Category: History

History

History, The Modern Age

Abul A’la Maududi

Nazeer Ahmed

Abul A’la Maududi

No modern Muslim thinker did more to recast Islam as a total civilizational project than Abul A’la Maududi. With passion and conviction, he wrote dozens of books and essays and delivered hundreds of speeches, articulating the intellectual architecture of an Islamic state with a constitution based on the Sharia. In his vision, religion, politics, law, economics, culture and society all belonged to a single Islamic moral order. Islam, in his view, was a complete system of life, destined to govern the individual and society alike. He was at once a journalist, theologian, disruptive politician and founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami movement. His writings shaped modern Islamist thought across South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. His ambition was immense. Unlike many contemporary reformers, he did not seek to accommodate Islam within modernity; he sought to answer modernity with Islam.

Maududi was born on 25 September 1903 in Aurangabad in the princely state of Hyderabad in British India. His family belonged to the Chishti Sufi tradition and claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) through the line of Imam Husayn. His father, Ahmad Hasan Maududi, was a lawyer who had received an English education and later turned toward a more orthodox religious life.

India during Maududi’s youth was in the midst of deep social and political upheaval. British colonial rule was entrenched. The Muslim elite in North India were in political disarray. Hindu-Muslim tensions were on the rise. Thinkers such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Iqbal and Shibli Nomani influenced the intellectual environment. Educated Muslim youth debated issues of nationalism, secularism, reform and revival.

Maududi received his early education at home. His father supervised his instruction in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, logic, jurisprudence, hadith, mathematics and history. He attended Madrasa Furqaniyya in Aurangabad and later Darul Uloom in Hyderabad. Financial difficulties and his father’s death in 1918 interrupted his formal education. Maududi never received a formal university degree. His intellectual formation came through independent reading and journalism. He studied the works of classical Muslim scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah, Al-Ghazali, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi and Mulla Sadra.

In 1920 he joined the Urdu newspaper Taj in Jabalpur as an editor. He later edited Muslim and Al-Jamiyat. These journals addressed issues facing Indian Muslims during the Khilafat Movement and the struggle against British rule. Maududi developed a reputation for clear prose and strong polemical argument in Urdu. His early writings criticized Western imperialism, secular nationalism and moral decline in Muslim societies.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Maududi became increasingly involved in political and religious debates. He opposed both Western secular nationalism and ethnic nationalism. He criticized the Indian National Congress as a Hindu-dominated organization. He also expressed reservations about the All-India Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah. Maududi argued that nationalism based on territory or ethnicity conflicted with the universal character of Islam. He believed Muslims formed a distinct ideological community bound by faith rather than geography, language, or ethnicity.

In 1932 he launched the influential journal Tarjuman al-Quran. Through this publication he developed many of his major ideas. He argued that Islam offered a complete civilization and political order. He rejected the separation of religion and state. He also criticized socialism, capitalism and secular democracy. His writings attracted educated Muslims seeking intellectual responses to colonialism and modernity.

His most important political move was the founding of Jamaat-e-Islami on 26 August 1941 in Lahore. To place this event in temporal context, it came a year after the Muslim League passed the Lahore Resolution demanding a separate state for the Muslims of India. The stated goal of Jamaat-e-Islami was to establish an Islamic state governed by the Quran and Sunnah. Maududi envisioned a disciplined vanguard movement that would reform society through education, preaching and political action. The Jamaat sought moral transformation before political power. Members underwent strict ideological and ethical training.

The stated goal of an Islamic state based on the Quran and Sunnah struck a sympathetic chord in the intellectual circles of British India and achieved substantial influence among students, professionals, scholars and the urban middle classes. It established schools, publications, welfare organizations and political networks. The movement remained smaller than mass political parties in electoral terms, but its intellectual impact far exceeded its numerical strength. The idea of an Islamic state proved powerful enough to resonate across the world. Decades later, Jamaat branches emerged in independent India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Great Britain and other regions.

Maududi initially opposed the Partition of India. He feared that Muslim nationalism based on territory would weaken the broader unity of Muslims in the subcontinent. He also questioned whether the Muslim League was serious in its intention to establish a genuinely Islamic state. The partition of India in 1947, however, changed the political context. Massive communal violence displaced millions of people, especially in Punjab. Maududi left India and moved to the new state of Pakistan in 1947.

In Pakistan, Maududi threw himself into debates about the constitution and identity of the new state. He argued that governance in Pakistan should be based on the Shariah. Scholars such as Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr and Charles J. Adams have shown that Maududi played an important role in shaping Islamist political discourse in Pakistan during the 1950s and 1960s.

Maududi faced repeated imprisonment for his disruptive politics. In 1953 the Pakistani government arrested him during anti-Ahmadi agitations in Punjab. A military court sentenced him to death for inflammatory publications linked to the unrest. However, public pressure from scholars and political leaders across the Muslim world led the government to commute the sentence. Several further imprisonments followed during the governments of Ayub Khan and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, earning him a reputation as a principled Islamic activist.

Central to Maududi’s thought was the concept of the Islami Nizam, or Islamic order. He argued that sovereignty belonged to God alone. Human beings served as vicegerents responsible for implementing divine guidance. He described the Islamic state as a “theo-democracy” in which rulers and citizens remained subject to the Quran and Sunnah. His political theory appeared in works such as Islamic Law and Constitution, The Process of Islamic Revolution and Four Basic Quranic Terms.

During the 1950s and 1960s, Maududi and his followers in Pakistan produced one of the most comprehensive articulations of the Islamic state in the modern Muslim world. His multi-volume Quranic commentary Tafhim al-Quran also provided a sustained interpretation of Islam as a social and political system. This commentary became widely read across the Muslim world.

Maududi’s influence extended far beyond South Asia. Thinkers linked to the Muslim Brotherhood read and translated his works into Arabic. Scholars have identified strong parallels between Maududi and Sayyid Qutb in their critique of secular modernity and their call for Islamic governance. His ideas influenced Islamic revivalist movements as far away as Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Great Britain and North America.

Maududi resigned as leader of Jamaat-e-Islami in 1972. He died in 1979 in Buffalo and was buried in Lahore, Pakistan.

Maududi’s legacy remains deeply influential and controversial. Admirers regard him as one of the central Muslim intellectuals of the twentieth century. They credit him with reviving confidence in Islam as a complete civilizational framework. He addressed major questions raised by colonialism, secularism, nationalism and modernity in a systematic and accessible manner. His books continue to circulate widely in Urdu, Arabic, English, Turkish, Bengali, Malay and many other languages.

Critics argue that he transformed Islam into a highly ideological and political system shaped partly by modern European concepts of the state, party organization and revolutionary activism. The political scientist Olivier Roy and the historian Fazlur Rahman both suggested that modern Islamist thinkers, including Maududi, reduced the complexity of Islamic intellectual traditions into a more rigid ideological framework.

History, The Modern Age

Ali Shari ati (1933–1977)

Nazeer Ahmed

ʿAli Shariʿati (1933–1977)

Few modern Muslim thinkers united religion, philosophy and revolutionary zeal as completely as ʿAli Shariʿati. He spoke to a wounded civilization searching for dignity after colonialism and cultural fragmentation. His writings stirred the imagination of a generation of Iranian youth. His ideas helped create the intellectual climate that culminated in the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

Shariʿati was born in 1933 in the village of Mazinan in northeastern Iran, near Mashhad. His father, Muhammad Taqi Shariʿati, was a scholar and teacher who instilled in the young Ali Shariʿati the conviction that Islam was more was a living moral force transcending rites and rituals. This conviction shaped Shariʿati’s character and became the driving force behind his revolutionary writings.

Ali Shariʿati studied literature and the humanities at school and later entered the University of Mashhad. His early writings reveal a deep concern with social justice, colonial domination and the moral decline of Muslim societies. In the early 1950s he became active in anti-Shah politics and participated in nationalist circles inspired by Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

In 1959 he traveled to Paris for graduate studies at the Sorbonne. Those years proved transformative. Paris exposed him to European philosophy, sociology, revolutionary theory and anti-colonial politics. He encountered the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Georges Gurvitch and especially Frantz Fanon. Fanon’s critique of colonialism deeply shaped Shariʿati’s understanding of cultural humiliation and political domination.

At the same time, Shariʿati immersed himself in Islamic intellectual history. Among modern Muslim thinkers, Muhammad Iqbal exercised the greatest influence upon him. Like Iqbal, Shariʿati believed that Islam possessed immense spiritual and civilizational energy. He saw Islam as a force capable of reviving a Muslim world steeped in intellectual torpor. Unlike Iqbal, he transformed the language of selfhood and spiritual reconstruction into a revolutionary call for social awakening and political struggle.

Shariʿati drew selectively from classical Islamic thinkers. He admired the spiritual depth of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and his profound concern with the inner life of faith. However, he feared that a withdrawal from worldly struggle could produce passivity before tyranny. In contrast, Ibn Rushd represented for him the courage of rational inquiry and intellectual resistance.

For Shariʿati, thought carried moral responsibility. Philosophy could never remain detached from history. To think meant to confront oppression. Knowledge demanded action. Religion demanded commitment.

When he returned to Iran in 1964, the country stood under the authoritarian rule of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. Political repression had intensified. Western influence dominated elite culture. Vast social inequality scarred Iranian society. Shariʿati entered this atmosphere as an electrifying public speaker and writer.

His lectures at the Husayniyyeh-yi Irshad in Tehran attracted thousands of students and young professionals. These lectures blended Islamic history, sociology, revolutionary theory and emotional rhetoric into a compelling vision of engaged Islam. Among his major works were Religion versus Religion, On the Sociology of Islam, Hajj, Martyrdom and Fatima is Fatima. His passionate prose carried emotional intensity and revolutionary urgency. His writings spread rapidly through universities and intellectual circles. Audio recordings and pamphlets of his lectures circulated widely across Iran. Thousands of young Iranians encountered Islam through Shariʿati’s language of resistance and sacrifice.

Shariʿati sought to rescue Islam from two forces that he regarded as destructive. One was sterile traditionalism that reduced religion to ritual and passive obedience. The other was blind imitation of the West that produced cultural servitude and spiritual emptiness. He argued for an Islam rooted in self-consciousness, struggle and justice.

His interpretation of Shiʿism became especially influential. He distinguished between what he called “Red Shiʿism” and “Black Shiʿism.” Red Shiʿism represented the revolutionary spirit of resistance embodied by Imam Hussain at Karbala. Black Shiʿism represented a court-sponsored religiosity allied with political power and social passivity. Through this language, Shariʿati transformed Shiʿi memory into a revolutionary moral vision.

For Shariʿati, Karbala symbolized eternal resistance against oppression. Imam Husayn became the model of moral rebellion against tyranny. Martyrdom acquired political meaning. Suffering became a source of collective awakening. This reinterpretation deeply influenced educated urban youth opposed to the Pahlavi monarchy.

Shariʿati did not construct a systematic philosophical school. He functioned as a public intellectual and moral disruptive force. His purpose was awakening rather than scholastic precision. He sought to create a new Muslim persona conscious of history, justice and collective responsibility.

The Shah’s regime regarded him as dangerous. He faced surveillance, censorship and imprisonment. In 1977 he left Iran for England. A few weeks later he died in Southampton at the age of forty-three. Many of his followers believed that he had been assassinated by SAVAK, the Shah’s secret police.

Two years later the Iranian Revolution erupted. Imam Ruhollah Khomeini provided the clerical leadership that ultimately shaped the Islamic Republic. However, it ws Shariʿati who developed the revolutionary language that energized educated youth. He gave the Islamic Revolution its intellectual legitimacy and empowered it with emotive force.

Shariʿati occupies a unique place in modern Islamic intellectual history. He transformed Islam into a language of anti-imperial struggle and social justice. He fused Shiʿi symbolism with revolutionary politics. He translated existentialism and anti-colonial theory into Islamic categories familiar to Iranian society.

His legacy extended far beyond Iran. Across the Muslim world, many activists, students and intellectuals encountered in his writings a vision of Islam that combined faith with social justice and political emancipation. He inspired generations seeking an Islam capable of confronting dictatorship, inequality and cultural subordination. His voice still echoes wherever Islam is imagined as a force of moral resistance and collective awakening.

History, The Modern Age

Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924): Transformation of Turkey into a Modern Republic

Nazeer Ahmed

Ziya Gökalp (1876-1924): Transformation of Turkey into a Modern Republic

Ziya Gökalp was one the most consequential architects of modern Turkey. Born in 1876 in Diyarbakir in Anatolia, he lived during turbulent times in Islamic history. The Ottoman empire was under military-political pressure from the Entente powers – Britain, France and Russia. Iran was in the convulsive aftermath of the Tobacco Revolution of 1906. India, Indonesia, Egypt and West Africa were under colonial heels. There was a profound crisis within Muslim intellectual and political life. His work sought to answer a central question facing the Islamic world: how could a Muslim society modernize without losing its spiethical and cultural foundations? 

Gökalp received a traditional Islamic education in his youth along with exposure to modern scientific and political ideas. This dual formation shaped the direction of his intellectual life. He became deeply interested in the relationship between religion, culture, society and political organization. The late Ottoman period exposed him to competing ideologies including Pan-Islamism, Western liberalism and Turkish nationalism. Gökalp gradually concluded that the survival of Turkish society required a new synthesis that could unite cultural continuity with modern institutional reform.

His intellectual outlook drew heavily from sociology, especially the ideas of the French sociologist Émile Durkheim. Gökalp believed that societies depended upon shared moral values and collective consciousness. He argued that a nation could only remain stable if its people possessed a common ethical and cultural identity. For Gökalp, modernization could never succeed through the simple imitation of Europe. Imported institutions lacking roots in local culture would create alienation and social fragmentation. Modernization required the careful adaptation of external knowledge to the historical character of Turkish society.

At the center of Gökalp’s thought stood the distinction between civilization and culture. Civilization referred to the universal domain of science, technology, universal human rights and rational organization. Culture referred to the traditions, language, customs and emotive life of a people. He argued that Turkey should adopt the scientific and institutional achievements of the modern West while preserving the ethical and cultural spirit of the Turkish nation. This formulation became one of the foundational principles of Turkish modernization in the early twentieth century.

Gökalp also emphasized the importance of folk culture, or halk kültürü, which he regarded as the authentic expression of the people’s collective spirit. He criticized segments of the Ottoman elite for imitating European ideas without regard for local traditions and social realities. Language, literature, poetry, customs, collective history and communal practices represented for him the living moral foundation of society. He believed that national renewal required intellectuals to reconnect with the cultural inheritance of ordinary people rather than remain detached within imported cosmopolitan frameworks.

Islam occupied an important place in Gökalp’s vision, which he interpreted through a modern sociological lens. He argued that Islam possessed enduring ethical resources capable of supporting social solidarity, discipline and collective responsibility. Drawing upon the principle of ijtihad, Gökalp maintained that inherited legal and moral traditions must respond creatively to changing historical conditions. Religion, in his view, served as a moral foundation for society while modern administration required rational and secular institutions.

This effort to reconcile Islam, nationalism and modernity distinguished Gökalp from rigid traditionalists and radical secularists. He envisioned a society in which Islamic ethical values could coexist with scientific education, centralized administration and national political identity. His writings transformed philosophy into a practical instrument of state-building and cultural reform. Intellectual inquiry, for Gökalp, existed to strengthen social cohesion and guide collective progress.

