The Wayfarer

A REVIEW FOR AN INTERVIEW

He had known her since the past many years.

He had known her ever since his interest in Islam had found its first expression in the particular books that he sought out for his reading. To be precise, however, to know a person isn't exactly the same thing as knowing of a person. And for Max, this had been so very sadly true. It was sad because he had wished to have known her in person; to have communicated with her; to have shared his thoughts with her; to have held her in intellectual communion in the common aspiration that they both shared many great distances apart...

In spite of all his wishings, however, Max had never really known her; he had only known of her. Through her books, her writings, her autobiographical letters, her links with one of the foremost Islamic revivalists of the twentieth century after the disappearance of Christ, through her convictions, her loves, her hates...

He had followed her life as closely as her works. Not quite infrequently, he had wondered at the strange contours of her life; of her dignity; her perseverance in the pursuit of what she thought was the Truth. It had mattered little for her that she was in quest of something that was totally opposed to all that apparently mattered in her life, in her parents' lives, in the life of the community in which she was reared, in the face of her cultural contexts and in the face of her first beliefs...

Be that as it may, there are times when people make decisions with their lives. More importantly, however, there are times when people take on life-changing decisions. Most importantly, still, there are times when people stick to those life-transforming decisions once they are taken. Back in the years when Max first began reading about her, it was strangely compelling for him that nothing had mattered for MJ when she took that final decision to part ways with her past.

MJ.

MM to MJ.

Max smiled to himself as he looked back upon the text of the interview before him on his editor's desk at the Muslim Digest. Her name in acronym was much better to his memory now, all these years past. He knew that she had shifted from her home in the United States after her complete reversion to Islam in her twenties. Indeed, she had shifted her home, her faith, and her life - all to begin anew. The Orthodox Judaism of her parents had ironically, and in actual fact, convinced her against the basic tenets of the Jewish faith while Christianity, for her, had always been an intellectual bag full of the most irreconcilable dogmas. Her very own American culture by itself churned up the greatest revulsion in her; she had rejected it outright. She had fought against its influence tooth and nail; she talked against it no end; she alienated herself from her friends in the American society within which was she reared and brought up; she objected to the crass, blind materialism of the American way.

While thus she remained in the United States, she had existed as an island. An island in a land of lakes. Hers was loneliness in her intellectual isolation. Hers was soon a gnawing depression that steadily ate away at her soul. At her very being. Until she finally suffered breakdowns, and had to be cared for at medical institutions that catered more to the mind than to the body. But unlike those who genuinely worried about her - like her parents - she knew what her ailment was, and her mind was the very last place in her being which was ailing: of that she was sure. She knew she had to break away from her environment, if she was to have a cure for her illness. She had broken away from the confines of restricting doctrines a while ago when she had discovered Islam; when she had stumbled upon the world of the Qur'an. But now that discovery had led to another pressing need: she had to move from the environment that bred a context always at war with the elements of the Qur'anic teaching. And she had too much of a resonance with the Qur'an to not heed that call which promised her life. There was too much of a resonance there for her not to undertake her personal Hijrah; her movement as of the spirit, so of the body, towards that call of Providence. That call which almost all men feel, but few heed in their business with the distracting glitter of this world: snare of the Demon in his hunt for the soul of man.

It had been sometime since MM became MJ while still in America. When Margaret Marcus became Maryam Jameelah. Maryam Jameelah who would then correspond with Abul A'la Mawdudi of Pakistan and accept his invitation to make Pakistan her home. That was her cue, and that was when she finally moved out of America and into Pakistan. From one culture to another totally opposing one. From one faith to another. From being an unmarried American woman in her late twenties into being the accommodating second wife of an Islamic activist in Pakistan. From being a depressed intellectual to being the caring mother of four children who were all born amidst the heights of a growing career as an intellectual and a writer. Through her prolific writings on Islam, she gave vent to her deep misgivings of the culture that she had just rejected. To Max, who had grown up with many of her distrusts and revulsions to the Western way of life, MJ had further reinforced his own growing conceptions about the world that was the Muslim's canvas. The world that was to be restructured in the image of God. The world both of the East as well as the West, for did not God Himself declare his Omnipresence as 'the Lord of the two Easts and the two Wests?'

