Still
more profound has been its influence as a religious force within the Muslim
community. The intolerance and the excesses of its first adherents in
Arabia, and of those like them in India and West Africa at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, earned indeed the condemnation of the general body
of Muslims. But the Wahhabi outbreak was only the extreme expression of a
tendency which can be traced in many parts of Islam in the course of the
eighteenth century; and with the passing of its actively intolerant
phase, its principles reinforced the movement for the return to the pure
monotheism of the early Muslim church. This movement, combined with a
reaction against Sufi infiltrations, grew steadily throughout the nineteenth
century and has come to constitute, now in one form, now in another, one of
the outstanding features of Modern Islam.
It
is significant that the revolt originated in the most purely Arab province.
In their broadest lines the religious forces that had moulded the
development of post-Ghazalian Sufism were non-Arab: Berber, Persian,
Turkish; and though it might be fanciful to relate this to the political
subjection of the Arab lands, it is none the less true that their inrush had
gone far towards weakening both the predominance of the ‘Arab idea’ in
Islam and the influence of the older Arabic theologians up to and including
al-Ghazali. For many Persians and Turks the Mathnawi of Jalal ad-Din
ar-Rumi had replaced the Traditions of the Prophet as commentary on, and
interpretation of, the religious and ethical teachings of the Quran; and
even the leading Ulama of the eighteenth century, as we have seen, had
combined the heritage of the older learning with the speculative doctrines
of the later Sufis.
The
Wahhabi revival was the first reassertion of the ‘Arab idea’, and it was
followed by others, independent in origin. At the end of the same century a
massive revindication of al-Ghazali was issued by a Yemenite scholar,
Mohammed al-Murtada (d. 1790). The introduction of Arabic printing into
Egypt in 1828 led to the multiplication and spread of the standard works of
medieval theology and revived the prestige of the Egyptian tradition of
Arabic scholarship. European orientalism, with its editions of old texts and
its researches, contributed both directly and by provoking controversy to
the focusing of attention on the early centuries. All of these activities
combined to emphasize the distinction between earlier and later Islam, and
to discredit, in learned and literary circles, the Persian and Turkish
veneer. Thus they prepared the way for that recovery of Arab initiative and
influence in the Muslim world which came to a head with the Egyptian
reformist movement led by Mohammed Abduh at the turn of the present century.
There
was still a long way to go, however, before this point was reached. The Sufi
impulse of the eighteenth century had not yet spent its force. In North-West
Africa, in particular, it gained fresh triumphs, when a Berber disciple of
the Khalwati order, Ahmad al-Tijani, founded in 1781 the Tijaniya
order. The new order spread rapidly in the further West and into the
Negrolands, where it became associated with a fanatical and sanguinary
campaign of proselytization, largely at the expense of the peaceful
Qadiriya. In India, in Central Asia, and in most of the outlying Muslim
lands, there were Sufi revivals during the nineteenth century, and only in
the central Arab countries and cities does Sufism appear to have steadily
lost ground.
But
among the Sufis also the orthodox revival seemed to exert a growing
influence. Except in the extremer orders and the ‘irregular’
brotherhoods, the more extravagant rituals and practices of earlier days
were gradually dropped, together with much of their speculative theology and
pantheistic tendencies. The orthodox Ulama continued to maintain a steady
pressure in this direction. In receding from their former close association
with the orders, they took up on the whole an intermediate position,
rejecting both the fundamentalism of the Wahhabis, with its undercurrents of
fanaticism and intolerance, and the claims of the Sufi adepts. Holding fast
to the catholic doctrine of ijma‘, they asserted (and for the most
part still continue to assert) that, although the worship of saints is
contrary to Islam, reverence for the saints and prayers for their
intercession are lawful.
The
moderation and conservatism of the Ulama was not to the taste of more active
reformers, who have in every generation founded new societies to propagate
their principles. In the early part of the nineteenth century, the most
striking of these newer developments was the formation of reformist
missionary congregations on a strict orthodox basis, but organized on the
lines of the Sufi tariqas. The originator of this movement was a
descendant of the Prophet, the Moroccan Sharif Ahmad ibn Idris (d.