Gökalp became closely associated with the intellectual movements that shaped the final years of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of modern Turkeye. His ideas deeply influenced Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and the reforms that followed the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923. The secularization of education, the reform of legal and political institutions and the standardization of the Turkish language all reflected themes present in Gökalp’s writings. Although Atatürk pursued a more aggressively secular program than Gökalp himself may have envisioned, Gökalp’s theoretical framework helped legitimize the transformation of Turkey into a modern nation-state.

His influence extended beyond politics into education, literature and cultural theory. Gökalp encouraged the development of a national literature rooted in the Turkish language and popular traditions rather than Ottoman courtly forms heavily shaped by Persian and Arabic influence. He believed language reform would strengthen national consciousness and create greater social unity between elites and ordinary citizens.

Gökalp died in 1924, shortly after the formal establishment of the Turkish Republic. His legacy remains central to discussions of Turkish identity, secularism, nationalism and Islam in the modern Middle East. Admirers regard him as a visionary who provided an intellectual framework for reconciling tradition and modernity during a moment of civilizational crisis. Critics argue that aspects of his nationalism contributed to rigid forms of state ideology in later decades. 

In the broader history of modern Islamic thought, Gökalp represents a distinctive current of pragmatic reform. Unlike metaphysical philosophers or purely religious revivalists, he approached philosophy as a tool for cultural survival and political reconstruction. His work sought to preserve the ethical inheritance of Islamic civilization while equipping Turkish society to function within the modern world. Through that synthesis, he became one of the defining intellectual figures of twentieth-century Turkey.

History, The Modern Age

Muhammad Abduh

Nazeer Ahmed

Muhammad Abduh (1849- 1905)

Born in 1849 in the village of Maḥallat Naṣr in the Nile Delta of Egypt, Muhammad ʿAbduh rose to become one of the most influential reformers in the modern Islamic world. His beginnings were humble: his father belonged to a family of modest rural standing and his mother came from an Arab lineage associated with local religious life and learning.

He lived during a period of profound political upheaval in the Middle East. Egypt fell under British occupation in 1882. The Suez Canal passed increasingly under Anglo-French financial control before British domination. Sudan was conquered through British military expansion during the late nineteenth century. The larger Ottoman Empire, of which Egypt remained nominally a province, faced continuous military and political pressure from Russia in the north and from United Kingdom in the south and east.

The advance of European colonial power transformed the social, cultural and religious life of Muslim societies across Asia and Africa. Arabs, Turks, Persians, Indians and other Muslim peoples confronted new political realities, foreign economic domination and the growing challenge of European intellectual and military ascendancy. Within this atmosphere of crisis and transition, ʿAbduh developed his project of Islamic reform and intellectual renewal.

Mohammed Abduh received his primary school education through the Egyptian madrasa system. He memorized the Qurʾān at a young age. The methods of instruction were traditional. Students relied on rote memorization and repetitive commentaries. Teachers emphasized inherited summaries. The experience left a lasting mark on the young Abduh. He came to believe that the crisis of Muslim education arose from intellectual passivity and mechanical imitation.

In 1866, Al-Azhar University admitted the young Muhammad ʿAbduh into its advanced program of religious studies. During the following decade he immersed himself in the traditional disciplines of Sunni scholarship, including Qurʾanic exegesis, Hadith, jurisprudence, Arabic grammar, rhetoric, logic and theology. He completed his studies in 1877 and received the degree of ʿālim.  At the time, Al-Azhar was the foremost center of Sunni learning in the Muslim world, drawing students from Egypt, Syria, North Africa, Anatolia, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Soon after graduation, ʿAbduh joined the teaching staff at Al-Azhar. He lectured on theology (kalām), Aristotelian logic, ethics and philosophy. His classes attracted a younger generation of students who sought intellectual reform within Islamic education. Among those influenced by his teaching was Rashid Rida, who later became one of the leading transmitters of ʿAbduh’s ideas across the Arab world.

Political events soon drew him into public life. Egypt during the late nineteenth century faced severe debt, foreign intervention and political instability. European powers expanded their control over Egyptian finances and administration. A decisive turning point in Mohammed Abduh’s life came through his encounter with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in Cairo during the early 1870s. Al-Afghānī (1838-1897) was an eclectic pan-Islamic activist who encouraged critical thinking and intellectual independence among the youth. Under his influence, ʿAbduh studied logic, theology, philosophy and political theory.

Mohammed ʿAbduh sympathized with reformist movements that sought constitutional government and resistance to foreign domination. He supported the ʿUrābī revolt of 1881–1882, led by Colonel Ahmed Urabi. After the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, the authorities exiled him from the country.

Exile widened his intellectual horizons. He spent time in Beirut and later joined al-Afghānī in Paris. Together they published the journal al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqā in 1884. The journal called for Muslim unity, resistance to imperial domination and intellectual reform. Despite censorship, it was enormously popular and circulated widely across the Islamic world. The experience deepened ʿAbduh’s understanding of European political power and modern institutions. 

During his years in Beirut, ʿAbduh taught and wrote extensively. He studied Christian theology and European philosophy alongside Islamic disciplines. These encounters sharpened his concern for interreligious understanding and ethical renewal. Increasingly, he focused on education as the foundation of reform. In his view, societies rose through disciplined moral formation and sound intellectual training.

The British administration later allowed him to return to Egypt. He resumed teaching and entered the judicial system. His reputation for scholarship steadily grew. In 1899 he became Grand Mufti of Egypt, one of the highest religious offices in the country. From this position he issued legal opinions that addressed modern conditions in the Islamic world with flexibility and practical judgment. He argued that the Shariah possessed enduring principles capable of adaptation across changing circumstances.

Central to ʿAbduh’s thought was the harmony between reason and revelation.   He sharply criticized taqlīd, or blind imitation of inherited opinions. He called for renewed ijtihād, disciplined reasoning grounded in the Qurʾān and the Sunnah. He believed that the Shariah aimed at justice, welfare and moral order. This perspective influenced later reformers to reconsider issues of governance, education, family law and social ethics within a paradigm of Tauhid.

ʿAbduh also sought to reform theology. He criticized forms of scholastic kalām that had become detached from practical moral life. Endless metaphysical disputes seemed to him distant from the urgent needs of society. He aimed to restore theology to ethical clarity and spiritual seriousness. Religion, in his understanding, existed to cultivate moral character, social responsibility and awareness of God.

Education occupied a central place in his reform program. He advocated curricular reform at Al-Azhar and encouraged the inclusion of history, mathematics and modern sciences alongside religious studies. He believed that Muslim societies required scholars capable of engaging the intellectual challenges of the modern age. He also promoted clearer prose and accessible writing so that religious knowledge could reach broader audiences.

Among his most important intellectual works was Risālat al-Tawḥīd (“The Theology of Unity”). In this work he presented Islam as a rational and ethical religion compatible with scientific inquiry and human progress. He also collaborated with Rashid Rida on a famous Qurʾānic commentary, Tafsīr al-Manār. Through these writings he shaped modern Islamic discussions of theology, reform and interpretation.

His influence spread far beyond Egypt. Reformers across the Arab world, South Asia and Southeast Asia drew inspiration from his ideas. Thinkers such as Rashid Rida, Qasim Amin and later Fazlur Rahman engaged deeply with his legacy. His ideas also shaped movements for educational reform and constitutional government in many Muslim societies.

Muhammad ʿAbduh died in 1905. By the time of his death, he had transformed the intellectual landscape of modern Islam. He reopened questions that many had believed closed for centuries. He restored confidence in the compatibility of Islam, reason and modern knowledge.

His historical importance rests in his effort to revive Islam from within its own intellectual tradition. He sought renewal through critical engagement with the Qurʾān, the Sunnah and the moral purpose of religion. His work helped define the modern reformist tradition in Islam and continues to shape contemporary debates on theology, law, education and modernity.

History, The Modern Age

Ali Mazrui (1933-2014): Synthesis of African heritage, Islam and the West

Nazeer Ahmed

Ali Mazrui (1933-2014): Synthesis of African heritage, Islam and the West

Ali Mazrui was as one of the most influential African intellectuals of the twentieth century. Born in 1933 in Mombasa, Kenya, he belonged to a distinguished Muslim family with deep roots in East African religious and judicial life. His father, Al-Amin Mazrui, served as Chief Qadi of Kenya. The intellectual atmosphere of his upbringing shaped his lifelong engagement with Islam, ethics and political authority.

Mazrui received his early education in Mombasa before traveling abroad for higher studies. He studied at University of Manchester, where he earned a degree in political science. He later completed graduate studies at Columbia University in New York. In 1966, he earned his doctorate from University of Oxford. This combination of African, British and American intellectual influences gave his scholarship a global orientation.

Mazrui began his academic career at Makerere University in Uganda during the 1960s, a formative period in postcolonial African history. He later taught at University of Michigan and subsequently at State University of New York at Binghamton. His lectures attracted audiences across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. He wrote extensively on African nationalism, colonialism, Islam, culture and international relations.

A central theme of Mazrui’s work concerned the moral crisis of the postcolonial state. He examined the tension between inherited traditions and imported political institutions. He argued that African societies required ethical frameworks rooted in their own civilizational experiences. Islam occupied an important place in this vision. Mazrui viewed Islamic ethics as a source of social cohesion, discipline and justice. He explored the relationship between faith and reason with unusual intellectual breadth. His writings connected Islamic philosophy with contemporary debates on governance, education and development.

Mazrui gained worldwide recognition through his influential television series, The Africans: A Triple Heritage. The series argued that Africa’s identity emerged from the interaction of indigenous traditions, Islam and the West. This formulation became one of his most enduring intellectual contributions. He challenged simplistic narratives of African history and emphasized Africa’s deep connections with the broader Islamic and global worlds.

His scholarship combined political science with philosophical reflection. He treated ideas as forces that shape civilizations and historical change. He addressed questions of social justice, cultural dignity and political legitimacy with exceptional range.

Mazrui used Swahili especially in essays, speeches, interviews and public commentary directed toward East African audiences. He upheld the language as a vehicle for intellectual life and political consciousness. Mazrui argued that African languages carried moral memory, historical continuity and cultural legitimacy. Swahili, in his view, possessed unusual importance because it had already developed into a transnational African language spoken across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo and the Indian Ocean littoral states.

His engagement with Swahili strengthened the intellectual prestige of the language among educated Africans. He demonstrated that serious philosophical and political discussion could emerge from African linguistic traditions. This position paralleled the work of figures such as Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, who championed African languages in literature and education. Mazrui adopted a more cosmopolitan position than Ngũgĩ. He continued to write extensively in English while affirming the cultural power of Swahili.

Swahili also shaped Mazrui’s understanding of Islam in Africa. He saw the Swahili coast as a historic zone of synthesis where African, Arab and Islamic influences produced a distinctive civilization. This perspective influenced his famous concept of Africa’s “triple heritage,” developed in The Africans: A Triple Heritage. Swahili culture served as one of his strongest examples of Africa’s interaction with Islam and the wider world.

Ali Mazrui passed away in 2014. His legacy endures in African studies, Islamic thought and postcolonial political philosophy. He remains a major interpreter of Africa’s encounter with modernity and one of the leading Muslim intellectuals produced by the African continent.

History, The Modern Age

Islam in America

Nazeer Ahmed

Islam in America

The presence of Islam in North America is nearly as old as the European encounter with the New World. Historical records suggest that among the earliest transatlantic voyages under Spanish and Portuguese auspices were individuals of Muslim origin, including those fleeing the repression of the Spanish Inquisition. Although their presence was not always formally recorded as “Muslim” in colonial accounts, traces of Islamic identity can be detected in names, cultural practices and oral histories preserved in later narratives.

From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, the Atlantic slave trade brought millions of West Africans to the Americas. A significant proportion of these men and women came from regions where Islam was already well established, particularly in the Sahel and savannah zones of West Africa. While the brutal conditions of enslavement severely disrupted religious life, historical evidence indicates that Muslim literacy, devotional practices and Qur’anic learning persisted among enslaved populations for generations, leaving a subtle but enduring imprint on early African American history.

A further wave of Muslim presence emerged in the early twentieth century, particularly in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the First World War. Immigrants from former Ottoman territories in the Middle East—especially from Greater Syria—began to settle in North America, establishing some of the earliest organized Muslim communities and places of worship in the United States and Canada.

The most significant transformation, however, came after the immigration reforms of 1965, which removed earlier restrictive quotas. This change opened the door to large-scale migration from South Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa. Over the following decades, millions of Muslims arrived in North America, contributing to the rapid institutional development of mosques, schools, professional associations and cultural organizations.

At the same time, Islam in North America was shaped not only by immigration but also by conversion. Social and political dynamics within the United States—particularly struggles over race, identity and justice—led to significant numbers of African Americans and other citizens embracing Islam. Movements such as the Nation of Islam played a particularly visible role in this process, later intersecting with broader Sunni and global Islamic traditions.

As of the early twenty-first century, the Muslim population of the United States is generally estimated to be between three and six million, though exact figures vary depending on methodology and self-identification.

Our focus here is the intellectual, spiritual and organizational forces that shaped the growth of Islam in North America. We focus on the individuals, movements and historical dynamics that contributed most significantly to the establishment and evolution of Islam in the New World.

Malcolm X (1925-1964): Transformation Under Historical Stress  

Malik al-Shabaz (Malcolm X), was one of the most eclectic figures in twentieth-century Islam. A product of the American experience, he illuminated political discourse in North America by bringing to the forefront issues of justice, racial equality and ultimately, universal brotherhood. A brilliant orator, his disruptive eloquence contributed to the emotive emancipation of millions around the world. His legacy endures as one of the most dynamic spiritual transformations of the modern era and as a frontal confrontation with forces of injustice anywhere in the world.

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska. His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist minister and an activist influenced by the Pan-African ideas of Marcus Garvey. His mother, Louise Little, of Grenadian origin, struggled to keep the family together amid relentless racial hostility.

America was a land segregated along racial lines. Discrimination was rampant. The family was repeatedly targeted by white supremacist violence and persistent threats from the Ku Klux Klan. Eventually, they were forced to relocate. When Malcolm was still a child, his father died under suspicious circumstances, officially recorded as a streetcar accident. Many scholars and family members believed he was killed by white supremacists. Soon after, the family disintegrated under economic and emotional strain and his mother was institutionalized. The children were separated and placed into foster care.

This early fragmentation deeply shaped Malcolm’s psychological and political sensibility. He grew aware of a social order in which Black lives were devalued from birth. Even in school, he encountered institutional discouragement. A teacher dismissed his ambition to become a lawyer, advising him instead to pursue carpentry.

Adolescence unfolded across Boston and Harlem. He moved into a social environment shaped by gambling, hustling and drug economies. By 1946, at age twenty, he was arrested for burglary and sentenced to prison in Massachusetts. This moment marked the decisive rupture in the trajectory of his life.

Prison became Malcolm X’s intellectual laboratory. He was exposed to the teachings of the Nation of Islam, led by Elijah Muhammad. Through letters and disciplined study, he embraced the theology of the Nation of Islam that combined Black self-respect, moral discipline and a radical critique of white supremacy.

