida Asad All rights reserved including the right of reproduction

THIS LAW OF OURS

AUTHOR'S NOTE THE THESIS propounded on these pages is based on several essays published in Lahore between September 1946 and February 1947. They appeared in the periodical Arafat, which I wrote and edited in those days as a "one-man's journal". As was evident from its subtitle, "A Monthly Critique of Muslim Thought", Arafat was a kind of journalistic monologue meant to clarify-as much as might be possible for a single man-the great confusion prevailing in the Muslim community as to the scope and the practical implications of Islamic Law. The first impetus towards such a "monologue" came to me during the Second World War, when-because of my then Austrian citizenship--I found myself an involuntary "guest" of the Government of India from September 1, 1939, to August 14, 1945. Throughout those years I was the only Muslim in an internment camp peopled by some three thousand Germans, Austrians and Italians-both Nazis and anti-Nazis as well as Fascists and antiFascistsall of them collected helter-skelter from all over Asia and indiscriminately locked up behind barbed wire as "enemy aliens"; and the fact that I was the only Muslim among so many non-Muslims contributed, if anything, to the intensity of my preoccupation with the cultural and intellectual problems of my community and the spiritual environment which I had chosen for myself as early as 1926. The perplexity and the cultural chaos in which the Muslims were floundering in those days were ever-present in my mind. Thinking about the cause-or the causes-of that confusion became almost an obsession with me. I can still see myself pacing day-in and dayout over the great length of our barrack-room, trying to figure out why a community which had been granted a splendid spiritual guidance through the Qur'an and the life-example of the Last Prophet had for centuries failed to arrive at a clear, unambiguously agreedThis Law of Ours upon concept of the Law through which that guidance could be brought to practical fruition. And one day, suddenly, an answer to this tormenting question presented itself to me: the Muslims did not and could not apply the Law of Islam to the real problems of their communal and individual lives because that Law had been obscured to them-and, therefore, made impracticable-by centuries of juristic speculation and diversification. And it struck me forcibly that unless that tremendous complication could somehow be resolved and Islamic Law brought back to its erstwhile clarity and simplicity, the Muslims were condemned endlessly to blunder along through a maze of conflicting concepts as to what that Law really is and what it demands of its followers. At that time I had never yet read any of the writings of that outstanding Islamic thinker, Abu 'Ali: ibn J:Iazm of Cordoba; but the

conclusions at which I arrived spontaneously and independently proved, many months after my release from internment and after a study of Ibn J:Iazm's works, very close to--although not always identical with-the fundamental ideas of this great predecessor. To be sure, not all of hisfiqhl conclusions could or should be accepted at their face value: some of them are an outcome of a dogmatic literalism which does not recommend itself without reservation to minds that seek to comprehend the spiritual and not only the legal purport of the sharl'ah. None the less, Ibn J:Iazm ranks very high mdeed among the small group of those profound thinkers of our past who stood up boldly against mere convention in their endeavours to free the eternal Law of Islam of all that goes beyond the self-evident ordinances of the Our'fm and the Sunnah of the Prophet, upon whom be God's blessings and peace.

*
As I have mentioned at the outset, the thoughts underlying this essay were first conceived by me some forty years ago. It seems to me, however, that despite all the changes which have come about in the meantime, these thoughts are even more relevant to our present social and cultural situation than they were in that comparatively distant past. We are now witnessing a strong resurgence, in all Muslim lands and throughout all social layers of the community, of a consciousness of our past greatness as well as of our failings, coupled with a deep longing for a re-establishment of Islam as the basic factor in Author's Note our lives. In some countries-pre-eminently in Pakistan-a sincere, planned effort is being made in the right direction:. a re-introduction of the system of zakiih and 'ushr, a reform of banking methods free of the drawback of riM as a pre-condition of a future return to an Islamic scheme of economics, and so forth-and all this with an absence of the fanaticism and lack of moderation unfortunately prevalent in the two or three other countries which have embarked on the long journey towards a truly Islamic state of things. But even if we take the praiseworthy example of Pakistan into account, we find that, on the whole, the emotional upheaval which is so characteristic of the present-day Muslim world is as yet completely incoherent and confused. There is no unanimity as to the kind of spiritual, social and-more than anything else-political future at which wc ought to aim. To desire a return to an Islamic reality is one thing; but to visualise that reality in all its concrete aspects is another. Mere slogans will not help us in our dilemma. The dream of an Islamic "revolution" (a Western concept artificially implanted in Muslim minds) can only lead to an exacerbation of the many existing conflicts within our ummah, and thus to a deepening of the chaos in which we now find ourselves. And the same goes for the assertion that this or that Muslim country has already attained to the status of an "Islamic State" by virtue of nothing more than the introduction of hijiib for women and of shar'i punishments (hudud) for certain crimes, and the assumption of governmental power by groups of self-appointcd "guardians of Islam" who conceive themselves-after Western patterns and against all truly Islamic tenets-as a body of ordained clergy .... It is with the aim of contributing something to a clarification of

the fundamental issue confronting the world of Islam in this period of transition that I am now placing this essay for a consideration by all Muslims who realise that emotion alone will not bring us closer to our goal: in short, all Muslims who want, and are able, to think for themselves.

*
As I have mentioned at the outset, the following pages are the result-and occasionally even verbatim transcriptions-of writings published in the form of articles forty years ago: and this may explain a number of repetitions occurring in the present essay-repetitions for which the reader's indulgence is sought.