fazlur rahman and the search for authenticity islamic education-farid panjwani

Fazlur Rahman and the Search forAuthentic Islamic Education:A Critical Appreciationcuri_574 33..55

FARID PANJWANIInstitute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan UniversityLondon, United Kingdom

ABSTRACT

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

History says, Don’t hopeon this side of the grave.But then, once in a lifetimethe longed for tidal waveof justice can rise up,and hope and history rhyme.---Seamus Heaney (1990, p. 77)

The word islah, reform, has been reverberating throughout the last 200years of Muslim history, carrying with it memory and belief. Memory that,for centuries in the past, hope and history rhymed when Muslims led theworld, belief that if only Muslims could get it right—that is, interpret theQur’an correctly, follow the true Islam, apply the spirit of Islam, work outthe normative Islam—hope and history would rhyme again. Those calledconservatives or revivalists or traditionalists and those called modernists orprogressives all share this memory and belief. Among the modernists,Professor Fazlur Rahman of Karachi and Chicago, as Kenneth Cragg

© 2012 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of TorontoCurriculum Inquiry 42:1 (2012)Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UKdoi: 10.1111/j.1467-873X.2011.00574.x

(1985) memorably calls him, is amongst the most influential reformer-scholars in the second half of the 20th century. The conjoining of reformerand scholar was both a major strength and a significant weakness, as will bediscussed in this article.1

Fazlur Rahman was an educationist not in the sense of being con-cerned with policies and pedagogies, but in the sense of being in searchof the theoretical bedrock of “Islamic education,” a form of educationwhich he believed was necessary if Muslims were to successfully integratethe essence of their faith with modern practices and institutions. He didnot start his academic career in the field of education, but with thepassage of time the question of “the sequence of belief within the sequelof generations” (Cragg, 1985, p. 92) attracted his increasing attention. Inseveral of his articles and in at least one of his major books, education isa central theme.

This article aims to provide a critical appreciation of Fazlur Rahman’seducational thought situated within his overall modernist (or neo-modernist, as he called himself) reform project. It discusses his life andwork in five sections. These introductory comments are followed by abiographical note. The third section situates Fazlur Rahman’s work,including his concern with education in its historical, intellectual, andpolitical contexts. The fourth section provides a survey of his main ideasand their relationship with education. The final section discusses theimpact of his thoughts and personality on education and the study ofMuslim cultures more generally. It also provides some critical comments.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Born on September 21, 1919, in British India, Fazlur Rahman belonged toa deeply religious family.2 He received religious education at home underthe supervision of his father, who was a scholar in the Deobandi tradition(Masud, 1988).3 After completing school he went to the University ofPunjab for higher studies, where he obtained a BA (Hons.) and then, in1942, an MA in Arabic.4 In 1946, Fazlur Rahman proceeded to Oxfordwhere he studied under Hamilton Gibb and Van den Bergh for his doctoralwork on the treatise on psychology by 11th-century philosopher Ibn Sina(Latinized as Avicenna). Later, he published a book by the title Avicenna’sPsychology, an annotated translation of the sixth chapter of Book II of IbnSina’s work Kitab al-Najat (Book of Deliverance). After his studies, FazlurRahman taught at the University of Durham and then joined the Instituteof Islamic Studies at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

The study of philosophy appears to have nurtured a tension between theneed to question and what William James (1909) called “the Will tobelieve,” creating a phase of acute skepticism towards his traditional learn-ing and conventional beliefs (Rahman, 1985). His book Prophecy in Islam:Philosophy and Orthodoxy (1958) lays out the various attitudes towards

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prophecy—and implicitly towards Islam itself —with which Fazlur Rahmanwas struggling. From his later works, it would seem that eventually he felt“reborn” and sought to integrate the intellectual prowess of philosophywith the faith-inspired dynamism of legal-theological tradition. His methodto integrate rational enquiry and religious conviction was a Qur’an-centredhermeneutics, a fresh and personal study of the scripture (Rahman, 1985).This task was to remain a fount of creativity for him and an inspiration formany of his students and followers.

In 1961 Fazlur Rahman entered a major new phase in his life when hewas invited by the then president of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, to help interpret“Islam in rational and scientific terms to meet the requirements of amodern progressive society” (Rahman, 1976, p. 285). From 1962 to 1968,he was the director of the Central Islamic Research Institute (CIRI) and amember of the Islamic Advisory Council (from 1964). He founded and, formany years, edited a journal called Islamic Studies. As Director of CIRI, hewas also responsible for the training of religious scholars. His book, Islam,a long interpretive exposé of the key historical movements, central con-cepts, and cardinal values of Islam, was published during this period. Healso wrote many articles in English and Urdu, on Pakistan’s educationalsystem, social conditions and political direction (Rahman, 1964, 1965a,1965b). A series of articles concerning methodological issues in hadith(sayings attributed to Prophet Muhammad) and law (Ali, 2009) was pub-lished in a book entitled, Islamic Methodology in History (Rahman, 1965c).The issue of methodology would eventually become his distinctive contri-bution to the reformist discourse generally and to the debates about Islamiceducation in particular.

Rahman’s efforts in Pakistan were aborted when his ideas landed him introuble with certain conservative groups who saw in him the state’s attemptto weaken and bypass their authority. The opposition he faced remains anunfortunate legacy in the history of modernist versus conservative debatesin Pakistan and in Muslim societies generally. Among the many issues onwhich conservatives opposed him were his support for the Muslim FamilyLaw Ordinance; the advocacy of modern banking system as Islamicallylegitimate; his interpretation of Mi’raj (the Prophet’s ascent to heaven) asa symbolic/spiritual rather than a physical event; his historical-criticalapproach to ahadith (plural of hadith); his proposals for streamlining taxstructure in the spirit of zakat (obligatory contribution for social welfare);and his views on the nature of revelation. The last of these was perhaps thestrongest source of controversy he faced, including being labelled asmunkir-i Qur’an (disbeliever in the Qur’an) (Ali, 2009; Berry, 1988;Rahman, 1976). On all of these matters, his stances were progressive andcourageous, until now matched only by very few reformers.5

Faced with public agitation, threats to his life, and a dwindlingsupport from the government, Fazlur Rahman was forced to leave Pakistanand settle in the United States in 1968. After a brief association with the

35FAZLUR RAHMAN: A CRITICAL APPRECIATION

University of California at Los Angeles, Fazlur Rahman joined the Univer-sity of Chicago in 1969, where he stayed until the end of his life.