In addition, he started a process of intense self-education, copying dictionary entries and reading widely in history and philosophy. Language itself became his instrument of reconstruction. He later credited this period with giving him the intellectual discipline that defined his public speaking style.

Consistent with his new identity as a member of the Nation of Islam, he discarded his surname “Little,” which he regarded as a remnant of slavery and adopted the name “X,” symbolizing the erased African ancestral identity denied by the history of enslavement.

After his release from prison in 1952, Malcolm X rose rapidly through the ranks of the Nation of Islam. His oratory, organizational skill and intellectual clarity made him its most visible national figure. He expanded the movement across urban centers such as Harlem, Chicago and Detroit.

The Nation of Islam preached Black self-reliance, moral reform and racial separation. Malcolm’s speeches gave these ideas political force, particularly in communities experiencing systemic segregation and economic exclusion.

However, tensions developed within the organization. The Nation’s hierarchical structure concentrated authority in Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm’s growing national prominence created internal friction. 

The early 1960s marked a period of accelerating rupture. His comment on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, describing it as “chickens coming home to roost,” led to suspension from the organization. But the deeper crisis was ideological.

Malcolm had begun to question whether the Nation’s framework could account for the complexity of global racial and political realities. His critique of the mainstream Civil Rights Movement also left him increasingly isolated as he rejected integrationist strategies that he believed ignored structural inequality.

By 1964, the break became final. Malcolm X left the Nation of Islam and entered a new phase of intellectual and spiritual development.

The decisive transformation in Malcolm X’s worldview occurred during his pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca in 1964. This experience marked a profound rupture with the racial theology of the Nation of Islam.

During the Hajj, he experienced the universal brotherhood of man. He prayed alongside Muslims from Europe, Africa and Asia, men and women from all corners of world, black, white, brown and yellow, united in faith and united in devotion. This experience compelled him to question his views on racism. Malcom embraced orthodox Islam and adopted the name All-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, signaling both religious fulfillment and a reconstructed identity grounded in global Islam and African heritage

Following the Hajj, Malik al Shabaaz traveled extensively across Africa and the Middle East. He met political leaders, intellectuals and religious scholars who introduced him to Islam as a global civilization. These encounters exposed him to postcolonial political thought, Pan-Africanism and Islamic reform movements. He began to think of the African American struggle as a part of the broader global anti-colonial resistance.

Malik al-Shabazz’s intellectual transformation produced in him a new political vision. In 1964, he founded the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which situated the struggle of Black Americans within the broader international struggle for human rights. He identified colonialism, capitalism and racial domination as the root causes of that oppression.

This perspective connected him to liberation movements across Africa, Asia and Latin America. He became a figure of international stature, linking domestic racial injustice to global systems of power. In Africa, he was received as a spokesperson for linking racial oppression in the United States to colonial domination. His address to the Organization of African Unity in Cairo articulated African American struggle as part of a global liberation movement.

In the Muslim world, his adoption of orthodox Islam allowed him to enter transnational religious discourse. He was now a leader in the broader Islamic intellectual community. Across postcolonial societies, his evolving thought became a reference point for movements seeking to integrate religion, identity and anti-imperial politics.

Within Black political discourse, Malik al Shabaaz introduced a more radical internationalist framework. He rejected both assimilationist liberalism of Martin Luther King and the rigid separatism of the Nation of Islam, moving toward a model of global solidarity grounded in shared struggle against oppression.

His evolving global perspectives challenged both the Civil Rights Movement and American state institutions. Federal agencies intensified surveillance of his activities, concerned about his international connections and revolutionary rhetoric.

On February 21, 1965, Malik al Shabaaz was assassinated in Harlem while preparing to speak. He was thirty-nine years old. His death occurred at a moment when his intellectual influence was expanding globally. It transformed him into a martyr  whose ideas continued to circulate long after his life ended.

Malik al Shanaaz stood as a giant on the canvas of history. His life touched many ideological shores. Its significance lies in the human capacity for spiritual transformation under conditions of extreme historical pressure.

He began as Malcolm X, a voice of radical racial separatism within the Nation of Islam and ended as Malik al Shabaaz, a global Islamic leader articulating a universal framework of human rights and anti-colonial solidarity. In his death he became bigger than what he was in his life; it continues to shape debates on race, religion and justice in the modern world.

 

Reflections

Zohran Mamdani’s Primary Victory in New York: A Beacon of Inclusive Politics

Nazeer Ahmed

Dr. Nazeer Ahmed

I love New York. The City has always had a peculiar rhythm—a kind of vitality that can surprise you just when you think it’s run out of steam. These feelings are perhaps colored by nostalgia from decades bygone when we rented an apartment on the upper East side in the 1960s. We spent our weekends in the City away from the serenity of Princeton, where we lived and worked. We were young and for us New York was the city of Central Park, Fifth Avenue, Grand Central Station, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, the Islamic Center, the Philharmonic, Columbia University, NYU and the Met. 

Decades went by and the city that we once remembered for the  Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade became the city of 9/11, Islamophobia, anti-Arab, anti-immigrant jingoism. The shadows of time traversed the canvas of history. Friends passed on. New generations emerged. Where once  the headlines of the New York Times were about the Vietnam war and the bombing of Laos and Cambodia, they were now about Gaza and Palestine and Iran. The subway buzz was about immigration raids, homelessness and the cost of living. The City we once knew receded from our consciousness as if it was a dream from the distant past. 

So, when the internet flashed the news that Zohran Mamdani had won the Democratic primary in New York, it was as if a rose had suddenly blossomed from a withered rose bush. Mamdani is a Muslim of Ugandan Hindu-Muslim parentage with left-of-center political views. The opposition candidate was a well-known establishment politician, a former governor of New York, backed by reputed billionaires.

Mamdani’s victory was a result of his singular focus on affordability. His populist agenda included free transportation, government-run food stores, rent control, childcare and affordable housing. He spoke to the immigrant communities and  their fears. He reached out to the young through social media and listened to their concerns. On international issues of concern to New Yorkers, he was honest and forthright, unlike the hypocritical stance of the establishment on issues such as Gaza and Palestine. This was a breath of fresh air for New Yorkers and they responded to his call. 

The opposition campaign was ugly. It was characterized by Islamophobia and anti-immigrant paranoia, indeed outright racism. Mamdani was painted an anti-Semite, an untrustworthy bearded,  brown-skinned immigrant and a far left radical with socialist ideas who would overtax and drive away the wealthy and bankrupt the city. 

It is to the credit of New Yorkers that they saw through the propaganda. None of the xenophobic paranoia took hold. Mamdani won the primary. 

Mamdani’s victory is a minor revolution in the political history of the United States. How could the largest city in the US which is the financial hub of the capitalist world select a Muslim with South Asian ethnicity barely 24 years after 9/11? The reasons have to be sought beyond the jingoism of the news media. 

The United States  has entered a post-capitalist phase where the economic, political and social structure is like an inverted pyramid. It is creating a world of contrasts where a miniscule  minority controls the sinews of economic and political power while the voice of the masses is marginalized. Each year it churns out billionaires by the dozen but millions go to bed hungry every night. Taxation favors the rich. Politics is not responsive to the petitions of the masses. Democracy suffers while authoritarianism takes hold. Inflation is rampant. The currency is effectively devalued. Housing is unaffordable.  Technology, which creates wealth, is the privilege of the educated elite while the rank-and-file experience it as unemployment. These trends are global but they are most glaring in the United States, as it remains one of the two  richest countries in the world  and by far the most influential.

For a long time, the reality of an inexorable march towards economic and political centration was masked by the traditional media, controlled as they are by the establishment. This stranglehold on information has been broken by social media. More young people today get their news from social media than from the New York Times and the Washington Post. The jinx has been broken. Disaffection has set in. 

Mamdani correctly felt the pulse of the nation which beats with heightened intensity in New York City. His voice was authentic and his campaign was focused. The voters, particularly the young, responded in droves. 

The establishment has taken the Hamdani victory as if it is the onset of doomsday. The most virulent Islamophobic and racist innuendos are hurled at the youthful, 34- year-old, committed democrat. Millions are offered as enticement to any candidate who would challenge and win against Mamdani and scuttle his agenda. 

For American Muslims the New York primary ought to be a clarion call. In spite of their educational and economic clout, they have been hemmed in too long by Islamophobia and a suspicion of “otherness”. Internally, they are stuck in moribund debates on minutia and dead  issues. The core of Islam is excellence in service. It is God Almighty, may He be exalted, who commands: “I created not beings of fire and beings of clay except to serve and worship Me”. Muslims should come out of their cloisters and support the Mamdani campaign not because he is a Muslim but because his agenda calls for the upliftment of the common man. Affordable food and affordable housing are not just slogans for the Democratic party; they are core values of good administration. Lofty ideas do go through a transformation when they are implemented in the world of man. Politics, like chess, is a subtle game of finesse. At the other end, it is like walking through mud. Compromises are inevitable but American Muslims must stand firm on the ideals of excellence in service while building bridges with like- minded communities, whatever their faith may be, for the common good.

Mamdani’s success is the beginning of a long journey. A journey in which Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, atheists, and others walk together not as opponents in ideological combat but as partners in shaping a future where everyone can thrive. The yellow rose has bloomed once more in the city that never sleeps—and now it’s time to tend the garden together.

Reflections

Power versus Justice, A Peek into the Soul of Two Civilizations

Nazeer Ahmed

Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, Ph.D., MBA

Muslims have been at the receiving end of the stick. At least that is the perception among the Muslim rank and file. The belief has taken hold that for two hundred years the world of Islam has labored under the yoke of western colonialism, imperialism, exploitation and outright military aggression. The recent history of  Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Bosnia, Kosovo, the Horn of Africa and now Gaza is offered as manifest proofs for this position. 

In addition, Muslims are befuddled by the double standards of the West.  They struggle to comprehend how western nations talk of morality at home while inflicting the most painful punishment upon the people of Asia and Africa. How can they be so insensitive to the suffering of the people of Gaza?

To understand a civilization, one must look into its soul.  What fundamental ideas govern the behavior of a nation? Who were the great personages who influenced their history and molded their communal ethos?

These are broad questions. In this brief essay, we will limit our observation to the United States of America. 

The American Revolution was inspired by Enlightenment thinkers like Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau. Voltaire’s ideas of liberty, equality and individual rights appealed to the revolutionaries who were disillusioned with the arbitrary taxation by the ruling British. Rouss=eau’s ideas of social contract formed the foundation of the American Republic. Locke’s ideas of equality, liberty and the pursuit of happiness formed the preamble for the constitution. 

However, these lofty principles did not prevent the new republic from continued slavery defining a black man as three fifths of a white man for political representation or the mass slaughter of the indigenous Indian tribes. 

The same dichotomy in American policies persists to this day: those who are inside the tent experience a liberal governance while those outside the tent are treated as “the other” and subjected to a different set of rules. This was starkly manifest during the Vietnam war. While Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was noted for “Great Society” initiatives  including the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, Medicare and Medicaid, it was also noted for its devastating bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

To understand this dichotomy between internal and external politics in America, one must dive deeper into the impulses that drive its actions. While Locke, Voltaire and Rousseau provided the inspiration for the American Revolution, the actions of the new-found republic were driven by Machiavellian impulses for power and aggrandizement. While freedom, liberty and the common good, overlaid on a thin veneer of Christian ethics, governed the evolving American internal civil society, the raw exercise of power governed its behavior with “the other”. This is as true today as it was at the founding of the Republic. 

Machiavelli (d 1527) was a Florentine priest who lived at a convulsive time when Italy was divided between warring city states. The threat of external aggression from France, Spain or the Holy Roman Empire was ever-present. Machiavelli was employed for a while as a civil servant in the Florentine court but lost it in a power shuffle in 1512 and spent the rest of his life banished from the court. It was during these years of desperation that he composed his masterpiece The Prince which summarizes his political philosophy. 

To Machiavelli the end justifies the means. He wrote: “In politics and leadership, success justifies the means…..People forget the method if the results work in their favor…use both force and strategy, like the lion and the fox, power lies in combining strength and intelligence”.  On cruelty: “Cruelty is acceptable if it fosters the correct perception …….It should be inflicted all at once so that the shock is less resented. Benefits should be granted gradually so that people savor them more”.  On war:” War is the foundation of political power…..Control the balance of power. Delaying war only benefits your enemy….”. Deceptive reporting: “Control morale through narrative”. No fidelity to your friends: “Replace those who brought you to power with your own power.”. On leadership:  ” Leadership is not about being perfect. It is about being effective. Sticking rigidly to virtue can be dangerous in a world full of opportunities. It is better to be thought as bad and stay in power than to be praised and lose everything.”

These selected quotes speak for themselves. Muslims have a hard time coming to terms with the seemingly hypocritical behavior of the west because they walk into the domain of politics from a different framework. The Muslims framework is one of justice, as it was practiced by Omar ibn al Khattab and imbibed by sultans and emperors through the centuries. Rulership is considered a trust and the ruler a “shadow of God on earth” whose function it is to establish the divine patterns of justice on earth.  One of the masterpieces of Islamic approach to politics is the Siasat Nama, written by Nizam ul Mulk in 1092 at the height of Seljuk power.  He writes: “Justice is the glory of the faith and the power of the government; in it lies the prosperity of the nobility and the commons. It is the measure of all good things as God said: “He raised up the heavens and has established the balance”.  He offers Naushirvan, a Persian prince of antiquity as an example of a just king: : “He was a youth whose nature had been infused with justice from infancy; he recognized evil things as evil and he knew what was good…….He commanded that a chain should be set up with bells attached to it within the reach of even a seven year old so that any complainant who came to the court would not need to see a chamberlain; he would pull the chain and the bells would ring; Naushirvan would hear the bells, summon the person, hear the case and give justice.”  About the bad qualities that a ruler should avoid, Nizamul Mulk writes: “They are…..hatred, envy, pride, anger, lust, greed, desire, spite, mendacity, avarice, ill temper, cruelty, selfishness, hastiness, ingratitude and frivolity.”

The modern world is much more complex than the worlds in which Machiavelli and Nisam ul Mulk wrote. The modern world revolves around economic power backed up by military power. Statecraft, foreign relations, education, the media, indeed religion itself is beholden to economic power. In addition, the spread of authoritarianism around the globe has blurred the distinction between internal politics for the “common good” and external politics for “the other”. The United States is no exception to it. 

Power versus justice.  Two different paradigms.  Two different civilizations. When people express their horror at the slaughter in Gaza, they are looking for justice.  They forget that the governing paradigm for the west (and now the accepted paradigm for states the world over) is Machiavellian self-interest and power. Events are happening not because of neglect; they happen by design. In a rational discourse on current events the first dictum is: know yourself and know your adversary. 

 

Reflections

The Individual – Mujaddid of the Next Millennia

Nazeer Ahmed

Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, Ph.D., MBA

Civilizations are like stars in the heavens. They are born, shine with brilliance and then die out. Is the Islamic civilization on this track?

We live in extraordinary times. Humankind stands at a bend in history that may well decide its destiny on earth. Artificial intelligence has overpowered human intelligence. Wars are fought not by soldiers but by robots and drones that are devoid of compassion or mercy. Man has conquered space but the  specter of climate change and atomic war haunts humankind here at home. The world is in a flux with some civilizations on the rise, others in decline

Forces of economic centration rule the world. The system churns out billionaires by the dozen but millions go to bed hungry every night. The top one percent own more than fifty percent of the wealth of the globe. Billions struggle not to slide down the greasy pole into abject poverty.  Even the basic needs of food, shelter, security and meaningful work are beyond the reach of billions. 

