VI

THE PRINCIPLE OF MOVEMENT IN THE

STRUCTURE OF ISLAM
AS a cultural movement Islam rejects the old static view of the
universe, and reaches a dynamic view. As an emotional system
of unification it recognizes the worth of the individual as such,
and rejects blood-relationship as a basis of human unity. Blood-
relationship is earth-rootedness. The search for a purely psycho-
logical foundation of human unity becomes possible only with
the perception that all human life is spiritual in its origin.1 Such
a perception is creative of fresh loyalties without any
ceremonials to keep them alive, and makes it possible for man
to emancipate himself from the earth. Christianity which had
originally appeared as a monastic order was tried by
Constantine as a system of unification.2 Its failure to work as
such a system drove the Emperor Julian3 to return to the old gods
of Rome on which he attempted to put philosophical
interpretations. A modern historian of civilization has thus depicted
the state of the civilized world about the time when Islam appeared
on the stage of History:4
It seemed then that the great civilization that it had taken four
thousand years to construct was on the verge of disintegration, and
that mankind was likely to return to that condition of barbarism
where every tribe and sect was against the next, and law and order
were unknown ... The old tribal sanctions had lost their power.
Hence the old imperial methods would no longer operate. The new
sanctions created by Christianity were working division and
destruction instead of unity and order. It was a time fraught with
tragedy. Civilization, like a gigantic tree whose foliage had
overarched the world and whose branches had borne the golden
fruits of art and science and literature, stood tottering, its trunk
no longer alive with the flowing sap of devotion and reverence,
but rotted to the core, riven by the storms of war, and held
together only by the cords of ancient customs and laws, that
might snap at any moment. Was there any emotional culture that
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 117

could be brought in, to gather mankind once more into unity and
to save civilization? This culture must be something of a new type,
for the old sanctions and ceremonials were dead, and to build up
others of the same kind would be the work of centuries.
The writer then proceeds to tell us that the world stood in
need of a new culture to take the place of the culture of the
throne, and the systems of unification which were based on
blood-relationship. It is amazing, he adds, that such a culture
should have arisen from Arabia just at the time when it was
most needed. There is, however, nothing amazing in the
phenomenon. The world-life intuitively sees its own needs, and
at critical moments defines its own direction. This is what, in
the language of religion, we call prophetic revelation. It is only
natural that Islam should have flashed across the consciousness
of a simple people untouched by any of the ancient cultures,
and occupying a geographical position where three continents
meet together. The new culture finds the foundation of world-
unity in the principle of Tawhid.5 Islam, as a polity, is only a
practical means of making this principle a living factor in the
intellectual and emotional life of mankind. It demands loyalty to
God, not to thrones. And since God is the ultimate spiritual
basis of all life, loyalty to God virtually amounts to man‘s
loyalty to his own ideal nature. The ultimate spiritual basis of
all life, as conceived by Islam, is eternal and reveals itself in
variety and change. A society based on such a conception of
Reality must reconcile, in its life, the categories of permanence
and change. It must possess eternal principles to regulate its
collective life, for the eternal gives us a foothold in the world of
perpetual change. But eternal principles when they are
understood to exclude all possibilities of change which,
according to the Qur‘ān, is one of the greatest ―signs‖ of
God, tend to immobilize what is essentially mobile in its
nature. The failure of Europe in political and social sciences
illustrates the former principle, the immobility of Islam during
the last five hundred years illustrates the latter. What then is the
principle of movement in the structure of Islam? This is known
as Ijtihād.
The word literally means to exert. In the terminology of Islamic
law it means to exert with a view to form an independent
judgement on a legal question. The idea, I believe, has its origin
in a well-known verse of the Qur‘ān– ―And to those who exert
118 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

We show Our path.‖6 We find it more definitely adumbrated in

a tradition of the Holy Prophet. When Ma‗ādh was appointed
ruler of Yemen, the Prophet is reported to have asked him as to
how he would decide matters coming up before him. ―I will
judge matters according to the Book of God,‖ said Ma‗ādh.
―But if the Book of God contains nothing to guide you? ―Then
I will act on the precedents of the Prophet of God.‖ ―But if the
precedents fail?‖ ―Then I will exert to form my own
judgement.‖7 The student of the history of Islam, however, is
well aware that with the political expansion of Islam systematic
legal thought became an absolute necessity, and our early
doctors of law, both of Arabian and non-Arabian descent,
worked ceaselessly until all the accumulated wealth of legal
thought found a final expression in our recognized schools of
Law. These schools of Law recognize three degrees of Ijtihād:
(1) complete authority in legislation which is practically
confined to the founders of the schools, (2) relative authority
which is to be exercised within the limits of a particular school,
and (3) special authority which relates to the determining of the
law applicable to a particular case left undetermined by the
founders.8 In this paper I am concerned with the first degree of
Ijtihād only, i.e. complete authority in legislation. The
theoretical possibility of this degree of Ijtihād is admitted by the
Sunnīs, but in practice it has always been denied ever since the
establishment of the schools, inasmuch as the idea of complete
Ijtihād is hedged round by conditions which are well-nigh
impossible of realization in a single individual. Such an attitude
seems exceedingly strange in a system of law based mainly on
the groundwork provided by the Qur‘ān which embodies an
essentially dynamic outlook on life. It is, therefore, necessary,
before we proceed farther, to discover the causes of this
intellectual attitude which has reduced the Law of Islam
practically to a state of immobility. Some European writers
think that the stationary character of the Law of Islam is due to
the influence of the Turks. This is an entirely superficial view, for
the legal schools of Islam had been finally established long before
the Turkish influence began to work in the history of Islam. The
real causes are, in my opinion, as follows:
1. We are all familiar with the Rationalist movement which
appeared in the church of Islam during the early days of the
Abbasids and the bitter controversies which it raised. Take for
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 119

