By, Muhammad Mumtaz Ali
I seem to have a progression in my ambitions. In a society influenced by a progressive mentality, it is not too bad a ‘weakness’ to have. When I was younger, my ambition was to reform India on standard or secular lines. I would gather my neighbours and run a Free Tuition class for illiterate children in the evenings and conduct the “Clean the Streets Campaign” on public holidays and Indian Independence days and organise campaigns to close a liquor shop in my neighbourhood.
However, as I entered my teen years when I came across with the literature of Mawlana Mawdudi, my worldview changed and I progressed towards a more holistic and comprehensive ambition, I hope. All the writings which I read during this period inspired me to read more about Islam and its role in history. So, I read the works of several Islamic scholars and revivalists such as Mohd Iqbal, Muhammad Asad, Syed Qutb, Jamaluddin Afghani, Mohd Abduh and Rashid Rida. I came up with an article entitled The World Peace in the Eyes of Iqbal which was published in a college magazine. I decided to follow the intellectual career steps of these great scholars of Islam and enrolled to a political science programme with my ambition being to develop my country and contribute towards the development of the Muslim Ummah in the manner of the above-mentioned activists and scholars.
Perhaps the political, physical, emotional, and financial struggles experienced by the above-mentioned activists was not in my naseeb (destiny, fate) or the little success that these activists achieved in many parts of the world such as Alegria, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia etc. propelled me to think of an alternative strategy to realise the very same goal. Thus, the dawning of the International Islamic University Malaysia [IIUM] in the educational world and my time to start bringing my mission into practice seem to have aligned or I imagined so. Whatever the cause of the events, my ambition was now moving towards a more mature and practical approach i.e., reforming the Ummah not based on political change but through educational struggles in the form of the Islamization of Knowledge.
Vision and Mission
My vision was now what Iqbal, Mawdudi, Hassan Al Banna and Syed Qutb had envisioned. I realize these illustrious mujtahids visualize how they saw the Muslim society reformed through holistic Islamized education.
Following the vision, my mission had now become to reform the ummah through the means of educational struggle in the form of the Islamization of Knowledge as proposed by Naquib al-Attas and Ismail Faruqi and my platform for this purpose was our university, the IIUM.
Philosophy of life
The above-mentioned scholars of Islam say that philosophy is nothing but our worldview of life. In fact, as our philosophy changes so do our vision, mission and even ambitions. Take the vision, mission, and ambitions as the body of a car which rests upon the wheels of “philosophy of life”. Where the wheels turn, the body of the car moves too. Hence if my ambition has evolved, progressed, and developed then it only hints that with time my philosophy of life has become clearer.
I realized Tawhid and Takhleeq (Creativity) are two realities of life. The reality of tawhid does not change yet the idea of takhleeq by its very nature is ever changing.
Allah SWT has blessed us with both qualities and ambitions. As we grow, some ideas and features of our personality like tawhid do not change while some dimensions of our mental and emotional thinking change.
The same is true about my philosophy of life. There are aspects of it that have not changed and there are other areas where my philosophy of life is ever moving or to be modest, simply changing towards better and better. I am conscious. The tawhidic aspect or the constant in my philosophy of life is me being curious and open to ideas. In other words, I am not satisfied with my surroundings. I want better and want to grow. I want to see an evolution in my life and in my surroundings. I want to travel the world and meet new people and learn from these experiences while always trying to consciously Islamize the input I receive from my travelling and social interactions.
On the other hand, the takhleeqi aspect or the ever-changing component in my philosophy of life as explained earlier was my vision, mission, ambition, purpose, and my role in it. This has been moving (hopefully in the right direction) i.e., from reforming my country in standard or secular terms to bringing change in the manner of political movements to the educational struggle IIUM is leading, of which I am proud to be a mere foot soldier.
Wisdom
When I was performing my Umrah in the mid-1990s with my family, I recall advising my children to pray for knowledge and wisdom! I wouldn’t say this dua was completely accepted by Allah SWT but coming from a middle-class family I was groping in the darkness with some shirk elements practiced around me stumbling upon Islamic Movements and then finally being embraced and supported by IIUM’s educational platform. This might suggest that there was a shade of wisdom as a blessing over my head that kept inspiring me in a surrounding where self-glorification was common to writing this piece on the 40 years of IIUM’s achievement!
This wisdom as explained above was the inspiration I received from Allah SWT and an internal keenness towards learning, exposure, and doing something big, visionary, and worthy in life!
These traits or inner callings helped me pick up the light crumbs of wisdom that Allah SWT threw on my way and nourished my soul with a holistic, comprehensive, and Islamic spirit!