Concomitant with economic centration is the rise of right-wing authoritarianism. As states arrogate more power to themselves, the individual is continually marginalized, with even the right to protest taken away from him. Global hegemonic powers encourage, cultivate and sustain these trends as they  are in sync with their own vision of a top-down world order. There is no countervailing power to restrain the hegemons. Efforts at correcting this course of history are mercilessly crushed. 

The world of Islam is caught up in the turbulence of these galactic changes and is tossed up and down like a cork in a mighty river. A crescent of destruction stretches from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, the Sudan, the Horn of Africa to Libya and beyond. 

The situation is not new. It has been an inexorable process since 1684 when the Ottomans retreated from Vienna while Aurangzeb promulgated his Futuwat and changed the direction of Islamic civilization from Taqwa to Fatwa. It is instructive to remember that it was circa 1684 that Sir Isaac Newton published his Laws of Motion and propelled the western world into the modern scientific age. Far from influencing the flow of history, no Muslim nation is even invited to the table while the hegemons carve up the world into spheres of influence. The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 was not the only example; it has happened, time and again. 

The reasons for this dismal state are both external and internal. Since the Napoleonic wars (1798-1815), the western powers have acted in unison, first to dismember the Ottoman empire and then to carve up Asia and Africa into their colonial empires. The modern hegemon actively works to prevent the emergence of any competing power or a combination of powers, Muslim or non-Muslim that could challenge them. The decimation of the Iraqi industrial base (2003-2007) is a case in point. 

The external powers would not be successful if the Muslims were not so divided among themselves. The Islamic world shows every sign of moral exhaustion at the corporate and state level. It shows up as corruption at every level. Demagogues rule. Dissent is silenced. Mediocracy prevails. Education is sterile and stagnant. Critical thinking absent. Innovation zero. Institutions dead. Economics subservient. State after state a basket case. Ijtihad bogged down in minutia such as the length of the beard. The mullah, the bureaucrat, the politician are all beholden to the glitter of gold, ready to mortgage themselves and their countries to the highest bidder. 

Many are the attempts that have been made over the last two hundred years to arrest this decline. The Ottoman Tanzeemat (1839-1876) were the first attempt. Iran witnessed the Revolutions of 1906 and 1979. Iqbal’s writings led to the creation of Pakistan. Mohammed Abduh of Egypt, Jamaluddin al Afghani, Maududi and Zia Gokalp were notable reformers. However, success was limited because the human material to sustain them was absent. 

You cannot build a Taj Mahal with sand. You need marble to build a Taj Mahal. Corrupt individuals cannot build a pious society. Only pious individuals, working together, can build a pious community “enjoining what is good, forbidding what is evil and believing in God.” 

Cozying up to western ideologies has been a grand failure. Muslims have tried capitalism, communism, socialism, nationalism, Arabism, Baathism and hybrids thereof. None succeeded. The Islamic body politic could not digest alien ideas that had no roots in its own intellectual landscape. This has been true since the days of the Mu’tazalites in the eighth century.

So, people ask: what should we do in these turbulent and uncertain times to avoid the fate of civilizations that have disappeared?

The Qur’an has answered this question: “Throughout time, humankind is at a loss except such as those who have faith, engage in righteous action and work together for justice and reinforce one another with patience and constancy”. Mevlana Rumi answered this question thus: “Yesterday, I was smart and I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise and I decided to change myself”. This advice is as valid today as it was eight hundred years ago. Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves. 

It is a recurring theme in Islamic history that at the end of each millennia there is renewal. The next renewal of Islamic civilization is unlikely to come from Casablanca or Karachi. It is unlikely to come from superman. It is going to come from the individual, namely, YOU!  Its basis is the Qur’an and the Seerah of the Prophet. I paraphrase this thesis with the acronym SeeC, that is S…e…e…C, the S stands for spirituality, the first e is for education, the second e for economics and the C is for cooperation. 

Spirituality connotes Iman, Adl and Ehsan. Iman (Faith) starts with Taqwa and finds its expression in Ehsan. Worship is its essence, excellence in service is its methodology. An unceasing struggle for Al Haqq (Truth, Justice) is its process. As a search for the Truth, it finds its expression in science and culture. As a struggle for justice, it finds its expression in public life. 

The basis of civilizational renewal is individual transformation. Taqwa is a first step in this process. What is Taqwa? Taqwa is something like rocket science. Just as you build a light shield in a space telescope to keep straylight out and focus on the light of a distant star, taqwa is a shield to keep away all the distractions of the world and focus on the light from Allah. With the Divine light comes tranquility of heart, peace of mind and awareness of the Asma ul Husna, the most beautiful Names and Attributes of Allah. That is why Taqwa is often translated as God-consciousness or simply as piety. 

Taqwa is a priceless jewel from the treasure house of Divine Grace. Its purpose is the transformation of the Self so that it becomes a reflector of divine light. It applies to the individual, the family, the community, the nation and the world. It is the garment for the people of paradise, the shield of the Awliya, the ladder of the believer and the goal of the visionary. 

Build your families on the foundation of Taqwa. The family is the foundation of a civilization. When the family falls apart, a civilization crumbles. That is the crisis of the modern man. 

Most important is the application of Taqwa to economics. What drives modern global civilization is economics. The farmer, the merchant, the teacher, the preacher, the employee and the employer are all beholden to the money lender. The issue is global and it transcends the Islamic world. It is a difficult issue. 

What is a Muslim family to do in the face of such galactic forces of centration? Start with good economics at home.  Inculcate taqwa. Practice moderation. Avoid consumption debt. Choose whose products you buy and who you give your money to. Encourage Muslims to enter business. Establish circles of Muslim-owned businesses in each community. Help one another with good business counsel and shared experience. Save and invest wisely. That is Taqwa. In addition to a good education, guide the youth on how to navigate a fast-changing technological world driven by Artificial Intelligence.

The existential destiny of Islamic civilization is with the individual. Every Muslim is a potential Mujaddid of the next millennia. Imagine a world illuminated by a billion points of light.  This is a paradigm shift. It is a compulsion of modern history. 

Excel in knowledge. Practice sound economics with taqwa. Build bridges of cooperation with trustworthy individuals and communities on the basis of Ehsan. 

Every human occupies a unique position in the grand architecture of divine purpose. Every human is a streak of light across the canvas of human history. Write on this canvas with the light of Iman, A’dl and Ehsan.  

 

Reflections

Spiritual Impressions of the Hajj

Nazeer Ahmed

(Written on September 28, 1977)

Prof. Dr. Nazeer Ahmed, Ph.D, MBA

And perform the Hajj and Umrah for the sake of Allah”, Al Baqra (2:196)

Summary: 

The Hajj is many institutions in one. The donning of Ihram, recitation of Talbiya, performance of Tawaf and Sai’, the well of Zamzam, stay at Mina, the gathering on the Plain of Arafat, visit to Muzdalifa, the stoning of Shaitan at Jumrat and Tawaf al Wida, each is an institution in itself, replete with oceans of wisdom.

At its transcendent level, the Hajj is a discovery of the “secret” of Adam which is enshrined in three letters Ain-Ray-Fe from which the word Arafat is derived. Ain stands for Ilm (Knowledge). Ray stands for Ruya (to witness). Fe stands for Fahima (to comprehend). The “secret” of Adam is in his recognition of Divine Names. All other knowledge springs from it. This knowledge is what makes us human. It is this knowledge that enables us to recognize the Brotherhood of Man, as manifest on the Plain of Arafat.

On the plain of Arafat one comes face to face with the Knowledge of al Asma ul Husna that Allah infused into the spirit of Adam, comprehends the inner dimensions of this knowledge and becomes a witness to it. One who attains this level of knowledge becomes an ‘Arif, a person who has attained ‘Irfan or Inner Knowledge.

To live as a “Muslim” is to live in a state of surrender to Divine presence, to worship Him and serve Him. The supreme majesty of Allah is asserted by a Muslim five times a day when he faces the Qibla (the direction of prayer), lifts his hands, and says with conviction: “Allahu Akbar” (Allah is Greater). Like the rhythm of the heartbeat that sustains life this invocation is recited by a Muslim with a daily rhythm until that heart ceases to beat and life returns to its Creator.

Total Surrender to God

That a Muslim lives in a state of surrender to the Divine does not make him oblivious to the life of this world.   Indeed, he is commanded by the Almighty Creator and Sustainer to seek the bounty of this world, to enjoy all that is good and to live in a state of equity, justice and balance. Thus, all relationships that make life meaningful, those within the family, the community and with fellow men area not only permitted but are encouraged. A Muslim therefore spends some of his resources, his time and his energy in sustaining himself and some in the remembrance of Allah.

But there is time when a Muslim rises above all mundane relationships, dons the robes of a mendicant and goes forth in the presence of the Almighty, reciting:

Labbaik, Allahumma Labbaik…….

Here I am O Lord; here I am!

Here I am, You Who has no partners, here I am!

Verily, to You (alone) belongs all prayer,

And Yours is the Bounty, Yours the Sovereignty;

You who has no partners!

The soul reaches out to its Creator at His Command, asking for His forgiveness and His bounty. The veils are lifted, the pristine proximity between man and God is approached and the Self is showered with bounties which may not be accessible to it in its mundane earthly existence.  It is the occasion when man and God reach out for each other, the one in supplication, humility and prayer, the other in Benevolence, Compassion and Mercy. It is the occasion when man is closest to Allah. This occasion is the Hajj.

To undertake the Hajj is to rise above this world and to aspire to heaven. A pilgrim begins his journey by offering sincere repentance of his misdeeds and by resolving not to commit an excess again, by undertaking to live his remaining days on earth as a Muslim with ‘Adl (justice) and Ehsan (beautiful deeds). He pays off his creditors and puts his assets in trust. He leaves provisions for his loved ones and provides for his own journey through lawful means. He prays to the Almighty for the safety of his dear ones and for his own safety and sets out to answer to the call of his Creator. All earthly preoccupations are left behind, all relationships forgotten save the one between him and his Creator.

Demonstration of Takbir

The Hajj is a concrete demonstration of Allahu Akbar (Allah is greater).  The pristine relationship between the human and God is one of ‘Abd and ‘Abid (one who worships and the One Who is worshiped, or, the servant and One Who is served).  This relationship is primordial, infinitely and immeasurably greater than every other relationship. It is more basic than the relationship with one’s family, friends and community.  By leaving behind all of these for the sake of Allah, a Muslim gives a positive, concrete demonstration of Takbir.

To undertake the Hajj is to reassert the Divine Unity, Tawhid, as has been done from that pristine moment when the consciousness of that Unity was bestowed upon man. To undertake the Hajj is to transcend one’s time and reach out for that time when the Supreme Law, “There is no god but God” was revealed to man. To undertake the Hajj is to renew the surrender (of the Self) to the Creator as was done by the First Man, Adam.

The ceremonies of the Hajj did not start with Muhammed (pbuh) although they were perfected by him. The ceremonies of Hajj go back to that moment when the First Man declared: “You are my Lord and I will worship none but You.” And for this worship Allah favored him with the knowledge to build a house of worship.

“The First House of worship constructed for humankind was that at Becca (Mecca), full of blessings (for men) and as a guidance to all the worlds.” (3:96)

To visit the First House built for worship of Allah is to recall that moment when the consciousness of the Supreme Being first dawned upon man.  It is to celebrate that moment when the highest Moral Law “La Ilaha Il Allah” (there is none worthy of worship but Allah) was infused into man, like a flash of lightning, in a moment of sublime transcendence. To visit the First House of worship is to thank the Almighty for the guidance He provided man, for without this guidance man would forever be at loss.

The Ka’aba

The construction of the Ka’aba predates history. It is shrouded in the same layers of prehistoric times as is the origin of man It is at this confluence of time and man that the erection of the structure of the Ka’aba takes place. It is asserted that the First Man, Adam, built the House of Allah, and worshiped and glorified His Name in it. As is the case with all knowledge, the knowledge for the construction of the House of Worship was given to the First Man by Allah. Ages went by and the Ka’aba was destroyed by the Great Flood and all that remained of it was a heap of rubble. Then came a time when the consciousness of the Supreme Law was re-infused into man, this time in the person of Ibrahim (pbuh). The sensitive soul of Ibrahim searched the skies, the stars, the moon and the sun for its Creator. This search was rewarded with the illumination: “There is no god but God.” Thereafter, his long and eventful life was governed by a single credo that of total submission to the Will of Allah. He was a Muslim par excellence, an Ummah of one. His extensive travels took him to the land of Egypt where he took his second wife, Hajira (May Allah be pleased with her). In time, a son, Ismail (pbuh) was born to Hajira. By an act of faith, Ibrahim (pbuh) proceeded to the valley of Mecca to leave Hajira and Ismail there. And as he departed from Mecca, he prayed:

“O my Lord, I have made some of my offspring to dwell in a valley without cultivation, by Your Sanctified House, in order O our Lord, that they may establish regular prayer. So fill the heart of some among men with love towards them and feed them with fruits so they may give thanks.” (14:37)

After Ibrahim (pbuh) left, Hajira was left to fend for herself and her infant son. Driven by thirst, she left the infant next to the Sanctified House and climbed up a hill to look for water. There was no water. She ran to an adjacent hill hoping to find water there. And as she ran she prayed to the Almighty for His compassion. When she had thus struggled a long time, running from one hill to the other, beseeching Allah for sustenance, she saw water spring forth from under a rock near where the infant was left. In her elation she cried out: “Zumi ya mubaraka!”  (Stop! O blessed gift of Providence!). She thanked the Provider that He had rewarded her struggle and the mother and child drank to their heart’s content

The Sanctified House

As Ismail grew to manhood, the patriarch Ibrahim returned to pay him a visit, and at the command of Allah, to build a house where only He would be worshiped. Father and son worked together to raise the foundation of the House on the site where the Ancient House stood:

“Behold! We gave the site to Ibrahim, of the (Sanctified) House, (saying): ‘Associate not anything (in worship) with Me. And sanctify My House for those who compass it round, or stand up, or bow, or prostrate themselves (therein in prayer).

“And proclaim the pilgrimage among humankind. They will come to you on foot and (mounted) on every kind of camel, lean on account of journeys through deep and distant highways that they may witness the benefits (provided) for them, and celebrate the name of Allah through the days appointed… (22:26-28). “

In this Sanctified House only the name of Allah was to be invoked. All associations with His name were to be discarded. Man was to rule the created word as the khalifa (representative), answerable to and worshiping his Creator alone.