instance the one important point of controversy between the two

camps– the conservative dogma of the eternity of the Qur‘ān.
The Rationalists denied it because they thought that this was
only another form of the Christian dogma of the eternity of the
Word; on the other hand, the conservative thinkers whom the
later Abbasides, fearing the political implications of
Rationalism, gave their full support, thought that by denying the
eternity of the Qur‘ān the Rationalists were undermining the
very foundations of Muslim society. 9 Nazzām, for instance,
practically rejected the traditions, and openly declared Abū
Hurairah to be an untrustworthy reporter.10 Thus, partly owing
to a misunderstanding of the ultimate motives of Rationalism,
and partly owing to the unrestrained thought of particular
Rationalists, conservative thinkers regarded this movement as a
force of disintegration, and considered it a danger to the
stability of Islam as a social polity. 11 Their main purpose,
therefore, was to preserve the social integrity of Islam, and to
realize this the only course open to them was to utilize the
binding force of Sharī‗ah, and to make the structure of their
legal system as rigorous as possible.
The rise and growth of ascetic Sufism, which gradually
developed under influences of a non-Islamic character, a purely
speculative side, is to a large extent responsible for this attitude.
On its purely religious side Sufism fostered a kind of revolt
against the verbal quibbles of our early doctors. The case of
Sufyān Thawrī is an instance in point. He was one of the
acutest legal minds of his time, and was nearly the founder of a
school of law,12 but being also intensely spiritual, the dry-as-
dust subtleties of contemporary legists drove him to ascetic
Sufism. On its speculative side which developed later, Sufism is
a form of free thought and in alliance with Rationalism. The
emphasis that it laid on the distinction of zāhir and bātin
(Appearance and Reality) created an attitude of indifference to all
that applies to Appearance and not to Reality.13
This spirit of total other-worldliness in later Sufism obscured
men‘s vision of a very important aspect of Islam as a social
polity, and, offering the prospect of unrestrained thought on its
speculative side, it attracted and finally absorbed the best minds
in Islam. The Muslim state was thus left generally in the hands
of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses of Islam,
having no personalities of a higher calibre to guide them, found
120 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

their security only in blindly following the schools.

3. On the top of all this came the destruction of Baghdad–
the centre of Muslim intellectual life– in the middle of the
thirteenth century. This was indeed a great blow, and all the
contemporary historians of the invasion of Tartars describe the
havoc of Baghdad with a half-suppressed pessimism about the
future of Islam. For fear of further disintegration, which is only
natural in such a period of political decay, the conservative
thinkers of Islam focused all their efforts on the one point of
preserving a uniform social life for the people by a jealous
exclusion of all innovations in the law of Sharī‗ah as expounded
by the early doctors of Islam. Their leading idea was social
order, and there is no doubt that they were partly right, because
organization does to a certain extent counteract the forces of
decay. But they did not see, and our modern Ulema do not see,
that the ultimate fate of a people does not depend so much on
organization as on the worth and power of individual men. In
an over-organized society the individual is altogether crushed
out of existence. He gains the whole wealth of social thought
around him and loses his own soul. Thus a false reverence for
past history and its artificial resurrection constitute no remedy
for a people‘s decay. ―The verdict of history,‖ as a modern
writer has happily put it, ―is that worn-out ideas have never
risen to power among a people who have worn them out.‖ The
only effective power, therefore, that counteracts the forces of
decay in a people is the rearing of self-concentrated individuals.
Such individuals alone reveal the depth of life. They disclose
new standards in the light of which we begin to see that our
environment is not wholly inviolable and requires revision. The
tendency to over-organization by a false reverence of the past, as
manifested in the legists of Islam in the thirteenth century and
later, was contrary to the inner impulse of Islam, and consequently
invoked the powerful reaction of Ibn Taimīyyah, one of the most
indefatigable writers and preachers of Islam, who was born in
1263, five years after the destruction of Baghdad.
Ibn Taimiyyah was brought up in Hanbalite tradition.
Claiming freedom of Ijtihād for, himself he rose in revolt against
the finality of the schools, and went back to first principles in
order to make a fresh start. Like Ibn Hazm– the founder of
Zahirī school of law–14 he rejected the Hanafite principle of
reasoning by analogy and Ijmā‗ as understood by older legists;15
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 121

for he thought agreement was the basis of all superstition.16 And

there is no doubt that, considering the moral and intellectual
decrepitude of his times, he was right in doing so. In the
sixteenth century Suyūtī claimed the same privilege of Ijtihād to
which he added the idea of a renovator at the beginning of each
century.17 But the spirit of Ibn Taimīyyah‘s teaching found a
fuller expression in a movement of immense potentialities
which arose in the eighteenth century, from the sands of Nejd,
described by Macdonald as the ―cleanest spot in the decadent
world of Islam.‖ It is really the first throb of life in modern
Islam. To the inspiration of this movement are traceable,
directly or indirectly, nearly all the great modern movements of
Muslim Asia and Africa, e.g. the Sanūsī movement, the Pan-
Islamic movement,18 and the Bābī movement, which is only a
Persian reflex of Arabian Protestantism. The great puritan
reformer, Muhammad Ibn ‗Abd al-Wahhāb, who was born in
1700, 19 studied in Medina, travelled in Persia, and finally
succeeded in spreading the fire of his restless soul throughout
the whole world of Islam. He was similar in spirit to Ghazālī‘s
disciple, Muhammad Ibn Tūmart20– the Berber puritan reformer
of Islam who appeared amidst the decay of Muslim Spain, and
gave her a fresh inspiration. We are, however, not concerned
with the political career of this movement which was terminated
by the armies of Muhammad ‗Alī Pāshā. The essential thing to
note is the spirit of freedom manifested in it, though inwardly
this movement, too, is conservative in its own fashion. While it
rises in revolt against the finality of the schools, and vigorously
asserts the right of private judgement, its vision of the past is
wholly uncritical, and in matters of law it mainly falls back on
the traditions of the Prophet.
Passing on to Turkey, we find that the idea of Ijtihād,
reinforced and broadened by modern philosophical ideas, has
long been working in the religious and political thought of the
Turkish nation. This is clear from Halim Sabit‘s new theory of
Muhammadan Law, grounded on modern sociological concepts.
If the renaissance of Islam is a fact, and I believe it is a fact, we
too one day, like the Turks, will have to re-evaluate our
intellectual inheritance. And if we cannot make any original
contribution to the general thought of Islam, we may, by
healthy conservative criticism, serve at least as a check on the
rapid movement of liberalism in the world of Islam.
122 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

I now proceed to give you some idea of religio-political

thought in Turkey which will indicate to you how the power of
Ijtihād is manifested in recent thought and activity in that
country. There were, a short time ago, two main lines of
thought in Turkey represented by the Nationalist Party and the
Party of Religious Reform. The point of supreme interest with
the Nationalist Party is above all the State and not Religion.
With these thinkers religion as such has no independent
function. The state is the essential factor in national life which
determines the character and function of all other factors. They,
therefore, reject old ideas about the function of State and
Religion, and accentuate the separation of Church and State.
Now the structure of Islam as a religio-political system, no
doubt, does permit such a view, though personally I think it is a
mistake to suppose that the idea of state is more dominant and
rules all other ideas embodied in the system of Islam. In Islam
the spiritual and the temporal are not two distinct domains, and
the nature of an act, however secular in its import, is
determined by the attitude of mind with which the agent does it.
It is the invisible mental background of the act which ultimately
determines its character.21 An act is temporal or profane if it is
done in a spirit of detachment from the infinite complexity of
life behind it; it is spiritual if it is inspired by that complexity.
In Islam it is the same reality which appears as Church looked
at from one point of view and State from another. It is not true
to say that Church and State are two sides or facets of the same
thing. Islam is a single unanalysable reality which is one or the
other as your point of view varies. The point is extremely far-
reaching and a full elucidation of it will involve us in a highly
philosophical discussion. Suffice it to say that this ancient
mistake arose out of the bifurcation of the unity of man into two
distinct and separate realities which somehow have a point of
contact, but which are in essence opposed to each other. The
truth, however, is that matter is spirit in space-time reference.
The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in
regard to what we call the external world; it is mind or soul
when you look at it as acting in regard to the ultimate aim and
ideal of such acting. The essence of Tawhid, as a working idea,
is equality, solidarity, and freedom. The state, from the Islamic
standpoint, is an endeavour to transform these ideal principles
into space-time forces, an aspiration to realize them in a definite
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 123

