From an epistemic perspective, Sir Syed accords priority to ʿaql over wahy, even though he does not explicitly acknowledge this in so many words. Giving precedence to reason over revelation has several aspects. One general aspect relates to the problem of rational husn and qubh in things, which the Muʿtazilah upheld – that is, the ultimate criterion for the goodness or badness of anything is reason, not the Shariah. In this respect, Sir Syed appears fully aligned with the Muʿtazili position. However, the most significant dimension of this priority is that he takes modern science – grounded in physical observation and experiment – to be the fundamental point of reference for human reason. In contrast, he regards ancient science or Greek philosophy as mere conjecture and surmise. That said, in those questions which do not lie within the operational scope of science, he does attempt to buttress his position by appealing to classical philosophical principles and technical terms. He treats science as such a normative standard of human reason that his stance effectively reaches the point of scientism – which, in the modern West, is among the most extreme of anti-religious tendencies.
A second important point is that Sir Syed assigns no significance to wajdan (inner intuition), even though its importance has been acknowledged in both pre-modern and modern philosophical traditions. It seems that in his view, two factors principally obstruct the recognition of wajdan as a legitimate source of knowledge. The first is precisely this scientism; the second, which is in one respect derivative of the first, is the exaggerated Sufi notion of personal experiential knowledge – a notion that manifests itself in the form of mystical claims about spiritual unveilings. In Sir Syed’s eyes, such claims are “nothing but imaginings – pure imagination and nothing more.” He does not differentiate between kashf (mystical unveiling) and wajdan. There is no doubt that Sufi kashf is indeed one particular form of wajdan, and it can certainly be subjected to criticism or even denial. However, to reject wajdan altogether on the basis of arguments against kashf is in fact a consequence of that scientism which had taken firm hold of Sir Syed’s mind.
The philosophical account of wajdan as presented by al-Ghazali has, of course, always been subject to questioning, and in this matter Sir Syed is not alone. Yet the manner and style in which he attempts to dismiss it entirely attests to the particular cast of his temperament and to a certain stylistic severity. Sir Syed maintains that human beings have been made morally responsible (mukallaf) on the basis of reason, and therefore it is inconceivable that the matters in which they are held responsible should fall outside the ambit of their reason. In principle, no one disputes this. The problem arises at the level of particulars, where Sir Syed tries to apply this principle in a manner that, as Muhsin al-Mulk rightly objects, is simply untenable. To claim that all the principles and doctrines of religion can be demonstrated strictly in accordance with modern science and the laws of nature is both futile and unnecessary.
By contrast, Ibn Rushd – who is often regarded as a precursor of Islamic modernism and whose thought exerted a profound influence on Sir Syed – acknowledged the limitations of reason. He regarded ʿaql as the most important means for understanding the revealed texts and, in that respect, an essential instrument for apprehending reality. However, he kept firmly in view the distinction that reason is incapable of grasping all realities. In this way, wahy constitutes a complementary extension of reason:
كل ما عجز عنہ العقل افاده اللّٰہ تعالی االنسان من قبل الوحی’
Every matter of which reason falls short, Allah Most High grants knowledge of it to the human being by means of revelation.
Therefore, in all such cases we are required to refer back to the Shariah (يجب ان نرجع فيہ الی الشرع). What revelation provides is knowledge of the unseen (ʿilm al-ghayb). The unseen realm (ʿalam al-ghayb) and the visible realm (ʿalam al-shahadah) differ from one another in their very essence and quiddity, and thus the unseen cannot be analogically reduced to the seen. In this way, Ibn Rushd seeks to draw a line of demarcation between religious and philosophical truths. In his view, the real difficulty arises when these two domains are conflated; each has its own proper sphere of operation and must be considered within that sphere.
By contrast, the way in which Sir Syed conceives of reason and its functioning, in an abstract and technical manner, appears to be largely alien even within the Islamic rational tradition itself. Among the philosophers, the mutakallimun and the usuliyyun, there is a substantial discourse concerning ʿaql, its modes of operation and its criteria, and the various classifications of reason that flow from these. Sir Syed’s mental horizon seems almost entirely untouched by these discussions. In his view, after the fourteenth century a new epoch began in which reason attained absolute sovereignty over knowledge of the realities of things. Now, whatever lies beyond the range of reason is to be deemed unacceptable.
A Critical Look at the Theological Thought and Method of Sir Syed
In the foregoing pages we have attempted to examine Sir Syed’s theological contributions and, in that connection, his thought and method, while also indicating certain lines of criticism. The present discussion has thus sought to cast a critical eye over his intellectual project as a whole.
