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Quran and Muslims
  By
Dr Muzaffar Iqbal
10/27/2007 Because of their mental training and aptitude, most educated Muslim
readers of the Quran expect to read a text that would systematically lay out the
articles of faith, procedures for religious rites, provide continuous narration
of historical events and have a beginning and an end. Instead, they find
themselves reading the story of Prophet Nuh in one verse or group of verses and
in the very next verse the Quran tells them about Allah's unchanging custom of
annihilating nations which transgress and soon thereafter is the mention of
Allah's unbound mercy and compassion.
This makes them utterly confused. When they attempt to resolve this confusion,
they generally have recourse to an English or French work on the Quran wherein
they find un-reverential verdicts. In frustration, many close the Quran forever.
Those who persevere, continue to struggle with the help of various aids to
understand the holy book. These include exegeses and explanatory books written
by human beings, which reflect another human being's understanding of the book
of Allah.
Behind this dilemma is a deeper malady: the alienation of the contemporary
Muslims from their own intellectual tradition. Most Muslims educated in schools
and universities simply have no idea of the vast corpus of scholarship their
forefathers have produced on all subjects. Most of it has been relegated to
museums and whatever little circulates is among specialists; it is not a part of
the education most Muslims receive in their colleges and universities. The death
sentence passed on this material by the 18th and the 19th century orientalists
has pushed this vast corpus out of reach of ordinary Muslims. As a result, paths
to the noble book have been blocked for them.
This difficulty is further complicated by rampart humanism: the very foundation
of modernity. Humanism has made human beings the measure of all things. Hence,
whatever is beyond the rational faculty of human mind, is stamped as unreliable
or at least suspect. Humanism is a product of the post-Renaissance western
thought, a legacy that was succinctly summarised by Muhammad Hasan Askari in a
short treatise, Jadidiat ya maghrabi gumrahion ki tarikh ka khakah, in 1971.
This short book contains two articles; the first is an insightful and concise
history of the aberrations (gumrahis) which have appeared in western thought
since the Renaissance; the second is a list of 153 aberrations which have crept
into Muslim mind and have a direct relationship with religion in general and the
revelation in particular. One of the most important things Askari pointed out
was that in the previous eras, aberrations were limited in number and in their
geographical spread, but this is not the case anymore. Furthermore, modern
aberrations mix up truth and falsehood so that it has become impossible for
ordinary people to sift them apart.
Thus, Muslims who rely on orientalism to understand the Quran can hardly
distinguish the insidious currents of various 'isms' that are rampant in this
scholarship. These include Protestantism of various shades, humanism,
naturalism, nationalism, the scientific revolution of the 17th century,
rationalism, deism, idealism, organism, positivism, historicism, utilitarianism,
Marxism, scientism and other "isms". Askari pointed out certain key traits of
oriental scholarship which stand in stark contrast to the normative beliefs of
the people whose religious traditions they study. For instance, orientalists
believe that the oral tradition is not reliable. Thus, when they encounter the
fact that the Quran was compiled from oral sources, they immediately cast a
doubt on its textual validity. For Muslim, oral tradition is superior to the
written text; the true authority for them is not a written and bound book
containing the text of the Quran, but a hafiz who has memorised it and received
a stamp of approval from a teacher - another hafiz, who in turn has done the
same and so on until the chain goes back to the prophet (pbuh) himself. Muslims
proclaim testimony of faith (shahadah); they do not write it out and sign it.
Likewise, western scholarship on the Quran has no clear distinction between a
revealed text and an inspired text. The New Testament and the Quran are taken to
be at par, whereas the former is clearly attributed even in their own estimates
to the four disciples of Sayyidna Isa (AS). Similarly, the clear distinction
between beliefs (aqa'id) and deeds (a'mal) is lost in this scholarship. Muslims
who approach the Quran from within the traditional perspectives, for instance,
clearly understand that beliefs are the foundation of deeds. But those who do
not have such training have little understanding of the distinction between the
two. Thus, many such Muslims find "a lot of Islam in the west" when they see
honest dealings in everyday business transactions, not realising that Islam is
not based on honest business transactions but on the two testimonies (shahadas).
There is only one true remedy to this basic problem faced by 80 per cent Muslims
now living on the planet earth: to study the Quran in its own language and from
its own perspective. This is indeed a serious undertaking demanding time and
effort, but then life itself is a serious undertaking for the believers. This
daunting task is made easier for those who know with certainty that a day will
come when they will have to answer for how they spent their time on earth by the
first bearer of the Quran, the prophet (pbuh), who said that on that day the
Quran will itself speak for such a person. They will be told to keep reciting
the Quran and as they recite, their station will become loftier and loftier in
an ever-lasting abode.
The writer is a freelance columnist. Email: quantumnotes@gmail.com
(Concluded)
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