Traditional Islam and a tale of 2 reformations
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

Ah love! Could thou and I with fate conspire
To grasp this sorry scheme of things entire
Would we not shatter it to bits
And remould it nearer to the heart’s desire!

(from the Rubaiyat by Omar Khayyam; translation by EJ Fitzgerald)

Writing in the Washington Post last month, Salman Rushdie has lent his weight to the rousing chorus that calls for the “reformation” of Islam in the wake of 7/7 London bombings (bring in the Islamic Reformation, 8 August). Rushdie is a master of timing. At a time when muslim are given to deep introspection, that “our own children” had perpetrated the bombings in the words of the Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, the author of the Satanic Verses dons his uniforms for the new wave Islamic Reformation. To Rushdie, “traditional Islam is a broad church that certainly includes muslims of tolerant, civilized men and women but also encompasses many whose views on women’s rights are antediluvian, who think of homosexuality as ungodly, who have little time for real freedom of expression, who routinely expresses anti-semitic view … what is needed is a move beyond tradition – nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists …”. This has uncanny resonance with the calls of Irshad Manji who anchors Canada’s QueerTelevision and hailed by the western media as “Muslim lesbian intellectual” with the publication of her book the Trouble with Islam, “If ever there was a moment for an Islamic Reformation, it is now. For the love of God, what are we doing about it?” If “Islamic Reformation” has too close an association with Christianity, “Liberal Islam” is more recognizable to muslims as the agenda to empty Islam of its ethical, moral and juristic tradition and bringing it in line with “modernity”.

The problem of racial bigotry, disgust of homosexuality and unmodern views on women exist in every society, not least within america’s bible belt which has thrown up the occasional bombers and a senator who recently called for the assassination of a democratically elected president of a sovereign state. Do they now need a Re-Reformation? But what really drives today’s fashionable question of “why has Islam not undergone a Reformation like Christianity and Judaism?” is “Islamic terrorism”. This is a question asked by both well-intentioned non muslims and those impatient at muslims’ resistance to post-christian consumerist materialism of the west.

We acknowledge that terrorism as a political weapon of the weak is largely a muslim problem today. But what muslims really need is a reformation of their politics, not their religion – a political reformation that will seek to establish distributive justice, genuine representation, respect of fundamental human rights, good governance, people oriented policies and serious efforts at poverty eradication. Since September 11 volumes have been written by experts on the roots of muslim terrorism. Denying Al-Qaeda new recruits is not such a difficult thing. Just simply stop propping up brutal dictators in the middle east and let the people choose their own governments. Secondly stop subsidizing economically, military and politically the state of Israel and restore justice to the Palestinian, and thirdly end the occupation of Iraq, all this at no cost to american tax-payers. Bringing “the core concepts of Islam into the modern age” as Rushdie wishes us to do is a mischievous opportunism that exploits the pervasive fear and distrust, quite a lot of it is manufactured, towards a people whose values may not accord with modern liberalism.

With secularization, modern western education and penetration of western culture into traditional muslim societies, the proponents of Islamic Reformation or liberal Islam attempt to deconstruct at doctrinal level the scholarly consensus on Islam’s traditional pillars of theology, jurisprudence and spirituality, and at praxis level to dilute muslims’ observance of Islam’s rituals and practices, and questioning its moral teachings whenever they appear incongruous with the values of modernity. Naturally the most vexing issues are the ones where Islamic norms and teachings are most jarring to modernism’s eyes such as the question of the rights women, sexuality and Islam’s moral strictures. This have been the vehicle by liberal Islam to effect a complete break from the stifling weight of tradition and the dogmas of orthodoxy which have always been blamed for muslim decline. The panacea is appropriation by all and sundry the right to “ijtihad”, to re-interpret religion, to remould it nearer to the heart’s desire.

It must have been a source of wonder to non-muslim observers why is it that the propents of “liberal” or “progressive” Islam have remained on the fringes, unable to penetrate the Islamic mainstream despite its noble themes centred around such liberal values as human rights, gender equality, human progress, and freeing society from the moral strictures of an era long gone. Why are muslims so resistant to positive changes?

First, despite their pretensions to liberalism, the main concern of liberal Islam appears to be to graft western norms in matters of sexuality, morality and women issues onto a largely conservative muslim society masquerading as “fundamental freedoms”. Though these are problems that need to addressed, they are relatively peripheral issues. Our central concerns are really the widening income gap, urban poverty, stresses on family life imposed by the modern exploitative economy, and in may muslim countries, the suppression of those truly fundamental liberties of expression, thought and political association which are the cornerstone of a genuinely representational, democratic polity. What is really promoted in the end is not so much a political liberalism whose emphasis on fundamental rights muslims have no difficulty identifying with, but rather a moral libertinism of post-christian west. Secondly, and this is perhaps a far more serious concern, liberal Islam’s stubborn insistence on the right to “ijtihad” or re-interpretation of Islam is based on the highly persuasive argument that religious truths should not be the monopoly of traditional scholars, who, stuck in the cobweb of stagnant traditions, have spectacularly failed in making muslims conform to the liberating values of modernity. This strikes at the heart of traditional Islamic scholarship with its strict emphasis on hierarchy of knowledge and respect for specialization in various branches of Islamic sciences of theology, jurisprudence and spirituality. What muslims see in this “ijtihad” by proponents of liberal Islam who have no formal pre-requisites of Islamic knowledge is the destruction of a major pillar of Islam, the sunna, upon which rests Islamic praxis (the Shariat), and the selective rejection of Quranic verses that contradict modernity’s latest fashionable ideas. What mainstream muslims see in this whimsical “ijtihad” is a confusion and chaos that will lead to the dilution and ultimately the destruction of Islam itself.

