CONTEMPORARY MUSLIM RESPONSE
TO THE CHALLENGE OF KNOWLEDGE:
SEPARATING THE GRAIN FROM THE CHAFF - 9
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[Background ]
[ The Problem I ]
[ The Problem II ]
4. The Role of
Institutions The role of waqf Institutions in the development of
educational institutions in the early history of Islam has been adequately dealt
with by numerous works among them that of Makdisi. Even in the West it has been
virtually the same story, understandably so, for a lot of the impetus for
development came from the then Muslim world.(53) These works have obviated the
need to dwell on the subject and leaves
us with only two fairly obvious points to make. Now that they have all but
disappeared, ways of resuscitating these must form a component of this drive to
respond to the challenge of knowledge. In reviving them, care must be taken to avoid
the partisanship which characterised the waqfs of old or even the more
dangerous contemporary partisanship of madhhab,
Sufi, Salafi or such frivolous creations of the idle, if pious, minds of
today. But there is another role of another institution which
we ought not be oblivious of. Like Nasr argued, the science of today does not
stand on pure scientific fact alone it has a whole army behind it.(54) The
secular epistemology which has created it and under which it thrives has also
created a range of institutions that reinforce and protect it and occasionally
enforce it. In the rather more blunt words of Abdullahi Smith: “The reason why
the new tradition of learning which these (Western) institutions represent, in
spite of the way in which they run counter to the grain of human intellectual
history ... are so often unquestionably accepted ... is no doubt a function of
the enormous material power ... whatever we may say about the moral basis of
the human governments of the industrialised world of Western Europe and North
America, there is no doubt at all about its colossal power ...”.(55) This is
not to suggest that Muslims should raise an army to protect their epistemology,
in fact it is to suggest that they should dispense with having any. Ziauddin
Sardar, when discussing his idea (or is it dream?) of an Islamic university
seems to summarise the point, when he says: “Unlike the western university,
which despite being guided in all its endeavours by values which are
deliberately hidden, swept under the carpet so that they may not be noticed, an
Islamic university boldly states the values and norms which shape its goals and
academic work. This is not just a much more honest stance, it is also a less
dangerous one”.(56) Ideas, at least we now know, can be far more powerful than
sheer physical power, as the collapse of the Berlin wall amply demonstrated.
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