MOHAMMAD Kazim has passed away. In him we have lost a genuine Arabic scholar, one who was seriously engaged in translating into Urdu all that he considered the most precious in Arabic. At the same time, he also translated into Arabic from Urdu as well as from English those writings which he believed carried an Islamic vision.

He has left behind quite a number of translated works. But equally valuable are his original writings in Urdu. The most significant, in my opinion, are Muslim Fikr-aur-Falsapha: Ahad-ba-Ahad and the collection of his articles called Mazameen. All these writings need to be examined anew to enable us to evaluate Kazim’s contribution to our language and to the tradition of religious writings.

Mazameen was an amazing read for me. Studies in Arabic literature ranging from the period of Jahilya to the period of Palestinian resistance are very valuable in terms of their literary merit. But they are hardly in tune with the kind of studies hitherto made.

When I chanced to meet Kazim Sahib and had the opportunity to talk to him, I humbly asked him, “How was it that starting from Maulana Maudoodi you wandered in Ahd-i-Jahilya and then to Abu Nawas, who, as you yourself pointed out, happens to be a ‘poet of Mina-au-Jam?’” He replied, “I was trying to learn the Arabic language. So I had to turn to its literature. And as I stepped into that realm I found myself under the spell of Arabic poetry.”

So now Kazim finds himself in a different world and feels regaled in the company of Arab poets such as Abu Nawas. These poets so enamoured him that he planned, as he writes in his introduction to the book, to select a few more for his study and write in detail about them. He could not carry this out, but it does tell us about his passion for the kind of Arabic poetry which is not in tune with his earlier engagements with Arabic writings.

Muslim Fikr-aur-Falsapha: Ahad-ba-Ahad is aslo a wide departure from Kazim’s earlier engagements with Arabic studies. This book tells us much about his intellectual development, pointing to the possibilities in times to come. He seems no more keen to study what our religious scholars have written in Urdu and English and to translate them into Arabic for the benefit of the wider Muslim readership. Here again he is seen stepping into a different world. This is the domain of philosophy.

He tells us in the preface of the book that “philosophy has never been my subject of study. But it so happened that the literary personalities of the Arabic which I tried to introduce to my Urdu readers were also involved in thoughts and ideas.” He referred in this respect to Abul ‘Ala Al-Ma‘arri and those belonging to Ikhwanul Safa. They are referred to as such in the histories of Muslim philosophy.

Kazim Sahib is seen dabbling in Greek philosophy too. In fact, the very first chapter of the book is devoted to a discussion of the tradition of Greek philosophy. But he has a reason for it. He says, “Before embarking on a survey of Muslim thought and philosophy, I start talking about Greek philosophy. The reason is that Muslim thought is indebted to two great sources — the Quran and Greek philosophy.” He adds that “it was only after the philosophy of the Greeks had been translated into Arabic that the Muslims started thinking philosophically.”

So keeping this in view, Kazim Sahib starts tracing the origins of Muslim thought and philosophy. And it is not simply a survey of the developing stages of Muslim philosophy and an account of the philosophers who appear representing these developing stages. Kazim Sahib himself appears deeply involved in this process of philosophic development.

Will we then be wrong in inferring that in the person of Mohammad Kazim we see a thinker in the making? To be more precise, he will be justified in claiming that in the later stages of his writing career he appears to be struggling to come out as a thinker representing the modern thought of the Muslim world in our times.