MJ had been a beacon of light these many years, showing Max what Westernism was, and was not; is, and is not. And although he differed with MJ in her rejection of industrialism and modernism that was in any way tinged with westernization, he understood very well the reasons for her extreme caution. They were reasons, which, in the end analysis, he never failed to appreciate for the circumstances that necessitated such caution. He had ever appreciated her reasons - and her caution; indeed her apprehensions - in that they had emanated from no west-hating Asiatic or some rabid, illogical African ideologue content in blaming the Westerners - and perhaps, not altogether unjustly - for all the woes of indigenous races on the planet. He had appreciated her study of the West, because that was where she came from, because the West had been her first home, where she learned to talk, to walk, and to run, but not to fly. For in the domain of the spirit where man seeks his freedom the most; in that domain where satisfaction unattained counts as a life gone waste; in that domain was MJ constrained in her flights of freedom within her Western home. And that was where Max first found a system, a pattern of life that had gone all wrong.

In recent years, therefore, Max had evinced the greatest desire to meet MJ, before she became a thing of the past, before she entered permanently into the pages of Islamic history. To live in an age, a century, together shared with an Islamic celebrity was indeed an honour as things stood for Max. However, to get in touch, not to mention staying in touch, at least on the intellectual plane, was more of a dream for him. But then an entire generation gap and a great distance separated him and MJ.

'Will it be ever possible?' Max has asked the Wayfarer. 'Will it forever remain a dream until MJ or me die away, Wayfarer?'

And in his peculiar, inscrutable way in which he answered Max, the Wayfarer responded to his question in - of all things - a dream. A dream whence one night, and as he lay asleep, Max was introduced to MJ, wrapped up in her all-covering purdah. The dream was of course symbolic and to Max, who firmly believed in the potent symbolism of dreams, it was a prelude to action.

Max knew that MJ presently resided at Lahore, she being all of one and seventy years of age. His attempt to get in touch with MJ through a blog-writer friend in Islamabad failing, he lay awaiting the next opportunity. And Providence had been kind to him in that that opportunity came calling a few months ago. It came in the form of a book - in fact a dissertation - entitled 'Isaac or Ishmael?' that had come by airmail all the way from Lahore. It had been sent to Max by an elderly research fellow at the Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences, requesting him ever so humbly for a review. How that elderly scholar came to know of him or to trust a review for so valuable a dissertation from so inconspicuous a figure as himself was, of course, beyond Max's power to know. What he did know, however, was that the opportunity that he had been long awaiting had now come knocking. Max's plan was simple: he would do the review for the scholar and, in turn, request him to arrange an interview with MJ for him. Both MJ and Al-Mawrid being in the same place, such an arrangement would not be beyond the bounds of possibility, Max had calculated.

And so the days passed by wherein Max diligently studied the question of the only son who was taken for the sacrifice by the Prophet Abraham under Divine command. Was it Isaac, as affirmed by the Judeo-Christian camp or was it Ishmael, as believed by the Arabs and the Muslims? That was the question discussed by the able scholar from Al Mawrid in his book 'Isaac or Ishmael?' It was a question that was of considerable interest to Max himself, and in some uncanny way it had come to have a faint relevance to the object of his immediate quest: MJ was once Jewish herself!

Max's apparent success with the review, when he finally finished it, was a thing of the greatest and most unmitigated delight to the elderly scholar from Al Mawrid. As far as Max was concerned, his scholar friend would have bought him the moon in return if he could, leave alone setting up an interview with MJ who was right there in downtown Lahore. His review of the book, from beginning to end, would read as follows:

