Fazlur Rahman Abdul Karim Abdullah Introduction Fazlur Rahman, the leading Muslim modernist intellectual, aimed at reviving Islamic thought. He distinguished between normative Islam and historical Islam, challenging his contemporaries to re-interpret tradition. 1 Rahman had reservations about literalist interpretations of the Qur an; he stressed that context was important for an understanding of the text. 2 He saw the purpose of the Qur an as being to establish an ethical and just society where the weak and vulnerable would be protected and where the talented could develop to their full potential without being overly restricted. 3 He did not, therefore, simply support the views of secularists, who saw no role for Islam in the modern public sphere. 4 But Muslims, Rahman believed, had to rediscover the real Islam, not only for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of all mankind. 5 He argued it was necessary to go beyond traditional, atomistic readings of the Qur an, to see how its wisdom could be applied in the contemporary era. He insisted that: the Qur an must be so studied that its concrete unity will emerge in its fullness, and that to select certain verses from the Qur an to project a partial and subjective point of view may satisfy the subjective observer but it necessarily does violence to the Qur an itself 6 Rahman believed that knowledge of historical context was a sine qua non for a good understanding of the Qur an. Rahman proposed classifying all verses of the 1 Earle H. Waugh, The Legacies of Fazlur Rahman for Islam in America, The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16, no. 3 (1999): 27-44. 2 Ziauddin Sardar, Rethinking Islam, Critical Muslim, 91. Available at: http://ziauddinsardar.com/2011/02/rithinking-islam/. (Accessed on: 20 December 2015). 3 Frederick M. Denny, Fazlur Rahman: Muslim Intellectual, The Muslim World 79, no. 2 (1989): 91-101. 4 Qur an, Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Available at: http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0661. (Accessed on: 19 December 2015). 5 Fazlur Rahman, Islam: Challenges and Opportunities, in Islam: Past Influence and Present Challenge, ed. Alford T. Welch and Pierre Cachia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979), 315-30. 6 Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur an (Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980), 98-9.
Qur an into the two clusters of either universal or historical categories. 7 Universal verses, such as those emphasising tawḥīd (the Oneness of God), would be seen as timeless, while the principles underlying the historical verses would be seen as only applicable under specific historical conditions. To facilitate this appreciation of historical context, Rahman argued in favour of educational improvements and a new ijtihād. 8 He provided a strong critique of current Islamic education and suggested ways of achieving renewal. Life in Pakistan Fazlur Rahman Ansari al-qadri was born on 21 st of September 1919 in the Hazara district of what was then British India. He died on 26 th of July 1988. His father studied at Deoband and attained the rank of ālim (scholar). The young Fazlur Rahman learned Arabic at Punjab University in Lahore, gaining an MA in Arabic (with distinction). Subsequently, he went on to Oxford University, where he earned a PhD in 1949 with a dissertation on Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna). He then taught Persian and Islamic philosophy at Durham University (UK). From there he went to Canada where, from 1958 to 1961, he taught at the then recently established Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University. During these years, Rahman focused on the study of philosophy and theology through the medium of classical Islamic scholarship and published his famous text, Prophecy in Islam (1958). In 1961, at the invitation of President Ayub Khan, Rahman returned to Pakistan, where he served as Visiting Professor at the Islamic Research Institute of Islamabad. 9 The following year, he was appointed Director of the Islamic Research Institute in Karachi, a post he held until 1968. 10 Here he was tasked with the development of an Islamic Studies curriculum suitable for the young country s future religious leaders. He was also appointed a member of the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology, a policy research institute, and helped found the journal, Islamic Studies. It was also during his time in Pakistan that Rahman published two significant works, Islamic Methodology in History (1964) and Islam (1966). The former was a historical-critical analysis of the prophetic traditions (or aḥādīth) and the role they played in the development of the prophet s Sunnah, one of the two major sources of Islamic law. The latter text, on the other hand, was a general reader on Islam looking at the various branches of Islamic learning, including theology, sharī ah, and Sufism, in addition to Islam s textual sources (the Qur an, Sunnah and so forth). This book 7 Mehmet Akif Koc, The Influence of Western Qur anic Scholarship in Turkey, Journal of Qur anic Studies, 14, no. 1 (2012): 15. 8 Rahman, Fazlur, Oxford Reference. Available at: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100401842. (Accessed on: 18 December 2015). 9 Islamic Research Institute, Oxford Index. Available at: http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100012422?rskey=h4carr&result=18. (Accessed on: 19 December 2015). 10 Willem A. Bijlefeld, Dr. Fazlur Rahman, The Muslim World 79, no. 1 (1989): 80. 2
