Tradition and modernity

Earlier than beginning his lecture in our top quality in M. Com, one among our professors gave us some meals for thought in regards to the dynamics of the ‘trendy’ world and the way it determines winners and losers. He delved on the scientific achievements of the western world and its progress in different fields because of the Renaissance, which was primarily a brand new worldview, changing custom with modernity as a way of life and rationality with religion as the premise of rationalization of pure and social phenomena.

On the finish of the lecture, he suggested us to adapt to modern realities of modernity if we wished to succeed. It was an period of the “survival of the fittest”, he concluded, and one shouldn’t cling to the previous however look ahead and embrace change as the mandatory situation for progress. For him and lots of others, adopting modernity reasonably than following custom needs to be the overarching goal of each rational human being, particularly the educated class. This aim, nonetheless, appears unattainable, if not undesirable, within the context of Pakistan partly due to completely different training programs in vogue and partly due to some misconceptions about modernity vis-à-vis Islam.

The prevailing training system in Pakistan displays two completely different fashions — Deoband (traditionalist) and Aligarh (modernist). Madrassa Deoband was based in 1866 — 9 years after the Muslims had misplaced the battle of independence in 1857. Maulana Qasim Nanothwi, the founding father of Madrassa Deoband, and different like-minded non secular students have been satisfied that the prime reason for the Muslims’ downfall within the Indian sub-continent was the apathy of Muslims in direction of Islam. The curriculum taught in Deoband was designed to serve three major targets: to revive the glory of Islam, to withstand British colonialism, and to purify Islamic teachings from distortions.

A multi-prong technique was adopted to attain these targets. Within the preliminary section, the founders of Deoband centered on instructing primary abilities in logic, Arabic and Persian language, and Islamic historical past along with the exegesis of Quran and Hadith. Majority of madaris (non secular seminaries) are nonetheless instructing the identical topics with little window dressing within the type of introducing English and laptop science. This was adopted by spreading the message of Islam by way of sermons in Juma prayers and sending delegates to distant areas for preaching (Tablighi Jamaat is doing this work right this moment).

Within the second section, political wrestle was began with the creation of a political occasion, specifically Jamiat Ulemai Hind, along with motivating Muslims to wage Jihad in opposition to the British. Little doubt all this was obligatory within the given circumstances however after partition there was a necessity for some reforms significantly in madrassa training and the re-orientation and re-interpretation of Jihad. Within the newly created Pakistan, the madrassa training ought to have centered extra on growing financial system and state infrastructure according to Islamic teachings than blindly sticking to the outdated curriculum adopted through the British rule. Sadly, we’ve madrassa graduates who provide options to issues that don’t actually exist and sometimes fail to know not to mention provide options to issues that we face in the actual world.

In sharp distinction to Deoband, Sir Syed Ahmad Khan established Aligarh Faculty, initially as a madrassa in 1875, to emancipate Muslims from British slavery and Hindu domination. He was satisfied that the degeneration of Muslims was resulting from their backwardness in trendy sciences. He strongly advocated studying English as a gateway to understanding the usage of science and expertise in all fields of human life. Furthermore, he tried to reconcile Islamic teachings with trendy science by giving a pre-eminent position to cause reasonably than perception. He argued that the “phrase of God” (the scripture) can and shouldn’t contradict the “work of God” (the universe). Majority of latest academic establishments in Pakistan (each private and non-private) have been based on the Aligarh mannequin previous to Normal Zia’s Islamisation drive. This training system produced professionals who occurred to be alien in their very own nation. They occupied prestigious jobs in navy and civil paperwork with a visual distance from most of the people. Their superiority complicated coupled with ethical shortcomings made them egocentric and torpid.

A extra pragmatic and viable strategy to redefining our training system is to combine Islamic teachings with trendy sciences into one stream. Custom and modernity ought to, in precept, go collectively. The both/or dichotomy between them is a false one and must be averted. Turkey underneath the management of Tayyip Erdogan has proved Mustafa Kamal’s principle of “no modernisation with out westernisation” as empirically fallacious. How can we do that in Pakistan, past the short repair of the Single Nationwide Curriculum, is a problem for students and coverage makers to take significantly.

Printed in The Categorical Tribune, February 13^th, 2023.

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