However since “the war on terror”, we have seen liberal Islam or Islamic Reformation improve its fortunes. The neo-cons’ “war on terror” is using liberal Islam to do its bidding in the muslim world. They are natural allies as both have a healthy dose of disdain for people who prefer to live their lives as muslims rather than succumb to western culture, and not so much that all 1.3 billion of them are potential terrorists. On the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, Paul Wolfowitz confided that “we need an Islamic Reformation”. One year later, another prominent neo-conservative, Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum (MEF) declared that the ultimate goal of the war on terror had to be Islam’s modernization or as he put it “religion-building”. Pipes was then seeking funding for a new organization, tentatively named the Islamic Progress Institute (from AntiWar.Com, “Neo Cons Seek Islamic Reformation” by Jim Lobe). One of the people whom Pipes has invested hope in this Reformation project is Irshad Manji whom he calls a “moderate” muslim. It is strange that in a few short years what is generally understood as “moderate” muslim has shifted from that of a fully practicing muslim who sees terrorism as against the teachings of his/her religion and shares the humanistic universal values with the rest of the world, to someone whose idea of reforming Islam is to make it conform to western sentiments and norms who argues that Islam’s disapproval of homosexuality is the result of a faulty exegesis of scriptures. That makes all of us extremists except Rushdie, Manji and propents of liberal Islam.

Thus the thrust of the neo-cons think-tanks like Pipes’ MEF and the Rand Corporation is to support and give prominence to individuals and groups that range from Irshad Manji and the Al Fatiha Foundation in the west to intellectuals, scholars and NGOs that seek to propagate liberal Islam in muslim countries. But the choice a trojan horse in Salman Rushdie from whom muslims are still smarting from his denigration of their Prophet, Irshad Manji and a whole host of liberal Islam advocates in the muslim world is too unsubtle and crude that mainstream muslims have no trouble recognizing instantly that “Islamic Reformation” is an attempt to neuter Islam.

This is not to say that muslims have never thought about “reforms”. Given the state of muslims in the 20th century where poverty, political despotism, corruption, enfeebleness, economic backwardness are the norm – we are often given to nostalgic sentimentalizing of our glorious civilization before the ascending of europe. On top of that anti-semitism, dogmatism, sexism and paranoia in rife in Islamic societies today. Although this is not exclusively a muslim problem, it is reasonable to accept that this is more pronounced among muslims for the main reason that it has been on the losing side of a long conflict with the west. Many thinking muslims agree that we need to make ourselves feel at ease with modernity and awaken from our centuries of stupor, stagnation and dependency. Very few disagree on the need to master modern knowledge and the sciences, modern administration and polity, and learn to live and interact with other people as part of one humanity in all its diversity. This need for reforms started to be felt in late 19th century when large swathes of the muslim world came under western domination through colonialism and the progressive defeat of the Ottoman empire. There is a vast body of scholarly literature on these pioneering reformers of Islam – Jamaluddin Afghani, Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida – and the Islamic movements of the 20th century inspired by them. This genuine reformist movement aimed at taking muslim society out of stagnation and decline by creating a synthesis between modern values and systems, i.e. the positive aspects of western civilization, and Islam’s universal values. They also used the language of progress, modern knowledge, the primacy of rational thought and ijtihad. However like today’s proponents of Liberal Islam on a mission of Islamic Reformation, there was also the general tendency of doing away with accumulated tradition of jurisprudence of the 4 legal schools (madzahib), theology (kalam) and spirituality (tasawwuf), if not laying the blame of muslim decline on these “sclerotic” traditions.

But history has not been kind to this reformist project through both internal and external factors, not least western support of secular muslim dictators in the middle-east. This has been charted well by Olivier Roy in his well-known work l’échèc de l’Islam politique (the failure of political Islam). In this insightful work, Roy examined the metamorphosis in the reformist movement in its struggle for a social, political and economic revival of the muslim world led by modern educated professionals and technocrats who nevertheless remained pious muslims, to what he calls “neo-fundamentalism”, a literalist and rigid interpretation of scriptures that seek to bring muslim society back to an idealized past.

Increasingly, many commentators, muslims and non muslims, like Roy and Benjamin Barber in “Jihad vs Ms. World”, have argued that it is this militant neo-fundamentalism, itself partly a product of cold war proxy politics in Afghanistan, combined with romantic individualism of the west, that has created the modern phenomenon of Islamic terrorism. This is the unintended, mutant outcome of the initial impetus for Islamic revival or reform. Caught in an impasse between a rigid literalist interpretation of Islam that is vehemently anti-west in tone and a hyperliberal one that seeks to remould Islam to the mores and ethics of post-christian west – both driven by self-styled “ijtihads” that repudiate the consensus that has been built over centuries of classical Islamic scholarly tradition – muslims are now re-examining “traditional Islam” . There is a growing literature that is beginning to have an influence on modern educated muslims on traditional wisdom and texts, especially the extensive corpus of Al Ghazali that covers theology, spirituality, Islamic praxis and morality. Rather than sclerotic, stagnant traditions, classical Islam was alive with theological and jurisprudential debates. In “bombing without moonlight” (Islamica, Spring 2005), Abdal Hakim Murad wrote, “it was on the basis of this hospitable caution that non-Qutbian Sunnism engaged with modernity. Reading the fatwa of great twentieth century jurists such as Yusuf Al Dajawi, Abd Al-Halim Mahmud and Subhi Mahassani, one is reminded of the Arabic proverb cited on motorway signs in Saudi Arabia : there is safety in reducing speed. Far from committing a pacifist betrayal, the normative Sunni institutions were behaving in an entirely classical way. Sunni piety appears as conciliatory, cautions and disciplined, seeking to identify the positive as well as the negative features of the new global culture”. That elusive enlightenment we have been seeking for more than a century is not likely going to be through an Islamic Reformation of either the anti-west literalist interpretation or a hyperliberal self-loathing one born of an inferiority complex to the west, but a return to the wisdom, beauty and richness of tradition.

