Short Analytical Excurses of the Muslim Political Thinkers

 

 Short Analytical Excurses of the Muslim

Political Thinkers, Political Institutions

And the Political Thought

DR. BASHARAT ALI

(I)

INTRODUCTION

The life sketches and the works of the Muslim thinkers are available in the historical documents and in their own writings. Categorically all their works are available in Arabic. These documents were carefully preserved and transmitted from generation to generation in their pure and original forms. It was expected that on the availability of these materials, we would have been blessed in having large quantity of works collectively on the history of the development of political thought in Islam, and individually on each thinker right from the prophetic age down to our own times. The Muslims never cared to undertake this responsibility. They became indifferent to receive, manipulate and transmit their cultural legacy. This legacy was received by the Western Scholars, more particularly by the Germans Not only in all the fields of Islamologies, Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences and Spiritual Sciences but Islamic Culture books are readily available. We need not bother about the motivation and objective of their colossal productions in continuum since the 12^th century. Inspite of their subjective orientation, self-coined methodology, inferences, conclusions and Christian cultural mentality, their contributions, however negative and detrimental may be, are the greatest contribution ever made in human history. Throughout these long centuries, no Muslim scholar ever realized the importance of the study of Muslim political thought, which forms a link between medieval and modern political thought. They have achieved a balance in the ever-fluctuating thought-patterns through the introduction of the idealistic patterns axiological system of values, meanings and norms. In their simplest framework the modern world knew all about the Grecian, Roman and Indian thought through the linking agency the Muslim.

There is no difficulty whatsoever in the compilation of an authentic work on the history of the political thought and political thinker of Islam, because all the Arabic materials are preserved in the libraries of the world. This material is the first unsophisticated and pure source which is to be tackled properly in order to form accurate hypotheses, postulates, inferences and conclusions. The research should begin from the critical study, systematization and evaluation of these Arabic sources. The second source, comparatively of tolerable importance, is the German source. Not only all the books produced on Islamologies in general, and more particularly in relation to our field of inquiry, are available in German. Collective and individual studies of the thinkers with their multi-dimensional political view-points are the characteristics of the Germanic research methodological procedure. These thinkers have been studied either in singularistic form or in totality, either in their contribution on one aspect of the subject or in the interdependence of other subjects. In this totalitarian study, the German scholar have always been guided to analyze the thinkers and their thought, keeping in view the methodological procedures called paradigmatic and thematic. From the beginning of the twentieth century, some of the Muslim scholars concentrated their attention to study various fields of Islamologies and Islamic Culture, but they have no courage to study these variegated fields on the basis of the methodology evolved by the Muslim thinkers themselves. Above all they have overlooked their cultural background, cultural mentality, weltanschauung, original spirit and the inner layers of their cultural constellations and configurations. In their study, as rightly alleged by Prof. Gibb, these scholars are wholly and solely guided by their apologetic tendency and the mentality of defeatism. Thus the few books produced by our scholars are nothing but stereotyped studies. In the specialized fields of political thought and political thinkers, no book is available in any Eastern language. In the year 1942, there appeared for the first time a book entitled “Muslim Political Through and Administration” by Haroon Khan Sherwani (Sh. Muhammmad Ashraf, Lahore). Having no other book, this work was readily accepted by the scholars and the educational institutions, without ever considering the research-limitations and fact-finding of this book either in its form, content or meaning. It is an apologetic book and the author has no knowledge of the collective and individual work available is German or other European languages. The original sources have never been adequately utilized. All informations are based on “hear and say method”. The analysis is defective and the study is most dichotomous and contradictory. The joint study of political thought and administration is neither scientifically true nor valid on the ground of the classification of the two subjects which are diametrically opposed to each other. It is just like the logical mistake arising from the cohesion of the two opposites called “Coincidentia Oppositorum". Political thought has nothing to do with administration. Both of them are two independent but overlapping specialties. Nothing to say of modern development, even in the hey-day of Muslim scholarship they were treated and studied as two disciplines and two different universes of studies and researches. On the documentary evidence of the individual thinkers studied by the Professor, we are sure that no traces are to be found in their works as to the amalgam of the two different fields—Political Thought and Administration—in one totality. All of them have studied them as separate fields of inquiry.

Prof. Haroon Khan has nothing to say about the original sources of Muslim thought. In an apologetic way it is not sufficient to say without documentary evidence that the thinkers of the East never “Propounded their theories for the school-room or the college-hall but they actually advised monarchs about the best way of carrying the Government of their countries”. (Intro. p.1).