The intellectual climate of his time unquestionably demanded the project of constructing a new ʿilm al-kalam which Sir Syed undertook; yet it would be inaccurate to claim that, in the broader Muslim world, he was the sole pioneer of such an approach. It is true, however, that the storm of opposition which arose against him made his name and work a particular focal point of attention in this connection. Nor can it be denied that his efforts stirred the otherwise quiet theological atmosphere of the Indian subcontinent.
Sir Syed’s theological thought displays both strengths and weaknesses. His admirers and his critics have both tended to excess – the former in praise, the latter in censure. Some critics have not even refrained from declaring him outside the fold of Islam, while some admirers have left no room for moderation in lauding him. In the view of Shaykh Muhammad Ikram, “Perhaps the only ‘fault’ of Sir Syed was that, compared to other ʿulamaʾ, he was more far-sighted and more penetrating in his vision.” The truth is that, while Sir Syed was indeed endowed with a remarkable, even extraordinary, mind and personality, the psychology of intellectual self-assurance that underpinned his scholarly persona prevented him from successfully traversing the thorn-strewn path of renewing Islamic theological thought. Under the banner of scientific thinking, he made an abstract, rational standpoint the foundation of his argumentation – a standpoint which the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has called instrumental reason, and against which, as early as the eighteenth century, reactive currents had already begun to emerge within the West itself in the form of Romanticism and other movements. According to Taylor, this instrumental reason is one of the three major “malaises of modernity” that afflict contemporary Western modernity.
Sir Syed’s engagement with the Islamic intellectual tradition was neither particularly deep nor wide-ranging – as the author of Nuzhat al-Khawatir has also observed, although many of his other allegations against Sir Syed are unwarranted. It was more a matter of his native ingenuity that, from partial or inadequate material, he could derive seemingly “complete” and highly striking conclusions. That said, he did study al-Ghazali and Shah Wali Allah in some detail and benefited from them, and he appears to have been especially influenced by Shah Wali Allah. In many of his ideas and principles, one can clearly hear the echo of Shah Wali Allah’s thought.
Like the medieval Muslim philosophers before him, Sir Syed was intellectually deeply impressed and affected by modern science. The philosophers had regarded acceptance of virtually all the principles and universals of Greek philosophy as a precondition of rationality; Sir Syed, by contrast, took modern science to be the foundational basis of Islamic thinking. In his own age, al-Ghazali had shattered the mould of that mentality which was captivated by Greek philosophy, but in more recent times no comparable work has emerged over the past three centuries that could provide a robust defense against the challenges that modern science poses to religion.
Yet Sir Syed did not possess, to any adequate degree, the capacity to read and understand directly and in their original sources the very currents of thought from which he sought to protect religious belief. One major reason for this was that he knew no Western language that would have enabled him to study Western thought first-hand. Moreover, his reading of Western thought was highly one-sided. He remained largely unfamiliar with the internal critiques and counter-currents that had arisen within the West itself against the very scientific mentality which outwardly seemed to undermine religious transcendence. In defending religious belief, he tended to attribute virtually unlimited capacities to human reason. Had he, for instance, studied Kant – whose intellectual influence was very much alive in Europe at the time – he might not have been so ready to grant reason such boundless authority in matters of religion. He was influenced by the naturalist movements of Europe, but nowhere in his writings do we find clear references indicating what his primary sources were on these questions. My own view is that, in attempting to grasp Western scientific thought through secondary sources, he fell into errors similar to those of Ibn Sina, which Ibn Rushd later criticized in Tahafut al-Tahafut.
Another key point is that Sir Syed never undertook a principled study of the very nature of science itself and of its precise scope – issues that are now treated within the philosophy of science. From his conception of science, he tried to extract something that science, in fact, does not itself claim. Furthermore, in his doctrine of “nature” (fitrat) he uncritically accepted the prevailing interpretations of fitrat without reflecting that these interpretations are mutable rather than absolute. The laws of nature, as we understand them, are grounded in human cognition and experience – and human cognition and experience are subject to constant growth and development.
In formulating the premises of his theological thought, Sir Syed deployed a number of principles, several of which are highly significant and testify to the creativity of his mind. Yet some of the key principles on which he sought to erect his intellectual edifice are extremely weak; no solid theoretical structure can be built upon them. For example, in his correspondence with Maulana Qasim Nanawtawi, Sir Syed stated fifteen principles; the ninth was as follows:
A human being cannot be held responsible (mukallaf) for anything beyond human capacity; hence, if he is charged with faith (iman), it is necessary that faith and those injunctions on which salvation depends should not lie beyond human reason.