In the United States, Fazlur Rahman emerged as one of the mostrespected Muslim thinkers, both inside and outside academia. He wrote ona variety of themes, including Islamic education, Qur’anic studies, law andhistorical-philosophical topics. His most important work on Islamic educa-tion, Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition, waspublished in 1982. He was widely consulted by Muslim communities inNorth America as well as by various governments. In 1985 he served as anadvisor to the Indonesian government on matters pertaining to the qualityof higher education in Islamic Studies (Ali, 2009; Rahman, 1985). In thesame year, he received the Giorgio Levi Della Vida Award.6 At the time ofhis death in July 1988, Fazlur Rahman was the Harold H. Swift Distin-guished Service Professor, an elder statesman, an authority in his field, anda beloved teacher of his countless students who remember him as beingrigorous, engaging, and affectionate.

CONTEXTUALIZING FAZLUR RAHMAN’SINTELLECTUAL PROJECT

Within a hundred years after the death of Prophet Muhammad, Muslimswere ruling over a vast empire. Thus, from the earliest years of their history,Muslims witnessed a juxtaposition of their faith and worldly power. TheQur’anic assurance that they were the best community (3:110)7 was con-firmed by this situation, which continued for another thousand years or so.However, the encounter with modern Europe, particularly in the context ofcolonization, brought a revolutionary shift in Muslim societies. This was notonly a military setback—for such had happened in the past as well—butalso a cultural and social invasion, which affected every norm, tradition,and institution of Muslim societies. It was a transformation at the “level ofhuman consciousness, fundamentally uprooting beliefs, values and eventhe emotional texture of life” (Berger, 1977, p. 70). This total eclipse ofMuslim military, political, and intellectual life ruptured the long-standinglink between faith and power that Muslims assumed. It raised many ques-tions: Why was the “best community” in disarray? Why were the “infidels” inpower? How could the splendour of the past be reconciled with the squalorof the present? How does Islam deal with the modern world? To suchquestions there emerged many responses.8 While a few called for the totalembrace of secular modernity and the corollary minimization of the role ofIslam, the vast majority of Muslims retained a belief in the viability andnecessity of their religion in the modern world. Modernists and tradition-alists, as they have come to be known in academia, all claimed that withcorrect understanding and practice, Islam can “recover that initiative inworld-history which it deserves to have” (Rahman, 1962, p. 6).9

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Reformers of the modernist camp, while differing among themselves onmany points, shared the belief in the compatibility of modern ideas, prac-tices, and institutions with the spirit, essence, or truth of the teachings ofIslam. Some modernists went as far as to assert that Muslim history actuallyforeshadowed gender equality, democracy, and scientific spirit.10 Theybelieved in the perfection of the religion of Islam, which meant it could notbe held responsible for the backward conditions of Muslims. The burden ofbackwardness fell on Muslims themselves, who had either corrupted or mis-understood the perfect religion of Islam. For modernists, the essence ofIslam was buried under the corrupt and misunderstood practices of Mus-lims. Finding this essence (also called spirit, unchangeable, or universal) wasthe central concern of modernists. For this they appealed to the past—someto the Qur’an alone, some to the Sunnah11 as well, and some to the so-called“Golden Age” of the earlier centuries. All this was necessary to uphold theperfection of Islam and its continued relevance while explaining the condi-tions of the followers of the religion and the present dominance of Europe.

Fazlur Rahman was heir to more than a century of these modernistactivities. He saw himself as a neo-modernist, reviving and extending thework initiated by those he called the “classical modernists” in the late 19thand early 20th century. Modernity was for him, as for the Muslim modern-ists generally, a Janus-faced phenomenon. Fazlur Rahman saw its techno-logical and organisational sides as useful for the material uplift of Muslimsocieties, but felt that its underlying secular worldview was a threat toIslamic moral values. The secular, for Fazlur Rahman, was “necessarilyatheistic” (Rahman, 1982, p. 15). His entire approach to Muslim reformwas shaped by this understanding of modernity.

However, according to the academically trained Fazlur Rahman, themodernist movements had a fundamental weakness. They lacked a soundmethodology to distinguish the essence of Islam from its various forms.Another way to put it was that the modernists, according to Fazlur Rahman,lacked methodology to separate what he called the normative Islam fromhistorical Islam, two terms I will examine later in this article. By methodol-ogy, Fazlur Rahman meant an intellectually defendable and historicallyjustifiable approach to the study of the Qur’an that would reveal the realmeaning of the message of Islam. He felt that so far the modernists hadsearched the Qur’an arbitrarily to find what suited their ideology. In fact,he argued that this lack of method not only bedevilled modernist, but alsowas equally an issue in the revivalist approaches (Rahman, 1982).

The result of this was intellectual inconsistencies. An example of theseinconsistencies is the way in which the Qur’an and Sunnah are appealed toby the modernists to show rapprochement between Islam and modernity: AQur’anic verse, such as the one about polygamy (5:38), is explained away byappealing to the historical context of the revelation; but a progressive-sounding verse, such as the one about the tolerance of different beliefs(109:6), is quoted with no reference to the context. Sometimes the


example of the Prophet is invoked to mitigate a Qur’anic recommendation,such as regarding the treatment of wives (4:34); on other occasions, theprophetic practice would be rejected if it seemed to contradict a Qur’anicverse with a more lenient approach, for instance, to adultery (24:2).12

Fazlur Rahman saw a need to move beyond such inconsistencies generatedby the lack of methodology and assigned himself the task of providing themuch needed philosophically sound footing to the modernist agenda. Heembarked on a search for “intellectual modernism” or “Islamic intellectu-alism,” as he called it (Rahman, 1982, p. 1).

