Maroof
Following Iqbal, Fazlur Rahman has been arguably the lastmajor philosopher of our subcontinent and like the former’s philosophicallectures, his works are largely unheard, and certainly unheeded. He has been one of the mostbrilliant minds who was deeply informed about traditional Islam’s mostimportant languages, thinkers, history and general self understanding. It is shocking how little he has been reador understood or engaged with by Ulama whose key premises he interrogated. Hisgreat works have been and could be criticized on this or that point, but thatdoes not mean his many an insight and contribution could be ignored. We can’tproceed to solve certain problems today for the Muslim world, especially in thesubcontinent, without taking note of Fazlur Rahman. He was indeed fazl ofRahman and so far we have been absent to receive the treasure he uncovered.Today we take note of some of his questions he has raised regarding Quranexeges for Ulama to respond to. He must be turning in his grave seeing theworld at large taking his ideas seriously and Ulama of his own land largelyoblivious. Let us focus on only one text Islam and Modernity today.
Limitations of Muslim Hermeneutics
Rahman states that “the basic questions of method and hermeneutics were not squarelyaddressed by Muslims. The medieval systems of Islamic law worked fairlysuccessfully partly because of the realism shown by the very early generations,who took the raw materials for this law from the customs and institutions ofthe conquered lands, modified them, where necessary, in the light of theQur’anic teaching, and integrated them with that teaching. Where interpretersattempted to deduce law from the Qur’an in abstract, for example, in the areaof the penal law called, Hudud, results were not very satisfactory. This isbecause the instrument for deriving law and other social institutions, calledqiyas, or analogical reasoning, was not perfected to the requisite degree. Theimperfection and imprecision of these tools were due in turn to the lack of anadequate method for understanding the Qur’an itself… There was a generalfailure to understand the underlying unity of the Qur’an, coupled with apractical insistence upon fixing on the words of various verses in isolation.The result of this ‘atomistic’ approach was that laws were often derived fromverses that were not at all legal in intent.”
These are extremely important observations that haven’t beenrefuted and seem to be amply substantiated by all available evidence. Rahmanadds other points that may be listed below.
•The literature on the “occasions of revelation”is often highly contradictory and chaotic.
•The traditionally enunciated principle that “althoughan injunction might have been occasioned by a certain situation, it is neverthelessuniversal in its general application” is sound on the condition that onemeans by an “injunction” “thevalue underlying that injunction and not merely its literal wording.” (emphasismine)
•Muslim exegetes have often been textualists and as suchcontexts have been either ignored or not properly accounted for. Since thevalues can be excavated by “understanding well not only the language, but aboveall the situational context of a given injunction. This, however, was generallynot done.” The Companions did not care to record occasions of revelation andlater generations have been often forced to keep guessing about them.
•The real task consisted in “understanding the Qur’anicinjunctions strictly in their context and background and trying to extrapolatethe principles or values that lay behind the injunctions of the Qur’an and theProphetic Sunna. But this line was never developed systematically, at least byMuslim jurists.”
• “To insist on a literal implementation of the rules of theQur’an, shutting one’s eyes to the social change that has occurred and that isso palpably occurring before our eyes, is tantamount to deliberately defeatingits moral-social purposes and objectives.”
•He warns against complacent posturing of those who claimthat the Quran gives us “the principles” while “the Sunna or ourreasoning embodies these fundamentals in concrete solutions.” He notes that theQuran does not in fact give many general principles and instead one is requiredto deduce them and this constitutes “the only sure way to obtain the real truthabout the Qur’anic teaching. One must generalize on the basis of Qur’anictreatment of actual cases-taking into due consideration the socio-historicsituation then obtaining.”
•Here enter relevant historical, sociological, psychologicaland other enquiries that inform modernity as such. One can’t adopt thecomfortable strategy of writing glosses over glosses of traditionalcommentators in many cases if the Quran is to be understood/implemented in aworld that has significantly changed. Wealso know Iqbal’s rejection of the style of writing glosses over glosses ofprevious Masters for failing to address modern problems. The anxiety in certaininfluential scholars/exegetes to stick to the text of scripture as if considerationof context is somehow admitting a foreign body is itself premised on ignoringthe extratextual origins of a text. The Quran that would ultimately win ourhearts and minds is the cosmic Quran or one inscribed in our being – anextra-textual Quran and this implies it is Sufis, whom Rahman ratherproblematically engages with or fails to deal with on their own terms, whomaster such a reading are the best judges. Interestingly Sufi exegesis has always been marginalized by Muslimmodernists and fundamentalists alike and consequently we find frantic effortsto make sense of God’s word in absence of support from the science of symbolismand the only really convincing – “heart touching” method of school ofrealization. There would remain certain problems in any attempt to delineatemajor and minor themes of a sacred text and irreducible human element orsituatedness in any reading of the text.