For a book that was intended to be an appendix to another book namely 'Paran prophecy of the Bible regarding the Prophet of Islam,' the writer's contention that 'Isaac or Ishmael?' has instead become an attempt to solve a long addressed problem on the principles of objective research is, indeed, something of a humble understatement. Few Muslim scholars in the recent past have addressed the question of the identity of the actual son of the Prophet Abraham with such vigour and tenacity as has been done by Abdus Sattar Ghawri in his 'Isaac or Ishmael?' What makes Ghawri's work of particular relevance is his almost total, albeit deliberate, reliance on the Bible and the works of Biblical scholars to prove his point. Indeed, and as the author himself whole-heartedly admits, the question that he addresses in his book had been 'settled once forever' by the celebrated South Asian Muslim scholar, Imam Hamid al-Din Farahi in his masterly Arabic work, 'al-Ray al-Sahih fi man huwa al-dhabih,' which was later translated into English ('Who was offered for sacrifice?') by Nadir Aqeel Ansari while its Urdu version was produced by Amin Ahsan Islahi in 1975. Muslim scholarship on the subject, that was based primarily on Muslim sources, had, thus, probably effected a culmination with Farahi's work in the first quarter of the twentieth century. However, genuine Muslim scholarship on the same subject, based on Judeo-Christian sources, was not as forthcoming. It is, perhaps, into this genre of academic work on the topic that 'Isaac or Ishmael?' categorically falls, and in which it has become something of a pioneering effort.

To say, today, that the work of an artist has an innate tendency to grow on him as he progresses with it, is to say something that is generally accepted as a matter of fact. Indeed, true art - and any effort worth its time can be rendered to the sublimities of a quintessential art form - presupposes an evolution of purpose within the artist in his work. True scholarship, too, is not beyond the pale of such artistic renditions. That much, at least, is in evidence as one reads through the path of discovery which Ghawri charts out for us in the progression, indeed, the evolution, of themes that center around the moot question: was it Isaac or Ishmael who was taken for the sacrifice by Abraham? Doubtless, in this evolution of themes around the central point, there has been a broadening of the very scope of the book itself. Thus, it covers, and addresses a whole host of different, yet intimately related, incidents and issues that must necessarily be of the greatest interest to the genuine scholar, Muslim and non-Muslim alike. Amongst others, it covers the relevant themes of the site of Makkah according to the Bible, pilgrimage to Makkah as described in the Bible, the site of Al-Marwah in the Bible, King David's visit and pilgrimage to Makkah and of his later yearning to be there, the offering of sacrifices at Makkah as mentioned in the Book of Isaiah, the well of Zamzam and a brief, yet significant, outline of the history of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem.

The Judeo-Christian viewpoint on the subject has consistently been one which asserts that it was Isaac, and not Ishmael, who was taken for the sacrifice by the Patriarch Abraham. Strangely enough, however, and as Ghawri points out in his introduction, while the Bible has recorded the story of the sacrifice in a fairly detailed manner, the name of the only son of Abraham as Isaac has been mentioned but once in the whole of the narrative. Granted the strength of the contention over this issue down the centuries, it can hardly be any advantage, whatsoever, for the Judeo-Christian camp, that the son of Abraham offered for the sacrifice has been referred to as Isaac but once in the whole of the Biblical narrative. On the other hand, Ghawri also states that a majority of Muslim scholars affirm that it was Ishmael, and not Isaac, who was taken for sacrifice. Interestingly, this implies that there is a minority of Muslim scholars who, apart from the traditional folk-lore of the Muslims, are, at best, unsure of the exact facts of history: of the identity of the son of Abraham who was offered for the sacrifice. In the main, such a minority opinion amongst Muslims must necessarily owe itself to the fact that while the Qur'an describes God's command to Abraham and of Abraham's willing submission in taking his obedient son for the sacrifice, it does not, by itself, reveal the exact identity of the son concerned.

However, to go by the Biblical version of the identity of the son as being Isaac, would be to trust in the fleeting opinion of a redactor who penned down his wishful thinking, as being part of the Divine word, a full one thousand years after the incident of the sacrifice. Evidently, serious historians would hardly take such naive, or even pious, assumptions as genuine facts of history, particularly when the only instance in which the identity of the son is mentioned appears almost totally out of context, and in a manner which provides genuine grounds for suspicion. This, then, has been the methodology adopted by Ghawri throughout his presentation of the problem - a problem about which one observer noted very pertinently: 'Lying at the root of centuries old Judeo-Muslim differences, this controversy is all that the Judeo-Muslim relations stand for.'

