ISLAM'S
GIFTS TO THE WORLD
By: Sayyid Mujtaba Musavi Lari
Islam stands for harmony and
perfectibility with an unmatched depth and breadth of scope that comprises all aspects of
spirit and life. It knows all the roads that lead to blessing and happiness. It has the
cure for human ills, individual and social, and makes them as plain as the wit of man can
devise or comprehend. It sets out to develop all sides of each person: and therefore
perforce includes every reality which impacts human existence. It has not given way, in
its doctrine of man, to modern errors or corrupt institutions. It does not set man in
God's place. To do so is to leave man with only himself to rely on in all his pride and
egotism: or else to reduce him to the slavery of being a beast of burden for his fellows,
powerless, will-less, helpless before nature's and matter's tyrannies. This is precisely
what modern heresies do with man. But Islam vindicates man's unique nature vis-a-vis all
other living creatures, affirming that he is a special creation with a lofty calling all
his own.
Islam holds that a man's
personality does not cease to exist with death, but is continuous and eternal.
"Worldly" and "other-worldly" are an indivisible unity. Body and soul
can therefore not be dissolved into disparate elements. Islam, on these grounds, presents
both worlds in shining terms. It both trains a man for eternity and also finds the guiding
principles for its public institutions on earth in the sublime destiny inherent in man's
creation.
Eternity dictates universal
principles, unchanging and unchangeable. These Islam proclaims as tenets, convictions,
commandments, statutes, in its school of contentment, in its thrust for progress. It
offers man the perfection of freedom for thought, for concern, and for exegesis of the
divine law on matters of social necessity. It reverts to first principles which provide
the sure and unshifting basis of rock-bottom truth in all the chances and changes of this
mortal life.
Islam holds that man has certain
characteristics which are his link with the material world and certain others which
connect him with realities that are non-material and which motivate desires and aims of a
more sublime nature. Body, mind and spirit each has its proper propensities. Each must be
duly weighed, so that what one of these indivisible elements desires does not conflict
with the desire of another. Islam takes all the elements and facets of human nature into
account and caters for the compound essence of man's combined material and spiritual
propensities. It draws him upward towards the highest without cutting his roots in the
material. It demands absolute purity and chastity without denying the flesh and its needs.
Its current flows from pole to pole over a network of live wires - convictions and
regulations which preserve the integrity of all the innate human instincts while rejecting
the Freudian doctrine of total freedom which treats man as nothing but animal.
Islam is not a mere set of ideas
in the world of metaphysical speculation : nor did it come into being simply to order
man's social living. It is a way of life so comprehensively meaningful that it shapes
education, society and culture to heights none other ever aimed at. It forms a supreme
court of appeal and rallying-point for East and West alike, and offers them an ideology
which can answer their divisive materialisms. It can replace their inequities and
contradictions with a more universal, more perfect and more powerful idea.
Islam does not concede priority
of any kind to material affluence or to hedonistic comfort as basic for happiness. It
finds its principles in an analysis of man's true nature. With these principles it
constructs a plan for individual , social and international living, framed by fixed and
all embracing moral standards, aimed at a goal for humanity far loftier than the modern
world' s limited materialist aims.
Islam does not imprison man in
the narrow confines of the material and the financial. It sets him in a spacious and
expansive air. There morality, principle and the spirit reign. Its statutes are those
which spring from the nature of man himself. They encourage mutual help and team-work.
They pursue values outside the straitened boundaries imposed on individual and on
community by the petty pusillanimous pedestrian patterns of materialist purposes. Instead
it yokes man's strength and striving to the change, advance, progress and perfecting
inherent in his creation.
Islamic training sets out to
refine and enhance human qualities and to harness them to right and reasonable objectives
which direct and dictate every forward step to the desired end. It focuses a man's
motives, which arise from his natural desires and basic needs, in such a concentrated and
streamlined beam that each talent is called in to exercise its function in due succession
and order. Impetuous uncoordinated impulses are thus controlled so that no single instinct
overrule commonsense nor momentary urge replace reason. Instead man is made master of his
fate and captain of his soul. Excess is obviated and every person is accorded his or her
legitimate share in the common triumph of all. In this employment every need of body, mind
and soul is met and satisfied.
Whenever in history individuals
have united in harmonious pursuit of such aims, persons and communities have found
themselves. "What is right" has ruled thoughts, conduct and character; human
living has been orderly and secure. Reason dictates this training, and calls to a religion
with convictions superstition-free, canons practical, statutes feasible and excellencies
virtuous. The God-given human intelligence intuitively and logically perceives their
truth.
No man is asked to perform a task
above that which he is able. But his powers are put at full stretch. Every possibility
within him is expressed to the full. And each is, at doomsday, judged; then the fire
itself shall prove each man's work of what sort it is.
Modern political theory exalts
"the general will" Democratic government attempts to put that general will into
practice by making law out of the policy voted for by «'the majority" (which need
only be 51%) leaving null and void the will of the minority (which may be that of as many
as 49% of the voters). The minority is thus not "free" at all, even though in
some cases its will may be sensible, and in the circumstances right. But '«Government by
the Will of the People" will never voluntarily strip off the sanctity and splendour
with which it has endowed "the general will", giving that concept precedence
over all other material and spiritual values.
Islam, on the other hand, gives
precedence to the Will of the Lord of this world, rather than to the uncontrolled
inclinations and sentiments of a majority of humans. Islam refuses to strip the Godhead of
control of the legislative and jurisdictional power Islam's conception of Godhead and of
divine government is wide enough to comprise everything that goes to make up human life
everywhere on this planet. This makes Islam man's unrivalled guardian. It demands total
obedience to its statutes on the ground that these are God-given and that therefore no
human being has a right to allow his own desires to dictate any action in breach of these
statutes and rules of life.
How can God be proclaimed worthy
of total commitment by people who arrange their lives on precepts deriving from other
sources than God Himself? No person dare claim divine authority for a partner for God, nor
substitute another lawgiver for Him. Islam's aim is to champion truth and right in
everything in human society, since truth does not specialise exclusively in social,
political and financial matters but also clothes the stature of man himself in its most
beautiful vestments.
The human physique is fearfully
and wonderfully made. So are the rules and rights that govern human living. No-one can
claim a complete knowledge of all the mysteries of man's make-up, or of the complicated
social structure it generates. For this structure comprises the specialised areas of the
body and the spirit of all its individuals as well as of all their relationships with each
other Nor dare anyone claim to be innocent of sin, of a shortcoming, a fault or an error.
No-one is aware of all the elements which go to make up human happiness and welfare.
Despite all the devoted efforts
of scientists to penetrate the mysteries of human being, the area they have succeeded in
covering is still extremely limited. To quote Dr. Alexis Carrel again ("'Man, the
Unknown" p.4): "'Mankind has made a gigantic effort to know itself. Although we
possess the treasure of the observations accumulated by the scientists, the philosophers,
the poets, and the great mystics of all times, we have grasped only certain aspects of
ourselves. We do not apprehend man as a whole. We know him as composed of distinct parts.
And even these parts are created by our methods. Each one of us is made up of a procession
of phantoms, in the midst of which strides an unknowable reality."
Without insight into the human
make-up man cannot frame laws 100% suited to the human condition, nor justly cure the
troubles that arise : witness the bewilderment of legislators, their constant alteration
of their own statutes in face of today's new problems and unexpected blind alleys. Motives
of personal advantage, self-interest, profit, ambition, power, and even of environmental
predilections, intrude to distort the legislators' outlook consciously or unconsciously.
Montesquieu said of legislation that "none is ever wholly objective and impartial,
for the personal ideas and sentiments of the legislator influence his drafting". Thus
Aristotle, because he was jealous of Plato, influenced Alexander to denigrate his great
predecessor.
Modern slogans of "Liberty
and Equality" and "the Public Will" are empty words used by politicians to
win support for their laws, laws which in fact represent the interests not of the masses
but of the landowners and capitalists.
Henry Ford wrote of England,
which boasts itself "the Mother of Democracy". "We cannot forget the 1926
general strike or the way the government tried to break it with every means in its power.
Parliament, tool of the capitalists, proclaimed the strike unconstitutional and illegal,
and turned police and army out against the strikers with bullets and tanks. Meantime the
media of radio and press declared the government to be the servant of the workers, a plain
subterfuge contradicted by the fines imposed on the trade unions and by the imprisonment
of their leaders as soon as the opportunity offered."
Khrushchev declared in the 22nd
Supreme Soviet Congress: "In the era of the personality-cult (i.e. under Stalin)
corruption infiltrated our Party's leadership, government and finances; produced decrees
which trod the masses' rights underfoot; lowered industrial output; filled men with fear
in their work; and encouraged sycophants, informers and character-assassins."