But Allah does not let the belief of his worshipers go untested. Ibrahim (pbuh) received a Divine Command in a vision to offer his only son as sacrifice:

“Then, when (the son) reached (the age of serious) work with him, he said: “O my son! I see in vision that I offer you in sacrifice. Now see what is your view.” (Ismail) said: “O my father! Do as you are commanded. You will find me, if Allah so wills, one practicing patience and constancy. (37:102)”

When father and son had submitted themselves to the Creator, they proceeded towards a hill where the sacrifice was to be carried out. On his way, Ibrahim (pbuh) was tempted by Iblis (Satan) to desist from his undertaking whispering to him that the vision was not a divine vision. Ibrahim (pbuh) was steadfast in his faith and paid no heed to the satanic mechanizations. And when father and son were ready for sacrifice Ibrahim (pbuh) heard the Divine Revelation:

“You have already fulfilled the vision. (37:102)

Ages passed and the House of Allah again became a house for idols. It remained so until the Almighty in His Compassion and Mercy for man, sent down the Qur’an and showed the way again to a lost humanity. The Messenger this time was Muhammed (pbuh). In his last pilgrimage the Prophet Muhammed laid out the rites that men were to perform in commemoration of the Blessings of the Almighty on Adam, on Ibrahim and Ismail, and on Muhammed (peace be upon them) and through them on all those who submit unreservedly to Him. They were to come, men and women, from all nations, from lands far and near, on foot , by sea and by air, to reassert the Unity of Allah, to ask for His forgiveness and His Bounty just as Adam and Ibrahim and Hajira and Muhammed (peace be upon them) had done before them.

Talbiya: Here I am O Lord!

When the pilgrim sets out on his journey, he remembers the favors of Allah on His Messengers and eagerly awaits that time where he may walk the same hallowed earth that the Messengers did. Neither the difficulties of the journey nor the absence of dear ones, neither hunger nor thirst dilutes this zeal. His anticipation increases as he approaches Meeqat, dons the Ihram and recites the Talbiya: Here I am O lord! Here I am …..”” Like the soul returning to its Creator the pilgrim hearkens to the call of the Lord to shed all that is dear to him and undertaking to celebrate only His praise.

The first sight of the hills around Mecca fills his heart with awe and humility. Upon the sight of Mecca the pilgrim offers a humble prayer beseeching the Almighty to accept His presence in the sanctuary as a token of his submission to His Will, to forgive him and to admit him to the company of those who earned His pleasure. When he is in this city his heartbeat quickens with anticipation. He cannot bear to wait for that moment when he enters the Haram (the Sanctified House) and presents himself. He literally runs in thrilled enthusiasm. The first sight of the Haram makes him recite Talbiya that much more. It makes him say Darud and Istaghfar humbly, quietly. He is now within sight of the Sanctified House. His movements quicken and with tears swelling his eyes he enters the First House of Allah.

Here at last he is, on the same ground trodden by Adam and Ibrahim and Hajira and Ismail and Muhammed (peace be upon them) and his Companions. Here at last he is on the blessed ground that witnessed the first prayer of man to His Creator. Here at last he is on the ground where Ibrahim prayed, where Hajira beseeched Allah for His bounty, where Ismail submitted and where Muhammed (peace be upon them) preached.  He wonders if this is all real, if he is truly where he had so much longed to be. He declares: Labbaik, Allahumma Labbaik, and with sure quick steps merges himself into the multitudes circumambulating the Ancient House. Whatever goodness Allah has given him pours forth. Whatever evil lurked within him evaporates. He walks like a pure spirit, almost imperceptibly, in utter awe of the place and of his proximity to it, submitting himself in his totality to the Almighty, the Compassionate, Merciful. Without the slightest conscious effort he lifts his hands as he approaches Rukn-Yamani and recites: Bismillahi, Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahil-Hamd (In the Name of Allah, Allah is the Greatest; all praise be to Him) and moves along with the flow of the worshipers. Almost imperceptibly he finds himself moving ever closer to the Blessed House. He is here in the audience of Allah and all else is wiped away from his consciousness. He feels the radiations in the space, from those around him, yes even the hot sun feels soothing and comforting. He keeps his shoulders high, chest heaved forward as the Prophet taught him to do and walks with firm steps in due humility.

Gradually and slowly he becomes conscious of the thousand faces around him imploring Allah in a thousand languages for His forgiveness and asking for His bounty. There is no king here and no servant, no nobleman and no lowly beggar. Each one is here in the same garb wrapped in two unsewn sheets, just as he would be if he were to meet his Lord in death, equal in the eyes of God, and equal in the eyes of man. Differences of tongues and manner, of origin and color all disappear. All that remains is that pristine humanity facing Allah in a one to one relationship.

Sa’i: Dynamism of Tawwaf

The pilgrim pauses at Hijr-e-Aswad hoping he might get near enough to kiss it. But the dynamics of the throng prevents him. He moves on. He sees Bab-e-Multazim. He tries to pause and offer a silent prayer for himself, for his dear ones and for those who believe. He moves on. He sees young strong men walking slowly, humbly, with bowed heads. He sees old men, their faces shimmering with tears of repentance. He sees ladies, their faces radiant with Noor-e-Ilahi, praying for their sons. He keeps moving almost riveted to the rhythm of the throngs. He makes his way towards the place of Ibrahim where that Messenger and his son stood when they laid the foundation of the Ka’aba. When he completes circumambulating the Ka’aba seven times he stops here again, offers two Rakats of Nafl prayers and offers his thanks to the Almighty for his benevolence in that He brought him to this Blessed House.

The pilgrim now moves to the well of Zamzam to drink of its water and to recall the Mercy of Allah on a desperate mother and a helpless child. From there to Safa and Marwa for Sa’i which means struggle.  The pilgrim walks the distance between the hillocks of Safa and Marwa seven times much as Hajira did in search of water. He runs part of that distance simulating the struggle of a mother in search of Allah’s Mercy. As he does so, the pilgrim recalls with gratitude that all the struggles of man can be answered by the Mercy of Allah alone and no one else.  In answer to the struggle of a desperate mother Divine compassion brought forth water from under a rock. In much the same way, in answer to sincere struggle, Divine Light shines on hearts hard as rock, mellowing and turning them into founts of abundance. Struggle precedes compassion. That is the message of Sa’i.  Therein lies the dynamism of Islam. The pilgrim resolves to struggle for the rest of his life seeking the bounty of Allah both in this world and in the Hereafter. He resolves to dedicate himself to the service of justice, balance and truth, as a Muslim, so that truth prevails in the land.

After the first Tawwaf  till the time he proceeds to Mina for the rites of Hajj, the pilgrim visits Baitullah, time and again for prayer and meditation. The great mosque that surrounds the Ka’aba is a magnificent monument to the aspiration of man towards Allah. It is an imposing structure which, like the Ka’aba itself, overwhelms you, yet which liberates you from all worries and bestows upon you inner peace and tranquility. During the cool nights of the winter months when the midnight moon shines on the great mosque, the Harem takes on a transcendental character. It is as if the balmy rays of the moon bear witness to the million voices that rise up from this House declaring His Oneness, bowing to His Will and worshiping Him and Him alone. In those moments, in the hours of the late night, the world fades from your consciousness and the reality that pervades all creation stands forth as clearly as your consciousness can bear.

In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Stay at Mina

The rites of the Hajj start with donning the ehram, pronouncing the Talbiya and doing the Tawwaf. But the greatest event of this undertaking, namely, the gathering in Arafat, begins with a stay in Mina. The pilgrim fortifies himself with prayer for the great experience that awaits him. In Mina lies the mosque of Khaif. The Prophet stayed in this mosque during this last pilgrimage. On the morning of the 9th of Dhul Hajj the pilgrim gets up early and offers his Fajr prayers in this mosque. When the prayers are over the entire mosque resonates to the sounds of Labbaik, Allahumma Labbaik and the resonance of the million voices echoes from the hills of Mina.

From here the pilgrim proceeds to Arafat. This journey provides one of the most moving spectacles that the eye can behold. Here one sees a mass of humanity, on the move from the hills of Mina to the Plain of Arafat. They move, on foot, on the backs of animals, by car and by bus. By the tens of thousands one sees them, moving swiftly like a mighty river speeding towards its destination. It is an endless flow of humanity all headed towards an audience with the Lord of the worlds. Witnessing this tide of mankind one cannot but feel in one’s bones the truth of the Prophet’s saying: On the Day of Arafat Allah comes down to the lowest heaven so that He may shower His servants with His Bounty.

After the eye witnesses this great march for mile upon mile, it catches the first glimpse of the Plain of Arafat. Here spreads out a tent city the likes of which are unknown anywhere on this globe. It is a vast carpet of tents woven together and laid out from horizon to horizon. The Plain of Arafat stretches out holding forth countless souls in supplication before Allah. Beyond the plain lie the mountain chains, layer upon layer of them, inviting the eye to behold ever wider horizons.

Arafat literally means knowledge, recognition, witness and comprehension. It is a recognition of the Names (the Asma ul Husna, the most beautiful Divine Names) that Allah taught Adam. It symbolizes the knowledge and recognition that Allah gave to Adam and Eve. Hence it is a reminder of the common origin of all mankind. When Adam and Eve prayed to Allah Almighty to forgive their lapse, Allah forgave them and gave them knowledge and recognition of each other. Adam and Eve stood in prayer and thanked the Almighty for His Compassion and Mercy. Here on the plain of Arafat gather the sons and daughters of Adam, from all corners of this earth, to reassert their common humanity and to thank Allah for His Munificence.

Declaration of Brotherhood and Sisterhood of Humankind 

The pilgrim recalls that exalted moment when Allah created man “in the best of molds” and the moment when He made earth the habitat for this genre. This great gathering is a celebration of the presence of man on earth and of Allah’s gifts to him. On this day of knowledge and recognition the pilgrims re-assert the commonality and brotherhood of man and recall the declaration of the Qur’an:

“O mankind! Be aware of your Creator and Sustainer Who created you from a single Soul, created, of like nature his mate, and from them scattered countless men and women. Be aware of Allah from Whom you demand your mutual (rights), and (be aware of) the wombs (that bore you) for Allah ever watches over you. (4:1)”

The Hajj is thus a moving declaration of the brotherhood of man. On top of Jablur Rahma (the Mount of Mercy), which is located to one side of the plain of Arafat, stands a single pillar as a monument to the knowledge and recognition bestowed upon man and woman.

Camping at Arafat is essential for Hajj. Indeed, Arafat is the Hajj. The other important requirements, namely the donning of Ehram, Talbiya, Tawwaf are included in the Umrah but Arafat is what makes the difference between Hajj and Umrah. Looked at another way, this great gathering of men and women, dedicated to the recognition and knowledge that they are all human beings with a common origin, an Ummah united in obedience to and worship of the Creator, the Sovereign, the Lord of the worlds, constitutes the core of the Hajj.

The Last Sermon

It was in the Plain of Arafat that the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) prayed like a mendicant asking for Allah’s mercy on his Ummah. It was at the foot of Jablur Rahma that the Prophet delivered his last sermon:

….”O Men, listen well to my words, for I do not know whether I shall meet you again on such an occasion in the future. O men, your lives and your property shall be inviolate until you meet your Lord. The safety of your lives and of your property shall be as inviolate as this holy day and holy month. Remember that you will indeed meet your Lord and that He will indeed reckon your deeds. Thus do I warn you. Whoever of you is keeping a trust of someone else shall return that trust to that rightful owner. All interest obligations shall henceforth be waived…you will neither inflict nor suffer inequity.

…..”O men, to you a right belongs with respect to your women and to your women a right with respect to you…Do treat your women well and be kind to them, for they are your partners and committed helpers. Remember that you have taken them as your wives and enjoyed their company.…”

…..All humankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. Learn that every Muslim is a brother to every Muslim and that the Muslims constitute one brotherhood. Nothing shall be legitimate to a Muslim which belongs to a fellow Muslim unless it was given freely and willingly. Do not, therefore, do injustice to yourselves…..”

….”…..I am leaving you with the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Messenger. If you follow them you will never go astray….

It was here in the plain of Arafat that the last Ayah of the Qur’an was revealed:

“This day have I perfected your Deen, completed my favor upon you and have chosen for you Islam as your Deen. (5:4).”

The pilgrim recalls the association of God’s favors with this hallowed ground.  He stands in his tent invoking the compassion of God. He proceeds towards the Mount of Mercy, and lifting his hands towards the heavens asks for the forgiveness of his sins and of his loved ones and for the bounty of God in this life and in the Hereafter. Emotions swell in him as he realizes how the Almighty has befriended Him and has conferred His favors upon him by giving him this opportunity to be a witness to this great gathering dedicated to the worship of God and the brotherhood of man.

Jumraat, the Sacrifice, Tawwaf e Wida

The pilgrim proceeds to Muzdalifa and participates in the symbolic stoning of three pillars to commemorate the encounter and triumph of prophet Ibrahim (pbuh) over Satan. Jumraat celebrates the triumph of the will of man over the enticements of evil. Iblis never tires of his whisperings to sow the seeds of doubt in the deepest recesses of the human soul and take man away from the path of God. The will of man, when it is in consonance with the Will of God, conquers evil. Abraham was on his way to sacrifice his son Ismail at the command of God. Iblis accosts him on the way and whispers that what Abraham had heard was not the voice of God. Abraham “throws a stone” at him, forcibly rejecting the whisperings of Iblis.  

Eid ul Adha is the Eid of sacrifice. It commemorates that sublime moment when man in the person of Ibrahim (pbuh) resolved to break off the closest relationship between a father and son and chose to listen to the Voice of the One Who is beyond all relationships. There are layers of sublime lessons in this event. Abraham was an ummah of one. His illustrious life was constantly in search of Tawhid. Recall how Abraham searched the heavens, looked at the stars, the moon and the sun, and in each case decided that they were not worthy of worship because they set. In other words, each of the heavenly bodies was subject to celestial laws; each was subject to a relationship. God is the Giver of Laws; He is beyond all relationships. Allahu Ahad. Allahu Samad. The sacrifice is a reaffirmation of Tawhid. 

The pilgrim offers a sacrifice to remember the trials and the sacrifice offered by Ibrahim and Ismail (peace be upon them).  He returns to Mecca with a heart suffuse with the Light that comes from the presence of Allah, performs the last Tawwaf and bids farewell to the Sanctified House.

Visit to Madina, the City of Light

Madina is the city of the Prophet. It is also called the city of Light. A visit to Madina is not a requirement of the Hajj. But how can you come so close and stay so far from the blessed earth where the Messenger of God lies entombed? A visit to this city is full of the choicest blessings. It is here that the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) gave concrete form to the ideal life which until then was only a concept. It was in Madina that the first mosque was built and it was this city that witnessed the struggle to establish justice on earth.

To travel from Mecca to Madina is to retrace in part the footsteps of the Prophet. Although the route is serviced by a first-class road, the sensitive Hajji can still catch a vibration or two of the epic journey of the Messenger of God. The road may be paved but the hills are still the same. The pilgrim may travel by car but the stars and the moon are the same. On a cool winter night, he can look up the clear Arabian sky and see that panorama of brilliant stars that must have borne witness to the safety of the Prophet. It was this same gathering of heavenly lights that heard the Revelation “By the Star as it sets.”  The moon follows the pilgrim along the entire route, as a companion, as if it too is on its way to Madina.

If he is fortunate, the pilgrim will arrive in Madina in the early hours of morning. The city of Light shimmers in the light of the rising sun giving it an enticing, enigmatic appearance. As the eyes witness this enchanting sight, Darud springs up from the depths of your heart.