•We need maqasid centric approach, a point many Ulama wouldpay lip service to but rarely take seriously in situations that call fordeparture from the letter of great fiqh manuals. Shatibi, Shah Waliullah andothers who especially emphasized this maqasid point have been largely ignored.Recent developments in theory of maqasid have yielded quite radical insights thatUlama or masses seem to be ignoring to their own peril. Rahman’s reproductionof lengthy quote from Shatibi needs to be excerpted here:
This being so, i.e., that pure reason divorced from theShari’a principles is unable to yield religio-moral values, reliance must beplaced primarily on Shari’a proofs in deducing law. But according to theircommon use, these latter either have no certainty at all or very little. I meanwhen Sharia’as proofs are taken one by one. This is because if these proofs arein the category of Hadiths coming from single or isolated chains oftransmission, it is obvious that they yield no certainty. But if these Hadithsare traceable to an overwhelming number of chains of transmission [mutawatir],certainty with regard to them, i.e., their meaning, depends upon premises allor most of which are only conjectural. Now that which depends upon what isuncertain is inevitably itself uncertain as well. For a determination of theirmeaning depends upon the correct transmission of linguistic usage, grammaticalopinions, etc.; thus taking all these factors into consideration thepossibility of establishing with certainty the meaning of these Hadiths is nil.Some jurists have taken refuge in the view that although these Shari’a proofsare in themselves uncertain, when they are supported by indirect evidence orconcomitants [qara’in] they can yield assurance. But this occurs rarely or notat all. The proofs considered reliable here are only those inducted from anumber of conjectural proofs which converge upon an idea in such a manner thatthey can yield certainty, for a totality of proofs possesses a strength whichseparate and disparate proofs do not possess.”
Rahman adds his comment: “The nass has traditionally been considered the surest ground fordecisions and thought to be absolutely incontrovertible; yet the passage Iquoted from al-Shatibi in the preceding section strongly contradicts thisstand, for, according to al-Shatibi, no individual text by itself can haveabsolute probative force unless it is understood in the light of its historicalbackground and the total relevant teaching of the Qur•an and the Sunna.” Onecan thus see dangers in all too readily supplying Chapter and verse numbers bypopular preachers and polemicists. The Quran calls for some pause afterreading/listening to it helpunderstanding. The Quran calls for taking guidance from all phenomena or eventsat hand.
Now read these insights in light of Allama Anwar ShahKashmir’s candid admission that this Ummah has failed to attend to what hasbeen the Quran’s due, that Muslims haven’t paid enough attention tohermeneutics of the Quran, that onecould reduce the number of so-called abrogated verses to zero, that Madrasasneed Harvard style lecturing style rather than reading and memorizing texts, that one can – he can – writecomparable/better books than our ancestors in almost all cases (except suchworks as Hedaya, Futuhat and he admits his utter awe before Abu Hanifa), his criticism of Imam Shafi’s interpretationof hikmah as sunna/hadith, his appropriation of philosophers such as MullaSadra in explaining afterlife, his critical though respectful engagement withstalwart scholars/philosophers/Sufis, his critique of likes of Suyuti and ShahWaliullah on many points, one sees how far and how near are our pioneeringscholars to challenges posed by new thought currents calling for revisiting theclassical heritage. It seems indeed little difficult to envisage likes ofIqbal, Allam Kashmiri, Fazlur Rahman, Askari, S.H. Nasr, Hafiz Ayub Dehlavi andSoroush converging on many important points to pave way for better dialoguebetween Ulama and intellectuals/philosophers and pull Muslims out of tragicdivide. Fazlur Rahman had a brief stint with a student of Anwar Shah, MawlanaBinori, but it has been a quirk of history that the proposed joint project ofIqbal and Allama Kashmiri couldn’t materialize. It might not be irrelevant torecall Dr Israr’s meeting with Fazlur Rahman or the latter’s attempt to carveextensive association with Faruqi. Fazlur Rahman is dismissed unheard by suchscholars as Mufti Zarwali Khan. Failure of dialogue between Fazlur Rahman andUlama or influential Jamate Islami illustrates tragedy of modern Islamstruggling for authenticity.