Notes

1. . In support of taql˜, conservatives usually press into service such Quãnic verses as exhort to patience and resolution. The verses, you who believe, strengthen your‐selves with patience and prayer; for God is with the patient. We shall try you with some fear, hunger, poverty, loss of life and wealth; but joy to the patient! Who, in the face of disaster, resolutely say, are Gods and to Him we shall return'” (Quãn 2: 153–57); and Those who violate the covenant of God after they have entered therein, denying what God had enjoined and spreading evil—Those are certainly the losers(Quãn 2:27); and Be not like her who ravels her knitting after she has made it fit and fast. Let not your foot slip down once it is firmly established and thus expose yourself to the suffering incumbent upon those who turn away from the path of God (Quãn 16: 92, 94), are popular in conservative apologies. Against innovation, the conservatives cite the following: Some people acknowledge God but understand Him in a peculiar way. Their faith is strong as long as their fortune is good; but once they are put on trial they give up their faith for something else, thereby losing both this world and the next (Quãn 22:ll); It is He Who revealed to you the Book some verses of which are precise and their meaning is unmistakable and others are equivocal. Those whose faith is faulty follow the latter with a view to innovate and to interpret as they wish (Quãn 3:7); Abä Säd a1 Khudari reported that the Prophet said: The time is near when the most fortunate Muslim will be the one who, by following his goats far above the mountainheads would avoid getting himself involved in innovations in religion (The Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs [cd.], Al Muntakhab min al Sunnah [Cairo: Där al Kitäb al ärabä, 1961], I, 297); Jäbir reported that the Prophet said: The best words are the words of God and the best guidance is that which Muhammad brought. The worst of all things are the new; every innovation is an error and a misguidance ibid., II, 169). For an early analysis and refutation of taqläd by a Muslim thinker, see Taqiyuddin Abmad ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), Minhäj a1 Sunnah al Nabawiyyah (Cairo: Mustafä al BäTbä al Halabä, 1938); Shäh Waliyyullah (1703–81), äqd a1 Jäd fü Ahkäm a1 Ijtihäd wa a1 Taqläd (Cairo: Al Azhar Press, 1939).
2. . They [your enemies] will continue to fight you until they turn you away from your religion. Whoever of you turns away from his religion and dies an unbeliever will lose his works in this world and suffer eternally in hell” (Quãn 2:218).
3. . To my knowledge, there is no statement in the Queen enjoining loyalty to the faith that is not directed against apostasy or shirk (i.e., association of other beings with God). Nor is there any statement enjoining loyalty to the theo‐legomena of the faith, because these came after the Queeh.
4. . Basing itself on the verse God will not forgive any associating of aught with Him; but He will forgive, to such as He wishes to forgive, the lesser sins (Queen 4:47, 115), Islamic law has prescribed that whoever solemnly testifies that there is no God but God, and that Muämmad is the Prophet of God, is a Muslim (see Asaf A. A. Fyzee, Outlines of Muhammadan Law [2d ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955], pp. 46–51; Muämmad bd a1 Karm Shahrastn, Al Milal wa a1 Niäl, ed. Muámmad Fathallah Badrn [Cairo: A1 Azhar Press, 1947], p. 53).
5. . Likewise, We have not sent before you a prophet but that the evil‐doers among his people objectedWe found our fathers following a certain course and we shall follow in their footsteps. He said: What? Will you persist even if I bring you a better guidance than your fathers had left for you? So We punished them (Queen 43:24–26; see also 7:27; 21:53; 26:74, where Abraham reprimanded his people for blindly following their ancestors in idol worship and disregarding his monotheistic breakthrough).
6. . The Bedouins of the desert claim that they have mn [faith by conviction]. Say [to them] You do not yet have that. Rather you have islm [acquiescence, or faith by convention]. mãn has not yet entered into your minds (Quãn 49:14)
7. . Hence he Quãnisc position that ímãn, or faith by conviction increases by adducing new evidence and new signs (Quãn 3:173; 8:2; 9:125; 48:4; 74:31).
8. . ‘Abbãs Mahamüd al Aqqäd, Al Islím fí al Qarn al äshrän: H iruh wa Mustaqbaluh (Cairo: Där al Kutub al Hadíthah, 1954). The sane point is held by most notable Western treatises on modern Islam, e.g., Charles C. Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1933); H. A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947); Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Modern Islam in India (London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd., 1946); and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958); G. E. von Grunebaum, Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962).