human organization. It is in this sense alone that the state in

Islam is a theocracy, not in the sense that it is headed by a
representative of God on earth who can always screen his
despotic will behind his supposed infallibility. The critics of
Islam have lost sight of this important consideration. The
Ultimate Reality, according to the Qur‘ān, is spiritual, and its
life consists in its temporal activity. The spirit finds its
opportunities in the natural, the material, the secular. All that is
secular is, therefore, sacred in the roots of its being. The
greatest service that modern thought has rendered to Islam, and
as a matter of fact to all religion, consists in its criticism of
what we call material or natural– a criticism which discloses
that the merely material has no substance until we discover it
rooted in the spiritual. There is no such thing as a profane
world. All this immensity of matter constitutes a scope for the
self-realization of spirit. All is holy ground. As the Prophet so
beautifully puts it: ―The whole of this earth is a mosque.‖22 The
State, according to Islam, is only an effort to realize the
spiritual in a human organization. But in this sense all state, not
based on mere domination and aiming at the realization of ideal
principles, is theocratic.
The truth is that the Turkish Nationalists assimilated the idea
of the separation of Church and State from the history of
European political ideas. Primitive Christianity was founded,
not as a political or civil unit, but as a monastic order in a
profane world, having nothing to do with civil affairs, and
obeying the Roman authority practically in all matters. The
result of this was that when the State became Christian, State
and Church confronted each other as distinct powers with
interminable boundary disputes between them. Such a thing
could never happen in Islam; for Islam was from the very
beginning a civil society, having received from the Qur‘ān a set
of simple legal principles which, like the twelve tables of the
Romans, carried, as experience subsequently proved, great
potentialities of expansion and development by interpretation.
The Nationalist theory of state, therefore, is misleading
inasmuch as it suggests a dualism which does not exist in Islam.
The Religious Reform Party, on the other hand, led by Sa‗īd
Ḥalīm Pāshā, insisted on the fundamental fact that Islam is a
harmony of idealism and positivism; and, as a unity of the
eternal verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity, has no
124 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

fatherland. ―As there is no English Mathematics, German

Astronomy or French Chemistry,‖ says the Grand Vizier, ―so
there is no Turkish, Arabian, Persian or Indian Islam. Just as the
universal character of scientific truths engenders varieties of
scientific national cultures which in their totality represent
human knowledge, much in the same way the universal
character of Islamic verities creates varieties of national, moral
and social ideals.‖ Modern culture based as it is on national
egoism is, according to this keen-sighted writer, only another
form of barbarism. It is the result of an over-developed
industrialism through which men satisfy their primitive instincts
and inclinations. He, however, deplores that during the course
of history the moral and social ideals of Islam have been
gradually deislamized through the influence of local character,
and pre-Islamic superstitions of Muslim nations. These ideals
today are more Iranian, Turkish, or Arabian than Islamic. The
pure brow of the principle of Tawhid has received more or less
an impress of heathenism, and the universal and impersonal
character of the ethical ideals of Islam has been lost through a
process of localization. The only alternative open to us, then, is
to tear off from Islam the hard crust which has immobilized an
essentially dynamic outlook on life, and to rediscover the
original verities of freedom, equality, and solidarity with a view
to rebuild our moral, social, and political ideals out of their
original simplicity and universality. Such are the views of the
Grand Vizier of Turkey. You will see that following a line of
thought more in tune with the spirit of Islam, he reaches practically
the same conclusion as the Nationalist Party, that is to say, the
freedom of Ijtihād with a view to rebuild the laws of Sharī‗ah in
the light of modern thought and experience.
Let us now see how the Grand National Assembly has
exercised this power of Ijtihād in regard to the institution of
Khilāfat. According to Sunni Law, the appointment of an Imām
or Khalīfah is absolutely indispensable. The first question that
arises in this connexion is this– Should the Caliphate be vested
in a single person? Turkey‘s Ijtihād is that according to the
spirit of Islam the Caliphate or Imāmate can be vested in a body
of persons, or an elected Assembly. The religious doctors of
Islam in Egypt and India, as far as I know, have not yet
expressed themselves on this point. Personally, I believe the
Turkish view is perfectly sound. It is hardly necessary to argue
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 125

this point. The republican form of government is not only

thoroughly consistent with the spirit of Islam, but has also
become a necessity in view of the new forces that are set free in
the world of Islam.
In order to understand the Turkish view let us seek the
guidance of Ibn Khaldūn– the first philosophical historian of
Islam. Ibn Khaldūn, in his famous Prolegomena, mentions three
distinct views of the idea of Universal Caliphate in Islam:23 (1)
That Universal Imamate is a Divine institution, and is
consequently indispensable. (2) That it is merely a matter of
expediency. (3) That there is no need of such an institution. The
last view was taken by the Khawārij.24 It seems that modern
Turkey has shifted from the first to the second view, i.e. to the
view of the Mu‗tazilah who regarded Universal Imamate as a
matter of expediency only. The Turks argue that in our political
thinking we must be guided by our past political experience
which points unmistakably to the fact that the idea of Universal
Imamate has failed in practice. It was a workable idea when the
Empire of Islam was intact. Since the break-up of this Empire
independent political units have arisen. The idea has ceased to
be operative and cannot work as a living factor in the
organization of modern Islam. Far from serving any useful
purpose it has really stood in the way of a reunion of
independent Muslim States. Persia has stood aloof from the
Turks in view of her doctrinal differences regarding the
Khilafat; Morocco has always looked askance at them, and
Arabia has cherished private ambition. And all these rupture in
Islam for the sake of a mere symbol of a power which departed
long ago. Why should we not, he can further argue, learn from
experience in our political thinking? Did not Qādī Abū Bakr
Bāqillānī drop the condition of Qarshiyyat in the Khalīfah in
view of the facts of experience, i.e. the political fall of the
Quraysh and their consequent inability to rule the world of
Islam? Centuries ago Ibn Khaldūn, who personally believed in
the condition of Qarshīyat in the Khalīfah, argued much in the
same way. Since the power of the Quraysh, he says, has gone,
there is no alternative but to accept the most powerful man as
Imām in the country where he happens to be powerful. Thus Ibn
Khaldūn, realizing the hard logic of facts, suggests a view which
may be regarded as the first dim vision of an International Islam
fairly in sight today. Such is the attitude of the modern Turk, inspired
126 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

as he is by the realities of experience, and not by the scholastic

reasoning of jurists who lived and thought under different
conditions of life.
To my mind these arguments, if rightly appreciated, indicate
the birth of an International ideal which, though forming the
very essence of Islam, has been hitherto overshadowed or rather
displaced by Arabian Imperialism of the earlier centuries of
Islam. This new ideal is clearly reflected in the work of the
great nationalist poet Ziya whose songs, inspired by the
philosophy of Auguste Comte, have done a great deal in
shaping the present thought of Turkey. I reproduce the
substance of one of his poems from Professor Fischer‘s German
translation:25

