Traitors of Islam
Traitor: Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan
The Pioneer of Modernism in The Muslim World
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was born in Delhi on October 17, 1817 and raised in a religious atmosphere. He was educated along the classical, traditional lines, but was so impatient with his Arabic and Persian studies that he abandoned them as soon he could. During his youth he led a carefree life, frequently attending convivial parties where singing and dancing were the principal entertainments. After the death of his father in 1838, he found employment with the East India Company. In due course, he was appointed a sub-judge in different towns.
When he was twenty-nine he decided to increase the scant religious knowledge he had acquired so half-heartedly during his youth and pursued his studies under the well-known scholars of his day. In his spare time he wrote some religious tracts, including a biography of the Prophet, which, although conforming to orthodoxy, were mediocre both in content and literary style.
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan first achieved notoriety upon the publication in 1847 of Athar al Sanadid, a history of the famous people and monuments of Delhi. This historical work, which displayed a scholarship so conspicuously lacking in his religious writings, was reprinted in 1854, translated into French several years later and in 1863, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was awarded honorary membership in the Royal Asiatic Society of London.
In reviewing this book, the Urdu poet, Ghalib remarked that Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan should study English culture instead of wasting his time in dreaming about the Golden Age of Islamic civilization in India. We shall presently see how seriously he accepted this advice.
After the Mutiny in 1857 and the subsequent British domination of India, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan arrived at the conclusion that the salvation of the Muslims depended upon cooperating and befriending the British and adopting their culture. He decided to make himself self-appointed mediator. He pointed out that enmity between Christians and Muslims on religious grounds is prohibited by Islam "because of all the religions in the world, Islam has the most respect for Christ and his guidance." He assured the English that it was taught by Islam that "if through the will of God, we are subdued by a nation which grants us religious freedom, rules with justice, maintains peace in the country and respects our individuality and property as the British are now doing in India, we are obliged to be loyal to it." In an attempt to reconcile political servility to Islam, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan cited the example of Joseph who served the Egyptian Pharaoh loyally and obediently even though the latter was not a Muslim.
In his zeal to serve the interests of British imperialism, he decided to start a special publication of official notes relating to loyal Muslims in the service of the British Government. "I shall mention the rewards and favours our equitable and impartial Government has bestowed on them for their loyalty in order that the generosity, the justice and the patronage may become better known and all the Muslim subjects of India by reading it may express their gratitude to our benevolent Government." *
* quoted from The Reforms and Religious Ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, J.M.S. Baljon, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1964.In April 1869 Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan decided to visit England and see with his own eyes the sources of British power so that he could help his countrymen along the same path. He was so impressed with what he saw that he was convinced of the superiority of the English over the Muslims of India not only in education, science and technology but socially, morally and spiritually as well. In one of his letters from London dated October 15, 1869 he wrote home as follows :
"Without flattering the English, I can truly say that the natives of India, high and low, merchants and petty shop-keepers, educated and illiterate, when contrasted with the English in education, manners and uprightness are as like them as a dirty animal is to an able and handsome man. The English have reason for believing us in India to be imbecile brutes....What I have seen and see daily is utterly beyond the imagination of a native of India. The fatal shroud of complacent self-esteem is wrapt around the Mohammedan community. They remember the old tales of their ancestors and think that there are none like themselves. The Mohammedans of Egypt and Turkey are daily becoming more civilised. Until the modern education of the masses is pushed on as it is here, it is impossible for a native to become civilised and honoured."
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan was determined to prove that Islam could be transformed into the true religion of humanity, civilization and progress as soon as antiquated ideas and customs contrary to the spirit of modern times were abandoned.
In order to promote a modernized class of Muslims, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan founded a school at Aligarh in 1878. Convinced of the inadequacies of Arabic, Persian, Urdu or any of the Indian vernaculars, he insisted on English as the sole medium of instruction. In 1920, Aligarh was promoted to the status of a University.