Thus both Eastern and Western
systems of government falsely appear in the guise of the public will, Parliamentary rule,
representation of the masses: while capitalism and communism alike frame inequitable laws
because they neglect the heavenly decrees which establish fast what is best for man.
Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote
("Social Contract" Book II: Chapter 6: "The Lawgiver"):
"To discover the rules of
society that are best suited to nations, there would need to exist a superior intelligence
who could understand the passions- of men without feeling any of them, who had no affinity
with our nature but knew it to the roots, whose happiness was independent of ours but who
would nevertheless make our happiness his concern, . . . in fact a divine lawgiver is
needed."
By these standards the most
competent legislator is the Creator of man Himself, He knows all the mysteries of man's
being, makes no profit out of any human society, and needs no man. Hence the principles
which can shape equitable social regulations must be learnt from a person who receives
direct guidance from the Creator, whose teachings are the inspired revelations of that
unique Source, and who is wholly reliant on that Infinite Wisdom.
Human laws aim only at the
ordering of human society. They do not stray outside those limits, nor touch non-social
matters like personal conditions, attitudes of mind, spiritual excellence. They do not try
to cure internal pollutions within the personality. It is only when personality problems
issue in social disorder in action that they enter the scope of legal measures. A person
may be filthy in thought and spirit and still good in the eyes of Western law, which looks
only upon outward acts and not upon the heart. Islam with its wide outlook aims not just
at redressing what has been done wrong but primarily at putting individual and society
right from inside, regarding the ethical personality as the basic unit, and its perfecting
as the priority. Islam aims at an orderly society composed of sound morals, sane thinking,
sensible action, serene psyches. It therefore legislates for the inner life of the
individual in as much detail as for the outer life of society. It brings order and
congruence between large and small in creation, the natural laws and the spiritual, the
material and the metaphysical, the individual and the social, creeds and philosophies. It
helps man not to come into collision with the natural laws which underlie the orderliness
of the universe; disobedience to which collapses and confounds all human affairs.
Man-made institutions pursue
performance of the law. but in Islam the trustee for the law's performance is a
deep-rooted faith; and a Muslim duly performs his obligations by the force of morality and
faith, even in matters where he is seen by no one save by God alone. Armed force is only
needed to control the tiny minority of criminal-minded hypocrites. Islam thus pays due
regard both to inner purity of heart and to outward purity of action. It calls those deeds
good, laudable and meritorious which spring from sincerity and faith.
USA's Attorney General, in his
introduction to his book on Islamic Law , wrote: "American law has only a tenuous
connection with moral duty. An American may be accounted a law-abiding citizen even though
his inner life is foul and corrupt. But Islam sees the fount of law in the Will of God as
revealed to and proclaimed through His Apostle Muhammad. This Law: this Divine Will,
treats the entire body of believers as a single society, including all the multifarious
races and nationalities which go to make it up in a far-scattered community. This gives
religion its true sound force and makes it the cohesive element of society. No bounds of
nationality or geography divide, for the government itself is obedient to the one supreme
authority of the Qur'an. This leaves no place for any other legislator,. so that no
competition or rivalry or rift can arise. The believer regards this world as a vale of
soul-making, the ante-room to the next : and the Qur'an makes perfectly plain what are the
conditions and laws which govern believers' behaviour to each other and towards society;
and thus makes the changeover from this world to the next a sure and sound and safe
transition."
Despite Westerners' small
acquaintance with Islam, and their often mistaken ideas, far removed from reality, a
comparatively large number of their thinkers grasp some of the depth and profundity of
Islamic teaching and do not conceal their admiration for its clear exegesis and estimable
doctrines.
A Muslim scientist's respect for
Islam's laws and ordinances is no surprise. But if a non-Muslim savant, despite his
slavery to his own religious bigotry, yet recognises Islam's grandeur and greatness and
its lofty leading, that is a real tribute, especially when it is based on a recognition of
the progressive nature of Islam's legal systems and their legacy to mankind. This is why
this book quotes foreign verdicts on Islam. We do so, not because we need their support,
but because they can help to open the road for seekers and enquirers so that who reads may
run its way.
Dr. Laura Vacciea Vaglieri,
Naples University professor, wrote: "In the Qur'an we come across jewels and
treasures of knowledge and insight which are superior to the products of our most
brilliant geniuses, profound philosophers and powerful politicians. How can such a book be
the product of the brain of a single man - and that of a man whose life was spent in
commercial, not particularly religious, circles - far removed from all schools of
learning? He himself always insisted that he was in himself an ordinary simple man like
other men, unable, without the help of the Almighty to produce the miracle of such work.
None other than He whose knowledge compasses all that is in heaven and earth could produce
the Qur'an."
Bernard Shaw in his
"Muhammad, Apostle of Allah" said: "I have always held the religion of
Muhammad in the highest esteem simply from the marvel of its living vigour. To my mind it
is the sole religion capable of success in mastering the multifarious vicissitudes of life
and the differences of culture. I foresee (it is manifest even today) that, man by man,
Europeans will come to adopt the Islamic faith. Mediaeval theologians for reasons of
ignorance or bigotry pictured Muhammad's religion as full of darkness, and considered that
he had cast down a challenge to Christ in a spirit of hatred and fanaticism. After much
study of the man, I have concluded that Muhammad was not only not against Christ, but that
he saw in Him despairing mankind's saviour I am convinced that if a man like him would
undertake leadership in tile new world, he would succeed in solving its problems, and
secure that peace and prosperity which all men want."
Voltaire, who at the beginning
was one of Islam's most obdurate opponents and poured scorn on the Prophet, after his 40
years of study of religion, philosophy and history frankly said: "Muhammad's religion
was unquestionably superior to that of Jesus. He never descended to the wild blasphemies
of Christians, nor said that one God was three or three Gods were one. The single pillar
of his faith is the One God. Islam owes its being to its founder's decrees and manliness;
whereas Christians used the sword to force their religion on others. Oh Lord! if only all
nations of Europe would make the Muslims their models."
One of Voltaire's heroes was
Martin Luther. Yet he wrote that "Luther was not worthy to unloose the latchets of
Muhammad's shoes. Muhammad was a great man and a trainer of great men by his example of
virtue and perfection. A wise lawgiver, a just ruler, an ascetic prophet, he raised the
greatest revolution earth has seen."
Tolstoi wrote: "Muhammad
needs no other claim to fame than that he raised a barbarous bloodthirsty people out of
their diabolical customs to untold advances. His Canon Law with its intelligence and
wisdom will come to be the world's authority."
Our world is split into two
blocs. They hold contradictory ideologies, each backed by its own scientists and savants
who, in a spate of pamphlets and books, prove it right and its opponents wrong. Each
claims to be the sole sure road to happiness, and says its adversary is the sole cause of
confusion and catastrophe.
Both cannot be right. Both may be
wrong! Each may be missing a vital point. Yet both have made large contributions to human
progress through the brilliance of some of their scientists and technologists. Progress in
one field is no proof of equal progress in every field of human life, any more than an
individual's possession of one set of talents indicates a competence in all occupations.
An outstanding physician is not ipso facto a brilliant musician! Nor does technological
advance ipso facto imply equal advance in thought, wisdom, religion, government, morality
.
Dr. Alexis Carrel writes
("Man, the Unknown" p. 27 and 28) : "The applications of scientific
discoveries have transformed the material and mental worlds. These transformations exert
on us a profound influence. Their unfortunate effect comes from the fact that they have
been made without consideration for our nature. Our ignorance of ourselves has given to
mechanics, physics and chemistry the power to modify at random the ancestral forms of
life. Man should be the measure of all. On the contrary, he is a stranger in the world
that he has created. He has been incapable of organising this world for himself, because
he did not possess a practical knowledge of his own nature. Thus, the enormous advance
gained by the sciences of inanimate matter over those of living things is one of the
greatest catastrophes ever suffered by humanity The environment born of our intelligence
and our inventions is adjusted neither to our stature nor to our shape. We are unhappy. We
degenerate morally and mentally. The groups and the nations in which industrial
civilisation has attained its highest development are precisely those which are becoming
weaker, and whose return to barbarism is the most rapid."
The perfection and subliminating
of man in a whole series of different areas requires a body of sound and universal
teachings based on realities of human life and free of all faults and errors. Such is only
to be found in the teachings of the prophets of God to whom revelation was granted
concerning the origins of the world's being.
Morality, to rely on sanctions
higher than the natural and to be inspired by what is beyond the material, must build
solely on fundamental and basic instructions.
From the moment that man was set
upon the globe and laid the groundwork of civilisation, a cry rose to heaven from his
inward depths.
