The Philosopher King — The Case of Fazlur Rahman

The authoritarian ruler has the best existential chance of succeeding in carrying out large-scale socio-moral reforms if only he shows boldness and courage. He not only possesses sufficient actual power for enforcement but also controls the media of mass communication-the press, radio and television-which can be effectively used for suitable inducement of public opinion if tactfully operated. In such a situation, if he does not implement such reforms, it is difficult to see how else reform will come about at all.[1]

The above statement is extraordinary particularly since it comes from a figure who is arguably the doyen of the modern Islamic Studies field and inspiration behind countless would be reformer-activists operating under the guise of academia in the Anglosphere.

Professor Fazlur Rahman has been celebrated uncritically in Islamic Studies departments for the last few decades — held up as an exemplar reformer. His work has had enormous influence from the Indo-Malay region[2] to a new generation of Muslim feminist authors who seek to appropriate his theory of Revelation and hermeneutics for their own projects. Little attention if any, however, has been given to his political career as a zealous Philosopher King under the auspices of the military ruler Ayub Khan in Pakistan.

What treatment is given to this period is often apologetic, romanticising the ‘Philosopher-King’ label in Rahman’s context painting him as a lonely figure struggling to enlighten the masses and sanitising the career of Ayub Khan[3] or seeks to only treat Rahman as a victim of ‘traditionalist emotionalism’[4]. It never looks at Rahman’s own political inclination and outlook.

Professor Rahman’s stint in Pakistan is looked at as a frustrated and agonising period of how a brave lone reformer battles against the unwashed masses of Sunni traditionalism. This is mere projection however and often such characterisation is performed by those very sympathetic and invested in his intellectual project, for as I make the case in this piece it would be more accurate to see him as a frustrated autocrat who despite commanding the impressive machinery of Ayub Khan’s praetorian state failed to ram through his vision.

Considerable work has been done on Rahman’s intellectual work, looking at his moral philosophy [5], legal application [6] however what attracts most attention is the specific issue of his hermeneutical framework that has been characterised as progressive [7], emphasizing the “human side of the Quran” [8] and cited as inspiration for a whole generation of Muslim feminists[9] (including Amina Wadud [10])who grapple with the Qur’an. My interest in this piece is looking at how the Rahmanian project was attempted to be realised in the context of a newly independent Pakistan.

Khan’s Liberal Authoritarianism

Part of Ayub’s Khan programme towards modernisation was a recognition that it was necessary to construct a new type of religious authority that bypassed or perhaps even subdued the ulema who remained sceptical and unwilling to cede interpretive authority. Towards this end, Ayub created the Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology (ACII) and Islamic Research Institute. The latter would be Fazlur Rahman’s ship to command, and this created a dangerous precedent that allowed significant interference from the State in contentious scholarly debates. Later history would go on to repeat itself as Generally Musharraf another would-be moderniser would announce a drive towards ‘enlightened moderation’ placing the controversial religious intellectual Javed Ahmed Ghamidi at the helm, notorious for his hadith scepticism.

This impressive endeavour and brazen attempt to sideline the ulema from having any interpretive agency could not have been missed by someone as learned as Professor Rahman, one has to assume then that his engagement was cognisant of the implications of what this meant for religious authority in the newly founded Pakistan. Vali Nasr, writes extensively here about Ayub’s ambitions:

“Islam, it was apparent to the new regime, could not immediately be sidelined but it could be reformed, modernized, depoliticized, and eventually eased out of politics. In a surprise move, on May 3, 1959, Ayub Khan addressed a gathering of the ulama from both East and West Pakistan. He devoted his speech to exhorting the divines to do away with obscurantism and interpret religion in ways that were more relevant to the country’s developmental agenda and that would fight communism.