In order to create a really effective political unity of Islam, all

Muslim countries must first become independent: and then in their
totality they should range themselves under one Caliph. Is such a
thing possible at the present moment? If not today, one must wait.
In the meantime the Caliph must reduce his own house to order
and lay the foundations of a workable modern State.
In the International world the weak find no sympathy; power alone
deserves respect.

These lines clearly indicate the trend of modern Islam. For

the present every Muslim nation must sink into her own deeper
self, temporarily focus her vision on herself alone, until all are
strong and powerful to form a living family of republics. A true
and living unity, according to the nationalist thinkers, is not so
easy as to be achieved by a merely symbolical overlordship. It
is truly manifested in a multiplicity of free independent units
whose racial rivalries are adjusted and harmonized by the
unifying bond of a common spiritual aspiration. It seems to me
that God is slowly bringing home to us the truth that Islam is
neither Nationalism nor Imperialism but a League of Nations
which recognizes artificial boundaries and racial distinctions for
facility of reference only,26 and not for restricting the social
horizon of its members.
From the same poet the following passage from a poem
called ―Religion and Science‖ will throw some further light on
the general religious outlook which is being gradually shaped in
the world of Islam today:27
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 127

―Who were the first spiritual leaders of mankind? Without doubt

the prophets and holy men. In every period religion has led
philosophy; from it alone morality and art receive light. But then
religion grows weak, and loses her original ardour! Holy men
disappear, and spiritual leadership becomes, in name, the heritage
of the Doctors of Law! The leading star of the Doctors of Law is
tradition; they drag religion with force on this track; but
philosophy says: ―My leading star is reason: you go right, I go
left.‖
―Both religion and philosophy claim the soul of man and draw it
on either side!‖
―When this struggle is going on‖ pregnant experience delivers up
positive science, and this young leader of thought says, ―Tradition
is history and Reason is the method of history! Both interpret and
desire to reach the same indefinable something!‖
―But what is this something?‖
―Is it a spiritualized heart?‖
―If so, then take my last word– Religion is positive science, the
purpose of which is to spiritualize the heart of man!‖

It is clear from these lines how beautifully the poet has

adopted the Comtian idea of the three stages of man‘s
intellectual development, i.e. theological, metaphysical, and
scientific– to the religious outlook of Islam. And the view of
religion embodied in these lines determines the poet‘s attitude
towards the position of Arabic in the educational system of
Turkey. He says:28
The land where the call to prayer resounds in Turkish; where those
who pray understand the meaning of their religion; the land where
the Qur‘ān is learnt in Turkish; where every man, big or small,
knows full well the command of God; O! Son of Turkey! that land
is thy fatherland!
If the aim of religion is the spiritualization of the heart, then
it must penetrate the soul of man, and it can best penetrate the
inner man, according to the poet, only if its spiritualizing ideas
are clothed in his mother tongue. Most people in India will
condemn this displacement of Arabic by Turkish. For reasons
which will appear later the poet‘s Ijtihād is open to grave
objections, but it must be admitted that the reform suggested by
him is not without a parallel in the past history of Islam. We
find that when Muhammad Ibn Tūmart– the Mahdī of Muslim
128 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

Spain– who was Berber by nationality, came to power, and

established the pontifical rule of the Muwahhidūn, he ordered
for the sake of the illiterate Berbers, that the Qur‘ān should be
translated and read in the Berber language; that the call to
prayer should be given in Berber;29 and that all the functionaries
of the Church must know the Berber language.
In another passage the poet gives his ideal of womanhood.
In his zeal for the equality of man and woman he wishes to see
radical changes in the family law of Islam as it is understood
and practised today:
―There is the woman, my mother, my sister, or my daughter; it is
she who calls up the most sacred emotions from the depths of my
life! There is my beloved, my sun, my moon and my star; it is she
who makes me understand the poetry of life! How could the Holy
Law of God regard these beautiful creatures as despicable beings? Surely
there is an error in the interpretation of the Qur‘ān by the learned.‖30
―The foundation of the nation and the state is the family!
As long as the full worth of the woman is not realized, national
life remains incomplete.‖
―The upbringing of the family must correspond with justice;
Therefore equality is necessary in three things– in divorce, in
separation, and in inheritance.‖
―As long as the woman is counted half the man as regards
inheritance and one-fourth of man in matrimony, neither the family
nor the country will be elevated. For other rights we have opened
national courts of justice.‖
―The family, on the other hand, we have left in the hands of schools.‖
―I do not know why we have left the woman in the lurch?‖
―Does she not work for the land? Or, will she turn her needle into a sharp
bayonet to tear off her rights from our hands through a revolution.‖31
The truth is that among the Muslim nations of today, Turkey
alone has shaken off its dogmatic slumber, and attained to self-
consciousness. She alone has claimed her right of intellectual
freedom; she alone has passed from the ideal to the real– a
transition which entails keen intellectual and moral struggle. To
her the growing complexities of a mobile and broadening life
are sure to bring new situations suggesting new points of
view, and necessitating fresh interpretations of principles
which are only of an academic interest to a people who have
never experienced the joy of spiritual expansion. It is, I think,
the English thinker Hobbes who makes this acute
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 129