This cry we call religion. Its
truth is indissolubly connected with a moral order.
Inhumanity, faction, inequity,
tyranny, war, all testify to the truth that governments and their laws have never sufficed
to control the sentiments and beliefs and feelings of man nor to establish an order of
justice, happiness, peace and quietude in society. Science and knowledge can never solve
the problems of human life nor prevent its derailment except in alliance with religion.
Will Durant, American sociologist
and philosopher, writes in his "Pleasures of Philosophy" (pp.326/7): '"Has
a government such power in economic and ethical matters to preserve all the heritage of
knowledge and morals and art stored up over generations and woven into the warp and woof
of a nation's culture? Can it increase that heritage and hand it on to posterity? Can a
government, with all the modern machinery at its disposal, bring the treasures of science
to those depressed classes who still think of scientific utterances as blasphemy and
witchcraft? Why is it that such small men govern America's biggest cities? Why is our
administration conducted in such a way as to make one weep over the lack of noble policies
and true patriotism? Why do corruption and deception enter into our elections and make
havoc of public property? Why has government's basic task dwindled today to an attempt
merely to prevent crime? Why do governments not seek to understand the causes of war and
the conditions of peace? Churches and families ought to undertake the imposition of
civilisation on such governments."
Western society can only continue
to tolerate moral confusion and its ways of destruction because of its limited powers to
take reform into its own hands. But the continuation of this state of affairs already
tolls a warning bell. Peril lies close at hand, for civilisation stays stable only so long
as there is a balance between ends and means, between authority and aspiration. When this
equilibrium breaks down, such violence ensues that no goodness can stop it. It rushes
headlong to an inevitable disruption. You will find no nation throughout human history
which survived the corruption of indulgence and permissiveness.
Rome perished. The glory of
Greece collapsed. France, because of the indulgent lives of its citizens, turned soft and
gave way to the first Nazi assault. One of their most famous generals himself wrote that
the reason for their weakness was the inner erosion of character.
Spengler foresaw the downfall of
Western civilisation and said that other lands would in the future see great cultures
arise. Perhaps the East will be one of the first to return to its ancient heritage. This
will not come by worshipping at the false shrine of misguided civilisations. But the
decline of one civilisation can awaken men to the divine plan and inspire them to follow
it; and so, by means of this sublime truth, to found an entirely new social life on sound
foundations.
Today, alas, the symptoms of an
inferiority-complex over Western industrial prowess and its deadly consequences mark
everything in Eastern nations' life. Many a Muslim is so impregnated with Western ideas
that he wishes to see everything through Western spectacles, in the belief that progress
demands manners and morals, laws and legislation, which copy Western styles. This total
surrender welds the ring of slavery in our ears. We spread the red carpet of our
self-respect, our material and moral wealth, our religious and national heritage of
good-breeding, before their feet. This is what saps Muslim nations' strength, both
physical and spiritual. Muslims they may be: but they have lost the art of thinking on
Islamic lines, cast aside their Muslim outlook on world events, alienated themselves from
Islam's creed and culture, and want to Westernise all Muslim ways. Mankind's greatest
problems are not those which can be solved in the laboratory.
Shall a foreign force prevent our
taking our place in civilisation's caravan? Suppose we follow neither the capitalist nor
the communist trail. Suppose perfect social justice rules the interior of our land, and
wins us an international regard, restoring our ancient prestige amongst the assembly of
national governments. Might this not save us and mankind from further horrors of wars?
Why do we not let our religion's
laws and statutes solve our internal problems? If it can prevent us occupying the seat of
a beggar at the table of humanity, and instead install us as masters in that house to the
benefit of all, is this a small thing? Can a rich and generous giver turn beggar? Can a
man born to command turn submissive, cringe and crawl as an inferior, and give up his
right to choose the road he knows is proper?
Our inherited treasures have
blessed humanity in the past. Neither West nor East dare disregard that fact, and despise
us as backward and helpless, however much they strive to turn our confidence into
confusion and our hope into hopelessness, so that we fall easy prey. Our long experience
over three thousand years of history has left us tired. We have culled habits, thought,
laws, manners from here and there over centuries, and donned them in indiscriminate
combination, so that we make ourselves more like figures in a ridiculous carnival
procession than the dignified personalities that we should be, wearing our own national
garb with distinction and consuming our national dishes with conscious nobility.
Take our present constitution. We
first copied French models : then those of other European nations were added ; and later,
on each occasion when new legislation was called for, sought our mould in some other place
again, so that there is an endless conflict between the spirit of the laws which we have
borrowed from outside, and the national spirit for which the laws are made. As a result, a
transgressor of the law gains national renown, hero-worship, and help unstinted in every
way. Why? Through ignorance in the community? Not so! For the educated do not respond to
the laws. No! It is the inconsistency between the national spirit and the borrowed laws,
unrelated to social needs, historical antecedents, national consciousness, personal
convictions that emerged from an environment entirely alien to the spirit of our people.
Each borrowed law came from a community with its own history, religion, needs and peculiar
realities. Yet none of them can even give a wholly positive answer to its own people, as
continuous insurrectionary conditions show.
Professor Hocking of Harvard in
"The Spirit of World Politics" writes: "Islamic lands will not progress by
merely imitating Western arrangements and values. Can Islam produce fresh thinking,
independent laws and relevant statutes to fit the new needs raised by modern society? Yes!
- and more! Islam offers humanity greater possibilities for advance than others can. Its
lack is not ability - but the will to use it. In reality the Shar'iya contains all the
ingredients needed."
Iran's national daily
"Keyhan" on 14th Dey, 1345 reported: "Yesterday, anniversary of the
martyrdom of the Imam Ali, all Tehran practised Islam's laws 100%. Result: - no crimes;
forensic offices unemployed; no murders; no violence; no ripple on the calm surface;
borough officers and police untroubled by any calls; even family quarrels within the homes
were quickly hushed in reverence for the martyred Leader of the Faithful."
The Persian "Reader's
Digest" (No. 35, Year 25) corroborated this, saying. "The average number of
corpses in Tehran mortuaries on any one day of last year was 6 - fewer of course on
religious holy days and more on some other days. Last week's anniversary (Dey 13th) of
Ali's martyrdom was total peace - a proof of the persistent strength of religious
conviction, and of the calm and sanity society attains on days when sale of alcohol is
banned and amusement houses are closed." Such is the result of Muslims practising
their religion's laws for 24 hours. Could a single Western city report, if not 24 hours,
even 60 minutes, without an accident, a theft or a murder? When will mankind attain the
adult maturity to learn the simple lesson from which so easily comes the peace, the quiet,
the unity that all want? It is plain serendipity for us for, in the poet's words,
"I round the globe in search
of Heaven did roam:
Returned, and found my Heaven was here at home."
Man has always had to wrestle
with the task of exploiting nature's resources to extract his livelihood therefrom. In the
primitive centuries, as Aristotle said, life organised itself socially "to make it
possible to live: and continued, to make it possible to live well." In the last four
centuries a "science of economics" has been deduced from the statutes regulating
human relations and the exchange of goods which developed through this social
organisation. Faced with the vast expansion of a technology and affluence, this
"science" has broken into two opposing camps.
On the one side
"Capitalism" or "free enterprise" believes that nature should take its
course in economics, so that an enlightened self-interest causes the genius of some
finally to level out to the benefit of all. This is the doctrine for which the Western
bloc stands.
On the other side
"Communism" holds that the means of production must be controlled by a
proletariat state, so that a just and equal sharing of all the benefits of human endeavour
is imposed on society.
The rivalry for absolute power
between these two ideologies hangs over the modern world with a menace like the sword of
Damocles.
We must ask Marxists whether
their "classless society" can be ensured by the single measure of making the
means of production joint property and abolishing a moneyed class, when in fact a
diversity of classes exists arising from other than economic causes. While in Soviet
Socialist Republics no bourgeois propertied class exists, other classes distinguished by
occupational and environmental differences do exist: e.g.
factory-workers,
agriculturalists, civil servants, clerks, party officials and numberless others. Do
physician and nurse receive equal pay? Or navy and engineer?
There are yet other differences
amongst people which exist in reality- Lenin's "reality in which we have to orient
ourselves." People differ in age, sex, inclinations, tastes, physical strength,
appearance, reasoning powers, ideas and outlooks.
A Soviet economist recently wrote
("Economics" Vol. 2, p.216): "It is impracticable to impose absolute
equality right across the board. If we were to pay professors, thinkers, politicians and
inventors exactly the same as manual workers, the only end-result would be the abolition
of all incentives to brainwork of any kind."
