Iqbal: the principle of movement in Islam

Of the seven lectures that Dr Allama Iqbal delivered in Muslim congregations in Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh in the late 1920s and which were subsequently published in 1930 in a compendium under the title, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (RRTI) 1930, perhaps the most important in terms of casting out a direction for dynamism, progressivity and forward movement in Islamic legal body and thought is the sixth lecture on the 'Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam'.

This lecture - which is a signal contribution of the poet-philosopher to the need and necessity in Islam law and precepts of progress in accordance with the prevailing environment, science and human knowledge, so that the moribund doors of movement in Islamic thought and corpus are once again reopened - deals with the question of ijtehad which literally means 'striving'.

Of the few later day mujtahids in Islamic history, consequent upon the Fall of Baghdad in 1258, there is no more a shining star than Ibne Tayyimah (b.1263 ) under whose influence the great Arab reformer born in Nejd in 1700 i.e. Muhammad Ibne Abd al Wahab strived and to whose movement, 'are traceable nearly all the great modern Islamic movements of Muslim Asia and Africa like the Sanusi Movement, the Pan-Islamic Movement and the Babi Movement, giving a fresh inspiration to Islam invoking a spirit of freedom to Islamic aspirations denying classical claims of analogy (qiyas) and ijma that had choked the spirit of evolution in Islam.

Proceeding further Iqbal then raises the question as to what were the causes of the birth of the intellectual attitude which reduced the law of Islam practically to a state of immobility. He alludes to three main factors responsible for the demise of ijtehad in Islam.

The first was the rise of rationalists or mutuazilites and the conservative or orthodox response to it. Conservative thinkers regarded the matuazilites as a force of social disintegrating considering it as a danger to the stability of Islam as a social and political entity. Their main purpose was to preserve the social order and to realise that the only course open to them was to use the binding force of shariah (p122 RRTI).

The second cause in Iqbal's eye of the rigidity and stationeriness that impeded Islamic law was the rise of ascetic sufism with its emphasis on pure speculation and otherworldliness. It obscured men's vision from Islam as a social polity and attracted the best minds in Islam. The Muslim state was left in the hands of intellectual mediocrities, and the unthinking masses, having no personalities of a higher caliber to guide them, found comfort and security only in blindly following the traditional schools. Ijtehad thus suffered a critical blow and found no advocates of prominence. (p122 RRTI)

The third cause of cessation of ijtehad in Islamic thought was the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols in 1258 which decimated the intellectual centre of Islam causing widespread fear for the future of Islam. Apprehending further disintegration the thinkers focused all their attention on one point: preserving the social order and organisation and ensuring uniformity among the people by jealous exclusion of all innovations in Islamic law. The stress on order and organisation was natural but the ulema of that time and the ulema of today ignore the fact that overstress on organisation is inimical to the growth of individual worth which is crushed out of existence.

Thus a false reverence for past history provides no remedy for a people's decay. The only effective power that effectively prevents the forces of social decay in a people is allowing 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. (p123 RRTI)

Although Iqbal does not explicitly refer to it, another cause for the closure of ijtehad was the transformation of the Islamic state, over time, from one based on consultative spirit to one of autocratic monarchism in which absolute power harshly crushed all dissent and rational debate in order to preserve political power, suppressing the spirit of renewal in Islam.

The discarding and rejection of the consultative and debating impulse which had taken roots in European christendom (the British parliament dates back to the 12-13th centuries) was another important factors leading to the choking of the spirit of ijtihad in Islamic law.

The internecine bitter power conflicts and political rivalries following upon the four caliphs left little scope or inclination for the promotion and spread of education among the masses (The Gottenberg printing press, 1527, was banned by the ulema as being heretical in Ottomon Turkey) which cannot but be termed as one large factor in closure of progress and ijtihad in Islamic doctrine in keeping with the ever-changing new world realities and knowledge.

Adverting to the four sources of Islamic doctrine - the Quran, Hadith, Qiyas and Ijma - Iqbal notes that "a study of the four sources of Mohamaddan law and the controversies they invoked clearly shows that the rigidity of our recognized schools evaporates and a possibility of further evolution becomes perfectly clear…from about the middle of the 1st century upto the beginning of the fourth not less than nineteen schools of law appeared in Islam. This fact is alone sufficient to show how incessantly our early doctors of law worked in order to meet the requirements of a growing civilization."

Iqbal takes a middle course between reason and revelation and the dynamic spirit of Islam warning against extremes. Although averse to the such doctrinairism as that of Ghazali who declared that mathematics is the science of the devil and that an arrow moves towards its target due to divine intervention.

Iqbal cautions against the pursuit of pure reason to the exclusion of spiritualism that is the core and crux of Islamic vision of the universe and keep away from the nationalist and limited world view of Europe that has engendered a system partaking of crass materialism and rivalry.

"Let the Muslim of today…reconstruct his social life in the light of ultimate principles…and evolve that 'spiritual democracy' which is the ultimate aim of Islam." (p144 RRTI)