Islam as a Deen, a Divine System by Muhammed Asad
Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 3:49 pm
Muhammed Asad on Islam
Here we show some very important observations made by Muhammed Asad, the Austrian Journalist who became Muslim ,and later on a famous translator, in the 1920's. In his beautifull and important book 'road to Mecca', which i highly recommend to everybody as it gives an insight how todays conflicts between Arabia and Europe started and what Islam is and should be as observed by a intelligent young western man. Next to that, Muhammed Asad met with some of the most interresting figures of the 20th century of the Muslim world. I hope you people will see the important messages he and the people he met want to tell us. What i quote now, will only show a glimps of truth which others have eloborated further:
"In my endeavour to gain a fuller picture of what Islam really meant and stood for, i derived great benefit from the explanations which some of my Cairene Muslim friends were able to provide me. Outstanding among them was Shaykh Mustafa Al-Maraghi, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars of the time and certainly the most brilliant among the ulama of Al-Azhar University.[..] A pupil of the great Egyptian reformer Muhammed Abduh, and having associated in his youth with that inspiring firebrand, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Shayk Al-Maraghi was himself a keen, critical thinker. He never failed to impress upon me that the Muslims of recent times had faqllen very short indeed of the ideals of their faith, and that nothing could be more erroneous than to measure the potentialities of Muhammed's message by the yardstick of present-day Muslim life and thought. 'Just as' he said, 'it would be erroneous to see in the Christians'unloving behaviour toward one another a refutation of Christ's message of love...'
With this warning, Shayk Al-Maraghi introduced me to Al-Azhar. Out of the crowded bustle of Mousky Street, Cairo's oldest shopping centre, we reached a small, out-of-the-way square, one of its sides occupied by the broad, straight front of the Azhar Mosque. Through a double gate and a shadowy forecourt we entered the courtyard of the mosque proper, a large quadrangle surrounded by ancient arcades. Students dressed in long, dark jubbas and white turbans were sitting on straw mats and reading with low voices from their books and manuscripts. The lectures were given in the huge, covered mosque-hall beyond. Several teachers sat, also on straw mats, under the pillars which crossed the hall in long rows, and in a semicircle crouched a group of students. The lecturer never raised his voice, so that obviously required great attention and concentration not to miss any of his words.
One should have thought that such absorption would be conducive to real scholarship; but Shaykh Al-Maraghi soon shattered my illusions: {and now comes the important part, so pay close attention what this man says!}'Dost thou sees those "scholars" over there? he asked me. 'They are like those sacred cows in India which, i am told, eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets...Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them. They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat- and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation.''But, Shayk Mustafa,' i interposed, 'Al-Azhar is, after all, the central seat of Islamic learning, and the oldest university in the world! One encounters its name on nearly every page of Muslim culteral history. What about all the great thinkers, the theologians, historians, philosophers, mathematicians it has produced over the last ten centuries?''It stopped producing them several centuries ago.'he replied ruefully. 'Well, perhaps not quite; here and there and independent thinker has somehow managed to emerge from Al-Azhar even in recent times.
But on the whole, Al-Azhar has lapsed into the sterility from which the whole Muslim world is suffering, and its old impetus is all but extinguished. Those ancient Islamic thinkers whom thou hast mentioned would never have dreamed that after so many centuries their thoughts, instead of being continued and developed, would only be repeated over and over again, as if they were ultimate and infallible truths.{read that last one a couple of times}If there is to be any change for the better, thinking must be encouraged instead of the present thought-imitation...'Shaykh Al-Mataghi's trenchant characterization of Al-Azhar helped me to realize one of the deepest causes of the culteral decay that stared one in thy face everwyhere in the Muslim world.
Was not the scholastic petrification of this ancient univeristy mirrored in varying degrees in the social sterility of the Muslim present? Was not the counterpart of this intellectual stagnation to be found in the passive, almost indolent, acceptance by so many Muslims of the unneccessary poverty in which they lived, of their mute toleration of the many social wrongs to which they were subjected?"
