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Muhammad Iqbal The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:15:00 GMT

Muhammad Iqbal is regarded as one of the great thinkers of the Islamic Awakening. His major philosophical work has now been published in German. The book is a timeless intellectual challenge of the first rank, says Ludwig Amman

Allama Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal - posthumously revered in Pakistan as Muffakir-e-Pakistan (The Thinker of Pakistan) or Shair-i-Mashriq (The Poet of the East).

The great Indo-Muslim poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938), was a man ahead of his time. Regarded as one of the great thinkers of the Islamic Awakening, a movement which pointed the way towards a regeneration of Islamic culture, he was born in Sialkot in what was then India and today belongs to Pakistan.

Now, at last, his major philosophical work, "The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam" has been published in German. It surprises and delights.

Inspiration from Western philosophy

The volume consists of seven lectures originally in English, on religion and philosophy, held in 1928 at the universities of Madras, Hyderabad and Mysore, following study in Lahore, Cambridge and Munich. Iqbal allowed himself to be inspired by Western thought and philosophy: "Most of my life has been spent in the study of European philosophy and that viewpoint has become my second nature. Consciously or unconsciously I study the realities and truths of Islam from the same point of view. I have experienced this many a time that while talking in Urdu I cannot express all that I want to say in that language."

It's a revealing statement and one that helps us understand the appeal of the work in the West. It is the Western view of Islam that characterises it linguistically, conceptually, and intellectually. The exceptional clarity, precision and vividness of thought however is what really characterises the work.

No dusty tome from the distant past this, but a timeless intellectual challenge of the first rank – and, as such, testimony to a man with a commanding knowledge of numerous intellectual traditions from Ibn Arabi and Fakhr ad-Din Rasi to Einstein, Bergson and Freud.

Re-thinking Islam

Like many thinkers of his generation he felt that Islam had suffered for centuries under an "intellectual paralysis" that had allowed the West to leave it behind. The task, then, was the reconstruction of religious thought: "The task before the modern Muslim is, therefore, immense. He has to re-think the whole system of Islam without completely breaking with the past".

An important prerequisite for this re-thinking is a critical reception of modern knowledge: "The only course open to us is to approach modern knowledge with a respectful but independent attitude and to appreciate the teachings of Islam in the light of that knowledge."

The careful balance here is not accidental. However Iqbal's emphatic insistence on an independent attitude is something that tends, even nowadays, to be overlooked. "No people can afford to reject their past entirely, for it is their past that has made their personal identity. And in a society like Islam the problem of a revision of old institutions becomes still more delicate, and the responsibility of the reformer assumes a far more serious aspect".

Europe and its "perverted ego"

None of this is apparent from a recent review in a German newspaper, where the impression is given that Iqbal had urged Islam to free itself from the "medieval fantasies of the theologians" in order to achieve spiritual emancipation, because, it was claimed, "the Islamic world is moving spiritually towards the West." Whatever else he says, Iqbal certainly does not say this!

It might have been advisable to have read the book to the end: "Believe me, Europe today (due to its perverted ego) is the greatest hindrance in the way of man's ethical advancement. The Muslim, on the other hand, is in possession of these ultimate ideas of the basis of a revelation, (…) which, speaking from the inmost depths of life, internalises its own apparent externality. With him the spiritual basis of life is a matter of conviction for which even the least enlightened man among us can easily lay down his life."

No, the study of Western thought had not turned Iqbal into an irreligious European, his Westernisation did not go that far, in spiritual matters he remained a believer in ex Oriente lux (the conception that light, in the sense of culture and civilisation, originates from the East).

The Islamic origins of science

When Iqbal calls for a reconstruction of religious thinking, that is exactly what he means – and why he balances out two lines of argument. On the one hand the reception of science, that is to say the natural sciences must be justified. This can be done by providing proof of their Islamic origins:

The empirical character of the Koran, this theory maintains, made it possible for Muslims to become the founders of modern science, the birth of Islam then being the birth of inductive reasoning, an intellectual revolt against the speculative philosophy of the Greeks – and for the experimental methods of the Arabs to be taken up in European thought and further developed.

How convincing this rather Islamocentric genealogy of empirical science is remains to be seen. It is in any case an accepted part of Al-Jabiri's "Critique of Arab Reason" (1984-1992), which attributes the dynamism attained by the sciences in Europe to the reception of the rationalistic thinking of Averroes/Ibn Rushd – while the Islamic world meanwhile succumbed to Avicennist thinking and stagnated scientifically as a consequence.

Intimate contact with reality only via religion

On the other hand, the mystic experience of God is as real for Iqbal as every other human experience; the segmentary character of the natural sciences means they – "are like so many vultures falling on the dead body of Nature, and each running away with a piece of its flesh" – so religion has a central role in the synthesis, the bringing together of all human experience. Religion alone has the power to establish an intimate contact with reality and it does so by means of the spiritual condition we call "prayer".

However religious thinking does not attain dynamism merely through the reception of modern knowledge. Of more crucial importance is the world- and self-conception of Islam, according to Iqbal, the true and 'rediscoverable' essence of Islam in conflict with a mistaken fatalistic concept of divine predestination. To this end he devises a theology of creative change:

"It is time regarded as an organic whole that the Koran describes as Taqdir or the destiny – a word which has been so much misunderstood both in and outside the world of Islam. Destiny is time regarded as prior to the disclosure of its possibilities. (…) The destiny of a thing then is not an unrelenting fate working from without like a task master; it is the inward reach of a thing, its realizable possibilities."

"If time is real (…)," Iqbal goes on to say, "then every moment in the life of Reality is original, giving birth to what is absolutely novel and unforeseeable. Everyday doth some new work employ Him, says the Koran. To exist in real time means (…) to create it from moment to moment and to be absolutely free and original in creation. The universe is a free creative movement."

From freethinking theology to tricky jurisprudence

This sounds wonderful. But it only gets serious when Iqbal moves from freethinking theology into the treacherous field of jurisprudence where nothing less than the rules and laws by which society functions are at stake. Here, as generations of reformist Muslims and Orientalists have done, he identifies ijtihad, the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the sources of the law as "the principle of movement in the structure of Islam".

In order to find reconciliation between stability and change, Islamic society must, on the one hand, find eternal principles, "it must possess eternal principles to regulate its collective life; for the eternal gives us a foothold in the world of perpetual change."

However since eternal principles can also be debilitating if they are understood as excluding all change, the dynamism of ijtihad is necessary. Nothing untoward there – but then the surprises begin to pile up, and they should give us pause for thought:

Wahhabism – characterised by the spirit of freedom?

Of all things, it is the arch-conservative Wahhabism that Iqbalit declares a modern movement, characterised by the spirit of freedom of ijtihad – the very same tyrannical and puritanical antediluvian form of Islam of the Saudis, who since 1975 have been using their oil billions worldwide to promote a thoroughly anti-modern brand of re-Islamisation!

We may pass over this as a premature misinterpretation, confusing the theoretical modernisation potential of ijtihad with the maximally restrictive use that defensive movements make of judgements irrespective of religious schools based solely on founding texts. But that is just the beginning:

The contribution of the Indo-Muslims to the Renaissance of Islam is "healthy conservative criticism, [that] serve[s] at least as a check on the rapid movement of liberalism in the world of Islam". Iqbal then, is no liberal reformer, even if there are many who like to think of him as such; he is a conservative reformer, concerned about the "proper limits of reform"!

The concept of "spiritual democracy"

It is exactly this that characterises his finely balanced conception of "spiritual democracy" as alternative to the non-spiritual democracies of Europe, that "highest goal of Islam" and its contribution to the progress of mankind. If Iqbal transfers the authority of the ijtihad to a Muslim legislative assembly, he is not doing so solely to ensure the contributions of sensible laymen to legal discussions. It is much more a matter of avoiding major errors in interpreting the laws – this is why the jurists should form "a vital part of a Muslim legislative assembly helping and guiding free discussion on questions relating to law".

This, in the final analysis, is what conservative Islamic reform movements demand when they protest about the complete exclusion of religious law from the legislative process. They are considered as radical and as enemies of democracy because they do not want to consign Allah's Law – Sharia, often demonised in Europe – to the dustbin of history but instead to focus on modernisation through extension of the law.

Sir Muhammad Iqbal too, is this kind of "Islamist". Our understanding of Islamic activism in all its forms might make tremendous strides if only we would remove the blinkers and learn to take the religious element in religious thinkers seriously instead of thinking of such people as merely uncritical (or slow-on-the-uptake) adherents of secular European thinking.

Ludwig Ammann

© Qantara.de 2005

Translation from German: Ron Walker

Muhammad Iqbal: Die Wiederbelebung des religiösen Denkens im Islam (The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam). German Translation by Axel Monte and Thomas Stemmer, Published by Hans Schiler 2004, 238 pages

Mohamed Talbi "Religious Dogmas Terrorize the Spirit"

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:12:00 GMT

The Tunisian intellectual Mohamed Talbi is regarded as one of the most critical leading thinkers in the Arab world. In his most recently published book, he denounces traditional Islamic religious scholars and argues for a contemporary reading of the Koran. Rachid Boutayeb introduces Mohamed Talbi

Mohamed Talbi argues for an "enlightened, open-minded Islam" (photo: Beat Stauffer)

Mohamed Talbi was one of the founders of the Tunisia University and a follower of Habis Bourguibas, the father of the republic and the only Arab ruler who succeeded in stemming the influence of Islamic conservatism in his country in order to establish a secular regime. Today, Talbi is first and foremost a critical intellectual who never tires of denouncing the police state of Ben Ali.

In an open letter, Talbi, who in contrast to many other critics of the regime has not gone into exile, referred to Tunisia as a "gulag for the spirit." In other respects, his situation is not much different from other Arab intellectuals who find themselves caught between two fronts – the hammer of Arab dictatorships and the anvil of radical Islamism.

Similar to all of his comrades-in-arms, Talbi supports an enlightened, open-minded Islam and criticizes the one-dimensional thinking prevalent in many Islamic countries, which excludes and condemns those with dissenting views. Talbi matter-of-factly and, at the same time, convincingly describes the significance of the Islamic religion today. "Religion is neither an identity, a culture, or a nation. Religion is a private relationship with God. We can be Muslims and simultaneously be part of a Dutch, French, or Chinese culture."

Sharia as a man-made work

Christian Church in Tunis: In the spirit of secularism, Mohamed Talbi supports the strict division of religion and state. Right, behind the palms, lurks Ben Ali, the autocratic ruler of Tunisia

Abdou Filali Ansary, a renowned Moroccan thinker, summarizes the basic ideas of Mohamed Talbi's current book, "Reflections of a modern Muslim," in one central question: How can we be Muslims in the present day? This question demands a new reading of the Koran in order to throw off the oppressive burden of tradition.

In fact, Talbi would like to stress the priority of human freedom over religious tradition, and therefore defends the idea that the Sharia is a man-made work, which is not binding on all Muslims. He sees it as absolutely necessary to rethink the Sharia. According to Talbi, the Islamic faith is based upon freedom, and every interpretation that attempts to diminish this freedom stands in clear opposition to the faith.

In this respect, Talbi follows in the footsteps of the German orientalist Theodor Nöldeke, who in his landmark work "The History of the Koran" stressed that every religious tradition has been influenced by its time and has undergone many transformations.

A plea for a historical reading of the Koran

"God does not only speak to the dead, but also to the living.

The standard work of modern Koran exegesis: Mohamed Talbi's "Universalité du coran" published in 2002

This is why I must understand His

The standard work of modern Koran exegesis: Mohamed Talbi's "Universalité du coran" published in 2002
word with my present-day
mentality and in view of my current life situation. I suggest a dynamic reading of the Koran and not a rigid or conservative one, which can only kill the word of God," writes Talbi.

Talbi therefore aspires to free Islam from dogmatic interpretations claiming to possess the ultimate truth. This is the kind of claim that "terrorizes the spirit and nips any dialogue with others in the bud."

He argues for a historical reading of the Koran in which the freedom of the individual takes centre stage. As an example of this new interpretation, he raises the problem of slavery. The Koran does not explicitly forbid slavery, but who today is prepared to defend slavery in the name of the Koran, asks Talbi provocatively.

For Talbi, reality maintains the upper hand and not the wording of the Koran. As such, the starting point for a modern reading of the Koran must be reality and historicity instead of tradition.

The Koran as a secular book?

Talbi criticises Islamism and regards this ideology as a lever of power in the hands of a "theological totalitarianism." And he doesn't hesitate in stressing that the Koran is a secular book, as there is no church or clergy in Islam.

Therefore, Talbi sees any interpretation that claims to be able to lay down the meaning of the Koran once and for all as posing a danger – not only for believers, but also for the true spirit of the religion.

Above all, Talbi denounces traditional Islamic religious scholars, in particular those who issue so-called "death sentence fatwas" against dissenters. He feels that these religious diehards do not only want to terrify people and massively limit their individual freedoms, but are also misusing the Islamic faith with all its variety and richness as a tool in achieving political goals.

Rachid Boutayeb

© Qantara.de 2008

Translated from the German by John Bergeron

"Islamic Feminism Is a Universal Discourse"

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 18:01:00 GMT

Margot Badran is an expert in Islam and feminism. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, she talks about the influence of patriarchy on Islam and on how Islamic feminist ideas draw on the Quran and how they find their way into religious teachings

According to Margot Badran, Islamic feminism is neither "Western" nor "Eastern" but a universal discourse grounded in the Quran

How do Islamic feminists deal with aspects of the fiqh tradition that seem to be maligned against women's rights?

Margot Badran: Women scholars (whether they embrace Islamic feminism or prefer ijtihad – independent readings of the sacred text and other religious sources) recognise the overwhelmingly misogynist nature of traditional fiqh. A fresh interpretation of the Quran is a foundational step in the reconsideration of fiqh, of building a new jurisprudence.

Some scholars like Aziza al Hibri engage more directly with jurisprudence. As for hadith, people are widely familiar with the works of Fatima Mernissi who has used the tools of classical Islamic methodology to examine hadith relating to issues of women and gender, demonstrating how many widely circulating hadith are weak or spurious and how some, which are of more solid provenance, have been read out of context.

There are a growing number of other women who are bringing to scrutiny the persistent circulation of hadith that contradict the basic principles of the Quran.

Why do women assume such central importance in Muslim/Islamist discourse generally?

Badran: A good way to get a grip on this is to place it in the context of patriarchy – patriarchal modes of thinking, behaviour and control of Muslim men, which has made patriarchy Islamic itself. Virtually, all old Muslim societies, women and their sexual purity (variously defined) have been linked with the honour of men and families, and this discourse has been associated with Islam (or "legitimised" through connecting it with Islam).

We see that this linkage of honour and women's sexual purity holds for those of other religions in the same societies, showing that this nexus transcends the terrain of any one religion. It has a grip on Muslims as on other religious groups. Because of this link of honour with women's sexual purity, women need to be controlled and those who do the controlling are men and their surrogates, in combinations of age, stage, position, class, etc (within and beyond the family).

The patriarchal system does not call for men to be controlled. If some women are not sexually pure that means that some men are also not sexually pure. Thus, cultural ideas are harnessed and often exaggerated in the service of political ideologies and practices. Women, and the children they raise, are controlled through a strict ideology of body, sex, and honour. Women and their bodies, meanwhile, serve as emblems of purity – and the politics – of the group (nation or religious group); the hijab becomes a kind of national flag and political symbol.