9. . That is the Book which no doubt can penetrate and which contains the guidance of the pious. In truth We revealed it, the truth to tell.… God has revealed it in the best of form (Quãn 2:2; 17:105; 39:23). These are only exemplary; like statements asserting the divine origin, perfection, authority, and superiority of the Quäh are ubiquitous in the text.
10. . This was the outcome of the Muäazílah controversy of the ninth century concerning the createdness or uncreatedness of the Qu (Shahrastän, op. cit. [n. 4 above], pp. 62, 82, 98, 102, 114, 119; Encyclopaedia of Islam [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1918–1933, q.v. “Muäzilah, Quãn” T. J. De Boer, History of Philosophy in Islam, trans. E. R. Jones [London: Luzac & Co., 1933] pp. 43 et seq.; H. A. R. Gibb, Mohammedanism [London: Oxford University Press, 1949] pp. 110 et seq.).
11. . And the unjust, having consulted in secret, asked: Muhammad is only a man like you. Would you then accept his magic in full day? They said: What does this man seek, who eats food and goes about in the market place? Had God sent with him an angel to warn, or given him a treasure, or a [terrestrial] paradise from which to eat? Is he not merely a man under spell? Thus We have revealed to you a spirit from Our relam, previous to which you knew neither book nor faith. We have made it [the book revealed to you] a lighthouse of guidance Those who do not believe in the Final Day ask you to alter the revelation and to bring them a different Quäan. Answer: It is not up to me to change it; I only repeat what is revealed to me. Had God not willed it, nothing might have been recited to you by me. Have I not been, before this came to be a fellow of yours for almost a lifetime without any revelation? Do you not reason? (Quãn 21:3; 25:7–8; 42:52–53; 10:15–16).
12. . And if you doubt what We have revealed to Our servant, produce a chapter like any of its chapters and call forth your witnesses if you really mean it (Quãn 2:23; 10:37–38; 11:13; 28:49–50; 52:33). The Quãn asserts: Say, even if men and jinn were to assist one another to produce a Quãn such as this, they will not succeed (Quãn 17:88).
13. . The Hadíth has reported a number of such attempts on the part of the greatest contemporary poets of Arabia, namely, a1 Walíd ibn a1 Mughärah, tbah ibn Rabäah, Unays, and others (see A1 Muntakhab min a1 Sunnah [n. 1 above], 11, 156–68; or any other Aadäth collection, q.v. Quãn).
14. . A modern student, following in the footsteps of the older generation of orientalists, writes: It is a matter of faith in Islam that since it is of Divine origin it is inimitable, and since to translate is always to betray, Muslims have always deprecated and at times prohibited any attempt to render it in another language. Anyone who has read it in the original is forced to admit that this caution seem justified; no translation, however faithful to the meaning, has ever been fully successful. Arabic when expertly used is a remarkably terse, rich and forceful language, and the Arabic of the Quãn is by turns striking, soaring, vivid, terrible, tender and breathtaking. As Professor Gibb has put it, No man in fifteen hundred years has played on that deeptoned instrument with such power, such boldness, and such range of emotional effect. It is meaningless to apply adjectives such as beautiful or persuasive to the Quãn; its flashing images and inexorable measures go directly to the brain and intoxicate it (J. A. Williams, Islam [New York: G. Braziller, 1961], p. 16).
15. . H. H. Rowley, The Growth of the Old Testament (London : Hutchinson University Library, 1950); H. H. Rowley (ed.), The Old Testament and Modern Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1961); Stanley B. Frost, The Beginning of the Promise (London: S.P.C.K., 1960); Geddes MacGregor, The Bible in the Making (London: John Murray, 1961); Ernst Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, trans. P. R. Ackroyd. (Oxford: B. Blackwell, 1957).
16. . Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. F. Max Muller (2d ed.; New York: Macmillan Co., 1949), pp. 516 ff.; Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. James C. Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), pp. 61 ff.
