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RETREAT AND RAGE |
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would like to discuss here Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan's role in the
modernization of Islam and therefore in checking the general retreat
of Islamic civilization. Sir Sayyid was greatly influenced by the
Naqshbandi order,Shah Waliullah (the eighteenth century reformer)
and Sayyid Ahmed Barelvi 19, the
Wahhabi leader who revived the principle and practice of hijra
(migration from dar-ul- harb,land of war or those lands not under
Muslim rule, where, under certain circumstances war can be
sanctioned against non-Muslims). Sir Sayyid saw the world as a
Muslim, as Professor Francis Robinson puts it.
This does not mean that Sir Sayyid's attempt to interpret the Koran in terms of laws of nature, or Western learning, did not involve innovation. It did. If men such as Jamaluddin Afghani, the leading pan-Islamist of the nineteenth century, ridiculed him as a nechari naturist-his efforts to harmonize the laws of Islam with nature earned him this title), they were justified. But his own intention was to strengthen the appeal of Islam, to reveal to people the original bright face of Islam, as he put it, and make it possible for young Muslims to imbibe Western learning and yet remain Muslim. His intentions apart, however, Sir Sayyid did not have the capacity to impose his view of compatibility between the Koranic revelation and miracles, on the one hand, and modern science, on the other, on the Muhammadan Anglo- Oriental Collage which developed into the Aligarh Muslim University. The whole enterprise would have ended in smoke if he had not surrendered control of theological education at Aligarh to Ali Baksh, one of his bitterest critics on that issue.
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