Capitalism claims that only by
private enterprise and personal property can an economy be achieved such that the standard
of living of all classes constantly rises and the difference between rich and poor
constantly diminishes. Against this claim must be set the report of an enquiry arranged by
Walter Reuther, President of the U.S.A. United Auto Workers Union, in his capacity as
chairman of the "American Society to Combat Hunger." This committee affirms that
ten million Americans suffer from undernourishment; and asks the president of the republic
to declare a state of emergency in 256 cities, situated in 20 of the states, where the
danger is most grave. As causes of this undernourishment, the committee cited the
aftermath of World War II coupled with a number of defects in America's internal economy
The Secretary of Agriculture took extreme measures to purchase from abroad and commandeer
from within all foodstuffs he could lay hands on to fill the gap (UP).
We are bound to ask, therefore,
how far any regime, whatever its claims, has succeeded in equalising the classes,
eliminating differences and building a sound and just society?
Both Socialist and Capitalist
regimes base their systems on theories which are reverenced without any regard to moral
and spiritual values. The aim of each is to increase affluence, and nothing more.
Islam's philosophy reverences the
whole man in his world setting. It orders society's material behaviour and benefits, while
at the same time legislating for moral virtues, spiritual perfections, and a higher
standard of living. By this it means, not simply the material, but the mental, the
spiritual, the moral, the altruistic, the philanthropic standards which enable all men to
live each for all and all for each.
Western law supports
property-rights and gives preference to those of capitalists over those of workers. Soviet
law, in their own words, exists to strip the individual of all property rights and to
extirpate capital as a personal possession, giving preference to the workers' group
throughout. Both systems are grounded in human reasoning and judgment.
But Islam's law is grounded in
Divine Revelation. Its legislation is not a human expedient. It does not set class against
class; but helps each group to respect the excellence of other groups. Dictated by the
Lord of all creatures for the general good and for the good of all, it permits no class to
lord it over others nor allows injustice to break in. A ruler is in it only an ordinary
person with a particular set of duties, himself under law, wielding power solely to ensure
that the Divine commandments are obeyed in society. Since confidence reigns that God's Law
is sovereign, peace and quiet obtain.
Islam on the one hand opposes
Capitalism's doctrine that the rights of property-ownership lie outside the limits of
state control, and its permitting "free enterprise" to exercise aggression and
tyranny of the stronger over the weaker in an exaltation of the rights of the individual
to the detriment of the rights of society as a whole: and, on the other hand, does regard
the sanctity of property as a fundamental.
Prosperity is the stone on which
independence and freedom are built within a social order. The common good must be the
regulating principle governing personal ownership of property. Islam therefore equally
opposes the Communist total rejection of private enterprise and property, which entrusts
the key of bounty to the state, reducing the individual to so subordinate a position that
he is left with no intrinsic value in himself as a person, being regarded as a state tool
- a stomach for the state to fill and thereafter exploit, as a farmer does his horses and
cattle.
Communists hold that private
property is not natural to man. They aver, without advancing evidence to support the
thesis, that the first communities of primitive man held all things in common in
cooperation, love and brotherhood, neither did any man say that aught that he had was his
own. The human "community" started as communist with everything in common and
parted to each as his need required. The claim to personal ownership of anything, they
contend, only developed by slow degrees until it reached the terrifying excesses it
manifests in today's world.
Their utopian "Golden
Age" is, alas, a pipe-dream : for the facts show that personal ownership is not a
result of the development of acquisitive tendencies in a particular environment. Property
is coeval with the appearance of man on earth: it is as germane to human nature as all the
other innate urges, and no more to be denied than they are. Modern economists say that the
universal sense of ownership of property, which is found in every tribe on earth and in
every epoch, can only be explained if it is a primal instinct. Man wants to be the sole
master of the goods that minister to his needs, in order to feel truly free and
independent. Further, a man feels that goods which owe their existence to the hard work of
his hands are in a way an extension of himself, deserving of the same respect as he
demands for the integrity of his personality. Finally, he feels the inner urge to build up
a store to ensure his future and that of his family, developing thereby a thrift and
economy which make him lay up a provision against a rainy day: This store he thereafter
guards jealously as "his own". The community's wealth grows with the increase in
private property and productivity, for a social unit subsists by the industry of its
individual members. The incentive to hard work lies in its rewards in personal ownership
and in increased ease of living. Wherefore society must concede to the individual the
right to own what his toil has created, since society's own welfare is itself a product of
that toil.
Islam, with its practical and
realistic approach to man as he is, recognises the importance of the urge to own as a
creative factor for all social progress; and therefore legislates to secure a man
possession of all that his hand has won for him by proper and lawful means, regarding his
productivity as the guarantee of his right to ownership.
Islam rejects the contention that
oppression, exploitation and violence are inevitable concomitants of private ownership;
for they only appear where the legislative power is held by the richest class, and by
them, as in Western lands, directed solely to the protection of their own interests. Since
Islamic Law derives solely from the supreme overarching Authority of God, it is wholly
impartial : so no law can be devised by it with the aim of protecting the rich or injuring
the poor. From its inception, Islam has recognised private property, but always only under
such conditions that violence and oppression are ruled out of court. Islam holds that it
is wrong to wrest factories out of the hands of those who founded them and who, by patient
endurance of hardship and toil, built them up to give labour to many, goods to society,
and, of course, also profit to themselves. For Islam holds that such resort to violence in
removing the means of production from the hands of men of initiative is injurious to
social security and to respect for the rights of the individual. It discourages the spirit
of invention and initiative and enterprise. Nonetheless the government can and should so
control the administration of great industries and the establishment of factories that
social justice, equity in profit, public benefits and the government's own finances are
properly cared for.
In sum, Islamic economics gives
joint primacy to both individual and community. It equably balances the interests and
rights of these two elements by guaranteeing a free economy while safeguarding the freedom
of the individual member and the benefit of the whole community simultaneously by certain
reasonable and necessary regulations on private ownership. The urge for such ownership it
recognises as innate, and therefore germane to human nature, so that the only limits which
may be imposed upon it are those dictated by the general interests of the whole society,
which of course contains the best interests of each single member. Islam regards the
instinct to possess as an incentive divinely implanted to inspire men to hard work for the
improvement of the means of livelihood and of their increased production: yet regulates
the expression of this incentive with conditions that obviate violence, oppression,
exploitation, extortion and other forms of misuse of freedom. These conditions safeguard
the interests of society and are limits on individual independence in no way injurious to
liberty, since both communal living and individual freedom must impose those limits on
behaviour which will guarantee the survival of both individual and community. and must
therefore outlaw profiteering, embezzlement, malversation, hoarding, miserliness, avarice,
usury, forcible seizure of other people's property and all similar criminal and
anti-social methods of amassing capital.
Economic historians tell us that
at its inception the capitalist system was simple and beneficent : but that the habit of
granting loans at interest step by step grew to its present harmful excess. With this came
the bankrupting of small concerns and their amalgamation into huge complex companies and
financial structures. Islam labels such usury '"sin", as it does also the crises
of boom and slump inseparable from the system.
Islam has legislated for a
payment of "Zakat" (the Poor Rate) of 20% on capital gains by the rich for the
support of the indigent. This helps to level out differences, to draw economic extremes
closer together and to curb excessive piling up of wealth. Another Islamic regulation with
the same aim and same results is the government's right to tax wealth for national
finances, since Islam holds that God has put His good gifts into this world for the
benefit of all, as may be seen by the forests, reedbeds, pastures, desert lands, mountain
ranges, mines.*
Estates, too, become public
either through the intestacy of a deceased owner or because they are paid as fines in
restitution; so that they are as much the property of all as God meant all things to be.
Islam's testamentary laws also curb undue accumulation of property in the hands of one
family from generation to generation.
The conditions, therefore, by
which Islam limits its respect for the rights of private ownership, are those which are
dictated by the need to assure that the individual's privileges never menace the wellbeing
of the Islamic community. Therefore, in emergency or disorder, the just Islamic government
can employ the legal powers put at its disposal both to avert dangers which threaten the
future and also so to administer society as to meet the needs of the Muslim masses, any
time it sees fit.
A country's land may not fall
into the possession of a small handful of proprietors. Indigence and malnutrition of the
masses may not be ignored. These points are fixed principles, frankly and firmly,
faithfully and forcefully, propounded by Islam. The Faith condemns the injurious intrusion
of modem capitalist practices into the Muslim world and bans the greed and avarice which
lead to enslavement, war and imperialism.
In the Qur'an it is written (Sura
59-"Al-Heshr"-"The Gathering of Troops" verse 7 in part): "The
dispositions we have revealed for the distribution of property . are ordained that capital
may not merely circulate round the group of capitalists amongst you."