As you can see above, how important this quote is. Although Muhammed Asad's last sentence also inclines that the social wrongs were started by Europe's involvement in Arabia. This passiveness he talks about, originated from the alien-layer that has covered Islam over the years. This blind acceptance of scholar opinions. To uphold Historian (repeat:HISTORIAN) books as Buchari, Muslim, Al-Tabari and others as if they were complete truths, Hidden revelations. To follow blindly people as Shafi and other scholars of the past, who were only indivuals in the large mass of Muslim intellectuals of the first centuries, but because they served the Elite's and Priest's purposes were upheld as the only to be followed.The passivenes and downfall of the Muslims comes from these false assumptions. The Shaykh's comment was made around 1920, and is still completely true now in 2006. Shaykh being a student of Abduh and Al-Afghani, scholars who started to see the Ajami, alien layer over Islam, and who, the first in centuries, dared to question hadith and fiqh, because of them, he could made such an honest observation as given above.But as said, this is only the top of the iceberg.
The alien-layer that has covered Islam must be swept away before the scholars will wake up from their endless reading and repeating, before the Muslimworld will wake up from its passiveness. The only Revelation given to our Prophet, was the Quran. All the hadith were collected by historians, who left us history they thought was reliable. So we must start again to approach them as man-recorded history, and thus that they contain forgeries and wrong assumptions.
That alien sources as Persian, Christian, Jewish and Pagan beliefs has entered them, and tried to infect Islam by making people believe our Prophet said or did certain things.All of the Prophet's deeds and behaviour were a result of the Quran. Not of any revelation next to it. So to follow the Prophet, we must follow the Quran and start with the Quran. To use history as guidance is dangerous and misleading in many cases. It is time to be honest, time to admit many mistakes and lies has entered into the idea of what Islam is and tells us. The Quran is Islam, all else is human interpretation and recording of history and creation....
Here we show some very important observations made by Muhammed Asad, the Austrian Journalist who became Muslim ,and later on a famous translator, in the 1920's. In his beautifull and important book 'road to Mecca', which i highly recommend to everybody as it gives an insight how todays conflicts between Arabia and Europe started and what Islam is and should be as observed by a intelligent young western man. Next to that, Muhammed Asad met with some of the most interresting figures of the 20th century of the Muslim world. I hope you people will see the important messages he and the people he met want to tell us. What i quote now, will only show a glimps of truth which others have eloborated further:
"In my endeavour to gain a fuller picture of what Islam really meant and stood for, i derived great benefit from the explanations which some of my Cairene Muslim friends were able to provide me. Outstanding among them was Shaykh Mustafa Al-Maraghi, one of the most prominent Islamic scholars of the time and certainly the most brilliant among the ulama of Al-Azhar University.[..] A pupil of the great Egyptian reformer Muhammed Abduh, and having associated in his youth with that inspiring firebrand, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Shayk Al-Maraghi was himself a keen, critical thinker. He never failed to impress upon me that the Muslims of recent times had faqllen very short indeed of the ideals of their faith, and that nothing could be more erroneous than to measure the potentialities of Muhammed's message by the yardstick of present-day Muslim life and thought. 'Just as' he said, 'it would be erroneous to see in the Christians'unloving behaviour toward one another a refutation of Christ's message of love...'
With this warning, Shayk Al-Maraghi introduced me to Al-Azhar. Out of the crowded bustle of Mousky Street, Cairo's oldest shopping centre, we reached a small, out-of-the-way square, one of its sides occupied by the broad, straight front of the Azhar Mosque. Through a double gate and a shadowy forecourt we entered the courtyard of the mosque proper, a large quadrangle surrounded by ancient arcades. Students dressed in long, dark jubbas and white turbans were sitting on straw mats and reading with low voices from their books and manuscripts. The lectures were given in the huge, covered mosque-hall beyond. Several teachers sat, also on straw mats, under the pillars which crossed the hall in long rows, and in a semicircle crouched a group of students. The lecturer never raised his voice, so that obviously required great attention and concentration not to miss any of his words.