1837). Initiated in his youth into one of the reformed branches of the
Shadhiliya, Ahmad ibn Idris settled in Mecca, where his outstanding
spiritual, intellectual, and personal gifts attracted a devoted following.
It is a disputed question whether he was directly influenced by the Wahhabi
revolt, but it is certain that he followed the Hanbalites in rejecting ijma,
beyond that of the first generation of the Companions of Mohammed, and qiyas
or ‘analogy’ as a legal method. The Quran and the Sunna alone could
be accepted as sources of doctrine and law. Along with this, he taught a
number of liturgical prayers, corresponding to the Sufi dhikr; but he
rejected entirely the Sufi doctrine of union with God, substituting for it,
as the goal of the mystical life, a mystical union with the spirit of the
Prophet.
The
new Muhammadiya tariqa, as it was called, had an immediate and
striking success. Besides the original tariqa (Idrisiya) of the
founder in Arabia itself (where his descendants for a time exercised
political authority in the province of Asir), several of his disciples
established other congregations, on the same or similar foundations. The
most influential of there were the tariqa founded by the Algerian Mohammed
ibn Ali al-Sunusi (d. 1859) in Cyrenaica, and that of the Hijazi Mohammed
Othman al-Amir Ghani (d. 1853) in East Africa.
The
different fortunes of these two offshoots of the Muhammadiya provide a
remarkable illustration of the part played by circumstances and opportunity
in moulding the development of such orders. All puritan reformist movements,
even if peaceful in principle, are by nature liable to adopt violent
courses. Having from the outset to expect the hostility of the orthodox
religious authorities, they are uncompromising in defence and
counter-attack; and where the secular arm is turned against them as well,
their opposition, being forced into political channels, becomes a
revolutionary movement, directed to the foundation of a new theocratic
state. And it must not be overlooked that one effect of the renewed emphasis
upon Quran and Sunna in Muslim fundamentalism is to restore to jihad ‘in
the path of God’ much of the prominence which, as has been seen in Chapter
4, it held in the primitive Community; whereas in the historic Community the
concept of jihad had gradually weakened and at length been largely
reinterpreted in terms of Sufi ethics.
The
Amirghaniya of Nubia and the Sudan, at grips with the more extreme
revolutionary order organized by the ‘Mahdi’ Mohammed Ahmed (d. 1885),
became the defenders of the ‘Community’ and of submission to the secular
authority. The Sunusiya of Cyrenaica, on the other hand, rejected
Othoman claims to suzerainty and built up the militant organization which
was needed for its missionary task of converting and controlling the nomads
of the Libyan desert. At a later stage, however, when were confronted with
the expansion of the Christian Powers, the ‘Senussis’ adopted the role
of defenders of the Faith, first against French penetration into Equatorial
Africa, and subsequently as allies of Turkey against the Italians in Libya
and the British in Egypt. Militarily crushed and to all appearances
destroyed by the Fascist military regime, the Senussi brotherhood has shown
vitality by its almost instantaneous revival on the expulsion of the
Italians from Cyrenaica.
But
long before the missionary congregations in their remote deserts reacted in
characteristic fashion to the penetration of the Western Powers, the
political and economic impact of the Christian West had begun to create new
tensions among the settled Muslim populations. The continuous expansion of
European political power over Muslim territories produced in the first place
a psychological unsettlement, the effects of which were reinforced
successively by the derangement of their old social and economic structure
and the intrusion of Western thought.
The
channels through which Western ideas percolated were not only literary and
educational, but almost infinite in their variety and complexity, affecting
government and politics, military organization, law and its administration,
transport, hygiene, commerce, industry, and agriculture. Sooner or later the
lives of almost every section of the population were affected to some extent
by one or other of these developments. Though Western schools and academies
exercised the most direct effect upon the literate classes, the most potent
influence, probably, was that of the new daily and periodical press. From
small beginnings in the principal centres in the middle of the nineteenth
century, almost every part of he Muslim world now has its own output of
journals, and the press of Egypt in particular radiates far outside its own
boundaries.