If we draw upon our Islamic learning, we know that mode of dress or modest dress is likewise enjoined upon men and that sexual behaviour or sexual purity is equally ordained for men. Men and women alike are enjoined to obey Islamic precepts and are exhorted to engage in taqwa or righteous behavior. When you think about it, obsession with women's bodies is itself a kind of sexual obsession – as women's obsession with men's bodies and how they were clothed would be (if it existed). But the obsession with women's bodies is a politicising mechanism, so in short, the answer to your question lies in politics and projects of control.

How can Islamic feminist insights be introduced into the centres of Islamic 'orthodoxy', most notably the madressahs? Is this happening? Do you know of any women's madressahs where some sort of Islamic feminist texts are taught?

Badran: Let me first make a comment or two on centers of Islamic learning or madressahs. The term, and the institution of the madressah varies widely over time and place. Madressah may signify some sort of generic Islamic schooling, or a more specific institutional structure. In many places madressahs or schools, run by religious teachers, no longer exist as part of the state or quasi-state system.

But becoming more widespread in recent times in the Middle East, for example, are private religious schools, which are usually not called madressahs and must conform to state educational requirements if their degrees are to be recognised.

Let me answer your question with respect to Al Azhar University as the highest center of learning in Egypt, with its various faculties and branches throughout the country. Here, yes the ideas of Islamic feminism are taught and spread – not as "Islamic feminism" per se but as part of Islamic learning embedded in various subjects. Let me give an example from Islamic jurisprudence.

The Dean of the Women's College at Al Azhar, Dr Suad Salih, is also a Professor of Comparative Fiqh. She teaches in Women's College and also controls the boards that examine candidates for PhD. She evaluates men's and women's intellectual grasp of the religious sciences, especially fiqh.

This highly qualified and respected scholar knows her fiqh and knows that there is no gender impediment, keeping women from becoming muftis or dispensers of religious rulings in answer to requests. She submitted a request to be appointed as mufti, knowing well that there is no religious impediment in the way of women becoming muftis.

In fact, women have historically functioned as muftis. The most illustrious example is that of Sayyidna Aisha, wife of the Prophet (PBUH). Dr Suad was thrust into the role of campaigning for women to be able to be officially appointed muftis. So, yes, "Islamic feminist" ideas percolate in these high halls of religious learning.

Now let me give you an example of a madressah for women and men in Indonesia, where ideas of "Islamic feminism" – again not by that name but simply under the name of religion – form part of the curriculum. Haji Husein Muhammad is a kyai (or sheikh). He teaches at Dar Al Tawhid, a pesantren (the Indonesian word for madressah) in West Java.

When we discussed Islamic feminism and the curricula in pesandrens, he gave the example of a 19th Century liberal treatise on the rights of the two spouses Uqud Al Lujain fi Banan and Huqug Al Zawjaini, written by the Indonesian scholar Muhammad Ibn Umar Nawawi, who had studied in Mecca and at Al Azhar.

That was republished with a contemporary woman-sensitive commentary, and is now taught in many pesantren, including his own Dar Al Tawhid, where there are some 600 students. Islamic feminist reading of religion is, of course, simply a celebration of the full amplitude of Islam.

How does one counter the oft-heard argument that Islamic feminism is a Western import and represents a misreading and distortion of faith as salafe saleh, the early Muslims, had understood it?

Badran: Islamic feminism, as a discourse grounded in the Quran and other religious texts, is not "Western", nor it is "Eastern". It is a universal discourse. There are many ayats in the Quran, firmly indicating that Islam is a universal religion, knowing no geographical or cultural boundaries. This is exquisitely imparted in Surat Al Nur.

"God is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The parable of His Light is as if there was a niche and within it a lamp...lit from a blessed tree, an olive, neither of the East nor the West." (24:35)

The specific forms that Islamic feminist activism takes are locally grounded. They come from within. For example, we have run the long campaign for many years, led by some women in Egypt, using the discourse of Islamic feminism to argue that there was nothing in the religion of Islam barring women from becoming judges. This finally ended in victory this January when three women were finally appointed as judges.

In South Africa, Muslim women have been campaigning for greater access to participate in congregational prayer alongside men (that is to occupy adjacent rather than behind or an altogether separate space) and to give talks at Friday prayer prior to the khutba, and have met with successes. I can give you the example of the Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, where women's discourse at Friday congregational prayer is now a commonplace.

Interview by Yoginder Sikand

© Islaminterfaith.org 2005

Margot Badran is a historian and a specialist of gender studies focused on the Middle East and Islamic world. She did her MA from Harvard University and DPhil from Oxford University. She acquired a diploma in Arabic and Islam from Al Azhar University, Cairo.

A Senior Fellow at the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, Badran is currently a visiting fellow at ISIM (Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World) in Leiden, The Netherlands. Her books include "Feminists, Islam, and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt", and "Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing". She has also penned numerous articles on feminism and Islam. Her works have been translated into Arabic, French, Italian, Dutch, German, and many other languages.

Badran has lectured on feminism and Islam in the US, Europe, Middle East, and Africa. She writes for numerous newspapers in the Middle East, for International Herald Tribune, and contributes regularly to Al Ahram Weekly.

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The Koran's Spirit of Gender Equality

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:59:00 GMT

Lily Zakiyah Munir, Head of the "Center for Pesantren and Democracy Studies", Indonesia, argues that it is not the Koran, but social convention of patriarchal cultures that women in Islamic countries are deprived of equal social status

Lily Zakiyah Munir

In several conferences on women, the recommendations for promoting gender equality and women's rights almost always mention religion, particularly Islam, as a source of discrimination and oppression against women, as if Islam as a religion hindered the promotion of women's rights.

Now, if one defines Islam as the sum of attitudes and behavioral acts of the major part of Muslims in Muslim societies (which are – like many other societies worldwide – patriarchal societies), then it is correct to say Islam does discriminate against women, trying to hamper their rights and liberties. This view is not correct if Islam is understood as a set of moral teachings and rituals revealed to bring blessings to all of mankind, including women.

Hence, the issue is Islam versus Muslims. These two phenomena are not identical, and, looking at the phenomena under the gender aspect, there is even a wide gap between the two. It is, therefore, important that we close the gap by educating the public in general and Muslims in particular about equality between women and men and of the rights guaranteed by Islam to women.

The Koran tells us that man and women are created equal

Muslims mark the start of Ramadan in prayer at Istiqlal Mosque in Jakarta

There are at least 30 verses in the Koran that support equality between women and men and that refer to women's rights in various aspects of life. Many of these women-friendly Koranic verses are further supported by the Hadith, traditionally attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, which illustrate that the Prophet's teachings do not at all put women in second place, but, on the contrary, are conducive and supportive of their position in society as equals.

Among these teachings, to mention only a few, are – first – the creation of human beings: Contrary to the Christian dogma, which states that women were created from the ribs of a man or that men were created first (thereby implying that women are inferior to men), the Koran tells us that women and men were created from a single source/soul ("nafs wahida"). There is not a single verse indicating superiority of one gender over the other.

Second: There is no difference between a sin committed by a woman and a sin committed by a man: A large number of Koran verses explicitly guarantee equal rewards and punishment to women and men for their good and bad deeds.

Third: Equal rights and duties for women and men to pursue knowledge. The Koran clearly assigns both women and men to seek knowledge. The Hadith is very clear about it.

Fourth: Equal rights and duties to engage in public activities. Both men and women, as God's vicegerents, are obliged to strive for a virtuous life and to prevent sins and evildoings ("amar ma'ruf nahi munkar").

Islamic societies tell us that women are not equal to men

Now, if Islam has wisely granted equality between women and men as well as a set of women's rights in various aspects of life, then why does the status of women in Muslim societies remain low? If Islam teaches that both women and men are obliged to perform "amar ma'ruf nahi munkar", then why do they still suffer from gender segregation, under which women are saddled with domestic responsibilities while men dominate the public domain? Why is social justice more accessible to men than to women? There are lots more similar critical questions to raise, if we reflect further on gender and women's issues from an Islamic perspective.

There are several reasons for the gap between Islamic teachings and their manifestation among Muslims.

First, such liberal and emancipative messages of the Koran are not easy to understand, let alone be internalized and practiced, particularly when one reads the Koran with an already gender-biased mind-set that is a product of our patriarchal, ideological hegemony prevalent in our culture. An anthropological investigation of a Koranic verse on marital sexuality (Koran, al-Baqarah 187) shows that gender and sexual equality that are actually advocated by the verse are hardly taken into consideration by the majority of Muslim men and women, because they are used to stratified gender relations.

Second, religious teachers and preachers, through religious learning forums ("majlis ta'lim"), electronic and printed media, hardly ever promote these women's rights. The major themes of religious education and teaching by male and female teachers ("ustadh" and "ustadha") are mainly on the superiority of God and the "superiority" of men over women, sustaining the already subjugated position of women.

Thirdly, most of the women who play an influential role in public life of Islamic societies aren't trying to promote awareness for the difficult position women are in. Some of them even advocate the subordinate role women have in relation to their husbands (regardless of what their husbands are like). They argue that it is part of the requirement to be a devout Muslima.

Koran's spirit of gender equality

It is time that Muslims take time to reflect on these realities. Have we done justice to women? Have we given women the rights they are entitled to and are guaranteed by the Koran? In patriarchal Muslim societies, the Koranic spirit of gender and sexual equality is inevitably challenged. The key to its realization lies in the success of educating Muslim men and women on the authentic meaning of the Koran and its mission to liberate women and oppressed groups.

Attempts to implement women's rights and gender equality in Islam should be enhanced to reconstruct equitable Muslim societies according to the wisdom of the Koran. Much of the challenge lies in the hands of men, as they are the holders of power to reinterpret, reconstruct and implement liberating.

Lily Munir

© Lily Munir 2003

The author founded the "Center for Pesantren and Democracy Studies" and has been very active in women's organizations tied to Nahdlatul Ulama - the largest Muslim organization in Indonesia. Lily Munir is currently in Atlanta at the "School of Law at Emory University" designing learning modules on Islam and human rights for use in Islamic theological schools (pesantrens) in Indonesia.

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"Islam? Perfectly compatible with Women Rights"

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 17:55:00 GMT

Martha Nussbaum interviewed by Elisabetta Ambrosi

“Do you know what our first president George Washington said, writing to the Quakers about why he was not going to require them to perform military service? ‘The conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness’. Well, I wish I saw more of this delicacy and tenderness in Europe today”. According to the famous political philosopher Martha Craven Nussbaum, “it’s just appalling that nations want to ban wearing of traditional Islamic dress”. Religion, and in particular Islam, says Nussbaum, is compatible not only with democracy but also with women rights (see the Indian case). What’s really wrong are Western stereotypes about Muslims and the so (badly) called “Islamic world”.

In your reflections on human capacities, you underline the importance of a correct and harmonic physical and psychical development and of the possibility for the individual to express his ideas and emotions in a free and open way. Well, if even in the rich West women suffer from restrictions of different kind, don’t you think that these rights are systematically denied to women in the Islamic world?

I think that there is no such thing as “the Islamic world,” and thus no such thing as “a way” to be a woman in it. There are many types of Muslims, and, like Christians and Jews, they find many different ways to be women within their traditions. My Muslim friends in India do not fit any single stereotype – and why should one expect them to? – any more than do my Buddhist or Hindu friends. I think that in all religions there are people who want to live a traditional life and people who want to be part of modernity, and we ought to make room for both and show both equal respect. When I go to the traditional Jewish neighborhood of Boston, called Brookline (as I have recently done, to buy Passover gifts), I see many women living a traditional Orthodox life (and that does not mean that they are not lawyers and doctors and so forth, more or less everyone in Brookline is a lawyer or a doctor!), but of course there are also people like me, whose version of Judaism is Enlightenment-based and modern. We can respect one another, and we do.

However, you can’t deny that there are often tragic cases which show a dramatic tension between Islamic religion and women condition. Some intellectuals, for example Ayaan Hirsi Ali, argue that Islam is not compatible with women’s rights.

As a long-time expert on India, I want to point out to you that the three largest Islamic nations in the world are Indonesia, Pakistan, and India. There are about as many Muslims in India as in Pakistan, although of course in India they are a minority. It happens that I have recently written a book about Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, so I know a lot about this issue (the book is called The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future, and it is coming out in April). There have recently been two significant studies of the situation of Muslims in India: one commissioned by the government, and one, focused on women, done by two first-rate social scientists (the leader being Zoya Hasan of Jawaharlal Nehru University, who is now also a member of the government’s Minorities Commission). Both surveys find that Muslims are disproportionately poor and that they suffer from a variety of types of discrimination. However, the condition of Muslim women is not worse, on balance, than the condition of Hindu women in each region: in other words, the pertinent variations are regional rather than religion-based. Muslim women are very strong advocates of education for their daughters, and in many cases the fact that their boys face discrimination in employment has led to a greater emphasis on education for girls.

The case of India seems to puncture all the common Western stereotypes about Islam.

These Muslims are often very devout, and we ought to remember that an extremely religious Muslim, Maulana Azad, was one of Mahatma Gandhi’s chief allies, and an early leader of the Congress Party. But they do not interpret their religion, on balance, in a way that makes women second-class citizens. Indeed, at the time of independence the people who protested most vociferously against laws raising marital age and so forth were traditional Hindus. Women face inequalities in every religion in India, but they have fully equal rights as citizens, and there is a united front of both men and women, across all religions in fighting for sex equality against repressive custom. There is no reason to think that Muslims are more against women’s equality than Hindus and Christians and Parsis. All religions contain sexist people. Christian women in India won the right to divorce on grounds of cruelty only in 2001, well after all the other religions had that right.

Are you arguing that the problem is not Islamic religion, but its use?

Exactly. What we see in some nations, then, is not Islam itself, but a politicized version of Islam that is not a necessary interpretation of those religious texts. That point has been made repeatedly by dissidents in the societies in which this politicized version of Islam is influential, such as Shiran Ebadi and Akbar Ganji in Iran. Both are devout Muslims, and both insist, with convincing argument, that there is nothing in their sex-equal democratic proposals that is incompatible with Islam. Unfortunately, people in the West often don’t know much about Islam, so they equate the entire religion with a politicized version of it that they happen to hear about. As for Ayaan Hirsi Ali, maybe she ought to have moved to India rather than the Usa: surely she’d have a lot better chance of playing a leading role in political or intellectual life there, as a woman, than in the Usa. We might also mention Bangladesh, a democracy where 85 percent are Muslims and women (both Muslim) lead both of the two main political parties.

I’d like anyway to insist with you about the compatibility of Islam and democracy. You surely know that level of the tension has recently increased, after the Islamic virulent attacks to western writers and movies directors. There has also been a recent dispute, which you perhaps heard about, between Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash on a side and Pascal Bruckner and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the other: Buruma and Garton Ash arguing that there can be a liberal Islam, Bruckner and Hirsi Ali rejecting this possibility. According to you, is there a chance for Islam to become democratic? And how to reconcile universal rights and cultural and religious diversities?