Dr. Mazeni Alwi

Bandung 50 Years After
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

The London terror bombings have consigned events of the last few weeks to distant memory. Headline – grabbing demonstrations in Edinburgh and the “Live 8” concerts that preceeded them today seem particularly very dated. Even more so, the celebrations to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the historic Bandung conference, with which the pop music concerts and the calls for the leaders of 8 wealthy nations to take concrete action share a common thread – third world poverty. Only a few among the young of today’s generation have probably heard of or cared about it, and those old enough to have a memory of it so disillusioned by its failures that they probably would rather prefer not to remember “the spirit of Bandung”.

Of my numerous trips to Indonesia over the years, my most recent one was as a guest of the Ikatan Dokter Anak Indonesia (Indonesian Paediatric Association) triennial convention in Bandung. This was only a few weeks after the celebrations of 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference (which was held in April 1955). Gedung Merdeka, the venue of the original conference, a magnificent colonial era building is the heart of the city, was still dressed in celebratory mood, with banners and posters to remind visitors the historic event 50 years ago where Sukarno hosted leaders of newly independent nations of the 2 continents. Among them were also leaders of liberation movements of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, then in the midst of struggle for independence from French colonial rule to compare notes and take inspiration from the newly sovereign leaders. The atmosphere must have be electric, a gathering charismatic leaders who were then larger than life in the eyes of their people like Sukarno, Nasser and Hocine ait Ahmed (of Algeria’s FLN). Attempting to neutralize the air of radicalism, there was the pro American camp of leaders of Turkey, Ceylon, Pakistan and Iraq with their denunciations of Soviet colonialism, while Nehru stood as a symbol of relative moderation, having successfully avoided the excesses and violence of India’s independence process.

More than half of humanity was represented in Bandung in 1955 to proclaim the end of the colonial era and the emancipation of the coloured peoples in Asia and Africa. It was hailed as a new dawn for “the wretched of the earth”, whose goal was not just political independence, but ultimately economic, social and cultural liberation.

The new dawn was supposed to herald a new vision and strategy of freedom, solidarity and progress for the formerly colonized peoples, to take their destiny in their own hands after centuries of colonial oppression, exploitation and humiliation. Some sympathetic western intellectuals likened Bandung to humanity’s 1789 (the French Revolution). It was in relation to the historic event that the economist Affred Sauvy invented the term “third world” (tiers-monde), the peoples of Asia and Africa, who collectively hold immense material and human resources of the planet. Alas history has not been very kind to the denizens of the third world. For many, not much has changed 50 years post Bandung – remaining the wretched of the earth, and for some others, things have taken for the worse.

As for Bandung the city, those of us who know Indonesia through our experience of visiting Jakarta might be persuaded to think that she has lived up to the spirit of the conference she hosted half a century ago. She carries the burden of embodying its vision if Indonesia the nation cannot. The compact former hill station of the Dutch retains many of the beautiful colonial era buildings, notably the Governor’s residence, the Gedung Merdeka, a couple small churches and those used today as government and military offices. The pride of Bandung are her educational and scientific institutions, notably the Institut Teknologi Bandung and Universitas Padjajaran. But perhaps one institution that the conference hosts may want to pride themselves as their success in alleviating disease and poverty in the third world even if this is purely co-incidental is the Bio Farma, a biotechnology complex that manufactures vaccines and sera for Indonesia as well as supplying them to the third world in collaboration with the WHO. This is located in the “Pasteur” district of Bandung as Bio Farma was once called “Institut Pasteur”, next to the sprawling Hassan Sadikin Hospital complex, a teaching institution for the Universitas Padjajaran medical school. This former Dutch company was nationalized after Indonesia’s independence and now runs profitably as a state-owned company.

Unlike Jakarta, we do not see in Bandung the poor living in squalid squatter colonies and under flyovers, nor do we see children begging in the streets. The elegant old bungalows along her narrow, tree-lined streets are turned into commercial offices, or increasingly as factory-outlet stores of branded fashion goods- Bandung’s main attraction today. The new tolled highway has cut down traveling time from Jakarta to 2 ½ hours, such that hordes of the capital’s residents invade Bandung on weekends and during school holidays, making the traffic jams nearly as bad as that of the capital city. For this reason, I had to leave for the airport immediately after giving my lecture at the convention as it was held in the midst of school holidays in Indonesia. The driver deftly weaved through the congested traffic and the city’s back streets, having been told that I could not afford to miss the flight home as I had one to catch for Japan the next day.

Our familiarity with our neighbour with whom we share many things in common is such that one would not be easily deceived by Bandung’s air of new prosperity and old elegance, for Indonesia is another of those third world country that could not hide its extreme inequality, where there is an unbridgeable chasm between the rich and the poor. The two seemingly mingle but live in separate social universes outside the work place. When occasionally I get invited to help with some work in a private hospital, I would be chauffeured from the 5 star hotel to the hospital and have meals in Jakarta’s expensive restaurants, enabling me to catch a glimpse of how that section of society lives. Thankfully most of the time they’re institutional invitations where I get to see up close Indonesia’s poor and those who just manage to get by who are lucky enough to live near an urban centre.

In his opening address, the president of the Ikatan Dokter Anak read off startling statistics of the nation’s infant mortality rate and maternal deaths (during delivery), figures that would shock today’s public health experts in the developed world. And notwithstanding Bio Farma as Indonesia’s biotechnology showcase in the area of vaccine production, the nation recently saw outbreaks of polio among children that were highlighted in the international media.

Given what I do to earn a living, I can’t help using health indicators to illustrate the failures of nation building of a third world country like our neighbour, not out of condescension but as a sobering reminder for our own trajectory. For greater accuracy on this, one can always consult the UNDP reports. Its experience is by no means unique. Many of the new nations and those in the process of political liberation that were represented at the Bandung Conference had a disturbingly similar trajectory, particularly the Arab states. Political independence did not lead economic prosperity and social well-being for their citizens, self confidence and flowering of local culture. Instead, oppression and exploitation was continued by the new ruling elite, corruption became endemic, and poverty remains the lot of many.

