Masood N. Khan M.D
Abstract: It is a universal truth that Muslims across the board, in general, have divided knowledge between knowledge of faith Ilm-ud-Deen and worldly knowledge Ilm-ud-Dunya’ the former being more pious and respectable than the latter. An incisive study of Quran their book of divine guidance and the various sayings of their Prophet does not even point to such a division much less making one more valuable than other. Then how did this idea become so prevalent and so deeply reinforced among Muslims. Is it because they have unquestionably accepted what their religious scholars convinced them with. If so it underscores a serious problem in that Muslims have totally delegated the understanding of their faith to their so called scholars and hence have become intellectually timid and submissive in the matters of their faith. This adverse phenomenon has all the ingredients of idol-worship which Islam has so emphatically condemned. It has consequently robbed Muslims of their fierce sense of freedom. The following article critically examines how and at what cost such intellectual subjugation occurred among Muslims. This is perhaps yet another major cause of their decline.
Ribi’l ibn Aamir, presenting himself as an envoy of Sa’ad ibn abi waqaas at the court of Rustam the commander of Persian army, told him in the presence of his courtiers that the mission of Muslims was to deliver human beings from the yoke of their overlords to the fair domain of the Almighty and from the narrow confines of this world to the boundlessness of the hereafter.
These words represented the spirit of emancipation in Al-Islam, a fierce sense of freedom from all forms of man-made oppressions. The very article of faith which formed the first and the foremost pillar of Islam was worded to express negation and rejection of every kind of idol, and affirm freedom of human beings from their oppression. Such a glorified sense of freedom was achieved by submitting to one God. Naturally, it had to be so engrained in the psyche of Muslims that without it Islam’s infrastructure for the dignity of human being would simply crumble down. Yet it is a puzzling irony that for centuries, among all the people of the world, only Muslims had to abandon this sense of freedom so irresistibly. It seems this was yet another major cause of the decline of Muslims.
The grave consequences of the loss of this treasure—an uncompromising universal sense of freedom—resulted in their accepting quietly, despotic dictators to rule them, letting their social dynamics degenerate into an oppressive patriarchy with subjugation of women, letting their minds be enslaved by an ugly class consciousness based upon social and economic fortunes and their intellectual surrender to their religious scholars possessing a static and stagnant interpretation of faith frozen in antiquity.
The scholars or idols?
Nowhere the damage was more abrasive than their letting these scholars become their intellectual idols. In contrast to the other forms of oppressions, the intellectual oppression that Muslims pathetically subjected themselves to was more subtle and extremely dangerous, making masses of Muslims over generations intellectually too lethargic to take responsibility and control of matters relating to their faith. How many times one would hear Khutbahs (sermons) and lectures delivered by Muslims where speaker needed to feel secure by saying “It is not my opinion, this is what scholars have said.” He would even at times go to the extent to shamelessly give his own conclusions under the sheltered reference of scholars. And more tragic perhaps, the recipients of his lecture in the audience would have no courage of common sense to question the stupidity of any statement blessed with the wand of scholars. And more tragic perhaps, the recipients of his lecture in the audience would have no courage of common sense to question the stupidity of any statement blessed with the wand of scholars. It was true that Islam had given reverence and respect to those who attained knowledge. Certainly it was meant not to make idols out of scholars but to encourage scholarship among common Muslims and make them seekers and students of knowledge. Respecting a scholar should never have been at the expense of one’s own freedom to think, reflect and draw independent conclusions. What Muslims have done unfortunately quite contrary to the spirit of “La Ilaha III Allah” (There is no God but God) is that they have created a privileged class of scholars and submitted to them, accepted them without question referred to them for solutions, felt too timid to differ with their interpretations and let them exercise monopoly over issues relating to their faith.
The above characteristics are the ideal ingredients of idol-worship, subtle but fraught with fatal effects on human intellect. Free from institutionalized delivery of knowledge by few so called acclaimed scholars, the model for learning and education prevalent among early Muslims, following Prophet’s departure from this world, had to be intensely interactive and built upon personal investigation and research. Every Muslim felt responsible for his own pursuit of knowledge with a sincere concern for personal guidance and success in this world and in the hereafter. Gradually this dynamic and vibrant model was replaced by a monopolized and stagnant system controlled by few idolized scholars.
An attractive fallacy!
