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April 18, 2004
REVIEWS: South Asian view of Islam
Akbar S. Ahmad’s Discovering Islam, first published a decade ago and on which the BBC based its six part series, “Living Islam”, is “part autobiography, part history, part literature, and part science” as the author himself describes the book. It is unique in the sense that it gives a very South Asian touch to the understanding of Islam that readers in the West are not generally familiar with. They have known Islam more through the Arabs than the Muslim diaspora in other lands.
Here Islam appears as a religion indissoluble from a series of cultures — “embodied communities whose diverse experiences are conjoined by engagement in a common challenge”. In the words of Lawrence Rosen, with whose preface the new edition of the book has been launched, in South Asia Islam is focused “on the constancy of moral themes, within a framework of variable practices, that renders history a wellspring for the templates and choices that confront Muslims in every culture and every age”.
Akbar Ahmad tackles a number of important questions: how are Muslims to understand the history of their religion and its relationship to society? Why do Muslims behave the way they do? What motivates them and what are their concepts of right and wrong? How are they to explain the turbulence in contemporary Muslim society, which has helped to create the negative image of Islam? Akbar Ahmad attempts to understand these issues in the light of an ideal that he formulates from “one book” — the Quran — and “one life” — the Prophet’s (PBUH).
This ideal is eternal and consistent and Muslim society is neither. “Islamic history offers abundant evidence that there is a dynamic relationship between society and the striving of holy and learned Muslims for the ideal.” This ideal and the aspiration to it provide Muslim society with its dynamics. The ideal gives a charter of action to each individual and to Muslim society for constant renewal and revival of faith.
It would be wrong to assume, Akbar Ahmad points out, that what we see today in the turmoil and extreme awareness of Muslim identity, that some already like to call a revival, is nothing new in the history of this religion. Islam was always reviving, it was always being rediscovered after being neglected. It is not a 20th century phenomenon.
This phenomenon has been in motion since the 7th century, an endless seeking for the ideal, not a turning back, a fundamentalism, it is often dubbed as. The struggle is as much external as it is internal. The ethnic cultures also are in transformation with relation to the ideal which is mistakenly seen as pitted against the West or forces of modernism in general.
Now what is this ideal? Akbar Ahmad paraphrases it in the simple qualities of character that the Prophet’s (PBUH) life so magnificently presents to the world: compassion, respect for learning, tolerance of others, generosity of spirit, concern for the weak, gentle piety and desire for a better, cleaner world.
At the social and collective level this translates into belief, behaviour and practice, not blood and race. It is important how people behave, how their customs, culture and society are organized, not who their ancestors were. Islam believes in “nurture”, not “nature”; it transcends class and nation. This equips Islam with its own revolutionary charter which gives it the dynamism for renewal and life.
Akbar Ahmad thinks South Asia is one of the most crucial and dynamic areas of Islam. Its population alone is almost 40 per cent of the total Muslim population. Placed between the Middle East, Central Asia and South East Asia “it is a filter and store house of diverse human knowledge”. He cites examples of excellence achieved by South Asian Muslims in most fields of activity from sports to literature to science, philosophy and soldiery. But most important is their concern for Muslim causes around the world.
Discovering Islam is in two parts. The first deals with the past. It presents a theory of Islamic history, glances through the great Muslim empires, the sufis and scholars like Al Beiruni and Ibn-i-Khaldun, the diaspora in places like China and the former Soviet Union and lastly in the colonial period of their disintegration and decline. The second part discusses contemporary Muslim society, problems of ethnicity, place of women, the refugee problem, the emergence of the Gulf states, contemporary Muslim thought and the need to connect and find a place in the fast changing world of the 21st century.
The main thrust of Akbar Ahmad’s book is on creating a bridge of understanding between the Muslims and the West as without that the build-up of confrontation can lead to perpetual strife, misgivings and violence that he rightly concludes is not going to end unless its root causes are addressed.
“The conjunction of ideal and actual is what Muslims strive for; the failure to achieve it creates stress in society. The formula can help us interpret Muslim history and society. Rising and falling and rising again, there is rhythm in Muslim history. At its core providing a constant measure and a powerful stimulus, is the ideal of Islam; Muslims living up to it, sometimes partly, sometimes fully. Because of the universal message of the ideal, transcending race and colour, and because of its rationality it may help to connect, to build bridges between peoples and thereby provide answers to contemporary problems.” This is the South Asian view of Islam.
Discovering Islam — Making Sense of Muslim History and Society
By Akbar S. Ahmad
Lotus Collection/Roli Books, India Available with Liberty Books (Pvt) Ltd, 3 Rafiq Plaza, M.R. Kayani Road, Saddar, Karachi
Tel: 021-5683026
Email:
libooks@cyber.net.pk
Website:
www.libertybooks.com
ISBN 81-7436-276-2
251pp. Rs595
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