observation that to have a succession of identical thoughts and

feelings is to have no thoughts and feelings at all. Such is the
lot of most Muslim countries today. They are mechanically
repeating old values, whereas the Turk is on the way to
creating new values. He has passed through great experiences
which have revealed his deeper self to him. In him life has
begun to move, change, and amplify, giving birth to new
desires, bringing new difficulties and suggesting new
interpretations. The question which confronts him today, and
which is likely to confront other Muslim countries in the
near future is whether the Law of Islam is capable of
evolution– a question which will require great intellectual
effort, and is sure to be answered in the affirmative,
provided the world of Islam approaches it in the spirit of ‗Umar–
the first critical and independent mind in Islam who, at the last
moments of the Prophet, had the moral courage to utter these
remarkable words: ―The Book of God is sufficient for us.‖32
We heartily welcome the liberal movement in modern Islam,
but it must also be admitted that the appearance of liberal ideas
in Islam constitutes also the most critical moment in the history
of Islam. Liberalism has a tendency to act as a force of disintegration,
and the race-idea which appears to be working in modern Islam
with greater force than ever may ultimately wipe off the broad
human outlook which Muslim people have imbibed from their
religion. Further, our religious and political reformers in their
zeal for liberalism may overstep the proper limits of reform in
the absence of check on their youthful fervour. We are today
passing through a period similar to that of the Protestant
revolution in Europe, and the lesson which the rise and outcome
of Luther‘s movement teaches should not be lost on us. A
careful reading of history shows that the Reformation was
essentially a political movement, and the net result of it in
Europe was a gradual displacement of the universal ethics of
Christianity by systems of national ethics.33 The result of this
tendency we have seen with our own eyes in the Great
European War which, far from bringing any workable synthesis
of the two opposing systems of ethics, has made the European
situation still more intolerable. It is the duty of the leaders of
the world of Islam today to understand the real meaning of what
has happened in Europe, and then to move forward with self-
control and a clear insight into the ultimate aims of Islam as a
130 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

social polity.
I have given you some idea of the history and working of
Ijtihād in modern Islam. I now proceed to see whether the
history and structure of the Law of Islam indicate the possibility
of any fresh interpretation of its principles. In other words, the
question that I want to raise is– Is the Law of Islam capable of
evolution? Horten, Professor of Semitic Philology at the
University of Bonn, raises the same question in connexion with
the Philosophy and Theology of Islam. Reviewing the work of
Muslim thinkers in the sphere of purely religious thought he
points out that the history of Islam may aptly be described as a
gradual interaction, harmony, and mutual deepening of two
distinct forces, i.e. the element of Aryan culture and knowledge
on the one hand, and a Semitic religion on the other. A Muslim
has always adjusted his religious outlook to the elements of
culture which he assimilated from the peoples that surrounded
him. From 800 to 1100, says Horten, not less than one hundred
systems of theology appeared in Islam, a fact which bears
ample testimony to the elasticity of Islamic thought as well as
to the ceaseless activity of our early thinkers. Thus, in view of
the revelations of a deeper study of Muslim literature and
thought, this living European Orientalist has been driven to the
following conclusion:

The spirit of Islam is so broad that it is practically

boundless. With the exception of atheistic ideas alone it has
assimilated all the attainable ideas of surrounding peoples, and
given them its own peculiar direction of development.

The assimilative spirit of Islam is even more manifest in the

sphere of law. Says Professor Hurgronje– the Dutch critic of
Islam:

When we read the history of the development of Mohammedan

Law we find that, on the one hand, the doctors of every age, on the
slightest stimulus, condemn one another to the point of mutual
accusations of heresy; and, on the other hand, the very same
people, with greater and greater unity of purpose, try to reconcile
the similar quarrels of their predecessors.

These views of modern European critics of Islam make it

The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 131

perfectly clear that, with the return of new life, the inner
catholicity of the spirit of Islam is bound to work itself out in
spite of the rigorous conservatism of our doctors. And I have no
doubt that a deeper study of the enormous legal literature of
Islam is sure to rid the modern critic of the superficial opinion
that the Law of Islam is stationary and incapable of
development. Unfortunately, the conservative Muslim public of
this country is not yet quite ready for a critical discussion of
Fiqh, which, if undertaken, is likely to displease most people,
and raise sectarian controversies; yet I venture to offer a few
remarks on the point before us.
1. In the first place, we should bear in mind that from the
earliest times, practically up to the rise of the Abbasids, there
was no written law of Islam apart from the Qur‘ān.
2. Secondly, it is worthy of note that from about the middle
of the first century up to the beginning of the fourth not less
than nineteen schools of law and legal opinion appeared in
Islam.34 This fact alone is sufficient to show how incessantly
our early doctors of law worked in order to meet the necessities
of a growing civilization. With the expansion of conquest and
the consequent widening of the outlook of Islam these early
legists had to take a wider view of things, and to study local
conditions of life and habits of new peoples that came within
the fold of Islam. A careful study of the various schools of legal
opinion, in the light of contemporary social and political
history, reveals that they gradually passed from the deductive to
the inductive attitude in their efforts at interpretation.35
3. Thirdly, when we study the four accepted sources of
Muhammadan Law and the controversies which they invoked,
the supposed rigidity of our recognized schools evaporates and
the possibility of a further evolution becomes perfectly clear.
Let us briefly discuss these sources.
(a) The Qur‘ān. The primary source of the Law of Islam is
the Qur‘ān. The Qur‘ān, however, is not a legal code. Its main
purpose, as I have said before, is to awaken in man the higher
consciousness of his relation with God and the universe.36 No
doubt, the Qur‘ān does lay down a few general principles and
rules of a legal nature, especially relating to the family37– the
ultimate basis of social life. But why are these rules made part
of a revelation the ultimate aim of which is man‘s higher life? The
132 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

answer to this question is furnished by the history of

Christianity which appeared as a powerful reaction against the
spirit of legality manifested in Judaism. By setting up an ideal
of other-worldliness it no doubt did succeed in spiritualizing
life, but its individualism could see no spiritual value in the
complexity of human social relations. ―Primitive Christianity‖,
says Naumann in his Briefe über Religion, ―attached no value
to the preservation of the State, law, organization, production. It
simply does not reflect on the conditions of human society.‖
And Naumann concludes: ―Hence we either dare to aim at
being without a state, and thus throwing ourselves deliberately
into the arms of anarchy, or we decide to possess, alongside of
our religious creed, a political creed as well.‖38 Thus the Qur‘ān
considers it necessary to unite religion and state, ethics and
politics in a single revelation much in the same way as Plato
does in his Republic.
The important point to note in this connexion, however, is
the dynamic outlook of the Qur‘ān. I have fully discussed its
origin and history. It is obvious that with such an outlook the
Holy Book of Islam cannot be inimical to the idea of evolution.
Only we should not forget that life is not change, pure and
simple. It has within it elements of conservation also. While
enjoying his creative activity, and always focusing his energies
on the discovery of new vistas of life, man has a feeling of
uneasiness in the presence of his own unfoldment. In his
forward movement he cannot help looking back to his past, and
faces his own inward expansion with a certain amount of fear.
The spirit of man in its forward movement is restrained by forces
which seem to be working in the opposite direction. This is only
another way of saying that life moves with the weight of its own
past on its back, and that in any view of social change the value
and function of the forces of conservatism cannot be lost sight
of. It is with this organic insight into the essential teachings of
the Qur‘ān that modern Rationalism ought to approach our
existing institutions. No people can afford to reject their past
entirely, for it is their past that has made their personal identity.
And in a society like Islam the problem of a revision of old
institutions becomes still more delicate, and the responsibility of
the reformer assumes a far more serious aspect. Islam is non-
territorial in its character, and its aim is to furnish a model for
the final combination of humanity by drawing its adherents
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 133