Emanating from the grand ceremony of Bandung, the concept of the third world has however lost much of its moral weight in the last few decades. One of the more sympathetic figures of that generation that had expressed solidarity with the spirit of Bandung, the recently deceased Paul-Marie de la Gorce, gave a melancholic account 20 years ago, “Many hopes have been deceived, many illusions have vanished, many predictions proven false by history. The fashion today, even if seemingly excessive, is of disenchantment and skepticism : the third world would not have been able to resolve any of its problems – hunger, under development, disunity. The socialist experiments have turned into tropical dictatorships and the capitalist experiments into cosmopolitan corruption. No centres of power, no new international order could have been born from it. And it is remarkable that in France, Paul Bruckner’s Le Sanglot de l’homme blanc (Sobs of the white man) has had considerable success, a book full of bitterness and rancour, where all anticolonialism, every effort to understand the third world, our struggle against under development (on the part of western sympathizers) is seen as a sentiment of guilt, self-hate and masochism” (from “Bandung ou la fin de l’ère coloniale” by Jean Lacouture, Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2005, the quote taken from a 1984 issue of the same journal which I have translated here).

From Bandung to the invasion of Iraq, via the defeat of Nasserism, the sterile victory of Vietnam, the horrors of the Khmer Rouge and the Rwanda genocide, the third world has lost much of its moral capital. The Non-Aligned Movement, The G77, the South-South Commission – later incarnations of third world solidarity failed to gain respect and credibility as their meetings are nothing more than jamborees of corrupt dictators and semi-autocrats who have no respect for their own people.

Yes, there is the hypocrisy, unwillingness to relinquish its economic interests and sometimes naked desire for hegemonic control by some western powers, which means that the colonial masters never really left their colonies. We can blame these external forces as the cause of the continuing misery and poverty of ordinary people of the third world, but more than that, it is the leaders of the third world themselves on whom the responsibility rests. Long on rhetoric and short on ideas, not a few were autocratic, power crazed, corrupt and inept, readily accepting the role of proxies for the cold war warriors – even Sukarno, Nasser and the Algerian revolutionaries. They served as grave reminders of how power corrupts noble intentions and alienates those who wield it from their people if they don’t continually interrogate the whisperings of their egos.

Little wonder then that there was little to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bandung. The new face of transnational terrorism born out of failed nation-building in the muslim world is perhaps the most potent symbol of its failure, and the raucous scenes of europeans begging on behalf of Africa’s poorest in Edinburgh or media flashes of young westerners of the “me” generation who think their pop music jamborees can end world poverty, its greatest humiliation. In this era of economic globalization whose currency is ruthlessness and greed, is a new vision possible to lift the world’s poor out of poverty and confer on them a human dignity long denied?

Dr. Mazeni Alwi

The Legacy of Titus Burckhardt
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

Having written about Martin Lings, I felt it is appropriate to write about his contemporary, Titus Burckhardt, as a matter of thematic continuity. Burckhardt, a swiss, was only a year older than Lings but he died in 1984. Lings wrote the introduction to Burckhardt’s Letters of a sufi master the Shaykh Ad Darqawi and Fez, city of Islam. Apart from his translations of classic Sufi texts by Ibn Al Arabi and Abd Al Karim Jili, making the metaphysics of the former known to the western world as well as his own writings on the subject, Burckhardt was also a distinguished art historian. With the intimate understanding of an ‘insider’, his authoritative work on Islamic art is unsurpassed. Thirdly, his role as an expert engaged by UNESCO in the conservation efforts of the city of Fez is another area where he has made a major contribution in the domains of Islamic intellectual, spiritual and artistic traditions. It is Burckhardt’s work in these 3 related areas that before returning to Malaysia in 1990, I took 2 months off and drove from England to Morocco, stopping for a couple of weeks in Andalusia, whose culture and civilization Burckhardt also wrote about (Ibn Arabi was from Murcia in Southern Spain). I was also drawn to Fez for the reason that Ibn Khaldun, credited for the birth of critical historiography and sociology, lived and taught in the Qarawiyyin mosque university in the heart of the medieval city for a period during the 14th century.

I first stumbled on Titus Burkhdardt some 25 years ago through his translation of Letters of a Sufi Master The Shaykh ad-Darqawi (simply known in Darqawi circles as Rasa’il or letters), first published in 1969. This was republished by Fons Vitae in 1998. The book consists of excerpts of letters of Mulay al Arabi ad-Darqawi (died 1823), founder of the Darqawi branch of the Shadhiliya Tariqa (Sufi order) to his disciples, instructing them on the spiritual path. The letters were collected and later published in a lithographed edition in Fez in early 19th century. They are a gem of Sufi literature, offering a fascinating insight into how a Sufi shyakh guides his disciples in the rigorous path of Islamic spirituality.

As these are letters of instruction, the emphasis was more on practical methods and operative aspects of Sufism rather than doctrine. In his counsel to his disciples Shaykh Darqawi referred heavily to aphorisms from Ibn Ataillah’s Al-Hikam (a widely used Sufi text even today all over the Islamic world), other masters of the Shadhiliya order including his own teacher, as well as the Quran and the prophetic tradition. Burckhardt’s translation has enriched Sufi literature and made available a document of extraordinary power and beauty that belonged to a recent past.

