Why Muslims — and Islam — will gain from Yogi Adityanath's move to revamp madarsa education
Uttar Pradesh government's recent dictate of introducing NCERT syllabus in madarsas might carry a Hindutva undertone, but it's indeed a blessing in disguise for Muslims. The consensus among Muslims that modern science and Islam are incompatible, that Islamic principles supersede rationale and critical thinking fails to acknowledge the tradition of scientific approach the faith was known for.
Long before al-Qaeda, al-this, al-that and al-whatnot hijacked the “al” from Arabic nomenclature, it was the language of science. Baghdad then had “al-Khwārizmī” (born before 800, died after 847 in Baghdad), a young Persian mathematician, astronomer and geographer. One of the greatest scientific minds of the medieval period and the most important Muslim mathematician, al-Khwārizmī was known for his paradigm-shifting work on Hindu numerals in his book titled Kitab hisab al-'adad al-hindi (On the Calculation with Hindu Numerals) released around 825 AD.
This book was translated into Latin by Robert of Chester in the 12th century under the title “Algoritmi de numero Indorum” meaning "Algoritmi on the numbers of the Indians". "Algoritmi" was the translator's Latin-isation of al-Khwārizmī's name and the word "algorithm" is the English variant of the Latin word algorismus, named after al-Khwarizmi.
Let us start from the premise.
In the Golden Age of Islam (8-3th AD), when the faith was at its pinnacle under the Abbasid rule, when arts and science flourished, when the medieval Arab "Ivy League" produced astronomical, mathematical and other scientific breakthroughs, when Europe and most of the western world was fighting the dark allies of Roman Empire, struggling to find its renaissance, the Islamic world carried the lamp of light — the light of knowledge and scientific temperament.
Perhaps, in order for light to shine bright, darkness must surround it. The translations of various scientific, philosophical and literary texts, transcending geographical and language boundaries — from Persian to Sanskrit and from India to Spain — went on to become what we know as science today.
Had Alfred Bernhard Nobel existed then, there would have been a lot more Muslim Nobel laureates in the field of physics, chemistry and science.
I'm not suggesting that the Islamic civilisation was the only one with a scientific outlook. A lot of Islamic science is based on Greek and Indian knowledge systems. The development of science doesn't happen in a vacuum, Arabs used Greek knowledge and the West used Arab's scientific works and took it forward.
That is how the science works. Ibn Haytham's contribution to theoretical physics and optics is as important as that of Albert Einstein or Neils Bohr.
To understand how scientific knowledge transcends cultures, languages and civilisations, let’s see how three different cultures and knowledge systems worked together to give us the trigonometric "sine".
In the “Surya Sidhhanta”, the three trigonometric functions introduced by Indian mathematicians were Jyā, koti-jyā and utkrama-jyā.
Image Source: wikipedia.org
The word "ardha-jya" was abbreviated by Hindu mathematicians to "jiva". Al-Khwarizmi, while translating these works of Hindu mathematicians in his book, used "jiba" instead of "jiva" since, there’s no "v" in the Arabic language.
Later, when Robert of Chester translated al-Khwarizmi’s book on Indian numbers, he misread "jiba" as "jayb", which in Arabic means "pocket" or "inlet" and used the Latin word for pocket: "sinus", and finally, in English, it became "sine".
As Abdus Salam, a Nobel laureate in physics put it, "The history of science, like the history of all civilisation, has gone through cycles". Salam was the first Muslim to receive a Nobel Prize in physics for his contribution in developing standard model of particle physics.
In his Nobel Prize banquet address, quoted a well-known verse from the Quran, the Surah Al-Mulk. Sample an excerpt from his address:
The creation of physics is the shared heritage of all mankind. East and West, North and South have equally participated in it. In the Holy Book of Islam, Allah says:
"Thou seest not, in the creation of the All-merciful any imperfection, Return thy gaze, seest thou any fissure. Then Return thy gaze, again and again. Thy gaze, Comes back to thee dazzled, aweary."
This has been the guiding principle for all the Arabic scholars; from Al-Khwarizmi to Ibn Haytham, from Jabir ibn Hayyaan to Ibn Sina — the Islamic concept of seeking knowledge served to coalesce all the rational and scientific developments in the Islamic world.
However, the point is not “how many scientific breakthroughs”, it’s about the culture and environment that makes these achievements possible by propagating and encouraging methods that seek and respect new knowledge and learning.
The guardians of science, Abbasids
During the times of Abbasids (750–1258), who ruled as caliphs of Islamic Empire from their capital in Baghdad in modern-day Iraq, intellectual and scientific research was a lucrative career path wherein state patronised translations, expeditions to gather knowledge, while still maintaining the Islamic studies as a core part of the knowledge system.
Abbasid caliph Al-Rashid and Al-Ma’mun took a personal interest in collecting scientific works and books from East and West. They brought scholars from all corners of the world to create one of the greatest intellectual academies in history and laid the foundation of The House Of Wisdom or Bayt al-Hikma.