Ghawri's has been an effort to, among other things, present a logical appreciation of the statements, factual or otherwise, that appear in the Bible. In thus providing a logical context for the narratives in the Bible, and with his own redoubtable understanding of history and data handling, his has been a thorough study of the subject which owes its authentication not to Muslim scholarship, but to the opinions and considered judgements of some of the greatest names in modern Biblical scholarship within the Judeo-Christian world. It is in this connection that reference must be made to the remarkable number of books and authorities which the learned author has consulted in the making of this ground-breaking research. Indeed, the extensive footnotes to which the attention of the reader is constantly invited in almost every page of the book constitutes a significant, if not a major, part of the work itself. In fact, the footnotes and annotations form a parallel world that operates on the reader's understanding in tandem with the main body of the book. The end result, of course, has been an overwhelming body of evidence in favour of Ishmael having been the son who was offered for the sacrifice: a conclusion made even more pertinent by the fact that it was derived almost in its entirety from the Bible, and from the works of renowned scholars of the Bible.

Of especial consideration, with regard to Ghawri's approach, must certainly be his eye for detail and his ability to go directly to the point; to the heart of the matter, as it were. While this approach has necessitated a seeming repetition of relevant aspects throughout the course of the study, when read in conjunction with the immediate context of the author's arguments, however, these repetitions almost never end in the dry monotony that would be otherwise expected of them. Contrariwise, they result in a further consolidation of the strength of the argument. One instance wherein the author's ability to go directly to the substance of the argument is seen quite early on in the work. A classical stance of the modern Judeo-Christian world with regard to the identity of the son taken for the sacrifice has been that while Ishmael was, indeed, the first born of Abraham, he need not be considered as such owing to his 'low' birth through Hagar, a mere bondservant of Abraham. As such, it must be Isaac, born through Sarah, the 'real' wife of Abraham, who needs to be considered as the first-born and the only son of Abraham. In a manner that amply illustrates the way in which he demolishes all such false, egotistic pretensions of the Judeo-Christian world, Ghawri quite simply brings the attention of the reader to the following passage from Deuteronomy:

"If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the first born son be her's that was hated: then it shall be, when he maketh his son to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved first born before the son of the hated, which is indeed the first-born: But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the first-born, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the first born is his." (Deuteronomy xxi: 15-17, KJV, p.181)

It would not be too much to say that Ghawri has merely allowed facts, and aberrations, from the Bible to speak for themselves. The rest of the matter should be easily settled by the common sense and intellectual logic of the impartial seeker after truth. The author's committed labours lend credence to the fact that scriptural aberrations or corruptions, far from hiding the facts, actually leave, in their wake, a string of clues and trails which the real historian, working with the advantage of hindsight, can sift and reassemble to reconstruct a semblance of what might, indeed, be the real Truth.

The sections appended to the book as Appendix I, II and III (titled respectively as Beersheba: the 'Well of seven' or the 'Well of Zamzam,' 'The text of the Bible and some types of corruptions in it,' and 'A Brief Account of the History of the Temple of Solomon') might very well have formed integral portions of the book, which, technicalities apart, they actually do. This is very much owing to the fact that they supplement the arguments in the core sections of the book, and the book would have been all the poorer for their absence from it. A useful index and a complete table of bibliographical references (which include 25 versions of the Bible, 39 commentaries on the Bible, 53 encyclopedias and 16 other Biblical studies, all by Christian scholars) must further place the work of Ghawri amongst the top-most references on the subject today. Indeed, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that 'Isaac or Ishmael?' has substantially altered the way in which the academic world must view the answer to the age-old question that it poses.

A fellow of the prestigious Al-Mawrid Institute of Islamic Sciences, Lahore, Abdus Sattar Ghawri is the author of a number of articles on the Biblical text that has special reference to the prophecies heralding the advent of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh). He has also lectured extensively on the subject. This robust experience in treating the subject at hand is fairly visible in Ghawri's 'Isaac or Ishmael?' If the results of his honest labours are accepted in a spirit a impartiality and good-will within the community of Jews and Christians, it goes without saying that it will help in clearing the international atmosphere between the Muslims and the Judeo-Christian world so much vitiated by misunderstanding and hostility begotten of centuries of ignorance and mistrust. To this end has surely been the author's motivation, and in this end-result, most certainly lies, his higher reward. His highest reward, of course, must, like all other sincere efforts in the Islamic cause, find its expression in the presence of his Maker, the Changer of hearts, the Lord of all Creation.