has remained an important reference work on Islam. It may also be described as an elaboration of an Islamic worldview within the context of modernity. Ultimately, Rahman s thought during this period hinged on his opinion that all existing interpretations of the Qur an were suited only for the time periods in which they were developed. Each generation had responded to and approached the Qur an in light of its own experience, drawing its own conclusions about how to apply the text s teachings in response to the specific historical challenges they faced. The emergence of taqlīd (indiscriminate imitation), therefore, had greatly undermined the authenticity of later Muslim scholars, who became intellectually beholden to their predecessors. In Rahman s view, taqlīd was an unqualified disaster, effectively stifling any further growth in Islamic civilisation. It effectively froze Muslim civilisation in time, imposing a rigid conformity. Taqlīd effectively precluded any possibility of renewal and destined Islam to intellectual stagnation. While in Pakistan, Rahman also developed a critique of the second source of sharī ah, the Sunnah of the Prophet. He differentiated between what he called the ideal Sunnah, which was the Sunnah of the Prophet, and the living Sunnah, which was the Sunnah of the community. He argued that the meaning of the Prophet s Sunnah underwent a change over time; initially, only a small number of aḥādīth were understood to reflect prophetic practice on a range of given issues. Over time, however, it was assumed that all the aḥādīth reflected the Prophet s Sunnah. 11 As a result, later scholars found themselves confronted with the need to reconcile inconsistencies (if not contradictions) between various aḥādīth, and also between some aḥādīth and the Qur an. In the late 1960s, a new and more conservative regime came to power in Pakistan. As a result, Rahman found himself under threat from various conservative elements within the Pakistani religious establishment, who viewed his ideas as inimical to Islam. 12 Due to this less than conducive political climate, Rahman resigned from his position at Karachi s Islamic Research Institute in 1968. He resigned because, as he put it, he was unwilling to compromise on his humanist take of Islam. Certainly, Rahman s modernist ideas had touched off violent protests across the country, organised by traditional religious scholars. Because of his controversial views, Rahman was forced to leave Pakistan in 1968. Life in the US Travelling to the US, upon his arrival Rahman joined the University of California Los Angeles, where he worked for a year as a Visiting Professor. He also served as an advisor to the State Department. The following year (1969) he joined the University of Chicago. There he helped found the Near Eastern Studies Program, still 11 R. Kevin Jaques, Fazlur Rahman Quran, Prophecy and Islamic Reform, Studies in Contemporary Islam 4 (2002): 63-83. 12 Frederick Mathewson Denny, The Legacy of Fazlur Rahman, in The Muslims of America, ed. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 97. 3
held to be amongst the best in the world. 13 At Chicago, he taught several generations of students and wrote Major Themes of the Qur an (1980) and Islam and Modernity (1982). In his Islam and Modernity, Rahman argued that there was a need for educational reform within the Muslim world. The traditional Islamic methodology of education, he said, was no longer suitable for enabling Muslims to adapt to the demands of modernity. 14 To facilitate the latter, therefore, a new Islamic epistemology was needed, one that would be both Islamic and scientific at the same time. 15 This methodology of interpretation would reject strict literalism in favour of rational reconstruction. 16 Like Muhammad Iqbal (d.1938) before him, who had also argued for a reconstruction of religious thought, Rahman favoured a holistic approach to reform, capable of enabling a re-application of the eternal principles of Islam in the postcolonial era. He felt that the heritage of Islam contained the necessary resources to allow contemporary Islamic civilisation to adapt successfully to modernity. 17 What prevented it from doing so, however, was the methodology used to study it a challenge he grappled with in his Islamic Methodology in History. He felt, for example, that the Qur an was not only about laws, but carried a universal ethical message that tended to be overlooked by an overemphasis on legalistic approaches to the text. In his work, therefore, Rahman sought to restore the balance between spirituality and ritual. Unlike the Egyptian Islamist, Sayyid Qutb (d.1966), Rahman disdained the rhetoric of revolution. Like Qutb, however, Rahman was wary of using extra- Qur anic sources when interpreting the Qur an itself; he felt that an overreliance on extra-qur anic texts would overshadow the text of the Qur an itself and lead to misinterpretations and misunderstandings. According to Rahman, exegetes who had used extra-qur anic sources in the past had often used unreliable and obscure sources, negatively affecting their interpretations. Ultimately, Rahman believed that the best interpreter of the Qur an was the Qur an itself. Rahman entertained the possibility of what he called an alliance of civilisations, but on the condition that Muslims hearken more to the Qur an than to the historic formulations of Islam. 