The term East is an ambiguous term. For the world of Islam the Islamic East has constantly been used and maintained by the orientalists. As the thought patterns of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas Bodin, Hobbes, Rousseau, etc., are totally deferent from the Islamic thought patterns, similarly there is no unity, harmony and reciprocity between Islamic and the Eastern thought-patterns produced by Confucius and Kautiliya. It is to be noted that Confucius and Kautiliya are more akin to the Western thinkers than to the Muslim thinkers. Geographical affinity is no reason of being equal in thought pattern. The unifying factors are psychological forces and ideology, or aims of life. These thinkers have close affinity and similarity with the thinkers referred to because of their unity, harmony, and solidarity in their culture mentality. Both are representatives of ideational culturar patterns, negating the hard and fast realities of life. Their thoughts are the products of two opposites — the ideational and the sensate. Upholders of ideational outlook affirm the realities of life-after-death and upholders of sensate pattern negate those realities. For them the worldly, material and sensate realities are alone true. The “coincidentia” oppositora" of these two divergent patterns is the characteristic of the thinkers referred to above. Whether they belong to the West or to the East makes no difference. The Muslim thinkers, from the beginning, had no interest for such contradictions and oppositions. They believed in the totality, harmony and unity of ideational and sensate patterns of life. Thus the genesis and characteristic of their through pattern in all fields of knowledge and culture is purely idealistic. Under these circumstances the study of Confucius and Kautiliya has neither causal nor logico-meaningful relationship with the major topics of his subject as propounded by Muslim thinkers. Without etiological, taxonomical and logico-meaningful relativity and connection, the instantaneous study of Ibn Khaldun, after the analysis of Confucius and Kautiliya seems to be most absurd. This is unnecessary clash between two warring camps — the advocates of ideational political thought (Confucius and Kautiliya) and idealistic thought Ibn e Khaldun. This instantaneous study has another defect. Both Confucius and Kautiliya have studied political thought in segmentalized from cutting it off from the totality of human life, while Ibn Khaldun has developed his political thought in togetherness with other aspects of life. In this way he has maintained the totality of human life in all its dimensions, depth and levels. Not only it is a unity in terms of material and non-material aspects of life; but a complete unity in terms of meanings—the existential base of Muslim systems of knowledge, culture, belief, action, personality and spirituality. It is an attempt to establish the Unity—the major premise of Islam, enunciate as by the Qur‘an:

Say: He is God, The one and only God, the Eternal, Absolute; He begetteth not, Nor is He begotten. And there is none Like unto Him. (Yusuf Ali -The Holy Qur‘an, Sura Ikhlas).

In recent times we have come across E. l. J. Rosenthal‘s work: “Political Thought in Medieval Islam“. With the exclusion of Ibn Abi Rabi, the author has attempted to add few more thinkers like lbn Taimiyya and Dnwanni. Inspite of its addition of some more names it is a segmentalized approach, having nothing to do either with the thinkers of the subsequent period, or with the ideal of life and the spirit of the ago, or the dominant trend in cultural mentality, and weltanschauung. It is a. purely subjective approach to the subject. The author has no regard either for the logical or historical and the scientific methodology. He is neither interested in objectivity of knowledge nor in the understanding of the peculiarly and genesis of the cultural mentality of the Muslims, their spirit and the existentially determined axiological base of their political thought. His subjectivism is crisscrossed with his thesis that Muslim political thought was nothing but either the stereotyping or the projection of the Grecian and Roman thought. His subjectivism is the product of a deep-rooted hatred for Islam and Muslims, which is due to the inherent antagonism existing between the advocates of ideational and idealistic outlook on life. The learned professor is not keen to trace the original sources of Muslim thought. He has overlooked the importance of cl.ish of cultures, reciprocity, assimilation and influences and counter-influences on human relations. The real problem does not relate to the influence of Grecian, Roman and Eastern thoughts on the thoughts of the Muslims but to the unequivocal and unsophisticated inquiry into the new dimensions added by the Muslims to the knowledge transmitted to them as the legacy of human race. These new dimensions should be viewed either in terms of discovering altogether new and unknown facts or in terms of critical vision and deep insight into some micro, macro and mata facets of knowledge and culture.

For the understanding of the thought-patterns of a particular nation initially it is indispensible to understand its peculiar cultural mentality, cultural milieu, outlook on life,—in short the entire cultural situation. Biologically humanity is one, but culturally it is different. There are variations in terms of typology of culture-—its types and sub types and variations in space—-time dimensions. In the universality of human race, “particularism” is the feature which is to be kept a mind. Nations meet on the levels of psychological equality and ideological affinity. Having in view this universal law. nations and societies follow the rules of selectivity, individuality and segregation. Those elements of material or non-material culture arc accepted and assimilated with their own cultural patterns which have reciprocity, affinity and causal relativity with either the latent or the apparent aspects of culture, on the one hand, and which are not opposed to the horizontal and vertical movements of culture. In the processes of selectivity, nations are susceptible, critical and prejudicial. The elements of culture which are detrimental, unwanted and not suited are readily rejected. In an age of scientism, technology and sociologism, It is really a potential cause for anxiety to see a scholar of great reputation like Rosenthal to violate the basic laws of evaluation as laid down in the scientific research methodology and survey method. It is strange indeed that this method is persistently applied in the study of the people and problems of the West but it is deliberately and ruthlessly avoided in the case of the East, particularly the Muslim East.

