THE IMMUTABLE PRINCIPLES OF ISLAM AND WESTERN EDUCATION[1]

Reflections on the Aga Khan Chair of Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut

THE establishment of a chair of Islamic studies by His Highness the Aga Khan at the American University of Beirut is an event of great significance both for the field of Islamic studies and the university in which it is situated. As the first occupant of this chair whose duty it has been to lay the foundation for its later activity, we feel obliged to express what we feel are the particular duties and responsibilities of the chair. It is our hope that eventually over the years they will be realized and the chair will be able to fulfill the important functions and achieve those ends for the sake of which it was founded.

Today in the Muslim world there is a chasm created through the presence of two contending educational systems between a Western educated minority and a majority which on both the popular and intellectual levels is rooted in traditional Islam. A generation of Muslims in many lands are trained in a mode of thought based on modern science and philosophy that makes it difficult for them to understand the language of the traditional works in which Islamic wisdom is contained. One sees in many parts of the Muslim world two men externally, but who do not understand each other because they are using different systems of reference. At the same time, for over a century, a large number of works have been produced by Western orientalists, many of whom have been hostile to Islam, and in fact have written on Islam not because of their love of the subject but in order to refute it. Yet, these works, even the prejudiced and distorted ones, are the only sources available on Islam to those trained in the modern educational system and they appeal to many by what appears to be a scientific method and language.

To this situation is added the need o.' different parts of the Muslim community to come to know each other better and on a larger scale, to come to gain a more intimate knowledge of the other great religious, traditions of the world. The problem of the encounter with other religions is a counterpart of the contact with modernism. A traditional Muslim who has not encountered the modern world need not think of Christian theology or of Hindu and Buddhist metaphysics. But once contact is made with the different forms of modernism, there is a necessity to come to know other religions as well. In fact such knowledge is often an antidote for the skepticism brought about as a result of the influence of modernism whereas in a homogeneous Muslim climate such knowledge would be in most cases unnecessary and redundant.

With these factors in mind and considering the particular position of the Aga Khan Chair, it is our belief that its function is to become instrumental toward the realization of several goals, which are of concern to the whole Muslim world:

1.   Islam is a living spiritual and religious tradition not a dead religion that is simply of historical interest. The role of the Chair should be first and foremost to present to the modern world the many treasuries of wisdom which continue to exist in the Islamic tradition but which are half forgotten by a generation of modern Western educated Muslims. It means to translate the traditional truths of Islam in a contemporary language without betraying them. Such a difficult task requires one who himself firmly believes in Islam and has not become enamored with the noise and clamour of modernism. It calls to task a person who judges the world according to the immutable principles of Islam and does not seek to so-called "reform" the God-given truths of Islam in the light of the transient and ephemeral conditions which are called "the times". Such a person must be free of a sense of intellectual inferiority vis-a-vis the West. On the contrary he should consciously uphold and be proud of the Islamic tradition with all its intellectual and spiritual riches and not just as a simple rational faith devoid of a spiritual dimension that some have tried to make it.

At the same time, he must know the Western world well, know is well but not in a second hand fashion that would make him take for new clothing what has already been discarded by the Western intelligentsia as outmoded. He must know the inner forcer that motivate the Western mind and have a clear grasp of the philosophical, scientific, religious, artistic and social life of the West in their religious and historical roots as well as in their present day manifestations. Only a person who himself knows through first hand knowledge the intellectual life of Islam and has mastered the contemporary medium of expression can hope to present in a fresh form and language the perennial wisdo m which exists in the Islamic world. Only such a person can provide the necessary knowledge of Islam for a new generation that has been cut away from this wisdom by having become trained in another mode of thought and expression and who at the same time is in desperate need of the saving truth contained in the Islamic message.

2.   The study of Islam by orientalists has produced a large number of works which are studied the world over by all interested in Islamic studies, not only in the West and in non-Muslim countries of Asia, but even in those Muslim countries where a European language such as English or French is widespread. Unfortunately, Islam has not received favourable treatment in most of these works, even in comparison with other great religions of Asia such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Many factors such as the historical contacts between Christianity and Islam which have not always been friendly the medieval fear of Muslims in Europe, the fact that Islam comes after Christianity historically, the Semitic origin of Islam for the predominantly Indo-European people of the Western world, who are thus naturally more attracted toward Hinduism and other Aryan religions, all play a role in the unfavourable treatment that Islam has received and continues to receive. In fact many orientalists writing about Islam have not embarked upon this field because they have had a love for some aspect of it, but because they have been somehow unwillingly pushed into it as philologists or missionaries.

The considerable amount of research done on Islamic studies by orientalists contains much of scientific and historical value, even if there are many elements that are unacceptable in it from the Muslim point of view, and even if one finds distortion and misunderstanding in interpretation in many cases. Whatever the value of these studies may by they cannot be refuted nor can their influence be annulled by simply denouncing orientalists or using language of demagogy against them. What the orientalists have done is to study Islam for their own ends and needs. The duty of the Muslim scholars, and one in which the Aga Khan Chair shares particularly, is to provide a Muslim answer to the challenge of the orientalists in a language and method appropriate for such a task. Such an undertaking would also he of great interest to the world of orientalism itself. What is needed is a study of all domains of the Islamic tradition and civilization by Muslim scholars who, while firmly believing in their tenets, can deal with them in a scholarly manner so as to provide a response to the challenges posed by the works of many orientalists to Islam. Only an undertaking of this kind could curtail the influence of such works on Muslims themselves who study Islam from their writings. Such an undertaking could at the same time help to present Islam and its culture and history to the outside world in its true colour.