Following the Al-Mawrid scholar's appreciation for the review, little time was lost in the execution of the next stages of Max's plan. Max's hurriedly prepared interview-questionnaire was sent from the Muslim Digest's office at Bangalore by email to the kind fellow at Al-Mawrid, and through him, MJ's consent for the interview clinched with the greatest ease, just as if she was waiting for it all along, or so Max imagined.

Less than a fortnight later, MJ had sent in her answers to Max's probing questionnaire through the untiring efforts of that most genial of scholars at Al Mawrid. When it arrived finally on his computer screen in its scanned-attachment version via email, Max had stared in complete silence, at that his first direct interaction with MJ, for what seemed an eternity. He had gazed in awe and wonder at the rounded handwriting of MJ, which despite her seventy-one years, was anything but illegible. The text of the interview dated June 7th 2005/ Rabi-us-Sani 29, 1426, and signed towards the end by MJ herself, would soon be printed in the pages of the Muslim Digest. In its transcribed form and lying there on Max's desk, it read as follows:

Max: We have always known about your conversion through contacts with Mawlana Mawdudi, but nothing about how in the first instance you got interested in Islam. Would you like to throw some light on your initial days of interest in Islam?

MJ: Like Muhammad Asad (Leopold Weiss), I first became interested in Islam by a fascination with everything Arab. I read all the books about Arabs I could find and loved to listen to recordings by Umm Kalsoum. Then, as now, most of these books were by Orientalists or missionaries and presented a very negative view which I knew was unjustified. Only years later I acquired knowledge about Qur'an Majeed through Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall's translation which inspired me with the desire to convert to Islam.

Max: You have settled in Pakistan since 1962. How different has been the experience in this shift of cultures, indeed, of ideologies, as in your case? Of course, your expectations of Muslim culture would have been quite high, and there must have been some disappointments especially in the beginning. Was it a lack of alternatives or, satisfaction with what you found in Pakistan or merely familial bindings that led you to remain in Pakistan, perhaps never traveling out once?

MJ: I settled in Pakistan at the invitation of Maulana Maudoodi with whom I had been corresponding for two years. He not only gave me emotional support as a new convert but also a permanent home in Pakistan, and helped me find a good husband. I have been on such good terms with his family. I never wanted to go anywhere else, convinced there was nothing for me in America. My first impression of Pakistan was that it was a very good Muslim country. Disillusions with its numerous shortcomings only came later.

Max: Have you performed Hajj and what has been your impression. Do you travel for 'Umrah and if you do, do you find changes in Arab adherence to Islam in the two holy Harams?

MJ: I talk with everyone I know who has returned from Hajj and read everything about it that I can. I deeply regret that the expansion of the Haram and the Masjid-an-Nabi could only be accomplished by the massive destruction of nearly all the Ottoman structures of the Holy Cities including numerous historic places associated with the Holy Prophet. Everything has been modernized/ westernized including much inappropriate technology. However, the comforts and physical accommodations have been vastly improved. Despite all this, returnees who have returned to tell me their experiences insist that the Hajj was the greatest spiritual experience of their lives.

Max: You have known the late Mawlana Mawdudi well in your close association with him. How relevant are his ideas for the future of the Muslim community today? How do you view the policies and practices of the Jamat-e-Islami in Pakistan today? How has its policies changed since the time that it was first launched in 1941?

MJ: At the beginning in 1941 Maulana Maudoodi was concerned with cultural matters in Islam's relation with the West. Now everything is politics. Placing politics at the centre of the Islamic mission is contrary to the traditions of Islam. However, Jamat-e-Islami deserves all the credit for restraining the worst excesses of secular military dictatorships.

