IQBAL AND IJTIHAD (1)

(30.09.1982)

One of the most acute symptoms of crisis in the intellectual world of Islam today is reflected in the controversy around the concept of "IJTIHAD" or formation of independent judgements in Islamic Law. Actually it is a conflict between those who wish to preserve the economic and political status quo and those who want to change it.

Iqbal, in our times, is generally considered as the leading intellectual who upholds the position that "it is necessary to rebuild the law of Shariat in the light of modern thought and experience". (2)

Those who are opposed to this position say that Islamic law or Shariat is a divine, and hence eternal, verity, and therefore to seek to do so is to change that which God has pronounced as the distinctive mark of Islam and the Muslims.

They go further and attribute ulterior motives to those who regard "IJTIHAD" as the necessity of the moment for the reorganisation of Muslim society as based on the principle of "TAQLEED" or acceptance and strict observance of the authority of the four (or five) main schools of FIQH which have been prevalent in Muslim society for hundreds of years.

The ulterior motive that is attributed to the proposers of "IJTIHAD" is that. they wish to make Muslims permanentiy adopt the ways that they have adopted as a result of Western example and influence, and give these new fangled ways the sanction of Islam. Along with this charge goes the implied (also stated, in certain cases) criticism that such persons having themselves adopted western modes of thought want to impose them on .Islam and reconstruct it in accordance with a western model

Iqbal is not mentioned in this context but the purpose is really a refutation of his ideas on the subject without naming him. For instance, Mr. Salim Ahmed (3) who has recently launched a strong attack on the concept of IJTIHAD has done so as if he was interested in merely refuting the espousal of the concept by Dr. Rashid Jallandhri (4). But it is clear from certain references to the philosophical principles underlying the need of IJTIHAD as advanced by Iqbal, that he happens to be the real target of. Mr. Salim Ahmed's strictures. Not that Mr. Salim Ahmed is afraid of openly criticising Iqbal. He is a brave man, and has on an earlier occasion made a severe criticism of Iqbal's concepts contained in "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam". In that criticism he has concluded that if we followed Iqbal's ideas it would mean denuding Islam of its essentials, its beliefs, its rituals, and its legal forms altogether, so that it is reduced to merely an emotional enthusiasm.

Those who regard Iqbal as the symbol of Islamic nationhood of Pakistan , and hence as sacrosanct; may think that Mr. Salim Ahmed is going too far. But I think that free intellectual discussion is the only way we can arrive at the truth. Blind acceptance of temporal authority, howsoever widely acclaimed, and a false respect shown to the elders, howsoever revered, cannot automatically lead us on the right path. Iqbal would have been the last person to disallow free criticism of his own ideas because he did not claim finality for them. As he said in the introduction to his "Reconstruction": "There is no finality in philosophical thinking. As knowledge advances and fresh avenues of thought are opened, other views, and probably sounder views than those set forth in these lectures, are possible" (5). Besides it is precisely on the ground of a critical attitude in religious thinking that he bases his own criticism of his contemporaries and the need for a reconstruction of religious thought in Islam.

The necessity for such a critical reevaluation in Iqbal's time, in his opinion, was the tremendous scientific, social, economic and political changes that were rapidly overpowering all societies of the world, and introducing changes in them which were transforming their entire structures. Iqbal was a witness to these changes in the world of Islam, and as a profound scholar of both the Western and the Islamic knowledge, was concerned with the crisis which they represented. His was the same problem which was faced by Shah Wali Ullah who found in the ascendance of the Hindu capitalist class the danger of the, Muslims losing their Islamic identity unless they changed themselves from within.

The fact is that we are involved in a deeper crisis than either Shah Wali Ullah or Iqbal. The Islamic society throughout the world is in danger of extinction as an Islamic society because it has already been transformed into the Western capitalist mould. If anybody should think that merely because the Hudood punishments and rituals of Islam are strictly observed in Saudi Arabia , therefore it is an Islamic and not a Western society in its essence, then he must be deluding himself. Similarly, to think that the present changes of law in Pakistan have turned ours into an Islamic society is injurious to Islam and Islamic society.

It is this deepening crisis and the widening gap between the Islamic appearance and the capitalist reality of our times that has brought forth all the genuine as well as bogus fundamentalist movements in Islamic countries. All fundamentalism is essentially based on the necessity of being critical about our religious professions and to reconstruct our thought and practice in terms of our past and present. In short all of them are answers to the vital question of today- am I a Muslim? And what is a Muslim? (In the last analysis) What is Islam?

Why should the question arise if the matter is as simple as Mr. Salim Ahmed thinks? His idea is that we have to follow strictly in the footsteps of our forefathers, accept their interpretations of Islam as DEEN, as SHARIAT, as law, as social consensus. It means that there is no need to reinterpret either DEEN, or SHARIAT, or Law, or social consensus, because as Mr. Salim Ahmed thinks those are given and eternal unchanging verities.

