Islam - One Scholar

The Prophet of Islam (Peace be upon him and his family) said: "One Scholar is more powerful against the Devil than one thousand worshippers." [1]

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The power of readers lies not in their ability to gather information, in their ordering and cataloguing capabilities, but in their gift to interpret, associate and transform their reading. For the Talmudic schools, as for those of Islam, a scholar can turn religious faith into an active power through the craft of reading, since the knowledge acquired through books is a gift from God. According to an early hadith, or Islamic tradition, "one scholar is more powerful against the Devil than a thousand worshippers." For these cultures of the Book, knowledge lies not in the accumulation of texts or information, nor in the object of the book itself, but in the experience rescued from the page and transformed again into experience, in the words reflected both in the outside world and in the reader's own being." [2]

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One of the elemental features of madrassah education is what madrassah administrators now call "comparative religion." In practice, this involves comparing and contrasting one interpretive school vis-a-vis another, for example Sunni vs. Shia or Deobandi vs. Barelvi. It also involves radd, or refutation, whereby students learn to counter the arguments of a sectarian system and defend their own tradition's worldview.[3]

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"Signatories to the letter said it is very clear that their (the teachers and supervisors to be recruited) educational qualification is not as expected for educating children with a broad mind.

"They said the project would curtail constitutional rights of children as the project would use worship places of a certain religion to teach children and children of other religion would not have access to those worship places." [4]

From the esteemed halls of the Ijtihad-level imam to the more humble civic ones of Bangladeshi parents, the matter of scholarship, whether for the young or the wisened, looms large, for the Islamic Small Wars, where they are fought for God and not the progeny of bandits and sadists, are neither military or political in their ultimate nature but rather vigorously intellectual and astoundingly poetic.

"One Scholar is more powerful against the Devil than one thousand worshipers."

The world may be in better shape than it knows, for today scholars reside among Christians, Jews, and Muslims in quality and numbers great enough to represent the energies of millions of worshippers against the Devil.

In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that horror in Islam--its daily roster of bombings, kidnappings, and murders--may be found in the willfully dishonest exploitation of language, the abuse of the world's magnificent library in its totality, the misappropriation of license, the adoption of denial as a way, and a naturally consequent, even addicted revel in self-indulgent mayhem.

Even in Bangladesh, among the world's poorest and most tender nations, 83 percent Muslim, 16 percent Hindu [5], modestly informed adults, so I may assume here, know the difference between a circumscribed madrassah education (and perhaps too its narrowed Wahabbi entrepreneurism) and a broad and generous introduction to the universe that may be experienced, explored, known, and shared, harmoniously, for the benefit of mankind worldwide and to the greater honor due God.

"Each community has its own direction to which it turns: race to do good deeds and wherever you are, God will bring you together." [6]

We are racing today.

May courage and heart be inspired by those who have been racing "to do good deeds" for years or decades.

"ArchNet is an international online community for architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, conservationists, and scholars, with a focus on Muslim cultures and civilisations." [7]

As part of its mission in Islam, ArchNet provides a terrific overview of its part of the possible in development and scholarship both: http://archnet.org/library/images/index.jsp?collection_id=23

For the want of a world working together rather than one at war, among many fine examples of cooperation and respect one will find in the ArchNet archive the Museum of Moroccan Judaism. [8]

For the photography by Micheline Jauson:

http://www.archnet.org/library/images/one-image.jsp?location_id=5687&image_id=36624

Note the source for conveyance of the art work: Aga Khan Trust for Culture, part of an extraordinary institutional race in the realm of good-deed doing. [9]

"God knows those who spoil things and those who improve them." [10]

Few, if any, would surpass Aga Khan for invigorating and sustaining life and culture--many cultures, multiple legacies--throughout Islam.

Where the evils of ignorance, poverty, and war darken the soul, charity and philanthropy may chase away that darkness.