For Fazlur Rahman, this lack of Islamic intellectualism also pointed to adeeper historical problem—the problem of Muslim decline. Whence canone trace the origins of the present decline of Muslims? This question hasreceived much attention both among Muslim reformers and in modernscholarship. Unlike most modernists, who saw the cause of the decline interms of military defeats, internal disunity, the incursion of “foreign”customs, not seen as justified by the Qur’an and Sunnah, and laxity infollowing religious dictates, Fazlur Rahman understood the decline inintellectual terms. He came to the conclusion that the decline of Muslimswas due to the failure of Muslim theology and law to evolve a genuinelyIslamic worldview that would have been rational, freedom promoting, andjust. The writing was on the wall from the earliest period of Muslim history:“stagnation was inherent in the bases on which Islamic law was founded”(Rahman, 1982, p. 26). Thus, Fazlur Rahman saw the Muslim downfall inmodern times as an outcome of a longer-term decline. Hence, to put thereformist thought on firm intellectual grounds was also to correct a long-standing error in Muslim intellectual history.13

CONCERN WITH EDUCATION

If the decline of Muslim societies was rooted in their failure to generateintellectual bedrock, their revival was not possible until this task was carriedout, and for Rahman this was essentially a task of creating Islamic educa-tion. In the very beginning of his book Islam and Modernity (1982), FazlurRahman defines his understanding of Islamic education:

by “Islamic education” I do not mean physical or quasi-physical paraphernalia andinstruments of instruction such as the books taught or the external educationalstructure, but what I call “Islamic intellectualism”; for me this is the essence ofhigher Islamic education. It is the growth of a genuine, original, and adequateIslamic thought that must provide the real criterion for judging the success orfailure of an Islamic education system. (p. 1)

For Fazlur Rahman, the essence of Islamic education was “Islamic intel-lectualism,” which for him, in my view, is the same as the “genuine, original,and adequate Islamic thought.” Once articulated, this Islamic intellectual-

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ism (or the adequate Islamic thought) would provide the basis to evolveand judge the rest of the Islamic education system.

Fazlur Rahman was by no means the first to see education as central tothe reform of Muslim societies. Since at least the end of the 18th century,many Muslims saw education as the “secret wisdom” of the West, which theywanted for Muslims (Hefner & Zaman, 2007). Attempts to reform tradi-tional education and import Western education were made from that timeonwards. But Fazlur Rahman was distinctive in holding the view that thesuccessful reform lay neither in importing the Western educational systems,nor in the juxtaposition of Western school subjects and traditional Islamiceducation, nor in the superficial recasting of madrasa education. The wayforward, according to Fazlur Rahman, lay in the philosophical task ofevolving an Islamic worldview for education.

The centrality of education in Fazlur Rahman’s thought was also linkedto the fact that in his lifetime, most Muslim societies gained freedom fromcolonial rule, and in the process transformed themselves from traditionalpolities to modern states. What role was education to play in these societies?Fazlur Rahman critically observed that as the newly independent Muslimcountries embarked on modernization, the economic role of educationbecame dominant, and only an emotional attachment to religious identitywas being nurtured (Rahman, 1982). In his view this predominantly utili-tarian purpose to which education was being put risked turning it into anatheistic system leading to the desacralization of morality. An authenticIslamic education was needed to provide children with a holistic andnon-utilitarian experience of learning.

Fazlur Rahman made a distinction between modern institutions—schools, banks, parliament, and so forth—and a modern mind, with its setof work ethics and moral values, including those of freedom, egalitarian-ism, and justice. Without a modern mind, institutions are modern onlysuperficially. He observed that while Muslim societies have managed animplantation of modern institutions surrounded by a shallow chorus ofmodern vocabulary, “the modern mind” had not made “any real impact onthe Muslim world” (Rahman, 1966, p. 118). The state of educational insti-tutions in the Muslim world was an example of this superficiality. He wrote:“We have now had approximately a century of modern education among usand yet our seats of modern learning have been able to add precious littleof real originality and worth to the fund of human knowledge” (Rahman,1967a, p. 321).

For Fazlur Rahman, while the influx of modern institutions and tech-nology in Muslim societies was inevitable, the diffusion of modern mindand values was not. Because of his belief that “the hold of Islam” on itsfollowers was likely to remain strong (Rahman, 1966, p. 118), he arguedthat modern values needed to be integrated with the ethical message andmission of Islam, and only then would they gain a hold in Muslim societies.For him, Islamic intellectualism provided the fertile ground for such inte-


gration. His concern with education was ultimately a search for intellectualconditions that could help integrate modern ideals with Islamic ethos. AsIbrahim Moosa put it, “it was a search for Islamic humanism in the modernage” (Rahman & Moosa, 2000, p. 24).

Fazlur Rahman’s engagement with education was thus theoretical innature. He lamented the lack of an Islamically oriented theory of educa-tion, which he believed was needed if all other aspects of education—curriculum, textbooks, teacher education, and assessment—were to haveIslamic traits. In the absence of such a theory, education systems in Muslimcountries become poor copies of those in the West.

DIAGNOSIS OF EDUCATIONAL MALADY

Fazlur Rahman identified the lack of a genuine synthesis of the modernand the traditional educational institutions as the main weakness of theeducational systems in most of the Muslim countries. This weakness had ledto a dual system of education, which distributed social, intellectual, andeconomic capital unfairly among the populations of Muslims.

For him the roots of the problem went back to the colonial times.Muslim societies had evolved elaborate educational systems in their history.These systems faced intellectual as well as economic pressures when Muslimsocieties came under the European rule or influence. In response, a varietyof attempts were made by Muslims to implant the new modern educationsystem alongside traditional institutions. Fazlur Rahman saw these attemptsas a reflection of mechanistic approaches to combine Islamic tradition andmodernity. In some cases, as in Aligarh, Islam was taught by traditionalreligious scholars alongside modern subjects such as math, science, andgeography. In others, such as the Deoband, a traditional curriculum waspadded with elements of modern educational management, such as exami-nation, annual reports, and record keeping. Still other approachesattempted to Islamize modern education by means that were not clear toanyone, including their advocates. All such attempts failed to integratemodernity and Islamic worldviews, and in fact resulted in an educationaland social duality with far reaching consequences.

The most basic trouble with education in Pakistan and some other Muslim coun-tries, however, is its dichotomy: two systems of education are running side by side,one modern and the other the traditional madrasas, untouched by any modernoutlook. The former is government-funded, while the latter is privately financed.They are producing men of quite different and incongruous outlooks on life andincompatible world-views. It would be no exaggeration to say that two nations arebeing produced. (Rahman, 1973, p. 198, italics in original)

Those qualified from the traditional system “are incapable of even con-ceiving what scientific scholarship is like and what its criteria are” and thosequalified from the modern system are unable to produce work that is

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“Islamically purposeful or creative” (Rahman, 1982, p. 124). In fact, theproducts of these two systems can hardly communicate with each other.Furthermore, because the state was seeking to follow the path of moderni-sation, the economic interests were associated with the modern system. Theresult was that the dual system created not only an epistemological divide,but also a class divide. He saw education in Muslim societies caught in the“most vicious of all circles,” which could only be broken if “necessary andfar reaching adjustments are made in the present system of education”(Rahman, 1982, p. 86).