The general’s speech set the tone for subsequent relations between the military regime and the Islamic groups. Thenceforth, the government sought to take the monopoly of interpreting Islam away from Islamic parties to control the nature and scope of religion’s interaction with society and politics. The national concern for “Islamicity” in literary and political circles quickly gave way to lip service to the “principles of Islam,” a change that in effect undermined the religiopolitical platform of parties such as the Jama‘at. The government sought to limit the scope of their activities and demands, exclude them from the political process, and subject them to state control. To accomplish this, Ayub Khan turned to state-sponsored institutions that could appropriate the right to interpret Islam and control its flow into politics.

This job was given to two ministries, interior and education, and information and broadcasting. Together they launched a propaganda campaign questioning the loyalty to Pakistan of the self-styled spokesmen of Islam, their knowledge of modern statecraft, and even their moral and ethical standing. Under the provisions of the Waqf (endowment) Properties Ordinance of 1959, religious endowments were nationalized, and the government took over the management of shrines and mosques. Then it formulated its own conception of Islam, and its own religiopolitical platform, thereby entering the domain of the ulama with the goal of appropriating for the state the right to interpret Islam and implement its teachings. The government’s synthesis was essentially modernist, premised on reforming Islamic law and interpreting its tenets liberally in light of the needs of the government’s developmental objectives. Qazi Shahabu’ddin, the minister of education, information, and broadcasting, was particularly vocal in furthering the government’s cause, and his pronouncements on a host of religious issues soon incensed the ulama.

The actual task of devising a new vision of Islam was delegated to the Institute of Islamic Culture (Idarah-i Thiqafat-i Islam) of Lahore, headed by Khalifah ‘Abdu’l-Hakim (d. 1959), and, more significantly, to the Islamic Research Institute of Karachi, headed by Fazlur Rahman (d. 1988), a confidant of Ayub Khan. The two institutions outlined the government’s strategy against the ulama and Islamic parties, providing an intellectual rationale for the essentially political campaign against the religious forces” [11]

Contemporary discussion about Islamization amongst intellectual circles in Pakistan particularly those writing in English, or influenced by Western academia often cite Zia-ul-Haq as the chief architect for the instrumentalization of religion for State purposes.[12] However, a more correct reading is that the genesis of using Islam as a resource for State-building and formation explicitly under the auspices of the Army imagining a Praetorian Republic of sorts lies with Ayub Khan:

“The close relationship between the army and the Pakistan government during Ayub Khan’s tenure as president (1958–69) was expressed in almost all fronts of governance, including economic development, foreign policy and crafting a Pakistani national identity. Ayub Khan aimed to teach the Pakistani people the ideal of nationalism and make the army the ‘true’ protectors of Islam and the nation. This was presented as ‘benevolent despotism’. The collective identity of Pakistan as a Muslim nation and the state’s Islamising efforts were intertwined”[13]

A related controversy for Pakistanis is the legacy that Jinnah left behind in terms of what sort of state he wished to fashion, which is beyond the scope of this article — however, what is abundantly clear from my reading is that Jinnah wished to use Islam as a resource for state-building — what this exactly would look like, whether he would have approved for such a venture under a framework of praetorian rule, what his stance would be vis a vis the ulema and other important questions will forever be a source of speculation for historians given how soon he died after founding Pakistan.

Rahman Declares War Against the Ulema

What is even more disconcerting is that Rahman whilst offering opinions on interest, birth control and other contentious issues that often pitted him against a range of ulema also sought to provide an Islamic basis for Ayub’s dictatorial tendencies offering explicit moral justification to the nation-state to create an ‘ideology of Islam’ going so far as to state:

“…the ultimate control and direction of practical religious life the Community vests in the Head. For example, how mosques are to be mannered and run, how the religious schooling is to be done and what religious curricula are to be taught, etc. is his responsibility.”[14]