Here are some examples of these epistolary gems, “The Fuqara’ (pl. of faqir, novice of the spiritual path) of ancient times sought only for what could kill their souls and bring life to their hearts, whereas we do just the opposite… . They strove only to become free of their passions and dethrone their egos; but as for us, what we long for is the satisfaction of our sensual desires and the glorification of our egos, and thus we have turned our backs to the door and our faces to wall”. Subduing one’s ego forms one of the major themes of Rasa’il, and in another letter, “The first lesson that my master gave me was as follows : he ordered me to carry two baskets full of fresh fruit through the town. I carried them in my hands and did not wish, as the others told me, to put them on my shoulders, for that was unwelcome to me, and constricted my soul, so that it became agitated and fearful and grieved beyond measure, till I almost began to weep. Never before had my soul had to suffer such a thing, so I was not conscious of its pride and cowardice (Shaykh Darqawi, of noble lineage, was a young scholar then). While I was in this state, my master who perceived my pride and my inner distress, came up to me, took the two baskets from my hands and placed them on my shoulders with the words: ‘Distinguish thus between good and evil’. Thereby he opened the door for me and led me the right way, for I learned to discriminate between the proud and the humble, the good and the bad, the wise and the foolish, the orthodox and the heretical, between those who know and translate their knowledge into deeds, and those who do not. From that moment no orthodox person ever overpowered me with his orthodoxy, no heretic with his heresy, no scholar with his knowledge, no pious man with his piety, and no fasting man with his ascetism. For my master, may God have mercy on him, had taught me to distinguish truth from vanity, and wheat from chaff”.

Burckhardt also brought us an unlikely story that could only have come from classic Sufi literature, the account of Shaykh Darqawi’s first meeting with his master: “That night I asked God to confirm my intention (of becoming a disciple of the Master Ali al-Jamal), and I spent the whole night picturing him to myself, wondering what he was like and how my meeting with him would be, unable to sleep. When morning came, I went to find him at his Zawiyah in the Rumaylah quarter, located between the two cities (“old” and “new” Fez), on the river bank, in the direction of the Qiblah, on the very spot where his tomb lies today. I knocked on the gate and there he was before me, sweeping out the Zawiyah – as was his custom, for he never gave up sweeping it everyday with his own blessed hand, in spite of his great age and high spiritual function. “What do you want”, he said. “O my Lord”, I replied, “I want you to take me by the hand to God”. Then he began to reprove me furiously, hiding his true state from my eyes, with words such as these, “And who told you that I take anyone at all by the hand and why ever should I do so for you?”. And he drove my away – all to test my sincerity. So I went away. But when night came I questioned God once more (by means of the Holy Book). Then after performing the morning prayer, I went back again to the Zawiyah. I found the master again sweeping as before and knocked at the gate. He opened it and let me in and I said: “Take me by the hand, for God’s sake!”. Then he took me by the hand and said: “Welcome!”. He led me into his dwelling place in the inner part of the Zawiyah and manifested great joy. “O my Lord”, I said to him, “I have been looking for a master for so long!”. “And I”, he replied, “was looking for a sincere disciple”.

Burckhardt’s translation of selections from Rasa’il opens up a fascinating dimension of Islamic tradition whose vestiges was still present in late twentieth century to the western world. A more complete translation of Rasa’il was later produced by the English Sufi Aisha Abd ar Rahman at-Tarjumana titled The Darqawi way. What surprised me most was, not long after reading Burckhardt’s translation, I came across a jawi-malay translation by the Terengganu scholar Tok Pulau Manis in the early 1900’s (The Darqawi Tariqa is largely North African but many scholars of Tassawwuf from all over the muslim world lived and taught in Mecca before the collapse of Caliphate and the imposition of strict wahhabism).

How did Burckhardt came to write that translation? In his book, Fez, city of Islam, he gave an account of his visit to Morocco in 1933 – 34 as a young man of 25, “Seeking a spiritual master, I settled in Fez, where I divided my time between this search and the study of Arabic. After six months, however, I had reached a dead end …”. Then follows his account of his meeting with the sage Hajj Muhammad Bu Sha’ara, with whom he stayed and later recommended him to one of the foremost ulama of Fez, Mulay Ali ben Tayyib Darqawi, the grandson of the Shaykh Darqawi. It was Mulay Ali who completed Titus Burckhardt’s education – in Arabic, theology and Sufism, making him read and learn by heart many chapters of the Koran, as well as the essentials of Islamic doctrine and rituals by Ibn ‘Ashir, and also making him attend the courses in traditional science, which he himself and other scholars gave at Qarawiyyin University, then situated in the mosque of the same name (traditional Islamic universities were based in great mosques). He wrote, “On the day that Mulay Ali gave his lectures at the great mosque, a saddled and caparisoned mule was waiting for him at the door of the sanctuary to take him back home before midday. As soon as he was in the saddle, he told me to grasp the tail of the animal which trotted up the steep lanes of the Medina … . His garments were always in an impeccable condition and bore witness to his rank as a scholar. I sometimes saw him, however, in the garb of the Sufis, wearing a patched cloak”. Nevertheless, his presence in Fez raised the concern of the French Protectorate authorities. To them it was unimaginable that someone, especially a foreigner, could so diligently attend the courses at the traditional university, for other than political motives. In those interwar years, a swiss intellectual and artist officially converted to Islam could only be a cause of trouble and in the pay of a foreign power hostile to France. He was made to leave Moroccan territory. Once back in Switzerland, Burckhardt was only able to return to Morocco after she regained independence in 1956.

The book Fez, city of Islam was first published in 1960 in german but the English translation by The Islamic Texts Society of Cambridge only appeared in 1992 (It was part of a series which he edited – Homesteads of the Spirit to which he also contributed two other volumes, Siena, city of the virgin and Chartres and the birth of the Cathedral).

Fez, city of Islam conveys a profound understanding of the sacred roots that nourish Islamic culture and civilization, drawing from his own experience and the people he knew when he was young student of Islam, as well as references drawn from classical texts by scholars who had lived in the Maghreb in past centuries. For bonus the book is beautifully illustrated with photographs of many of the city’s rich architectural heritage as well as his black and white prints of 1930’s.