Confronted
with the penetrating and pervasive power of these Western influences, the
Muslim was unable to ignore them; but to relate them to the bases of his own
life and thought called for an effort of comprehension and adjustment which
he was not yet ready to undertake. Yet without the effort, the outcome could
only be conflict and confusion, both external and internal, and made more
confusing by the conflicting ideas and purposes within the Western forces
themselves. To distinguish the effect form the cause, the secondary and
superficial from the essential, the instrument form the motive, the false
from the true-all this was a task for which even his Western advisers, when
he sought their assistance, were too often inadequate and unreliable guides.
On the religious plane, two ways of meeting the challenge of the West
presented themselves. One was to start form the basic principles of Islam
and to restate them in the light of the contemporary situation. The other
was to start form a selected Western philosophy and to attempt to integrate
Muslim doctrine with it. Both ways have been followed, but out of the great
variety of conflicting interpretations and cross-currents only a few of the
more outstanding can be dealt with here.
The first method must not, to begin with, be confounded with the
attitude of the Ulama in general. For them, there has as yet been no
question of ‘restatement’ in any sense. The theology, law, and practice
of the orthodox Community, based on the Quran and the Sunna, as interpreted
by the great medieval doctors and confirmed by general consensus, remain
binding and unalterable, although, under pressure of irresistible
circumstances, some concessions in matters of practice may be temporarily
allowed. But even those who set out to restate Islamic doctrine might do so
from two very different motives. It might be restated on the one hand to
serve the purpose of strengthening the Muslim world against the
encroachments of the West, or on the other to serve as a datum-line from
which any process of adaptation or assimilation should proceed. The emphasis
in the one case would be laid more on the external aspects of Muslim
practice and organization, in the other on the fundamental principles of
Muslim thought.
In
the circumstances, it was only natural that the former should precede the
latter. In all Muslim communities the Western invasion produced political
reactions, such as those which came to a head in the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
These lie outside the scope of this book, except to the extent that they
involve specific religious attitudes and positions. But for religious minds
the political weakness of Islam was to be explained as the consequence of
loss of belief and corruption of practice. Thus the first general reform
movement in the nineteenth century took on a dual character.On the religious
side, it appealed for purification of religious belief and practice, the
raising of intellectual standards, and the extension and modernization of
education. On the political side, it aimed at removing the causes of
division between Muslims and uniting them in defence of the Faith. The
protagonist of both was the Afghan Jamal al-Din (1839-97), whose untiring
campaigns throughout the Muslim East powerfully stirred Muslim feeling, and
contributed to both the Arabi rising in Egypt and the Persian revolution. He
was the founder and inspiration of the Pan-Islamic movement, which sought to
unite all Muslim peoples under the Ottoman Caliphate; and though he failed
in this, his supreme objective, his influence lives on the more recent
popular movements which combine Islamic fundamentalism with an activist
political programme.
Among
Jamal al-Din’s disciples, however, there was one who had the insight to
separate the political from the religious reform and the restatement of
Islamic doctrine. This was the Egyptian shaikh Mohammed Abduh (1849- 1905),
a man of great breadth, independence, and nobility of mind. As young teacher
in al-Azhar, he had tried to introduce a broader and, more philosophical
conception of religious education, and in later exile he had collaborated
with Jamal al-Din in a semi-religious, semi-political journal called al-Urwa
al-Wuthqa. In 1888 he returned to Egypt, and there, in spite of strong
opposition from the conservative Ulama and political opponents, exerted by
his character and his teaching an immense influence upon the new generation,
how finding themselves to some extent alienated by the formalism of
al-Azhar.
Like
the great medieval scholars, Mohammed Abduh expounded his thought in the
form of a Commentary on the Quran, although he did not live to complete it.
He was a modernist in the sense that he urged the pursuit of modern thought,
confident that in the last resort it could not undermine but only confirm
the religious truth of Islam. In relation to the traditional orthodox
structure of belief he was no innovator. He was not, like al-Ghazali, a man
who framed the line of synthesis by which a body of ideas hitherto outside
the orthodox faith could be incorporated in it or accommodated to it. It is
sometimes difficult for an outside observer to see why his teaching was so
enthusiastically received and so influential on the one hand and so
tenaciously opposed on the other. The explanation seems to be that by
restating the rights of reason in religious thought he restored some measure
of flexibility to what had become a rigid and apparently petrified system,
and allowed the possibility of reformulating doctrine in modern instead of
medieval terms.