One should have thought that such absorption would be conducive to real scholarship; but Shaykh Al-Maraghi soon shattered my illusions: {and now comes the important part, so pay close attention what this man says!}'Dost thou sees those "scholars" over there? he asked me. 'They are like those sacred cows in India which, i am told, eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets...Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them. They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat- and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation.''But, Shayk Mustafa,' i interposed, 'Al-Azhar is, after all, the central seat of Islamic learning, and the oldest university in the world! One encounters its name on nearly every page of Muslim culteral history. What about all the great thinkers, the theologians, historians, philosophers, mathematicians it has produced over the last ten centuries?''It stopped producing them several centuries ago.'he replied ruefully. 'Well, perhaps not quite; here and there and independent thinker has somehow managed to emerge from Al-Azhar even in recent times.
But on the whole, Al-Azhar has lapsed into the sterility from which the whole Muslim world is suffering, and its old impetus is all but extinguished. Those ancient Islamic thinkers whom thou hast mentioned would never have dreamed that after so many centuries their thoughts, instead of being continued and developed, would only be repeated over and over again, as if they were ultimate and infallible truths.{read that last one a couple of times}If there is to be any change for the better, thinking must be encouraged instead of the present thought-imitation...'Shaykh Al-Mataghi's trenchant characterization of Al-Azhar helped me to realize one of the deepest causes of the culteral decay that stared one in thy face everwyhere in the Muslim world.
Was not the scholastic petrification of this ancient univeristy mirrored in varying degrees in the social sterility of the Muslim present? Was not the counterpart of this intellectual stagnation to be found in the passive, almost indolent, acceptance by so many Muslims of the unneccessary poverty in which they lived, of their mute toleration of the many social wrongs to which they were subjected?"
As you can see above, how important this quote is. Although Muhammed Asad's last sentence also inclines that the social wrongs were started by Europe's involvement in Arabia. This passiveness he talks about, originated from the alien-layer that has covered Islam over the years. This blind acceptance of scholar opinions. To uphold Historian (repeat:HISTORIAN) books as Buchari, Muslim, Al-Tabari and others as if they were complete truths, Hidden revelations. To follow blindly people as Shafi and other scholars of the past, who were only indivuals in the large mass of Muslim intellectuals of the first centuries, but because they served the Elite's and Priest's purposes were upheld as the only to be followed.The passivenes and downfall of the Muslims comes from these false assumptions. The Shaykh's comment was made around 1920, and is still completely true now in 2006. Shaykh being a student of Abduh and Al-Afghani, scholars who started to see the Ajami, alien layer over Islam, and who, the first in centuries, dared to question hadith and fiqh, because of them, he could made such an honest observation as given above.But as said, this is only the top of the iceberg.
The alien-layer that has covered Islam must be swept away before the scholars will wake up from their endless reading and repeating, before the Muslimworld will wake up from its passiveness. The only Revelation given to our Prophet, was the Quran. All the hadith were collected by historians, who left us history they thought was reliable. So we must start again to approach them as man-recorded history, and thus that they contain forgeries and wrong assumptions.
That alien sources as Persian, Christian, Jewish and Pagan beliefs has entered them, and tried to infect Islam by making people believe our Prophet said or did certain things.All of the Prophet's deeds and behaviour were a result of the Quran. Not of any revelation next to it. So to follow the Prophet, we must follow the Quran and start with the Quran. To use history as guidance is dangerous and misleading in many cases. It is time to be honest, time to admit many mistakes and lies has entered into the idea of what Islam is and tells us. The Quran is Islam, all else is human interpretation and recording of history and creation....