Of what value is the past for the Muslims in the twenty-first century? One may be surprised to be told that to engage with the present demands firm knowledge of the past, for therein lies the reservoir of Islam’s rich intellectual and scholarly tradition. This theme was the leitmotif of a recent discourse session with Shaykh Dr Afifi Al-Akiti at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), organised by the Assembly of Young Intellectuals (HAKIM) and Curiosity Institute.
Dr Afifi, a Malaysian scholar who is currently KFAS Fellow in Islamic Studies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, is also a Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford, as well as College Lecturer in World Religions at Worcester College, Oxford. His doctoral thesis was on a group of philosophical writings called the ‘Madnūn Corpus’ attributed to the great theologian, philosopher and Sufi, Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), on metaphysics and natural philosophy. Writings such as these testify to the heritages that have slipped past Muslims today, for whom classical literature is but a closed book. It is regretted, however, that so much of this has been taken over by the West, some of them ‘lock stock and barrel’. The one-to-one tutorial system that we see today mirrors much of the shaykh-murīd relationship that we see in classical Islamic education. Similarly, the academic practice of graduates wearing the mortar board during graduation ceremonies originates in the traditional practice of Muslim graduates who place the Qur’ān on their heads as a mark of reverence to the Holy Book when they receive their ijāzah (certificate of qualification).
Such legacies, however, have yet to be fully appreciated by contemporary Muslims. The crisis (or chaos) of knowledge – ‘the fitnah of ʿilm’ – now affects even scholars, one of the symptoms being what Afifi calls ‘blinkered specialisation’. The fact that there should be balance and proportion in the pursuit of knowledge seems to have been increasingly eclipsed today. Every science is founded upon ten principles (al-mabādī al-ʿasharah); the least that is expected is knowledge of three of them, that is, its definition, objective and benefit. Outside these contours the seeker is at risk of developing a blinkered perspective that confines him to oblivion to the other sciences and cripples any prospect of knowing the worth, value or relationship between one’s discipline and its cognates. This does not just apply to the religious sciences. The intellectual or ‘secular’ subjects must equally be pursued and governed by the same spirit and principles. Scholars ought to read widely and not on their subject matter alone for every ‘secular’ subject has potentially an ethical, moral or sacred value and hence of interest to religious knowledge and by implication religious scholars.
To master the present, it is important to be firmly grounded in traditional knowledge and a grasp of the legacy of scholarship that our previous scholars have left for us. Yet this has presented formidable obstacles for many today, the lack of knowledge of Arabic being one of the major reasons. Mercifully, thanks to the Qur’ān, Arabic is a unified language and through it also much of the classical character of Arabic has been preserved to this very day. Still, there is a difference between knowledge of the language for conversational purposes and that which is required to access scholarly materials. This is an uphill task for those who have not been acquainted with the prerequisites in approaching these sciences. These methodological knowledge or tools to engage with classical scholarship he calls the propaedeutic sciences (al-ʿulūm al-ʿalāt), whose mastery used to be the barometer to leave the madrasah in the classical system. Some of these sciences include Arabic grammar (naḥw), morphology (ṣarf), rhetoric (balāghah), logic (manṭiq) and dialectic or the science of argumentation (jadal).
The task facing the scholar is even more immense when we consider the fact that specialist knowledge is one thing, the ability to engage with the public or relate such knowledge to a wide audience is quite something else. This can be seen by contrasting two personalities in Islamic history, namely Ibn Sīnā (d. 1037) and al-Ghazālī. Despite his monumental accomplishments, Ibn Sina lacked the rhetorical skills or eloquence to engage with a mass audience. The case is different with al-Ghazālī, whose personality and writing demonstrate his ability to straddle both worlds. Al-Ghazālī was not just a scholar but also a ‘translator’ who brought the language of the scholars to popular appeal. In the contemporary world, this Ghazālian populism deserves more appreciation in the context of Muslims’ encounter with people of other faiths. It was al-Ghazālī too who observed that people are always enemies of what they are ignorant of, echoing the Roman philosopher Cicero, many centuries before him, who said that people condemn things they don’t understand. To play this role of ‘translator’ again demands knowledge of the propaedeutic sciences and solid understanding of both the traditional and modern sciences, particularly in the presentation of argument with proper ethics and clarity. Afifi highlighted that this involves correct reasoning in framing our discourse. Popular literature is replete with argumentation errors, as we see in how ambiguous prefixes such as “Islam says” are appended to individual claims (the correct reasoning, the Shaykh argued, is to identify the source of the claim, e.g. “Allah says”, “the Prophet said” or “in my opinion”). This seemingly trivial issue actually reflects deeply on the intellectual state of the ummah. Within the ummah itself, the role of ‘translation’ applies when we try to harmonise or reconcile problems among Muslims, for example, in relation to intra-madhhab issues.
A glimpse at the classical method of learning Islamic law hints at this concern to bridge specialist knowledge and public engagement. The student is first given lessons in the branches of Islamic law (furūʿ), after which he ventures into the principles or foundations (uṣūl) and then proceeds to the differences of opinion (ikhtilāf). The branches precede the principles simply because the former pertain to actual circumstances or ‘case studies’ in which the rules or theoretical principles are applied. One may add that the furūʿ also relates to practice as distinguished from the more theoretical orientation of uṣūl.
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