Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
197 . Khudi of Allama Iqbal - 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
This paper integrates faith, science and history. It presents a unified vision of knowledge. While explaining the idea of Iqbal’s khudi, it integrates the physical and the spiritual and renews the foundation of Islamic knowledge. Such an integrated view helps humankind understand its place and its purpose in the cosmos; gives a spiritual character to science and history; fosters their study in a spiritual paradigm; removes the tensions between religious and secular education; and, shows the historical errors that philosophers, scientists and men of religion alike have fallen into. It unveils the lofty vistas that are the destiny of humankind and removes the layers of ignorance, heedlessness, skepticism and apathy that have overtaken the civilization of man. It is a comprehensive attempt in which the body, mind the soul are complementary and each play their essential part.
There is a Light in every heart. It is bestowed upon every man and woman at birth. It shines by the Grace of God and comprehends the physical and spiritual. It is the seat of all knowledge and through it the physical and the spiritual are united. The goal of every soul is to find that Light. That is the quintessential struggle of man, from the cradle to the grave.
Several questions are addressed in this paper: Is science compatible with religion? How is history related to faith? Is there a common thread that binds science, history and faith? In a broad sense, is there a classification of knowledge that integrates science, history and faith? If there is, then what is the basis for such classification? Does it offer a consistent, coherent and comprehensive vision of the cosmos that we are a part of?
These questions are important. Modern man has gone off on a tangent, separating faith from science and history. In this fragmented worldview, faith is confined to the walls of “the church”, while the world outside is abandoned to secular scrutiny. Modern science and history are thus bereft of the Grace of God. In this soulless world, humankind finds itself isolated and alone, dangling between the heavens and the earth, existing in the cosmos without purpose, without joy, without love, without anchor and without roots.
Truth is one and indivisible. It is a search for the truth that unites all human endeavor. The truth that faith discovers cannot be different from the truth discovered by science or by history. Man is a part of nature, not separate from it. The laws of history may be qualitative and descriptive as compared to the laws of nature which are more quantitative but they are not contradictory. For instance, a dynamic balance governs nature. Man is subject to a dynamic balance in his personal and communal life; if you violate balance (justice), you ultimately destroy yourself. But alas! The secular worldview separates man from nature. It divides up the truth into fragments and as a consequence makes it impossible to discover it. It is like the proverbial elephant: the legs and the trunk and the tail do not make an elephant whole. Only an integrated perspective shows the entire elephant.
Our Approach
The approach taken in this paper is distinguished in that: (1) It bases all knowledge on experience, (2) It includes all sources of experience, the body, mind, heart and the soul, (3) It relates experience to the spirit, which is the life source for all existence, (4) it shows the interconnectivity of different disciplines, (5) it presents a knowledge-based vision for the renewal of Islamic civilization.
The basis for this work is the Qur’an. The inexhaustible wisdom of its verses is used to offer insights into the questions raised and make things clear.
A comprehensive attempt to integrate faith, science and history has not been made in the Islamic world in modern times. It was a recurrent effort in the classical age (765-1219 CE). Islamic scholars in the classical age produced the al Hakims, the integrators, who combined in themselves knowledge of the religious sciences as well as the empirical and mathematical sciences. This integrated worldview shriveled with time under the successive impact of the Crusades, the Mongol devastations, foreign invasions, occupation and colonialism. Internal schisms as well as extremism took their toll so that Islamic sciences which at one time served as a beacon of light for the world became a caricature of what they once were.
In the last two hundred years, as Europe gained its ascendancy, Muslims absorbed many of the assumptions made by the secular West and accepted the separation of the sacred from the secular. Today, the mullahs who are trained in religious schools are ignorant about science, philosophy and history. They suspect what they do not comprehend and trap themselves more and more into an isolationist corner in a world of pre-scientific reductionism. What they do not understand, they denounce. In turn, the world of science abandons them and history walks away from them. Those educated in secular schools fare no better. They have no knowledge of the religious sciences and become alienated from their ethical roots and their faith. The tensions between the sacred and the secular tear Muslim societies apart and are a major source of instability in Muslim lands.
The Terminology
The basis of knowledge is experience. There are four sources of human experience: the body, the mind, the heart and the Nafs. The terms body, mind and heart must not be confused with the physical body, mind and heart. Each of these is a composite of attributes. The body is a composite of the attributes of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. We will show that these are not in fact attributes of the physical body but are attributes of the Nafs (the Self). The mind includes the attributes of reasoning, reflection, logic, extension and deduction. It is the repository of Aql and Fikr. The body and mind cannot be separated; they act as an integral whole, supporting and complementing each other. The heart has multiple stations: an outer station called the Sadr; a second, higher station called the Qalb; a third, higher yet station called the Fu’ad; and a fourth station, the highest one, called Birr. Each station has its own attributes and its capabilities. The Nafs is a composite term which includes the body, mind and the heart. Sometimes, it is translated, simply, as the Self.
A great deal of confusion in understanding Qur’anic ideas occurs because of the lack of correspondence between Arabic and English terms. Translation is a process of Dynamic Perception Mapping. It is dynamic because it is time bound; what a person understands from a term today may not be the same as what he understands from the same term twenty years from now as he gains in knowledge and experience. It is perceptual because it is constrained by the capability of the person. It is especially so when it comes to the Qur’an. Its self-sustained eloquence, subtle nuances and the grandeur of its locution challenge and defy translation. Mapping refers to the act of translation from one language to another. As each language is culture bound, oftentimes there are no equivalent words to convey an idea. So, the term Nafs which is a compendium of the body, mind and heart cannot be appropriately translated as soul. The word soul in English is separate and distinct from the body whereas the term Nafs includes the body. Certainly, its rendering as Ego is incorrect except to explain certain of the attributes or the Nafs. The Ego is the “I” in the English language. The Ego can be conquered, suppressed and even annihilated. By contrast, as the Ego is conquered, the Nafs merely undergoes a series of transformations, and in stages evolves from Nafs e Ammara to Nafs e Mutma-inna.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