Taken together, the discussion in the last two sections highlights that forFazlur Rahman the crisis in Muslim education was intimately connectedwith the larger issue of reform in Muslim societies. In both matters the lackof Islamic intellectualism, which could provide the touchstone to work outthe authentic Islamic teachings for modern times was the main lacunae.The next section will discuss Fazlur Rahman’s attempt to address this issue.

METHODOLOGY FOR REFORM IN TRANSFORMATION OF ANINTELLECTUAL TRADITION

While Fazlur Rahman’s diagnosis of the educational problems in theMuslim world and the broad outline of his solution are scattered in severalworks (Rahman, 1962, 1967a, 1967b, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1988), it is in Islamand Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition (1982) that hedevoted substantial space articulating his methodology for generatingIslamic intellectualism. In this section I will focus on this book, thoughreferences will be made to other works as well. The book was the result ofa major international project titled “Islam and Social Change” which FazlurRahman and Leonard Binder had led. The project resulted in severalmonographs on various Muslim countries. As the project director, FazlurRahman wrote Islam and Modernity as a synthesis and a general work oneducation in Muslim contexts, both in historical and contemporary times.

The book has an intellectually substantial introduction followed by fourchapters, each of a very wide sweep. At the very beginning of the book,Fazlur Rahman situates the Qur’an at the centre of his project of workingout Islamic intellectualism. He justifies it by pointing out the psychological,spiritual, and practical importance of the Qur’an for Muslims. This status“encouraged the Muslim jurists and intellectuals to look upon the Qur’an(and the model of the Prophet) as a unique repository of answers to allsorts of questions” (p. 2). Fazlur Rahman then makes a crucial point thatwhile this approach succeeded initially, with the passage of time—as thecontext in which Muslims lived became more and more distanced from thecontext in which the Qur’an was revealed—the approach faltered. Therethus arose a need for a “method and hermeneutics,” which was never“squarely addressed by the Muslims” (p. 2). The result was that theQur’anic worldview was lost very early on in history. Intellectually, this led


to a situation in which by the 10th century the religious sciences (ulumshariya) were separated from rational sciences (ulum aqliya). This “fatefuldistinction” in fact was the beginning of the decline of intellectual life inMuslim societies, a situation that became inescapably apparent in light ofthe political fall of Muslims in the modern period (p. 33). The first chapterof the book traces this process of decline in intellectual life.

In chapter two, Fazlur Rahman tackles the impact of modernity onvarious parts of the Muslim world and the resulting intellectual responses.Within this broad context, the chapter focuses on the period of classicalmodernism in the late 19th and early 20th century, comparing develop-ments in Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, and Indonesia. The emergence ofthe dual system of education, noted above, is discussed in these specificcontexts. The third chapter on contemporary education examines post-independence trends in the same countries. In the final chapter, FazlurRahman provides his suggestions for the way forward.

Interspersed among these historical surveys is Fazlur Rahman’s method-ology, which begins with the need to “distinguish clearly between norma-tive Islam and historical Islam” (p. 141). These are two very importantideas, and Fazlur Rahman’s solution stands or falls depending on how theseare defined and justified. Normative Islam was Islam as it was—as it was inthe mind of the Prophet and in the Qur’an. Historical Islam, on the otherhand, was Islam as understood and practiced by Muslims, the “career ofIslam at the hands of Muslims” (p. 147). Once discovered, normative Islamwas to act as a criterion by which the historical Islam—including the entiregamut of intellectual disciplines and scholarship of Muslims—was to bejudged. In terms of education, it would provide the philosophical bedrockfor the construction of genuine Islamic scholarship, leading to the writingof curriculum and textbooks and the training of teachers, all of whichwould serve as vehicles for the transmission of the normative Islam to thenew generation of Muslims.14

The critical question posed in this important text is: How does oneaccess normative Islam? His response was perhaps his single most impor-tant and influential contribution to reformist thought among Muslims. Inhis answer to this question, he proposed “the double-movement theory,”moving “from the present situation to Qur’anic times” and then “back tothe present” (Rahman, 1982, p. 5). He believed that “to the extent that weachieve both movements of this double movement successfully theQur’an’s imperatives will become alive and effective once again” (p. 7).There was no fixed content to normative Islam; each generation was tomake fresh efforts to discover normative Islam and apply it to the issues ofits own times. What was fixed was the correct methodology he was puttingforward, not the particular interpretation: “it is obviously not necessary thata certain interpretation once accepted must continue to be accepted; thereis always both room and necessity for a new interpretation, for this is, intruth, an ongoing process” (p. 145). The Qur’an, according to Fazlur

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Rahman, consists not only of particular commands but also contains therationale, ratio legis, for the commands. The rationale is understood whenthe individual verses are pondered upon by taking into account the wholeQur’an and the larger socio-historical context in which the verses wererevealed. In the Qur’an, inspiration and history interact.

The first of the two movements—that is, the move from the presentsituation to Qur’anic times—itself was made up of two steps. When facedwith a particular issue in the present time, the first of these steps would beto understand “the meaning of the Qur’an as a whole as well as in terms ofthe specific tenets that constitute responses to specific situations” (p. 6).This would lead to the ratio legis:

Generally speaking, each legal or quasi legal pronouncement [in the Qur’an] isaccompanied by a ratio legis explaining why a law is being enunciated. To under-stand a ratio legis fully, an understanding of the socio-historical background (whatthe Qur’anic commentators call “occasions of revelation”) is necessary. The ratiolegis is the essence of the matter, the actual legislation being its embodiment.(Rahman, 1980, p. 47)

By understanding the ratio legis one was able to carry out the second stepof the first movement, which was “to generalise” from the specific responsesand arrive at “statements of general moral-social objectives” (Rahman,1982, p. 6).15 Armed with the “general principles, values, and long-rangeobjectives” (p. 7) one would execute the second part of the doublemovement—working out specific Islamic norms to be applied now. Thisrequired a thorough social scientific analysis of the various aspects of thecurrent situation and the problem being addressed. Once the morallyrelevant dimension of the current situation was formulated, the reformerwas in a position to apply the Qur’anic objective afresh to it.