Sayyid Ahmad Khan was the leading pioneer of modernist apologetics. Some apologetic interpretations originated by him are :
1. Polygamy is contrary to the "spirit" of Islam and should not be permitted except in rare exceptional cases.
2. Islam prohibits slavery absolutely, even the enslavement of war prisoners which is permitted by the Shariah.
3. Modern banks, business transactions, loans and international trade comprising our modern economy, although all involving payment of interest, do not properly fall under the definition of riba and thus are not contrary to the law of the Quran.
4. The punishments laid down in the Quran and Sunnah for amputation of the hand for theft, stoning for adultery and a hundred lashes for fornication are barbarous and suitable only for a primitive society which lacks prisons.
5. Jihad is banned except in the direst necessity of self-defence.The only criterion Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan considered valid in demonstrating the truth of Islam was its conformity to nineteenth century scientific naturalism. He argued that if religion is compatible with human nature or nature in general, then it must be true. However, in order to prove that Islam was the religion of science and reason, he felt compelled to deny not only the miracles, angels, djinn and the virgin birth of Jesus, explaining away the Miraj of the Prophet as simply a dream, but also the bodily resurrection, the Day of Judgment, Heaven and Hell, all of which he insisted must not be accepted literally but only symbolically. He even went so far as to compare the phenomenon of revelation to the hallucinations of the mentally ill!
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan derived his conception of God from the Deists of 18th century France. To him, God was only a remote abstraction. As the laws of nature are unalterable, he said, not even God can do anything to change them. Consequently, there is no sense in praying to Him. Such a cold, impersonal Deity could not be expected to take the slightest interest in us.
According to Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, the authority of the Quran and the Sunnah is restricted to purely devotional matters. Those verses in the Quran and Hadith dealing with social, economic or cultural affairs reflected only the primitive society in which the Prophet lived and are entirely unsuitable for our enlightened, modern civilization. Therefore, if Muslims are not obliged to follow Islam as a complete way of life, there is nothing to stand in the path of adopting Western culture.
It is obvious that Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan had no genuine interest in a religious revival. The best that could be said for him is that he wanted to promote the social and economic welfare of the Muslim community of India, assuming that the more worldly progress it made, the better off it would be. In so doing, he was utterly blind to the fact that no people in history has ever been able to flourish even in a material sense, under foreign rule.
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1839-1908) followed faithfully in the footsteps of his master. In declaring it most desirable to shed one's blood in the cause of British imperialism but condemning jihad as a crime, he was merely carrying Sayyid Ahmad Khan's ideas to their logical conclusions.
During his exile in India, Jamal ud-Din Afghani (1838-97) became acquainted with Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and in his Al-Urwah Al-Wuthqa had this to say:
"The English authorities saw in Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan a useful instrument to demoralize the Muslims so they began to praise and honour him and helped him build his college at Aligarh and called it the college of the Muslims in order that it be a trap to catch the sons of the believers and spread unbelief among them. Materialists like Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan are even worse than the materialists in Europe for those in Western countries who abandon their religion still retain their patriotism and do not lack zeal to defend their fatherland while Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and his friends represent foreign despotism as acceptable." *
* The Reforms and Religious Ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, op.cit. pp.117-119.The influence of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan upon the Westernizers who came after him cannot be over-estimated. His apologetics are faithfully followed to this day. Ameer Ali, Chiragh Ali, Khuda Bakhsh, Ghulam Ahmad Parvez, Khalifa Abdul Hakim and Maulana Muhammad Ali Lahori of the Ahmadiyya movement have scarcely done more than repeat his ideas. Little, if anything, new has been added since.
The above is an excerpt from Islam and Modernism, Maryam Jameelah, Mohammad Yusuf Khan & Sons, Lahore, 1965/1988, p.62-68
References:
* The Reforms and Religious Ideas of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, J.M.S. Baljon, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1964.
* The Religious Thought of Sayyid Ahmad Khan, Bashir Ahmad Dar, Institute of Islamic Culture, Lahore, 1957.* These are the most important classics of Muslim modernism. They belong on the "black-list" and should be approached with extreme caution because they have all done (intentionally or unintentionally) irreparable harm to the Islamic cause.
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