But
any such reformulation is not to be achieved in one or two generation. There
is no cause for surprise that little outward progress has been made in this
direction, especially when political tensions have created and maintained an
atmosphere unfavourable to the calm pursuit of the scholar and the
theologian. Thus the immediate results of Mohammed Abduh’s activity found
expression in two different and opposed tendencies.
On
the one hand there has grown up in secular circles a widespread but not
explicitly formulated ‘modernism,’
which, while holding to the basic dogmas of Islam, is strongly influence by
Western ideas. In its most advanced forms, modernism tends to become
confounded with the movement of secularization which aims at separating
Church and State and substituting Western systems of law for the Islamic
Sharia’s. The most extreme application of secularist principles has been
furnished by the Turkish Republic since the abolition of the Ottoman
Caliphate in 1924. But though secularism has its supporters in other Muslim
countries, the majority of modernists adopt a much more moderate attitude
towards the religious organization and its tradition. Whatever their views
on matters of law and politics, their doctrinal position may be summed up as
a general rejection of the final authority of the medieval doctors, and a
more hesitant assertion of the right of private judgement.
The
second consequence was the formation of a religious party which called
itself the Salafiya, the upholders of the tradition represented by
the ‘Great Ancestors’, the Fathers of the Muslim Community. The Salafis
agree with the modernists in rejecting the authority of the medieval schools
and in accepting Quran and Sunna as the sole authority for religious truth.
In this respect, as against the generality of the Ulama, they are
reformists; but as against the modernists they passionately reject any
intrusion of Western liberalism and rationalism.
The
leader of the Salafi movement was Mohammed Abduh’s Syrian disciple Shaikh
Rashid Rida (1865-1935), the editor of his Quran-Commentary and of the
reformist journal al-Manar, which eventually gained a wide
circulation from Morocco to Java. Under his influence, the movement at first
reasserted the Pan-Islamic programme of Jamal al-Din; but when the secular
rulers of Turkey turned their backs on the Islamic tradition Rashid Rida
unreservedly condemned their policy. Like the earlier puritan reformers he
was steadily driven back on fundamentalism, and at length recognized and
cultivated a relationship of purpose and thought between the Salafiya, and
the Wahhabiya. In their final doctrinal position, the
Salafiya, rejecting the too pronouncedly sectarian mood of the Wahhabis,
confess themselves ‘Neo-Hanbalites’, conservatives claiming the
reopening of the ‘Gate of Ijtihad’ (p. 66) and the right of
reinterpretation in matters of theology and law.
Possibly,
however, the strongest link between Salafi and Wahhabi has been their common
hostility to any forms of Sufism, saint-worship, and animistic
‘innovation’ detracting from the pure monotheism of the Quran. It is
partly this stand which made ‘Manarmodernism’ a force in all those
Muslim countries where the reformers found themselves face to face with the
vested interests of saint-worship and the Sufi Brotherhoods. Discarding the
cautious middle-of-the-road attitude of the official Ulama, it created
across national and racial boundaries a new brotherhood of enthusiastic
groups, determined to make war equally on internal corruption and external
disruption. Though not confined to any one cultural level or economic or
social group, it had little following amongst the more educated, and in
return suspected them of undue laxity in matters of faith and practice.
Parallel to the Salafi movement, but on a less pronounced doctrinal
basis, the most striking development in the Muslim community in recent
decades was the rise of new religious societies. These too were, in a sense,
restatements of Islamic thought and reassertions of the Islamic conscience
in face of the Western intrusion, adapted to different social and
educational environments. Thus, in Egypt and the Arab lands the
‘Association of Muslim Youth’ addressed itself to the same kind of
public, with much the same methods, as the Y.M.C.A., while the ‘Muslim
Brotherhood’ operated at a more popular level. Similar, but independent,
associations exist in Pakistan and Indonesia.