In the Rahmanian vision then, the very nature of religious life and discourse is within the domain of the nation-state, it is the prerogative of the political rulers to determine what exactly constitutes the boundaries of acceptable religious discourse. If the ulema, the madrassahs, and traditional seminaries will not bend the knee to the ruler then naturally force should be used. Rahman later goes on to argue in the same paper that the State can effectively ‘’suspend the operation of the Shari’ah if….[deemed] necessary”. In Rahman’s imagination, the ‘Head of the State’ represents the sum total colossal will of the ‘’Community’’ — how this authority is legitimised is vague for at times in his work Rahman tends towards democratic legitimacy and at other times veers towards epistemic authoritarianism requiring coercive force. The ‘voice of the Community’ is assumed to be the will of the ‘Head of State’. Such words would have been music the ears of the military ruler Ayub. Even more ominous is Rahman’s assertion that the situation demanded:

“An enlightened class of religious leaders. We must repeat that our present religious leadership is unable to fulfill this function [broadly hinted at as ijtihad, by Rahman in the preceding paragraphs]by any stretch of imagination. The intolerable insufficiency and out-modedness of their curriculum must necessarily condemn them to this position” [15]

Rahman rather than offering dialogue or reconciliation with the ulema, declared all-out war against them, sanctioning them as the target for Ayub’s policy of forced modernisation — no doubt aware of the coercive power of a praetorian state and all too ready to use it to achieve his own ideological vision. This authoritarian streak one could argue is present in the work of his intellectual descendants today working within the Anglophone academia who harbour similar contempt, antipathy, and envy for the traditionally trained ulema today.

Rahman elsewhere offers some key insights into what can be a hindrance to this new social order that he envisages and again is not afraid of using coercive force to achieve this new reality:

“The inertia and recalcitrance of people to the establishment of such a social order has to be overcome. People have to be made conscripts in the path of goodness, so to say, if they suffer from inertia”

What this looks like in terms of constructing religious authority is again outlined in no uncertain terms:

“For this purpose, services of the local religious leadership, i.e. the Imams and Khtaibs must be enlisted besides the State media of publicity. In fact, all members of the society must be made to realise, and realise starkly unless they positively cooperate for good, and produce results, their doom is not going to be any different from other bygone nations” [16]

Once again, the Rahmanian discourse of reform is ambitious and does not shy away from complete State-capture of religious authority. This antipathy towards his intellectual opponents and threatening them with the full writ of the machinery of a praetorian regime is once again on stark display:

“Our Mulla suffers from the handicap of the same medieval outlook and has developed a resistance to all modern ideas. His way of thinking has to be changed. For this, it is necessary to pass through him an entirely overhauled syllabus of education, a question which we shall discuss in greater detail in the last article of this series. It should be point out, however, that whereas a reformed Mulla is a necessity for a society, a Pir is a parasite and the two must be clearly distinguished. The Mulla, however, has to come under State control directly or indirectly”[17]

In the Rahmanian scheme the only good ‘’Mullah’’ is the ‘’reformed’’ Mullah and not only that, this ‘’reformed Mullah’’ becomes a salaried bureaucrat who dares not contradict the wisdom of the State’s agenda. Who exactly will be in charge of this new syallbus of ‘enlightenment’? It is quite clear that what Rahman envisages is not a partnership, dialogue or a mutual exchange of ideas but utter and complete domination of the traditional ulema who can only continue to function under the aegis of his new epistocracy — reformed and compliant with his agenda.

To highlight this stark epistemic authoritarianism, the sagely Rahman writes condescendingly:

“The local Imams and Khatibs may undergo a short course of instruction themselves so that the religious leadership itself becomes enlightened”. [18]

What is even more remarkable is Rahman’s brazen conflation of the writ of the State with Islam the religion itself. In his scheme, there was no difference. In the two preceding articles cite Rahman goes on to give Ayub extraordinary powers — the right to curtail media freedom even warning that a multiparty system is something to be suspicious about from an Islamic standpoint. Rahman in effect ever keen to assume the position of the ‘Philosopher-King’ was enthusiastic about forcing Ayub down a line of forced religious modernisation according to his own desire.