17. . Quãn 2:171. Commenting on verse 2:111 (“Bring forth your evidence if you are truthful in your claims”), a modernist writes: “The Quãn taught the Muslims always to ask for the evidence, to build their convictions on evidence. It is natural that the author of a conviction should ask his opponent to produce his evidence; and that was the practice of our noble predecessors. They upheld the evidence, demanded it for everything and forbade the acceptance of any claim without it. It was the ignoble later generations that demanded and applied taqläd and forbade the seeking of evidence against what they taught, until Islam almost became its very opposite. Instead of evidence and proof, they demanded conformance with this and that authority, not that these authorities are God or His Prophet, but mere Tom, Dicks and Harrys” (Muäammad Abduh, A1 Manär [Cairo, 1933], VI, 902).
18. . A. J. Arberry, Revelation and Reason in Islam (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1957), pp. 34 ff.
19. . Quäh21:107.
20. . The story was known for centuries. I t was rewritten by Ibn Tunfay, and rewritten again by Ibn Tufayl. It is the story of the lonely child growing in the woods and nursed by a gazelle. As the child grows, his mind asks questions and finds the answers on the basis of evidence furnished first by the senses, then by the inductive understanding, followed by deductive logic and metaphysics. When, finally, circumstances bring the nature‐man back to civilization, and he discovers the truths of revelation, he finds them perfectly in accord with the truths of nature. Thus, by natural reason alone, the truths of revelation are reached because they are one with the truths of nature (see George Sarton, Introduction to the History of Science [Baltimore: Williams & Wilkens, 1931], 11 Part I, 354 ff.; G. Quadri, La philosophic arabe duns l Europe mídié Avale [Paris: Payot, 1960], pp. 71 ff., 95 ff., 154 ff.; or any other history of Islamic philosophy, q.v. Ibn Tufayl”).
21. . CostiK. Zurayq, The Essence of Islamic Civilization, MiddIe East Journal  , 3, No. 2 (April, 1949), 125–39.
22. . On this point, most of the philosophers and the theologians agree, basing their argument on the Quãnic principle that the works of nature are signs and pieces of evidence of God.
23. . For a historical account of the superstitious life of Islamic society in Egypt by a native, contemporary historian, see Jabarti, Ajäib a1 Athär fiacute; a1 Taräjim wa a1 Akhbär (3 vols.; Cairo: Bläq, 1910); and by a Western orientalist, Edward W. Lane, The Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians (London: Everyman's Library, n.d.); by leaders of Muslim modernism, A1 Manär (Cairo, 1927–34) (see n. 17 above). For a similar account regarding the Indian subcontinent, see Shah Waliyyullah, op. cit. (n. 1 above); and Murray L. Titus, Islam in India and Pakistan (Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Publishing House, 1959), pp. 137 ff., 153 ff.
24. . Quäh 6:112; 43:36; 58:19; 19:83; etc.
25. . “We (the angels) do not come down to earth except when commanded by your Lord. For to Him belongs all that is before us and all that is behind us and all that is between” (Quãh 19:64). The revelation of this verse was, according to the Aadãth, occasioned by the Prophet's asking Angel Gabriel to make his visits more frequent (A1 Muntakhab min a1 Sunnah (n.1 above), 254–55).
26. . The Quãn is replete with statements of which the following is typical: “The creation of heaven and earth, the succession of night and day, the vessels which cross the seas for the use of men, the fall of the rain which brings life to a dead earth, the animation of the creatures, the orientation of the winds and subjection of the clouds between heaven and earth–‐All these are signs for those who reason” (Quãn 2: 164). Such statements and all those which include assertions about one or more ayah or “given sign” imply a view of nature as an open book which man can read and research in and which, when properly read, cannot but teach man the knowledge of God. The path of science, i.e., of discovering the laws of nature or creation is a valid alternative to that of revelation, the truth which is the object of both being one and the same. This “Enlightenment” view is not only held by the Muslim modernist, in the eyes of whom the Enlightenment failed in the West for lack of rationalist nerve vis‐his persistent attacks on two fronts, skeptic British empiricism and dogmatic Christian theology. The Enlightenment view is essentially that of Islam. I t was also A1 Ghazãlãs, the father of the medieval Islamic synthesis, who called nature tapãnãf (“composition”), the very word used for the writing of an author (Iy? Alím a1 Dãn [Cairo: Al Maktabah al Tijãriyyah al Kubrã, n.d.1, IV, 435–47; G. H. Bousquet, Ghazali: Vivification des sciences de la foi, analyst et index [Paris: Librairie d AméArique et d'Orient, Adrien‐Maisonneuve, 1955], pp. 429–31).