Aiming
primarily to revive and stimulate religious faith and practice, which might
otherwise be submerged in the tides of modern life, the new societies tended
to take up, almost of necessity, a political attitude also in defence of the
heritage of Islam. Thus they represented, among the urban populations of the
settled countries, a twentieth-century adaptation of the nineteenth-century
movements amongst the tribesmen, and at the same time replaced the older
Sufi orders, whose influence in the cities declined with the break-up of the
trade guilds. Embracing all gradations of doctrine from fundamentalism to
liberal orthodoxy, they found a common rallying-point in an enthusiastic
veneration for the person of the Prophet, which may be said to furnish the
chief emotional and ethical stimulus in modern Islam.
The
second type of reaction to the Western impact found expression almost
exclusively in India. Behind it also, however, lies the influence of the
orthodox reform movement, which prepared the way by eliminating the
authority of the medieval ‘schools’. Beginning in the early decades of
the nineteenth century with the preaching of the Wahhabi puritanism and
revolt against saint-worship by such leaders as Sharia’st Allah and Sayyid
Ahmad of Rai Bareli (killed in battle against the Sikhs in 1831), the
movement gained a large following amongst Indian Muslims. Several
organizations have explicitly carried on its principles, notably the
fanatical Fara’idi sect in Bengal who are also called Salafiya),
and the more numerous congregation (who are call themselves Ahl-I-Hadith,
the Followers of the Prophetic Tradition, and maintain their own mosques and
schools. But within the wider community as well, their campaign for the
purification of doctrine and practice has found a ready response.
In
this way the door was opened for the more personal and individual attempts
to formulate Islamic doctrine in terms of modern thought. The firs of these
was made by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-98). Believing, like Shaikh Mohammed
Abduh, that Islam and science could not prove antagonistic in the long run,
he took the further step of asserting that the true justification of Islam
was its conformity to Nature and the laws of science, and that nothing which
conflicted with this principle could be regarded as authentically Islamic.
In order to encourage and develop this line of thought, he founded at
Aligarh in 1875 a college in which religious education should be combined
with modern scientific studies, and thus established the first
‘modernist’ organization in Islam. The new college and its founder
naturally became the target of violent opposition, and that not only from
the orthodox Ulama but also form Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who bitterly
attacked the nechari philosophy as pure materialism and treason to
the Faith. Nevertheless, the Aligarh movement prospered, though the college
itself (which became in 1920 the Muslim University of Aligarh) has gradually
moved away from its original doctrinal position.
The
new liberalizing theology that followed from Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan’s
rationalist approach to Islam brought with it a revaluation of the
traditional social ethics of the Muslim community. The latter was probably
one of its strongest attractions for the growing body of Muslim
intellectuals, who were becoming acutely aware of the social evils linked
with such practices as slavery and unregulated polygamy and divorce. In this
respect, indeed, the influence of his school extended far beyond the
boundaries of Indian Islam through their new presentation, partly apologetic
but also implicitly reformist, of Muslim practice and social doctrine.
Among
the several Indian writers how popularized the new liberal theology and
ethics, the leading figure was Sayyid Amir Ali, a Shi‘ite and a
distinguished jurist. His book on the Spirit of Islam, first
published in 1891, furnished the awakening political consciousness of
Muslims with the reasoned basis of self-esteem which it required in face of
the Western world.So exactly did it conform to the mood of his
contemporaries that few educated Muslims observed that Amir Ali was
reformulating Islamic doctrine in terms of Western thought just as much as
his nechari predecessors had done. This is not the place to examine
his positions in detail, but three of them must be mentioned because they
have become integral elements of modern Muslim thought.
The
first these is the concentration, which we have already noted in other
modern movements, upon the person of Mohammed. That the original title of The
Spirit of Islam was The Life and Teachings of Mohammed is enough
to show the central place of this them in his exposition. But in contrast to
the Sufi doctrine of Mohammed it contains no hint of supernaturalism;
Mohammed is presented as the embodiment and exemplar of human virtue in its
most exalted manifestations. Amir Ali himself carried his liberalism to the
point of regarding the Quran as the work of Mohammed, but he has not been
followed in this by the general body of modernists, who still maintain the
orthodox doctrine of the Quran as the literal Word of God.