Rahman turns Islam into an instrument of the State, an ideological prescription that all citizens particularly unruly ulema must adhere to or otherwise volunteer themselves (whether by choice or not, Rahman adopts a position of deliberate ambiguity at times) for ‘re-education’ to become ‘enlightened’. Professor Zaman writes insightfully about how Rahman would go on to construct a theology of utter obedience to the ‘enlightened strongman’:

“In keeping with the statist view, it is no surprise that Rahman underlined the need for a strong man at the helm of the affairs. But some of the language is extraordinary, for instance when elucidating how the Qur’an presents God: “God’s concept is functional, i.e., God is needed not for what He is or may be but for what He does. It is exactly in this spirit that Aristotle compares God to a general of the army. For the general (in Aristotle’s concept) is not a soldier among other soldiers — just as God is not an extra-fact among facts — but represents ‘order,’ i.e., the fundamental function of holding the army together.” In a later work, Rahman was markedly more restrained in speaking of the strong man: “The Qur’an will tolerate strongman rule only as a temporary arrangement if a people is immature, for how can a society whose people remain immature produce mature leaders? The efforts of several Muslims the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to justify and propagate the idea of a strongman rule, therefore, run in the very teeth of the Qur’an.” But that was a decade after the fall of Ayub Khan”[19]

Pakistan Through Hallaq

Hallaq’s now seminal work ‘The Impossible State’ is a brutal takedown and dissection of Islamist ambitions of state-capture. The case of Pakistan, however, demonstrates that Hallaq’s assertions about Islamists agitating for state-capture need to be grounded historically and contextualised according to each nation-state’s experience. The traditionally trained ulema and Islamists (for instance like Maulana Maududi) of Pakistan from the outset were outcasts from the machinery of the State, subject to the violence of a praetorian ruler accompanied by a Philosopher-King with pretensions of completely overhauling the system of religious education and discourse in the country. In such a light, it is only rational that the opponents of Rahman would seek State-capture not for the sake of domination but for survival since a dangerous precedent had been set. Indeed, as Pakistani’s history shows whenever a new ruler accedes to power the Council of Islamic Ideology is packed with scholars sympathetic to the agendas of contemporary rulers. Opting out of such a contest then becomes suicide. State-capture then becomes a necessary part of any religious movement’s agenda. What becomes apparent from the Pakistani context is that the State whether that be praetorian or monarchical harnessing the technologies and capabilities of the State not just for economic and institutional modernisation but also for cultural and religious reform becomes a dangerous gambit since it entrenches the notion that victory of a particular religious discourse can only be guaranteed through complete State-capture. Rather than allowing for independent institutions to organically develop at a critical distance from temporal authority Ayub embarked on an opportunistic play at consolidating power across various sectors of Pakistani society. Some of these would no doubt sow the seeds for the atrocities that would be endured by the people of Bangladesh.

Professor Rahman, it seemed lacked confidence in the veracity of his ideas in winning over the masses or even significant sections of the scholarly community. He viewed both with contempt and loathing particularly the ulema. He clearly resigned himself to the idea that Islamic reform could only be achieved through imposed top-down reforms through mandatory ‘’re-educational’’ activities. What Rahman did not count on, was the tenacity and sheer independence of the ulema who would oppose him and be forever suspicious of Ayub’s agenda. Not only that but later on when Zia ul Haq would assume power they would rationally make a play for State-capture. The critical difference, however, is this — when Ayub’s star faded Rahman had to go into exile and was unable to organically establish a presence within Pakistan that would effectively challenge his intellectual opponents. His opponents, however, would always be present even if at times they would be aggressively sidelined by the State. They would always sustain a presence in the public sphere which Rahman always found difficult to pursue given the controversial nature of his ideas and his underlying epistemic autocracy.