As Fez has been the intellectual, cultural, spiritual heart of North Africa, he dedicated whole chapters to traditional science, Islamic orthodoxy and Sufism. There is also a chapter on the houses of Fez, “The true unveiled face of Fez remains hidden to whoever knows Fez only from the street, and has seen only the shopping alley-ways and the grey outer walls of the houses …”, but once inside its exterior drabness gives way to a beautiful courtyard, some with a small garden and fountain, with arches leading to the surrounding rooms. As Martin Lings wrote in the introduction, Titus Burckhardt is an authority whose works are a constant source of inspiration … the publication of this book in English is like the unearthing of a great treasure”. It was in recognition of Burckhardt’s unrivalled knowledge and authority on Fez that he was appointed special advisor to UNESCO with particular references to the preservation of the unique architectural and cultural heritage of Fez.

Related to the architectural, cultural and intellectual heritage of Fez, Burckhardt is also an authority in yet another domain, Islamic (and religious) art. He is an accomplished art historian, following in the footsteps of a great-uncle, and his father was a sculptor. His last major work was Art of Islam. Unfortunately I am in possession only of its French version, L’Art de l’Islam. He was persuaded to write the book side by side with his activities as adviser to the Arts Council of Great Britain during its preparation for the exhibition of Islamic art during the World of Islam Festival in London in 1976. Unlike the many books of Islamic art, Burckhardt wrote from the position of an authoritative figure who also had an intimate familiarity and profound understanding of Islamic civilization and its intellectual and spiritual traditions.

Burckhardt gives his penetrating insight into the intellectual principles, contemplative nature and spiritual role of the Islamic art forms – architecture, calligraphy, the decorative arts, those related to worship and the mosque, the folk crafts – as well as thoughtful thesis on the influence of other cultures that greatly enriched it as the religion rapidly spread beyond the Arabian peninsula.

In a world stifled by the crushing weight of a secular materialism and uniformizing consumerism, Titus Burckhardt has left a precious legacy. In Fez, city of Islam, he expressed his concern over dehumanizing ravages of secular modernity on traditional muslim society, “Whereas previously men were differentiated only by their culture, the community is all of a sudden split into economically determined classes, and with the cheap products of the factory, a poverty without beauty invades the homes, ugly, senseless and comfortless poverty is the most widespread of all modern achievements”. Writing then in 1960, he could have been easily rebuffed as a western romantic irrationally smitten by the hollow charm of the Islamic orient, who wanted it remain stagnant for his own selfish romanticism. It is also true that sclerotic traditions that have no mechanism for self rejuvenation within themselves and the accretion of negative external influences have led to the stagnation and decay of Islamic civilization, hence the fixation for secular modernism for some and a reformist spirit driven with the puritanical zeal for others have formed our main responses to modernity. But today, the unintelligent embrace of modernity and the careless jettisoning of traditional wisdom has caused, the muslim world to sink deeper in crises of all forms imaginable – political despotism, poverty and ignorance of the common folks whereas the rich wallow in consumerist materialism, religious fanaticism on the one hand and the loss of values in the embrace of the latest post modern fashions on the other. As for his Fez, une ville humaine (badly translates as a human city, the title of one of his lectures), Burckhardt may have succeeded in preserving the many beautiful buildings and monuments, but the march of secular modernity and materialism is too overwhelming despite his noble efforts at rehabilitating its Islamic culture and tradition. Taking a look at today’s metropolises and urban environment of the muslim world reminds one of Burckhardt’s horror of “poverty without beauty”. Today, after all those costly false starts, what we need is to intelligently seek a balance between conforming to modernity and remaining faithful to our traditional wisdom and values. There is perhaps something to be learned in the romanticism of men like Titus Burckhardt and Martin Lings.

Dr. Mazeni Alwi

Martin Lings in memory
by Dr. Mazeni Alwi

His most widely read book sits very conspicuously on the shelves of many a muslim home – its bright blue jacket against which are the white lettering of its title Muhammad : His life based on the Earliest Sources. When news of his passing circulated in cyberspace recently, I learnt that Martin Lings’ biography of the Prophet of Islam has touched the lives of quite a number of friends, whose frank admissions rode on the eulogy by a muslim from North America grateful that his life has been equally transformed.

The biography by Lings combines light scholarship and factual accuracy with what muslims traditionally expect of a narration of the Prophet’s life – a degree of respect and reverence for his person. He does away with extensive bibliography and footnotes despite what the title suggests (based on his earliest sources), not for want of scholarship, for Martin Lings is more than capable of that, given his mastery of Arabic and for many years he was keeper of Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum and later the British Library. Instead he retells the familiar events of the Prophet’s life in a narrative that is refreshingly simple but in such a beautiful language that the his humanity shone through. Many readers must have had teary-eyed moments when reading some of the passages that recounted the hardship and tribulations of his early Mecca years. Lings has filled a void for those western-educated muslims wishing to have a fresh start at understanding Muhammad, God’s last messenger but who was also a loving husband and father, a loyal companion, a leader of his community, respected adversary and many more. Otherwise one would have to wade through Guillaume’s translation of Ibn Ishaq’s voluminous Life of Muhammad convoluted text and style.

When his biography of Prophet first appeared, I had not expected it to be a straightforward, traditional narration of his life, having read his earlier books A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century – Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi, his spiritual heritage and legacy (1961) and the 2 smaller books, What is Sufism (1975) and Ancient beliefs and Modern Superstitions (1965), and also his introduction to Titus Burckhardt’s Letters of a Sufi Master the Shaykh ad-Darqawi (1969). Rather, given Lings’ leaning towards Sufism, I thought it would be in a similar vein to Anne Marie Shimmel’s And Muhammad is His Messenger – the veneration of the Prophet in Islamic piety (1985), weaving mystical symbolisms and interpretations into the biographical narration.

The story of Bahira the Christian Monk who thought that the young Muhammad bore the marks of the coming messenger, when as a 12 year old he (Muhammad) accompanying his uncle Abu Talib on a trade caravan to Syria, they stopped near the monk’s cell, and the story of Isra’ and Mi’raj, the Prophet’s night journey to Jerusalem and his ascension to Heaven – both were narrated devoid of any references to mystical symbolisms.