The book written by Rosenthal and popularized by our scholars begins with the above fallacious preamble. In his introduction he has with great audacity and boldness stated that Islamic theology, law and way of life are the products of Judaism and Christianity. He writes:

Islam is the youngest of the great world religions. Although Arabia is its cradle and its inspiration, it owes in its theology a good deal to Judaism and Christianity, and its way of life centred in and regulated by an all-embracing law has many features in common with the Jewish way of life. Muhammad, its founder-prophet, grew to maturity in daily contact with Jews and Christians.

“Yet, although Jewish and Christian elements can be found in Muslim ritual and law, Islam is not simply the sum total of foreign elements. For Muhammad brought his own personality to bear upon what he saw and heard and argued about. In their transformation these foreign elements blended with Arabian features into something peculiarly its own, another child of the desert, of the Semitic genius for religion.

“From its beginnings in the Arabian Desert, Islam looked out on the world that surrounded the Arabs. Religious zeal increased the power of its arms and brought it victory over marry lands and nations of different cultures and civilizations, of different faiths and customs. It has always been willing to accept ideas and institutions from those it vanquished. But in acceptance it has adapted and transformed in inheritance. Not always able to work the various strands into a harmonious whole, Islam has never yet lost its identity, even if instead of fusion and synthesis there resulted only fruitful and peaceful coexistence. This holds good for every manifestation of Muslim life and thought. The hard core of Muhammad’s (ﷺ) teachings and its interpretation gave Islam that coherence and stability which enabled it to control its receptiveness, and to draw into its Arabian foundation elements from highly developed nations and systems which enriched and ennobled it. In Arabia in the first place, Judaism and Christianity had to be faced in matters of doctrine and ritual; Zoroastrianism offered the next challenge Iran, as did Sassanian ideas and practice of government; Byzantium supplied more than administrators. Indian and especially Persian literature, Persian historiography, Greek and Hellenistic philosophy, Jewish and Roman law, Greek medicine and natural sciences, not to mention Indian and Byzantine art and architecture, all have a share in the complex fabric of Islamic civilization. It is not the least important and attractive feature of the Muslim genius that it was able to accommodate all these strangers and make them feel at home. It made no great demands on converts: ‘Allah is great and Muhammad is His Prophet’ were the magic words that opened the gates of the spacious house of Islam to the Ahl al-Kitab, those who possessed a book, that is, revelation. Refusal to accept Islam was not punished by death in their case; they were granted protection against payment of poll-tax, which helped to fill the coffers of the Muslim treasury. With the others it was conversion or the sword. The Oneness and Unity of God and Muhammad (ﷺ) as His Prophet had to be acknowledged, a reasonable enough price to pay for a share in the privileges of the Muslim community, especially in the time of its empire-building, with the promise of rich booty and high office.

“Mutual adaptation proceeded apace, naturally not without opposition. The astonishing result, Islamic culture and civilization justified Arab open-mindedness, generosity, desert hospitality carried into urban life, and intellectual curiosity of Bedouins who were attracted by the refinement and glitter of Iran and Byzantium. The title of a remarkable book by A. Mex, ‘The Renaissance of Islam’ reflects rich flowering of the spirit at the height of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad". (Political Thought in Medieval Islam, pp. 1—2).

We apologize our readers, for the long quotation, but we have taken the liberty to do so, because we want that our readers should know the fallacious methods adopted by the Western scholars to distort Islam and the Islamic system of knowledge and culture. The views expressed by the author are diametrically opposed to the Qur‘anic viewpoint. The religions of Judaism and Christianity have been rejection totally as valid and true religions by the Qur’an in Sura al- Baqarah and elsewhere. How, then, could the Muslim scholars project and copy the thought-patterns of those religions (See for detail (2: 40-41). And again the Qur‘an has definitely guided the Muslims not to follow the aberrational faith and the value-deviancy-patterns of the People of the Book. This warning and the refutation of the two patterns in its thematic analytical procedure is continued throughout the next Sura Al-lmran (3 : 1 to 30, 3 :64 to 101, 5:112 to 123).