Max: It has been said that the logic of your discursive approach has recently led you away from current forms of Islamic revivalism and even from the Jamat-e-Islami itself. It has also been said that increasingly aware of revivalism's own borrowing from the West, you have distanced yourself from the revivalist exegesis and have even criticized your mentor, Mawlana Mawdudi, for his assimilation of modern concepts into Jamat-e-Islami's ideology. How much do you agree with this?

MJ: I became disillusioned about the Maulana's disdain for the necessity for beauty in the lives of his followers, of traditional Islamic philosophy and Islamic art and his whole-hearted acceptance of industrialism, technology and evolutionism. But now I am less critical. Maulana Maudoodi, Sheikh Hasan al Banna and Syed Qutb devoted their entire lives to the Islamic cause and sacrificed all their time, energy and resources and even their lives towards that end. They strictly abided by Shariat all their lives and inspired many others to do so.

Max: You once said that you were totally in disagreement with what Allama Iqbal wrote in his 'Reconstruction of religious thought in Islam.' Can you please explain the basis of this disagreement?

MJ: In his 'Reconstruction of religious thought in Islam' Allama Iqbal attempted a most unconvincing reconciliation with certain 19th century western philosophies. The entire book is based on evolutionism and progressionism. It will remain one of the most well known classics of Islamic modernism.

Max: You have known the late Muhammad Asad through his writings and perhaps also in his capacities in the foreign ministry of Pakistan. Were his works like 'The Road to Makkah' and 'Islam at the Crossroads' instrumental in your own conversion to Islam? Did you ever perceive a certain evolution in his thought: an evolution to which you couldn't reconcile yourself in later years? If so, can you please explain where you differed from his viewpoints? What is your opinion about his Commentary (on the Qur'an)? Would you recommend its inclusion in Islamic studies, either private or institutionalized?

MJ: Muhammad Asad's 'The Road to Mecca' inspired my desire to live in a Muslim country and 'Islam at the crossroads' determined my entire literary career. However, his 'Message of the Qur'an' is almost entirely based on 'The Manar' by Shaikh Muhammad Abduh. It is filled with modernism and naturalism. Muhammad Asad was a great admirer of Shaikh Muhammad Abduh and was much influenced by him.

Max: Alija Ali Izzetbegovich, the former President of Bosnia-Herzegovina, has been one of the most unsung Muslim intellectuals in modern European history. What has been your own assessment of his life and works? How would you rate his work, 'Islam between East and West'?

MJ: Having only read a brief biography and obituaries and not 'Islam between East and West,' (I may say that) Alija Ali Izzetbegovich is renowned as the most distinguished Bosnian Muslim statesman.

Max: Writing in as far back as 1969, you had stated that the Muslim Ulema (with honourable exceptions) 'had become like the Pharisees against whom Jesus Christ devoted his entire mission. In their extremes of verbal hair splitting, some of our Ulema have outdone the Talmud and put the Rabbis to shame.' How much has the situation progressed for the better today, some thirty-five years later?

MJ: Although certain Ulema have shortcomings the righteous amongst them uphold the Shariat, combat bid'ah or innovations and can be regarded as the indispensable pillar of traditional Islamic civilization.

Max: Do you see a marked difference in approach on the part of the Orientalists in view of the spread of Islamic knowledge, and in view of questions of their intellectual integrity raised now and then, especially by Norman Daniel?

MJ: Even the most 'sympathetic' Orientalists think Islam should change in conformity to the demands of modern life; some of them even propose that Qur'an and Hadith be subjected to 'Higher Criticism' like Biblical studies, (and that) a search (be made) among modernists for one who could play the part of a Muslim Martin Luther and 'updating' Islam like Vatican II.

Max: Some years back when Frithjof Schuon was criticized in the Impact for his Sufi practices, you had reacted strongly. Do you agree with the ideas presented by him, and the practices he tried to promote?