27. . Conservative Muslims continue to hold to this view despite a fair amount of sophistication in other fields. The latest statement on doctrine by the Islamic Congress (Sayyid Sãbiq, Al Aq id a1 Islímiyyah [Cairo, February, 1964], p. 215) admits the possibility of occasional “breaches” of natural law on the part of the saints, as well as the authorship of the devils (or the non‐Muslim jinn) of a great many evils in the world (ibid., pp. 134, 144).
28. . Quãn 2:116; 3:18; 5:72–75; 6:100; 10:66; 21:22; 42:ll.
29. . “Those who disbelieve say: ‘If only he brought about some miracle.’ But you [Muammad] are only a Warner” (Quãh 13:7). “Say: Miracles belong only to God No prophet may bring forth a sign except with God's permission” (Quãn 10:20; 13:38). Add to this the Quãn's caustic remark to the Prophet almost despairing of converting his fellowman: “And if they persist in turning away from you, would you wish you could penetrate through the earth or ascend to heaven on a ladder, that they may believe?… Do not be like the ignorant” (Qu in 6:35; see also 6:50; 7:187).
30. . E. W. Lane, op. cit. (n. 23 above); E. W. Lane, Arabian Society in the Middle Ages (London, 1883); A1 Jabarti, op. cit. (n. 23 above; Alfred Guillaume, Prophecy and Divination: A Study of Man's Intercourse with the Unseen World (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1938), contain numerous instances and anecdotes culled from Muslim history. Consider also a report on suppression of the teaching of geography in Sad Arabian schools in Khãlid M. Khãlid, From Here We Start, trans. this author (Washington: American Council of Learned Societies, 1953), pp. 138–40. The New York Times of June 5, 1966, reported “Sheikh bd al zãz bin Bãz, Vice‐president of the Islamic University at Medina, wrote an article that appeared January 11 in two Arabic newspaper: ‘Much publicity has been given… to the theory that the earth rotates and the sun is fixed.… I thought it my duty to… guide the reader to the proof of the falsity of this theory.… Hence I say the Holy Koran, the Prophet's teaching, the majority of Islamic scientists and the actual fact all prove that the stable, spread out by God for his mankind and made a bed and a cradle for them, fixed down firmly by mountains lest it shake.… Anyone who professed otherwise would utter infidelity and deviation, because such an act is a charge of falsehood toward God, the Koran and the Prophet.'”
31. . Quãn 6:59, 73; 10:20; 11:123; 16:77; 27:65; 34:3; 52:41; 53:35.
32. . W. Crooke, An Introduction to the Popular Religion and Folklore of Northern India (Allahabad, 1894); L. Bevan Jones, The People of the Mosque (Calcutta: Y.M.C.A. Press, 1932).
33. . Quãn 33:72.
34. . A1 Jabarti, op. cit. (n. 23 above), III, 35–37. After telling how pleasantly surprised the Muslim divines were who visited the French factories, laboratories, and libraries and saw for themselves the accomplishments of French science, a1 Jabarti, the greatest historian of the period, quotes Shaykh asan a1, Rector of Al Azhar, as saying: “Our country must needs change; and many unknown disciplines [branches of knowledge] must be renovated.” A1 himself wrote: “Many of the books of the French have been translated in our time, in which we read many of their works and came to know of their accomplishments in engineering and natural science. These books tell of the military industries and the instruments of fire. They elaborate their principles and laws and systematize them into an independent science with many branches.Whoever is anxious enough to read these strange compositions will learn many precise and scientific truths” (Ali Mubãrak, A1 Khiiai a1 Tawfiqiiyyah fi Tarjumat a1 Shaykh Hasan a1 Affir [Cairo: Bülãq, 1924], IV, 38).
35. . Ibid.
36. . Corroborating this view is the account of the history of education at A1 Azhar University of the Azharite Muhammad Abdullah inn, Trkh a1 Jími a1 Azhar (2d ed.; Cairo: Mãssasat a1 Khinji, 1958), pp. 151 ff.