In
the second place the teachings of Mohammed are presented in terms of
contemporary social ideals. The four obligatory duties (prayer, fasting,
almsgiving, and pilgrimage) are commended, rather than defended, on rational
grounds of social and physical utility. The prevalence in Islamic society of
slavery, polygamy, divorce by repudiation, and other moral and social
weaknesses is admitted, but asserted to be contrary to the true teaching of
the Quran, and responsibility for them is laid upon the later doctors and
canonists. Slavery is held to be contrary to the Quranic teaching of the
equality of all human beings; polygamy to be implicitly forbidden by the
conditions attached to it in the Quran; divorce to be wholly opposed to the
spirit of Mohammed’s precept and example. In recent years many Muslim
countries have passed civil legislation to tighten up the laws of marriage
and divorce, as well as other branches of Shar‘i law, administered in the
Muslim religious courts, although only in Turkey have they been replaced by
purely western codes. Slavery was abolished by law in all Muslim countries
except Arabia in the second half of the nineteenth century.
The
third point is the emphasis laid on Islam as a progressive civilizing force,
the glories of Baghdad and Cordova, the advancement of learning and science,
the religious tolerance and reception of Greek philosophy, the institution
of hospitals and endowed schools. All this is contrasted with the
contemporary life of medieval Europe, and it is believed with conviction by
even highly educated Muslims that the revival of learning and the
Renaissance in Europe were due to the stimulus of Islamic culture and the
borrowing of its intellectual and technical skills by European scholars and
craftsmen.
Apart
from its apologetic and controversial uses, however, this argument serves to
support two further modernist positions. One is that already taken up by
Shaikh Mohammed Abduh, that Islam, rightly understood and practised, rejects
any form of religious obscurantism and requires its adherents to pursue all
branches of learning and science with their utmost endeavours. This is the
riposte to the medieval depreciation of secular learning and the
concentration of the Muslim madrasas upon theological and literary studies.
Sanction is found for this doctrine in the frequent Quranic arguments from
design and exhortations to study God’s ‘signs’ in the natural world,
and in several well-known sayings attributed to the Prophet, such as ‘Seek
knowledge, even unto China’, and ‘The ink of the scholar is more sacred
than the blood of the martyr.’
The
other position is that in taking over modern Western learning and science
Muslims are only resuming the heritage of their own civilization. This
argument has been most persuasively stated by Sir Mohammed Iqbal
(1876-1938), the exponent of most sweeping modernist reformulation of
Islamic doctrine. In contrast to the earlier modernists, the Muslim
foundations of Iqbal’s theology are derived from Sufistic philosophy,
which he reinterpreted in terms of the Nietzschean superman and Bergson’s
theory creative evolution. His own activist philosophy, which found
expression first in a series of Persian and Urdu poems, made a powerful
appeal to the younger generation of Indian Muslims and contributed to the
rise of Pakistan as a Muslim state in 1947. It was given more systematic
form in a series of lectures delivered in English in 1928 under the title of
The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, but it is still
doubtful how far it has gained a following outside Pakistan and India.
One
further development within the Muslim community during the nineteenth
century remains to be noted. This was the reappearance of the tendency to
form new syncretist sects, a tendency manifested in the early centuries by
the Nusairis, Druses, Yazidis, and a number of Shi‘ite sects and at a
later date by the Bektashis and the Sikh movement. There is no reason
therefore to look for Western influences to explain their emergence. The
first of the new sects, in fact, arose out of the Shaikhi philosophical
school within Persian Shiasm, and was led by Sayyid Ali Mohammed of Shiraz.
Calling himself by the old symbolic name of the Bab, the
‘gateway’ through which divine truth is made known, he preached a
combination of liberal religious doctrine with gnostic elements, and after a
rising of his followers was executed in 1850.
The
Babi sect broke in two after his death. The majority followed his disciple
Baha’ullah (1817-92), who developed the original doctrine into a universal
religion of pacifism and humanitarianism, called after himself Bahaism. The
new religion, now definitely outside the pale of Islam, has had some success
in Persia and the United State, and its headquarters are in Haifa in
Palestine.