In it, translators, scientists, authors, men of letters, writers and authors would meet every day for translation of the books and knowledge collected from all over the world into Arabic. Jim Al-Khalili, in his book The Pathfinders states, "Often foreign rulers defeated in battle would be required to settle the terms of surrender to him with books from their libraries rather than Gold."
All the great scholars and scientists, regardless of their faith (Muslim, Hindu, Jews), worked under one roof in the House of Wisdom. Soon the House of Wisdom became the largest repository of books in the world and the centre of scientific knowledge. Baghdad, which is now a dilapidated city, was once a hub of scientific thought and research.
Departure of independent inquiry
In 1055, Seljuqs (Oghuz Turks) wrested control from the Abbasids, and took control of Baghdad and from that point, the empire was ruled in name by the Abbasids, but in practice by the Seljuq. The Islamic world began turning away from scientific innovation in the 11th century. Nizam Al Mulk, the grand vizier of the Seljuq dynasty created a system of education called “Nizamiyah” that focused more on religious studies neglecting the Islamic concept of “Ijtihad” or independent inquiry.
During Seljuqs, religious studies became institutionalised and religious studies were seen as a more lucrative career path. Previously, sciences and Islamic law were intertwined. The fundamentalist approach of Seljuqs, arrival of Mongols and later in the Europeans colonising Muslim world — all played a role in the decline of the scientific thought.
The Indian subcontinent and the Abbasids of India
Much like Al-Rashid and Al-Ma’mun, Sir Syed played an important role in reforming the scientific though among Indian Muslims. He wanted to create a scientific temperament among the Muslims of India and to make the modern knowledge of science available to them.
He believed, “Acquisition of knowledge of science and technology is the only solution for the problems of Muslims. Ijtihad (critical reasoning, re-interpretation with the changing times) is the need of the hour and we need to give up taqlid (copying and following old values).
Allama Iqbal, another reformist, gave a series of Lectures in 1932 in Madras University where he penned down his thoughts on why Muslims need to adapt a new rational, logical and scientific outlook and the concept of Ijtihad(critical thinking) which were later published in book form under the title The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam."
Today, when there is a gradual rise in hostility towards Muslims, where, ordinary and poor Muslims are at the receiving end of this hate, because they are the easy targets, only modern education, scientific and rational thinking and "Ijtihad" can help Muslims to counter this growing hostility, rationally.
What Sir Syed said 200 years ago is still relevant, at least for Indian Muslims who comprise 14 per cent of India’s population but account for 4.4 per cent of students enrolled in higher education, according to the 2014-'15 All India Survey on Higher Education, while the national figure is 23.6 per cent and that of other backward classes is 22.1 per cent and scheduled castes 18.5 per cent.
The global Muslim Population is 1.57 billion, of which more than 480 million Muslims live in pre-1947 India (Pakistan, India and Bangladesh). About 31 per cent of all Muslims are of South Asian origin, the largest population of Muslims in the world. India alone houses 11 per cent of the total Muslim population - the Indian subcontinent is still at the centre of the Muslim world. There’s hardly any scientific breakthrough or research emerging from the Muslim world. Barring Tunisia, there's no Muslim country which invests more than one per cent of GDP on research and development (R&D).
There’s a need to revisit how early Muslims were able to produce such rational and scientific thoughts while keeping their Islamic values at its core. There are various Islamic bodies in India like Waqf board and madarsa board, but sadly, most of them are either busy in defending triple talaq or grabbing the real estate.
Barring few examples, neither these organisations nor the individuals at the helm of these bodies are concerned about real issues.
We need to change this myopic understanding of how we perceive modern science. It’s time to remind the world that science and Islam were never at odds. We need to reinvent the education system in madarsa system to include a new approach towards education while keeping the religious studies at its core.
Therefore, Yogi Adityanath's decision of introducing NCERT syllabus in UP Madarsa Board is a blessing in disguise. Whatever his intentions may be, for all the things I despise Yogi Adityanath, I think this is a move we need to implement across all the madarsa boards of India.
I can't thank him enough for this decision. It’s now the time to remind the Muslim world of their rich scientific and rational past — and how it shaped the modern understanding of the science, as we know it.
The sense of belonging will surely instil a sense of pride in the community and propel rational thought, independent reasoning and scientific enquiry. Al-Khwarizmi should not just be taught in the history class, rather, while teaching algebra or quadratic equations, students should learn how a young mathematician from Baghdad named al-Khwarizmi, for the first time in the human history, laid down the step-by-step process of solving a quadratic equation, which later became algorithms which essentially drive every single thing around us.
From finding a cab driver to finding a dating partner, they are virtually doing everything which was once considered a sophisticated human task.
Perhaps, "Algorithm maketh, Algorithm taketh away”. We have done this before, we can do it again.