Why Sir Syed can’t be Ignored?

His position is far more nuanced than generally known or attributed to him by hostile critics.

Sir Syed is amongst the most misunderstood, misread and boycotted thinkers. His tafsir has been often ridiculed though few have cared to read it. His seminal thesis – that Islam is identifiable with Nature, with what is the case and thus Islam embraces, by definition, whatsoever truth is there and is not to reduced to a religion or creedal system or theology as popularly understood and is the very name of openness and free inquiry and thus needn’t be proved and can’t be meaningfully doubted and is only a reminder of what we already know/can know in principle – has never been seriously debated. Sir Syed has arguably provided for Islam a philosophical foundation that can’t be shaken in principle and thus immunizes it against all critiques beforehand. It is in the name of truth/Islam that we challenge any claim to truth of any ideology or system. Islam has been understood as a meta-religion by some but Sir Syed takes the idea to its logical conclusion. Islam becomes the background, the foundational presupposition and the very air we breathe. The world is not divided into factions of divergent religions but Muslims of various degrees and there is none who can claim to be totally outside or immune to divine call or live outside God where one resists Mercy. He recalls great Mu’tazilite thinkers and modern philosophers and protestant theologians. Muslims have been largely revering him for providing his modern solution to Muslim backwardness while they have ignored his theology, not unlike great medieval philosophers whose medical and other contributions were well received while theological thought mostly ignored by Muslim laity and Ulama. Prof. Kazmi has published a book Sir Syed on Education and Tolerance that reminds us of a treasure we need to excavate and appropriate today. A few remarks on Sir Syed will help in appreciating the content of the work.

• He doesn’t deny the supernatural per se. Sir Syed was not a naturalist in the standard sense of the term. He didn’t deny the supernatural – he believed in revelation and thus divine or supernatural books/ayats – and not even miracles if we understand the latter as events that only appear supernatural to the Prophet’s contemporaries but are not breach of what he called natural laws and sought to understand in terms of or approximate to the notion of unchanging sunnat-al-llah in the Quran. Sir Syed’s position is far more nuanced than generally known or attributed to him by hostile critics. He notes that “we are not aware of all the laws of nature, even those which are known to us, are not perfectly known.” He makes miracles to be extraordinary events of which the preceding causes are not known/perfectly clear to us. For him “miracles are not possible as the infringement of the verbal promise of God.” He does not deny the possibility of miracles because they are against reason but because, in his understanding, the Quran does not support the idea of such happenings (Quran Baqara II: 20,106,109, 117, 148). He notes that the term ' miracle' is not mentioned in the Quran. The words ayah (sign) and burhan (arguments) are not used for miraculous happenings. References to miraculous events such as in lives of Abraham, Moses and Jesus are not violation or breach but “a part of the pre - established order. ….Every thing is natural, not to us but to God.” So far there is, in the scientific world, almost a consensus that miraculous events do happen but we can seek and should seek to explain them in terms of certain depth dimension or hitherto less clear or unknown law. All the opposition to science has been inconclusive, ineffective and failed to displace the reigning conviction that what appear as miracles to one generation needn’t be considered breach of natural law and another generation may well be able to replicate the same. I know of only three consistent Sir Syedians in Kashmir and they are all distinguished minds in their own right – Prof. Shabir Ahmed Mir, a renowned pharmacologist and self taught philosopher of a sort, Prof. Mir Faizal, a renowned physicist whose theological reflections deserve debate and Prof. Sanuallah Mir who has developed more sophisticated defense of Sir Syed and whose formative influence and guidance has been acknowledged by the author of this book Prof. Latif Kazmi.    
• He doesn’t accept any verse is abrogated. This is the thesis that is not unheard in the traditionalist camp (Shah Waliullah paves way for it and Imam Anwar Shah fully embraces it) and has been widely advocated by modern “progressive” Muslims. It helps dissolve arguments against tolerance advocated by exclusivists reigning today.
• He, self avowedly, doesn’t uphold interpretations (of such verses that are usually seen as referring to miraculous events) that ignore philology and use of language by community/original addressee.
• He, self avowedly, takes inspiration not primarily from Western thinkers but from great Muslim thinkers that include philosophers, Mu’tazilites, Sufis and amongst more recent names Shah Waliullah.
• His attempt to reconcile modernity and Islam may appear flawed or less sophisticated but was motivated by religious reasons as well. His attempt to do ijtihad does border on tahreef on occasions as Imam Kashmiri pointed out but the task he took upon himself was quite formidable and it is no wonder that he took resort to farfetched arguments at places but that shouldn’t be taken as excuse to condemn his whole legacy. Some of his opinions may be and have been and should be rejected now that science, theology and philosophy of religion have embarked on new paths but he, understood as embodiment or the very spirit of critical reason, has to be treasured.
• For him philosophy was essential to understanding of religion. While Din is perennial, Shariah, practically identified with fiqh, is amenable to change. For him Islam is not a “totalistic system or complete code in the strict sense.” 
• Sir Syed argues that the challenge posed by modern thought is more serious than posed by classical Greeks and notes that kalam Muslims have cultivated needs serious rethinking as “many suppositions of Greek classical sciences and philosophy on the basis of which the 'Ulama had founded some religious problems have been proved wrong.”
• Sir Syed’s key complaints against fellow Muslims are still mostly valid – most Muslims don’ read, abhor new developments in the world of science and scholarship and are obscuranits, gullible and sectarian.