Maulana Nanawtawi raised two objections to this. First, that the negation of taklif ma la yutaq (imposing duties beyond capacity) concerns actions (aʿmal), not faith (iman). Second, that “action depends on the operative faculty, not on the rational faculty, such that lack of awareness of its inner rationale and wisdom would prevent moral responsibility.” Many elements and components of faith and practice, and the underlying purposes which they serve, are not fully accessible to human reason. Maulana Nanawtawi also raised the question of the status and standard of reason itself, considered in terms of its operations – a question that is fundamentally sound. The theological issues on which Sir Syed took up the task of inquiry demanded very deep and sustained reflection, but it appears that, entangled as he was in numerous practical engagements, he lacked the time for the level of deliberation they required.
The greatest difficulty with Sir Syed’s theological thought is that the principled framework within which he conducts his discussion is, on the one hand, based on a complete rupture from the tradition, and, on the other, not particularly coherent or internally organised with respect to its relevant dimensions. By contrast, Husayn Afandi al-Jisr (d. 1909), for example, placed emphasis on general principles. In discussing the theory of evolution, he adopted the principle that if any scientific finding should attain the level of demonstration and certainty, then recourse to figurative interpretation (taʾwil) of scriptural texts becomes possible. He writes:
لو فرض ان ادلتکم علی النشوء بلغت الی درجۃ اليقين وهديتم الی اعتقاد دين محمد الذی اساسہ ان ال خالق لشیء اال اللّٰہ تعالی فال حجر عليکم فی تاويل تلک النصوص وصرفها عن ظاهرها وتطبيقها علی ماقامت عليہ االدلۃ قاطعۃ من
النشوء مع اعتقاد انہ بخلق اللّٰہ تعالی وال ينافی ذلک. If it be supposed that your evidences for evolution have reached the degree of certainty, and that you are guided to belief in the religion of Muhammad – whose foundation is that there is no creator of anything other than Allah Most High – then there is no hindrance upon you in interpreting those (scriptural) texts, diverting them from their apparent meanings, and applying them to that which has been firmly established by conclusive evidences of evolution, provided that you simultaneously maintain the conviction that this too is by Allah’s creative act, and that there is no contradiction in this.
Similarly, Farid Wajdi (d. 1954) took the view that attempts to align the Quran’s statements about cosmic phenomena with scientific theories are mistaken, because the Quran is not concerned with the precise factual nature of such phenomena. Its purpose is rather the moral and spiritual training of the human self and to impel it toward reflection on the universe.
Ibn Taymiyyah, in Darʾ taʿarud al-ʿaql wa-l-naql, sought to establish general principles on this question, principles which later figures such as Maulana Thanawi built upon in their own efforts at systematization. Ibn Taymiyyah posits four possible configurations of conflict between reason and revelation and, within this principled framework, seeks a reconciliation between the two. Although there is room for discussion in these principles and generalizations – and they cannot be deemed final – they nonetheless provide fundamental and practically useful guidance for resolving apparent conflicts between reason and the scriptural texts. In contrast, the foundational framework which Sir Syed outlines is very loose, and its weakness is further exposed by the fact that he does not respond with intellectual seriousness to the objections raised against it.
Summary of the Discussion
The period in which Sir Syed Ahmad Khan attempted to formulate his theological thought was one of intense turmoil for Islamic intellectual life. Not only in the Indian subcontinent but also in the central lands of Islam, the horizons of Islamic thought were overshadowed by the clouds of imitation and stagnation. In response to this, two fundamental tendencies emerged within the Muslim world. One tendency sought, from within the Islamic intellectual tradition itself and through its internal resources, to confront the rational challenges facing Islamic thought and to benefit from the breadth, diversity and richness of that tradition. In the Indian context, this tendency is represented by Shibli. The second tendency, which also arose in this region, tried to spread a new intellectual canvas in order to meet these challenges, largely setting aside the distinctive features of the Islamic intellectual heritage. This latter approach is represented by Sir Syed and the cohort of thinkers associated with him – such as Chiragh Ali and Amir Ali – with Sir Syed at their head.
Although the foundational principles on which Sir Syed sought to build his theological edifice were weak and marked by fissures, his project nonetheless helped to open up previously closed intellectual pathways, much as the emergence of Muʿtazili thought once provoked and energized the theological reflection of Ahl al-Sunnah scholars. The theological thought and method of Sir Syed have had far-reaching effects, which may be assessed on both positive and negative grounds. Yet the positive effects are by no means negligible, and in the Indian subcontinent they may be discerned, in varying degrees, in the intellectual and scholarly endeavors of Shibli, Iqbal and the Farahi school.