37. . For a sampling of their thinking on the place of Islam in society, see my discussion of secularism in On Arabism, Vol. I: Arabah and Religion, a Study of the Fundamental Ideas of Arabism and of Islam as Its Highest Moment of Consciousness (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1962), pp. 212 ff.
38. . The periodical Al Hilal, the main organ of the school, made its debut in 1982 and has been appearing regularly since. Its greatest challanged to the conservatives were articles written by the strongest adherent of the school, Salímah Misi, during the 1930's and 1940's. Replies and refutations to these articles from the opposite camp appeared in Majallat al azhar during the editorship of Mahammad al Khiar Ausayn and Muhammad Farad WajdI (1930–52).
39. . On this point see Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (n. 8 above), chap. ii; von Grunebaum, op. cit. (n. 8 above), chap. i.
40. . Quãn 9:41.
41. . Sir Sayyid Aímad Khan, Lectures, ed. Munshh Sirij al Din (Sadhora, 1892).
42. . Sir Sayyid Aímad Khan, Al Taurfr fa Usil al Tafsar (Agra, 1892), pp. 10–11; Fazlur Raíman, “Modern Muslim Thought,” Muslim World, XLV, No. 1 (January, 1955), 18. In the Arab world, the efforts of this school have led to the same results. Its principal proponent, Mubammad Farid Wajdi, wrote: “What is reason and what is religion? What are the boundaries of their jurisdiction? Do they both seek to dominate man, so that in the end man belongs to the winner?… Islam is natural religion… whose truths are corroborated by the natural sciences” (A1 Islím fi Sir a1 Alm [Cairo: A1 Maktabah al Tijariyyah a1 Kubru, 1350/1932], I, 105–6, 253–54).
43. . For an analysis of the principle claims of “Islamism,” see my Arabah and Religion (n. 37 above), pp. 173–97.
44. . Perhaps the noblest and most eloquent praise of science ever written by man has come from the pens of Muslims moved by this kind of consideration. Consider Jíma Bayin al Klm wa Faslih wa me Yanbaghu fi Riwdyatih wa Hamlih (“The Comprehensive Account of the Enlightenment and Virtue of Science and of the Prerequisites of Telling Its Truths and of Carrying Its Mission”) by the greatest Andalusian theologian and exegete, Abu ímar Yusuf Abd al Barr al Qurauba (d. 463/1071) (Cairo: Maubaat a1 Mawsat, 1320/1902).
45. . “In Islam, the spiritual and the temporal are not two distinct domains…In Islam it is the same reality which appears as the Church looked at from one point of view and the state from another…Islam is a single unanalysable reality which is one or the other as your point of view varies…This ancient mistake arose out of the bifurcation of the unity of man into two distinct and separate realities which somehow have a point of contact, but which are in essence opposed to each other. The truth, however, is that matter is spirit in space‐time reference. The unity called man is body when you look at it as acting in regard to what we call the external world; it is mind or soul when you look at it as acting…” (Sir Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam [Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1958], p. 154).
46. . Abduh writes: “The Muslims have neither opposed science, nor were opposed by science except from the day they alienated themselves from their religion and opposed the study of it. In the measure they separated themselves from knowledge of religion they separated themselves from science and denied themselves its fruits, whereas in the past, the more they knew in religion, the more they did in the sciences of nature. Other people found that the more they cling to their religion, the more they alienate themselves from science, and vice versa. That is why they clamour that science is the work of reason, that reason has no jurisdiction in religion,… and that religion is the work of the heart,… that the two are disparate and never meet [p. 1601.… But here [i.e., in Islam] reason and heart do meet… Do not think like some naive men do that there is a difference between them,… both are two eyes of the soul by which it knows,…they are mutually dependent. The soul cannot enjoy the advantage of the one unless it can enjoy that of the other. True science is corrective of the heart, and the sane heart is the best co‐operator of science. Perfect religion is both knowledge and judgment, mind and heart, reason and perception, critical thought and intuition. If one falls down, religion cannot stand on the other…” (Muhammad abduh, A1 Islím wa a1 Narruiniyyah maa a1 alm wa a1 Mudaniyyah [Cairo: nopublisher, n.d.1, pp. 159–60, 142–43).