The Hajji may decide to visit the Mosque of Quba first, before he visits the mosque of the Prophet. Quba is located about three miles from Masjid-un-Nabawi. It was here that the Prophet camped before he entered Madina. The pilgrim recalls that Abu Bakr (r) accompanied the Prophet on his journey. Ali (r) had stayed behind in Mecca to confound the would-be assassins of the Prophet and to return all the trusts that the Prophet held. After he had successfully accomplished both, Ali (r) walked on foot in the mid-summer heat the entire 430 kilometers from Mecca to Madina and joined the Prophet at Quba. What fortitude did those Companions possess!

The mosque of Quba is the first mosque of Islam. The Prophet helped build it with his own hands. The Prophet said: “If a man performs ablution and prays two rakats here, then his prayer is equal (in beneficence) to an Umrah.” This saying of the Prophet is inserted on the mehrab (niche) of the mosque.

From here the pilgrim heads to Haram-e-Nabawi. On the road he observes that here, in the city of the Prophet, the pace is slower as compared to Mecca, the sun more temperate, the surroundings greener. The Prophet’s mosque, looked at from a distance, reflects this soothing, inviting character. It invites you, entices you, beckons you to its hallowed precincts.

The mosque of the Prophet is the most revered one after Masjid al Haram in Mecca.  It was from here that the Prophet inspired, guided, molded and established an Ummah “enjoining what is good, forbidding what is evil and believing in Allah.”  The hills of Mecca heard the beginnings of the Divine Message. The valley of Madina saw its fulfillment and its fruition. God spoke to man in Mecca infusing into his consciousness the Eternal Message. God spoke to man in Madina guiding him to establish the kingdom of God on earth.

The pilgrim walks to the mosque, his mind filled with these thoughts, his heart brimming with happiness. As he enters the mosque he offers his salaam to the Prophet. A visit to the enclosed area where stood his house follows. As he approaches the Prophet’s tomb the following Ayah flashes through his mind:

“Wa ma arsal naka illa rahmatal lil Alameen – And We sent thee not except as a mercy to all the universes”.

Recollections of the Prophet’s life flash through the pilgrim’s mind. The Prophet’s early life, the first Revelation at Jabl-e-Noor, his call to Tawheed, the ridicule, abuse and persecutions in Mecca, attempted assassination, the Hijra, the welcome of the Ansar, the establishment of this mosque, the building of an Ummah, the attacks of the Mushrikeen and the Munifiqeen, the sacrifices of the Companions, his rectitude through years of trial, his triumphant return to Mecca, his generosity and forgiveness of his former foes, the last Pilgrimage and the sermon at Jablur Rahman in the plain of Arafat. With humility and reverence, the pilgrim offers his salaam to the Prophet and recites the Darud.

Now that he has completed the Hajj and has partaken of the blessings of a visit to Prophet’s mosque, the pilgrim returns to his land, his family, his village and his town, wherever it may be in the far corners of the earth, to spread that light of brotherhood, peace and love that he acquired as a Hajji.

 

Education - A Historical Look

History, Science and Faith in Islamic Education

Nazeer Ahmed

Dr. Nazeer Ahmed

Note: This presentation was made at the Diaspora Forum in Washington, DC on April 2, 2022, and is available on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mji67cvgsmk&t=2438s

We live in extraordinary times. These are times when human progress is limited only by the speed of light and the human capacity to absorb change. Humankind has conquered space and searches for life on other planets. Giant telescopes seek to unlock the very origin of the known universe. Terms such as Space Travel, the Theory of Relativity and the Big Bang have entered into common discourse. Machine learning and robotics drive cutting edge technologies and seek to replace human reasoning with artificial intelligence. Indeed, we are now headed into a post-human world in which the very essence of being human is challenged.


Yes, these are extraordinary times. Economic centration, driven by the inexorable forces of globalization produces billionaires by the day while millions go to bed with a hungry stomach. Within this global context, the story of India is a special case. While Indian rockets reach out to Mars, hundreds of millions cannot afford a meal a day. In this matrix of poverty, the Muslims in India are a marginalized minority hemmed in not only by the global forces of economic centration but also by the well-financed global Islamophobia industry and the incessant hammering from Hindutva forces. Similar is the case with the Dalits and other marginalized groups. It is with this background that we approach the topic under discussion today, namely, History, Science and Faith in Islamic Education. The subject is deep and the terrain is vast. All we can do in the next 40 minutes is to survey this vast terrain, whet our appetite, anchor our observations on historical benchmarks, connect the dots, ask questions and learn from them as we go.

The epistemology of knowledge

Knowledge is a gift from God. It is one and indivisible. It is not denied to anyone. Its ultimate purpose is to find the Truth. There is no such thing as Western knowledge, Eastern Knowledge, Christian Knowledge, Jewish Knowledge, Hindu Knowledge, Muslim Knowledge, Secular Knowledge and Religious Knowledge. These are all specific wavelengths in the composite spectrum that constitutes the totality of Knowledge. Each wavelength brings out a different color of the ultimate truth. As such, each one is valid within its own context and its own assumptions. A man of Truth is one who is open to the vistas that are offered at different wavelengths.
Education embraces the means, methods and processes for acquiring knowledge. What is knowledge? What is its purpose? How does the human learn? These are profound philosophical questions that have challenged the sages through the ages. They relate to the most basic question:

What makes us human?

This presentation focuses on Islamic education. As such it brings with it its own doctrinal, historical, philosophical and cultural assumptions. It is offered here only as a means to further intercultural understandings. I hope that in future forums we will have the privilege of learning about other faith-based or non-faith-based approaches to knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge.
In the Islamic paradigm, God is the source, the origin, the locus, and ultimate object of all knowledge. Its essence is embodied in the Divine Name, al Haq, which at once means the Truth, Justice, Balance, Rights and Responsibilities. As a Hadees e Qudsi declares: “I was a hidden treasure. I willed that I be known. Therefore, I created a creation that would know Me”. Incidentally, Justice is the first pillar in the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of India.

How does one encompass this ocean of knowledge?

Some fifty years ago when I wrote my first book, What Makes Us Human? I constructed a possible approach to the epistemology of knowledge. It is illustrated in the diagram shown. The tree of knowledge has its roots in the heavens and its seed is Al Haqq, the Truth. The knowledge that is imparted to the Prophets and the sages is called Ilm al Ladduni. Its mode of transmission is infusion. It is involuntarily. It speaks the timeless, spaceless language of the spirit. It is light that illuminates the soul. It seeks to answer the basic questions that every human asks at one stage or the other: Who am I? Why am I here? What is the purpose of my existence?
When heavenly knowledge is applied to the mundane world, it splits into two major branches. The first is knowledge that can be expressed and taught. In the Urdu language it is called Ilm ul Ibarat. Ibarat comes from the Arabic root word a-b-r, namely to wade from one shore of a stream to another. It includes the inductive, empirical knowledge of the sciences, and the deductive knowledge of reason and philosophy. It embraces the sciences, history, economics, medicine, engineering, mathematics, politics and governance. This is the knowledge that we send our children and grandchildren to Harvard and MIT, Stanford and Caltech, and yes, Aligarh and the IITs to acquire. It is knowledge that commands a price in the global marketplace.
The other branch Ilm ul Ishara is knowledge that can be alluded to but cannot be expressed through language. It includes the language of the heart and the language of the soul. Examples are: love, compassion, mercy, empathy, forgiveness, generosity. In all of God’s creation, there is nothing as sublime, as noble as the heart because it alone is the seat of unfettered love. Nay, it is wide enough to contain the very Name of God Almighty. It is not Hindu or Muslim, Christian or Jewish, Sikh or Zoroastrian, American or Russian. This is the knowledge taught by the saints and the Sufis of the past, the language of love, of unconditional service, of rapture and surrender. This is the language that is expressed by Amir Khusroe when he sings out in ecstasy:
Nameedanam che Manzil bood shab jaye ke man boodam…

The Seven epochs in Islamic History

Human history is like a mighty river that flows with discernible bends. Some bends are sharp ; others are slow, like a sine wave with a long wavelength.
Islamic history offers at least seven major discernible bends. Each of these bends marks the onset of a certain mode of learning and the emergence of a corresponding cultural archetype:

  1. The Age of the Prophet (622-632 CE)
  2. The Age of the Companions (632-760 CE)
  3. The Age of Reason (760-846 CE)
  4. The Age of the Scientists (846-1219 CE)
  5. The Age of the “Sufis” (1219-1683 CE)
  6. Colonialism and the Age of Discontinuity (1683-1870 CE)
  7. The Modern Technological Age (1870-Present)

One way to study each epoch is to examine the archetypes that personify the age. Summarily, the archetype at the time of the Prophet was the Prophet himself; during the age of the Companions it was the visionaries; in the age of reason it was the Mu’tazilites, in the age of the Scientists, it was the empiricists; in the age of the Sufis it was the Awliyah. Colonialism gave birth to revivalists while the modern technological age is shaping the post-human, post-scientific monad.

The Age of the Prophet.

Islam burst upon the global scene in the 7th century and transformed a nomadic people into prime movers of a world civilization. Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) was the architect of that transformation. Few are the personages in history who occupied a position in relation to their people as did Prophet Muhammed with respect to his. He was the focus for all social, spiritual, political, economic and juridical activities. He was the teacher, the exemplar, the Prophet and the Messenger of God.
Four attributes of the Prophet stand out when we seek to understand his legacy on education:
First the Qur’an. The Prophet was the personification of the Qur’an. If the Qur’an was the Book, he was the Light. The first word of the Qur’an was “Iqra” (read) and the Prophet was an embodiment of knowledge. After Badar, when a large number of prisoners were taken, he offered to set them free if each of them taught two people how to read and write. His saying, “Seek knowledge even onto China” is well known. China was a distant land, known for its learning but it was not Islamic. Alas, if only the ulema in later centuries had kept the Prophet’s example before them and not rejected learning from other traditions, be it Western or Eastern. I offer, as an example, the tribulations that Sir Syed had to face from the Mullahs when he founded the Anglo-Mohammedan college, later to become Aligarh University.
• The Hadith
• The Sunnah
• The Seerah
What the Prophet said became the Hadith. What he did became the Sunnah. The Seerah was his path, his methodology, his way which exuded the wisdom in his approach. Once again, examine how later Muslims, especially those in the subcontinent, took the broad highways of the Prophet’s approach to knowledge and turned them into narrow, sinewy alleys. The Ahle Hadith and the Ahle Sunnah are at each other’s throats while neither of them ponders over his Seerah or the wisdom of his approach in tackling contemporary issues. The tensions between the Deobandi and Barailwi schools are well known.

The Age of the Companions, Tabeyeen and Tabe Tabeyeen

Civilizations are tested with crises just as individuals are tried with adversity. It is these critical moments that bring out the character of a civilization. Great civilizations measure up to their challenges and grow more resilient with each crisis, turning adversity into opportunity. It is much the same way with individuals. Critical moments in history test the mettle of humans. Great men and women bend history to their will, whereas weaker ones are swallowed up in the convulsions of time.
The death of Prophet Muhammed (p) was the first historical crisis faced by the Islamic community. The Muslims met this challenge by establishing the institution of the Khilafat and affirming the continuity of historical Islam. The price paid for this process was the Shia-Sunni split that continues to rock the Islamic world even after 1400 years. There emerged the towering personalities of Abu Bakr as Siddiq (r), Omar ibn al Khattab (r), Uthman bin Affan (r) and Ali ibn Abu Talib (r). What these Companions did and did not do has influenced the course of Islamic history in the subsequent 1,400 years. We see in this period an increasing emphasis on documentation as it was with Sehaf e Siddiqui. Omar (r) in particular paid attention to education. He appointed teachers paid by the state treasury and established schools in the far flung corners of the Khilafat. There was an explosion of intellectual activity in the period that followed. Jurisprudence, philosophy and science flourished. The Halaqa, or a study circle centered around a Shaikh became the institutional framework for knowledge transmission. As the Khilafat expanded to include vast regions stretching from the Indus river to the Pyrenees mountains in France, it embraced Greeks and Turks, Iranians and Egyptians, Berbers and Spaniards, Africans and Europeans, Chinese and Indians. The new entrants brought with them not only their ancient heritage and culture but methods of looking at the sublime questions of life in ways fundamentally different from that of the Arabs. Fiqh was the doctrinal response of the Islamic civilization to these challenges. The codification of Fiqh solidified the foundation of Islamic civilization and was the cement for its stability through the turmoil of centuries. As long as the process of Fiqh was dynamic, creativity and ideas flowed from Islam to other civilizations. When this process became static and stagnant, historical Islam increasingly turned inwards and became marginalized in the global struggle of humankind, as is too obvious in India today. 


Some definitions of the terms Shariah and Fiqh are in order here as the two terms are sometimes erroneously interchanged. Shariah derives its legitimacy from Divine sovereignty. It defines not just the relationship of man to man but also the relationship of man to God and of man to nature. As such, it is all embracing and its dimensions are infinite. The sun rises from the East, that is Shariah. The galaxies rotate, that is Shariah. Fiqh is the application of the Shariah in space-time. As such it is dynamic and changing. Those who wish to understand the Hijab controversy in India today need to keep this in mind. We will offer the life and times of Imam Abu Haneefa as an archetype of the age. It is most appropriate to choose him as our model as his school of jurisprudence is the one that is most commonly used in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Turkey and Central Asia. Indeed, a great majority of the 1.8 billion Muslims in the world today (circa 2010 CE) follow the school of Fiqh named after him.   That Imam Abu Haneefa was one of the greatest of the jurists is well known. What is not commonly known is that he was also a mathematician of the first magnitude. He was aware of the concepts of specific density and specific volume and implemented them in practice. As a philosopher, his work anticipated the Hegelian dialectic by more than a thousand years. The Hegelian dialectic (named after Hegel the German philosopher of the 17th century) is one of the basic principles of Western philosophy. Its premise is that a higher collective truth emerges when multiple individual truths compete. Looked at it another way, it also means that the state is more important than the individual. To cap it all, Abu Haneefa was no hermit, or a pure academician, cloistering himself in a monastery or a mosque or a university. He was a rich man, a successful merchant, a wonderful human being who lived among common folk with the zest and enthusiasm of a believer; he contributed to the life of the community that he was a part of.
The story of Imam Abu Haneefa is the story of the famed city of Baghdad. With the Abbasid Revolution of 750 CE, the center of gravity of political power shifted from the Arab heartland to Persia, Khorasan and Central Asia. Acknowledging this shift in power, the Caliph al Mansur wished to relocate his capital from Damascus in Syria.
Imam Abu Haneefa was commissioned by the Caliph to locate and plan a site for the new capital. Abu Haneefa chose the current location, around a bend of the River Tigris, paying careful attention to defense and communications. There were no computers or computer aided design in those days. To obtain the concurrence of the Caliph, Abu Haneefa marked out the geometrical layout of the planned capital on the ground, showing in detail the location of the palace, the mosque, the marketplace, the residential areas and the fort. Then he sprinkled cotton seeds over the marked outlines. Selecting a moonless night when there was little background radiation, Imam Abu Haneefa set fire to the cotton seeds. One of the characteristics of cotton seeds is that they radiate a brilliant light when they are burned. Using the burning cotton seeds as his guide, Imam Abu Haneefa showed the outline of the planned city to the Caliph from a tower specially constructed for observation on the occasion. The Caliph was pleased and authorized the construction.
Imam Abu Haneefa studied in the Halaqa of Imam Ja’afar as Sadiq and benefited from the spiritual knowledge transmitted through the Ahle Bait. The school of jurisprudence named after him offers the greatest latitude to a jurist to formulate legal opinions to meet the requirements of changing times. The usool ul fiqh or principles of the Hanafi fiqh include the Qur’an, the Sunnah of the Prophet, the Ijma or collective opinion of some, not necessarily all the companions, Qiyas or analogy and Estehsan or creative juridical opinion based on sound principles. The principles of Qiyas and Estehsan are available to the large number of Muslims who live as minorities in India, China, Europe and America to apply the Shari’ah and deduce legal opinions that meet the requirements of their social, political and economic context.