MJ: I was utterly shocked by the article in Impact condemning Frithjof Schuon and considered it (and still do) the worst character assassination. When dissatisfied with revivalist books, I was at first greatly impressed with Schuon's writings. The writings of his school were alone in emphasizing the necessity of beauty and Islamic art, strongly condemned industrialism and modern science and upheld traditional orthodox Islamic civilization in every aspect of a Muslim's life. Schuon's writings remained my favourite books until I met with his divorced third wife. We became best friends and she related all her experiences in her 30-year life with Schuon. So Impact's article turned out to be true after all. My new found friend disclosed even more shocking facts about Schuon which utterly disqualified him as a spiritual guide. She disclosed that Schuon lived with three women without proper Nikah. He loved nudity and was accused in court of sexual child abuse. He hugged dozens of beautiful, bare-breasted young girls clad in only a transparent loin-cloth. He painted fifty pictures of his youngest wife in the nude. As entertainment, he and his followers danced native Indian dances. Outside Schuon's house was a life-sized statue of the Virgin Mary. Worst of all, he forbade his followers to befriend other Muslims. I still have all Schuon's books; they still attract me but I cannot look at them without a profound sense of shame.

Max: What, in general, is your assessment of the neo-apologists and propagators of Sufi ideas such as Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martin Lings, or others of this class? Do you think that, in effect, they offer pantheism rather than impress about Islam's unique ideas and strict tawhid perspectives?

MJ: Like Schuon, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Martin Lings are my favourite writers. More profound criticism of Western philosophy, science and technology is not found among any of the revivalist writers. Martin Lings Seerat is by far the best in English - based entirely on Qur'an and Hadith.

Max: How do you rate Rene Guenon's writings? Do you think his obsession with the cyclic explanation, did away with whatever good criticism he made against the Western culture, and contributed nothing, despite his long stay in Egypt, to the projection of Islam as primarily rational?

MJ: No modern writer attacked modern civilization and all it stands for more than Rene Guenon. Next to him the revivalist figures appear childish. His all-out attack on evolutionism and progressionism is decisive and irrefutable. He proved the cyclic and disproved progress. No sensitive, intelligent mind can study Rene Geunon's 'Crisis of the modern world' and 'Reign of quantity and signs of the times' without being changed forever.

Max: How would you explain the exclusion of many powerful Muslim personalities of not only our own times, but even of the first half of the last century from the 'Encyclopedia of Islam' produced at Braille, when you find entries on other less influential men of the past?

MJ: The 'Encyclopaedia of Islam' is entirely an Orientalist work. The exclusion of these powerful Muslim personalities of the past and present serves their own nefarious purposes of keeping serious scholars ignorant about them.

Max: In your opinion, how effective is the present educational system in the Muslim world? Will a piecemeal attempts at making conventional western-style education conform to Islamic requirements suffice in effecting a lasting transformation amongst the Muslim youth today? Or will a wholesale shift in paradigm be necessary before a new edifice of education is built on premises that are strictly in keeping with the founding principles of the Islamic worldview?

MJ: The present educational system in Muslim countries results in imitation of Westerners. It destroys faith in Islam and the Islamic way of life. Maulana Maudoodi was most concerned about this when in 1939 he wrote Talimat and Tanqihat. Despite all their defects I am most opposed to the secularization or closing down of the Deeni Madaris - all that is left of traditional Islamic education for the young today.

Max: While the Jews have always disowned the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion' ever since it was first discovered in the early years of the twentieth century, there is a widespread belief that the 'Protocols' form the blueprint for Jewish world domination. What is your own view on the 'Protocols' and the Zionist movement in general?

MJ: Nobody knows if the 'Protocols of the learned elders of Zion' is authentic or not (?). If so, it was probably written by Theodore Herzl at the first Zionist Convention in Basle, Switzerland in 1897. Literary similarities between the 'Protocols' and 'The Jewish State' (1896) are striking. Racial anti-semitism produced by the 'Protocols' which fail to distinguish between Judaism and Zionism is a Western import into the Muslim world previously unknown. Orthodox Judaism and Zionism conflict and are irreconcilable.

Max: The WTC attacks of September 11, 2001, have had a profound impact on the prospects for Islamic revival in the 21st century. How historic do you think is this development? What has been your assessment of global developments with regard to Islam and the Muslim world in the four years since the event? Do you perceive an attempt at neo-colonization of the energy-rich Muslim lands by the Western Powers led by the US as sufficient justification for those Muslims who have picked up the gauntlet and have responded in kind to the oppression that has become the staple fare of innocent Muslims in several parts of the globe?