In addition to the legal
enactments which ensure the correct use of finances and resources by punishing
transgressions, Islam also brings entirely new motives to bear, as our Qur'anic quotation
hints, by directing men's aspirations towards God. It therefore streamlines their conduct
within the confines of the road that leads to Him. This road has moral fences on either
side over which the aspirant desires not to stray. The road is paved with philanthropy,
affection, and sentiments of charity and self-sacrifice, which mean that no Muslim will
voluntarily be a party to courses of action which lead to injustice to others. Thus the
individual's conscience refuses to pile up excessive capital, and the employer refuses to
use tyranny or oppression to compel his workers to produce.
This lofty spiritual challenge,
directed towards helping the individual come to a knowledge of God and so to love of his
neighbour, is deeply planted within the conscience, so that a man finds his pleasures and
his treasures in pleasing his Creator; and these excel all other values for him.
In truth it is the decline of
faith today, and the diminution of belief in doomsday and judgment, which led to the greed
and cupidity and maleficence and the forms of injustice and oppression which we see around
us. Unless men's relationships are right with God, their relationships will not be right
with one another. A revolution of conscience produces a revolution in the soul, in
society, and in the world. Such is the lesson of history in practice, as well as the
doctrine of religion.
The same considerations apply to
the ideology of Communism, and it will be readily seen that Islamic lore is superior to
both the Western and Eastern materialist excesses.
Modern philosophers like William
James, Harold Laski, John Strachey, Walter Lippmann, criticise Communists' total
abrogation of personal and social affairs in favour of the state authority, saying that
the individual's personality and initiative are suffocated in such an ambience. While on
the other hand capitalist democracy over-emphasises individual freedom to the detriment of
social progress. This creates an oligarchy of the rich, making them masters of the means
of production and turning all men into slaves of economics. From opposing angles they come
to a common conclusion that individuals must impose an inner discipline on themselves if
they are to enjoy true freedom, contradictory as that may seem, and that the welfare of
society depends upon the responsible exercise by its members of that self-disciplined
freedom. What is their conclusion other than a restatement of the doctrine which Islam has
been preaching for 14 centuries? It is time that the lessons of history, the conclusions
of the philosophers and the doctrines of religion were made the guidelines for the conduct
of men and communities everywhere.
In AD 1951 the Paris College of
Law devoted a week to the study of. the Islamic "Feqh" (Canon Law). They called
in experts from Islamic lands round the world for elucidation of particular points, e.g.:
1. Islamic Canon Law on property;
2. Conditions for filing deeds of exchange on property to preserve the welfare of society
and the public;
3. Criminal responsibility;
4. The reciprocal influence of Islamic faith and Canon Law on each other.
The head of the Parisian Lawyers'
Society chaired the conference and summed up at the end thus: "Whatever our earlier
ideas about Islamic law and its rigidity or incompetence in documenting transactions, we
have been compelled to revise them in this conference. Let me sum up the new insights -
new I think to most of us - the conference has given us, in this week devoted particularly
to the Feqh, Islamic Canon Law. We saw in it a depth of rock-bottom principle and of
particularised care which embraces mankind in its universality and is thus able to give an
answer to all the emergencies and events of this age. In our final communique we say.
'Islam's Canon Law should be made one of the formative elements of all new international
legislation to meet present-day conditions, since it possesses a legal treasure of stable
universal value which fits its Feqh, amongst the modern welter of religious views and
pronouncements, to cope with the exigencies imposed by the new forms of living arising in
the modern environment'."
* The arid sunbaked expanses of the Islamic belt of territory which
stretches from the Mauritanian Atlantic coast nearly 6,000 miles through the Soviet Muslim
Republics of the Western Gobi, can support only a scant human population, while the
paucity of vegetation forces a nomad migratory way of life upon livestock-owners, if they
are to find pasturage. Hence our author's list of the publicly owned benefits of God's
gifts : while his omission of sunlight and rain. which are natural in the thought of
Westerners as free for all, are not mentioned because that belt has always too much
sunshine and too little rainfall (Translator's note)
Most Westerners are ignorant of
the debt their civilisation owes to Islam, even for modern industrial transformation,
scientific advance and philosophical enterprise.
Islam came into the world in the
bosom of one of the most backward of peoples. In a very short time it had raised those
tribes to pre-eminence in every field.
Its greatest miracle was its
appearance as a fullgrown adult of the spirit in so degraded and poverty -stricken an
environment.
Its second miracle was the
raising of that environment, by sheer force of inspiration, without any extraneous aids,
to an unmatched destiny.
Its third was to create a
cultural focus from which strong waves radiated, stimulating renascence in other peoples
of every background throughout the world.
The changes it wrought compose
history's greatest revolution so far, a revolution in sense and sensibility, in thought
and intellect, in relations of individuals and communities, and indeed in every department
of human life.
By the end of its first
millennium Islam stretched from the Atlantic coast of Africa in the west to the Great Wall
of China in the east, from the Mediterranean to the Sahara in Africa. In Spain its troops
took first Andalusia, then all Spain up to the Pyrenees, and even penetrated the south of
France as far north as Tours. All the "Jezirat-ul' Arab" was of course Muslim.
From Muslim Iran and Afghanistan other troops took Sind, the Punjab and the Gobi - and
this within a few short centuries.
In all its dominions the
principles worked out in the Arab homeland were applied to the new societies under its
sway. In particular its justice, equality and brotherhood, humane fruits of its meticulous
care for the individual and his place in society, which are the distinguishing marks of
Islam, set their stamp on the communities over this entire vast area.
The first task was the overthrow
of tyrannies : the second was the establishment of sound Islamic rule and respect for
human rights : the third was the illumination of intellect, research and thought: the
fourth was the propagating of the faith by its calm appeal to reason and logic and by its
profundity and breadth of vision: the fifth - and perhaps the most glorious because the
most anonymous-was the infection of other nations, of all creeds and none, with its own
superior moral, mental and spiritual outlook.
This last achievement not merely
raised the general level of peoples of every religion throughout the world, but also drew
many proselytes to itself from the idolaters of Arabia, the animists of Africa, the
Magians and Zoroastrians of Iran, and the Christians of Egypt and Syria.
Pre-Muslim Arabia had no trace of
culture, no science, no erudition, no economics; for geographical reasons Arabs lived in
penury and squalor, the prey of superstitions, isolated from world currents. Islam changed
all that, and went on to open the hearts and brains of men everywhere to new
possibilities.
In far-off Andalusia a school of
scholars, writers, mathematicians, scientific researchers and philosophers arose, inspired
by Islam to revive the level of thought reached by the Greeks 1500 years earlier, and to
move on up from there to heights never before touched by man.
Modern scholars in every
country,. even those whose prejudices would make them prefer to maintain a critical and
hostile attitude to Islam, more and more draw attention to the speed of the spread of the
Muslim faith, to its beneficent results for mankind's prowess in thought and study, and
the progressiveness of the ideas which it brought to other stagnant civilisations.
It should be noted by all our
"progressives" everywhere, that this brilliant advance for all humanity was the
concomitant of a moral self-discipline, of an eschewing of the dissipation which follows
upon loosing the reins of passion, and of a deliberate control of the creative instincts,
which channelled them into works of artistic, intellectual, and social creativity worthy
of mature human beings. This inner discipline, which man needs, promotes the inner freedom
he desires; and it is one cause of Islam' s wide dominion over the minds of men of the
early Middle Ages. For it offered not merely sounder outward forms of living but
reassurance to the inner core of the spirit. It abolished the wild persecutions brought
about by purblind bigotry and by narrow-minded fanaticism.
It was for this reason that the
Sultan Kemal-ul-Mulk, nephew of Saladdin, talked as man to man, and as scion of the same
spirit, to Francis of Assisi when the Saint crossed the lines from the camp of the
Crusaders under King Louis, whom the Muslims had halted before Damietta. It was the same
universal humanity which caused the vast contrast between Omar's merciful treatment of the
Christians in Jerusalem when he conquered it, and the barbarous massacre of Jerusalem's
Muslim inhabitants by the European Crusaders who took it back for a brief period 300 years
later. Islam replaced such savagery with a constitutional rule, a humanely regulated
society, an overarching philosophy embracing all mankind.
In Europe's Dark Ages, while the
Church established its power over the different nationalities, and fettered them in
restraining bonds in a status quo, Islam was building up a many-sided culture which laid
the basis for that flowering of science, knowledge, and artistic and technological
creativity which is called the "Renaissance". This was while the Church was
condemning Galileo for confirming Copernicus' theory of the orbiting of the earth round
the sun, and forcing him to his famous recantation: "I, Galileo Galilei, in the 70th
year of my age (1633 AD), on my knees before your Reverences (the Pope and Bishops) with
the Holy Scriptures before my eyes, take them in my hands and kiss them while repenting
and denying the foolish claim that the earth moves, and regard that claim as a hateful
heresy," even while he muttered rebelliously sotto voce "Eppure si
muove".
