The Need of the Hour

The Need of the Hour

1987 4 April 27-30 The Need of the Hour (1473) When Maulana Shibli Nomani (1857-1914) started a movement for modern Islamic education – an idea which was hailed on all sides with an enthusiasm matching his own – only a modernist Muslim group dissented, arguing that Islamic education would lead Muslim youth into backwardness. For according to them Islam was against learning. The example cited in support of this view was an incident which allegedly took place in the time of the second Caliph, Umar Farooq, after the Egyptian city of Alexandria had been conquered. Shibli’s detractors maintained that at that time there still stood in Alexandria a vast Greek library, dating from the time of Ptolemy, and that so great was the contempt of these Muslim victors for learning that they burnt this library to the ground, thus depriving the world of the intellectual inheritance of their forefathers.

Realizing that this allegation would harm his cause, Maulana Shibli began intensive research into the entire subject and finally published a well-documented article, in which he proved, drawing on historical sources, that this library had been destroyed long before the Islamic conquest. In the time of Umar Farooq, not the slightest trace of it had remained. Citing established facts, Maulana Shibli proved that the library of Alexandria had been destroyed by Christians during their own period. Later, in the sixth century of the Islamic calendar, a Christian historian, by the name of Abul-Farah Malti, had wrongly attributed this action in order to shift the blame for this act from the Christians to the Muslims. Maulana Shibli’s findings were so well substantiated that they were later supported by European scholars.

Considering the course of action which he considered it necessary to pursue, it is clear that Maulana Shibli was more than competent to launch his campaign for modern Islamic education. He did not just make appeals for his cause: he effectively silenced the opposition from contemporary forces with highly scholarly and intelligent counter-arguments. Present-day exponents of the movement to preserve the Shariat, however, have not so demonstrated their competence. Indeed, they present quite a different picture. Far from arguing the case for Islamic law on a high scholarly level, they appear to have confined themselves to raising innumerable slogans, castigating what they term ‘interference’ in religion. In no way does this meet the intellectual imperatives of the present day.

For Indian Muslims, the year 1985-86 was crucial in the history of Islamic law. In the now well-known Mohammad Ahmad-Shah Bano case, the Supreme Court delivered a verdict that Mohammad Ahmad should pay his divorced wife a monthly sum of Rs. 180 – a decision which ran contrary to Islamic law, thus causing the religious sect among Indian Muslims to rise against it. On all sides, slogans were raised against interference in religion and the politics of rallies and demonstrations reached such a peak that beside them, the Khilafat movement seemed to pale into insignificance. Finally, the Indian Muslims had their victory. In May 1986, the Indian parliament passed a law which, from the Muslim point of view, satisfactorily dealt with divorced Muslim women.

A fact not grasped by the victors, however, was that a victory won in this way was little better than a defeat. In conducting their movement, the Muslims had made a great deal of noise about interference in religion and the preservation of the Shariah, but no one from their ranks – neither from the leaders nor the followers – had come forward with solid evidence to prove that Islamic law was the correct and most advantageous legal system. The man of today weighs up everything according to reason. Now, since Muslims ,had shown themselves incapable of measuring up to the highest standards of present-day rationalism, the greatness of Islamic law, notwithstanding this ostensible victory, has failed to make its impact upon the minds of the populace.

As a result of this agitation on the part of Muslims, the law of Islam regarding marriage and divorce came under discussion throughout the country with every newspaper and magazine expressing its views on the subject. On the one side, were our theologians who insisted that according to the Shariah, an allowance cannot be granted to a divorced woman. One the other side were the modernist Muslims and non-Muslim brethren who supported Clause 125 of the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, under which divorced women have been granted the right to receive up to Rs. 500 per month as an allowance from their former husbands.

The Islamic law is, without doubt, an extremely rational and fine law, but our theologians proved unable to establish its rationality with up-to-date proofs. All they did was assemble crowds of people on the grounds of wrongful interference in religion, with the result that those who looked at the matter from the outside saw the law of Islam as inferior and modern law as superior. As presented by the theologians, Islamic law laid down that a man could divorce his wife whenever he felt so inclined, and could expel her from his house, after which no responsibility for her upkeep devolved upon him. Modern law, on the other hand, was presented as providing some support for the woman after she was divorced. It compensated for any excesses the husband may have committed in that it bound him legally to the payment of a monthly allowance to his divorced wife. Whatever our religious leaders did, they did for the sake of preserving the Shariah : in actual fact, their efforts culminated in a degradation of Islam.

The lesson we have learned from this is that we should undertake such tasks only if we are fully competent to perform them, failing which it would be better to remain silent than “to launch a nation-wide campaign. Efforts which are ineffectual, because uninstructed, can never bring about improvements; they are more likely, in fact, to bring about a further deterioration of the situation.

On May 4, 1986, a Dialogue was held in the India International Centre, to which highly educated Muslims and Hindus from the Capital were invited. A well-known Muslim leader duly delivered a detailed speech in which he said that the Shariah was dearer to Muslims than life itself. Whatever the cost, they could not put up with interference in the Shariah, he said. According to the Quran, no maintenance was to be granted to divorced woman. For this reason, they would not permit any Muslim woman to take her case to a civil court to obtain an order under civil law granting her an allowance from her former husband.

In spite of having made an impassioned speech on the subject, this leader could not explain the principles of the Shariah in a way that would have appealed to the audience’s powers of reasoning, thus losing a valuable opportunity to convince them of its superiority. It is hardly surprising then that at the conclusion of his speech an eminent Hindu pointed out that, nowadays, such statements were simply not acceptable. “One will have to show the sense behind one’s laws. Rhetorical statements in themselves are not enough. Tomorrow one might say that it is written in one’s scripture that petrol may be thrown on daughters-in-law and that they may be burnt. In that case, should one be allowed to burn one’s daughters-in-law with impunity? And would the upholders of Civil Law be expected not to interfere?”

There stood the Muslim speaker publicly confronted by the Hindu’s rebuttal of his argument, and, sad to say, he was unable to bring forward any well-substantiated argument of his own to counter this opposition.

We must realize that the present age is one of rationalism. In this day and age everything is weighed against reason and whatever is under dispute becomes acceptable only when it comes up to rational standards. This being so, when we want to make an Islamic issue public and feel that the launching of a political campaign is essential, we should be prescient enough to realize that nowadays people will demand rational proof of our arguments. Before they are even deemed worthy of consideration, they shall have to be put forward in a reasonable and sensible light. If we are not able to do so, we shall be presenting Islam to the public in an inferior and degrading light, no matter if, by our own reckoning, we have raised the flag of Islam over the walls of parliament.

Without doubt, Islamic law is the most rational of laws, but in the present day its rationality has become clouded. The real need of the day is that the veils should be removed so that the rationality of Islamic teachings may once again reign supreme.

It is only when it has been fully appreciated that Islamic thought is of a high intellectual calibre, that Islam itself will be accorded the status it deserves in every sphere of the national life.