3.   Closely allied to the challenge of the study of orientalists to Islam is the whole modern scientific, historical and philosophic attitude of which the approach and method prevalent among most orientalists is but a reflection. This immense challenge which Islam faces, as do all other religions, is to be seen today especially in such matters as the theory of evolution, psychoanalysis, existentialism, historicism and on another level dialectical materialism. It is not, of course, possible for the Aga Khan Chair of Islamic Studies to provide answers to all of these questions which require concerted effort on the part of the whole Muslim intelligentsia. However, traditional Islamic wisdom possesses within itself the metaphysical doctrines which alone can provide the answers to such problems. These modes of thought in fact have come about for the most part as a result of the forgetting of metaphysical principles.

To present the traditional doctrines in a contemporary language would therefore itself contribute toward facing these and similar challenges posed by modernism. The very situation of the Aga Khan Chair in a Western-oriented University places it in the forefront of this vital task to provide a Muslim answer to the fashionable ideas of the times, some of which are pseudo-science parading in the dress of science and others are purely and simply the fruit of the secularism of the past four centuries in the West. Also by studying Islam as a living reality and emphasizing the perennial nature of the truths contained in the Islamic tradition, the Chair can provide an antidote to the malady of historicism which is so prevalent today and which Islam opposes in its philosophical roots by refusing to admit that the truth can become incarnated in history.

4.   Every religion by the fact that it enters into the world participates in the multiplicity that is characteristic of it and therefore divides into different schools and perspectives. In fact it is through the presence of these dimensions, providentially placed within a revelation, that it is able to integrate into its structure people of differing psychological and spiritual temperament. Islam is no exception to this rule, although it has displayed more homogeneity and less diversity than other world religions. One of the tasks of this Chair is to study this diversity in Islam in the light of the unifying principles, to delineate the structure of the two great orthodox dimensions of Islam, namely Sunnism and Shiaism, as well as the movements and sects that have diverged from them. It is to make each one better known to the other.

Family feuds occur naturally in every family, but they are immediately put aside when the whole family group is endangered. In the present situation in the Islamic world an intellectual and spiritual understanding between Sunnism and Shiaism is essential, as is a firm comprehension of the total orthodoxy of Islam which consists of these two main branches. It is also important to make a critical study of the small religious groups who over the centuries have separated from the mainstream of Islamic religious life and to discover their relation to the main body of Islamic orthodoxy. Nowhere can this study he carried out wish greater success and more immediate and tangible results than in Lebanon where nearly every part of the Muslim community is represented and where inter-community understanding is a problem of daily concern.

5.   Also due to contact with the modern world. which both corrodes the homogenous religious world view and at the same time facilitates knowledge of other religious traditions, the carrying on of a serious dialogue between Islam and other religions is a necessity. Until now Muslims as a whole have been less interested in the study of other religions than either the Christians or the Hindus and Buddhists perhaps because the presence of other religions was an already accepted r truth in Islam before modern times. Islam of all the religious traditions is the only one to have had contact before the modern period with nearly every important tradition, with Christianity and Judaism in the western and central territories of Islam, with Hinduism in India, with Buddhism in northwestern Persia and Afghanistan and with the Chinese tradition in Sinkiang. Also the principle of the universality of revelation is clearly stated in the Qur'an and was in fact explored to a certain extent by some of the older Muslim masters such as Rumi and Ibn Arabi. Therefore, in principle it is easier for Islam to make a sympathetic study of other religions and remain completely faithful to its own principles than is the case with many other religions which May find an acceptance of other traditions difficult from the point of view of their own accepted dogmatic structure.

However, serious studies of other religions have not as yet been carried out extensively by Muslim scholars and few attempts have been made to penetrate into the inner message of other religions. The Aga Khan Chair could also be instrumental in this domain particularly as it pertains to Christianity. In Lebanon Muslims and Christians live side by side with little profound and sympathetic understanding of each other, especially since intellectually Islam is on the defensive. Nowhere could a more meaningful dialogue take place between Islam and Christianity than here, provided there will be a meeting of equals who respect each other as these two religions did in medieval times.

A meaningful dialogue can only result when two religions meet as conveyors of Cod's message to men, and not when one is on the offensive through its identification by some with the modern Western world with all the military and economic advantages that it enjoys and the other on the defensive before these very forces. Christianity was an eastern religion before it became providentially the religion of the Occident. And here in Lebanon representatives of bath its eastern and western branches are present amidst the world of Islam. No better site could be found for the creation of an atmosphere in which mutua I comprehension and respect on the intellectual and spiritual levels could be brought about. It is perhaps not accidental that at this time the official Christian authorities in the West have expressed the wish to have a closer relation with Islam and seek to create understanding between the two religions.

Of course to carry out all these tasks, to present the traditional wisdom of Islam in contemporary language, to answer the questions posed by the works of orientalists, to provide an answer to the challenges of modernism, to bring about closer understanding between the different groups of Muslims, and finally to provide a dialogue between Islam and other religions, especially Christianity, is a momentous undertaking. It cannot be fulfilled by one person or one Chair at all. Rather, it is the work of a whole younger generation of Muslim scholars who must be trained and prepared to carry it out. Vet the Chair could aid in the realization of these goals by striving toward them in its own activities. Moreover, it could seek to achieve these ends in a centre of Islamic studies of which it could serve as a nucleus and also by training students in this field. Only then could it function properly and be of maximum be nefit both to the Islamic world and the Western world of scholarship.

It is our hope that as the activities of the Chair become fully integrated into the life of the American University of Beirut and the Chair finds a place in the academic community it will be able to achieve these goals. In so doing it would render a great service to Islamic studies as well as to the cause of inter-religious and inter-cultural understanding in which the American University of Beirut itself is destined by its very nature to be called upon to play an important role.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr

NOTES