[Background ]  [ The Problem I ]    [ The Problem II ]   [ The Problem III ]   [ Approach of IIIT ]   [ Delineation of the Problem ]   [ Role of History ]    [ Role of Attitudes ]   [ Role of Institutions ]   [ I. of Knowledge & Islamization of Society ]   [ Concluding Remarks ]  Abstract This article stems from a concern that the popular perception of the Islamization of knowledge currently in vogue appears to be a gross oversimplification of a much more complex and arduous process and could, therefore, delay rather than hasten the intellectual recovery of the Muslim Ummah. The article attemps to trace the genesis of the problem and then examines some of the Islamization ideas of the IIIT against a background of the ideas of some pioneering scholars. The thrust of the article’s argument is that while there is a case for the Islamization of knowledge, the grains appear to be jumbled with much chaff and there is an urgent need to separate the chaff from the grain and put the whole challenge into perspective. This, it argues is a process which requires the best minds of the Ummah. Some of the issues that may need immediate attention in this respect are also examined, hoping thereby to provoke the thoughts of others and generate a fruitful debate. Introduction Some 15 years ago a Muslim professor of education gave a lecture on the ways of evaluating learning to a class in an Islamic university. At the end of the lecture, the professor asked the class, which had all along been listening attentively, if they wished to ask any questions about the lecture. The first, which turned out to be the only, question asked was whether what the professor had just taught them was halal or haram? The poor professor must have found the question depressing in itself, but this, however, is the least of our worries. Admittedly, students of Islamic universities, at least the one in question, are not usually the brightest, for the best are apt to attend secular (or shall we call them non-Islamic) universities, but this is not the point here. Rather, the point here is the encounter between two frames of mind, one nurtured in an Islamic system of education, or what has remained of it, and the other nurtured in the ever pervading Western system of education. The encounter itself is not the problem, but rather what it reveals and indeed what it conceals. It immediately reveals the gulf that exists between these two frames of mind, a gulf which threatens to make any discussion a dialogue of the deaf. But it also conceals Muslim inadequacy in both their own intellectual tradition as in the ubiquitous Western tradition. This encounter actually conceals more than it reveals, but our immediate interest is the gulf this dichotomy has created, the intellectual degeneration it has occasioned and the challenge it poses. The root of the problem can be traced back a few centuries. Indeed it may all have started with the expulsion of the Muslims from Spain some five centuries ago. We need not debate here whether this expulsion, in 1492, was the cause or the consequence of the problem. Those who believe that it was the consequence, may wish to push the problem half a century earlier when the Renaissance movement first began. Whichever point is taken, it will suffice, for our purpose, to say that from that point onwards Muslims began an intellectual retreat from which they have never returned. It is true the Ottoman Caliphate rose to greatness thereafter and so spread Islam into Europe. Similarly, other states and polities, like the Mughal Empire in India and the Sokoto Caliphate in Hausaland also rose to produce towering scholars. But this scholarship was no longer all encompassing nor was it the pace setter it used to be, so the fact still remains that expulsion from Spain marked the beginning of an intellectual decline from which the Muslims never recovered. Having quit the frontiers of knowledge, Muslims were gradually reduced from being producers of knowledge to being consumers of knowledge. Having absconded from the cutting edge of history, they receded from their position as makers of history to victims of history, where they have since remained. The invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 represented a significant milestone in this degeneration. In an intellectual encounter at al-Azhar, the French scientists appeared to have had no difficulty in impressing and dumfounding scholars at the great al-Azhar with their scientific displays. Though the Shaykhs of al-Azhar put up a very brave face and Shaykh al-Bakri, very confident in his Islamic faith, even challenged the conjurers, or so he thought they were, this singular act nevertheless shook the Muslim intellectual establishment leaving far reaching consequences in its trail. For al-Jabarti, the Egyptian historian, after visiting, like many of his contemporaries, the Institute set up by Napoleon, with its extensive library and scientific equipment, he wrote a long account of his visit and did not hide his astonishment, concluding his description with the words, “things which minds like ours cannot comprehend”.(1) Perhaps not in so many words, but the gulf, the degeneration and the challenge are all evident. The significance of the French invasion, which as we know signalled many successive such invasions, was in bringing all these to the fore. It was an encounter between an intellectual tradition that had long rested on its oars and another which having taken its cue and borrowed a lot from the former, had taken the wind out of the former’s sails and overtaken it. This in itself is natural and presents us with no more difficulty than life itself, after all this is what in a way the Islamic intellectual tradition did to others before it. The problem, however, lies in the fact that while the Islamic intellectual tradition developed largely because of and in tune with its religion, the Western intellectual tradition could only do so in spite of and often in defiance of its own religion. The fact that it had to rebel against its own religious tradition to survive and thrive, created a basis for and gave vent to a dichotomy between the religious and the secular, the sacred and the profane, in which the latter seeks to curtail and dominate the former. This tragic development found its way into the Muslim world through a combination of coercion and persuasion. Muhammad Ali who came to power in Egypt not long after the French left, began the policy of sending students to study in the universities of France, a policy which Constantinople (Istanbul) had also began. This was to be continued by generations of Egyptian and Ottoman rulers. This paved the way for the Western system of education with its secular frame of reference, and which gradually, if imperceptibly, supplanted and undermined the Islamic system of education and social morality. By the late nineteenth century, the dichotomy had taken root in Egypt, and while the scope and vision of Azhar was diminishing in both depth and breadth, the influence of Western trained scholars was growing. Muhammad Abduh had cause to criticise the ulama’ “for their negative attitude towards the modern sciences in spite of the fact that such knowledge had been taught in Moslem madarasahs in the past”.(2) But he also dismissed the Egyptian products of Western education, saying that “these are even more misguided”.(3) The Egyptian government itself was busy replacing the Azhar shaykhs in both the schools as well as the courts with these products of Western education referred to as the Effendi. As one Western scholar sympathetically argued, “the Shaikh-judges ... could be charged with inefficiency and backwardness, with inadaptability to the new social conditions and lack of understanding of the new spirit which was gradually permeating conditions through contact with Europeans. The effendi”, the writer continues, “in spite of his lack of training, was more polished and adaptable and quicker witted than his shaikh colleagues”.(4) In 1892, when Muhammad Shibli Nu’mani, from the Indo-pak sub-continent, visited Cairo, he shared his concerns about this situation with Muhammad Abduh. From his report, he seems to have left dissatisfied with what the Dar al-Ulum in Cairo could offer and certainly unimpressed by the effendis of Egypt.(5) Since then this dilemma has occupied one generation after another and remained unresolved.