Nothing in this Introduction, which forms the major premise of the analysis of Muslim political thought, is either valid or accurate from the view-point of the Qur‘an or in the perspective of historical facts. There are differences between Sunnis and Shias, but they and differences of interpretation not of belief or Sharia. The inclusion of Ibn Khaldun in the periphery of the political thinkers of Islam on the presumption that he was the only political thinker is neither historically true nor it is valid on any logical ground which may be followed in vindication of the self-centered arguments and subjective orientations. The deliberate use of the term adaptability is nothing but a pseudo-logic deliberately followed by the author to viciate the originality, creativity and idealistic finality of Islam Again the term has been misused as regards its scientific ussage, and herein, apart from the comment above, one can discover the inner base of the mind and intention of the author. The Muslim philosophers are credited, not because of their original thinking and contribution made by them towards the development of philosophical thought, but because the Muslim Religious Philosophers‘ according to the learned author, are in a very special way the best qualified exponents of an attempted synthesis between two cultures and ways of life. (Intro., p. 3.).

Paradoxically enough the peculiarity, beauty and originality of the political thought of the Muslims have been denied by declaring at the first instance that, in constitutional law, history and theology, Muslim contribution is nothing but the reproduction of the Jewish and Christian thought. From Farabi to Darwin, it is stated that all the thinkers “encountered the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle". And thus goes on the distorted picture of Muslim political thought. The greatest favour shown by the author is to be seen in his ridiculous remarks that the Muslims made a determined attempt at a real Synthesis between Platonic and Islamic concepts. The entire book is full of distortion, anomalies and contradictory views about the Muslims. Consequently, in view of the popularity of the book in our country and more particularly because its being taken up as a text-book in our universities we have decided to keep it all through our deliberations for erasing his fantastic, self asserted and prejudicial views.

The Muslims never followed either the Platonic or the Aristotelian thought in any field without critical analysis. They under-took to study them, like other alien productions, in order to compare them with the Islamic systems, patterns, ideas, ideals and values. Their mistakes were removed and in this way they gave direction and flow to their thought to be transmitted to the future generations. Greek and Roman thought in general, and more particularly the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle, were diametrically opposed to the idealistically integrated thought of the Muslims, and hence it was not possible to assimilate them without paradigmatic analysis and criticism. At the first instance all these thoughts were ideationally-inclined and dichotomous in their structure, function and genesis, and hence it was not possible for the Muslims to take them at their face value. The most important fact which has awfully been neglected by the orientnlists and their Eastern disciples is that the Muslims were not free to absorb any alien thought without critical evaluation, testing and analysis along the predetermined evaluative lines of the Qur’an. It is absolutely wrong to assume that the verse 3:7 is simply related to the classification of the Qur'anic verses and the rules of their interpretation. (3: 7).

We do not reject the facts stated about the taxonomy (classification) and rules of interpretation. But it is to be noted that the verse referred to lays down the universal law in relation to the methodology and value-judgement, as to the acceptance and rejection of the alien system of knowledge and culture in their categories and totalities.

Applying the criterion of the Qur‘an, Muslims were able to amend end and correct mistakes committed by the Greek and Roman thinkers. This fact, which is recognized today by some of the Western scholars, has been ruthlessly rejected by Rosenthal. The book is full of contradictions, anomalies and hypotheses formulated fallaciously by “the author. From page 1 to 4, the author has nothing to say but respect his thesis that the Muslims blindly followed the Greeks and the Romans. But all of a sudden he repudiates himself by stating that “they are considered as Muslim Philosophers, which means that their metaphysical standpoint is not one of complete independence, but is conditioned by the Sharia of Islam". (p. 4). And again he says:

“they were Muslim philosophers first and followers of their masters Plato and Aristotle second". (p. 4). Had the Muslims recognized them as masters, they would not have criticized them so frankly and openly.

Neither Greek masters, nor their thought, were given preponderance and any weight vis-a-vis the Qur’an. The Muslims never recognized any person as their master, except the Prophet. Never for a moment they inculcated the desire to compare the Qur’anic revelation with any other thought-pattern just to vindicate the rationality of the Qur’an. Revelation was not a prophetic law. It was Divine Guidance, binding both on the Prophet and his followers. In the claim of the Qur‘an, that all its statements are based on human rationality and empiricism, how the Muslims dared to challenge this verdict by comparing them with the Nomas of the Greeks. The fantastic orientation made by the author himself has been rejected under the statement that “if priorities must be established supremacy belongs to the revealed law of Islam“. (p. 4).

The interdependence of Falasafah (Philosophy) and political thought, though recognized by the author, has not been properly evaluated. It was not the legacy of the Greeks, but the concept of the Unity of Philosophy and Political Thought that formed the major premise of the Islamic Culture—the principle of Tawheed and the resultant philosophy of life—-the totality and continuity of life. In this way the author has ruthlessly rejected the universal law conventionally followed by the Muslim scholars. He is reluctant to measure ideas and their value by the impact they have made on the thought of humanity.

This is one of the canon of evaluation with regard to the though-patterns of Muslim thinkers like Ghazzali and Ibn Taymiyya because they are still respected and followed as heroes—-as Imams. (to be Continued)