Foreward to Salbiah Ahmad’s Malaya: Critical Thoughts on Islam
Foreword to Salbiah Ahmad’s Malaya: Critical Thoughts on Islam, Rights, and Freedom in Malaysia, published by SIRD, Petaling Jaya, RM40.00; 405 pages.
[First of two parts]
Every person wants freedom, especially in his mind.
Pramoedya Ananta Toer (“Revenge” in All That is Gone)
As I reflect over my career that now spans over three decades, I am deeply humbled by and immensely appreciative of the contributions from those outside my profession. Yes, I learned the basic skills of my craft from other surgeons. Nonetheless every time I am in the operating theatre, I am filled with gratitude to these non-surgeons who have enabled me to be better at my craft.
From the space scientists came the elemental diet that spares my patients with intestinal fistulas from unneeded surgery. The engineers have fashioned unbelievably intricate instruments so I can perform surgery without making huge incisions. From the systems analysts I learned such tools as the Six Sigma to enable my colleagues and I in reducing medical errors and thus providing quality care.
At the more basic level, the American system of medical education, widely acknowledged as the best, was the contribution of neither an educator nor a physician but an insurance salesman, Abraham Flexner.
Surgery is not unique; other disciplines have also benefited greatly from the infusion of insights and innovations from outside their fields. Yet today, in Malaysia and elsewhere in the Muslim world, the ulama and religious scholars arrogantly arrogate unto themselves the exclusive rights to discourses on Islam. They neither seek nor welcome contributions from others, their insularity matching their anti-intellectualism.
These latter day ulama and scholars have learned little from their illustrious predecessors. Ancient Muslim luminaries did not hesitate to seek knowledge from the Greeks, Romans and Hindus. Those earlier scholars were not at all perturbed that they were learning from the infidels. They took to heart the prophet’s exhortation “to seek knowledge even unto China,” it being the epitome of the end of the world in his time.
Those ulama of yore intuitively knew that all knowledge begins with Allah. That He had chosen to dispense the wisdom of the concept of zero to a Hindu, the secret of the atom to a Jew, and the universality of gravity to a Christian, is not for us to question. Suffice for us to acknowledge that such insights are for the benefit of all.
Having mastered the then known body of knowledge, Muslim scholars like Ibn Khaldun and Ibn Sinna went on to make their own seminal contributions that enlightened their world. Those scholars and ulama did not make any distinction between “secular” and “religious” knowledge. Ibn Sinna made significant contributions to the sciences as well as theology.
Mental Berlin Wall
The massive mental wall today’s ulama and scholars erect around themselves will crumble. Even the Berlin Wall tumbled, not through the use of physical force but through the much more formidable force of the universal human yearning to be free.
Contributors like Salbiah Ahmad are doing their part in chiseling this massive mental wall. Individually the dents they make may be imperceptible, but rest assured that collectively and cumulatively, they will contribute to the critical or tipping point that will undermine the integrity of the barricade and sent it tumbling down.
When that happens, it will be great day for our faith and society. Salbiah and others could then rightly claim some credit. Meanwhile she will have to endure the Islamists’ dismissal of her lack of “proper” credentials. Meaning, she is not madrasah educated and burka clad. And in the exclusively male world of the ulama, Salbiah is also of the wrong sex.
The ulama’s dismissal notwithstanding, there is now emerging a class of formidable Muslim scholars who, having been exposed to the traditional system and then benefited from superior liberal education and rigorous scholarship of the West, are bringing fresh interpretations to our faith. Theirs is a refreshing breadth of fresh air. They are peeling away the layers of debris that have frozen our faith into its present fossilized form, unchanged since the Tenth Century.
Theirs is still very much work in progress but they have already demonstrated the universality of the principles of this great faith, giving substance to the Quranic refrain that Islam is indeed a “perfect religion for all mankind and at all times.”
The dean of these modern scholars was the late Fazlur Rahman. A prodigious thinker and prolific writer, his career was cut short by his untimely death. His talent and scholarship were not appreciated in his native Pakistan, but in the West and specifically at the University of Chicago, he found a supportive and nurturing intellectual environment.
Fazlur Rahman’s thesis is that we should deduce from the particularities of the Quran and hadith, their underlying general principles, and then apply those same principles to the problems and challenges facing our society today. Obviously modern society is very different from that of the prophet’s time but the moral imperatives remain the same. Such a reading would require considerable intellectual effort, much more than the simplistic reciting and parroting of the texts.
There are others following in Fazlur Rahman’s footsteps. Among them are Ebrahim Moosa, Khaled El Fadl, and Abdullahi An Naim in America, and Tariq Ramadan and Abdulkarim Soroosh on the continent. I am thrilled that Salbiah frequently cites these scholars in her commentaries.
Next: Interface of Islam, Feminism, and Human Rights