Well I’ve already answered that question. People who doubt this should go live in India for a while. As for the European debate, I think that it is predicated on the assumption that being a good democratic citizen means accepting the norms and behaviour patterns of the majority. But why should we think this? Perhaps a good democracy is one where people express themselves in their own way, and still live with one another on terms of equal respect. I’m just finishing a book on the Usa tradition on the topic of religious liberty, and I think for once that there is something to be said in favour of the traditions of my own nation. Namely, people who are different from the norm not only get scrupulous fairness under law, which even John Locke advocated, they also get what is called rights of “accommodation”, namely, they do not have to observe certain laws that burden their conscience, unless there is a “compelling state interest”. In other words, if you are a Jew and you receive a subpoena to testify in court on a Saturday, you may refuse without legal penalty. If you are a Roman Catholic priest and you are testifying under oath in a criminal trial, you may refuse to divulge information you heard in the confessional, without paying any legal penalty. If your religion forbids military service, you are exempt from military conscription, and you don’t have to go to jail for your conscientious refusal. And: if your religion requires the use of illegal drugs in sacred ceremonies, you may be exempt from the drug laws in that context. I believe that this tradition of “accommodation” expresses a spirit of equal respect for minorities living in a majority world. Writing to the Quakers about why he was not going to require them to perform military service, our first president George Washington says, “The conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with the greatest delicacy and tenderness”. I wish I saw more of this delicacy and tenderness in Europe today.

Can you explain better this assumption?

I think it’s just appalling that nations want to ban wearing of traditional Islamic dress. The claim that veiled women on the street pose a security risk is really quite comic (I’ve written in a Dutch newspaper about this): we deal all the time with people whose faces are covered, from surgeons and dentists to Chicagoans out in the freezing snow and ice. And nobody suggests that this is a security risk, until some stranger whose religion seems unfamiliar wants to do the same thing for religious reasons! To take a related example, the state of New Jersey made a rule that no police officer could have a beard, and they fired some Muslim police officers because they would not shave off their beards. Now of course they said that this was some sort of big discipline and security issue, but it turned out that they had already allowed some policemen with skin conditions to keep their beards. So, rightly and properly, the Usa Court of Appeals said that they had to reinstate the Muslim officers and allow them to keep their beards. People love homogeneity, but law has to speak up for the rights of the different.

5 Apr 2007

Source

Modern Science and the Hermeneutics of the “Scientific Interpretation" of the Qur’an

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:55:00 GMT

by Mustafa Abu Sway

Introduction:

Allah (SWT) created humanity and, out of His mercy, He bestowed on humanity proper guidance throughout its history. The story of Adam (AS) in the Qur’an shows that he received instruction and revelation, before and after his time in the Garden. Humanity’s beginning was, therefore, an informed one. The instructions that Adam (AS) received were to equip him with the knowledge necessary to relate to his environment and to warn him against satanic temptations:

    “And He taught Adam the names of all things…” Qur’an, 2: 31

    “Then We said: “O Adam! Verily this is an enemy to thee and thy
    wife: so let him not get you both out of the Garden, so that thou art
    landed in misery.” Qur’an, 20:117

Despite all warnings, Adam (AS) gave in to Satan’s evil whispering. Nevertheless, Allah SWT chose him for his grace: “He turned to him, and gave him guidance.” Qur’an, 20:122

When Adam (AS) was dismissed from the Garden along with his spouse, after Satan deceived both of them, he received revelation, therefore becoming the first prophet:

    “Then received Adam from his Lord [certain] Words and his Lord
    forgave him; for He is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful.” Qur’an, 2: 37

The ‘Words’ in this context were meant to teach Adam about the possibility of repentance and how to repent, and as a result Allah SWT forgave him. The essence of divine revelation did not change since the time of Adam (AS). It was, and still is a call for Tawhid or belief in the absolute oneness of Allah SWT. Along with it is a call to serve and worship none but Him, and to modify one’s behavior accordingly. All this is included in the meaning of Islam, the religion of submission to the will of Allah SWT. The Qur’an mentioned the core of the message that was delivered by several prophets to their respective peoples. All of them repeated the same call for Tawhid. To reflect their messages, the Qur’an used, in numerous verses and contexts, the exact wording:

    …He said: “O my people! Worship Allah! Ye have no other god but
    Him…” Qur’an, 11:501

Therefore, the purpose of revelation is to guide human beings and lead them to their Creator. Revelation aims at forming God-conscientious women and men. The references in the Qur’an to natural phenomena are not meant for themselves, but rather to point in the direction of Allah SWT. These references do not change the basic message of the Qur’an as a book of guidance. There is a certain element of spirituality that is associated with studying the universe in all of its dimensions:

    Behold! In the creation of the heavens and earth; in the alternation of
    the night and the day; in the sailing of the ships through the ocean
    for the benefit of humanity; in the rain which Allah sends down from
    the skies, and the life which He gives therewith to an earth that is
    dead; in the beasts of all kinds that He scatters through the earth; in
    the changes of the wind, and the clouds which they trail like their
    slaves between the sky and the earth; (here) indeed are Signs for a
    people that are wise. Qur’an, 2:164

There is no doubt in my mind that the Qur’an is first and foremost a Book of Guidance. I counted more than three hundred references in the Qur’an to guidance [huda], using different grammatical forms. Some of these are directly associated with the Qur’an:

    This is the Book; in it is guidance sure, without doubt, to those who
    are God-conscientious. (2:2)

    ...and We have sent down to thee the Book explaining all things, a
    Guide, a Mercy, and Glad Tidings to Muslims. (16:89)

Verily this Qur’an does guide to that which is most right...(17:9)

It is rather obvious that the Qur’an is organically related to guidance. Yet, what is the meaning of guidance here? And what relation does it have to science?

In order to understand the message of the Qur’an, there is a need to consider it as a whole. The Qur’an invites humanity to see for itself and to have contemplation regarding natural phenomena:

    Do they not look at the camels, how they are created [khuliqat]?
    (88:17)

[Other translations have "made" instead of "created", with the commentary reflecting on the physiology of the camel. This is different from the connotations of "created". Every translation is an interpretation. Hence, is the emphasis that it is a translation of the meaning of the Qur’an, and not the Qur’an itself in English or any language other than Arabic. See translation of the King Fahd Complex of the meaning of the Qur’an, which is based on Yusuf Ali’s translation]

And [do they not look] at the sky, how it is raised high? (88:18)
And the mountains, how they are erected? ["fixed firm"] (88:19)
And the Earth, how it is spread out? (88:20)

Also the Qur’an is critical of those who do not ponder upon the universe, and do not benefit spiritually from that:

    Do they see nothing in the kingdom of the heavens and the earth and
    all that Allah has created? (Do they not see) that their term is nigh
    drawing to an end? In what Message after this will they then believe?
    (7:185)

Moreover, the Qur’an asks humanity to take practical measures in order to understand our origins:

    Say: "Travel through the earth and see how Allah did originate
    creation; so will Allah produce a later creation [I prefer to translate
    yunshi’ al-nash’ah al-akhirah as "recreate the last generation" as
    opposed to "originate"]: for Allah has power over all things. (29:20)

Though I restricted myself to these selections from three different chapters or Suras, it is clear that the realm of scientific activity is outside the Qur’an. This of course, does not deny or contradict the references in the Qur’an to the universe and natural phenomena. The basic concept here is the principle of non-contradiction between science and revelation. Both, the open book of the universe and the revealed Book come from the same source and they should reflect the same message. If not, it is either not science or not revelation, or the wrong interpretation of either one or both. Nevertheless, the Qur’an motivates humanity to study the universe. Humanity is also invited to go beyond the seen world and to make a spiritual link between natural phenomena and the ultimate reality:

    Behold! In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the
    alternation of Night and Day, -there are Signs for those of
    understanding, Those who remember Allah [while they are] standing,
    sitting, and lying down on their sides, and contemplate the creation of
    the heavens and the earth, [with the saying]: "Our Lord! Not for
    naught hast Thou created [all] this! Glory to Thee! Give us salvation
    from the Chastisement of the Fire. (3:190-191)

To understand the development of the "scientific interpretation" of the Qur’an, there is a need to trace it back to the concept of the inimitability [i`jaz] of the Qur’an. This in turn is related to the history of the prophets and the support that was rendered to them.

It should be mentioned that the messengers who came before Prophet Muhammad [SAAS] were supported by physical miracles such as Noah’s Ark and the flood, splitting the sea at the hand of Moses and quickening the dead at the hand of Jesus, all by leave of Allah SWT. Indeed, Muslims believe in these miracles solely on the authority of the Qur’an. These miracles were temporary in nature and they were meant to support the various prophets, serving as proofs that these prophets were genuine ones.

The prophethood of Muhammad [SAAS] was different compared to the messengers and prophets who preceded him; the revelation that was sent to him is the final message to humanity. Therefore, the support or rather the proof in this case could not be temporal, it had to be eternal. The Qur’an is humanity’s Book until the Day of Judgment. Al-Suyuti (d. 911 AH) realized in Al-Itqan fi `Ulum Al-Qur’an, the relationship between the eternity of the Shari`ah and the eternity of the intellectual miracle [al-mu`jizah al-`aqliyyah]. He added that the miracle of the Qur’an, compared to the extinct miracles of the other prophets, continues until the Day of Judgment [wa mu`jizat Al-Qur’an Al-Karim baqiyatun ila yawm al-Qiyamah].2

The noun used to describe temporal and eternal support is miracle or mu`jizah. While the work of Muslim scholars in the past was almost restricted to show the miraculous linguistic structure and literary style of the Qur’an, contemporary scholars included the “scientific miracles” of the Qur’an. The latter forms a corpus of literature that attempts to show that the Qur’an has scientific knowledge that corresponds to the latest discoveries in scientific fields such as in astronomy, biology and physics. The premise is based on the idea that the Qur’an is miraculous because of scientific knowledge that could not have been known fourteen centuries ago.

The impact of modern scientific discoveries on the exegesis of the Qur’an began with Muhammad `Abduh and can be seen in the Tafseer Al-Manar, which is primarily written by his student Muhammad Rashid Rida. Yet, the phenomenon that we call “scientific interpretation” of the Qur’an [Al-Tafseer Al-Ilmi] is a more recent one. The aim of this branch of the exegesis of the Qur’an is to show the scientific miracles.

The concept of a miracle:

It should be noted that the much celebrated word “mu`jizah” was neither mentioned in the Qur’an, nor in the Sunnah. It was used towards the end of the second century AH.3 The Qur’an uses instead of it words such as ayah, bayyinah, burhan, and sultan:

    They swear their strongest oaths by Allah, that if a (special) Sign [ayah]
    came to them, by it they would believe. Say: “Certainly (all) Signs are in
    the power of Allah: but what will make you (Muslims) realize that
    (even) if (special) Signs came, they will not believe?” Qur’an, 6:109

    To the Thamud people (we sent) Salih, one of their own brethren: he
    said: “O my people! Worship Allah; ye have no other god but Him. Now
    hath come unto you a clear (sign) from your Lord! This she-camel of
    Allah is a Sign [bayyinah] unto you…Qur’an, 7: 73

    Thrust thy hand into thy bosom, and it will come forth white without
    stain (or harm), and draw thy hand close to thy side (to guard) against
    fear. Those are the two credentials [burhanan] from thy Lord to Pharaoh
    and his chiefs: for truly they are a people rebellious and wicked.”
    Qur’an, 28: 32

    …They said: “Ah! Ye are no more than human, like ourselves! Ye wish
    to turn us away from what our fathers used to worship; then bring us
    some clear authority [sultan].” Qur’an, 14: 11

Mustafa Muslim points to the fact that the term “ayah” is also used for “verse” in the Qur’an. Therefore, “mu`jizah” was chosen in order to avoid terminology with more than one meaning.4

A miracle is defined as something that goes beyond the laws that Allah SWT has placed in the universe, and is not subjected to causality. It cannot be attained by personal effort and, regardless of its time and nature, is a gift from God.5

I`jaz Al-Qur’an in Medieval Writings:

It is well known that the Qur’an challenged the non-believers to come up with something similar to it, either totally or partially:

And if ye are in doubt as to what We have revealed from time to
time to Our servant then produce a Sura like thereunto…
Qur’an, 2:23

Wasil Ibn `Ata’(d. 131 AH), the founder of the Mu`tazilite school of thought, stated that i`jaz Al-Qur’an is not something inherent in the Qur’an, rather it is the fact that Allah SWT prevents people from producing anything similar to the Qur’an. This was later known in Arabic as al-sarfah. Ibrahim Ibn Sayyar Al-Nazzam (d. 231 AH), one of the leaders of the Mu`tazilites in Al-Basrah, adopted the position of Wasil. Nazzam’s student, Al-Jahiz (d. 255 AH), refuted systematically the position of his teacher in favor of an inherent notion of i`az Al-Qur’an. He discussed this topic in Al- Hayawan, Al-Bayan wal-Tabyin and in Nazm Al-Qur’an. The latter book, though it was dedicated to the topic, was lost and it is only known from cross-references. Three other scholars wrote books with the same name [i.e. Nazm Al-Qur’an]: Abu Bakr `Abdullah Ibn Abu Dawud Al-Sijistani (d. 316 AH), Abu Zayd Al-Balkhi Ahmad Ibn Suleiman (d. 322 AH) and Abu Bakr Ahmad Ibn `Ali who is known as Ibn Al- Akhshid Al-Mu`tazili (d. 326).6

One of the most remarkable scholars was Abu Muhammad `Abdullah Ibn Muslim Ibn Qutaybah Al-Daynuri (d. 276 AH), who was considered the leading literary authority amongst the Sunnites or Ahl Al-Sunnah wal-Jama`ah, wrote Ta’wil Mushkil Al-Qur’an. One of the statements that he used to describe the Qur’an was that “it would never run out of extra-ordinary things” [i.e. la tanqadi `aja’ibuh]. In addition, we find scholars such as Ibn Jarir Al-Tabari (d. 310 AH), and Abu `Abdullah Muhammad Ibn Yazid Al-Wasiti (d. 306 AH) wrote about the subject.7

Mu`tazilite scholars continued to write about the i`jaz in the Qur’an. Abu Al- Hassan `Ali Ibn `Issa Al-Rummani (d. 384 AH) wrote Al-Nukat fi I`jaz Al-Qur’an. Judge `Abduljabbar (d. 415 AH) dedicated volume sixteen of Al-Mughni to the notion of i`jaz. Jarallah Mahmoud Ibn `Umar Al-Zamakhshari (d. 538) wrote Al-Kashshaf, one of the most important interpretations of the Qur’an. He described the Qur’an, in the introduction to his book, as the “key to the religious and worldly benefits.”8

Amongst the Sunnite scholars who wrote on the subject are: Abu Sulayman Hamad Ibn Muhammad Ibn Ibrahim Al-Khattabi (d. 388 AH). He wrote Bayan I`jaz Al-Qur’an. Al-Baqillani (d. 403 AH), wrote I`jaz Al-Qur’an. And Abd Al-Qahir Al- Jurjani (d. 471 AH) wrote Dala’il Al-I`jaz.9 Al-Ghazzali was amongst those who thought that the Qur’an included “science”, as the term is used in the exact sciences. He mentioned in Jawahir Al-Qur’an several sciences such as medicine, astronomy, physiology and anatomy amongst others. He asserted that there were other sciences that he did not enumerate, and that the Qur’an potentially includes different kinds of science that did not come to existence yet.10 In addition, Al-Suyuti concluded in the Al-Itqan that the Qur’an includes all the sciences because Allah SWT said in the Qur’an:

    …Nothing have We omitted from the Book [i.e. the
    Qur’an]…Qur’an, 6: 38

Al-Shatibi (d. 790 AH) rejected the excessive inclusion of all the sciences in the Qur’an. While he accepted that the Qur’an includes indirect references to the sciences that the Arabs knew, such as astronomy, he rejected the inclusion of all the sciences, including every natural science and math. He said in the Muwafaqat: “The good Salaf [i.e. early Muslims] knew the Qur’an, its sciences and what it contains better [than us]. In that which has reached us, none of them said anything like this [i.e. inclusion of science]”11

The criticism that one might have regarding Al-Shatibi’s position is that he reached the right conclusion through wrong premises. He stated that the “blessed Shari`ah is illiterate (ummiyyah) because its people are so [i.e. illiterate]…” and therefore it was in their interest that the Qur’an did not include the sciences.12

When we consider the writings of both the Mu`tazilites and the rest of the Sunnites regarding I`jaz Al-Qur’an, during “medieval” times, we find that the nature of i`jaz remained practically confined to the literary style and linguistic structure until modern times. One might cite Mustafa Sadiq Al-Rafi`i (d. 1356 AH) as an example; he reflected the same approach in I`jaz Al-Qur’an wal-Balagha Al-Nabawiyyah, only six decades ago.13

The Modern Scene:

One would be reluctant to specify a date when trends change in a society, but I do not think that it is an exaggeration to mark the beginning of “modernization” with the campaign of Napoleon Bonaparte on Egypt in 1798. It seems that there was a fascination with “Western” science as reflected by the scientists who accompanied the campaign or the machines that they brought with them.