18 In particular, he rejected the historical idea that the so-called verse of the sword abrogated those conciliatory Qur anic verses 13 Hafeez Malik, Dr. Fazl ur Rahman, Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, 12, no. 3 (1989): 3. 14 Fazlur Rahman, Islamic Studies and the Future of Islam, in Islamic Studies: A Tradition and its Problems, ed. M. H. Kosr (Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1980), 125-133. 15 Basit B. Koshul, Fazlur Rahman s Islam and Modernity Revisited, Islamic Studies 33, no. 4 (1994): 403-17. 16 Waheed Hussain, A Philosophical Critique of Fazlur Rahman s Islam and Modernity, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 6 (2000-1): 53. 17 S. Parvez Manzoor, Damning History but Saving the Text: Fazlur Rahman between Tradition and Modernity, Islamica 2, no. 4 (1998): 41. 18 Celene Ibrahim-Lizzio, Qur anic Exegesis and Two Postcolonial Reform Agendas: Sayyid Quṭb (1906-1966) and Fazlur Rahman (1916-1988), Muslim World Affairs. Available at: http://muslimworldaffairs.com/2015/08/08/quranic-exegesis-and-two-postcolonial-reform-agendas/. (Accessed on: 18 December 2015). 4
counselling peaceful co-existence and inter-religious tolerance. For Rahman, jihād was primarily an ethical struggle (the greater jihād of the Prophet), rather than a military engagement. Rahman emphasised the continued relevance of the Qur an and urged his contemporaries to approach it in a fresh way, without preconceived notions. He felt that the intellectual, cultural and economic backwardness of Muslim majority nations was due to intellectual rigidity and a limited critical engagement with the intellectual heritage of the past, coupled with an insufficient willingness to adapt and evolve. Conclusions The experience of Fazlur Rahman illustrates the challenges facing any wouldbe Muslim reformer and modernist. Resistance to change remains strong in the Muslim world; attempts to re-interpret the past are often seen as little more than attempts to undermine tradition. Nevertheless, Rahman s work has undoubtedly inspired an entire generation of Muslim scholars, both in America and elsewhere. It is, however, only a first step. One area that deserves much further attention is the relationship between reason and revelation: while reason is rationalistic and empirical, revelation is intuitive; further consideration must be given to how these can work together. Traditionally, ijtihād has been used as a regulated modality for harmonising these concepts. Certain aspects of this methodology, however, may need reappraisal in order to accommodate modern advances in scientific rationality. In addition, any new methodology of interpreting the sacred texts will have to take into account not only historical context, as Rahman argued, but also new intellectual approaches to understanding reality. It was in this area that Rahman made his most important contributions to the building (and indeed rebuilding) of Islamic civilisation, qualifying him as one of its architects. Further Reading Bijlefeld, Willem A. Dr. Fazlur Rahman. The Muslim World 79, no. 1 (1989): 80-1. Denny, Frederick M. Fazlur Rahman: Muslim Intellectual. The Muslim World 79, no. 2 (1989): 91-101. ------------------------. The Legacy of Fazlur Rahman. In The Muslims of America, edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, 96-108. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Hussain, Waheed. A Philosophical Critique of Fazlur Rahman s Islam and Modernity. Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 6 (2000-1): 53-81. Ibrahim-Lizzio, Celene. Qur anic Exegesis and Two Postcolonial Reform Agendas: Sayyid Quṭb (1906-1966) and Fazlur Rahman (1916-1988), Muslim World Affairs. Available at: http://muslimworldaffairs.com/2015/08/08/quranic-exegesis-and-two-postcolonial-reform-agendas/. Islamic Research Institute, Oxford Index. Available at: 5
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100012422?rskey=h4carr&result=18 Jaques, R. Kevin. Fazlur Rahman Quran, Prophecy and Islamic Reform. Studies in Contemporary Islam 4 (2002): 63-83. Koc, Mehmet Akif. The Influence of Western Qur anic Scholarship in Turkey. Journal of Qur anic Studies 14, no. 1 (2012): 9-44. Koshul, Basit B. Fazlur Rahman s Islam and Modernity Revisited. Islamic Studies 33, no. 4 (1994): 403-17. Malik, Hafeez. Dr. Fazl ur Rahman. Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 12, no. 3 (1989): 3. Manzoor, S. Parvez. Damning History but Saving the Text: Fazlur Rahman between Tradition and Modernity. Islamica 2, no. 4 (1998): 41-4. Qur an. Oxford Islamic Studies Online. Available at: http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0661. Rahman, Fazlur. Islam: Challenges and Opportunities. In Islam: Past Influence and Present Challenge, edited by Alford T. Welch and Pierre Cachia, 315-30. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1979. -------------------. Islamic Studies and the Future of Islam. In Islamic Studies: A Tradition and its Problems, edited M. H. Kosr, 125-133. Malibu, CA: Undena Publications, 1980. -------------------. Major Themes of the Qur an. Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica, 1980. Rahman, Fazlur. Oxford Reference. Available at: http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100401842. Sardar, Ziauddin. Rethinking Islam. Critical Muslim. Available at: http://ziauddinsardar.com/2011/02/rithinking-islam/. Waugh, Earle H. The Legacies of Fazlur Rahman for Islam in America. The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 16, no. 3 (1999): 27-44. 6