The
only other syncretist movement of any importance arose in India out of a
reaction to the ‘Aligarh Movement’. Its leader, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of
Qadian (d. 1908), claimed to be the bearer of a revelation to reinterpret
Islam for the needs of a new age. Apart from this and his preaching of
pacifism, his doctrines differed little from those of moderate orthodox
reformers who opposed saint-worship. He and the powerful organization which
he built up were, however, vigorously attacked by the orthodox, mainly on
the ground of his personal pretensions, and branded as heretics.
After the death of his first Khalifa or successor in 1914, the
Ahmadiya also split into two sections. The original or Qadiani branch
maintained the founder’s claim to prophethood, and continued to recognize
a Khalifa; the seceders, or Lahore party, discarded both and formed
themselves into a ‘Society for the Propagation of Islam’ under a new
head. The Lahore branch subsequently endeavoured to become reconciled with
orthodox Sunnism, though the Ulama still regard them with some suspicion.
Both branches are distinguished for
their extensive missionary activity, not only in India, but also in England
and America. The Qadian party in particular are active opponents of
Christian missions in the East Indies, and in South, East and West Africa.
The total number of their adherents cannot be estimated with any certainty,
but even in India and Pakistan they are so few as to be relatively
negligible against the mass of Indian Muslims.
Brief as this survey of the more
recent developments within Islam has been, it has shown that the forces
which shaped the religious attitude of Muslims in the past have lost none of
their power. As in other historic religious communities, two opposed but
complementary tendencies have been constantly in operation. One is the
puritan reaction, the effort to hold fast to the legacy and tradition of the
Medinian church and community, and unending struggle against
‘innovations’ which seem to menace the purity of primitive doctrine and
practice. The other is the catholic tendency, which explicitly accepts the
necessity of reinterpretation to meet new and proved needs.
Many times already, Muslim religious leaders, confronted by the
insistent demand of new modes of thought, have set themselves to the task of
restating in their terms the eternal principles of the Quranic
interpretation of the universe. We can, without exaggeration, speak of a
Muslim Stoicism, a Muslim Aristotelianism, a Muslim Pantheism, all within
the four corners of the orthodox community. The puritan reaction can never
actually reverse this tendency and restore the primitive formulation and
outlook; but it can and does destroy the compromises of the catholic spirit
when these are felt to go so Islam. From its long inner history Islam has
acquired both the adaptability and the toughness needed to meet the
challenge of modern philosophical thought, although the terms of its reply
have yet to be formulated.
Yet the dangers to which Islam, as a religion, is exposed today are
perhaps greater than any that it has faced in the past. The most patent come
from those forces which have undermined, or threaten to undermine, all
theistic religion. The external pressure of secularism, whether in the
seductive form of nationalism, or in the doctrines of scientific materialism
and the economic interpretation of history, has already left its mark on
several sections of Muslim society. But even this, however insidious its
influence, is probably less dangerous in the long run than the relaxation of
the religious conscience and the weakening of the catholic tradition of
Islam.
Both these tendencies were
accelerated by the breaking of the association between the religious orders
and the Muslim middle and upper classes. Its place could not be taken by
Ulama and the official organization, since the Ulama have never sought or
exercised that spiritual guidance and direction of the individual Believers
which is part of the Christian pastorate. The new societies aimed, as we
have seen, to supply some of the needs which had been met by the Sufi
orders, but with wide differences of emphasis. Recourse to organized effort
was indeed needed to meet both the challenge of the outer world and the
ravages of secularism within. The middle-class groups, however modernist and
pacifist in tendency, have in general lacked the vitality to revive the
lowered spiritual tension among the professional classes and have dwindled
into coteries with little outward radiation. The ‘Muslim Brotherhood’
movement in Egypt, on the other hand, gained at first a wide popular
following with its fundamentalist and activist programme, but fell victim
eventually to the excesses of its extremist wing and was forcibly dissolved
by government action in 1956. Such failures may not be decisive;
nevertheless they tend to weaken still further the community of moral
purpose and feeling within the Muslim world.