Soon after the end of the campaign, rulers such as Muhammad Ali sent students to be educated in European institutions in order to master the western sciences. Muhammad Ali was not interested in science per se; he was interested in the possibility of improving the military through these sciences. For the last two centuries the picture remained the same, no government in the Muslim world had the interest and the proper planning to reclaim a lost scientific glory. Rather than attaining science and maintaining its proper status within the Islamic worldview, it seems that the "scientific interpretation" provided a comforting cushion. The rest of the world can do science, and we, Muslims, can discover it anew in the Qur’an!

The colonial period led to some inferiority complex and the gap between the Islamic world and the western world remained practically intact. Failing to bridge the gap, some Muslims developed a kind of nostalgia about the contribution of the Islamic civilization to the sciences. It became a kind of escapism and a flight to the past, rather than an attempt to analyze the paradigm that existed at the time and how to revive the ethos that led to the production of science. There is a dire need to understand the role of the Qur’an and the Sunnah in advocating knowledge and in the preparation of the Muslim psyche in ways that paved the way for the rise of science in the golden ages of the Islamic civilization.

There is a positive and organic relationship between Islam and science within the Islamic worldview. Yet, this relationship would remain healthy if no transgression takes place. The Qur’an, as the word of Allah SWT is absolute. In terms of the meaning of the contents of the Qur’an, it is divided into two parts: muhkam and mutashabih. The first part is absolute and the second part allows metaphorical interpretation. Science on the other hand can also be divided into different areas; one of them could be treated as fact and the other as theory. The problem would arise when we consider Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions. “Fact” could be less than what it claims to be! What would happen then if within the “scientific interpretation” we adopt the less than fact data?

One of the first scholars to include science in modern Islamic literature was Muhammad `Abduh (d. 1323 AH). Reflecting the impact of modernity and the status of western science, he began interpreting the Qur’an using the exact sciences. `Abduh, for example, interpreted the “birds” in the story of the Companions of the Elephant (Qur’an, 105:3) as microbes.14 His interpretation formed a part of Tafseer Al-Manar, which was mostly written by Muhammad Rashid Rida.15 Nevetheless, Rida distanced himself from stuffing the books of interpretation of the Qur’an with scientific theories. He said, “The people have serious need for an interpretation whose primary concern focuses on the guidance of the Qur’an in accordance with the glorious verses that were revealed with its description. [And it should be in accordance] with the reason for its revelation, including warning, glad tiding, guidance and reform.”16

In 1933, Dr. Muhammad Abdullah Al-Darraz included three kinds of I`jaz in Al-Naba’ Al-`Azim. Along with the literary and legislative I`jaz, he added the scientific one. Yet, apparently he did not focus on the scientific I`jaz the way it became spread in the Islamic world, especially in Arabic. Al-Darraz elaborated on the literary I`jaz because he believed that the challenge of the Qur’an was in this particular area.17

Tantawi Jawhari (d.1358 AH/1940 CE) wrote Al-Jawahir fi Tafseer Al-Qur’an, the earliest comprehensive “scientific” exegesis. He asked Allah SWT to enable him to interpret the Qur’an in a way that “includes all the sciences that were attained by humans”. The declared aim of this work is for Muslims “to understand the cosmic sciences”. He believed that “the Surahs of the Qur’an complement things that were exposed by modern science”.18 Jawhari’s book was banned in Saudi Arabia.

Many reputed scholars criticized the “scientific” interpretation". The list includes Mahmoud Shaltut, Amin Al-Khuli and Muhammad Mustafa Al-Maraghi.19

In a book that was published in 1997 on the sciences of the Qur’an, Fadl Hassan `Abbas, a prominent professor of Islamic studies at the Jordanian University, addressed the issue of the inimitability of the Qur’an (I`jaz al-Qur’an). He stated that the Qur’an is the book of all humanity and that it calls for sound belief and the best of ethics. At the same time it has a clear call that advocates science, reflection and thinking. Suffice it, `Abbas said, that the first revealed verses of the Qur’an said:

    “Read! In the name of thy Lord and Cherisher, Who created –
    Created the human being, out of a sticking clot:
    Read! And thy Lord is Most Bountiful, -
    He Who taught (the use of) the Pen,- …(Qur’an, 96:1-4)

`Abbas cited many other verses that reflect the elevation of science and the scientists in the Qur’an. He said that despite all the advances in science, no contradiction took place between the Qur’an and scientific discoveries. The Qur’an has opened the door for science and paved the way for the establishment of a great civilization that was humanity’s source of happiness for sometime. Yet, `Abbas exclaimed, does that mean that it is possible to have a scientific interpretation of the Qur’an? And is there such a thing as the i`jaz `ilmi?20

`Abbas summarized the various positions that the Muslim scholars adopted in medieval and modern times. He concluded that the scientific interpretation is a necessity during our times, yet specialists should be prepared for this task. The scientific interpretation of the Qur’an should fulfill the following conditions:

It should conform to the linguistic meaning [of the verses].
It should not contradict the sound traditions of the Prophet (SAAS) or narrations that are judged to be on the same level [ma lahu hukm almarfu`] of the tradition of the Propeht.
It should conform to the context and not to be inconsistent.
The scientific interpretation should avoid the news of the miracles.
The interpretation should take place according to proven scientific truths and not according to theories.21

Probably one of the most important things that `Abbas included in his discussion is a statement of Muhammad Sadeq `Arjoun who said: “In the view of the Qur’an, the search for facts, in the cosmos and on earth, is the task of the human being.”22

Moreover, not only books on the scientific interpretation and I`jaz were written. This trend reached the TV and subsequently the electronic media. It is available on line and one can buy CD’s with the title Al-I`jaz Al-`Ilmi.

In addition, specialized societies and institutes were established for the purpose of studying the Al-I`jaz Al-`Ilmi. Mansour Muhammad Hassab-al-Nabiy was one of the founders of the Society for Al-I`jaz Al-`Ilmi of the Holy Qur’an, in Egypt, in 1988. He wrote the Encyclopedia of Ma Farratna fi Al-Kitab min Shay’, a name reflecting a phrase from a verse [There is not an animal (that lives) on earth, nor a being that flies on its wings, but (forms part of) communities like you. Nothing have We omitted from the Book, and they (all) shall be gathered to their Lord in the end]. Most importantly, it reflects a specific understanding of the scientific content of the Qur’an.

It is worthwhile quoting Ibn Kathir’s (d. 774 AH) interpretation of "Nothing have We omitted from the Qur’an". He said that "Allah has knowledge of all and will not forget anyone providing sustenance and care to all [beings], whether they live on land or sea."23 It is remarkable that this prominent late medieval scholar did not mention anything about the epistemic implications of this phrase, and that he chose instead to interpret it within its own Qur’anic context.

So much coverage of the “scientific interpretation" is available to the degree that many found it necessary to set parameters for this trend, because they realized that damage could take place if it continues as is. Mustafa Muslim was one of those who paid attention to the problem and he wanted those involved in this field to remember the following:

The Qur’an is a book of guidance: [I have not created the Jinn and the human beings except to serve Me] Al-Dhariyat: 56 Therefore, studies of the cosmic signs that are mentioned in the Qur’an should be done without loosing sight of the aim of the Qur’an.
Neither Excess nor deficiency: Studying the cosmic signs should not be abandoned all together. Yet, it should not burden the text of the Qur’an with more than it can bear. One should not search for details of the cosmos, the human being, animals or plants and then make the books of tafseer look as if they are specialized books in the respective sciences. (This means that the Qur’an is not a book of astronomy, physiology or zoology)
Flexibility of the Qur’anic literary style: The verses of the Qur’an are open for interpretation. Whenever considering a verse for interpretation, then the etymological meanings and the metaphorical meanings should be consulted.
To quote scientific facts and to avoid theories in toto: The inclusion of theories that might prove false in the future would have a backlash and would lead to mistrust of science and tafseer.
Not to restrict the meaning of a verse to one scientific fact as long as other possible meanings exit or might be discovered in the future.
There is no contradiction between Qur’anic and scientific facts.
One should follow the Qur’anic method in seeking knowledge.

Mustafa Muslim, who is apparently specialized in Tafseer, after setting these parameters, went into discussing issues that covered astronomy, geology, oceanography, dermatology, physiology, embryology …etc!

To reflect the impact that one might have upon discovering contradiction in a text that, based on its title, celebrates science as found in the Qur’an. The Qur’anic Astronomy: The Scientific Facts in the the Glorious Qur’an, a book that draws heavily on astronomy, goes on to specify the hydrogen content of the sun. The author, Dr. Adnan Al-Sharif, who stated in the introduction that his book is a result of ten years of study, mentioned that the hydrogen content of the sun is 92.1% ( page 76) and only after two pages, he stated that the sun has 75% hydrogen!24

One does not need to be an astronomer to realize that these two figures cannot be reconciled. While the book must have very important and factual information, I found myself being overly critical of the text. In addition, the technical details that are included in the text do alienate the reader who is not specialized in the subject and who would not be able to verify the information easily.

To illustrate the difficulty that one faces when attempting to relate a verse from the Qur’an to known scientific facts, I would like to highlight the following experience. I coordinated a team entrusted by the Palestinian ministry of education to write the Islamic education textbook for the seventh grade. At one point we faced the problem of how to explain the word "nutfah" in a particular lesson. We have checked all possibilities and found that a well respected physician, Dr. Muhammad Ali Al-Bar, who is also a consultant for Majma` Al-Fiqh Al-Islami, using neutral language, he presented three possibilities: sperm, ovum, and zygote. We had to leave the word "nutfah" as is, for it would not help students at all if we present them with a situation where they have to choose between the possibilities, something that we could not in all fairness do.

Endnotes:

1 See also 5:72, 5:117, 7:59, 7:65, 7:73, 7:85, 23:23, 29:16…

2 Jalal Al-Din Al-Suyuti, Al-Itqan fi `Ulum Al-Qur’an (Beirut: Dar Al-Ma`rifah, n.d.) p. 149.

3 Mustafa Muslim, Mabahith fi I`jaz Al-Qur’an (Damascus: Dar Al-Qalam, 1999) p. 17.

4 Muslim, pp. 17-18.

5 Al-Suyuti, p. 148.

6 Muslim, p. 47.

7 Muslim, pp. 47-48.

8 Muslim, pp. 53-54.

9 Muslim, pp. 69-95.

10 Al-Ghazzali, Jawahir Al-Qur’an (Damascus: Al-Markaz Al-`Arabi Lil-Kitab, n.d.) p.26.

11 Muhammad Hussein Al-Dhahabi, Al-Tafseer wal-Mufassirun , 4th Edition (Cairo: Maktabat Wahbah, 1989) vol.2, p. 467.

12 Al-Dhahabi, vol.2, p. 465.

13 Muslim, p. 101.

14 Al-Dhahabi, vol.2, p. 543.

15 `Abduh’s interpretation goes from the beginning of the Qur’an reaching Surah Al-Nisa’ (chapter 4: 126), and Rida did the same and continued the interpretation until Surah Yusuf (Chapter 12: 101). Both of them interpreted some short chapters of the Qur’an which are located at the end. It is known that Rida used to publish `Abduh’s lectures on the exegesis of the Qur’an in the Al-Manar Journal. Al- Dhahabi stated that there is no difference between the two men except in very rare cases. (Al-Dhahabi, vol.2, p. 551)

16 Al-Dhahabi, p. 552.

17 Muslim, pp. 103-104.

18 Al-Dhahabi, vol.2, pp. 482-3.

19 Al-Dhahabi, vol.2, pp. 494-5.

20 Fadl Hassan `Abbas, Itqan Al-Burhan fi `Ulum Al-Qur’an (Amman: Dar Al-Furqan, 1997) vol. I, pp. 122-124

21 `Abbas, vol. I, pp. 125-126

22 `Abbas, vol. I, p. 126

23 Ibn Kathir, Tafsir (Beirut: Dar Al-Jil, 1988) vol. 2, p. 124.

24 Adnan Al-Sharif, Min `Ilm Al-Falak Al-Qur’an: Al-Thawabit Al-`Ilmiyyah fi Al-Qur’an Al-Karim, 4th edition (Beirut: Dar Al-`Ilm Lil-Malayin, 1999) pp. 76-8.

Source

Science and Civilization in Islam by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:50:00 GMT

The Principles of Islam

The history of science is often regarded today as the progressive accumulation of techniques and the refinement of quantitative methods in the study of Nature. Such a point of view considers the present conception of science to be the only valid one; it therefore judges the sciences of other civilizations in the light of modern science and evaluates them primarily with respect to their "development" with the passage of time. Our aim in this work, however, is not to examine the Islamic sciences from the point of view of modern science and of this "evolutionistic" conception of history; it is, on the contrary, to present certain aspects of the Islamic sciences as seen from the Islamic point of view. To the Muslim, history is a series of accidents that in no way affect the nontemporal principles of Islam. He is more interested in knowing and "realizing" these principles than in cultivating originality and change as intrinsic virtues. The symbol of Islamic civilization is not a flowing river, but the cube of the Kaaba, the stability of which symbolizes the permanent and immutable character of Islam.

Once the spirit of the Islamic revelation had brought into being, out of the heritage of previous civilizations and through its own genius, the civilization whose manifestations may be called distinctly Islamic, the main interest turned away from change and "adaptation." The arts and sciences came to possess instead a stability and a "crystallization" based on the immutability of the principles from which they had issud forth; it is this stability that is too often mistaken in the West today for stagnation and sterility.

The arts and sciences in Islam are based on the idea of unity, which is the heart of the Muslim revelation. Just as all genuine Islamic art, whether it be the Alhambra or the Paris Mosque, provides the plastic forms through which one can contemplate the Divine Unity manifesting itself in multiplicity, so do all the sciences that can properly be called Islamic reveal the unity of Nature. One might say that the aim of all the Islamic sciences and, more generally speaking, of all the medieval and ancient cosmological sciences is to show the unity and interrelatedness of all that exists, so that, in contemplating the unity of the cosmos, man may be led to the unity of the Divine Principle, of which the unity of Nature is the image.

To understand the Islamic sciences in their essence, therefore, requires an understanding of some of the principles of Islam itself, even though these ideas may be difficult to express in modern terms and strange to readers accustomed to another way of thinking. Yet a statement of these principles is necessary here, insofar as they form the matrix within which the Islamic sciences have meaning, and outside of which any study of them would remain superficial and incomplete.