It is important to bring here a distinction between an appeal to traditionand an appeal to the rational interpretation of tradition. As illustratedearlier, a widespread method of modernists has been to appeal selectivelyto the tradition, including Qur’anic verses, to advocate change. FazlurRahman saw this as a flawed approach: “Its fundamental shortcomingconsists in the fact that by an appeal to tradition (rather than to a rationalinterpretation of tradition), one is strengthening traditionalism itself”(Rahman, 1970, p. 325). Fazlur Rahman, in his methodology, was notappealing to the individual verses of the Qur’an, but to the legislativerationale behind the verse—an interpretive act emerging out of the analysisof the context.

The application of his theory led Fazlur Rahman to the view that theessence of Islamic teaching, its worldview, was the belief in one God andceaseless striving for social justice. The two aspects were integrally related.God was neither an intellectual abstraction, as Muslim philosophers con-strued Him, nor an object of personal experience, as the Sufis conceivedHim. Rather, this one God, for Fazlur Rahman, was


[t]hat dimension which makes other dimensions possible; He gives meaning andlife to everything. He is all-enveloping, literally infinite and He alone is infi-nite. . . . God is not an item among other items of the universe, or just an existentamong other existents. He is “with” everything; He constitutes the integrity ofeverything. . . . God then is the very meaning of reality, a meaning manifested,clarified, and brought home by the universe, helped even further by man.(Rahman, 1980, p. 4)

For Fazlur Rahman, God served as hope, as the guarantor of the unity ofvirtue and happiness, helping humans to remain between nihilism andhubris. With God as hope, it was left to humans to bring about social justice(Rahman, 1967b). God and humans were together in creating a just world.Because Fazlur Rahman took social activism to be the essence of the Islamicmessage, he considered much of Sufism as un-Islamic, as it made God anobject of personal experience and left out the message of social activism.

Following are some examples of the application of his theory. The firstis Fazlur Rahman’s analysis of the legal status of murder. The traditionalIslamic position, based upon appeal to isolated verses, has been thatmurder was a private crime against the bereaved family, which thus has aright to decide the fate of the murderer. Fazlur Rahman argued that ifthese verses were read in the context of other verses, such as 5:32,16 and inlight of the historical context, it would emerge that the general principlewas that killing a person was like killing humanity. Hence, murder was acrime against society and not against the bereaved family only. The state,and not the bereaved family, must deal with murder.17

Another example was Fazlur Rahman’s proposal regarding the functionof zakat in a Muslim country. Generally, zakat is seen as a form of charity,whereby Muslims are required to distribute a formulaic amount voluntarily(though in some countries it is collected by the state). The rate of zakat isfixed, and it is so small that it can only act as a form of charity in moderntimes. The modern state is run on taxes, with zakat acting as a charitableinstitution. Against this general view, and based on the application of histheory, Fazlur Rahman saw the zakat as a tax—in fact the only tax—imposedin the Qur’an to meet all the needs of the nascent society of Madina(Rahman, 1970). Hence, the ratio legis of zakat was to meet the social,administrative, and military needs of Muslim societies through their inter-nal means. The particular rate and modes were reflective of the needs ofthat society. In light of this, Fazlur Rahman recommended that “Muslimsmight rationalize and streamline the taxation structure by reintroducingzakat, refixing its rates in view of the colossal rise in government spending”(p. 328). As noted above, this suggestion was one of the issues for which hefaced resistance in Pakistan.

Several historical, epistemological, and hermeneutical assumptionsunderpinning the double-movement theory are worth noting as they relateto the viability of the idea of normative Islam. To begin with, FazlurRahman believed in an objective meaning of the text, which can be

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accessed through a rigorous analysis of intra and extra-textual contexts. Hewas aware of this assumption, and referred to Gadamer’s work as anti-thesisof his own. Another underlying assumption in his theory was historicism,the belief that ideas cannot be understood unless the historical circum-stances surrounding them are taken into account. For Fazlur Rahman,normative Islam was to emerge through an exercise in historicity wherebythe teachings of the Qur’an would be understood in their full and properhistorical contexts. Rationalism of religious teaching was another assump-tion in Fazlur Rahman’s theory. He believed that religious teachings arerational and thus comprehensible by the human mind; faith and knowl-edge, instead of being in separate compartments, were in harmony witheach other. In a later section of this article I assess the viability of theseassumptions to ascertain the solution as proposed by Fazlur Rahman.

NORMATIVE ISLAM AND EDUCATION

How does Fazlur Rahman’s methodology and normative Islam relate toeducation? As noted above, once normative Islam was worked out, it wouldserve as the criterion to assess historical Islam, to find out what was in linewith this normativity and what was not, and thus must be rejected:

The first task, I submit to you, indeed the urgent task, is to re-examine theIslamic tradition itself. I would rather call it the Muslim tradition, which contains,of course, many Islamic things, many unIslamic things and many that may be onthe borderline. This is extremely important. Is Ibn ’Arabi reflective of theQur’an? How far is Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s Ash’arism in conformity with the Qur’an?How far is al-Ghazali’s teaching in conformity with the Qur’an? (Rahman, 1988,p. 8)

Regardless of its philosophical soundness and practical viability, theproposal is nonetheless radical. Few reformists have attempted tochallenge the entire tradition of Muslim scholarship or to propose itscritical assessment.

In Fazlur Rahman’s view, the result of this exercise—of assessing thehistorical Islam by the criterion of normative Islam—would yield that whichwas genuinely Islamic. In educational terms, normative Islam wouldprovide the tools with which a selection could be made from Muslimcultures to arrive at an Islamic curriculum, or at least part of such acurriculum. To this historical corpus, scholars would add what was requiredto lead a modern life according to normative Islam, thus completing thecurriculum of Islamic education. The working out of the modern contentrequired an assessment of the world in which we live in a manner that was“unencumbered by the concerns of dogma and imaginary fears aboutchange. In this regard the role of science, the social science, and thehumanities were all indispensible aspects” (Rahman & Moosa, 2000, p. 8).


Here, too, normative Islam would be the criterion that would determinewhat should be adopted in Islamic education from modern knowledge.

