Sunday, May 24, 2015

SIR Syed Ahmad Khan

Sir Syed’s legacy



He has written diversely; however, his advocacy for modern/science education and his bold steps to reinterpret Islamic thought are considered his most prominent legacy. Yet it appears that these legacies have not received due attention as today, the Muslim societies of South Asia are facing the same challenges that Sir Syed highlighted over a century ago.
Despite having a traditional educational background, Sir Syed realised that the landscape of knowledge was being reshaped due to rapid developments in science and technology. He was convinced that without a scientific approach, no society would be able to contribute to knowledge in the contemporary world. He urged Muslims of the subcontinent to learn science and new languages in order to keep pace with the world. He not only tried to convince Muslims to get a modern education, he also took practical steps by establishing schools, colleges and a university.
Sir Syed was aware that scientific thinking/development required a rational approach. He was of the view that the traditional way of thinking would not help Muslims enter the arena of modern knowledge. He therefore urged them to develop a rational approach to scientific knowledge. He took bold steps to realign Islamic thought with science by highlighting rational aspects of Islamic teaching and history.
To revive this aspect of Islamic thought, he attempted to link and build on the rational traditions of the Mutazila and other Muslim philosophers such as Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. To highlight the importance of rational thinking, Syed Ahmad Khan wrote extensively in Urdu and his exegesis of the Holy Quran is viewed as one of the prominent examples of rational interpretation of scripture in the modern age.
To align Muslim religious thought and scientific knowledge, Sir Syed asserted that scientific knowledge did not contradict religion. He stressed that there were two realms of knowledge: the ‘word of God’ (scripture) and the ‘work of God’ (the universe). The holy scriptures are the word of God and are understood through theology and religious practice. The universe is the work of God that is explored and understood through scientific knowledge. Hence, he emphasised that scientific knowledge is as important as religious knowledge to understand the mysteries of God’s creation.
Today, it is observed that the Muslim societies of South Asia are facing the same challenges as they were in the 19th century. Lack of education and a narrow religious worldview are still amongst our daunting problems. In Pakistan, Sir Syed is viewed as one of the important leaders of independence. However, education has never been the priority of successive governments and today, we face huge challenges in educating the younger generation in Pakistan; for example, the country is said to have the second highest number of out-of-school children.
In our educational institutions, Sir Syed is discussed as an independence hero through superficial discussions on his life. His original work and thoughts are hardly taught even at the university level, therefore, very few are aware of his original works.
Sir Syed’s rational approach to faith faced huge opposition from the ulema of his time. Today, strong sentiments are still found that undermine a rational approach to religion. Hence, lack of ratio­nal thinking and the narrow interpretation of faith leads to religious intolerance.
Looking at the challenges of Mus­lim societies like Pakistan, Sir Syed’s thoughts and prescriptions still seem relevant to deal with the gigantic educational and social challenges. In this regard, conscious steps are needed to be taken at multiple levels.
First, at the government level Sir Syed’s thoughts need to be reflected in polices of education and social contract. Serious steps need to be taken to educate people about his thoughts through different sources such as reprinting his books and conducting serious research on the scholar’s works and thoughts. Second, Sir Syed’s thoughts need to be introduced at educational institutions by teaching his original works. Furthermore, the media should play a role in promoting the rational thoughts/works of Sir Syed in order to highlight the intellectual tradition of Muslims.
In sum, Sir Syed — being a thinker and reformist — had unique views about the issues facing his society. Today, Muslim societies as in Pakistan are facing huge challenges in educating the new generation and dealing with religious intolerance and polarisation. The powerful intellectual and practical legacies of Sir Syed can be instrumental in dealing with these issues by making them part of the state’s policies and society’s practices.

The writer is a freelance contributor with an interest in cultures and religion.
Published in Dawn, May 22nd, 2015

Danial Latifi

Smokers’ Corner: The mysterious ideologue on Jinnah’s left

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Abdullah Haroon

Leader with vision 

by sHARIF AL MUJAHID



AMONG the All-India Muslim League’s (AIML) second-cadre leadership, Abdullah Haroon, who died on April 27, 1942, has a prominent position. What sets him apart is his role in conceptualising Pakistan as it came to be embodied in the Lahore Resolution (1940). To quote Reginald Coupland, Haroon was “the only Muslim politician of any standing who had so far [till early 1939] taken a public part in the constitutional discussion” on the Pakistan proposal. Thus, though he did not live long enough to see his “dream” materialise, he is reckoned among Pakistan’s founding fathers.

