Fazlur Rahman and the Search for Authentic Islamic Education: A Critical Appreciation

Abstract

The article provides a critical appreciation of the educational thought of Fazlur Rahman, a major figure in the 20th‐century Muslim modernist trend. By situating his life and work in the history of Muslim reform, the article brings into relief distinctive elements of his intellectual project. Connections between Fazlur Rahman’s philosophy of education and his proposal for the Qur’an’s reinterpretation are outlined and assessed. In this context, his ideas about the location of meaning, role of tradition, and causes of Muslim decline which underpin his “double movement” theory are investigated. The article notes the wide‐ranging impact of Fazlur Rahman’s interpretive approach on educational and reformist thought in many Muslim contexts. Finally, Fazlur Rahman’s theory and its underlying assumptions are assessed, bringing out in particular the tension between his scholarly and reformist aims.

Notes

Notes

1 Islah has a much longer history, but my reference here is to movements that arose at least partly in response to the impact of the rising European military and political ascendency (Merad, 1960–).

2 Fazlur Rahman’s place of birth is generally given as the Hazara district in Khyber Pakhtunkwa (formerly North West Frontier) Province of present‐day Pakistan. However, Ali (2009) notes that sources differ with regard to his place of birth with some claiming that he was born in the province of Punjab.

3 Deoband is both the name of a madrasa located in the city of Deoband in India as well as of a school of thought that emerged out of it. The madrasa was established in 1867 (Metcalf, 1982).

4 Some decades later Fazlur Rahman fondly recalled the influence of his parents:

My mother and father had a decisive influence in the shaping of my character and earliest beliefs. From my mother I was taught the virtues of truthfulness, mercy, steadfastness, and above all, love. My father was a religious scholar educated in traditional Islamic thought. Unlike most traditional Islamic scholars of that time, who regarded modern education as a poison both for faith and morality, my father was convinced that Islam had to face modernity both as a challenge and an opportunity. I have shared this same belief with my father to this very day. (Rahman, 1985, p. 154)

5 While among his admirers in the West Fazlur Rahman generally receives sympathy for his struggle with conservative sections in Pakistan, many in his own country remain ambivalent, if not critical, of his association with a military dictator.

6 The award is given to recognise significant and lasting scholarship in the study of Islamic civilization. It is based at the Center for Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Los Angeles.

7 The reference is to the Qur’an, cited as chapter and verse(s).

8 A consciousness of history going wrong, of the ideals of Islam not being realised in the realities of Muslim societies, is discernable throughout Muslim history. The designation of rulers after the first four “Rightly Guided” caliphs as muluk—kings, the belief in the coming of a reviver ( Mujaddid) every hundred years, and the long‐standing wait for a Mahdi, all point to such a consciousness. However, in the modern period there was now an external factor, a rival civilisation proclaiming its superiority that, at least in the material domain, was hard to ignore or deny.

9 There is no scholarly agreement with regard to the taxonomy of Muslim reformist activities in the late 19th and early 20th century. In this article I have followed the categories used by Fazlur Rahman himself. He distinguishes between several reformist movements: the revivalist movements in the 18th century were the pre‐colonial movements which sought to purify Muslim practices by seeking to return to a pure Islam; the modernist (or classical modernist) movements of the late 19th and early 20th century, which tried to reconcile modernity and Islam; the neo‐revivalist movements in the second half of the 20th century, which sought to revive the political role of Islam in modern state; and the fundamentalist (or Waahabi) movements, which attempted a strict literalist understanding of the Qur’an. He called himself a neo‐modernist.

10 Amir Ali’s The Spirit of Islam, published in 1891, is arguably the most erudite work in the early modernist period.

11 Custom or practice, particularly that associated with the exemplary life of the Prophet Muhammad.

12 For details of these, see various extracts of modernist writings (Kurzman, 2002).

13 In modern scholarship, the meaning of decline, the standard against which the decline is measured, and the period when the decline started, all are vigorously contested. For details, see, among others, El‐Rouayheb, 2006; Gibb & Bowen, 1950; Hodgson, 1974; Levtzion & Voll, 1987; Voll, 1999.

14 In several of his works, Fazlur Rahman discussed historical Islam. For instance, in Prophecy in Islam he explored various conceptions of prophethood. In Islamic Methodology in History he showed the historical evolution of Islamic thinking in law. In such works he engaged with history qua history, for he believed that “neither Islam nor the Muslim community will suffer from facing the facts of history as they are; on the contrary, historical truths, like all truths, shall invigorate Islam” (Rahman, 1965c, p. x). This “modern” attitude towards the study of the past was itself a radical stance. He correctly anticipated that the traditional ulema—religious scholars—were unlikely to accept this perspective of history and faith.

15 Here Fazlur Rahman is critical of almost the entire Muslim scholarship on the Qur’an, as he believed that it failed to understand the underlying unity of the Qur’an. This was because the Qur’an was approached in an “atomistic” manner where laws were extracted by focusing on individual verses and not on the underlying ethical principles (Rahman, 1982, pp. 2–3).

16 “Whosoever kills a person unrightfully or without a mischief [i.e., a war] on the earth, it is as though he has killed all humanity; while he who saves one person, it is as though he has saved the whole humanity.”

17 It might be of interest to note that earlier this year a CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, was caught in Pakistan on the charges of murder. After much legal manoeuvring he was released through the payment of diyat (blood money) under Islamic legal provision, which was based on the traditional understanding of murder as a crime against the family (Walsh, 2011).

18 It may be useful to note that Fazlur Rahman is sometimes included in another reformist project—Islamization of knowledge—which also had very strong educational elements (Shafiq, 1995). The project’s roots can be traced back to the 1950s when a group of Muslims started to argue that Islam provided a way to generate its own distinctive form of knowledge. While there are overlaps, Fazlur Rahman did not share the basic assumptions of this movement. In fact, he seemed to have a very different understanding of knowledge and its relationship with Islam. Unlike the proponents of Islamization of knowledge, he did not believe in the relativity of knowledge or in the possibility of Islamizing knowledge. For him the issue was not cultural specificity of knowledge but its application (Rahman, 1988).

19 While conducting a teacher education programme in Karachi, I met a teacher of Islamiyat (religious education as it is called in Pakistan) who used Fazlur Rahman’s approach in discussing the Qur’an in his classroom. He had come across these ideas through the Internet, and finding them inspiring, started using it to explain the Qur’an to his students.

20 Ibrahim Moosa, in his introduction to Fazlur Rahman’s book Reform and Revival (2000), provides useful background to the work of Italian jurist‐philosopher Emilio Bette, whose approach to text and meaning appear to have influenced Fazlur Rahman.

21 Some more recent Muslim thinkers, such as Abdol Karim Soroush, appear to be engaging with this challenge. Soroush distinguishes between religion and religious knowledge—a distinction akin to Fazlur Rahman’s distinction between normative and historical Islam. However, unlike Fazlur Rahman, Soroush (1998) does not claim that it is possible to reach normative Islam or religion in itself.