THE NECESSITY FOR A RE-EVALUATION OF ISLAMIC HISTORY

No task of Islamic scholarship is more urgent than a bold reorientation of Islamic history on a realistic and genuine Quranic basis. The prevailing interpretation of the Muslim civilization of the past is extremely detrimental to the cause of Islam and so long as our scholars continue to indulge in such apologetics and romanticism, the movement for an Islamic renaissance will be severely crippled.

Because Muslims have felt so humiliated and impotent, since the rise of European imperialism, it has become the fashion of our writers to derive their emotional satisfaction from painting a rosy picture of a remote past:

Islamic civilization is one of those magnificent civilizations that embellish the pages of world history and fill to repletion the imperishable treasure-houses of books with its grand relics and glorious memories. During the reigns of the Khalifs Mansur, Rashid and Mamun, the city of Bagdad with its countless beautiful edifices, splendid amenities of life, unlimited wealth and resources, had reached a stage of civilization never approached by any nation before. The population of the city was 25 lakhs. Damascus, Cairo, Aleppo, Samarqand, Ispahan—what consummate models and what perfect ideals they have presented in all branches of art, in the cultivation of the sciences, in the happy and contented life of the people, in the abundance of magnificent edifices. Qairawan, Fez, Tlemcen, in Morocco and other cities in Africa had attained such heights of splendor and magnificence that no nation of modern Europe can challenge or refute their claims.

121 Cordoba with its million and a half of population, was without a match on the continent. Geometry, Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine, Chemistry, Geology and all the other sciences beneficial to man taught in the academies of al-Azhar, Al-Amazi, Az-Zaituna, Qairawan and the universities of Cordoba, Bagdad, and Samarqand at a time when Islam could boast of its empires and its great men.

How glorious was the galaxy of geniuses and scholars produced by Islam who were versed equally well in theology and in the sciences and could harmonise both like two blossoms on a garland! Al-Qazi Ibn Rushd is the Arab philosopher best known among the Europeans and he was a great theologian. We have had but a glimpse of the products of Islamic civilization and its golden age…. How many priceless books have been written by European historians on Islamic civilization, how many beautiful photographs have been published by them. Even the most malevolent critics of Islam have not dared to belittle the fruits of this civilization…..

Our Decline and Its Causes, Amir Shakib Arsalan, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1932, pp. 104-109. The above quotation illustrates all the errors which these well-meaning scholars have injected into a retrospective appreciation of our past. In the first place, this historical philosophy is out-and-out materialistic.

While indulging in the most extravagant praise of the achievements of Muslims in the worldly arts and sciences, it utterly ignores the actual state of the culture in question from a moral and spiritual standpoint. These scholars never trouble themselves to investigate with a critical mind precisely as to what extent these boasted achievements were Islamic or un-Islamic in their origin. It is sufficient for them that 122 the celebrities bore Muslim names and were accorded Western recognition.

Our scholars should take note of the fact that our Holy Quran condemns paganism, atheism and materialism in all its manifestations even if they happen to be disguised under Muslim labels. Because they have thus far failed to do so is the reason why the decadent affluence of the Abbasids under Haroun ar-Rashid, such Mutazilite monarchs as Mamun and the epicurians of Damascus and Granada, is wrongly lauded as the “Golden Age” of Islam. To attempt to justify Islamic civilization only to the extent to which it is allegedly claimed to be the forerunner of the modern West is to assert by implication that Islam has already accomplished its mission in history and henceforth has no future as an independent and self-sufficient way of life of its own.

An important aspect of Muslim apologetics is that Islam first taught what Europe now teaches.