from a variety of mutually repellent races, and then

transforming this atomic aggregate into a people possessing a
self-consciousness of their own. This was not an easy task to
accomplish. Yet Islam, by means of its well-conceived
institutions, has succeeded to a very great extent in creating
something like a collective will and conscience in this heteroge-
neous mass. In the evolution of such a society even the
immutability of socially harmless rules relating to eating and
drinking, purity or impurity, has a life-value of its own,
inasmuch as it tends to give such society a specific inwardness,
and further secures that external and internal uniformity which
counteracts the forces of heterogeneity always latent in a
society of a composite character. The critic of these institutions
must, therefore, try to secure, before he undertakes to handle
them, a clear insight into the ultimate significance of the social
experiment embodied in Islam. He must look at their structure,
not from the standpoint of social advantage or disadvantage to
this or that country, but from the point of view of the larger
purpose which is being gradually worked out in the life of
mankind as a whole.
Turning now to the groundwork of legal principles in the
Qur‘ān, it is perfectly clear that far from leaving no scope for
human thought and legislative activity the intensive breadth of
these principles virtually acts as an awakener of human thought.
Our early doctors of law taking their clue mainly from this
groundwork evolved a number of legal systems; and the student
of Muhammadan history knows very well that nearly half the
triumphs of Islam as a social and political power were due to
the legal acuteness of these doctors. ―Next to the Romans,‖ says
von Kremer, ―there is no other nation besides the Arabs which
could call its own a system of law so carefully worked out.‖
But with all their comprehensiveness these systems are after all
individual interpretations, and as such cannot claim any finality. I
know the Ulema of Islam claim finality for the popular schools of
Muhammadan Law, though they never found it possible to deny
the theoretical possibility of a complete Ijtihād. I have tried to
explain the causes which, in my opinion, determined this
attitude of the Ulema; but since things have changed and the
world of Islam is confronted and affected today by new forces
set free by the extraordinary development of human thought in
all its directions, I see no reason why this attitude should be
134 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

maintained any longer. Did the founders of our schools ever

claim finality for their reasoning‘s and interpretations? Never.
The claim of the present generation of Muslim liberals to
reinterpret the foundational legal principles, in the light of their
own experience and the altered conditions of modern life is, in
my opinion, perfectly justified. The teachings of the Qur‘ān that
life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each
generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its
predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems.
You will, I think, remind me here of the Turkish poet Ziya
whom I quoted a moment ago, and ask whether the equality of
man and woman demanded by him, equality, that is to say, in point
of divorce, separation and inheritance, is possible according to
Muhammadan Law. I do not know whether the awakening of
women in Turkey has created demands which cannot be met
with without a fresh interpretation of foundational principles. In
the Punjab, as everybody knows, there have been cases in
which Muslim women wishing to get rid of undesirable
husbands have been driven to apostasy. 39 Nothing could be
more distant from the aims of a missionary religion. The Law
of Islam, says the great Spanish jurist Imām Shātibī in his Al-
Muwāfaqāt, aims at protecting five things– Dīn, Nafs, ‗Aql,
Māl, and Nasl.40 Applying this test I venture to ask: ―Does the
working of the rule relating to apostasy, as laid down in the
Hidāya, tend to protect the interests of the Faith in this
country?‖41 In view of the intense conservatism of the Muslims of
India, Indian judges cannot but stick to what are called standard
works. The result is that while the peoples are moving the law
remains stationary.
With regard to the Turkish poet‘s demand, I am afraid he
does not seem to know much about the family law of Islam.
Nor does he seem to understand the economic significance of
the Qur‘ānic rule of inheritance. 42 Marriage, according to
Muhammadan Law, is a civil contract.43 The wife at the time of
marriage is at liberty to get the husband‘s power of divorce
delegated to her on stated conditions, and thus secure equality
of divorce with her husband. The reform suggested by the poet
relating to the rule of inheritance is based on a misunderstanding.
From the inequality of their legal shares it must not be
supposed that the rule assumes the superiority of males over
females. Such an assumption would be contrary to the spirit of
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 135

Islam. The Qur‘ān says:

And for women are rights over men similar to those for men over
women.‖ (2: 228).

The share of the daughter is determined not by any

inferiority inherent in her, but in view of her economic
opportunities, and the place she occupies in the social structure
of which she is a part and parcel. Further, according to the
poet‘s own theory of society, the rule of inheritance must be
regarded not as an isolated factor in the distribution of wealth,
but as one factor among others working together for the same
end. While the daughter, according to Muhammadan Law, is
held to be full owner of the property given to her by both the
father and the husband at the time of her marriage; while,
further, she absolutely owns her dower-money which may be
prompt or deferred according to her own choice, and in lieu of
which she can hold possession of the whole of her husband‘s
property till payment, the responsibility of maintaining her
throughout her life is wholly thrown on the husband. If you
judge the working of the rule of inheritance from this point of
view, you will find that there is no material difference between
the economic position of sons and daughters, and it is really by
this apparent inequality of their legal shares that the law secures
the equality demanded by the Turkish poet. The truth is that the
principles underlying the Qur‘ānic law of inheritance– this
supremely original branch of Muhammadan Law as von Kremer
describes it– have not yet received from Muslim lawyers the
attention they deserve.44 Modern society with its bitter class-
struggles ought to set us thinking; and if we study our laws in
reference to the impending revolution in modern economic life,
we are likely to discover, in the foundational principles, hitherto
unrevealed aspects which we can work out with a renewed faith
in the wisdom of these principles.
(b) The Ḥadīth. The second great source of Muhammadan
Law is the traditions of the Holy Prophet. These have been the
subject of great discussion both in ancient and modern times.
Among their modern critics Professor Goldziher has subjected
them to a searching examination in the light of modern canons
of historical criticism, and arrives at the conclusion that they
are, on the whole, untrustworthy!45 Another European writer,
136 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

after examining the Muslim methods of determining the

genuineness of a tradition, and pointing out the theoretical
possibilities of error, arrives at the following conclusion:

It must be said in conclusion that the preceding considerations

represent only theoretical possibilities and that the question
whether and how far these possibilities have become actualities is
largely a matter of how far the actual circumstances offered
inducements for making use of the possibilities. Doubtless, the
latter, relatively speaking, were few and affected only a small
proportion of the entire sunnah. It may therefore be said that . . .
for the most part the collections of sunnah considered by the
Moslems as canonical are genuine records of the rise and early
growth of Islam (Mohammedan Theories of Finance).46