By late 1938, when he seriously launched his campaign to popularise the Pakistan idea, Haroon had been in politics and in public focus for some 25 years. Along with political activities, Haroon had helped to build institutions in the education, health and social welfare sectors that would make groups and communities become self-contained and self-sustaining. Cosmopolitan in outlook and approach, he reached out beyond the parameters of Sindh, to help sustain worthy causes. His philanthropy extended to the entire subcontinent and the Middle East.

Haroon’s politics were ancillary to his human resource development campaign. And once securely established in business, which he was by the late 1890s, he became increasingly involved with civic activities in Karachi. Later, he became proactive in the major political organisations — the Indian National Congress (1917), the All-India Khilafat Committee (1919-29), Sind Provincial Political Conference (1920-30s), the All-Parties Con­fe­rence (1928), the All-Parties Muslim Confere­nce (1930-34), the Azad Sindh Conference (1930), and the Muslim League (1937).

His electoral defeat in 1937 caused him to wind up the Sind United Party that he had established with Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto in 1936 to take part in provincial elections. While Bhutto opted for a safe sanctuary in Bombay, Haroon chose to face the music. He decided to take part, once again, in all-India politics — a decision at once momentous and fateful.



Abdullah Haroon


The emerging political scenario was obviously unchartered and unpredictable, yet he was determined to canalise the minuscule Sindhi political elite towards playing its due part in all-India politics. He had the foresight to look at the problems of Sindh through an all-India prism, and to establish organic linkages between Sindh and the larger pan-Indian Muslim community, and mainstream Muslim politics, encompassed by AIML.

He, therefore, joined the Muslim League in 1937, established contacts and rapport with its top leadership at Lucknow in October 1937, and organised it at various tiers in the province. To a point, assisted by Shaikh Abdul Majid and Pir Ali Muhammad Rashidi, he was able to successfully organise the First Sind Provincial Muslim League Conference in Karachi, early in October 1938.

In terms of the themes and the participants’ standing, it was an all-India moot, except for it nomenclature. Presided over by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, it saw the participation of a galaxy of Muslim leaders drawn from the NWFP to Hyderabad Deccan, from Bombay to Bengal. Indeed, it read like a who’s who of Muslim India at the time.

Here, Haroon, who headed the Reception Committee, called the shots. His welcome address, which set the tone for the conference, was quite radical: it was in favour of an ideological goal. Without adequate safeguards for the minorities, said Haroon, the Muslims would have no option but “to seek their salvation in their own way in an independent federation of Muslim states”. He warned that, “We have nearly arrived at the parting of the ways and … it will be impossible to save India from being divided into Hindu India and Muslim India, both placed under separate federation.” This was indeed radical stuff.

Interestingly, the main resolution at the conference was cast in Abdullah Haroon’s mould. Though watered down in the Subjects Committee deliberations as Jinnah was not in favour of revealing much before the Muslims were organised and public opinion was galvanised, the resolution had nevertheless enough clout to warrant attention.

Briefly stated, the concept of separate Muslim nationhood was spelled out not only in a political way but also on an intellectual plane, laying down in categorical terms the ideological basics and the basis of that nationhood. Never before had the Hindus and Muslims been officially pronounced by the League as two separate nations. It called for “the political self-determination of the two nations known as Hindus and Muslims”. This explains why Coupland had singled out Haroon as having made a significant contribution, leading to the demand for partition.

In perspective, then, the resolution sought to break new ground; it was truly epochal. Indeed, it represented the penultimate step to, and prepared the ground for, the adoption of the Lahore Resolution by the AIML in March 1940. And herein lies the significance of Haji Abdullah Haroon as a trendsetter.


The writer is HEC Distinguished National Professor.
Published in Dawn, April 27th, 2015


Thursday, October 2, 2014

Fatima Jinnah


Fatima Jinnah: A sister’s sorrow

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Abdul Jabbar Khairi and Abdul Sattar Khairi

Khairis demanded Muslim homeland in 1917

By Saad R. Khairi 



KHAIRI brothers` contribution to the freedom movement largely remains unknown. They were the first to plead at an international organisation for India`s partition as far back as 1917 when World War I was still raging.

Their subsequent struggle for freedom took them to many lands, where they worked for the ideals in which they believed. They faced hardships abroad, were arrested at home and persecuted in many ways but never wavered.

It was at a conference of the Socialist International at Stockholm in 1917 that Abdul Jabbar Khairi and Abdul Sattar Khairi submitted a written proposal to the forum and called for independent status for Muslim states `destroyed by the British`. They named these `states` as Oudh (called United Province during the colonial period and now Uttra Pradesh in India), Sindh, Karnatak, Mysore and Delhi.