“See then how philosophy in the twentieth century comes establishing what the Quran laid down some fourteen centuries ago…. democracy whose edifice Muslims pride on their religion’s having first set up in the world…. European scholars have discovered that our forefathers had been working on the evolution theory, the latest of all scientific theories. And so on, all designed to show that the teachings now-a-days most esteemed in the West and by Westerners were long since proclaimed by Islam…. In the endeavor to lift Islam to the standard that the West accepts, it is forgotten that unless Islam not only reaches but surpasses such a standard; unless the religion is not only as good but better than secular requirements, there is presumably no case against those who abandon Islam and go over to Westernism. If Islam originally taught the essence of modernity, then they are not really abandoning Islam at all. If all that is claimed for Islam is a past greatness as a procurer of modern science 123 and philosophy, then it should be accorded appropriate applause and gradually let die out like any other historical phenomena….

Islam in Modern History, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Princeton University Press, 1957, pp. 144-146.

The above quotation eloquently exposes the fundamental intellectual dishonesty and the utter futility of this apologetic interpretation of our history. Even assuming it were true that Cordoba enjoyed miles of beautiful paved streets well-lit at night, hundreds of bath-houses, splendid public buildings and private dwellings equipped with carpets, tables, chairs and all the amenities of luxury while Christian Europe was wallowing in “medievalism,” how does this help us now? And furthermore, is such past materialist splendor what we as Muslims should take as our ultimate pride?

In the reconstruction of our view of the past, it is essential that we stop here and now reviewing our history through the distorted lenses of secularism and materialism. First of all, we must face the fact that those celebrities whom our apologetic literature praises most extravagantly as the acme of “Muslim” culture—al-Kindi, Ibn Farabi, Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd—were unanimously denounced by the reputable Ulama of their day as heretics because of their attempts to reinterpret Islam in the light of pagan Greek philosophy. Consequently, their fame was restricted to Europe alone. They had no reputation in the Muslim world and were almost forgotten by the Muslims until they were resurrected by Western orientalist research. The so-called “Muslim” philosophy is only a repetition of that taught by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle and had 124 nothing to do with Islam. The same is true of the various branches of science and mathematics as they developed for several centuries in the Muslim world. The sad fact is that most of the scientists and mathematicians who bore Muslim names adhered to the Mutazilite heresy.

Very few were devout and practicing Muslims.

Although their achievements in the various branches of the natural sciences far out-stripped what was known in ancient Greece and Rome, the philosophical foundation remained the same Greek paganism. This does not mean that Islam is inherently opposed to scientific research on principle. It only means that by historical coincidence, the natural sciences have emerged under the direct patronage of anti-religious values. It need not have been so but that is what happened.

Although our great mujaddids of the past rejected the philosophy of the Mutazilites as heretical innovation, they did not lack genuine appreciation and admiration for their concrete achievements in the physical sciences. Thus their most fervent opponent, al-Ghazzali himself declared:

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences seeing that there is nothing in revealed Truth opposed to these sciences either by way of negation or affirmation and nothing in these sciences opposed to the truth of religion. If the learned non-Muslim believes that Islam is based upon ignorance, he thus grows in love for philosophy and hatred for Islam…. The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazzali, translated by Montgomery Watt, George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., London, 1953, pp. 34-35.

125 Although scientists were never persecuted in the Muslim world on religious grounds as in medieval Europe, even our greatest of Mujaddids such as al-Ghazzali and Ibn Taimiya, failed to recognize the necessity of divorcing these sciences from their pagan Greek philosophical context and reconstructing them on a genuine Quranic basis. Consequently, the sciences fell into the hands of the enemies of Islam while the best minds in the Muslim world were diverted to Sufism and theological hair-splitting.

This enabled European imperialism with its superior technological weapons to conquer, dominate and enslave the Muslims.

All these facts should be squarely faced by our scholars and historians. It does us no good to indulge in romanticism and wishful thinking. All the pagan influences which infiltrated into the culture of the Muslim world in the past should be rejected as irreconcilable to Islam as the anti-religious forces of the present.

We should take our inspiration from the moral and spiritual excellence of the pious and devout rather than mere gloating over materialist brilliance and worldly success.

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