Islamic civilization as a whole is, like other traditional civilizations, based upon a point of view: the revelation brought by the Prophet Muhammad is the "pure" and simple religion of Adam and Abraham, the restoration of a primordial and fundamental unity. The very word islam means both "submission" and "peace"or "being at one with the Divine Will."

The creed of Islam "there is no divinity other than God and Muhammad is his prophet" summarizes in its simplicity the basic attitude and spirit of Islam. To grasp the essence of Islam, it is enough to recognize that God is one, and that the Prophet, who is the vehicle of revelation and the symbol of all creation, was sent by him. This simplicity of the Islamic revelation further implies a type of religious structure different in many ways from that of Christianity. There is no priesthood as such in Islam. Each Muslim being a "priest" is himself capable of fulfilling all the religious functions of his family and, if necessary, of his community; and the role of the imam, as understood in either Sunni or Shia Islam, does not in any way diminish the sacerdotal function of each believer. The orthodoxy based on this creed is intangible, and therefore not so closely bound to specific formulations of dogmatic theology as in Christianity. There have been, to be sure, sectional fanaticism and even persecution, carried on either by rulers or by exoteric theologians, against such figures as al Hallaj and Suhrawardl. Yet the larger orthodoxy, based on the essential doctrine of unity, has always prevailed and has been able to absorb within the structure of Islam all that is not contradictory to the Muslim creed.

In its universal sense, Islam may be said to have three levels of meaning. All beings in the universe, to begin with, are Muslim, i.e., "surrendered to the Divine Will." (A flower cannot help being a flower; a diamond cannot do other than sparkle. God has made them so; it is theirs to obey.) Secondly, all men who accept with their will the sacred law of the revelation are Muslim in that they surrender their wdl to that law. When ’Uqbah, the Muslim conqueror of North Africa, took leave of his family and mounted his horse for the great adventure which was to lead him through two thousand miles of conquest to the Moroccan shores of the Atlantic, he cried out: "And now, God, take my soul." We can hardly imagine Alexander the Great having such thoughts as he set out eastward to Persia. Yet, as conquerors, the two men were to achieve comparable feats; the "passivity" of ’Uqbah with respect to the Divine Will was to be transmuted into irresistible action in this world.

Finally, we have the level of pure knowledge and understanding. It is that of the contemplative, the gnostic (’arif), the level that has been recognized throughout Islamic history as the highest and most comprehensive. The gnostic is Muslim in that his whole being is surrendered to God; he has no separate individual existence of his own. He is like the birds and the flowers in his yielding to the Creator; like them, like all the other elements of the cosmos, he reflects the Divine Intellect to his own degree. He reflects it actively, however, they passively; his participation is a conscious one. Thus "knowledge" and "science" are defined as basically different frorn mere curiosity and even from analytical speculation. The gnostic is from this point of view "one with Nature"; he understands it "from the inside," he has become in fact the channel of grace for the universe. His islam and the islam of Nature are now counterparts.

The intellective function, so defined, may be difficult for Westerners to grasp. Were it not for the fact that most of the great scientists and mathematicians of Islam operated within this matrix, it might seem so far removed as to be irrelevant to this study. Yet, it is closer in fact to the Western tradition than most modern readers are likely to realize. It is certainly very close to the contemplative strain of the Christian Middle Ages a strain once more evoked in part, during the modern era, by the German school of Naturphilosophie and by the Romantics, who strove for "communion" with Nature. Let us not be misled by words, however. The opening of the Romantic’s soul to Nature even Keats’s "negative capability" of receiving its imprint is far more a matter of sentiment (or, as they loved to call it then, "sensibility") than of true contemplation, for the truly contemplative attitude is based on "intellection."

We should be mindful here of the changing usage of words. "Intellect" and "intellectual" are so closely identified today with the analytical functions of the mind that they hardly bear any longer any relation to the contemplative. The attitude these words imply toward Nature is the one that Goethe was to deplore as iate as the early nineteenth century that attitude that resolves, conquers, and dominates by force of concepts. It is, in short, essentially abstract, while contemplative knowledge is at bottom concrete. We shall thus have to say, by way of reestablishing the old distinction, that the gnostic’s relation to Nature is "intellective," which is neither abstract, nor analytical, nor merely sentimental.

Viewed as a text, Nature is a fabric of symbols, which must be read according to their meaning. The Quran is the counterpart of that text in human words; its verses are called ayat ("signs"), just as are the phenomena of Nature. Both Nature and the Quran speak forth the presence and the worsl of God: We shall show them Our portents on the horizon and within themselves until it will be manifest unto them that it is the Truth (41 53).

To the doctors of the Law, this text is merely prescriptive, Nature being present in their minds only as the necessary setting for men’s actions. To the gnostic or Sufi, on the other hand, the Quranic text is also symbolic, just as all of Nature is symbolic. If the tradition of the symbolic interpretation of the text of the Sacred Book were to disappear, and the text thereby reduced to its literal meaning, man might still know his duty, but the "cosmic text" would become unintelligible. The phenomena of Nature would lose any connection with the higher orders of reality, as well as among themselves; they would become mere "facts." This is precisely what the intellective capacity and, indeed, Islamic culture as a whole will not accept. The spirit of Islam emphasizes, by contrast, the unity of Nature, that unity that is the aim of the cosmological sciences, and that is adumbrated and prefigured in the continuous interlacing of arabesques uniting the profusion of plant life with the geometric crystals of the verses of the Quran.

Thus we see that the idea of unity is not only the basic presupposition of the Islamic arts and sciences: it dominates their expression as well. The portrayal of any individual object would become a "graven image," a dangerous idol of the mind, the very canon of art in Islam is abstraction. Unity itself is alone deserving of representation; since it is not to be represented directly, however, it can only be symbolized and at that, only by hints. There is no concrete symbol to stand for unity, however; its true expression is negation, not this, not that. Hence, it remains abstract from the point of view of man, who lives in multiplicity.

Thus we come to the central issue. Can our minds grasp the individual object as it stands by itself? or can we do so only by understanding the individual object within the context of the universe? In other words, from the cosmological point of view, is the universe the unity, and the individual event or object a sign (’’phenomenon,’’ "appearance") of ambiguous and uncertain import? Or is it the other way around? Of these alternatives, which go back to the time of Plato, the Muslim is bound to accept the first — he gives priority to the universe as the one concrete reality, which symbolizes on the cosmic level the Divine Principle itself, although that cannot truly be envisaged in terms of anything else. This is, to be sure, an ancient choice, but Islam does inherit many of its theories from preexisting traditions, the truths of which it seeks to affirm rather than to deny. What it brings to them, as we have already said, is that strong unitary point of view that, along with a passionate dedication to the Divine Will, enabled Islam to rekindle the flame of science that had been extinguished at Athens and in Alexandria.

We have seen that the sacred art of Islam is an abstract art, combining flexibility of line with emphasis on the archetype, and on the use of regular geometrical figures interlaced with one another. Herein one can already see why mathematics was to make such a strong appeal to the Muslim: its abstract nature furnished the bridge that Muslims were seeking between multiplicity and unity. It provided a fitting texture of symbols for the universe — symbols that were like keys to open the cosmic text.

We should distinguish at once between the two types of mathematics practiced by Muslims: one was the scrence of algebra, which was always related to geometry and trigonometry; the other was the science of numbers, as understood in the Pythagorean sense. The Pythagorean number has a symbolic as well as a quantitative aspect; it is a projection of Unity, which, however, never leaves its source. Each number has an inherent power of analysis, arising out of its quantitative nature; it has also the power of synthesis because of the inner bond that connects all other numbers to the unit. The Pythagorean number thus has a "personality": it is like a Jacob’s ladder, connecting the quantitative with the qualitative domain by virtue of its own inner polarization. To study numbers thus means to contemplate them as symbols and to be led thereby to the intelligible world. So also with the other branches of mathematics. Even where the symbolic aspect is not explicitly stated, the connection with geometric forms has the effect upon the mind of freeing it from dependence upon mere physical appearance, and in that way preparing it for lts iourney into the intelligible world and, ultimately, to Unity.

Gnosis in the Alexandrian world had used, as the vehicle for the expression of its doctrines, a bewildering maze of mythology. In Islam, the intellective symbolism often becomes mathematical, while the direct experience of the mystic is expressed in such powerful poetry as that of Jalal al-Din Rumi. The instrument of gnosis is always, however, the intellect; reason is its passive aspect and its reflection in the human domain. The link between intellect and reason is never broken, except in the individual ventures of a handful of thinkers, among whom there are few that could properly be called scientists. The intellect remains the principle of reason; and the exercise of reason, if it is healthy and normal should naturally lead to the intellect. That is why Muslim metaphysicians say that rational knowledge leads naturally to the affirmation of the Divine Unity. Although the spiritual realities are not merely rational, neither are they irrational Reason, considered in its ultimate rather than its immediate aspect, can bring man to the gateway of the intelligible worldrational knowledge can in the same fashion be integrated into gnosis, even though it is discursive and partial while gnosis is total and intuitive. It is because of this essential relationship of subordination and hierarchy between reason and intellect rational knowledge and gnosis, that the quest for causal explanation in Islam only rarely sought to, and never actually managed to, satisfy itself outside the faith, as was to happen in Christianity at the end of the Middle Ages.

This hierarchy is also based on the belief that scientia — human knowledge — is to be regarded as legitimate and noble only so long as it is subordinated to sapientia — Divine wisdom. Muslim sages would agree with Saint Bonaventure’s "Believe, in order to understand." Like him, they insist that scientia can truly exist only in conjunction with sapientia, and that reason is a noble faculty only insofar as it leads to intellection, rather than when it seeks to establish its independence of its own principle, or tries to encompass the Infinite within some finite system. There are in Islamic history one or two instances when rationalist groups did attempt to establish their independence of and opposition to the gnostics, and also to set themselves against other orthodox interpreters of the Islamic revelation. The spiritual forces of Islam were always strong enough, however, to preserve the hierarchy between intellect and reason, and thus to prevent the establishment of a rationalism independent of the revelation. The famous treatises of al-Ghazzali, in the fifth/eleventh century, against the rationalistic philosophers of his time mark the final triumph of intellection overrindependent ratiocination a triumph that did not utterly destroy rationalistic philosophy, but did make it subordinate to gnosis. As a result of this defeat by al-Ghazzali and similar figures of the syllogistic and systematic Aristotelian philosophy in the fifth/eleventh century, the Islamic gnostic tradition has been able to survive and to remain vital down to the present day, instead of being stifled, as elsewhere, in an overly rationalistic atmosphere.

The reaction against the rationalists, of which the wntings of al-Ghazzali mark the high point, coincides roughly in time with the spread of Aristotelianism in the West, which led ultimately to a series of actions and reactionsthe Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Counter-Reformationsuch as never occurred in the Islamic world. In the West, these movements led to new types of philosophy and science such as characterize the Western world today, that are as profoundly different from their medieval antecedents as is the mentaland spiritual horizon of modern man from that of traditional man. Europe in that period began to develop a science of Nature that concerns itself only with the quantitative and material aspects of things, meanwhile, the tide of Islamic thought was flowing back, as before, into its traditional bed, to that conceptual coherence that comprises the mathematical sciences.

Today, as in the past, the traditional Muslim looks upon all of science as "sacred," and studies this sacred science in a well-established threefold articulation. First, within the reach of all, is the Law, contained in essence in the Quran, elucidated by tradition and jurisprudence, and taught by the doctors; it covers every aspect of the social and religious life of the believer. Beyond that lies the Path dealing with the inner aspect of things, which governs the spiritual life of those who have been "elected" to follow it. This has given rise to the various Sufi brotherhoods, since it is actually a way of life built upon communication at a personal, nonsystematic level. Finally, there is the ineffable Truth itself, which lies at the heart of both these approaches.

According to a still-current simile, the Law is as the circumference of a circle, of which the Path is the radius, and the Truth the center. The Path and the Truth together form the esoteric aspect of Islam, to which Sufism is dedicated. At its core lies a metaphysical intuition, knowledge such as comes only to the right "mode in the knower." From this spring a science of the universe, a science of the soul, and the science of mathematics, each of them in essence a different metaphorical setting for that one science that the mind stnves after, each of them a part of that gnosis that comprehends all things.

This may help explain why the mathematician, who was something of a displaced person in the West right up to the late Middle Ages, plays a central role in Islam from the very start. Two centuries after the establishment in the Near East of Christianity (in A.D. 313), the Christian-dominated West was still sunk deep in barbarism. Yet two centuries after Muhammad, the Islamic world under the Caliph Harun al Rashid was already far more active culturally than the contemporaneous world of Charlemagneeven with the latter’s earlier start. What reached the West from Islam at that time was little more than dark tales of incredible wealth and wondrous magic. In Islam itself, however, the mathematician’s craft, having "found its home," was already able to satisfy the civilized man’s desire for logical subtlety and for intellectual games, while philosophy itself reached out into the mysteries beyond reason.

This early stabilization of the theoretical outlook of Islam extended also to the type of man who embodied it. Whereas tke role of intellectual leadership in the West devolved upon several different figures in turnthe Benedictine monk, the scholastic doctor, the lay scientisttke central figure in Islamhas remained almost unchanging. He is the haklm, who encompasses within himself some or all of the several aspects of the sage; scholar, medical healer, spiritual guide. If he happens to be a wise merchant too, that also falls into the picture, for he is traditionally an itinerant person. If his achievements in mathematics are extraordinary, he may become a figure like ’Umar Khayyam. It is clear, moreover, that such a man be his name even Avicenna will never be able to develop each of his several attainments in the same fashion as the single-faceted specialist may. Such specialists do exist in Islam, but they remain mostly secondary figures. The sage does not let himself be drawn into the specialist’s single-level "mode of knowing," for then he would forfeit the higher knowledge. Intellectual achievement is thus, in a sense, always patterned upon the model of the unattainable complete, that "total thing" that is not found in the Greek tradition. Ptolemy’s Syntaxis becomes in the Muslim world the Almagest or Opus Maximumeven as Aristotle is purely and simply al-failasuf (the philosopher).

The title of Avicenna’s great treatise, Kitab al-Shifa, which rivals in scope the Aristotelian corpus, means The Book of Healing. As the title implies the work contains the knowledge needed to cure the soul of the disease of ignorance. It is all that is needed for man to understand; it is also as much as any man need know. Newton’s work Principia has an obviously far different ring: it means a foundationessentially, a "beginning" rather than a knowledge that is complete and sufficient for man’s intellectual needs as the titles of so many medieval Islamic texts imply.

Islam came into the world at the beginning of the seventh century A.D., its initial date (the journey of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina) being 622 A.D.; it had spread over all of the Middle East, North Africa, and Spain, by the end of that same century. Just as the Islamic religion is one of the "middle way," so too did its territory come to occupyin fact, it still occupiesthe "middle belt" of the globe, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In this region, the home of many earlier civilizations, Islam came into contact with a number of sciences which it absorbed, to the extent that these sciences were compatible with its own spirit and were able to provide nourishment for its own characteristic cultural life.

The primordial character of its revelation, and its confidence that it was expressing the Truth at the heart of all revelations, permitted Islam to absorb ideas from many sources, historically alien yet inwardly related to it. This was especially true in regard to the sciences of Nature, because most of the ancient cosmological sciences — Greek, as well as Chaldean, Persian, Indian, and Chinese — had sought to express the unity of Nature and were therefore in conformity with the spirit of Islam. Coming into contact with them, the Muslims adopted some elements from eachmost extensively, perhaps, from the Greeks, but also from the Chaldeans, Indians, Persians, and perhaps, in the case of alchemy, even from the Chinese. They united these sciences into a new corpus, which was to grow over the centuries and become part of the Islamic civilization, integrated into the basic structure derived from the Revelation itself.