For our present purposes, however, we must distinguish

traditions of a purely legal import from those which are of a
non-legal character. With regard to the former, there arises a
very important question as to how far they embody the pre-
Islamic usages of Arabia which were in some cases left intact,
and in others modified by the Prophet. It is difficult to make
this discovery, for our early writers do not always refer to pre-
Islamic usages. Nor is it possible to discover that usages, left
intact by express or tacit approval of the Prophet, were
intended to be universal in their application. Shāh Walī Allāh
has a very illuminating discussion on the point. I reproduce
here the substance of his view. The prophetic method of
teaching, according to Shāh Walī Allāh, is that, generally
speaking, the law revealed by a prophet takes especial notice
of the habits, ways, and peculiarities of the people to whom
he is specifically sent. The prophet who aims at all-
embracing principles, however, can neither reveal different
principles for different peoples, nor leaves them to work out
their own rules of conduct. His method is to train one
particular people, and to use them as a nucleus for the
building up of a universal Sharī‗ah. In doing so he accentuates
the principles underlying the social life of all mankind, and
applies them to concrete cases in the light of the specific habits
of the people immediately before him. The Sharī‗ah values
(Aḥkām) resulting from this application (e.g. rules relating to
penalties for crimes) are in a sense specific to that people; and
since their observance is not an end in itself they
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 137

cannot be strictly enforced in the case of future generations.47 It

was perhaps in view of this that Abū Ḥanīfah, who had a keen
insight into the universal character of Islam, made practically no
use of these traditions. The fact that he introduced the principle
of Istiḥsān, i.e. juristic preference, which necessitates a careful
study of actual conditions in legal thinking, throws further light
on the motives which determined his attitude towards this
source of Muhammadan Law. It is said that Abū Ḥanīfah made
no use of traditions because there were no regular collections in
his day. In the first place, it is not true to say that there were no
collections in his day, as the collections of ‗Abd al-Mālik and
Zuhrī were made not less than thirty years before the death of
Abū Ḥanīfah. But even if we suppose that these collections
never reached him, or that they did not contain traditions of a
legal import, Abū Ḥanīfah, like Mālik and Aḥmad Ibn Ḥanbal
after him, could have easily made his own collection if he had
deemed such a thing necessary. On the whole, then, the attitude
of Abū Ḥanīfah towards the traditions of a purely legal import
is to my mind perfectly sound; and if modern Liberalism
considers it safer not to make any indiscriminate use of them as
a source of law, it will be only following one of the greatest
exponents of Muhammadan Law in Sunnī Islam. It is, however,
impossible to deny the fact that the traditionists, by insisting on
the value of the concrete case as against the tendency to abstract
thinking in law, have done the greatest service to the Law of
Islam. And a further intelligent study of the literature of
traditions, if used as indicative of the spirit in which the Prophet
himself interpreted his Revelation, may still be of great help in
understanding the life-value of the legal principles enunciated in
the Qur‘ān. A complete grasp of their life-value alone can equip
us in our endeavour to reinterpret the foundational principles.
(c) The Ijmā‗. The third source of Muhammadan Law is
Ijmā‗ which is, in my opinion, perhaps the most important legal
notion in Islam. It is, however, strange that this important
notion, while invoking great academic discussions in early Islam,
remained practically a mere idea, and rarely assumed the form of
a permanent institution in any Muhammadan country. Possibly its
transformation into a permanent legislative institution was
contrary to the political interests of the kind of absolute
monarchy that grew up in Islam immediately after the
138 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

fourth Caliph. It was, I think, favourable to the interest of the

Umayyad and the Abbaside Caliphs to leave the power of Ijtihād
to individual Mujtahids rather than encourage the formation of a
permanent assembly which might become too powerful for them.
It is, however, extremely satisfactory to note that the pressure of
new world-forces and the political experience of European
nations are impressing on the mind of modern Islam the
value and possibilities of the idea of Ijmā‗ . The growth of
republican spirit and the gradual formation of legislative
assemblies in Muslim lands constitute a great step in
advance. The transfer of the power of Ijtihād from individual
representatives of schools to a Muslim legislative assembly
which, in view of the growth of opposing sects, is the only
possible form Ijmā‗ can take in modern times, will secure
contributions to legal discussion from laymen who happen to
possess a keen insight into affairs. In this way alone can we
stir into activity the dormant spirit of life in our legal system, and
give it an evolutionary outlook. In India, however, difficulties are
likely to arise for it is doubtful whether a non-Muslim legislative
assembly can exercise the power of Ijtihād.
But there are one or two questions which must be raised and
answered in regard to Ijmā‗. Can Ijmā‗ repeal the Qur‘ān? It is
unnecessary to raise this question before a Muslim audience,
but I consider it necessary to do so in view of a very misleading
statement by a European critic in a book called Mohammedan
Theories of Finance– published by the Columbia University.
The author of this book says, without citing any authority, that
according to some Hanafī and Mu‗tazilah writers the Ijmā‗ can
repeal the Qur‘ān.48 There is not the slightest justification for
such a statement in the legal literature of Islam. Not even a
tradition of the Prophet can have any such effect. It seems to
me that the author is misled by the word Naskh in the writings
of our early doctors to whom, as Imām Shātibī points out in Al-
Muwāfiqāt, vol. iii, p. 65, this word, when used in discussions
relating to the Ijmā‗ of the companions, meant only the power
to extend or limit the application of a Qur‘ānic rule of law, and
not the power to repeal or supersede it by another rule of law.
And even in the exercise of this power the legal theory, as
Āmidī– a Shāfi‗ī doctor of law who died about the middle of
the seventh century, and whose work is recently published in
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 139

Egypt– tells us, is that the companions must have been in

possession of a Sharī‗ah value (Ḥukm) entitling them to such a
limitation or extension.49
But supposing the companions have unanimously decided a
certain point, the further question is whether later generations
are bound by their decision. Shaukānī has fully discussed this
point, and cited the views held by writers belonging to different
schools. 50 I think it is necessary in this connexion to
discriminate between a decision relating to a question of fact
and the one relating to a question of law. In the former case, as
for instance, when the question arose whether the two small
Sūrahs known as Mu‗awwadhatayn51 formed part of the Qur‘ān
or not, and the companion‘s unanimously decided that they did,
we are bound by their decision, obviously because the companions
alone were in a position to know the fact. In the latter case the
question is one of interpretation only, and I venture to think, on the
authority of Karkhī, that later generations are not bound by the
decision of the companions. Says Karkhī: ―The Sunnah of the
companions is binding in matters which cannot be cleared up by Qiyās,
but it is not so in matters which can be established by Qiyās.‖52
One more question may be asked as to the legislative
activity of a modern Muslim assembly which must consist, at
least for the present, mostly of men possessing no knowledge of
the subtleties of Muhammadan Law. Such an assembly may
make grave mistakes in their interpretation of law. How can we
exclude or at least reduce the possibilities of erroneous
interpretation? The Persian constitution of 1906 provided a
separate ecclesiastical committee of Ulema– ―conversant with
the affairs of the world‖– having power to supervise the
legislative activity of the Mejliss. This, in my opinion,
dangerous arrangement is probably necessary in view of the
Persian constitutional theory. According to that theory, I
believe, the king is a mere custodian of the realm which really
belongs to the Absent Imām. The Ulema, as representatives of
the Imām, consider themselves entitled to supervise the whole
life of the community, though I fail to understand how, in the
absence of an apostolic succession, they establish their claim to
represent the Imām. But whatever may be the Persian
constitutional theory, the arrangement is not free from danger,
and may be tried, if at all, only as a temporary measure in
Sunnī countries. 53 The Ulema should form a vital part
140 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

