The Early Defensive Attempts against the Political and Ideological Onslaught of the West on the Islamic World and their Achievements

The Islamic world made a number of attempts to meet the Western ideological onslaught, and many convinced and devout Muslims worked wholeheartedly to protect their faith and religion. These attempts to defend and safeguard Islamic values were of two types, the first was limited to mere protection and the second sought apologetic compromise and attenuation.

The merely defensive efforts to protect religious values and beliefs can be described, to quote Maulana Manazir Ahsan Gilani, as the following of Ashab-e-Kahaf’s attitude. They fled from the mainstream of social life in order to hold fast to faith. Even though this might appear to be sheer escapist in motivation, it was in fact based on the realistic acceptance of the truth that the Muslim world was not able to mount a direct frontal offensive on the West. The only way that remained open was to keep away from the flood tide of secularism and hold fast to religious faith, caring little for those who derided this approach. As a matter of fact, whatever meager success was achieved in the defense of faith was made possible through this approach. The faith of a section of the Muslim community was saved from atheistic influences and a few candles of faith were left alight in the darkness of crass materialism. The structure of the faith and religious law was maintained through sermons and the teachings of the Qur’an and Hadith. The most important phenomena of this type of struggle in the Indo-Pak subcontinent was the establishment of a Dar-ul-Uloom at Deoband. In name a mere scholastic institution, it was in reality the harbinger of a great revivalist movement.

The fundamental principle of the more aggressive approach was to keep up with the changing times without losing faith. To achieve this, they undertook to sift the sound from the fallacious in modern ideas and to construct a modernist version of Islam in order to prove its veracity as well as its capacity to meet modern challenges effectively.

At first, signs of defeatism were manifest in those who took up this work. A number of pseudo-scholastic thinkers of India and Egypt started to test the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith in the light of the new rationalism of the West. As a result of this, religious beliefs were attenuated and their metaphysical concepts were reinterpreted in purely scientific terms. Sayyid Ahmed Khan in the Indo-Pak subcontinent and Mufti Muhammad Abduh in Egypt and their acolytes attempted to formulate a modern interpretation of Islam to save it from anachronism and allow believers to make headway on the path of scientific progress like the Europeans. Their motives may have been sincere and their dedication genuine, but through these attempts Islam undeniably lost its very spirit and élan. The influence of Western materialism resulted in a non-religious version of Islam. Thus, these attempts served only a negative purpose: saving of those who were already completely Europeanized in culture and life-style from being called ‘un-Islamic’. Their inclusion in the fraternity of Muslim brotherhood remained unchallenged, and this new version of Islam was presented to the West on their behalf as an ‘apology’.

Ref: An excerpt from the English translation of the Book "اسلام کی نشاة ثانیہ :کرنے کا اصل کام" byDr Israr Ahmad (RAA); “ISLAMIC RENAISSANCE: The Real Task Ahead” [Translated by Dr. Absar Ahmad]