Yet 500 years previously our own
great astronomer and mathematician Omar Khayyam of Nishapur (floruit 2nd half of 11th
century AD, when William the Bastard was conquering England) had provided Iran with the
Jalali Calendar which to this day enables us to start our new year not merely on the day,
but on the exact hour, minute, and second that the earth terminates one orbit and starts
another round the sun at the vernal equinox! How few Westerners know this! They think of
him as a poet, though he was an indifferent one, but do not realise that if they had
picked up his wisdom they might have avoided all their Gregorian alterations of the Julian
calendar, and the loss of their "11 days"!
Roger Bacon (1214-1292 AD) the
Franciscans' "Doctor mirabilis", was in the reign of Edward I of England
compelled to give up the experimental research into science to which his lectures in Paris
on Aristotle's works and in particular on the " Liber de Causis" had led him',
and was driven out from Oxford back to Paris to be kept under the Church's eye-an eye too
narrow and bigoted to see the wealth of the scientific treasures he was offering them. He
was arraigned as a dabbler in devilish and satanic alchemy: and the mob was incited to
yell for this sorcerer's hand to be cut off and this Muslim' (!) to be exiled."
Nowadays European and American
historians and scholars all recognise and relate the fundamental contributions made by
Islam to all modern advances in science, mathematics, technology, philosophy, in many ways
of which this brief chapter has only been able to touch the fringe.
No better evidence of the passion
of Islam for the spread of erudition, from its very inception, can be given than the words
of the Prophet himself who said, after the battle of Badr and the Muslims' victory, to the
huge crowds whom they had taken prisoner, that any of them who wished to buy their freedom
but had no cash for a ransom could employ their literacy as their resources; and any
polytheist who trained ten Muslims to read and write should win freedom. His pronouncement
was put into practice; and it was thus that a large number of his original adherents were
started on the road of education.
His nephew and successor, the
Imam Ali, on whom be blessing, declared that the spreading of science and knowledge and
culture and intellectual ability was one of the merits to be coveted and achieved by every
Muslim government. In the record of his words it is reported that he said: "O people!
I have rights over you and you have rights over me. Your right over me is to insist that I
shall always give you guidance and counsel. and seek your welfare, and improve the public
funds and all your livelihoods, and help raise you from ignorance and illiteracy to
heights of knowledge, learning, culture, social manners and good conduct."
215 years after the Hejra the
Abbasid Caliph Ma'amoun founded a "House of Wisdom" in Baghdad to be a centre of
science, and furnished it with an astronomical observatory and a public library for which
he set aside 200,000 dinars (the equivalent of some 7 million dollars). He gathered
together a large number of learned men who were acquainted with foreign languages and
different disciplines, like Honain and Bakht-eeshoo' and Ibn Tariq and lbn Muqafa' and
Hajaj bin Matar and Sirgis Ra'asi, and others too numerous to mention, and set aside a
large sum for them, dispatching many of them to all the different countries of the world
to collect books on science, medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and fine literature, in
Hindi, Pahlevi, Chaldean, Syriac, Greek, Latin and Farsi. It is said that the vast
collections they sent to Baghdad exceeded 100 camel loads!
Europe had not one university or
cultural centre to show for itself in those centuries when Islamic lands had large numbers
staffed by experts and specialists in all branches of knowledge. These Islamic centres
were beginning to radiate waves of brilliant new thinking to the world at the very moment
when the Crusades were launched. In fact it might be said that it was the new learning
fostered by Islam which itself furnished the Europeans with some of their new thinking
that made possible whatever prowess they achieved in those disastrous wars and fired the
passion of jealousy and cupidity which made the West wish to seize for itself the
treasures which they saw Islam bringing to the nations under its sway.
Dr. Gustave Le Bon writes on page
329 of volume III of his "History of Islamic and Arab Civilisation". "In
those days when books and libraries meant nothing to Europeans, many Islamic lands had
books and libraries in plenty. Indeed, in Baghdad's 'House of Wisdom' there were four
million volumes ; and in Cairo's Sultanic Library one million; and in the library of
Syrian Tripoli three million volumes; while in Spain alone under Muslim rule there was an
annual publication of between 70 and 80 thousand volumes."
G. l'Estrange in his "Legacy
of Islam" page 230 writes: "The Mustansariyya University was furnished with
equipment and built in a huge campus with college edifices of such splendour that its peer
exists neither in the Muslim world nor elsewhere. Its four law-colleges, each with 75
students and a professor who taught the pupils gratis, paid its professor a monthly
salary, while each of the 300 students was given a gold dinar a month. A college kitchen
provided the daily meals. Ibn-el-Farat says that the library contained priceless and
unique volumes, on many branches of science, for any student to borrow. Pens and paper
were provided for the notes anyone might wish to take. The university had hammams (baths)
and infirmaries. Its doctors conducted a daily inspection of the colleges, and wrote
prescriptions for any who were ill. The college stores were able to dispense drugs
prescribed, immediately. All this at the beginning of the 13th century AD!"
Dr. Max Meyerhof writes: "In
Istambul the mosques possess between them more than 80 libraries, with tens of thousands
of books and ancient manuscripts. In Cairo, Damascus, Mosul, Baghdad, and in cities of
Iran and of India there are other great libraries full of treasures. A proper catalogue of
the precious volumes in all these has not yet been published complete in print. Moreover
the Escorial library in the Iberian Peninsula contains a huge section filled with books
and manuscripts produced by the Islamic scholars of the West, which also awaits completion
of its cataloguing."
Dr. Gustave Le Bon writes on
pages 55778 of his "Islamic and Arab Civilisation". "The Muslims pursued
the sciences with profound application. In any town they took, their first act was to
build a mosque and thereafter a college. This led to the production of majestic
institutions of learning in a vast number of cities. Benjamin Toole (ob. 1173 AD) said
that in Alexandria he found more than 20 colleges at work. Baghdad, Cairo, Cordova, and
other places all had great universities with laboratories, observatories, huge libraries
and all the other requirements for tackling intellectual problems. In Andalusia alone
there were 70 public libraries. The library of Al-Hakem II in Cordova contained 600,000
volumes and it took 44 volumes to catalogue the library' s contents. When Charles the
Just, four centuries later, founded the Bibliotheque Nationale of Paris he was only able
to assemble a total of 900 volumes, and that after great labours, while one-third of that
900 were books on religion."
The same author on page 562 adds:
"The Muslims launched science on the road of exactitude, experiment and
forward-looking discovery by hypothesis, with a particular enthusiasm, while producing
books and treatises and high schools that spread their intellectual prowess to all corners
of the world. They thereby opened for Europe the road to its renaissance. So it is with
justification that the title of "Europe's Professor' is given to the newly-arisen
Islamic power, since it was through them that the treasures of ancient Greek and Roman
science were rediscovered and enhanced and given back to Europe as she began to emerge
from the Dark Ages."
Josef Marc Kapp writes,
concerning the first centuries of Islam's progress in culture, in his book '"Muslim
Splendour in Spain" (p.170). "Even the lowest classes in society were athirst to
learn to read; and humble workers limited their expenditure on food and clothing and spent
their last sou on buying books. One worker collected such a library that men of learning
flocked to him. Freed slaves and the children of slaves entered the ranks of the learned;
and men like V afyat-ul- A'iyan lbn Khalkan laid the foundations for great progress".
Nehru wrote concerning the
benefits conferred on social progress and the cultural revolution of the Muslims in
Andalusia in his book "A Glimpse at World History" (p.413): "Cordova had
over a million inhabitants, a magnificent public park of about 20 kilometres and suburbs
stretching40 kilometres, with 6,000 palaces, mansions and great houses, 200,000 smaller
houses of beauty, 70,000 stores and small shops, 300 mosques, 700 hammams with hot and
cold baths for public use. There were innumerable libraries of which the most
comprehensive and important was the Royal Library, which contained 400,000 volumes.
Cordova University was famous throughout Europe and in western Asia. At the same time
education was provided for the poor. Indeed one of their contemporary historians writes
that nearly everyone in Spain in those days could read and write, while in the rest of
Christian Europe, apart from the monks and clearly persons who were educated through
religious houses, no one, including the highest members of the nobility, thought it worth
his while even to attempt to master basic arts of reading." To illustrate these
claims I append eight extremely brief chapters, each on a different branch of science or
culture; my debt I gladly acknowledge to Arnold and Guillaume's ."Legacy of
Islam" (publ. O U.P. 1931) to which I refer any reader who wishes to extend his
information.