The lands destined to become parts of the medieval Islamic world — from Transoxiana to Andalusia — were consolidated into a new spiritual universe within a single century after the death of the Prophet. The revelation contained in the Quran, and expressed in the sacred language (Arabic), provided the unifying pattern into which many foreign elements became integrated and absorbed, in accordance with the universal spirit of Islam. In the sciences, especially those dealing with Nature, the most important source was the heritage of Greek civilization.

Alexandria, by the first century B.C., had become the center of Greek science and philosophy, as well as the meeting place of Hellenism with Oriental and ancient Egyptian influences, out of which came Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. The Greek heritage, itself to a great extent an assemblage of ancient Mediterranean views, systematized and put into dialectical form by the peculiar discursive power of the Greeks passed from Alexandria to Antioch, and from there to Nisibis and Edessa, by way of the Christian Monophysites and Nestorians. The latter were particularly instrumental in the spreading of Greek learning, chiefly in Syriac translation, to lands as far east as Persia.

In the third century A.D., Shapur I founded Jundishapur at the site of an ancient city near the present Persian city of Ahwaz, as a prisoner-of-war camp, for soldiers captured in the war with Valerian. This camp gradually grew into a metropolis, which became a center of ancient sciences, studied in Greek and Sanskrit and later in Syriac. A school was set up, on the model of those at Alexandria and Antioch, in which medicine, mathematics, astronomy, and logic were taught, mostly from Greek texts translated into Syriac, but also elements of the Indian and Persian sciences were included. This school, which lasted long after the establishment of the Abbasid caliphate, became an important source of ancient learning in the Islamic world.

Aside from those more obvious avenues, there were also lines of communication with more esoteric aspects of the Greek sciences, particularly the Pythagorean school, through the community of Sabaeans of Harran. This religious community traced its origin to the Prophet Idns (the Enoch of the Old Testament), who is also regarded in the Islamic world as the founder of the sciences of the heavens and of philosophy, and who is identified by some with Hermes Trismegistus. The Sabaeans possessed a remarkable knowledge of astronomy, astrology, and mathematics; their doctrines were in many respects similar to those of the Pythagoreans. It was probably they who provided the link between the Hermetic Tradition and certain aspects of the Islamic esoteric doctrines, into which some elements of Hermeticism were integrated.

On the Oriental side the Indian and, to a lesser degree, the Persian sciences came to have an important bearing upon the growth of the sciences in Islam, a bearing far greater than is usually recognized. In zoology, anthropology, and certain aspects of alchemy, as well as, of course, in mathematics and astronomy, the tradition of Indian and Persian sciences was dominant, as can be seen in the Epistles (Rasail) of the Brethren of Purity (Ikhwan al-Safa’) and the translations of Ibn Muqaffa’. It must be remembered that the words "magic" and Magi are related, and that, according to the legend, the Jews learned alchemy and the science of numbers from the Magi, while in captivity in Babylon.

There are most likely elements of Chinese science in Islam, especially in alchemy, pointing to some early contact between the Muslims and Chinese science. Some have even gone so far as to claimwithout much proof, to be sure — that the word al-klmiya’ from which "alchemy" is derived, is itself an arabization of the classical Chinese word Chin-l which in some dialects is Kim-Ia and means "the gold-making juice." The most important influence from China, however, was to come in later centuries, particularly after the Mongol invasion, and then primarily in the arts and technology.

The totality of the arts and sciences in Islam thus consisted of a synthesis of the ancient sciences of the Mediterranean people, as incorporated and developed by the Greeks, along with certain Oriental elements. The dominant part of this heritage was definitely Graeco-Hellenistic, in translations either from Syriac or from the Greek itself, by such masters of translation as Hunain ibn Ishaq, and Thabit ibn Qurrah. There were numerous translations of Greek authors into Arabic in nearly every domain of knowledge. The ideas and points of views contained in these translations formed a large part of the nutriment which Islam sampled and then assimilated according to its own inner constitution, and the foundation given to it by tke Quranic revelation. In this way there developed, in conjunction with the three basic "dimensions" of the Law, the Path, and the Truth, Islamic schools which were to become an accepted part of Islamic civilization.

With respect to Greek learning itself, Muslims came to distinguish between two different schools, each possessing a distinct type of science: one, the Hermetic-Pythagorean school, was metaphysical in its approach, its sciences of Nature depending upon the symbolic interpretation of phenomena and of mathematics; in the other, the syllogistic-rationalistic school of the followers of Aristotle, the point of view was philosophical rather than metaphysical, and its sciences were therefore aimed at finding the place of things in a rational system, rather than at seeing, through their appearances, their heavenly essences. The first school was regarded as the continuation, in Greek civilization, of the wisdom of the ancient prophets, especially Solomon and Idris; it was therefore considered to be based on divine rather than human knowledge The second school was looked upon, for the most part, as reflecting the best effort the human mind could make to arrive at the truth, an effort of necessity limited by the finite nature of human reason. The first school was to become an integral part of Islam, certain of its cosmological sciences being integrated into some of the branches of Sufism. The second school did have many disciples in the earlier centuries and thus left an influence upon the language of Muslim theology after the seventh/thirteenth century, it lost ground, however and, despite its continuation up to the present day, it has remained a secondary aspect of Islamic intellectual life.

The various levels of reference existing hierarchically within the structure of Islam are presented concisely by a sage who lived in the fifth/eleventh century, and who is probably the one Oriental figure most familiar to the modern Western public: ’Umar Khayyam, mathematician and poet extraordinary. That he should be regarded in the Western world, on the strength of his famous quatrains as a skeptical hedonist is itself a sign of the profound lack of understanding between the two worlds; for he was in reality a sage and a gnostic of high standing. What appears to be lack of concern or agnosticism in his poetry is merely an accepted form of expression, within which he incorporated both the drastic remedy that the gnostic applies to religious hypocrisy, and also the reestablishment of contact with reality. (Late Greeks, such as Aenesidemus, had had recourse to the same skeptical device, and with similar intentions. ) In the following passage from a metaphysical treatise, Khayyam divides the seekers after knowledge into four categories:

(1) The theologians, who become content with disputation .and "satisfying" proofs, and consider this much knowledge of the Creator (excellent is His Name) as sufflcient.

(2) The philosophers and learned men [of Greek inspiration] who use rational arguments and seek to know the laws of logic, and are never content merely with "satisfying" arguments. But they too cannot remain faithful to the conditions of logic, and become helpless with it.

(3) The Ismailis [a branch of Shia Islam] and others who say that the way of knowledge is none other than receiving information from a learned and credible informant; for, in reasoning about the knowledge of the Creator, His Essence and Attributes, there is much difficulty; the reasoning power of the opponents and the intelligent [of those who struggle against the final authority of the revelation, and of those who fully accept it] is stupefied and helpless before it. Therefore, they say, it is better to seek knowledge from the words of a sincere person.

(4) The Sufis, who do not seek knowledge by meditation or discursive thinking, but by purgation of their inner being and the purifying of their dispositions. They cleanse the rational soul of the impurities of nature and bodily form, until it becomes pure substance. It then comes face to face with the spiritual world, so that the forms of that world become truly reflected in it, without doubt or ambiguity.

This is the best of all ways, because none of the perfections of God are kept away from it, and there are no obstacles or veils put before it. Therefore, whatever [ignorance] comes to man is due to the impurity of his nature; if the veil be lifted and the screen and obstacle removed, the truth of things as they are will become manifest. And the Master [the Prophet Muhammad] — upon whom be peace — indicated this when he said: "Truly, during the days of your existence, inspirations come from God. Do you not want to follow them?"Tell unto reasoners that, for the lovers of God [gnostics] intuition is guide, not discursive thought.

Here we have, stated authoritatively, the central perspective of Islamic thought, in which the component parts fall naturally into place. Each one is a different mode of knowing. It is puzzling at first sight to find nowhere in it the mathematicians, of whom Khayyam himself was such an eminent example. Notice, however, that the Ismailis correspond quite closely with what in the early Pythagorean school had been the Akusmatikoi, "those who go by what is told them." It should be noticed, also, that the Pythagorean Mathematikoi, the "expounders of the doctrine," will be found both among the philosophers and again among the Sufis, since systematic theory remains helpless without spiritual achievement, which is precisely what mathematics is intended to lead to, by contrast with syllogistic hair-splitting. This is clearly revealed in later sections of the same work in which Khayyam describes himself as both an orthodox Pythagorean and a Sufi.

Here, too, we see the significant contrast with the Greek world. For the Pythagorean doctrines alluded to had become practically extinct there by the time of Aristotle, and were to be taken up again, and at that only after a fashion, in the Hellenistic revival; in Islam, we see them stabilized and restored almost according to their original pattern through the unitary religious idea. Islam was thus able to hand on to the West, to the extent that the latter accepted the Pythagorean tradition, something more coherent, as well as technically more advanced, than the West’s own immediate heritage from antiquity.

There are other lines to be found in Khayyam’s spectrum. The "atomistic" school of thought which flourished in Islam after the fourth/tenth century, and which in the Western pespective might be supposed to be scientific, he regards as not belonging to science at all, but to theology, for the Ash’arites who represented this school were exactly the sort of " theologians" he described. In the writings of the followers of this school, especially al-Baqillam, who may be considered their outstanding "philosopher of Nature, "the continuity of external forms is broken by an "atomistic" doctrine of time and space, and by the denial of the Aristotelian notion of causality. For the Ash’arites (as also for the Sufis), the world is annihilated and recreated at every moment; the cause of all events is the Creator and not a finite, created agent. A stone falls because God makes it fall, not because of the nature of the stone or because it is impelled by an external force. Whatappears as "Laws of Nature," i.e., the uniformity of sequence of cause and effect, is only a matter of habit, determined by the will of God and given the status of "law" by Him. Miracles, which seem to break the apparent uniformity of natural phenomena, are simply going against the "habit" of Nature; the Arabic word for a supernatural event means literally that which results from "rupture of habit." We are facing here a strict "consequentiality," which has its parallel in Western thought of the seventeenth century. From Descartes to the Occasionalists, the development presents curious similarities.

In the second grouping on Khayyam’s list, the "philosophers and learned men," we would find assembled all the famous names of Islamic science. There is a sharp distinction, however, between two schools of "philosophical" thought, both of which profess to be disciples of the Greeks. The first is the Peripatetic school, whose doctrines are a combination of the ideas of Aristotle and of some Neoplatonists. The representative of this school who was closest to Aristotle was Averroes who, paradoxically, had less effect upon the Islamic than upon the Christian world, and should be studied more as a great member of the tradition of Western philosophy than as an integral part of Islamic intellectual life.

The science of Nature cultivated by the Peripatetic school is primarily syllogistic: it seeks to determine the place of each being, in a vast system based upon the philosophy of Aristotle. The best expression of the doctrines of this school appears in Avicenna’s early writings. The Book of Healing is the most comprehensive encyclopedia of knowledge ever written by one person, and undoubtedly the most influential Peripatetic work in Islam.The other Islamic school professing to follow the Greeks was much more sympathetic to the Pythagorean-Platonic than to the Aristotelian tradition. This school, which in later centuries came to be called the Illuminatist (ishraqi) school, asserts that it derives its doctrines not only from the Pythagoreans and their followers, but from the ancient Prophets, the Hermetic Tradition, and even from the ancient Zoroastrian sages. The symbolic works of Avicenna, such as Living Son of the Awake (Hayy ibn Yaqzan) are early expressions of the writings of this school. The greatest Illuminatist philosopher, however, is Suhrawardi, who drew his symbolism from all the many sources mentioned above.The sciences of Nature, as well as the mathematics cultivated by certain adherents of this school, are primarily symbolic, and resemble to a great extent the writings of sorne Neoplatonists. Nature becomes for the writers of this school a cosmic crypt from whose confines they must seek to escapeand on their journey through it, they see in its phenomena "signs," which guide them on the road toward final "illumination." Many Illuminatists, particularly those of later centuries, have also been Sufis, who have made use of the eminently initiatic language of the Illuminatist philosophers to describe the journey of the Sufi toward gnosis. Many members of this school, and in general the learned men whom Khayyam mentions, have also been among the group that have cultivated mathematics, astronomy, and medicine; for these learned men took an interest in all the arts and sciences, and helped to keep alive the traditions of learning in those fields, as an integral part of their studies in philosophy.

The Peripatetics were very strong during the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries, but their influence weakened during the succeeding period. The Illuminatists, on the other hand, became strong after the sixth/twelfth century and al-Ghazzah’s triumph. They have had a continuous tradition down to the present day, chiefly because of the metaphysical (as against rationalistic) emphasis in their doctrines, and also because of the use of their language by certain Sufi masters. One of the greatest exponents of Illuminatist doctrines, as interpreted and modified by the Safavid sage Mulla Sadra, was Hajil Mulla Hadi Sabziwari who died in Persia less than a century ago.

The Ismailis, to whom Khayyam next refers, are a branch of Shia Islam, which was very powerful in his time, and also played a considerable role in the cultivation of the arts and sciences. Ismaili doctrines are fundamentally esoteric, being based on numerical symbolism and the symbolic interpretation of the "cosmic text." The symbolic interpretation of the Quran, which is basic in Shia Islam as well as in Sufism, was made the basis for the symbolic study of Nature. Moreover, such sciences as alchemy and astrology became integrated into their doctrines, and such texts as the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, and the numerous writings of Jabir ibn Hayyan, the alchemist, were to have their greatest influence upon this group. The development of what has been called "Oriental neo-Pythagoreanism" is found most clearly in the treatises of the Ismailis. They were very much interested in the sciences of Nature; in integrating the rhythms and cycles of Nature with the cycles of history and with the manifestations of various prophets and imams, their works rank among the most important Islamic writings on Nature.

Khayyam mentions, finally, the Sufis or gnostics, the group to which he himself belonged. It may seem surprising that a man so well versed in the arts and sciences of his day should consider the "way of purification" of the Sufis as the best way of acquiring knowledge. His language in this regard, however, is not merely theoretical, it is almost operational: one cleanses and focuses the instrument of perception, i.e., the soul, so that it may see the realities of the spiritual world. Aristotle himself, the great rationalist, had once said that "knowledge is according to the mode of the knower." The gnostic, in employing the "right" mode of knowledge ensures that Intellection takes place in him immediately and intuitively. In this regard, Khayyam’s statement becomes clearer when seen in the light of a doctrine that we shall discuss later: the doctrine of the universal man, who is not only the final goal of the spiritual life, but also the archetype of the universe.

To the extent that the gnostic is able to purify himself of his individualistic and particular nature, and thus to identify himself with the universal man within him, to that same extent does he also gain knowledge of the principles of the cosmos, as well as of the Divine realities. For the gnostic, knowledge of Nature is secondary to knowledge of the Divine Principle; yet, because of the rapport between the gnostic and the universe, Nature does play a positive role in guiding him to his ultimate goal. The phenomena of Nature become "transparent" for the gnostic, so that in each event he "sees" the archetype. The symbols of substances — geometric forms and numerical quantities, colors, and directions — these and many other such symbols are aspects of the being of things. They increase in their reality — a reality independent of personal taste or of the individual — to the extent that the gnostic divorces himself from his individual perspective and limited existence, and identifies himself with Being. For the gnostic, the knowledge of anything in the universe means ultimately knowledge of the relationship between the essence of that particular being and the Divine Intellect, and the knowledge of the ontological relationship between that being and Being itself.