And yet the question is constantly being asked -and answered in lengthy treatises.

The trouble is that despite his vast learning Mr. Salim Ahmed is labouring under a number of misconceptions about Islam, and Shariat and DEEN and FIQR, which could have been removed very easily if only he took the trouble of trying to understand Iqbal's book.

For one thing these terms DEEN and SHARIAT and FIQH are not interchangeable, or they would not be given different names.

Secondly, the problem which is causing the crisis of identity is not a matter of changing the family laws, or the laws of punishment. Nor is it a matter of what form of dress should be worn by Muslims, whether KURTA, ALIGARH PAJAMA and ACHKAN, or the AWAMI Suit, or the. Western coat and pants?

It is the much more crucial matter of the political and economic forms of society that we may, or may not, adopt as Muslims, which is the bone of contention.

Without settling these issues, and going ahead with the rapid reorganisation of Islamic society on some agreed lines, we will remain unorganised and helpless crowds, which have no possibility of facing the kind of challenges which organised societies of the West, are throwing in our faces everyday.

Is it. not an obvious fact that the Muslim societies in most countries are composed of unorganised crowds, without any principles of organisation or even the freedom to organise, or to speak and assemble. They are administered by bureaucracies who, whatever their professions are only appendages of imperialist powers and servile agents of imperialist purposes and designs.

Has it not been proved that in the face of such a well organised military machine as Israel , created, nurtured and defended by the United States and other Western powers, the Arab and Islamic countries with their Leagues and organisations should react so feebly to the present debacle in Lebanon ? These nations which could gather together and move heaven and earth on the situation in Afghanistan; along with the U.S. and the Western powers, could not even meet to discuss Israel's invasion of Lebanon until the Palestinians were ejected from that country. Nor could they do more than hold prayers and a one hour strike in their countries when Israeli and Phalangist forces massacred thousands of Palestinian men, women and children.

The fact is that the major part of the Islamic world has been westernised in a much more serious manner than we are prepared to admit. It has not only adopted the Western economic system of capitalism but integrated itself politically into the world wide system of capitalist imperialism. Having done that the leaders of these countries are slavishly following the international strategic objectives of Imperialism. Hence the strong reaction in the case of Soviet interference in Afghanistan , and no reaction to the Israeli's aggression and massacres - supported very openly and blatantly by the U.S.

This is not, however, a new situation. The Muslim monarchs, ruling elite classes and the Mullahs, have been playing at this game for two or three centuries. Islamic feeling and Islamic solidarity has been kept alive by the common people of Islamic countries, and the Islamic identity, its crisis, ant its protection has been a matter entirely left to the Muslim masses to bother about. It is quite in accordance with the prophecy in the HADITH which says that in the end Islam would be left only among the common people.

The common Muslims, therefore, must reorganise themselves for the task of maintaining the Islamic identity. And that is the meaning of the Islamic upsurge of today - as far as the participation of the masses is concerned. The problems of reconstruction of Islamic thought in the light of social, economic, political changes that have taken place in the 20th century are essentially their problems. It is they who have to come to grips with the changes in life conditions and make adjustments in their thinking and behaviour - while at the same time remaining Muslims as well.

For instance the most important juristic matter with which we are concerned in Pakistan today is the question of the political structure of an Islamic state. It is something which is of concern to all Muslims, and it is an urgent matter. Who is the ruler, the sovereign, the legislator, the administrator, in an Islamic state?

Pat comes the answer - God Almighty is the sole sovereign in an Islamic state and nobody else but He. But is this really so in fact -for instance in Pakistan ?

If it were so, all this debate about the Islamic system of government which has gone on for the last five years -in fact since the very beginning of Pakistan -would be entirely pointless. Today practically everybody in Pakistan , all the political parties, of right, left and centre, of Islamic fundamentalists and socialists, are agitating that it is not the army or the civil bureaucracy, or the vested interests, but the people who must be the rulers in this country, through their freely elected representatives. It is they who should have the power to govern, to rule, to frame laws and administer the affairs of the country. In contrast, only a handful of odd bodies and nobodies seem to be against this.

In neither case is the argument settled by saying that let God be allowed to function in his capacity as political sovereign, as he is the sovereign of all that happens in the universe. And that for a very simple reason, which was stated by Hazrat Ali when the KHWARIJ proposed that the Caliph is an unnecessary institution since God is the sovereign. In reply he said -that this was a truth but geared to the service of a falsehood, because the institution of the state is necessary for human society, and temporal ruler is therefore essential, otherwise every individual would become his own lawgiver and society turn into anarchy. That is why the KHWARIJ are regarded as an anarchist movement in early Islam.

