When a Saudi Shaykh "danced to a Quaker's tunes"! (Light notes on Hodgson's seminal work: The Venture of Islam)
(This
is an old piece)
It is no doubt a sheer coincidence. I had just finished reading
a critique by the Saudi conservative preacher and Salafist, ‘Aid al-Qarani, of
Muslim medieval scholarship, when I turned to Hodgson. The thrust of ‘Aid
short article was that after the first two generations of Muslim history, where
supposedly a great deal of emphasis was placed on analyzing and interpreting
textual sources and outside phenomena for practical reasons, a shift in focus
took place. The result of this shift was the creation of a normative system of
education where memorization of large canonical texts (mostly fiqh compendia)
took precedence over a more innovative and reformative look at the social and
legal issues that faced Muslims. ‘Aid’s main focus was on how jurists in particular
were for the most part unable to respond to the social and political changes
which swept the Muslim world across the Middle Period. Scholars’ inability to
keep up with the pace with which Muslim societies were changing was attributed
by ‘Aid to this singular obsession with memorization. But ‘Aid seems also to
imply in his article that this obsession led to a general atmosphere of
stagnation that casted their shadow on other social institutions. ‘Aid’s
article created a stir and has already enticed dozens of responses from
multiple audiences and for various reasons. More responses are sure to emerge
within the next few days.
The kind of educational system ‘Aid decried as a source of
stagnation is similar to the one Hodgson identifies as central to Muslim and
non-Muslim education in the medieval era. This is a form of education where
“the heart of the studies was rote learning of standard books,”[1]one that meant to “limit
the possible range of individual responsiveness, both moral and intellectual.”
Obviously, ‘Aid and Hodgson have come to this conclusion from completely
different angles. Hodgson provides more or less a descriptive evaluation of madrasha
system without trying to link this aspect of medieval Muslim education to the
present. ‘Aid’ article is part of a global and unsettled debate that has
galvanized the Arab world ever since their encounter with a more powerful and
technologically superior West in late 19th century sharpened their
recognition of inferiority. This feeling has been reduced to one central
question: “why have Muslims regressed while others [the West] advanced?”
This bitter recognition of inferiority has led to periods of self-introspection
and even at times to self-flagellation. Several attempts have ever since
been made to provide a satisfactory answer—attempts that gave birth to
contradictory and often conflicting ideologies, whose emergence punctuated the
Arabic 20th century. (It is important to keep in mind that this view
and analysis shares with Hodgson as a point of reference the comparison with
modern Western system of education and modes of scholarly exchange)
A common characteristic of these ideologies (whether Islamic,
nationalist, pan-Arabist or Arab socialist) and the ideologues who embraced
them was the simplistic or more precisely the reductionist nature of (first)
their prognosis of the ills of the modern Arab world, and (second) of the kind
of solutions they projected. Every ideology presumed that there was a moment in
history when the world of Muslims (or the Arabs for that matter), for reasons
that every leading ideologue presumed to have narrowed down, took a downward
turn. And on the basis of this diagnosis each ideology presented a way to
reverse this downward spiral. The Islamists, in varying but comparable ways,
saw the decline as a punishment of God to Muslims’ for neglecting religion, for
their captivation with this world, and for their capitulation to corrupt
leaders and foreign powers. Arab nationalists traced the decline to the time
when Arabs, as a race, ceased to value and ultimately lost the common racial
and cultural bond that united them in their centuries of glory. The loss of
this bond allowed foreigners to control their fate. To reverse the current
reality, this bond needs to be rejuvenated and strengthened.
Even though education has earned a central position in all
responses to that central question of “why Muslims [or Arabs in the Arab
world] have regressed while others progressed,” this is the first time that
someone with a clear salafist inclination singles out the mode of religious
learning that prevailed at a particular period as the root cause of Muslims’ ills.
While ‘Aid fell short of mentioning that the focus on memorization was a
deliberate attempt to limit the scope of innovation (as Hodgson maintains), he
certainly seems to imply that was the outcome. It should be noted that while
‘Aid’s article is less likely to redress the century-long question, and the
frenzy that it generated is more likely to die down with time, it certainly
points to a growing desire to revisit this question in the new century as the
attempts of the 20th century seem to have all failed. (Echoes
of it emerge daily in the Arab press.) Asking what would the Muslim world be
had education progressed differently is definitely not going to reverse the
past, but the dialogue that it generates may help sharpen our understanding of
Muslim medieval educational systems. Still, one would have to wonder whether
our inability to look at this past except through modern lenses where the
reality of the present serves as a reference clouds our judgment of its essence!
[1] - Hodgson 442
تعليقات
إرسال تعليق