Martin Lings, Titus Burckharft and Fritjof Schuon are notable figures who had gone beyond academic orientalism to steep themselves in the esoteric Islamic tradition of Sufism (Tasawwuf) – mastering the language, learning the texts and studying from the masters, to write eloquently as exponents of universal religious wisdom (religio perennis, a term coined later by Schuon) to guide the modern man in finding back his balance in this secular milieu of spiritual poverty. All of them lived long productive lives, especially Schuon and Lings. The latter was 95 when he recently died. All 3 of them had association with the Darqawi branch of the Shadzili Tariqa of North Africa and reformulated the metaphysics of the Spanish mystic Ibn Arabi in the modern idiom in their writings for the western educated audience.

Martin Lings and Firtjof Schuon were deeply influenced by René Guénon, the French mathematician and gnostic who was disillusioned with the west’s loss of the spiritual dimension. He moved to Cairo in 1930 to steep himself in the muslim tradition. Guénon took the name of Abdul Wahid Yahya and lived as an orthodox muslim, was initiated into the Shadzili Tariqa and later wrote his influential books on the recovery of tradition as salvation for the modern man.

Lings first read Guénon’s books in the early 30’s and translated one of his earlier ones into English. He recommended his closest friend at Oxford, who was then lecturing at Cairo University to meet the very reclusive Guénon, and later became his assistant. As fate had it, taking a break from his lectureship in Lithuania, Lings went to visit his friend in Cairo in 1939 but unable to return because of the war. A year later his friend died in a riding accident and Lings had no option but to take his place as Guénon’s assistant, and that was the start of his privileged relationship with him (meanwhile he also lectured at Cairo University on Shakespeare).

Guénon died in 1951 and Lings returned to England a year later where he took up a degree in Arabic at London University. Lings had been in special charge of Quran and other oriental manuscripts at the British Museum and British Library. Presumably it is from this background that he wrote A Sufi Saint of the Twentieth Century – Shaikh Ahmad Al-Alawi, his spiritual heritage and legacy, his other more readily available book. A Sufi Saint is largely adapted from his PhD thesis for the University of London, and therefore unlike his biography of the Prophet, it is written in a distinctly academic style with extensive footnotes and references to classical Islamic texts, prophetic traditions (hadith) and the Quran. It provides readers an interesting insight into one institution of traditional muslim society – the practice and influence of Sufism, its formal structure and hierarchal order of masters and disciples, its teachings and methods of spiritual self-realization. This is a useful book to gain a reasonable depth of understanding of Sufism and its various aspects through the examination of the life and works of a traditional master, who is perhaps among the last. I would like to dwell on this book in some detail as I feel it is more interesting than his other general work on Sufism and spirituality. With the title A Sufi Saint of the twentieth century, perhaps Lings would like to convey that such a tradition, though documented in our time, is something of an anachronism of the modern age, that it would soon be weakened or diluted by the encroaching modernity. Martin Lings gave an account of his subject, Shaikh Al-Alawi (Aliwah) who lived in Mostaganem, Western Algeria in the early part of the twentieth century when much of the muslim world was on the threshold of a rapid change from its encounter with the west through colonialism. This was also the period when the muslim world was supposed to be its darkest depth of ignorance, degeneration and decay. The French colonial power had the policy of separating the settler communities from the native algerians, minimizing contacts between the two and thus largely preserving the traditional muslim society and its institutions. He also provides a back drop of the social situation in the muslim world during that era – the rise of modernist muslims who uncritically wished to imitate the west, the puritanical muslim reformers who attacked Sufism as a corruption of the faith, and the agitation of the young Turks against the Caliphate which the Shaikh witnessed during his visit to Istanbul.

The first half of the book consists of a biographical account of Shaikh Al-Alawi’s life drawn from a number of sources – a french doctor who befriended the Shaikh, his own dictation to his scribe, testimonies of his disciple and the work of a French writer Berque – who wrote about Shaikh Al-Alawi Un mystique Moderniste in the journal Revue Africaine in 1936 (the title is a strange one, Lings notes, Berque’s quotations show that the Shaikh was essentially very conservative. His so-called ‘modernism’ appears to have been nothing other than the great breadth of his spiritual interests). Part 2 of the book deals with general aspects of Sufi metaphysics and mystical symbolisms with references from the Shaikh’s works. It is interesting that Lings dedicated 2 chapters on the Shaikh’s commentary on the ritual purification (wudhu) and the ritual prayer. This was taken from his book Al Minali Al Quddusiyyah, which was a commentary on Ibn Ashir’s guide to the essentials of religious knowledge, a book which all novices had to learn by heart to ensure that they have basic grounding in the outward, obligatory rituals before embarking on the spiritual path. His commentary and explanation of the mystical symbolisms of these 2 basic everyday rituals are astounding, given that the Shaikh did not have a formal education in a religious seminary and that he started life as a cobbler. Even more so are his mystical poems and aphorisms translated by Lings which make up part 3 of the book.

If parts II and III are informative about Sufism’s intellectual dimension and methods, Part I is highly interesting to the curious modern reader for it provides an account of an extraordinary life which perhaps could only have been possible in a traditional muslim environment. This is based first on the account of Dr. Marcel Carett, a French doctor who had an intimate friendship with the Shaikh from 1920 until his death in 1934. Dr. Carrett, unlike his compatriots, was curious to understand and interact with the arabs. He set up a clinic in the arab quarter of Mostaganem and charged minimal fees. Within a few months of his arrival from France he was requested to examine the Shaikh who was having a bout influenza, and thereafter began his friendship with him. At least once a week he would visit the Shaikh and the two would engage a in conversation over a wide range of things usually in the garden of his Zawiya (religious centre where the Sufis gathered). From Dr. Carrett’s notes Lings gives us an account of the Shaikh’s personality, habits, his disciples and the people around him and their rituals of dhikr (exercises in the remembrance of God). Of note is his first impression of Shaikh Al-Alawi’s appearance whereby he was struck by his likeness to the usual representations of Christ, “including the fine lawn head-cloth which framed his face, his whole attitude – everything conspired to reinforce the likeness. It occurred to me that such must have been the appearance of Christ when he received his disciples … that Christ like face, that gentle voice, so full of peace, those courteous manners … his taste for solitude and self-effacement … . I was surprised by his broadmindedness and tolerance, I had always heard that every Moslem is a fanatic and could never have anything but the greatest contempt for non-Moslem foreigners”. Frequently they engaged in frank, probing conversations about faith and salvation as Dr. Carrett was an atheist steeped in the scientific rationalism of his day.