The political system of Islam has been in constant movement and change. There has been nothing cut and dried about it, nor has there been something definite about it in the Quran, except that the Muslims must settle their affairs by consultation among themselves.

Presently we see this principle working in three different ways in three Islamic countries. In Pakistan we have a MAJLIS-I-SHURA (a consultative council) handpicked by the administration from among the citizens on the basis, it is said, of their pedigree. But as we know they have neither the power to legislate nor to administer. They are a mere semantic fig leaf for the real administration.

In Iran , there is an elected assembly which rules. It legislates and administes the country according to the will of the people who are the real sovereigns.

In Libya , there is no central organisation; only people's committees in professional institutions and localities, elected by the people, are running the affairs of the country in their own particular sphere. These are called JAMAHIR.

Now which one of these can be called Islamic?

If you go into the history of how these three forms of state - each calling itself Islamic - came into being, we find that they are based on IJTIHAD of the leaders who brought them into being.

And there was no other course, because there was no system of state and policy as such which was revealed to the Muslims. Ever since, IJTIHAD has been the means of determining the political system among Muslims from time to time.

When the Prophet (peace be upon him) was alive, he was the ruler, the legislator, the administrator, the judge.

If there had been any kind of given political system as such there would have been no difficulty after him. So the Muslims as a whole assembled to discuss the problem. Hazrat Abu Bakr was elected after the discussion. But in the course of discussion a number of decisions were made for which there was neither an instruction in the book nor a precedence, namely:

1) There has to be an IMAM, a Caliph, who has to be the chief legislator, administrator and judge.

2) An IMAM can only be from among the Quresh.

3) The IMAM must have the consent of the community as a whole.

Until the Khulafa-i-Rashedeen were ruling, this system was in operation. But during Umayyad rule the Caliphate was transformed into a dynastic monarchy. This was the second Ijtihad on the Islamic political system.

When the Caliphate was usurped by the Seljuq Turks, the principle of "Qarshiat" was dropped, and a jurist, Imam Abu Bakr Baqilani was the one who gave the sanction to a non-Qureshite dynasty of Caliphs through his independent judgement or Ijtihad.

In the 20th century, the Turks abolished the Caliphate because its universality had been overthrown by the Arabs in revolt. It was decided by the Turks that the elected assembly of the Muslims could take the place of the Caliph, i.e., the caliphate became collective.

These various forms of state that we have had in Islamic history show change and development of the law of state, which according to some is the fundamental part of Islamic law, in fact the very essence of Shariat and according to Maulana Maudoodi, identical with Deen.

Thus Islamic law can be demonstrated, in many of its essential elements, as not only capable of development, but as actually having developed in history through the exercise of the independent judgement of the Muslims. Those who have an idea of Islamic law, a Shariat, a Deen, as immutable, have tried therefore, to deny the relevance of all development since the Khulafa-i-Rashedeen, and hence to restrict Islamic history to the first thirty years after the Prophet (peace be upon him). The trouble with this solution is that even the state of Khulafa-i-Rashedeen was based on Ijtihad, or the exercise of independent judgement of the Muslims to add to or change the supposedly immutable Shariat.

Secondly this procedure creates a difficulty about the role of jurists in Islam. As we know, right up to the times of the Abbasid caliphs there was no written law of Muslims except the Holy Book. Nor had the Hadith been compiled into an authentic form. The four schools of Fiqh were codified during the times of the Abbasids and formed the first organised and universally accepted canons of laws.

Iqbal's book, "Reconstruction", is really a discussion of the problem posed by the present day political and economic changes in the world to the educated Muslims who are concerned about the preservation of their Islamic identity. The systems of law which are hitherto being identified with the Shariat and Deen, have no direct guidance to offer on most of these matters. Hence the necessity for Ijtihad on these matters. The consequence of denial of this course of action can only mean the bypassing of our entire history, and thus of Islam itself. That is the danger we incur from the rigid course being adopted by conservative Islamist intellectuals in this context.

NOTES:

1. Published in Mag. 30.9.82.

2. Iqbal: Reconstruction of Religious Though in .Islam, published by Sheikh Mohammad Ashraf.

1962, page 157.

3. An Urdu jorunalist and litterateur of right wing persuassions. Joined General Zia-ul-Haq's Government in 1977 as Advisor in the Ministry of Culture.

4. A scholar of Arabic and Islamiat. Studied in Darul Uloom Deoband, Al-Azhar and Cambridge . Served as Director Islamic. Research Institute, Islamabad , until turned out by General Zia-ul-Haq's government in 1977 for professing liberal views on Islam.

5. Reconstruction page vi