      Sir Syed was arguably the most vocal and candid champion of interfaith dialogue in recent history. Let us note Muslims have a poor record in interfaith dialogue in recent history and most of them think other religions are simply too corrupt to be taken seriously as originally heavenly dispensations with possible salvific potential and their followers constitute potential subjects for conversion rather than dialogue. Hindus are, generally speaking, dubbed polytheists and, thanks to atomist reading of scripture, both Jews and Christians are thought to be akin to idolaters forgetting that the Quran has not bracketed them with pagan idolaters. Intra-faith dialogue is generally speaking absent. Sir Syed, like mutaqadimeen authorities, doesn’t subscribe to the thesis that the Bible has been subject to tahreef-I lafzi. He had interesting correspondence with Deoband authorities on the question of salvation of non-Muslims and didn’t relent his pluralism while ensuring he avoids charge of heterodoxy or stigmatization. Sir Syed is the only Muslim scholar who attempted a commentary on the Bible and doesn’t think, likeh great classical Muslim authorities and unlike later scholars, that it has been corrupted (subject to tahreef-i lafzi). Post-Sir Syed it is only Farahi school that has underscored and meant more serious academic engagement with the Bible. For Sir Sayyid we can have “sincere friendship and cordial affection with people of other religions.” Sir Syed compared Hindus and Muslims to two eyes of a person but that didn’t mean he was a later day syncretist who didn’t care for specific Muslim identity. In fact he proposed the separate political dispensation for Muslims that one might argue, with some justification, later fructified in Pakistan. MAO College taught both Sunni and Shi’ite theologies and jurisprudence and strengthening of faith was one of the objectives of it. He welcomed an atheist’s education policy for supposedly non-communal implications of it. One may understand Jamat-e-Islami Hind’s attempt to safeguard secular non-communal character of India against the rightist Hindu organizations in similar sense. He seems to endorse the fact that “The Muslims adopted many Hindu customs and Hindus adopted many Muslim habits.” MAO college required that “Shia and Sunni boys shall not discuss their religious differences in the college in the boarding house.” In his Madrasah at Ghazipur classical languages Persian and Sanskrit were both taught reflecting his deep vision of communal harmony. Imagine if all Muslims and Hindus knew/were familiarized with both Arabic and Sanskrit what would be the implications on communal politics.
      The book argues against writing off contributions of Mu’tazilites in Asharite dominated Muslim scholarship. Their great services in defense of Islam against its critics can’t be forgotten or rendered irrelevant and in retrospective judgment it appears that although they had their own brand of intolerance when they assumed power and took their rationalism and voluntarism too far and indulged in certain problematic interpretative gestures, they have kept the lamp of critical reason burning, made inestimable contributions to almost all branches of Islamic learning and deserve to be more respectfully though critically approached. The book making the case of Sir Syed and certain methodological commitments of Mu’tazilites and well argued case for tolerance and interfaith dialogue constitutes welcome contribution to Sir Syed studies though one finds language and arguments loose in places, inadequate attention to views of critics of Sir Syed and some change in style as we progress in the book. The book underscore contribution of Sir Syed in discrediting weird interpretative ploys espousing “fatalism, obscurantism, dogmatism and fanaticism of varying hues.” It shows how his legacy was carried forward by Iqbal and how it has proved, at least in certain respects such as education, a great boon for Muslims. He needs to be understood rather than advocated to better comprehend our problems and debate possible solutions.
      The book takes exception to Sir Syed’s exclusively rationalist approach at places and notes that existentialist understanding of Islam caters better to Islamic legacy, especially that of Sufis. It is important to appreciate that the book seeks to understand rather than advocate Sir Syed. We must engage with him and then transcend him. His dated proposals are to be left aside while his methodology in general has much to recommend itself.
      By way of conclusion, let us ponder why many towering Muslim minds who know both traditional and modern worlds speak more respectfully of Sir Syed and the need to engage with his legacy and why the bitterest traditional critic of Sir Syed, Akbar Illaabadi, as Muhammad Ali Siddiqi notes, developed soft feelings for Syed Ahmad Khan after 1894 and made collection from friends and acquaintances in 1891 for the Building Fund of the M. A. O. College and confessed that while he talked much, Sir Syed worked. Also note that some of his proposals regarding compatibility of general tenor of modern science/philosophy and the Quran have become new orthodoxy. However, it is instructive that Sir Syed had little engagement with philosophical naturalism that evolutionists invoked and spirit negating reductionism besides many other problems that make any case for reconciliation between epistemes of religion and modern science impossible. Sir Syed didn’t carry his critical spirit  far enough to see what many philosophers, scientists and philosophers of science from Popper to Kuhn to Feyerbend have increasingly recognized regarding the limitations of paradigm of modern science as rational truth seeking certitude invoking objective endeavour. From a strictly traditionalist perspective he has rightly been severely censored; Akbar and Muslim Ulama in general rejected him though it has also been the case that almost “every intelligent man of the period sided with him” on certain issues. For a more nuanced understanding of him read critical views of Syed Moududi, Saleem Ahmed and Suheyl Umar. Sir Syed has been reviled or ignored or zealously championed for both right and wrong reasons; he has not even read and closely engaged with. 

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