Trust God to make a clear path of tangled communications: my journey to this post started with notification of journalist Nadene Ghouri's visit to the Serene Hotel in Swat Valley, Pakistan.

"It feels like one of the most beautiful and magical places on earth," wrote Ghouri, "But it's also extremely dangerous as Pakistani security forces take on Islamic extremists." [11]

Ghouri spent time in November 2008 as the 50-room luxury hotel's only guest.

It turns out Aga Khan owns the Sarena in Swat and maintains it as if it were the sunniest of days in peacetime--and perhaps it is that, for within the Islamic Small Wars, every inch affected, the twinned characteristics of cancer and diabetes--creeping, debilitating, deadly, and deadening wherever the action goes--cannot be overlooked.

However, whether with Iraq striving to recover from ruin, Somalia suffering renewed subjugation in its southern quarter, or Pakistan fending off those among its own who would suffocate the mass of its many people and cities beneath a dark cloak indeed, contemporary life races on around the misery.

Moreover, while its most luminous personalities have yet to forge a silver bullet, such as Aga Khan have learned or taught us much about healthy defenses, the healthiest of which may be humility before God and generous service to the the vast wonder of the human enterprise.

Three Aga Khan institutions strike me as particularly relevant in light of the Islamic Small Wars:

• The umbrella Aga Khan Development Network: http://www.akdn.org/default.asp

• The Aga Khan Trust for Culture: http://www.akdn.org/aktc

• The Global Centre for Pluralism: http://www.pluralism.ca/index.shtml

In this 50th year of Mawlana Hazar Imam's Imamat, as Aga Khan's name and position are known to his people, one may hope the goodness inherent in honest scholarship, diverse and open societies, and generous and great vision will stall the rigidly arrogant and vain, also monothematic and monomaniacal, among those who would seem most in fear of what waits for them in each and every one of the world's libraries.

This comes from a recent building dedication speech by the Aga Khan. The words arrange the world a little bit while contributing quite to its more luminous qualities.

"The congregational space incorporated within the Ismaili Centre belongs to the historic category of jamatkhana, an institutional category that also serves a number of sister Sunni and Shia communities, in their respective contexts, in many parts of the world. Here, the Jamatkhana will be reserved for traditions and practices specific to the Shia Ismaili tariqah of Islam. The Centre on the other hand, will be a symbol of confluence between the spiritual and the secular in Islam." [12]

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Reference

1. Ayatullah al-Uzma al-Hajj as-Sayyid 'Ali al-Husaini as-Seestani. Islamic-Laws.com: http://www.islamic-laws.com/marja/Ayatullahalseestani.htm

2. Manguel, Alberto. The Library at Night. P. 91. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

3. Fair, C. Christine. The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan. Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2008.

4. Staff Correspondent. "Concern over mosque-based child education project." The Daily Star, November 7, 2008: http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=62273

5. Kwintessential. "Bangladesh": http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/bangladesh.html

6. Haleem, M.A.S., Translator. The Qur'an. P. 17, 2:146. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2008.

7. ArchNet: http://www.archnet.org/lobby/

8. ArchNet Digital Library. "Museum of Moroccan Judaism": http://www.archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.jsp?site_id=4297

9. Aga Khan Trust for Culture: http://www.akdn.org/aktc

10. Haleem, M.A.S., Translator. The Qur'an. P. 25, 2:219. New York: Oxford University Press, Inc., 2008.

11. Ghouri, Nadene. "The only guest in town's luxury hotel." BBC News, November 6, 2008: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7708935.stm

12. Imam, Mawlana Hazar. "Speech At the Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of The Ismaili Jamatkhana and Centre, Khorog Monday, 3 November 2008." Ismaili Mail: http://ismailimail.wordpress.com/2008/11/05/speech-by-mawlana-hazar-imam-at-the-foundation-stone-laying-ceremony-of-the-ismaili-jamatkhana-and-centre-khorog-monday-3-november-2008/

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