Kayyam’s classification did not take into consideration certain writers of great importance, who did not follow any particular school. There are also many Islamic writers, hakims, including Khayyam himself, who possessed a knowledge of several disciplines, and in whom two or more levels of his hierarchy of knowledge may be found. Some of the most outstanding of these men will be discussed in the next chapter.

smuch as the hierarchy of knowledge in Islam, as it has existed historically, has been united by a metaphysical bond much as a vertical axis unites horizontal planes of reference the integration of these diverse views "from above" has been possible. Historically, of course, there have been many conflicts, sometimes disputes leading to violence and occasionally to the death of a writer. Such conflicts are not, however, as elsewhere, between incompatible orthodoxies. They are regarded by most Islamic commentators as due to the lack of a more universal point of view on the part of those who have only embraced a less universal one. Only the gnostic, who sees all things "as they really are," is able to integrate all these views into their principial unity.

Regarded from their own point of view, each of these schools may be said to possess a certain "philosophy of Nature, and, in conformity with it, to cultivate the sciences dealing with the universe. Some of their writings, primarily those of the Peripatetics, were to be translated into Latin to help form that Western scholasticism which was later to give way to seventeenth-century "natural philosophy." Other writings, such as those of the alchemists, were to flourish in the Western world for several centuries, only to wither away in its atmosphere of rationalistic philosophy. There were still other works, especially those of the Sufis and Illuminatists, which were to have an influence on certain Western circles such as that of Dante, and yet for the most part to remain almost unknown in the Western world, down to comparatively recent times.

In this brief introduction, it has been necessary to cover much ground that is unfamiliar and often quite difficult for a Western reader to grasp. But we felt that we had to dispel the common conception of the Muslims as merely Puritan warriors and merchants, whose strange bent for the "subtleties" of algebra and logic somehow also enabled them to become the transmitters of Greek learning to the West. As against that all too current notion, we have tried to present a brief picture of a culture whose spiritual values are inextricably tied up with mathematics and with metaphysics of a high order, and which once again fused the constituent elements of Greek science into a powerful unitary conception, which had an essential influence on the Western world up to the time of the Renaissance.

Strangely enough, it is this latter conception, half unknown at best, and then quickly forgotten in the Wcst, which has remained, up to the present Western impact upon the Islamic world, the major factor in the Islamic perspective determining its attitude toward Nature and the meaning it gives to the sciences of Nature; conversely, it is those very elements of the Islamic sciences, most responsible for providing the tools with which the West began the study of the already secularized Nature of the seventeenth century, that became secondary in the Islamic world itself and had already ceased to occupy the main intellectual efforts of that civilization by the ninth/ fifteenth century.

The Western world has since concentrated its intellectual energies upon the study of the quantitative aspects of things, thus developing a science of Nature, whose all too obvious fruits in the physical domain have won for it the greatest esteem among people everywhere, for most of whom "science" is identified with technology and its applications. Islamic science, by contrast, seeks ultimately to attain such knowledge as will contribute toward the spiritual perfection and deliverance of anyone capable of studying it; thus its fruits are inward and hidden, its values more difficult to discern. To understand it requires placing oneself within its perspective and accepting as legitimate a science of Nature which has a different end, and uses different means, from those of modern science. If it is unjust to identify Western science solely with its material results, it is even more unjust to judge medieval science by its outward "usefulness" alone. However important its uses may have been in calendarial work, in irrigation, in architecture, its ultimate aim has always been to relate the corporeal world to its basic spiritual principle, through the knowledge of those symbols which unite the various orders of reality. It can only be understood, and should only be judged, in terms of its own aims and its own perspectives.

Reading the Religious Text - A New Approach by Mohammad Shahrour

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:45:00 GMT

In my book "Al’Kitab W’al Qu’ran" (The Book and the Qu’ran), published in 1990, I addressed fundamental questions, such as: What is the basis for authority? What is the basis for our relationship to one another, or to the state? To what extent our ideas have been shaped by reading, or a misreading, of fundamental religious texts, particularly the Qu’ran?

If someone listened to programs about Islam on Arab televisions, he or she would see that the shaykhs preaching on TV say that Islam is good and Muslims are not good, as if Islam is something free in space. My understanding of meaning of Islam and of the situation of the Muslim world, starts with the definition of what Islam is. I differentiate between "Islam" and "Islamization".

"Islam" as such is the holy Qu’ran. But "Islamization" is what people see in the phenomenon, which can be understood by sociology. There is no need for a new Islam, but there is a need for a new Islamization, because Islamization is bounded by history and geography, unlike Islam itself which is a pure teaching and commandment.

After the first century of Islamic history, new methods of Islamization were created, with principles such as usul al fiqih (jurisprudence) and ilim al-qalam (theology). These sciences were created by political officials, within the framework of an oppressive political authority. Therefore, it is impossible to find in the usul al-fiqih, both in its Sunni or Shi’a versions, a place for concepts such as "constitution", "the rights of the people", or "the rights of the government". There is only elaboration on how to justify the power of ruler.

But now, the Middle East is facing new concepts such as constitution, pluralism, civil society, democracy and opposition. So, the problem is how these concepts can be introduced into the Islamic religious tradition.

I consider that, since religion has an important normative role in the Middle Eastern societies, it is impossible to ignore it. Liberals tried to do so, and they failed in their attempt to transport Western political formula to the Arab/Muslim states. Marxists wanted to impose a secularization, to deconstruct religion, and also failed.

Anyhow, there could be secularism in the Arab or Islamic states, but it would not solve anything. The Middle East problem is not secularism, but democracy. The secular state has been there for seventy years, it was imposed upon society and it did not work. A religious state was created in Iran and it is the strongest state in the Middle East, because it emerged from religion and appealed to the culture of the people among whom it appeared.

I began working with the analysis of the Qu’ran in 1970. For twenty years I worked on the book "Al’Kitab W’al Qu’ran". In 1982 I found the difference between the kitab (book) and the Qu’ran. The Qu’ran is not the whole book, but parts of it that deal with prophecy. The shari’a (Islamic law) is the message, which is called "The Mother of the Book". The Qu’ran and "The Mother of the Book", prophecy and message, were put together and this is al-kitab (the book).

After establishing the difference between the message and the prophecy, I focused on al-furqan. It is said in the Qu’ran that the same al-furqan was given to Moses, Christ and to Mohammad. With this information I began to cross-examine the verses, and concluded that al-furqan are the Ten Commandments which are the same to all prophets, but the law is different between Moses and Mohammad, or Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the Ten Commandments are main pillar of Islam. Then I began to approach the problem of predestination, which is a notion widespread in the Arab/Muslim world. The Mu’tazilite ideas about the Qur’an is that it is a created text, and not the eternal word of God. This necessary for understanding the text in a different way.

The term "word" in Arabic has two different plurals. One plural of kalimeh (word), is kalimat. The other plural of kalimeh, is kalam. Kalimeh, with the plural kalimat, is word as an objective being. Kalimeh, with the plural kalam, is the word which, is pronounced. All the beings in the universe are words of God, because His words have no language. The word "sun" for God is the sun itself. The world "sun" in English is shams in Arabic, but for God "sun" is the sun itself. So, the Qur’an, as a word, is created, because if it is not created, it means that God is an Arab.

I concluded that there is no basis in the Qur’an for predestination. The only predestination that exists are the universal laws for all humanity. Such as the one who rules that everyone will die. It is not defined in advance how long each one will live, but it is only written that everyone will die some day.

After this theological part of my work, I analyzed the legal system of the Qur’an and identified three different parts in the legal aspects of the Qur’an: the code of moral, the legal system, and the rituals. From the analysis of the legal verses, I reached the possibility of pluralism and democracy in Islam.

For example the execution of murderer, which is the upper limit of punishment to murder, and nobody can exceed it. But if anyone wants to give a lower punishment, it is perfectly acceptable. As there are upper limits in the Qur’an, there are also lower limits in it, for example, incest is a lower limit of marriage rules.

I believe there is room for pluralism and civil society within the limits defined by God. Thee is no need for "fatwa" anymore, but for "istifta’a", or referendum. If a society wants to abolish polygamy, they could do so, but only through a referendum, not by a force, so long as such referendum is bounded by the upper and lower limits set-out by God. Polygamy in Tunisia and Turkey was prohibited by force, in the name of progress and development, and the result is that if a man is caught with women and says that she is his second wife he goes to prison. But if he says she is a lover, it is accepted and both are freed.

I reviewed the principles of jurisprudence and I can say we are not in need for a "mufti" (the person who issues a fatwa). Instead, a nation bounded by the limits of God can exercise the process of legislation through a parliament. In reviewing the Qur’an, we can see the are two determinations for Haram (forbidden things). God only defines Haram. This is because haram has two implications, the first is that haram is exhaustive, the second is that it is eternal. To commit a murder is forbidden in Mecca, in Boston, in China, and in the seventh century as well as in the twentieth century. This is haram, and nobody is capable of making it halal, because it is absolute.

The Prophet’s doctrines are within the prohibited and non-prohibited domain. What Prophet Mohammed did in his life was to establish the rules of prohibited and non-prohibited things in the field of halal. But, he did not touch the field of haram. The field of halal is everything in exception to what is divinely defined as haram. Therefore, Islamic law served to organize everyday life, and a parliament has the same task of regulating the field of halal.

Quantum Revolution Is Not Over Yet-Mehdi Golshani

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:41:00 GMT

One can summarize the philosophical presuppositions of classical physics in the following way:

There is a physical reality independent of us. This reality is understandable, and the aim of physics is to understand this reality as it is.
This reality is decomposable into recognizable components and each component can be described in terms of some definite properties such as mass, electric charge, etc.
Macro-objects consist of micro-objects, and one can describe the behavior of macro-objects in terms of the behavior of micro-objects.
The time evolution of every system is such that every state of the object is causally determined by its earlier state.
Our knowledge of the behavior of physical objects is obtained through observation and experimentation, and the effect of the observation process on the observed system is negligible and is, in any case, calculable. In short, classical physics believed in an objective reality independent of us, and in our ability to get a true picture of this reality.

Important Ingredients of the Copenhagen Interpretation

1- Neglect of Ontological Problems

The founders of the Copenhagen interpretation, specifically Bohr, were concerned with the epistemological problems of microphysics and avoided ontological considerations as much as they could. They were only concerned about phenomena, and interpreted them in terms of classical concepts. This outlook was a result of the prevalence of positivism and instrumentalism. This instrumentalistic view is not a new idea, but in our time, it was developed as a result of two factors:

The presence of difficulties in the interpretation of quantum mechanics

The spectacular success of quantum mechanics in accounting for a large number of phenomena.

2- Denial of visualisability of micro-phenomena

The founders of quantum mechanics denied the visualisability of atomic phenomena. In their view, atomic structure is neither describable items of sensible qualities, nor conceivable in terms of space, time and causality. They can only be described by mathematics. It is the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics that gives a consistent picture of all observable phenomena and provides prescriptions for the relevant probabilities.

3- Dominance of positivistic thinking among physicists

The Dominance of positivism in physics circles of our era is mainly due to the hegemony of Copenhagen school. According to positivists:

(i) In constructing physical theories, one has to use only observable quantities.

(ii) The formulation of a theory should be such that it can predict unambiguous results. Thus, positivists avoided metaphysical concepts like reality, because they considered these concepts undefinable and non-empirical.

4- Refutation of Determinism

Classical physicists believed in determinism, i.e., the predictability of the future of an isolated system from its present state. Probability was used in some cases like the kinetic theory of gases. But, the general belief was that the state of gas particles can be precisely determined from the laws of motion. But, quantum mechanics denied determinism. Here, one cannot predict the exact future of a system. The only thing available is the probability of getting a definite result if the experiment is done for an ensemble of similarly prepared systems. The state of an individual system is not generally predictable. The most obvious way that quantum mechanics refutes determinism is through Heisenberg’s principle of indeterminancy which denies a simultaneous knowledge of the position and velocity of a particle. If we are to know the future of a system, we should know the position and velocity of its constituent parts - something that Heisenberg’s principle denies.Since then, physicists have generally refuted the validity of causality in the atomic world, and take this indeterminancy as meaning the ruling of chance in this domain.

5- The Prevalence of Idealism

Classical physicists believed in a world independent of human observers, and considered the duty of physics to explain this world. This is called naive realism. Idealism, on the other hand, holds that priority is that of consciousness, and it is the latter that determines the former. The dilemma encountered by the physicists of the first quarters of the twentieth century was that they could not give a coherent picture of microphysics. This changed physicists’ attitude towards the nature of quantum objects. The standard interpretation of quantum mechanics replaced the realism of classical physical by an outlook which had anti-realist flavour. Copengagen interpretation preached the idea that we should not be after the explanation of objects and events. Rather, we should be content to theories which are empirically adequate. Some quantum physicists believed that it is not possible to give a picture of the world in terms of material objects. Our world is conceivable only in terms of mathematics. The fundamental entities of the world are mathematical objects. H. Stapp has the same view:

“There is, in fact, in the quantum universe no natural place for the matter. This conclusion, curiously, is the exact reverse of the circumstance that in the classical physical universe there was no natural place for mind.”1

6- Quantum Logic

Some of the followers of Copenhagen interpretation tried to solve the interpretational problems of quantum mechanics by appealing to a new kind of logic, called quantum logic. They say the world follows a non-human logic, and, therefore, we should modify our regular logic in order to be able to resolve our quantum dilemmas.

Critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation

(A) Significance of Ontological Considerations

It is said that making predictions is not the sole task of physics, though it is necessary for checking the validity of theories. The main purpose of theorizing in physics is to comprehend the physical world as deeply as possible. De’ Espagnat puts the matter elegantly:

“As for the high-energy physicists … whereas their activity appears as essential as long as we believe in the independent existence of fundamental laws that we can still hope to know better, it loses practically its work motivation as soon as we believe that the sole objective of these scientists is to make their impressions mutually consistent. These impressions are not of the kind that occur in our daily life. They are extremely special, they are produced at great costs, and it is doubtful that the mere pleasure their harmony gives to a selected happy few is worth large public expenditures.” 2 and in the words of E. Witten:

“The purpose of being a physicist isn’t just to learn how to calculate things, it’s to understand the principles by which the world works.”3

If modern physics limits our knowledge of nature, or makes it non-transparent, this does not mean the actual reality has the same limitations. It is more logical to believe that our present concepts cannot give a complete description of phenomena than attributing the limitations to the world itself.

(B) Visualisability of micro-phenomena

Quantum physicists denied that quantum objects could be pictured in terms of space-time realities. In their view, they can only be explained by mathematics. But can one conclude, on the basis of the failure of physicists to give a spatio-temporal picture of atomic events, that, in fact, this is for ever beyond our reach?

E. Squires sums up the matter nicely: “These [i.e. quantum] phenomena may be telling us that radically new ways of picturing reality are required. In one sense this was the message, the positive message, of the ’ Copenhagen` interpretation: classical ways of thinking are no longer adequate, we need new ways of describing reality. The fact that it proved difficult to find such ways led to the negative aspect, namely that the quest was futile. This I do not believe.”4

(B) Limitation to Observable Quantities

Could particle physics progress if physicists had taken the idea of observability seriously? Do concepts related to unobserved entities like quarks have no physical content? Are they merely bridges between our observations? The idea of confining to observables was rejected even by some of the proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation. As Feynman put it:

“It is always good to know which ideas cannot be checked directly, but is not necessary to resume them all. It is not true that we can pursue science completely by using only those concepts which are directly subject to experiment.”5

(D) Denial of Determinism

The distinction between causality and predictability is often obscured in the physics literature. What the indeterminancy principle of Heisenberg implied was, at most, the denial of exact predictability. But, some physicists jumped from an epistemological position, referring to our ignorance, to an ontological position, implying the refutation of the principle of causality. This jump is based on the philosophical assertion that what cannot be measured does not exist. There are two important points to be made here:

(i) There is no justification for this jump.