The Mu’tazilites and the Age of Reason

Of all the sciences that the Muslims came in contact with, it was Greek rational thought that caught their fancy and they fell in love with its rigor and its precision. Aristotle became their hero and reason their guide. The Caliph al Mansur adopted and promoted Greek philosophy (the philosophy of the ancients as it was called) as court dogma. Muslim scholars set out to apply rational methods to physical phenomenon as well as social, cultural and religious issues with excitement and enthusiasm. These scholars were called the Mu’tazilites.

Al Mansur established an academy called Baitul Hikmah (the House of Wisdom) where scholarly books from around the world were translated into Arabic. From India came the Siddhanta of Aryabhatta, from Greece came the works of Aristotle, Plato and Hippocrates, from China came the technology for manufacturing porcelain and papermaking and from Iran the art of constructing windmills. Baitul Hikmah was a cosmopolitan academy. Among the scholars who worked there were Muslims, Christians, Jews, Hindus and Zoroastrians.
The application of classical Greek rational thought in an Islamic paradigm was not without its challenge.  The Greeks assumed that time was “eternal”. A second issue was “cause and effect” in nature. There were other issues of disagreement as well, namely, human free will (ikhtiar) and man’s responsibility for his actions.  These assumptions when applied to theological issues presented profound and fundamental doctrinal challenges to Muslim scholars. Resistance set in and it was led by the usuli ulema, spearheaded by Imam Ahmed ibn Hanbal. Faced with mounting public pressure, the later Abbasid Caliphs relented. In 846 CE, the Caliph al Mutawakkil disavowed the Mutazilites and banished them from his court.

The Scientists

The aftermath of the Mutazilite convulsions influenced the development of the natural sciences in the Islamic world in a profound way.
The classical Islamic civilization that emerged in the post-Mutazilite period was scientific-empirical. Indeed, the Muslims were arguably the originators of the empirical method. For more than five hundred years (700-1258 CE), Muslim scientists were the torchbearers of knowledge, advancing human civilization with their discoveries and inventions. It was this light that awakened Europe from its slumber in the Dark Ages (600-1200 CE). Some of the noted scientists of the era include al Khwarizmi (d. 840) after whom the word Algorithm is named; the physician al Razi who was the first to identify smallpox and communicable diseases; al Masudi the first empirical historian; al Baruni whose book Kitabul Hind was a masterpiece about medieval India; the physician ibn Sina whose book Cannons of Medicine was the standard textbook in Europe until the sixteenth century; the mathematician Omar Khayyam who compiled the precise Jalalian calendar; al Idrisi the geographer; Ibn Rushd the philosopher and the inventor al Jazari, one of whose inventions, the camshaft that converts linear motion into rotary motion, was one of the greatest inventions of humankind similar in its import to the plough and the stirrup.  This momentum towards a scientific culture was setback by the advent of Al Ghazzali towards the end of the twelfth century.  Basing his powerful dialectic on the earlier works of al Ash’ari, Al Gazzali argued that there was no cause and effect in nature, and that all natural events happen by the Will of God.
Al Ghazzali’s writings were carried far and wide through a chain of madrassas established by the powerful Seljuk dynasty and had a chilling effect on the pursuit of science in the Islamic world. His impact is to be felt in the thinking of the mullahs and the maulanas even to this day. ↓

The Sufis

The word Sufi literally means a practitioner of tasawwuf, a term that derives from the Arabic root s-w-f, meaning purity. In the context of tasawwuf, it means purity of the heart or purity of the soul.
Tasawwuf grew its roots and had solidified its position in the Islamic world when the Mongol cataclysm descended upon it in the thirteenth century. Genghiz Khan and his successors destroyed a civilization. Centers of learning and culture like Samarqand, Bukhara, Nishapur, Herat and Baghdad were obliterated.  India was a beneficiary of the Mongol invasions. This is where the story of Islam in northern India begins. As the centers of learning burned in Central Asia, many of the Sufi shaikhs and scholars found refuge with the Sultanate of Delhi.  If there is one word that captures the essence of how Islam captured the hearts of one third of South Asia, it is love. The key to the success of the Sufis lay in the spiritual bent of the Indian mind. Every culture produces an archetype that personifies the ethos of that culture. For instance, in contemporary America, it is the successful entrepreneur like Bill Gates. During the Dark Ages in Europe, it was the monk. In medieval Japan it was the Samurai. In the Muslim Middle East, it was the traditionalist. In India, it was the sadhu and the rishi. The Sufi could intuitively and immediately relate to the Indian culture in a manner that the learned doctors of law could not. Thus, it was that the great Sufis not only succeeded in introducing millions of Indians to Islam but also contributed to the evolution of a unique Hindustani language, culture, poetry and music which amalgamated the ancient inheritance of India with the vibrancy of Islam. If the center of gravity of the Muslim world today is closer to Kuala Lumpur, Lucknow and Lahore than to Cairo and Damascus, it is due not so much to the power of the Sultans or the preaching of the mullahs, but to the spiritual approach of the Sufi shaykhs.  Zawiyas, Tekkes and Khanqas spread out throughout the subcontinent offering the seekers of spiritual knowledge instruction not just in the Qur’an and the sunnah but also fiqh, tasawwuf, history, languages and mathematics. Well known zawiyas existed in Multan, Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Jaunpur, Patna, Murshidabad and Sylhet. The training was individualized and personal, from a shaikh to the mureed. The archetype of the age was a man of the spirit like Shaikh Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmer, Baba Farid of Lahore, Shaikh Shamsuddin Yahya of Kashmir, Shaikh Jalal of Sylhet, and Gaysu Daraz of the Deccan. Together, these men transformed a continent, molded it in a spiritual crucible, lit the candle of faith in the hearts of millions and laid the spiritual foundation for one of the richest and most powerful dynasties the world has ever known, namely the great Moghuls of India.


The emergence of tasawwuf as a powerful force in the Indian milieu did not go unchallenged by competing ideas.  The historian Barani describes an interesting confrontation between the Sufis and kadis in the magnificent Tughlaq courts in old Delhi. The kadis and the ulema sought a ban on sama’a (music), declaring it to be against the injunctions of the Shariah. To sort out these controversies, Gayasuddin Tughlaq, Sultan of Delhi, convened a conference of the leading ulema, kadis and philosophers in Delhi at his court in 1320. Nizamuddin Awliya was also invited. What started as a conference turned into a court martial of the Chishtiya Sufis. Kadi Jalaluddin, chief kadi of Delhi and Shaykhzada Jam argued against sama’a. Nizamuddin Awliya defended the practice basing his arguments on certain Ahadith. The discussion became heated, so the Sultan turned to Shaykh Ilmuddin who was a philosopher (Mu’tazilite) and had traveled extensively through Persia, Iraq, Syria and Egypt. Shaykh Ilmuddin answered that sama’a was halal for those who listened to it with their hearts and was haram for those who heard it with their nafs. The Emperor deliberated and, not to be drawn into a religious controversy, gave a split decision permitting sama’a gatherings for the Chishtiya Order but forbidding it to the followers of the Qalandariya and Haidari Orders.
Such antipathy towards music and other scientific disciplines persists in the religious circles of the subcontinent even to this day. As a result, the graduates of Islamic seminaries have no clue about electromagnetic theory, earthquakes, electron motion, Newtonian mechanics or windshear that brings down aircraft, all of which are based on harmonic or biharmonic equations.

The Rockets of Tipu Sultan

Science and Technology did not die out with the Mongol invasions; they shifted from the core Arab domains to the Indian, Turkish and Maghreb periphery. The Ottoman, Safavid and Mogul empires rose in Eurasia while Africa saw the advent of the great Songhay and Mali empires. Great center of learning spring up as far away as Timbuktu, Gao and Kano in Africa and Aceh in Indonesia. Isfahan, Istanbul, Delhi and Agra replaced Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad as centers of art and culture. The world renowned Ibn Batuta, the historian Ibn Khaldun, astronomers such as Ulugh Bey, master-builders like Muammar Sinan of the Ottoman empire, and Ustad Ahmed, the architect of the Taj Mahal, were all products of this age. But perhaps the most convincing evidence of this position is offered by the rockets of Tipu Sultan.  It comes as a surprise to many people that the American National Anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, was inspired by the rockets invented by an Indian Muslim king, Tipu Sultan of Mysore.  It was the year 1814. The Anglo-American war which started in 1812 was in full swing. The British forces, after burning down Washington and conducting a raid on Alexandria, proceeded up the Chesapeake Bay to capture Fort McHenry in Baltimore. Caught in the cross fire were two American lawyers, Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner, who had gone over to negotiate a truce and prisoner exchange with the British. Key and Skinner were allowed to board the British flagship HMS Tonant and present their proposals to Major General Robert Ross.
Since they had overheard the detailed war plans, Key and Skinner were held back by the British and were witness to the bombardment of Baltimore on September 13, 1814. Orange and red flashes of rocket fire illuminated the skies over Fort McHenry. The bombardment went on all night and it was not clear as to which side would prevail in this clash of arms. At daybreak, as the first rays of the sun hit the fort and the fog lifted over the Bay, the American flag was still aloft over Fort McHenry, fluttering in the morning breeze. This was the moving sight that inspired Francis Scott Key to compose the Star Spangled Banner.  The rockets used in the War of 1812 were a takeoff on the rockets captured by the British from Tipu Sultan of Mysore after the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799.  


The late Dr. Abdul Kalam, the architect of India’s rocket programs, called Tipu Sultan the father of modern rocketry.  When Tipu Sultan was martyred during the fourth Anglo-Mysore war of 1799, the British sent some of the captured Mysore rockets to the Royal Laboratory in England. A development team led by Colonel Congreve back-engineered Tipu Sultan’s rockets. The modified Mysore rockets, renamed the Congreve rockets, were used against Napoleon at the Battle of Boulogne in 1806 and against the Americans in the assault on Baltimore in 1814.  A solid propellant rocket is a system. It requires a host of technologies and a large number of subsystems. Tipu Sultan’s achievement was to create an advanced technological eco-system in the Kingdom of Mysore which was a match for any in Europe or America and in some respects was more advanced. This included metallurgy, iron smelting, fine grain casting, precision boring, solid propellant physics and chemistry, packing, loading, use of composite materials, standardization of materials, processes, manufacture, assembly, testing and deployment of rockets. Tipu Sultan not only established the karkhanas or factories for the production of rockets on a mass scale but backed it up by establishing research laboratories in several forts and advanced schools for the training of military engineers.
The advances made by the rocket engineers of Tipu Sultan show that as late as the eighteenth century, technological developments in Asia were not far behind those in Europe. It was only in the nineteenth century that Europe acquired a decisive technological edge over Asia.

What went wrong?

If the land empires of the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Great Moguls were so powerful and prosperous, what went wrong?
Most noticeable was the delay in the introduction of the printing press which was introduced in Germany in 1439 and spread throughout Europe by the end of the fifteenth century. In Italy alone, there were no less than 77 printing presses in the year 1500. The printing press made possible the spread of knowledge. It was one of the main engines for the Renaissance which produced the likes of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. It was only in 1728 that the printing press was introduced into the Ottoman Empire. It was introduced into Mughal India much later, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In both cases, what held back the introduction of this technology was the opposition of the ulema who held that the Word of God would be defiled by contact with wooden presses. Indeed, the ulema increasingly became hostile to the basic sciences which they did not understand. A case in point is the destruction of the Taqiuddin Observatory in Istanbul which was built in 1570 and destroyed in 1577 CE at the behest of the religious establishment, who suspected that the Ottoman defeat in the Battle of Lepanto (1571 CE) was somehow related to the ungodly pursuits of the astronomers.

The impact of colonialism

Europe used its technological and scientific advantage to colonize much of Asia and Africa. India was the first great Asian civilization to fall to the West (1757-1947).
The European powers dismantled the educational infrastructure of the colonized lands which had grown over many centuries, thereby injecting a discontinuity in the intellectual development of the colonized people. The zawiyas and madrassas which had provided the educational foundation of the Muslim world were either marginalized or disappeared. Their place was taken up by government schools run by the colonial authorities whose purpose was to educate the native population to man the lower echelons of the huge administrative bureaucracies in the colonized lands. Science and technology, which at best were flickering in the old institutions, died out.

The modern age

It was only in the latter half of the nineteenth century that the Islamic world woke up to the need to relearn the natural sciences from the west. In India, the Anglo-Mohammedan College, later to become Aligarh Muslim University was founded by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (d 1898). It was the genius of Sir Syed that he saw for the first time in history, the possibility of cooperation between the West and the ancient civilizations of the East based on science and rational thought. In the Ottoman Empire, a determined effort was made to cultivate science and technology through the Tanzeemat.
However, from a global perspective, the Islamic world continues to lag behind the west in science and technology. Less than one percent of the names that appear in the database of the United States Patents and Trademarks Office are Muslim and a similar trend is observable in the respectable scientific journals of the world. Literacy among Muslims is among the lowest in the world. What is more alarming is that the education gap between Muslim communities and the emerging economies such as those of China is increasing. War, occupation, physical dislocation and government neglect have all taken their toll. Meanwhile, Muslims continue to be bogged down with arguments over halal, haram, bida’, shirk, kufr, length of beards and halal meat. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, women and girls are attacked for going to school. In India girls are harassed for covering their heads. The term a’lim is reserved for one who has studied in a madrasa. Scholarship in the sciences is not valued. Knowledge has been compartmentalized into deeni and dunavi. The ignorant mullahs look down upon the natural sciences as secular, western and debasing. Clearly, a paradigm shift is needed.

The future

Poverty is a curse on humankind. Poverty breeds ignorance and ignorance breeds poverty. Education provides an exit door from this vicious cycle. What drives education today is technology. If the subcontinent is to emerge from the clutches of mass poverty, it must pay attention to its education system.
• Develop a framework to encourage the pursuit of the natural sciences. Instead of engaging in endless disputes about what divides us, would it not be more productive if India, Pakistan and Bangladesh evolved a common science curriculum for K-12 and reinforced each other by sharing the best practices through technological networks? Dhaka and Calcutta, Bangalore and Hyderabad, Mumbai and Karachi, Delhi and Lahore would become the nodes of such a network. Let this be the day when we proposed in this forum,the idea of a South Asian Primary and Secondary Education Network (Let us call it SAPASENET).
• Influence government policy. Primary education is one of first requisites of good governance. The governments of South Asia have washed their hands off of this responsibility. The privatization of primary education was one the worst developments in post-independent India. K-12 education should be free, universal, compulsory and of the highest quality.
• Establish institutions. Encourage bright students to compete and pursue higher education. There are 80 million Muslims in the Gangetic belt stretching from Delhi to Calcutta. While the rich use coaching and training to score high in competitive exams and get into good schools, the poor among the Muslims and the Dalits are left in the lurch. The admissions into IITs and IIMs speak for themselves.


