Islam's Reformers .pdf

Book and our Prophet’s Sunna. The wars declared for luxury,ambition and avarice by a notorious group governing the Statecaused a serious retrogression. Knowledge and artsdisappeared. Meanwhile, Imâm al-Ghazâlî came up and wonthe confidence of the caliph in Baghdad. But he departed fromthe palace and tried to refute the Greek philosophy. Hecriticized all the [Ahl as-Sunna] madhhabs for their weakaspects and inclinations incompatible with Islam. He revived thesystem of education which had been decaying. Worldlyknowledge and religious knowledge had been far away fromeach other. Yet he was inefficient in hadîth. He dealt too muchwith rational knowledge. He was in the wrong to have too muchinterest in Tasawwuf. It was Ibn Taimiyya’s lot to revive Islamicthought and spirit by avoiding these three dangers.”It is true that there have been some Muslim rulers whoperpetrated cruelty and wrongdoing under the influence ofsycophants and renegades who surrounded them. But Muslimscholars struggled to draw them to the right course by tellingthem Islamic commands and prohibitions in speech and writing.Therefore, the worst ones among them were more just andmore useful than the best ones of irreligious rulers. The world’shistories write about this fact. Those who read the book writtenby Lord Davenport, an Englishman, will easily comprehend notonly that Mawdûdî is wrong but also that he is after sedition. Wewant to emphasize that non-sahâbî Islamic caliphs might havebeen cruel and committed sins, yet none of them ever was anunbeliever. They were by no means hostile to Islam. Each ofthem had commissions of knowledge, Shaikh al-Islâms andcounsellors. None of them ever thought of preventing Islam’sprogress. All of them struggled to serve Islam. Mosques,schools, madrasas, roads, hospitals, fountains, baths, bridgesand various institutions of charity and arts which each of themhanded over to the next generation were innumerous. Theirremains and many of them themselves are in the open. Millionsof Muslims benefit from them today. It is a tactic of the enemiesof Islam to attempt to vilify them by putting forward their humandefects. Islamic shcolars’ staying away from the sultâns doesnot show that sultâns were evil. Following the hadîth, “The onewho approaches and is modest towards a rich manbecause he is rich will lose one-third of his îmân,” scholarskept away from every rich or famous person, yet they did not- 164 -