Muslims have long been led to believe by these scholars that the only knowledge to be upheld and pursued in this world and which is redeemable in the hereafter is the knowledge of faith and not of material world. In order to give legitimacy to this concept, it seems, they on purpose misinterpreted the sayings of the Prophet relating to the importance of education and knowledge in human life, to mean exclusively the knowledge of faith, (Ilm ud Deen). Injecting these misleading definitions in Islam, was an adverse innovation that berated the indispensable value of knowledge, per se, and artificially divided it into secular and religious with a value tag. Worse even, Muslims were forced to choose one over the other, and made to believe that since knowledge of their faith was more important, “the scholars” as possessors of such knowledge, were more important than scholars of secular knowledge or anybody else. Nowhere in Quran was knowledge divided as such. The concept of “Ilm” (knowledge) in Islam was based upon the understanding that any knowledge as long as it was not harmful, was a valuable possession no matter what facet of Allah’s creation it dealt with. It could only be categorized either beneficial or harmful to mankind. The Quran referred to knowledge only in terms of its presence versus its absence as in this famous verse which has been oft-repeated in Quran
Say how could those who have knowledge and those devoid of it, be similar 39:9
As a consequence of this unislamic division of knowledge Muslims went about establishing exclusively Islamic institutions with a mistaken sense of piety attached to them even though these institutions kept producing graduates who were misfits in the fast changing world. Institutions with exclusively Islamic education were a unislamic idea bound to be destructive. It not only produced non-progressive misfits but also divided Muslims into polarized groups of Mullahs and secularists with increasing gulf between them. Unchecked, the Mullahs, on the pretext of keeping up the supremacy of faith over worldly affairs, condemned the secular knowledge, discouraged any kind of debate much less dissent, made Muslims intellectually submissive to what they delivered and involved them into regulations concerning stupidly trivial affairs with a false notion that more conservative you were the more pious you were. This sad situation compelled Iqbal the great poet-philosopher to declare
“Haqeeqat khurafath men kho gayee”
The essence was lost in the rubbish.
Gradually this condition gave rise to a scholar-dependent community, made Ijtihad (analytical reasoning) difficult, prevented knowledge from evolving with time and created an environment where pseudo-scholars also flourished and commanded respect, to the detriment of society.
The Myth of Ijtihad (Analytical Reasoning):
The aura of idolized scholarship also included this myth that only scholars had the power to make “ijtihad” which is defined as a way to find solutions based upon analytical reasoning in situations where clear guidelines were not available in Qur’an and the example of the Prophet. For centuries the right to Ijtihad exclusively belonged to scholars in the name of preserving the divine message. Whether such an exclusive privilege also had the divine sanction, was highly questionable. By common sense, the purpose of Ijtihad was to let human beings come up with their own solutions to their unique situations and circumstances in life. Sure, such solutions had to follow an honest effort to see if there were clear divine injunctions that could not be bypassed and to make sure that their solutions were not in clear violation of the belief-framework or the spirit of the divine message. In essence it was the right and responsibility given to every Muslim and never a prerogative of the scholars with a decorative list of qualifications. Challenged this way, every Muslim was called upon to do his/her own home work, research, self-educate and seek knowledge so as to come up with honest and responsible solutions, and not subject oneself to unnecessary hardship with a senseless adherence to solutions that are no more applicable in the present age. It was freedom from the suffocating burden of hair-splitting regulations to the vastness and generosity of divine guidance. Besides, when people freely exercised this right they had to accept varied solutions to varied situations in life with broadmindedness, tolerance, understanding and mutual respect.
Islamic knowledge should be decentralized.
“As a person who needs medicine should consult a doctor and should not try to treat himself, the same way common Muslims should consult a scholar for their questions in the matters of faith.” Does this sound familiar? This is what scholars often convincingly told Muslims. This was such a deceitful logic put forward to promote the need and legitimacy of a privileged class of scholars, inapplicable to the matters of one’s salvation and guidance, simply because Deen, the guidance-based system of creation was not a profession that few experts in the community could take care of the rest. Here every Muslim was his/her own doctor, not only responsible but rather accountable to compound his/her own medicine with the ingredients extracted from divine guidance. It could not be naively equated to physical health.
Knowledge of Deen is a responsibility of every individual Muslim. It should take shape in their lives based upon their own struggles, efforts and experiences. It should grow and be vibrant at the grass root level, not coming down from an elite consensus of few scholars or institutions. It is essentially horizontal, a continuum within a spectrum of proficiency where individuals interact freely and attain different levels worth their efforts and inherent capabilities with no delegation to, or dependability on a privileged class of scholars. Every Muslim has to be a student of knowledge with freedom to think, study, consult, critique, interact, interpret and draw responsible conclusions with a sense of accountability. Such decentralization of knowledge is especially relevant in regard to seeking guidance from Quran. Notwithstanding the prevalent inhibition among Muslims to freely interact with Quran because of an undue emphasis on scholarship being a prerequisite, Quran addresses directly and plainly to each seeker of guidance. Muslims are invited by Quran to seek guidance from it profusely with the confidence that the only prerequisite for guidance is a sincere and God-conscious heart, not dependence on scholarship as brain-washed by many scholars. Free and uninhibited interactive learning from Quran should have been an important part of Muslims’ social life rather than occasionally staged lectures from scholars.
In such a community of Muslims, people would have freely and politely agreed to disagree and never have called each other names because they took positions contrary to the consensus of the scholars, much less become insanely violent and kill each other, unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence in the Muslim world. Commensurate with its spirit and nature, Islam would have remained simple and dynamic and not made artificially and negatively complicated. Knowledge would then have been free and dynamically upgraded with time, individual experiences and circumstances while the source and spirit remained constant. Every Muslim would have endeavored to understand matters relating to faith as an indispensability and Islam would have fulfilled its claim to be a final message for the rest of time.