(ii) The denial of causality is not the only avenue for the explanation of observations in the atomic realm. In fact, there are causal versions of quantum formalism, e.g. Bohmian mechanics, which account for the experimental results equally well. Dirac, who had accepted the rejection of determinism in 1920’s, changed his mind in 1970’s and talked of the possibility of return to determinism. We believe that it is not logical to dispense so easily with the causal explanation of microphenomena. Rather, it is more logical to attribute the appearance of chance as a sign of our incomplete knowledge.

(E) Idealistic Language

In criticizing idealistic attitude in regard to atomic events, the opponents say: there is a unique reality which exists independent of our thought, but can be grasped by our thought. Without considering this objective reality, science is simply reduced to some prescriptions for predicting the outcomes of the experiments. In Einstein’s words:

“The belief in an external world independent of the perceiving subject is the basis of all natural sciences”6 Those physicists who dismiss the realistic attitude do not necessarily deny the existence of the external world. Rather they reject any statement about the objective reality which does not refer directly to sense experience. This renunciation, however, reduces scientific enterprise to a set of prescriptions for making observational predictions and leaves the world incomprehensible. Even Heisenberg believed that the assumption of realism is necessary at the practical level:

“The physicist must, however, postulate in his science that he is studying a world which he himself has not made, and which would be present, essentially unchanged, if he were not there.”7

Questions

(i) Is the agreement with observations a sufficient condition for the validity of a theory?

(ii) Are we supported to leave the belief in physical reality simply because some of the present problems are not solved yet?

(iii) Can one deny the possibility of a future spatio-temporal description of microphysics?

(iv) Is not the belief in an objective reality the most important motivation for doing scientific research?

(v) Does un-predictability imply indeterminancy in nature? Is it logical to consider an uncertainty in our knowledge as an indication of indeterminacy and the rule of chance in nature?

(vi) If our present knowledge of physics limits our knowledge of nature, does it mean that the physical reality itself is limited and blurred.

(vii) Shouldn’t the developments of physics in the last few centuries prevent us from claiming that physics has reached the end of its development?

(viii) Was quantum physicists’ rejection of causality due to physical arguments or due to their philosophical inclinations?

(ix) If current physics cannot answer some fundamental questions of human concern, are we supposed to consider them meaningless?

Some physicists of undisputable reputation have expressed concern about the present physical theory, and many people have started to ask questions which were forbidden at the practical level. F. Selleri, G. Tarozzi and Alwyn vander Merwe have summed up the matter nicely:

“There is an increasing awareness that the founding fathers of quantum mechanics have left behind a theory which, though spectacularly successful in its applications, severly limits our intuitive understanding of the microworld, and that their reasons for doing so were at least partly arbitrary and open to questions.”8

1. H. P. Stapp, in Niels Bohr and Contemporary Philosophy, ed. by J. Faye and H. J. Folse (Dordresht: Kluwer Academic Pub., 1994), P. 743.

2-. B. d’Espagnat, Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (New York, Addison Wesley, 1989), P. 282.

3 . E. Witten, in Superstrings: A Theory of Everything, P. C. W. Davies and J. Brown (eds.), (Cambridge University Press, 1988), P. 98.

4. E. Squires, The Mystery of the Quantum World (Bristol: Adam-Hilger, 1986), PP. 132-133.

5 . R. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (Reading Mass.: Adison-Wesley Pub. Co. 1960), Vol. 3, P. 2-9.

6 . M. Born, The Born Einstein Letters, trans. by Irene Born (London: Macmillan, 1971), P. 91.

7 . Quoted in S. Jaki, God and the Cosmologists (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1988), PP. 152-153.

8. Microphysical Reality and Quantum Formalism, ed. by A. Vander Merwe., F. Selleri and G. Tarozzi (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), Vol. 1, P. ix.

Source

Equality, Not Just before the Law

arnoldmol@deenresearchcenter.com — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:19:00 GMT

Women's Rights in the Islamic World
Equality, Not Just before the Law

In recent years, women's rights activists in Arab countries have been working hard to improve the lot of women, not only by calling for new laws to be passed, but also by ensuring that they are enforced too. Martina Sabra highlights a few typical examples from the Arab world.

Arab women's rights groups are working hard to ensure that not only are laws improved, but that they are enforced too

Widad Naggar (not her real name) does not know how old she is. "I guess I'm 46 or so," says the mother of four children from Helwan, one of Cairo's poor neighbourhoods. Widad's birth was not officially registered, so she cannot tell how old she is. Hundreds of thousands of other Egyptian women share her fate. For decades, Widad had neither birth certificate nor identity card. She was unable to vote and could not handle official formalities on her own. Her husband Magdi had to accompany her whenever something needed to be sorted out at school or with the authorities – because of her lack of papers. "I often felt very ashamed," she says.

Widad always managed somehow, until her husband fell seriously ill. The family faced a real crisis. "I had to earn money but could not find a proper job without papers. And I didn't have any money to apply for papers." By chance, she heard about the ADEW, the Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women. Established in 1987, the ADEW was the first Egyptian women's organisation to specifically take up the cause of women who head households (mu'ilaat) in Cairo's slum areas.

Thanks to legal assistance from ADEW, Widad completed the application forms for a birth certificate and an identity card. An ADEW activist even accompanied her to the government office. The organisation also paid the fee worth about 5 euros, a great help for Naggar, who only earns the equivalent of 50 euros per month.

Once she had papers, Widad found a formal job as a cleaner for a small development agency in her neighbourhood. True, her income doesn't even pay for the food her family of six needs, but she is content nevertheless. "My two oldest children also make money. And it matters to me to have a formal job, with a contract and social security. Now no one can put pressure on me any more because I do not have ID papers, and it is not a catastrophe if I fall ill."

Double burden

Hundreds of thousands of women in the Middle East and North Africa don't have vital papers such as birth certificates or identification cards

Widad was lucky. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of women in the Middle East and North Africa who do not have any papers and never will. The ADEW is not able to assist everyone. "Obviously we are not the government," says lawyer Montasser Ibrahim. "We want to create some pressure and make the authorities improve their services. But, at the end of the day, the state must fulfil its responsibilities."

The lack of personal documents is just one of many challenges faced by women in the Arab world. However, Widad's story is a telling example of how the state's failure affects poor women in particular. Of course, it is not only women who are adversely affected by bad governance under Arab dictatorships, but gender-specific discrimination created by laws make women even more vulnerable than men. And wherever the written law does grant men and women equal rights, women are often denied those rights because they are too poor to pay bribes or because misogynist judges so decide.

The fate of development expert Muna Salameh (not her real name) is typical. She wanted to assert her formal rights when she married. In Jordan, as in all Arab countries, the law of personal status depends on a person's religion. "Jordan's matrimonial law for Muslims allows women to take up gainful employment and include an unconditional right to divorce in their marriage contract," Muna explains. "If women do not specifically insist on these rights, they lose them. My husband and I discussed the issue and decided to include the clauses in our marriage contract." However, the registry official refused to register the marriage. "He only relented when, after a long discussion, a lawyer we know pointed out the relevant legal provisions to him."

Sustainable social and economic development is only possible if men and women have equal rights. This awareness is not new in the Arab world. However, formal legal equality in itself does not suffice to safeguard improvements in the lives of women and girls. Unless it is enforced, new legislation does not make any difference.

Fighting discrimination

Strangers in their own country: up until 2004, the children of foreign fathers did not have the right to assume the nationality of their mothers, even if their mothers were Egyptian and were raising their children alone in Egypt

Arab women's rights activists have developed new strategies in recent years to boost the rule of law through actual enforcement and ensure the general acceptance of new legislation. German Technical Cooperation, GTZ, is among the agencies that support them. The reform of Egypt's nationality law is an example of how non-governmental women's organisations are campaigning.

Before 2004, children of foreign fathers did not have the right to their mother's citizenship, even if she was Egyptian herself and was raising the children by herself in her home country. Accordingly, hundreds of thousands of children, teenagers and adults were living like foreigners in their own country. They could not automatically attend state schools, were not entitled to social security and were not entitled to apply for jobs in the civil service. For mothers, this meant endless trips to the authorities, which took energy, time and money.

Faiza Tahnawi, who was an independent member of Egypt's parliament from 2000 to 2005, describes how she became interested in the subject, gradually at first and then adopting it as a major cause. "I stumbled across the problem of nationality more or less by accident, during a regional Arab conference on women's rights. I was shocked, and decided to dedicate all my energy to getting the law reformed."

Initially, resistance in parliament was strong, Tahnawi recalls. "A number of female MPs, and even journalists, advised me not to put the problems of 'those' women on the agenda, saying that they had, after all, made their own free decision to marry a foreigner. As if a woman betrays her country just because she marries a non-Egyptian!"

While Faiza Tahnawi argued for reform, an alliance of feminists and NGOs organised a nationwide media campaign. A number of female journalists were prepared to support the cause through their newspapers and on radio and television broadcasts. A documentary was produced (My child, the foreigner), which highlighted the precarious situation of Egyptian children without passports.

A highlight of the campaign was a major conference, during which some of the women and children concerned were filmed talking about their problems. "We had expected that the people concerned would be too shy to speak publicly about their suffering, but the reports were very striking, and a number of staff from ministries and authorities were visibly touched," recalls Fatma Khir, an Egyptian journalist. She believes that personal, direct interaction considerably contributed to the campaign's success. Within a few days of the law coming into force, 6,000 people applied for Egyptian citizenship in the greater Cairo area.

Divorce law for women

Since the introduction of so-called Khulaa divorces in Egypt in the year 2000, women too have the right to file for divorce without being obliged to give reasons

The laws relating to divorce provide another example of legal discrimination against women. Unequal treatment of women in the current legislation of Arab countries is not necessarily related to Islam. When the individual Arab states were formed in the first half of the 20th century, they adopted European laws, which were discriminatory in accordance with the Western Zeitgeist of the day – sometimes even more so than Islamic law.

It was an exigency of state formation to codify the traditionally decentralised Islamic law. Such national standardisation was to a certain extent regarded as progress because greater legal certainty and a binding effect for all citizens were desired. However, standardisation also meant that interpretations of the law that were unfavourable for women became generalised and individual freedom was curtailed. This was the case, for example, regarding divorce laws which, as they currently stand, greatly disadvantage women in nearly all Arab countries.

In 2000, Egypt introduced khulaa divorce. Prior to this reform, only men in Egypt had the right to a divorce (talaaq) without being required to give any reason and without a judicial decision. Women, in contrast, could only file for divorce if they could prove failures on the part of their husbands (such as infertility, considerable physical violence, desertion or failure to provide for a wife). A woman could lawfully divorce her husband (tatliiq) only if a judge confirmed such a fault.

Since the introduction of khulaa, women in Egypt can file for divorce without disclosing their reasons. To do so, however, they must renounce certain rights: the second (often larger) part of their dowry gift (mahr/mahr mu'akhar – which a bride receives as security in the event of divorce or widowhood) and the right to personal maintenance payments. However, khulaa divorce does not affect maintenance payments for their children, rights of custody and the right to the marital home. Even though khulaa divorce may mean that a woman forsakes material security, several hundred women in Cairo alone applied for divorce under the new law on the very first day after the law was passed.

Participatory monitoring

Before long, however, problems with the new law emerged. Many judges were unfamiliar with it, or claimed to not know it. Many women mistakenly believed that they would lose custody of their children, the right to the marital home and all financial rights in the event of khulaa divorce.

According to the new law, the divorce proceedings should be concluded within six months but, in some cases, they have dragged on for up to two years. The reality of reform thus lagged well behind expectations.

In 2004, ADEW, the women's organisation, launched a project previously unheard of in the Arab world. The approach of "participatory monitoring" meant that 1,200 divorce cases in courts all over Egypt were analysed in order to identify the expectations of clients, judges, female lawyers and advisors.

The people involved were not only observed and evaluated, they were also integrated into the study and the observations were used for training purposes. The result was greater acceptance and an improvement in the quality of the monitoring process. Participatory monitoring provided opportunities to review issues and discuss interim results of the study on a regular basis.

Secular thinkers and religious intellectuals like the Egyptian Muhammad Abdu were convinced that the Arab world would only ever be able to catch up on the West if Arab girls were given access to formal education

This approach set standards for improved "governance" in the judicial system. There were several practical implications. It was discovered that most men do not pay maintenance to their divorced or disowned wives, so a welfare fund for destitute divorced women and their children was established. This fund is based on a Tunisian model and is managed by the Nasser Social Bank, which is funded by zakat payments. Zakat (alms given under Islamic law) is one of the five pillars of Islam. The welfare fund itself will be funded by a special fee imposed on all registry office documents.

Outlook

For decades, secular regimes in most Arab countries have not succeeded in solving the problems faced by their people. Despite immense wealth and a high level of investment in education, Arab countries have not managed to catch up either scientifically or technologically. Instead, corruption, nepotism and poverty are spreading.

Disappointment over the failure of secular nationalism has led to a renewed focus on religion and an emphasis on Islamic values in the Arab world. This trend was strengthened by the fact that Saudi Arabia actively supported cultural Islamicisation with the monetary force of its oil revenues. Islam is now a defining feature of people's identity, particularly among the middle-aged and young generation. Religion plays a major role in discussions about development and governance.

Given weak state institutions, many women tend to seek out customary or religious legal institutions. Though these bodies are often marked by extreme patriarchal attitudes, they are at least affordable and familiar. Furthermore, they are geared towards resolving disputes. Any meaningful development policy will have to take these institutions into account.

In developmental terms, good governance is currently the greatest challenge faced by Arab nations. Important indicators of improvement are the participation of women in cultural, economic and political affairs, and the opportunities for women to assert their human rights.

Formal legal reforms and consistent laws are the basis for such improvements. However, for women to be able to assert their rights, there needs to be more widespread awareness of the laws and greater cultural acceptance of both human rights and women's rights. Judges, female lawyers and judicial officers should receive constant and ongoing training. Participatory monitoring and lobby work within Muslim institutions are promising instruments for promoting pro-women progress.

Equal rights are necessary

The "question of women’s rights" was a central issue in the discourse of Arab modernisation as early as in the 19th century. Both secular theorists and religious-minded intellectuals such as the Egyptian Muhammad Abdu, were convinced that the Arab world could only catch up with the West if Arab girls were given access to formal education and women were no longer forced to wear veils and remain in the home.

The post-independence governments of the Arab world typically promoted the education of women and considered the gainful employment of women a sign of progress. Nonetheless, there is still a great gender gap, even in terms of primary education. Men and boys are more likely to be able to read than women and girls, they enjoy more formal rights, and are in a better position to enforce them.

The UNDP published a series of four Arab Human Development Reports in the years 2002 to 2005. The series considers gender equality to be a basic prerequisite for development and good governance. In 2005, the GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) wrote in a discussion paper on governance in Arab nations that women's rights organisations should be regarded as important forces for reform in Arab nations.

Martina Sabra

© D+C Development and Cooperation 2009