The pedagogical task of educators would then be to find ways in whichthis Islamically approved knowledge was to be transmitted to the newgeneration. But these educators must themselves be able to envision thedialectic between the past and the present, which underlies the doublemovement. This required people who were familiar with both traditionalIslamic subjects and modern scholarship. One of Fazlur Rahman’s lamentswas the lack of such personnel, a situation that he saw linked with the dualsystem of education dominant in the Muslim world. During his tenure asthe director of the Institute of Islamic Research, he attempted to remedythe situation by encouraging madrasa-trained students to learn modernresearch approaches and by encouraging university graduates to learnclassical Islamic learning (Ali, 2009).18

This whole task—deriving normative Islam, sifting through historicalIslam, assessing modern knowledge, and creating pedagogy for the trans-mission of the resulting Islamic education—was envisioned by FazlurRahman as a collective and ongoing endeavour. As will be seen in the nextsection, several Muslim scholars have been inspired by this vision and havedevoted their intellectual energies to apply Fazlur Rahman’s double-movement theory to arrive at the normative Islam. It is less clear that muchsuccess has been achieved in applying the results to actual educationalpractices in the Muslim world.

We can conclude this section by asking what kind of Muslim FazlurRahman was envisioning that would emerge out of an Islamic educationcarried out according to his ideals. This can only be speculated as he doesnot specifically answer this question. Given Fazlur Rahman’s aim to bring tothe Muslim world not only the modern institutions but also the modernvalues, it can be expected that he was envisioning a Muslim embodying anIslamic modernity with values of egalitarianism, social activism, and what hecalled “progressive embodiment of the fundamental values of freedom andresponsibility” (Rahman, 1979, p. 39).

A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF FAZLUR RAHMAN’S WORK

As Ibrahim Moosa has noted, Fazlur Rahman tried to open doors, some ofwhich were closed for centuries (Rahman & Moosa, 2000, p. 204). Afterhim, others have tried to keep these doors open and to walk through themto new pastures. Among these are his scores of students, who are perhapsthe most important source of his influence. Many of them went on tobecome respectable scholars themselves. They have written about thelasting impact of Fazlur Rahman’s personality, mastery of scholarship, andcommitment to tradition. As Donald Berry (1988) noted, “the refreshingcandour and vitality of Fazlur Rahman has thoroughly permeated the fieldof Islamic Studies in North America” (p. 37).

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His methodology has inspired fresh readings of the Qur’an on wide-ranging topics; for many scholars Fazlur Rahman’s approach—bringingtogether a holistic rather than atomistic approach to the Qur’an with thetools of social sciences and humanities—has become common sense. Forthem, only a historical understanding can provide a basis for the contem-porary application of the Qur’anic teaching. Amina Wadud, for example,writes in her book, Qur’an and Woman (1999), that she used the “method ofQur’anic interpretation proposed by Fazlur Rahman” (p. 4). Deploying thismethod she criticised the atomistic approach predominant in the traditionof Qur’anic interpretation, which has led to androcentric readings, justify-ing and reinforcing patriarchal social practices. Similarly, Farid Esack(1997), in formulating an interpretation of the Qur’an that embeds thestruggles and aspirations of Muslims for justice and liberation, adopts aninterpretive model that is similar to that of Fazlur Rahman.

Another example is Fazlur Rahman’s influence in Indonesia, where hehas been a trailblazer in what is called the liberal Islamic revival (Harjanto,2003). The foremost leader of this school of thought, Nurchlolish Madjid,did his doctorate under Fazlur Rahman. In his writings and speeches,Madjid has been a strong advocate of secularization (which he distin-guishes from secularism) and intellectual freedom, the two elements hesees necessary if Muslims are to distinguish between transcendental valuesand temporal values (Madjid, 1998, p. 286). In general, Fazlur Rahman’sapproach underpins the work of many of those seeking to provide progres-sive interpretations of the Qur’anic text. Though R. Kevin Jaques (2002)observes that Fazlur Rahman “failed to have an impact on Muslim thinkingbeyond the confines of academia” (p. 83), this may be changing in recentyears. Now he has a notable presence in “cyber Islam” as well as in the worldof journalism, and in many blogs and discussion forums people refer to histhoughts.19

Fazlur Rahman’s work could be seen as a major watershed in modernistdiscourse. As Richard Martin (1998) notes, “Virtually no other Orientalist,Muslim or non-Muslim, reflected as Fazlur Rahman did on the theoreticalproblems and hermeneutical issues involved in interpreting religious texts”(p. 247). The result is that any significant work in this tradition must nowprovide reflexive comments about its methodological mode. Thus, therehas been a qualitative shift in Muslim theoretical engagement with thediscourse of modernity and post-modernity. In the same spirit, FazlurRahman is among the pioneer scholars cum reformers who seek tocombine academic rigour with commitment to Muslim tradition. He con-stantly struggled to push his convictions about religion to their utmostlimits, seeking to give them as firm a rational ground as possible. In theyears since his time, this combination is now widespread in universities.More specifically, in terms of today’s education, Fazlur Raman’s insistencethat broader human potential rather than economic utility should be theunderlying purpose of education remains relevant at a time when there is


an increasing drive to define, manage, and judge education on economicterms. His thought also shows that concern with the ultimate meaning ofeducation is found across traditions and that it can be the basis of creatingdialogue across people from different religions and cultures.

Fazlur Rahman’s widespread influence notwithstanding, questions canbe asked about his methodology and assumptions. Because in this article weare approaching him as an educationist, reformer, and an academician, theassessment would be along these lines.

Educationally, for instance, it is unfortunate that Fazlur Rahman did notprovide any concrete examples of how his ideas can be applied into actualeducational contexts. He did not elaborate what a curriculum or a teachereducation programme based on his ideas would be like. Perhaps hethought that thinking about the concrete application of his ideas waspremature. Before a curriculum could be designed along the lines of his“Islamic intellectualism,” the normative teachings of Islam need to beworked out in a range of areas. In my interviews with the advocates ofIslamic schools in the West, I found that some of them believed that FazlurRahman’s approach would help them in their search for Islamic education(Panjwani, 2009).

