Daily Times

In the early part of this month, during my sojourn to the Holy Land, the question which perplexed me most was whether there was a real connection between enlightenment and faith, and whether in their genesis these two are all-embracing or mutually exclusive. My deep reflections on various texts of the Holy Quran, and some references gathered from history did reaffirm my belief that they are mutually inclusive and do not conflict with each other. In fact for the future survival of Muslim nations with grace and dignity in competition with the rest of the world, it should be clearly understood that there is no schism between these two concepts. Rather an enlightened world-view is likely to rub off the accumulated centuries-old rust on the other-wise pristine fabric of Islam.

The European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasized reason and individualism rather than tradition. It was heavily influenced by philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, and Newton, and its prominent figures included Kant, Goethe, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith. It was a revolt against Man’s self-imposed tendency not to use his own understanding and only to follow tradition. It stressed reason, logic, criticism, and freedom of thought over dogma, blind faith, and superstition. In a broader sense, Enlightenment applied scientific reasoning to politics, science, and religion. Its followers were typically humanists who supported equality and human dignity, and it is wrong to suppose that enlightenment is in any manner opposed to religion. On the other hand, it acts as a bulwark against superstition, intolerance, and bigotry which have brought bad name to religions.

Despite their different approaches, science and religion are also complementary. It is said that science can help you diagnose and treat your cancer, but it cannot touch the despair and dismay and terror you feel when you get the diagnosis, nor can it help you to die well. For that people turn to religion, which answers the deeper questions of our human predicament.

The survival of religion in the 21st century, according to Karen Armstrong, largely depends on its capacity to create compassion for the fellow human beings which is the ultimate object of religion.

But unfortunately religion is mostly misunderstood in our time due to our inability to take historical perspective of the social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional settings that shaped people’s lives and actions in the past. Such an understanding which is often termed as “historical empathy” helps us to understand the vast differences between us in the present and those in the past. Compassion also teaches us to transcend our limited world-view and place ourselves in the cultural and social environments of the past.

There are enough grounds to believe that for the survival of Islamic civilization, faith and enlightenment should go hand in hand.

The Holy Prophet by his conduct and precepts has been admittedly one of the greatest and most influential personages in history and we Muslims believe that the Holy Quran, his revealed message to humanity, is a marvel of wisdom for the mankind. But the fate of Muslims everywhere is most pathetic, the responsibility for which can be traced in Islamic history.

The first shock after the death of the Holy Prophet on the question of his succession resulted in the tragic split between the Sunnies and Shias which also in due course divided the Islamic countries into two blocks.. The next significant setback which reversed the Islamic clock occurred during the Abbasid period when philosophers like al-Ghazali (1058-1111 AD) fiercely opposed the Mu’tazilites practice of subjecting Islamic theology to rationalism which led the Abbasids to ban the Mu’tazilites. Islam’s vitality and appeal was gravely affected by the resurgence of literalist interpretations of Sharia ( that treats man-made laws as divine) and the worsening of sectarian cleavages within Islam which has set in motion a perpetual cycle of violence that directly endangers the lives of ordinary Muslims everywhere.

Within a century of Holy Prophet’s death his followers had built an empire that stretched from Spanish Europe to Central Asia. The Rashidin caliphate can be credited for military expansion, but It was not until the Umayyad Dynasty-from 661 to 750-that Islamic and Arabic culture began to truly spread. The Abbasid Dynasty-from 750 to 1258-intensified and solidified these cultural changes.

The Golden period of knowledge in Islam began during the reign of the Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid (786 to 809) when he invited scholars from various parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds and mandated them to gather and translate all of the world’s classical knowledge into the Arabic language. This resulted into an astonishing growth of philosophers and scientists such as Ibne Rushd (translated Aristotle, and wrote books on Islamic jurisprudence ) Al-Kindi (discovered rules of astronomy and optics ) Khawarzmi ( Father of Algebra and mathematics ) Ibne Sina (Father of Medicine, astronomy and Logic ) who ushered in a golden era of knowledge. Ironically the dark age of Europe coincided with golden age of Islam. But it was the most tragic turn in the history of Islam that the fruits of hard labours of these philosophers and scientists could not reach the Islamic society because of the opposition to rational thought by the jurists and clergymen of the day and lack of wisdom and vision of their rulers who opposed a rational underpinning of Islam – analogous to St. Thomas Aquinas who lent rationality to Christianity in the Middle Ages. The theologians like Al-Ghazali and Ibne Tamayya refused to accept scientific change and discoveries and forced the Khalifa to ban Mu’tazilites who were advocates of rational thought. It was contrary to the teachings of the Quran and precepts of the Holy Prophet who had made no such restrictions on the acquisition of knowledge. According to the saying of the Prophet, Muslims were to seek knowledge even if they had to go to China.

The Islamic state also failed to patronize these polymaths by refusing them enough funds for their research etc under fear of reaction from the reactionary forces. But most importantly , contrary to the injunctions of the Holy Quran, the local jurists divided the concept of knowledge into two broad and disjunctive categories as “ilm ad-din” (= religious knowledge) and “ilm ad-dunya” (= worldly knowledge). Neither in the Quran nor in the authentic books of Hadith was there any such division allowed in the acquisition of knowledge. Islamic sources declare knowledge as an indivisible whole.

The Golden period of spread of knowledge ended with the collapse of the Abbasid caliphate due to Mongol invasions and the Siege of Baghdad in 1258 AD.

Even during the Ottoman Empire, nothing was done for promotion and development of science and technology, perhaps because the Emperors thought that it would be a threat to the opulence of the monarchs. On the other hand, a blunder was done through a wretched Fatwa, which banned the printing press in the Empire which remained in force for over 200 years. This left Islamic world in the dark when West sailed away with renaissance and enlightenment.

Thus there are enough grounds to believe that for the survival of Islamic civilization, faith and enlightenment should go hand in hand.

The writer is a former member of the Provincial Civil Service, and an author of Moments in Silence