The episode of Rahman thus serves as a useful example to understand the project of Islamic reform that has unfolded and continues to unfold across several different Muslim contexts. It underscores the need to look at the work and activism of would be reformists, modernists, progressives, etc with a more critical eye and to unpack the pathologies within their projects that more often than not tends towards the authoritarian rather than the authoritative. Frustrated by the well-established edifice of classical and traditional Sunni pedagogical practices these modernists attempt to inflict violence on such infrastructure feeling resigned that their ideas will not gain much traction in such circles. This frequently entails fashioning new modes of religious authority.

Fazlur Rahman, was a frustrated Philosopher-King who had little to no intention of fostering partnership, dialogue, and conversation with the ulema. He sought complete domination. He declared war on his opponents by cynically throwing his lot in with Ayub Khan. In doing so, he created the precedent where the Pakistani State interferes actively with religious discourse threatening its very integrity.

[1] Fazlur Rahman, “Islamic Modernism: Its Scope, Method and Alternatives” (1970) 1 International Journal of Middle East Studies 317 <www.jstor.org/stable/162650>.

[2] Safet Bektovic, “Towards a Neo-Modernist Islam” (2016) 70 Studia Theologica — Nordic Journal of Theology 160 <https://doi.org/10.1080/0039338X.2016.1253260>.

[3] See Professor Moosa’s introduction in Fazlur Rahman, “A Study of Islamic Fundamentalism. Revival and Reform in Islam” (Oxford: Oneworld 2003).

[4] “Revisiting Fazlur Rahman’s Ordeal | Hanging Odes” <https://hangingodes.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/revisiting-fazlur-rahmans-ordeal/> accessed February 13, 2020.

[5] Fatimah Husein, “Fazlur Rahman’s Islamic Philosophy” (1997) <https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/5h73px966?locale=en> accessed February 13, 2020.

[6] Amhar Rasyid, “Some Qurʾānic Legal Texts in the Context of Fazlur Rahman’s Hermeneutical Method” (1994) <https://escholarship.mcgill.ca/concern/theses/xp68kj28z?locale=en> accessed February 13, 2020.

[7] Safdar Ahmed, “Progressive Islam and Quranic Hermeneutics” in Lily Zubaidah Rahim (ed), Muslim Secular Democracy: Voices from Within (Palgrave Macmillan US 2013) <https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137282057_4>.

[8] Ali Akbar, “Towards a Humanistic Approach to the Quran: New Direction in Contemporary Islamic Thought” (2019) 20 Culture and Religion 82 <https://doi.org/10.1080/14755610.2018.1532919>.

[9] “A Feminist Qur’an? By Maria Massi Dakake | Articles | First Things” <https://www.firstthings.com/article/2015/11/a-feminist-quran> accessed February 13, 2020.

[10] HAIFAA JAWAD, “Muslim Feminism: A Case Study of Amina Wadud’s ‘Qur’an and Woman’” (2003) 42 Islamic Studies 107 <www.jstor.org/stable/20837253>.

[11] Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr, The Vanguard of the Islamic Revolution: The Jama’at-i Islami of Pakistan (Univ of California Press 1994).

[12] Ayesha Siddiqa, Military Inc.: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2007)

[13] Yasmin Saikia, “Ayub Khan and Modern Islam: Transforming Citizens and the Nation in Pakistan” (2014) 37 South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 292.

[14] FAZLUR RAHMAN, “IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ISLAMIC CONCEPT OF STATE IN THE PAKISTANI MILIEU” (1967) 6 Islamic Studies 205 <www.jstor.org/stable/20832882>.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] FAZLUR RAHMAN, “SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE RECONSTRUCTION OF MUSLIM SOCIETY IN PAKISTAN” (1967) 6 Islamic Studies 103 <www.jstor.org/stable/20832872>.

[18] Ibid.

[19] Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “Modernism and Its Ethical Commitments,” Islam in Pakistan (Princeton University Press 2018) <http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1ws7wf2.8>.