If we assess him as a reformist, we note that his central concern waswith discovering the normative Islam. This was to emerge through theapplication of critical historical methods whereby the teachings of theQur’an would be understood in their full and proper historical contexts.But how much does one need to know about these contexts to be surethat one knows enough to contextualise the Qur’anic teachings? In recentdecades, scholars have situated the early period of Muslim history at thetail end of Late Antiquity. This periodization has led to the revision andre-evaluation of many elements that would count as the context of revela-tion (Cameron & Conrad, 1992; Sizgorich, 2009). Our knowledge of thecontext of the Qur’an is growing, but it is also leading to different under-standings of the same events and to more questions. Similarly, in readingMuslim sources, the imprint of post-Prophetic fragmentations, diversity ofoutlooks, and the political stances cannot be ignored. The time lagbetween the “event of the Qur’an” and the sources carrying asbab-e-nuzul(occasions of revelations) poses its own set of historiographical problems.How does one reconcile divergent historical understandings to arrive atthe knowledge of the context that would lead to the general principles? Itis not clear that one can find satisfactory answers to these issues in FazlurRahman’s work.

Furthermore, the normative Islam Fazlur Rahman arrives at, the Islam ofsocial justice and activism, seems to neglect, or at least underrate, manyaspects of religious life—aspects such as love, gratitude, worship, andfestivals. As Cragg (1985) puts it, “the Muhammad beloved of the Sufis. . . must give way to the Prophet who inaugurated a new society through arevelation essentially geared to action” (p. 91).

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There is another related problem as well. Fazlur Rahman certainly madea valid point that a simple appeal to tradition was going to ultimatelystrengthen traditionalism. Instead, he argued that Muslims should aim fora rational interpretation of tradition. The problem is that he seems toequate being rational with being progressive and liberal, yet such an equa-tion does not necessarily follow. The interpretation of tradition can berational but conservative. In fact, one of the reasons for the appeal ofconservativism among the educated sections of Muslim community is thatconservatism is presented in a rational manner and not simply by the forceof authority.

Fazlur Rahman’s approach also comes very close to being unfalsifiable.For him, if a particular Islamic solution—found through the application ofhis theory—did not work, it meant either Muslims did not understand theQur’anic principle correctly or that the principle was not applied correctly.No other possibility arises:

For if the results of understanding fail in application now, then either there hasbeen a failure to assess the present situation correctly or a failure in understandingthe Qur’an. For it is not possible that something that could be and was actuallyrealised in specific texture of past cannot—allowing for the differences in thespecifics of present situation—be realised in the present context. (Rahman, 1982,p. 7)

It is hard to envisage what would count as evidence against hisapproach. As with unfalsifiable approaches generally, there is even adanger of a totalitarian outlook, and Fazlur Rahman came very close to it.In his view, once normative Islam was found, it must be applied withstrength: “The inertia and recalcitrance of people to the establishment ofsuch a social order has to be overcome. People have to be made conscriptin the path of goodness, so to say, if they suffer from inertia” (Rahman,1967b, p. 104).

When considering Fazlur Rahman as a scholar, it is important to note hisbelief in the possibility of accessing objective meanings of the Qur’anic textas it was in the mind of the Prophet. In light of the findings of modernhermeneutics, is this belief sustainable? Can one go beyond interpretationto an objective meaning? Gadamer (1975) argues:

A person who is trying to understand a text is always performing an act of project-ing. He projects before himself a meaning for the text as a whole as soon as someinitial meaning emerges in the text. Again, the latter emerges only because he isreading the text with particular expectations in regard to a certain meaning. Theworking out of this fore-project, which is constantly revised in terms of whatemerges as he penetrates into the meaning, is understanding what is there. . . . Thisconstant of new projection is the movement of understanding and interpretation.(p. 236)

Fazlur Rahman was aware of this challenge and in fact noted that ifGadamer were right, his whole thesis collapsed: “If Gadamer’s thesis iscorrect, then the double-movement theory I have put forward has no


meaning at all” (Rahman, 1982, p. 8). Yet, he barely engaged with thechallenge of those who think that meanings are not objectively in the textwaiting to be discovered but exist “only inside the consciousness of livingpersons” (Smith, 1980, quoted in Cragg, 1985, p. 95), produced and repro-duced in the engagement between the text and the reader. To acknowl-edge this would have meant legitimising “those many Muslim hearts andminds Fazlur Rahman is at pains to exclude or correct” (Cragg, 1985,p. 96). Not surprisingly, Fazlur Rahman (1982) dismissed this challenge bycalling it “hopelessly subjective” (p. 9). To be fair, he always qualified hissearch for objectivity; he demanded “sufficiently objective” knowledge or“fairly objective” judgement, but he never elaborated on what would countas sufficient or fair. In my view, this is evidence of the tension betweenFazlur Rahman the scholar and Fazlur Rahman the reformer. The scholarrecognised the challenge posed by the interpretive nature of scripture, butthe reformer was not able to follow through the implications.20

Finally, Fazlur Rahman calls for a thoroughly rational metaphysics ofIslam, reconciling knowledge and faith. But can this be claimed withoutaddressing the challenges posed by philosophers such as Hume and Kant?Again, Fazlur Rahman was aware of this challenge, and in light of it, hemade God a regulative idea. Yet he failed to show how this regulative idearelated to the notion of revelation and how it served as a divine response tothe human condition. Can a modern theology ignore the perplexitiesabout the very possibility of the Word of God?21 As he sought to Islamisemodernity, he hardly dealt with the claim that “few ideas are more foreignto modernity and Enlightenment than the idea of revelation” (Wild, 2006,p. 1).

Notwithstanding these criticisms, Fazlur Rahman has left many lastingimprints. Perhaps his most important legacy is the boldness with which hemade proposals for reforms. Modernity was an opportunity and a challengefor him. Many of his followers, particularly those working on extremelysensitive matters like gender and sexuality, and who wish to engage withmodernity as a challenge and an opportunity, draw upon his work. Weak-nesses in his approach are not confined to him alone. They are endemic tothe entire modernist tradition. They are accentuated in his case becauseunlike many other reformists, Fazlur Rahman wanted to remain a thor-oughgoing scholar; herein lay the tension between Fazlur Rahman as ascholar and Fazlur Rahman as a religious reformer—it is indeed a tensionbetween history and hope.

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Berger, P. L. (1977). Facing up to modernity: Excursions in society, politics, and religion.New York: Basic Books.

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Berry, D. (1988). Dr. Fazlur Rahman (1919–1988); A life in review. In E. Waugh &F. Denny (Eds.), The shaping of an American Islamic discourse: A memorial to FazlurRahman (pp. 37–45). Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press.