Source of Inspiration
Can I be proud for a moment and say that my source of inspiration in the beginning was none but the internal feelings of growing and exposing myself to new cultures and people and modes of knowledge? Perhaps I can justify this haughty claim by reminding the readers that I came from a family where shirk elements were to be found! Who would be my source of inspiration in this darkness? But yes, after reading Islamic literature, Iqbal, Mawdudi, Hassan al Banna, Syed Qutb, Nasr, Sayeed Nursi amongst others became my source of inspiration. I have tried to dissipate these sublime feelings into my children as well.
If the above were the sun and moons of my life, then Naquib al-Attas, Ismail Faruqui, Khurshid Ahmad, our former IIUM Rectors AbdulHamid AbuSulayman and Kamal Hasan to some extent have been the streams of light emanating from those sun and moons helping me tread my path towards my goal in life which is to develop the Ummah through the means of Islamization of Knowledge and Education.
One can go on writing at breakneck speed on the scholarly contributions of the above writers in the field of Islamization of Knowledge through their works that have either been the solid bedrock of this university, the shining dome of this institution or the green pathways of this Garden of Knowledge and Virtue are as follows:
Iqbal’s Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam and his Urdu/Persian Poems on the role of Education and reformation of society along with Mawdudi’s Towards Understanding of Islam, Let Us be Muslim, Islamic Law and Constitution, Mawdudi on Education, Islam Verses the West, Asad’s Islamic State, Islam at the CrossRoads, Ismail Faruqi’s Islamization of Knowledge: General Principles and Workplan to name a few. Other works such as Syed Qutb’s Milestones and Social Justice in Islam, Ismail Raji Al Fauqui’s Tawhid and its Implications in Life and Thought, Naquib Al Attas’s Islam and Secularism, Islamic Education and many more. Khurshid Ahmad’s translation efforts of Mawdudi’s works and his own critique of the fallacies of Western philosophies.
Former IIUM Rector AbdulHamid AbuSuleyman’s efforts in developing the Kulliyyah of KIRKHS (now AHAS KIRKHS), the compulsory IRK courses for all students to undertake no matter from which faculty and of course his most cherished book, Crisis in the Muslim Mind and Sayyed Hossein Nasr’s engaging, scholarly, contemporary, philosophical discussions on the pitfalls of Western philosophies.
Former IIUM Rector Kamal Hassan’s many administrative and academic pursuits, his article on presenting the need for the Islamization of Human Knowledge and the idea of Ulul al-Baab for Islamization and perhaps his most formidable work so far, the three edited volumes on the Quran and Natural Science whose General Editor was Dr Nur Jannah Hassan, the current person in charge of Kamal Hassan Library.
All these people, their academic and even administrative efforts have been a source of inspiration in my life, and I cannot thank Allah enough for bestowing this light upon me.
Efforts and Hard Work
Is it enough to have an ambition or a vision and a mission? As mentioned earlier, Allah SWT shaded me for which I believe was due to my weak iman, from political, financial, physical, and emotional struggles and pain that Islamic movement scholars and activists have gone through and are still going through. Yet Allah SWT decided not to keep my plate fully empty of struggles and hardships as well.
One struggle after joining the IIUM battalion was to realise that it is, in fact, not a battalion but a Garden of Knowledge and Virtue. Coming from India where we are hot tempered and extremely zealous people, I came in contact with the soft-spoken, mild tempered, cool, calm, and sober Malaysian people. My high regards for myself in being open to cultural interactions were about to receive a blow and I was not even prepared for it!
I found the Malaysian approach towards the Islamization of Knowledge and its practical application too mild, slow, and missing the hot spiciness of us Indian subcontinent people. I had problems interacting and accepting their calm and sober nature and this difficulty did create many hurdles and speed breakers in my goals towards the actualisation of the Islamization of Knowledge project and principles.
I apologise to my colleagues for my attitude and behaviour and promise to use milder spices in my food hoping it will impact my mood, behaviour, vision, mission and even my ambitions. Did I just hint at yet another development in my ambitions? Yes! The path towards Truth doesn’t end until the road of life itself has stopped! Yet my heart is beating and so is that of IIUM’s!
Hence, my journey towards understanding the purpose of life and my role in it, my vision and mission under IIUM’s banner are still evolving, still changing just as IIUM’s leadership is changing. The tawhidic or constant of IIUM and my life is Islamization of Knowledge but the takhleeqi part is restless, ever-changing, developing and improving for both myself and the IIUM (hopefully for the better)! ***
(Dr. Muhammad Mumtaz Ali is an academic at the AbdulHamid AbuSulayman Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences under the Department of Usul al-Din and Comparative Religion.)