• Introduce ethics into the school curriculum. Tarbiyet is as important as Ta’leem.
• Train the religious establishment, the a’lims and the mullahs, in the basics of science and technology.


Islam is a great civilization. Our hope is that it will once again rise up to the current challenges, renews itself and will march forward with the light of knowledge. The path to that renewal lies in universal, compulsory and free mass education of the highest quality driven by technology, nourished by compassion and love and governed by reason.

The Classical Period

Al-Zahrawi, the father of Surgery

Nazeer Ahmed

Submitted by Prof. Dr. Ibrahim B. Syed, Clinical Professor and Director of Nuclear Medicine Sciences, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, Kentucky, USA

Abstract

Abu al-Qasim Khalaf ibn al-Abbas Al-Zahrawi was born near Cordoba, Spain, when it was part of the Islamic Empire. He was a physician, surgeon and chemist. He is best remembered for his encyclopedia of medicine, the Al-Tasrif li man ajaz an-il-talif (An Aid for Those Who Lack the Capacity to Read Big Books), known as the al-Tasrif. This became a standard reference in Islamic and European medicine for over 500 years. In Europe, Al-Zahrawi was known as Albucasis, and was particularly famous for his surgical knowledge.

Al-Zahrawi’s encyclopedia included sections on surgery, medicine, orthopedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology and nutrition. In it he described over 300 diseases and their treatments. He also included detailed descriptions of numerous surgical procedures, and the use of over 200 surgical instruments, many of which he developed. The most famous section of the encyclopedia, on surgery, was translated into Latin by Gerard of Cremona in the 1100s. From this time it also became a standard text in Europe, and was still being reprinted in the 1770s. Considered the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, he has been described as the father of surgery

While famed for his writing, Al-Zahrawi was also a prominent practitioner and teacher. In recognition of his skills, he was appointed as the court physician to King Al-Hakam II of Spain.[1]

 Early Life

Abū al-Qāsim Khalaf ibn al-‘Abbās al-Zahrāwī al-Ansari (‎ 936–1013), popularly known as Al-Zahrawi (الزهراوي), Latinized as Abulcasis (from Arabic Abū al-Qāsim), was an Arab Muslim physician, surgeon and chemist who lived in Al-Andalus. Considered the greatest surgeon of the Middle Ages, he has been described as the father of surgery.

Al-Zahrawi’s principal work is the Kitab al-Tasrif, a thirty-volume encyclopedia of medical practices. The surgery chapter of this work was later translated into Latin, attaining popularity and becoming the standard textbook in Europe for the next five hundred years. Al-Zahrawi’s pioneering contributions to the field of surgical procedures and instruments had an enormous impact in the East and West well into the modern period, where some of his discoveries are still applied in medicine to this day.

He was the first physician to identify the hereditary nature of hemophilia and to describe an abdominal pregnancy, a subtype of ectopic pregnancy that in those days was a fatal affliction.

Al-Zahrawi was born in the city of Azahara, 8 kilometers northwest of Cordoba, Andalusia. His birth date is not known for sure, however, scholars agree that it was after 936, the year his  birthplace city of Azahara was founded. The nisba (attributive title), Al-Ansari, in his name, suggests origin from the Medinian tribe of Al-Ansar, thus, tracing his ancestry back to Medina in the Arabian Peninsula.

He lived most of his life in Cordoba. It is also where he studied, taught and practiced medicine and surgery until shortly before his death in about 1013(at the age of 77), two years after the sacking of Azahara.

 He was a contemporary of Andalusian chemists such as Ibn al-Wafid, al-Majriti and Artephius. He devoted his entire life and genius to the advancement of medicine as a whole and surgery in particular.

Surgical career

Al-Zahrawi specialized in curing disease by cauterization. He invented several devices used during surgery, for purposes such as inspection of the interior of the urethra and also inspection, applying and removing foreign bodies from the throat, the ear and other body organs. He was also the first to illustrate the various cannulae and the first to treat a wart with an iron tube and caustic metal as a boring instrument.

While al-Zahrawi never performed the surgical procedure of tracheotomy, he did treat a slave girl who had cut her own throat in a suicide attempt. Al-Zahrawi sewed up the wound and the girl recovered, thereby proving that an incision in the larynx could heal. In describing this important case-history he wrote: So, I hurriedly sutured the wound and treated it until healed. No harm was done to the slave-girl except for a hoarseness in the voice, which was not extreme, and after some days she was restored to the best of health. Hence, we may say that laryngotomy is not dangerous.

Al-Zahrawi also pioneered neurosurgery and neurological diagnosis. He is known to have performed surgical treatments of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions and headache. The first clinical description of an operative procedure for hydrocephalus was given by Al-Zahrawi who clearly describes the evacuation of superficial intracranial fluid in hydrocephalic children.

Kitab al-Tasrif

Fig. 1. Title page from the first Latin translation of the Al-Tasrif, here called the Liber theoricae nec non practicae Alsaharavii (Theoretical and practical book by al-Zahrawi). (1599). (Public Domain)  [2]

Al-Zahrawi’s thirty-volume medical encyclopedia, Kitab al-Tasrif, completed in the year 1000 CE, covered a broad range of medical topics, including on surgery, medicine, orthopedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition, dentistry, childbirth, and pathology. The first volume in the encyclopedia is concerned with general principles of medicine, the second with pathology, while much of the rest discuss topics regarding pharmacology and drugs. The last treatise and the most celebrated one is about surgery. Al-Zahrawi stated that he chose to discuss surgery in the last volume because surgery is the highest form of medicine, and one must not practice it until he becomes well-acquainted with all other branches of medicine. Al-Tasrif is an illustrated encyclopedia of medicine and surgery in 1500 pages.

The work contained data that had accumulated during a career that spanned almost 50 years of training, teaching and practice. In it he also wrote of the importance of a positive doctor-patient relationship and wrote affectionately of his students, whom he referred to as “my children”. He also emphasized the importance of treating patients irrespective of their social status. He encouraged the close observation of individual cases in order to make the most accurate diagnosis and the best possible treatment.

Not always properly credited, modern evaluation of al-Tasrif manuscript has revealed on early descriptions of some medical procedures that were ascribed to later physicians. For example, Al-Zahrawi’s al-Tasrif described both what would later become known as “Kocher’s method” for treating a dislocated shoulder and “Walcher position” in obstetrics. Moreover, Al-Tasrif described how to ligature blood vessels almost 600 years before Ambroise Paré, and was the first recorded book to explain the hereditary nature of hemophilia. It was also the first to describe a surgical procedure for ligating the temporal artery for migraine, also almost 600 years before Pare recorded that he had ligated his own temporal artery for headache that conforms to current descriptions of migraine. Al-Zahrawi was, therefore, the first to describe the migraine surgery procedure that is enjoying a revival in the 21st century, spearheaded by Elliot Shevel a South African surgeon.

On Surgery and Instruments

On Surgery and Instruments is the 30th and last volume of Kitab al-Tasrif. It is without a doubt his most important work and the one which established his authority in Europe for centuries to come. On Surgery and Instruments is the first illustrated surgical guide ever written. Its contents and descriptions has contributed in many technological innovations in medicine, notably which tools to use in specific surgeries. In his book, al-Zahrawi draws diagrams of each tool used in different procedures to clarify how to carry out the steps of each treatment. The full text consists of three books, intended for medical students looking forward to gaining more knowledge within the field of surgery regarding procedures and the necessary tools.

He divided the surgery section of Al-Tasrif into three parts:                                                                                1. on cauterization (56 sections);                                                                                                                                                2. on surgery (97 sections),                                                                                                                              3. on orthopedics (35 sections).[3]

 Some of the procedures and techniques detailed in these chapters include the following:

  • Surgery of the eye, ear, and throat. He fully described tonsillectomy and tracheostomy.
  • He devised instruments for internal examination of the ear.
  • He devised an instrument used to remove or insert objects into the throat.
  • He described how to use a hook to remove a polyp from the nose.
  • He described the exposure and division of the temporal artery to relieve certain types of headaches.
  • He utilized cauterization, usually to treat skin tumors or open abscesses. He applied cauterization procedure to as many as 50 different operations.
  • Application of ligature for bleeding vessels and internal stitching utilizing catgut. He preceded the famous French military surgeon Ambroise Pare (1510–1590), claimed to be the first European to utilize sutures, by five centuries.
  • Treatment for anal fistulas.
  • Setting dislocated bones and fractures. His method for setting and reducing a dislocated shoulder was centuries before Kocher introduced his similar technique to European medicine.
  • Removal of urinary bladder calculi. He advised that the treating physician has to insert a finger into the rectum of the patient, move the stone down to the neck of the bladder, then make an incision in the rectal wall or the perineum and remove the stone.
  • He devised instruments for inspection of the urethra.
  • He is credited to be the first to describe ectopic pregnancy.
  • He devised several dental devices and artificial teeth made of animal bones.
  • Al Zahrawi is considered the father of operative surgery. He is credited with performance of the first thyroidectomy. The last chapter of his comprehensive book, named “On Surgery”, was dedicated to surgical instruments. He introduced over 200 surgical tools, a staggering number by all standards. He gave detailed descriptions of for using probes, surgical knives, scalpels, and hooks. He also devised and invented surgical scissors, grasping forceps and obstetrical forceps. His illustrations of surgical instruments were the earliest intended for use in teaching and in methods of manufacturing them. [4]

The book was translated into Latin in the 12th century by Gerard of Cremona. It soon found popularity in Europe and became a standard text in all major Medical universities like those of Salerno and Montpellier. It remained the primary source on surgery in Europe for the next 500 years, and as the historian of medicine, Arturo Castiglioni, has put it: al-Zahrawi’s treatise “in surgery held the same authority as did the Canon of Avicenna in medicine”.

In the beginning of his book, al-Zahrawi states that the reason for writing this treatise was the degree of underdevelopment surgery had reached in the Islamic world, and the low status it was held by the physicians at the time. Al-Zahrawi ascribed such decline to a lack of anatomical knowledge and a misunderstanding of the human physiology. He who devoted himself to surgery must be versed in the science of anatomy.

Noting the importance of anatomy, he wrote:

    “Before practicing surgery one should gain knowledge of anatomy and the function of organs so that he will understand their shape, connections and borders. He should become thoroughly familiar with nerves muscles bones arteries and veins. If one does not comprehend the anatomy and physiology one can commit a mistake which will result in the death of the patient. I have seen someone incise into a swelling in the neck thinking it was an abscess, when it was an aneurysm and the patient dying on the spot.”

Al-Zahrawi introduced over 200 surgical instruments, which include, among others, different kinds of scalpels, retractors, curettes, pincers, specula, and also instruments designed for his favored techniques of cauterization and ligature. He also invented hooks with a double tip for use in surgery. Many of these instruments were never used before by any previous surgeons.

His use of catgut for internal stitching is still practised in modern surgery. The catgut appears to be the only natural substance capable of dissolving and is acceptable by the body. An observation Al-Zahrawi discovered after his monkey ate the strings of his oud. Al-Zahrawi also invented the forceps for extracting a dead fetus, as illustrated in the Al-Tasrif. [4]

Fig. 2. Albucasis blistering a patient in the hospital at Cordova. [5]

In addition to sections on medicine and surgery, there were sections on midwifery, pharmacology, therapeutics, dietetics, psychotherapy, weights and measures, and medical chemistry.

Fig. 3. Page from a 1531 Latin translation by Peter Argellata of Al Zahrawi’s treatise on surgical and medical instruments.  [4]

Al Zahrawi is considered the father of operative surgery. He is credited with performance of the first thyroidectomy. [4]

 

 
 

Figure. 4. Two pages from a manuscript of Al-Zahrawi’s Al-Tasrif, preserved at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, Baku [6]

Abdel-Halim et al gave a detailed study of Al Zahrawi’s technique of cystolithotomy.

Al Zahrawi contributed early descriptions of neurosurgical diagnoses and treatment including management of head injuries, skull fractures, spinal injuries and dislocations, hydrocephalus, subdural effusions, headache and many other conditions.

In addition, he made significant contributions to pediatric surgery. In addition to his description of hydrocephalus, he described harelip, adenoids, ranula, imperforated external urinary meatus, perforated anus, hermaphrodites, gynecomastia, supernumerary and webbed fingers.  He was the first to describe in detail the medical aspects of hemophilia.

Finally, he emphasized child education and behavior, school curriculum and academic specialization. He advised that gifted and intelligent students be encouraged to study medicine after completing their primary education in language, grammar, mathematics, astronomy and philosophy.  [4]

CONCLUSION

Thus, in conclusion, Al-Zahrawi was not only one of the greatest surgeons of medieval Islam, but a great educationist and psychiatrist as well. He devoted a substantial section in the Tasrif to child education and behavior, table etiquette, school curriculum, and academic specialization.

The methods of Albucasis eclipsed those of Galen and maintained a dominant position in medieval  Europe for five hundred years, i.e long after it had passed its usefulness. He, however, helped to raise the status of surgery in Christian Europe; in his book on fractures and luxations, he states that ‘this part of surgery has passed into the hands of vulgar and uncultivated minds, for which reason it has fallen into contempt.’ The surgery of Albucasis became firmly grafted on Europe after the time of Guy de Chauliac (d.1368), the 14th century, French surgeon. He quoted al-Tasrif over 200 times. Pietro Argallata (d. 1453) described Al-Zahrawi as “without doubt the chief of all surgeons”. Al-Zahrawi’s influence continued for at least five centuries, extending into the Renaissance, evidenced by al-Tasrif’s frequent reference by French surgeon Jacques Daléchamps (1513–1588). [5]

 We can reasonably assume that Al-Zaharawi knew about Sushruta. In the eight century CE, Sushruta Samhita was translated into Arabic by Caliph Mamun  as “Kitab Shah Shun al –Hindi” and “Kitab – I – Susurud.” Al-Zaharawi lived in the 10th Century. [7]

  Fig. 3 in  in this article appears  similar to the instruments used by Sushruta.  However, I made a comparison and found there is no resemblance. Actually, instruments used by Sushruta look modern.    They are not the same.    Sushruta (Sanskrit: सुश्रुत, lit. “well heard”) was an ancient Indian ayurvedic physician, known as the main author of The Sushruta Samhita (ca. 600 BCE), an important early medical text and the first text to represent the process of rhinoplasty. One of the earliest documented plastic surgeons, he also described procedures for treating hemorrhoids and fistulae, as well as cataract surgery. Sushruta has been called “father of surgery” and “father of plastic surgery”.   Al-Zaharawi (936-1013) wrote Al-Tasrif (The Method of Medicine), a 30-part medical encyclopedia in Arabic wherein  he introduced his collection of over 200 surgical instruments, many of which were never used before. He is  the first to describe and prove the hereditary pattern behind hemophilia, as well as describing ectopic pregnancy and stone babies. He has been called the “father of surgery”.

References 1.http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/people/Albucasis 2. https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-writings/al-zahrawi-legacy-father-modern-surgery-004693 3. https://muslimheritage.com/abu-al-qasim-al-zahrawi-the-great-surgeon/ 4. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6077085/ 5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Zahrawi 6. https://hekint.org/2017/01/22/abulcasis-the-pharmacist-surgeon/ 7.  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5512402/