MJ: The USA under President Bush is engaged in an all-out war on Islam: the same colonialism and imperialism as the British and French a century ago. But insurgency and suicide bombers are no effective response. Shocking disregard for human life, especially women, children and the elderly - all innocent non-combatants cannot qualify the struggle as Jihad. Jihad must be waged according to Shariat.

Max: Your views on the future of the Muslim people and the prospects for the Islamic faith in the 21st century? Do you see a vision of hope which bases itself on the inherent strengths - howsoever negligible - of the Muslim Ummah today, as against one which has for its premises the myriad weaknesses of the community?

MJ: As despair and hopelessness are forbidden in Islam, I view the future with great caution. The destruction of most of the outward signs of traditional environment and atmosphere in Islam, particularly architecture and Islamic dress for males as well as females is a catastrophic loss. Taqwa will remain in the next century although it will grow less and less and harder and harder to find. Many signs of the Last Days predicted by Hadith are now present. When asked what to do at the approach of the Last Days, the Holy Prophet replied: 'Separate yourself from the evil ones, concentrate on your own affairs and cling to the roots of the tree (of Islam) until death overtakes you in that state...'

Thus had come about Max's interview with a living celebrity of the Islamic world today. Sitting back in his editor's chair and with the review for 'Isaac or Ishmael?' and the interview with MJ laid out separately on his desk, Max considered the working of the small niche that he operated in the Indian Muslim Media scene. He amused himself with the idea that this interview would go down as the biggest 'scoop' in the Muslim media scene in India since a long time, for few other media outlets in India had reached out to an Islamic intellectual of the caliber of MJ in recent years. To Max at least, the timing of the interview was poignant enough: he had heard that MJ had become weak and indisposed since some time now. How many more active years she had remaining in her was anybody's guess. But then, how many active years, indeed, days, do any of us have any way? Every moment of our lives counted as if it were the very last, or so the Wayfarer would remind him again and again.

The interview with MJ, however, would remain special for in the months that followed Max would be writing fairly detailed life profiles on Ahmed Deedat and Zaynab al Ghazali who died in quick succession and that too in a single month (August 2005). Writing on Deedat was especially painful for, the guidance of the Wayfarer apart, Deedat was the man who had first put Max on a track that would take him through the mists of a Christianity concocted by St. Paul to the brilliant purity of Islam. Meeting Deedat too had been a dream for Max: one which unfortunately was not destined for fulfillment. After having written a profile on Zaynab al Ghazali, and without having recovered from the shock of having lost these pioneering Muslim intellectual-activists of the last century, Max would write to his chief editor at the Muslim Digest:

"Of late, and of a most tragic coincidence, sir, we, at the Muslim Digest, seem preoccupied fully with the writing of obituaries and profiles for successive luminaries of this Ummah who will now be confined to the halls of our memories and to the illuminating patches of the otherwise darkened pages of modern Islamic history. In their departure we lose not just their consoling presence, but even the very progress and consolidation of the vast corpus of our otherwise once-dynamic but now-stagnating knowledge base. Had not the Divine confirmation come to the prophet that in the Last Days knowledge will be divorced from the people inasmuch as our scholars will be taken away from us? Is this generation of the Ummah really doomed to witness the fulfillment of this Divine intimation?"

The chief editor's reply, as was expected of him, was crisp and to the point:

"The fulfillment of God's word notwithstanding, I invite you to pick up the gauntlet now and, in twenty years from today, to carry on from where they have left off. We are counting on you, Max."

"That, sir," thought Max to himself, "is taking matters a bit too far." Max was up from his table now, and as he walked past his cabin to the News Room adjacent, he found himself remembering and thanking that scholar-friend from Al-Mawrid in Lahore for making his interview with MJ happen before it was too late. In the course of the intervening chain of events, Max had made him his review as well in exchange.

A review for an interview. But then, did not the Qur'an itself state: 'Hal Jazaa al Ihsani illal Ihsan?', meaning 'Is not the reward for the good but the good?'

# posted by Maximus@ 1:53 PM

Saturday, October 22, 2005