Cameron, A., & Conrad, L. I. (1992). The Byzantine and early Islamic Near East: 1stWorkshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam: Papers. Princeton, NJ: Darwin Press.

Cragg, K. (1985). The pen and the faith: Eight modern Muslim writers and the Qur’an.London: Allen & Unwin.

El-Rouayheb, K. (2006). Opening the gate of verification: The forgotten Arab-Islamic florescence of the 17th century. International Journal of Middle East Studies,38(2), 263–281.

Esack, F. (1997). Qur’an, liberation & pluralism: An Islamic perspective of interreligioussolidarity against oppression. Oxford: Oneworld.

Gadamer, H. (1975). Truth and method. London: Sheed & Ward.Gibb, H. A. R., & Bowen, H. (1950). Islamic society and the West: A study of the impact

of Western civilisation on Moslem culture in the Near East. Vol. 1. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

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Chicago: University of Chicago Press.James, W. (1909). The will to believe, and other essays in popular philosophy. New York:

Longmans.Jaques, R. K. (2002). Fazlur Rahman: Prophecy, the Qur’an, and Islamic reform.

Studies in Contemporary Islam, 4(2), 63–83.Kurzman, C. (2002). Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A sourcebook. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Levtzion, N., & Voll, J. O. (Eds.). (1987). Eighteenth-century renewal and reform in Islam.

Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.Madjid, N. (1998). The necessity of renewing Islamic thought and reinvigorating

religious understanding. In C. Kurzman (Ed.), Liberal Islam: A sourcebook (pp.284–294). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Martin, R. (1998). Fazlur Rahman’s contribution to religious studies: A historian ofreligion’s appraisal. In E. H. Waugh & F. Denny (Eds.), The shaping of an AmericanIslamic Discourse: A Memorial to Fazlur Rahman (pp. 243–259). Atlanta, GA: Schol-ars Press.

Masud, M. K. (1988). Obituary notes. Islamic Studies, 27(4), 397.Merad, A. (1960–). Islah [Reform]. In Encyclopaedia of Islam (Vol. 4, pp. 141–163).

Leiden, the Netherlands: E. J. Brill.Metcalf, B. D. (1982). Islamic revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900. Princeton,

NJ: Princeton University Press.Panjwani, F. (2009). Rethinking the educational case for schools with Muslim religious

character: Critical analysis of the conceptions of knowledge and autonomy (UnpublishedDPhil thesis). University of Oxford, Oxford.

Rahman, F. (1958). Prophecy in Islam: Philosophy and orthodoxy. London: Allen &Unwin.

Rahman, F. (1962). Some observations on education and religion. The Voice of Islam,10, 157–161.

Rahman, F. (1964). Islam aur Pakistan ki salmi’at. Fikr-o-Nazr, 2(2), 89–93.Rahman, F. (1965a). Islami hakumat aur qanun sazi. Fikr-o-Nazr, 3(3), 208–216.


Rahman, F. (1965b). Islami saqafat kia hay? Fikr-o-Nazr, 2(12), 779–788.Rahman, F. (1965c). Islamic methodology in history. Karachi, Pakistan: Central Insti-

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national Journal of Middle East Studies, 1(4), 317–333.Rahman, F. (1973). Islam and the new constitution of Pakistan. Journal of Asian and

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Essays on Islamic Civilization, Presented to niyazi Berkes (pp. 284–302). Leiden, theNetherlands: Brill.

Rahman, F. (1979). Islam (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Rahman, F. (1980). Major themes of the Qur’an. Minneapolis, MN: Bibliotheca Islamica.Rahman, F. (1982). Islam & modernity: Transformation of an intellectual tradition.

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fundamentalism. Oxford: Oneworld.Shafiq, S. (1995). Islamization of knowledge: Philosophy and methodology and

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Sizgorich, T. (2009). Violence and belief in late antiquity: Militant devotion in Christianityand Islam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Soroush, A. K. (1998). The evolution and devolution of religious knowledge. InC. Kurzman (Ed.), Liberal Islam: A sourcebook (pp. 244–254). Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Voll, J. O. (1999). Foundations for renewal and reform. In J. Esposito (Ed.), TheOxford history of Islam (pp. 509–548). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wadud, A. (1999). Qur’an and woman. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Walsh, D. (2011, March 16). CIA spy escapes murder case in Pakistan after US pays

“blood money.” The Guardian. Retrieved July 31, 2011, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/cia-spy-murder-pakistan-blood?INTCMP=SRCH

Wild, S. (2006). Self-referentiality in the Qur’an. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz.

NOTES

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

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

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

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

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

5. While among his admirers in the West Fazlur Rahman generally receives sym-pathy for his struggle with conservative sections in Pakistan, many in his owncountry remain ambivalent, if not critical, of his association with a militarydictator.

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

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

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

9. There is no scholarly agreement with regard to the taxonomy of Muslim reform-ist activities in the late 19th and early 20th century. In this article I have followedthe categories used by Fazlur Rahman himself. He distinguishes betweenseveral reformist movements: the revivalist movements in the 18th century werethe pre-colonial movements which sought to purify Muslim practices by seekingto return to a pure Islam; the modernist (or classical modernist) movements ofthe late 19th and early 20th century, which tried to reconcile modernity andIslam; the neo-revivalist movements in the second half of the 20th century,which sought to revive the political role of Islam in modern state; and thefundamentalist (or Waahabi) movements, which attempted a strict literalistunderstanding of the Qur’an. He called himself a neo-modernist.

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

18. It may be useful to note that Fazlur Rahman is sometimes included in anotherreformist project—Islamization of knowledge—which also had very strong edu-cational elements (Shafiq, 1995). The project’s roots can be traced back to the1950s when a group of Muslims started to argue that Islam provided a way togenerate its own distinctive form of knowledge. While there are overlaps, FazlurRahman did not share the basic assumptions of this movement. In fact, heseemed to have a very different understanding of knowledge and its relation-ship with Islam. Unlike the proponents of Islamization of knowledge, he didnot believe in the relativity of knowledge or in the possibility of Islamizingknowledge. For him the issue was not cultural specificity of knowledge but itsapplication (Rahman, 1988).

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

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

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


fazlur rahman and the search for authenticity islamic education-farid panjwani

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