The other source materials that Lings drew to construct a biographical outline of Shaikh Al-Alawi is the account of his life that he had himself dictated to his scribe a few years before his death. This formed the second chapter of the book. His beginnings were humble and ordinary. He never went to school/seminary and his only early education was the evening Quran lessons from his father. As a young man he became a cobbler to support his poor family. His initiation into the Sufi path, his relationship with his teacher Shaikh Al Buzidi and his spiritual development makes for interesting reading for a twentieth century audience. This is straight out of classic Sufi literature, which I feel merits to be reproduced here. He tells us of his inclination towards Sufism from an early age, first initiated into the Isawi Tariqa (Sufi order), from which he quickly distanced himself because of what he perceived as unislamic practices. The only thing he kept was the art of snake charming which brought him into contact with his future teacher, Shaikh Al Buzidi, who had regularly come to visit his business partner in their shop. ‘One day, when he was in our shop, the Shaikh said to me: “I have heard that you can charm snakes and that you are not afraid of being bitten”. I admitted this. Then he said: “Can you bring me one now and charm it here in front of us?”. I said that I could and going outside the town, I searched for half a day, but found only a small one… . This I brought back with me and putting it in front of him, I began to handle it according to my custom… . “Could you charm a bigger snake than this?” he asked. I replied that the size made no difference to me. Then he said, “I will show you one that is bigger than this and for more venomous, and if you can take hold of it you are a real sage”. I asked him to show me where it was, and he said : “I mean your soul which is between the two sides of your body. Its poison is more deadly than a snake’s … . Then he said : “Go and do with that little snake whatever you usually do with them, and never go back to such practices again”, and I went out, wondering about the soul and how its poison could be more deadly than a snake’s’.

Thus began his spiritual journey under the guidance of Shaikh Al Buzidi. He was a very gifted disciple who became the natural heir to his Syaikh when the latter died, and under his leadership the Darqawi Tariqah enjoyed phenomenal growth in Algeria and Morocco as well as other parts of the Islamic world where he travelled during his pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1926 he was invited to preach the first sermon and lead the first prayer of the Paris mosque.

Apart from his mystical poems and the more profound and abstruse works, he also wrote a couple of simple expositions of the elements of Islam, for it was his principle that the first thing to be done with a novice was to teach him his ordinary religious obligations according to his capacity.

Lings quoted a number of examples of how Shaikh Al-Alawi’s reliance on inspiration of the moment, such as the decision to write his ideas down into books – which is one of the characteristics of mystics, but he also gave examples of his practicality and pragmatism, however much they might go against his natural inclinations. He started a religious weekly newspaper, Al Balagh al Jazair in Algiers as a means of disseminating his teaching, seeking to safeguard Islam’s dimension of breadth, and above all to restore what it had lost of its dimension of depth. He stressed the importance of knowledge of classical Arabic and pointed to the dangers of westernization. He also used the medium to defend Sufism as a wholly integral part of the Islamic tradition from attacks by puritanical reformers.

Shaikh Al-Alawi was also conscious of his role as he declares in one of his poems,

Then when the Giver vouchsafed that I might proclaim it, He fitted me – and how I know it – to purify souls, And girded upon me the sword of steadfastness, And truth and piety, and a wine He gave me … … thus came I to pour it, nay, it is I that press it, Doth any other pour it in this age?

Lings concluded the summary account of the Shaikh’s life by a quotation by Fritjof Schuon, taken from his eulogy “RahimahulLah” published in Cahiers du Sud in 1935, “So much the greater good fortune is it to come into contact with a true spiritual representative of one of those forms (worlds which the modern west fails to understand) to come into contact with someone who represents in himself … the idea which for hundreds of years has been the very life-blood of that civilization … To meet such a one is like coming face to face, in mid twentieth century, with a medieval saint or a semitic patriarch, and this was the impression made on me by the Shaikh Al-Hajj Ahmad bin Aliwah, one of the greatest masters of Sufism, who died a few months ago at Mostaganem”.

From his account of Shaikh Al-Alawi’s life and his spiritual legacy, Martin Lings has captured for the twentieth century audience the vestige of that universe of traditional Islam where spirituality, of which Sufism is its formal expression, is the third pillar in that triumvirate of iman (faith), Islam (outward observance) and ihsan (goodness). Martin Lings belonged to that select handful of scholars who had privileged access to that traditional universe and conveyed what he had absorbed of that to the reading public with great insight and eloquence. It cannot be denied that some aspects of Sufi practices and teachings as exhibited by a number of its modern day exponents are questionable, and later developments of Schuon’s own Tariqah as available in the public domain are a sad testimony of this. But, it is also more evident today that western exponents of Sufism are bringing it fully into the fold of orthodox Islam, its natural home. This owes in no small part to the likes of Martin Lings, who undertook a serious study of Sufism – mastering its language, delving into its texts and chronicling its masters, rather than removing it from its Islamic moorings and distorting it into a form of exotic pseudospirituality as was the fashionable thing to do until recently in a secular world which has lost its capacity and awe for the Transcendent. Alfatihah.

Dr. Mazeni Alwi