of a Muslim legislative assembly helping and guiding free

discussion on questions relating to law. The only effective remedy
for the possibilities of erroneous interpretations is to reform the
present system of legal education in Muhammadan countries, to
extend its sphere, and to combine it with an intelligent study of
modern jurisprudence.54
(d) The Qiyās. The fourth basis of Fiqh is Qiyās, i.e. the use
of analogical reasoning in legislation. In view of different social
and agricultural conditions prevailing in the countries
conquered by Islam, the school of Abū Ḥanīfah seem to have
found, on the whole, little or no guidance from the precedents
recorded in the literature of traditions. The only alternative open
to them was to resort to speculative reason in their
interpretations. The application of Aristotelian logic, however,
though suggested by the discovery of new conditions in Iraq, was
likely to prove exceedingly harmful in the preliminary stages of
legal development. The intricate behaviour of life cannot be
subjected to hard and fast rules logically deducible from certain
general notions. Yet, looked at through the spectacles of
Aristotle‘s logic, it appears to be a mechanism pure and simple
with no internal principle of movement. Thus, the school of
Abū Ḥanīfah tended to ignore the creative freedom and
arbitrariness of life, and hoped to build a logically perfect legal
system on the lines of pure reason. The legists of Hijāz,
however, true to the practical genius of their race, raised strong
protests against the scholastic subtleties of the legists of Iraq,
and their tendency to imagine unreal cases which they rightly
thought would turn the Law of Islam into a kind of lifeless
mechanism. These bitter controversies among the early doctors of
Islam led to a critical definition of the limitations, conditions,
and correctives of Qiyās which, though originally appeared as a
mere disguise for the Mujtahid‘s personal opinion, eventually
became a source of life and movement in the Law of Islam. The
spirit of the acute criticism of Mālik and Shāfi‗ī on Abū Ḥanīfah‘s
principle of Qiyās, as a source of law, constitutes really an effective
Semitic restraint on the Aryan tendency to seize the abstract in
preference to the concrete, to enjoy the idea rather than the event. This
was really a controversy between the advocates of deductive and
inductive methods in legal research. The legists of Iraq
originally emphasized the eternal aspect of the ―notion‖, while
those of Hijāz laid stress on its temporal aspect. The latter,
The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam 141

however, did not see the full significance of their own position,
and their instinctive partiality to the legal tradition of Hijāz
narrowed their vision to the ―precedents‖ that had actually
happened in the days of the Prophet and his companions. No
doubt they recognized the value of the concrete, but at the same
time they eternalized it, rarely resorting to Qiyās based on the
study of the concrete as such. Their criticism of Abū Ḥanīfah
and his school, however, emancipated the concrete as it were,
and brought out the necessity of observing the actual movement
and variety of life in the interpretation of juristic principles.
Thus the school of Abū Ḥanīfah which fully assimilated the
results of this controversy is absolutely free in its essential
principle and possesses much greater power of creative
adaptation than any other school of Muhammadan Law. But,
contrary to the spirit of his own school, the modern Hanafī
legist has eternalized the interpretations of the founder or his
immediate followers much in the same way as the early critics
of Abū Ḥanīfah eternalized the decisions given on concrete
cases. Properly understood and applied, the essential principle
of this school, i.e. Qiyās, as Shāfi‗ī rightly says, is only another
name for Ijtihād55 which, within the limits of the revealed texts,
is absolutely free; and its importance as a principle can be seen
from the fact that, according to most of the doctors, as Qādī
Shaukānī tells us, it was permitted even in the lifetime of the
Holy Prophet.56 The closing of the door of Ijtihād is pure fiction
suggested partly by the crystallization of legal thought in Islam,
and partly by that intellectual laziness which, especially in the
period of spiritual decay, turns great thinkers into idols. If some
of the later doctors have upheld this fiction, modern Islam is not
bound by this voluntary surrender of intellectual independence.
Zarkashī writing in the eighth century of the Hijrah rightly
observes: 57
If the upholders of this fiction mean that the previous writers had
more facilities, while the later writers had more difficulties, in
their way, it is, nonsense; for it does not require much
understanding to see that ijtihad for later doctors is easier than for
the earlier doctors. Indeed the commentaries on the Koran and
sunnah have been compiled and multiplied to such an extent that
the mujtahid of today has more material for interpretation than he
needs.

This brief discussion, I hope, will make it clear to you that

142 The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam

neither in the foundational principles nor in the structure of our

systems, as we find them today, is there anything to justify the
present attitude. Equipped with penetrative thought and fresh
experience the world of Islam should courageously proceed to
the work of reconstruction before them: This work of
reconstruction, however, has a far more serious aspect than
mere adjustment to modern conditions of life. The Great
European War bringing in its wake the awakening of Turkey–
the element of stability in the world of Islam– as a French
writer has recently described her, and the new economic
experiment tried in the neighbourhood of Muslim Asia, must
open our eyes to the inner meaning and destiny of Islam.58
Humanity needs three things today– a spiritual interpretation of
the universe, spiritual emancipation of the individual, and basic
principles of a universal import directing the evolution of
human society on a spiritual basis. Modern Europe has, no
doubt, built idealistic systems on these lines, but experience
shows that truth revealed through pure reason is incapable of
bringing that fire of living conviction which personal revelation
alone can bring. This is the reason why pure thought has so
little influenced men, while religion has always elevated
individuals, and transformed whole societies. The idealism of
Europe never became a living factor in her life, and the result is
a perverted ego seeking itself through mutually intolerant
democracies whose sole function is to exploit the poor in the
interest of the rich. Believe me, Europe today is the greatest
hindrance in the way of man‘s ethical advancement. The
Muslim, on the other hand, is in possession of these ultimate
ideas on the basis of a revelation, which, speaking from the
inmost depths of life, internalizes its own apparent externality.
With him the spiritual basis of life is a matter of conviction for
which even the least enlightened man among us can easily lay
down his life; and in view of the basic idea of Islam that there
can be no further revelation binding on man, we ought to be
spiritually one of the most emancipated peoples on earth. Early
Muslims emerging out of the spiritual slavery of pre-Islamic
Asia were not in a position to realize the true significance of
this basic idea. Let the Muslim of today appreciate his position,
reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles, and
evolve, out of the hitherto partially revealed purpose of Islam,
that spiritual democracy which is the ultimate aim of Islam.59