Dr. Meyerhof writes in "The
Legacy of Islam" (p.132). "Muslim doctors laughed at the Crusaders' medical
attendants for their clumsy and elementary efforts. The Europeans had not the advantage of
the books of Avicenna, Jaber, Hassan bin Haytham, Rhazes. However they finally had them
translated into Latin. These translations exist still, without the translators' names. In
the 16th century the books of Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Avicenna (Ibn Sina) were put out in
Latin translation in Italy and used as the basis of instruction in the Italian and French
universities."
On page 116 of the same work he
writes that after Rhazes' death the works of Avicenna (AD 980-1037) were taken up. His
influence on thought and philosophy and general science was profound, and his medical
works (based on the works of Galen which he had found in the Samarqand library in Arabic
translation) had a sensational outreach. Other scientists followed - Abu'l-Qais of
Andalusia; lbn-Zahr of Andalusia; Abbas the Irani ; Ali ibn-Rezvan of Egypt; Ibn Butlan of
Baghdad-Abu Mansur Muwaffaq of Herat. Ibn Wafeed of Spain; Masooya of Baghdad; Ali
Ibn-Esau of Baghdad; Ammar of Mosul; Ibn-Rushd (Averroes) of Andalusia. whose works
translated to Latin were used in European universities. Europe knew nothing of the cholera
bacterium when Islam entered Spain, and the people there regarded the disease as a
punishment sent from heaven to exact the penalty of sins : but Muslim physicians had
already proved that even the bubonic plague was a contagious disease and nothing else.
Dr. Meyerhof writes of Avicenna's
book "The Canon" that it is a masterpiece of medical science which proved its
worth by being printed in a series of 16 editions in the closing years of the 15th century
AD, 15 Latin and one Arabic. In the 16th century more than a score of further editions
were published, because of its value as a scientific work. Its use continued throughout
the 17th and 18th centuries, so that it became the most widely known. of all medical
treatises. It is still consulted in medical schools.
Will Durant writes that Mohammad
ibn Zachariah Razi (Rhazes) was one of Islam's most progressive physicians, author of 200
treatises and books well worth studying today. in particular his
1. "Smallpox and
Measles" (published in Latin and other European tongues in 40 editions between 1497
and 1866), and 2. "The Great Encyclopedia" 20 volumes mostly unobtainable
nowadays: five volumes were devoted to optics; translated into Latin AD 1279. printed in
five editions in 1542 alone; known as the most authoritative work on the eye and its
ailments and treatment for centuries; one of the nine basic works on which Paris
University composed its medical course in 1394 AD.
Surgery made similar progress in
the hands of Islamic practitioners, who even used anaesthetics, though these are assumed
to be of modern origin. They employed a henbane base.
Among Rhazes' innovations was the
use of cold water to treat persistent fever, of dry-cupping for apoplexy, of mercury
ointment and animal gut for wound sutures, and many others. Further information on Islamic
medicine can be sought from the many books on the subject. The diagnosis of tuberculosis
from the fingernails, the cure of jaundice, the use of cold water to prevent hemorrhage,
the crushing of stones in bladder and kidney to facilitate their removal, and surgery for
hernia are among advances too numerous to mention in detail. The greatest of Islamic
surgeons was Abu'l-Qasem of Andalusia, affectionately called Abu'l-Qays, and sometimes
Abu'l-Qasees, floruit 11th century AD inventor of very many surgical instruments and
author of books to describe them and their uses - books translated and printed in
innumerable editions in Latin and used all over Europe, the last such edition being in
1816.
Gustave le Bon writes :
"Besides the use of cold water to treat typhoid cases - a treatment later abandoned,
though Europe is taking this Muslim invention up again in modern times after a lapse of
centuries-Muslims invented the art of mixing chemical medicaments in pills and solutions,
many of which are in use to this day, though some of them are claimed as wholly new
inventions of our present century by chemists unaware of their distinguished history.
Islam had dispensaries which filled prescriptions for patients gratis, and in parts of
countries where no hospitals were reachable, physicians paid regular visits with all the
tools of their trade to look after public health."
Georgi Zeidan writes:
"Modern European pharmacologists who have studied the history of their profession
find that Muslim doctors launched many of the modern beneficial specifics centuries ago,
made a science of pharmacology and compound cures, and set up the first pharmacies on the
modern model. So that Baghdad alone had 60 chemists' shops dispensing prescriptions
regularly at the charges of the Caliph. Evidence of these facts can be seen in the names
given in Europe to quite a number of medicines and herbs which betray their Arabic, Indian
or Persian origin." Such are "alcohol, alkali, alkaner, apricot, arsenic,"
to quote some 'a's alone.
Georgi Zeidan continues:
"Within two centuries of the death of the Prophet, Mecca, Medina and the other great
Muslim cities all had hospitals, while the Abbasid governors and their ministers competed
each for his own region to have the best such institution for the care of the sick.
Baghdad alone had four important hospitals. By three centuries after the Hejra the
governor Adhud-ud-Dowleh Deylamy had founded the Adhudi Hospital with 24 specialists, each
master of his own particular field, a hospital which soon earned the reputation of
excelling all hospitals throughout Islam, though in the course of time it too was
surpassed.
The order and arrangement of
Islamic hospitals was such that no distinctions of race, religion or occupation were
recognised, but cure was administered with meticulous care to any patient. Separate wards
were allotted for patients of specific diseases. These were teaching hospitals where the
students learned theory and observed practice. In addition, there were travelling
hospitals which carried doctors and their gear by camel or mule to every district. Sultan
Mahmoud the Seljuk travelled with a hospital which required 40 camels for its
transport."
Dr. Gustave le Bon writes:
"Muslim hospitals went in for preventive medicine and the preservation of health as
much as if not more than for the cure of the already diseased. They were well-aired and
had plenty of running water. Muhammad bin Zachariah Razi (Rhazes) was ordered by the
Sultan to seek out the healthiest place in the Baghdad neighbourhood for the construction
of a new hospital. He visited every section of the town and its environs, and hung up a
piece of meat which he left while he looked into infectious diseases in the neighbourhood
and studied climatic conditions, particularly the state of the water. He balanced all
these various experimental tests and finally found them all to indicate that the place
where the portion of meat was the last to putrefy and develop infectious bacteria was the
spot on which to build. These hospitals had large common wards and also private wards for
individuals. Pupils were trained in diagnosis and brought observation and experience to
the perfecting of their studies. There were also special mental hospitals, and pharmacies
which dispensed prescriptions gratis."
Marc Kapp writes: "Cairo had
a huge hospital with playing fountains and flower-decked gardens and 40 large courtyards.
Every unfortunate patient was kindly received, and after his cure sent home with five gold
coins. While Cordova, besides its 600 mosques and 900 public hammams, had 50
hospitals."
Jaber ibn Haiyan, disciple of the
sixth Imam Ja'afar-i-Sadeq, became known world-wide as "the Father of Chemistry"
and of Arab alchemy. His influence on Western chemistry and alchemy was profound and long
lasting. Some hundred of his works survive. Of him the late Sayyid Hebbat-ud-Din
Shahristani of Kadhemain, once Iraq's Minister of Education, writes: "I have seen
some 50 ancient MSS of works of Jaber all dedicated to his master the Imam Ja'afar. More
than 500 of his works have been put into print and are for the most part to be found among
the treasures of the National Libraries of Paris and Berlin, while the savants of Europe
nickname him affectionately 'Wisdom's Professor' and attribute to him the discovery of 19
of the elements with their specific weights, etc. Jaber says all can be traced back to a
simple basic particle composed of a charge of lightning (electricity) and fire, the atom,
or smallest indivisible unit of matter, very close to modern atomic science."
The blending of colouring
matters, dyeing, extraction of minerals and metals, steelmaking, tanning, were amongst
industrial techniques of which the Muslims were early masters. They produced Nitric Acid,
Sulphuric Acid, Nitro-glycerine Hydrochloric Acid, Potassium, Aqua , Nitrate, Sulphuric
Chloride, Potassium Ammonia, Sal Ammoniac, Silver Nitrate, Alcohol, Alkali (both still
known by their Arabic names), Orpiment (yellow tri-sulphide of arsenic: arsenic is derived
from the Persian zar = gold, adjective zarnee = golden, Arabised with article
"al" to "al-zernee" pronounced "azzernee" and so taken into
Greek where it was turned to the recognisable word "arsenikon" which means
"masculine" since the gold colour was supposed to link it with the sun, a
masculine diety!): and finally - though this does not close the list we might cite-Borax,
also an Arabic word booraq. Further, the arts of distilling, evaporation, sublimation, and
the use of Sodium, Carbon, Potassium Carbonate, Chloride, and Ammonium were common under
the Abbasid Caliphate.