It would, of course, be unrealistic to expect the Khairi brothers to have jumped in time and demanded India`s partition something that would be onthe agenda of the Muslim League `under Jinnah`s leadership in 1940. But a study of pages 407-08 of the record of the conference should leave us in no doubt that the two brothers had presented to an international conference the idea in embryonic form of the subcontinent`s partition.

More than three decades later, in 1941 to be specific, when the Congress press was attacking the Pakistan idea and ridiculing it, Abdul Sattar Khairi, the younger brother then in prison in India, wrote a letter to Camille Haysmans, secretary general of the Socialist International, seeking his support. Since Khairi didn`t know Haysmans`s address, he sent the letter to Clement Attlee, then in Winston Churchill`s war cabinet, who forwarded it to Haysmans. In his reply via Attlee, the Socialist leader said he remembered `vividly` that the Khairis had demanded India`s partition in 1917.

Belonging to the Bani Makhzoom tribe of Mecca, the Khairis had come to India during Emperor Shah Jahan`s reign with the avowed aim of giving religious education to Mughal royalty a job they performed till 1857 when the British exiled the last Mughal emperor to Rangoon.

Educated at Delhi and Aligarh, theKhairi brothers later left for Baghdad on the way to Beirut and took admission to the Syrian Protestant College (later the American University of Beirut) where the junior Khairi did his M.A. while the elder brother did a PhD. The elderKhairi later acquired a dozen degrees of doctorate from various European universities.

Lebanon and Palestine, even though still part of the Ottoman empire, had their educational scene dominated by Western, mostly British and French, missionary activity. In 1908 there were 30,000 students in French and British schools, though there were some American and German institutions also.

The Khairi brothers opened Lebanon`sfirst madressah, called Madressa-iHindia, which later became a college and one of its students, Saeb Salam, became one of independent Lebanon`s major political figures.

In 1915, with the Ottoman empire atwar, the Khairi brothers went to Constantinople and launched the city`s first Urdu weekly, Akhovat, using the metal-type technology. With Turkey`s defeat in sight, the Khairi brothers left for Sweden via Russia and met Lenin, who gave them a fur-lined coat each and volunteered the statement that Communist Russia would soon come to India`s help and liberate it. The end of the Great War found them in Germany, where they earned a living by writing,lecturing and translations, because they were fluent in German, English, French, Turkish and Arabic. Even though Germany was in chaos and the Nazis were a rising force, the average German welcomed them because of their antiBritish sentiments. The brothers also converted some Germans to Islam. They included Dr Joseph Goebbels`s sister, whose Muslim name was Nayyar.

Another German woman became Muslim, given the name Fatima, and married Khairi junior.

After refusing to let the Khairi brothers return to India, the British government finally allowed Khairi junior to come home, but made clear there was no guarantee action would not be taken against him for wartime propaganda for the enemy. Abdul Sattar Khairi finally returned to India and started teaching German and French at Aligarh. Jabbar Khairi, however, was still a persona non grata with the British and was not allowed to return. Living in London, he asked Attlee to raise a question in the Commons as to why if he were such a dangerous person he was free in England but was not allowed to return to India. The government finally agreed to let him return.

Meanwhile, Sattar Khairi plungedinto politics, joined the Muslim League, became the chief of Aligarh ML, started a magazine called Spirit of the Times, whose editor was Fatima, and declared at the League`s Patna session in 1938 that the Muslims of India were not a community but a nation. He rose to become a member of the All-India Muslim League Council. However, the Second World War broke out, and Sattar Khairi was arrested and sent to prison in Jhansi and later Dehradun. Fatima, being a European, was sent to one of the camps in Nainital. At Dehradun he discussed politics and, in the evening, played badminton with fellow prisoners, among them Jawaharlal Nehru.

Released in the winter of 1944, Sattar Khairi died a few months later. Deeply religious, he hated mullahs and willed that his last rites should be performed by someone else. So Dr Ziauddin led his funeral prayer and he was buried in Aligarh.

Senior Jabbar took no part in politics after return to India and spent most of his time in his library that contained thousands of books in many languages.

He didn`t marry. Among his frequent visitors was Maulana Maudoodi. Despite his wish to come to Pakistan, Jabbar Khairi couldn`t make it, since he was not willing to part with his books. He died in Delhi in 1955.

This is an unpublished article written by the late Saad R. Khairi, a scion of the Khairi family. He belonged to Pakistan`s diplomatic service. 

Published in Dawn, Supplement Independence Day, August 14th, 2014


Ghulam Ahmed Parvez



The rise and fall of a spiritual rebel