The Ink of the Scholar
The ancient Greeks were the masters of
philosophy and science for over 1000 years. The Agora of Athens which once
resounded with the discussions of Socrates, Plato, and Sophocles is silent and
empty today with broken pillars covered with weeds.
Rome once ruled the Mediterranean and
beyond, but today is associated with Italian cuisine, fashion and art in the
shadow of the ruins of the dreaded Colosseum where Roman emperors were
entertained by gladiators fighting to the death.
That is the trajectory of all civilizations
that reached great heights and then tumbled into fragmentation, their past
glory all but forgotten.
The Islamic civilization too was once the
most significant custodian of learning, and like the Greeks, many of its
inventions, philosophies and laws are still an integral part of modern societies.
Unlike
the Greek and Roman empires, the achievements of the Islamic empire began to be
systematically erased. The 15th Century Renaissance was presented solely
as a European
revival of Greek learning, bypassing the role of Islamic scholarship in preserving Greek
texts and developing new ideas and inventions in science, medicine, astronomy, navigation,
music, and architecture.
Arab
culture was propagated as nothing more than harems, flying carpets and bedouins
galloping across the desert. The discovery of oil in the first part of the 20th
century in the middle east created the need to balance dependency of western countries
on access to the oil, while retaining political and cultural dominance.
To
understand how this became a relatively easy task, one has to travel back in
time, to understand how Muslim societies lost their intellectual edge and political
authority.
Some attribute the loss
of the investigative nature of Islamic scholarship to Al Ghazali’s 11th
C teachings in Tahāfut al-Falāsifa
("Incoherence of the Philosophers"), considered a turning point in
Islamic philosophy. He stated that pursuing pure science causes a straying from
metaphysical truth. Others reject this theory, instead proposing it was the
jurist Nizam al-Mulk, who introduced the Nizamiyah education system around the
same time, that focused purely on religious studies where previously, sciences
and Islamic law were taught together. Over four centuries, Nizamiyah colleges
were established in major cities and graduates were given priority in key
government jobs, although independent scientific enquiry continued outside
these colleges.
One must also take into account the 13th
century destruction by the Mongols of Baghdad and its legendary library Bait ul
Hikmat, where all scholars of note were educated. In Spain, another important
centre of learning, thousands of Arabic manuscripts were burnt when it was conquered
by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile in 1492. Over three million Arabs
and Jews were executed or exiled. Yet
another factor was the Black Death, a pandemic, that struck the Middle
East along with Europe and North Africa in the mid 14th C that killed
up to 75 million people. Many scholars and Sufis left the cities for rural
areas or other countries including India, and the dynamic centres of learning
ceased to exist.
Colonialism
and the creation of the nation state finally atomized the integrity of the transnational
Muslim Empire. Muslim nations were divided up between European countries and
isolated from one another, and the last symbol of a unified Ummah, the Khilafat,
was abolished. Colonialism imposed
European educational systems, laws and administrative structures.
Muslim
scholars are more likely to conduct research in American or European
universities than in their own countries. As the rebel poet Ahmaq Phapondvi
wrote:
Nai had bandiyan honay ko hain aeen-e- gulshan mein/ Kaho
bulbul se ab anday na rakhay aashiyane mein
New limitations are being imposed in the administration
of the garden/ Ask the bulbul to not place her eggs in her nest.
Any
resistance, such as against the creation of Israel in the Palestinian state, is
dubbed an act of terror.
Now
as the balance of power in the world seems to be faltering, a new digital transnational
generation is emerging, in a manner not dissimilar to the exchange of knowledge,
technology and culture on the trade routes of the past. It enables academic freedom,
once the hallmark of Muslim scholarship, to re-emerge. A hadith says ‘the ink of the scholar is
superior to the blood of the martyr’.
Asad Ibn al-Furat about to launch a naval attack on
Sicily in 827 AD, motivated his troops with:
“I
have been given this appointment because of my achievements with the pen, not
the sword. I urge you all to spare no effort, no fatigue in searching out
wisdom and learning. Seek it out, and store it up, add to it and persevere
through all difficulties and you will be assured of a place both in this life
and in the life to come”
Durriya Kazi
Karachi
January 27, 2025
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