The Abbasid Caliph
Haroun-al-Rasheed sent Charlemagne in Aix from Baghdad a present of a clock made by his
horologists which struck a bell on the hour every hour, to the great wonder and delight of
the whole court of the newly'crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
The massacre and expulsion of the
Muslims of Andalusia by the Christians carried with it the closure of many of the great
factories that had existed under Islamic rule, and the standstill of progress that had
been made in science, crafts, arts, agriculture, and other products of civilisation. Towns
began to fall into ruin because of the lack of skilled masons. Madrid dropped from 400,000
to 200,000 inhabitants; Seville, which had possessed 1,600 factories under the Muslims,
lost all but 300, and the 130,000 workers formerly employed had no more jobs, while the
census of Philip IV showed a fall of 75% in population figures.
It was the Muslims also who
brought about the substitution of cotton-wove paper for the old parchments; and it was
this invention which formed the basis for Europe's later invention of printing, using an
old Chinese technique, and so for the vast uprush of learning which came with the
Renaissance. More, since monks were starved for parchment on which to write their
religious works, they were tending more and more to scrape off priceless ancient
scientific texts from old parchments and to use them again as palimpsests. The
introduction of paper put a stop to this disastrous practice in time to save quite a
number of texts which would have otherwise been lost for ever, as, alas, too many were.
A paper manuscript of the year AD
1009 was found in the Escorial library, and claims to be the oldest hand-written book on
paper still in existence. Silk-wove paper, of course, was a Chinese invention, since silk
was native to China though rare in Europe; and the Musulman genius lay in seeing the
possibility of substituting cotton for silk, and so giving Europe a plentiful supply of a
practicable material for the reproduction of books by the monkish scribes.
Philip Hitti writes in his
'«History of the Arabs" that the art of roadmaking was so well developed in Islamic
lands that Cordova had miles of paved road lit from the houses on each side at night so
that people walked in safety. while in London or Paris anyone who ventured out on a rainy
night sank up to his ankles in mud - and did so for seven centuries after Cordova was
paved! Oxford men then held that bathing was an idolatrous practice; while Cordovan
students revelled in luxurious public hammams!
Baron Carra de Vaux, author of
the chapter on "Astronomy and Mathematics" in "The Legacy of Islam"
(OUP 1931 pp. 376-398), points out that the word "algebra" is a Latinisation of
the Arabic term Al-jabr ( = "the reduction". i.e. of complicated numbers to a
simpler language of symbols), thereby revealing the debt the world owes to the Arabs for
this invention. Furthermore the numerals that are used are "Arabic numerals'."
not merely in name but also in fact. Above all the Arabs' realisation of the value of the
Hindu symbol for zero laid the foundation of all our modern computerised technology. The
word "zero", like its cousin "cipher" are both attempts at
transliterating the Arabic "sefr", in order to convey into Europe the reality
and the meaning of that word in Arabic.
De Vaux writes: "By using
ciphers the Arabs became the founders of the arithmetic of everyday life; they made
algebra an exact science and developed it considerably. they laid the foundations of
analytical geometry; they were indisputably the founders of plane and spherical
trigonometry The astrolabe (safeeha) was invented by the Arab Al-Zarqali (Arzachel) who
lived in Spain AD 1029-1087. The word "algorism" is a latinisation of the name
of its inventor, the native of Khiva called by the name of his home province Al-Khwarizmi.
The Arabs kept alive the higher intellectual life and the study of science in a period
when the Christian West was fighting desperately with barbarism."
This is not the place to go
further into Muslim achievements in mathematics and astronomy. Suffice it to refer once
again to the Jalali calendar of Omar Khayyam, with its formulae for exact calculation of
the timing of. the earth's orbits round the sun, to which reference has been made earlier.
The Arabian Nights' tales of
Sinbad the Sailor, and of his voyages to China, Japan, and the Spice Islands of Indonesia,
give quite enough evidence of the brilliance of Arabic commercial shipping and the
knowledge of meteorology and geography which was at their disposal. Small wonder that the
Faith spread through them from Morocco to Mindanao.
But, besides the SE Asian seas,
Arabic sailors penetrated far down the East coast of Africa, and also up the rivers which
are channels from the Black Sea into the distant interior of Russia. The Safarname (Travel
journal) of Suleiman, a sea-captain of Seraf the port on the Persian Gulf recently
excavated by Dr. David Stronach of the British Institute of Persian Stulies, was published
at the end of the 9th century AD with accounts of his voyages to India and China. It was
translated into Latin, as giving some of the earliest first-hand knowledge of China which
ever reached Europe.
The geographer Ibn Hauqal
(floruit circa AD 975) wrote in his preface: "I have written the latitude and
longitude of the places of this earth, of all its countries, with their boundaries, and
the dominions of Islam, with a careful map of each section on which I have marked numerous
places, e.g. the cities, the kasbahs, the rivers, the lakes, the crops, the types of
agriculture, the roads, the distances between place and place, the goods for commerce and
everything else in the science of geography which can be useful to sovereigns and their
ministers and interesting to all people in general."
Abu-Reihan al-Biruni, Ibn Batuta
and Abu'l-Haussan are amongst other names in the history of the science of geography whose
worldwide travels were accompanied by meticulous observation and painstaking notes, which
are amongst the proudest achievements of science in our world to this day.
Cordova Mosque is one of the
finest monuments of Muslim art in Europe. Its architect and masons were local talent, who
introduced a number of novelties. The Muslims excelled at mosaic, inlay, fretwork and
applique work of all types. Marvellous doors, pulpits, and ceilings are decorated in many
of the ancient mosques all over the Muslim world with a lacelike design of mosaic, carved
ivory and wood and plaster, and fitted pieces of carved wood interlocking with each other
with consummate artistry. Chased and engraved wood and ivory are everywhere. Thus the
Altar of the Church of Saint Isidore Hispalensis (archbishop of Seville in the first years
of the 7th century AD) the carved ivory jewel-case made for Queen Isabella in the 11th
century and the carved ivory box now in the Church at Bayeux of the 12th century
(obviously some Crusader's loot from the East) inlaid with silver in chased gold, are
examples of that art which was the glory of Eastern lands. All this delicate and minute
handiwork was carried out with the crudest and roughest of tools, itself a further tribute
to the skill and artistry of the makers.
Jewel-studded boxes and cases and
caskets are to be seen in many places, though the best are on view in the museums of
Damascus and Cairo. Well said Sa'adi: "An Eastern artist may take 40 years to make
one porcelain vase: the West turns out 100 a day, all alike : the comparative worth of the
two products can be easily reckoned!"
The Muslims were also past
masters of the art of carved and coloured plaster work, in a style which still subsists
though modern technologies are, alas, rendering the skill rarer all the time. Tenth
century examples, some with enamelled work also, are to be found in Andalusia. The
Alhambra has 13th century masterpieces of this work. They glitter like the later Italian
Majolica. The famous Alhambra flower-vase, 1½ metres high, is unique in this line.
In this part of our book we have
given the briefest of sketches of some of the treasures of mind and spirit which mankind
owes to the rise of Islam.
They are not stated in
braggadocio but as an assessment of facts of human history. For too long they have been
neglected and forgotten not merely by those who benefited from them indirectly but even
also by the very descendants of their authors themselves.
Yet if mankind is to attain the
power to live as one united family which is our calling and destiny, it will happen on a
basis of appreciation of each other.
This adult assessment is growing.
Modern scholars are now showing gratitude that the Arab General Tareq-bin-Ziyyad in AD 711
landed his troops by the mountain since called Jebel-al-Tareq (Gibraltar) after him. His
Moors were unwelcome invaders at the time. It was a moment when Europe had lost most of
the benefit of Roman unification and cultural advance and sunk back into the Dark Ages
under the barbarian hordes overwhelming it from the North. With the Moors came in the
fresh stimulus of lively minds, bringing in Arabic the best thinking of ancient Greeks and
Romans, the impetus of scholarship and learning, the desire for scientific and philosophic
speculation, the aesthetic delight of artistic creation again.
Islamic universities as far apart
as Baghdad and Andalusia welcomed Christian and Jewish students, many of whom profited by
the instructions to be obtained nowhere else in those days. They were received with
generous subventions and assistance by their Muslim hosts, who treated them as honoured
guests. Dynamics, Statistics, Chemistry, Physics, were among the lessons.
In his "Making of
Humanity" Brilioth writes: "Modern European education in all branches stems from
the Muslims' curiosity and pertinacity in investigating the secrets of nature."
If our brief summary opens the
road for Westerners to the exploration of Eastern discoveries we are content; and can so
proceed to Part 3 and an examination of Islam's treatment of some of the social problems
which afflict every human community.
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