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Syed Ahmad Khan (1817–1898) and
Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938) are described in Pakistani schoolbooks
as the first Muslim leaders who stressed Hindu-Muslim
separateness. Revered as the spiritual founders of Pakistan, they
share many commonalities. Both were knighted for services to the
British Empire (respectively in 1888 and 1923), both advocated
purdah and had strongly traditional religious backgrounds, and
both wished to liberate Islam from mullahs and pirs. But the
similarity stops here. Although schoolbooks suddenly go silent on
this, the two men actually belonged to clashing ideological
universes. Sir Syed — as he became known — has now almost
disappeared from public view whereas Sir Muhammad Iqbal, now
commonly known as Allama Iqbal, has a ubiquitous presence.
Lahore’s airport, a university, a literary society, housing
blocks, many roads, and several schools bear his name.
For every 19th century Muslim intellectual, including Sir Syed and
the Allama, the outstanding challenge of the time was to
understand the ascendancy of western civilisation and the
apparently unstoppable decline of Muslim society. Seven centuries
had passed since the end of the Golden Age, and Islamic societies
everywhere were militarily feeble and intellectually sterile. Sir
Syed and Iqbal courageously chose to confront this galling truth,
but they arrived at dramatically different prescriptions for the
rescue and reconstruction of Indian Muslims. A century later,
these two national icons distinguish liberal Pakistanis from
conservative ones.
For Sir Syed, the trauma of Indian Muslims after the failed 1857
uprising against the British called for a radically new
interpretation of Islam. As a religious scholar and hafiz, he
considered himself well-equipped for the task. Backwardness, said
Sir Syed, resulted from superstitious beliefs and rejection of
maaqulat (reason) in favour of blind obedience to manqulat
(tradition). Desperate remedies were needed if the Muslims of
India were ever to become anything other than “stableboys, cooks,
servants, hewers of wood, and drawers of water”. His goal was to
make Islam compatible with post-Renaissance Western humanistic and
scientific ideas, and to extract the ‘pure’ belief from fossilised
dogma.
It was a difficult enterprise to take on. The period after the end
of Emperor Akbar’s reign had been one of unbroken anti-science and
anti-rationalist conservatism. Some 200 years before Sir Syed,
Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi and other influential religious figures had
issued fatwas against mathematics and the secular sciences, and
demanded that the education of Muslims be limited to religious
books. Initially Sir Syed was also inclined to this point of view
but, following his gradual transformation during the 1850s, he
rejected this view and challenged his contemporaries.
In Tahzib-ul-Akhlaq, he writes: “Yes, if the Mussulman be a true
warrior and thinks his religion correct, then let him come
fearlessly to the battleground and do unto Western knowledge and
modern research what his forefathers did to Greek philosophy. Only
then shall our religious books be of any real use. Mere parroting
and praising ourselves will not do.” (“Apnay moon mian mithoo
kahney say koee faida nahin”)
In his mind, the way forward was clear: Indian Muslims must learn
the English language, practice the scientific method, accept that
physical phenomena are explainable by physics only, and support
British imperial rule against the rule of Mughals (who had by then
sunk into decadence and depravity). This last piece of advice made
him a target of bitter ridicule by secular nationalists such as
Jamaluddin Afghani.
Sir Syed accepted the Holy Quran as divinely revealed but he
frequently reminded his readers of Islam’s forgotten rationalist (Mutazilite)
tradition, as in the works of Averroes. He proposed a radical
reinterpretation of the Holy Quran to make it compatible with
science and modernity. Among other matters this involved
understanding miracles, which science cannot accept as factual.
Sir Syed therefore explained the Great Flood, as well as various
miracles of Jesus, to be purely allegorical and symbolic. He also
interpreted Islamic laws as actually forbidding polygamy and
amputation of limbs. Quite expectedly, his claims provoked a
furious reaction from the ulema of the time and he was decried as
a heretic.
Sir Syed’s writings are all in Urdu and, whether or not one agrees
with him, his clarity in supporting modernity and science is
manifest. Equally, his remedies for social reform are clear and
unambiguous. On the other hand the Allama’s only serious prose is
to be found in English, and he leaves key questions unanswered or
ambiguous. At times, to revive Islamic civilisation, Iqbal appears
to call for a return to the sword. But at other times he stresses
the enhancement of khudi — a sophisticated philosophical construct
roughly describable as self-esteem. This construct, however, has a
plethora of interpretations. Does it belong to the physical world?
Will more khudi bring more order or more anarchy?
Iqbal’s politics, routed through his soul-stirring poetry, is the
real reason why he is Pakistan’s supreme icon today. In his epic
poem shikwa, like Samuel Huntington, he frames the world
exclusively in terms of us-versus-them and the superiority of one
civilization over all others. His pan-Islamic mard-e-momin belongs
to the ummah and this perfect human aspires to martyrdom: shahadat
hai matloob o maqsood-e-momin. Like a falcon, the mard-e-momin is
a fighter and above worldly desire: tu shaheen hai basera kar
paharon kee chatanon main. These verses can be found in Pakistan
Army magazines, on its recruiting banners, and are sung with great
fervour.
Iqbal, unlike Sir Syed, leaves the gap between science and
religion unbridged. He takes no explicit position on miracles. On
the contrary, he asserts that, “Classical Physics has learned to
criticise its own foundations. As a result of this criticism the
kind of materialism, which it originally necessitated, is rapidly
disappearing.” But no real physicist can take this statement
seriously. Even with the discovery of quantum physics — which
superseded and improved upon classical physics — the description
of observed physical phenomena requires nothing beyond material
causes. In the battle for Pakistan’s soul, Sir Syed’s rational
approach ultimately lost out and the Allama’s call on emotive
reasoning won. Iqbal said what people wanted to hear — and his
genius lay in crafting it with beautifully chosen words.
Unfortunately, his prescriptions for reconstructing society cannot
help us in digging ourselves out of a hole.
The article was
first published in The Express Tribune on February 9th,
2013.
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