FREEDOM MOVEMENT

Gandhi's Image of Islam

(Extracts from Gandhi's Responses to Islam)

Gandhi developed (his) image of Islam as a result of conversations with his Indian Muslim friends, and from his readings.

He read Thomas Carlyle'essay on Muhammad in the hook Heroes and Hero Worship.

Later, Gandhi read Shibli's biographies of Muslim heroes, books of Hadith, and Amir Ali's books on Islamic history

Carlyle and Shibli shared and an appreciation of Cubbon's great history of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Carlyle, in his famous essay, said explicitly that he was contesting the received idea in Western circles that Muhammad was a liar and an imposter. His argument was that a liar cannot elicit responses of trust and belief from Hasses of people over a long period of time... Carlyle maintained that a form of truth was emerging through Muhammad that was more honest and truer to human experience than the strange metaphysical doctrines which Esme out of the debates of Christian theologians in the early Christian centuries. In his words:

Mahomet's creed a better kind of Christianity than the miserable Syrian sects with their janglings about Homoiousion and Homoosion the head full of worthless rambling, the heart empty and dead".

Carlyle had written:

Islam devoured all these vain jangling sects; and I think had a right to do so. It was a Reality, direct from the Heart of Nature once more and idolatrous Syrian formulas, whatsoever was not equally real, had to go up in flames - mere dead fuel, in various sense, for this which was fire.

He envisaged the Islamic triumph over half the Christian world as another great revolution which had changed the conditions of human life.

Shibli's friend and fellow teacher at Aligarh, Thomas Arnold, in his book The Preaching of Islam had presented similar perspective on the early Muslim victories.

Gandhi may or may not have read Thomas Arnold, hit his close friends, the Ali brothers and Maulana Azad, were directly disciples of the perspective of Shibli had moted at Aligarh and at the Nadwa-ul-Ulema. Therefore, Arnold's approach to early Muslim history would have been mediated through Shibli, Amir Ali, Iqbal and other Muslim modernists. Gandhi was certainly sworn of the idea that progress had been made in history when religious reform had challenged traditional religious authorities. This awareness helped shape one of his fundamental beliefs, namely that all traditions had grains of truth in them, but all had also been misdirected by the equivalent of 'vain, jangling' authorities. This is reason why he so often asserted that anything anyone gets from any tradition should be accepted only after the individual has tested the material in his own experience.

His long struggle against untouchability in Hinduism was motivated by the conviction that that practice was a falsification of basic Hindu values. That truth comes in the experience of individuals, and not through blind adherence to the teachings of established religious authorities. In a sense, had again affirmed his conviction that the violent aspect of the Muslim tradition was a later accretion foreign to the basic truths of the religion. He wrote:

Though, in my opinion, non-violence had a predominant place in the Qur'an, the thirteen hundred years of imperialistic expansion made the Musselman fighters as a body. They are, therefore, aggressive. Bullying is the natural excrescence of an aggressive spirit... I refuse to be lifted off my feet. because of the scares that haunt us today. If Hindus. would but believe in themselves and work in accordance with their traditions, they will have no reason to fear bullying. The moment they recommence the real spiritual training. the Musselman respond. He cannot help it. If I can get together a band of young Hindus with faith in themselves, and therefore, faith in the Musselman, the band will become a shield for the weaker ones.

There are several notions implicit in this statement. One is that the Sufi understanding of Islam is closer to the Prophet's own religious life and intention than are the more militant expressions of the tradition. It is particularly in the Sufi tradition that the aspects of the Qur'an have been stressed that emphasize patience and personal self-discipline. Another idea is that Muslims will respond with spiritual affirmation to Hindus who show themselves spiritually strong; this conviction is certainly based on Gandhi's experience of winning Muslim followers to his movement in South Africa. He believed any Muslim tendency to bully would be overcome as a result of response to Hindu spiritual strength.

In a way, the idea is for Hindus to teach Muslims to recover the inner meaning of the Prophet's example. This might seem a kind of spiritual paternalism for one community to teach another the importance of its virtues. However, Gandhi does not see this process as a one-way street, because, just as Hindus might help Muslims recover an appreciation of the Sufi aspect of Islam, so Muslims might help Hindus recover the egalitarian understanding of the Bhakti forms of Hinduism. So Muslims might deepen their understanding of non- violence from contact with Hindus, and Hindus might increase their understanding of equality from contact with Muslims. Brothers were to support and learn from each other. From Gandhi's perspective, the vain, jangling theorists in each tradition had worked against mutual cooperation among believers.

True it is that interested or fanatical priests in both religions have set the one against the other.

This is one area in which the Bhakti-Sufi distrust of religious authoritarianism from the fifteenth century of Indian runs in similar directions to the enlightenment tradition in Europe. Gandhi affirms many values from the enlightenment, not least the notion that force should never be used in religious matters.

But in spite of many dark things of the modern times, the world's opinion to-day will as little tolerate forcible conversions as it will tolerate forcible slavery. That probably is the most effective contribution of the scientific spirit of the age. That spirit has revolutionized many a false notion about Christianity, as it has about Islam. I do not know a single writer on Islam who defends the use of force in the proselytizing process. The influences exerted in our times are far more subtle than that of the sword.

The vein, jangling fanatical religious authorities are condemned by Gandhi both because they falsify the original good teachings of the respective traditions, and also because their attitudes are incompatible with the good aspects of modernity. He quotes a poem from Goethe to underline his teaching that the basic affirmations of all human religious traditions are similar. In so doing, he is acknowledging recognition that one aspect of the European enlightenment had been a movement away from the wars of religion that had resulted from the characteristically modern notion that the world can in fact be changed. Although Shibli, for example, followed fairly closely the narrative of the Prophet's life contained in the writing of the eighth century author Ibn Ishaq, he gave a characteristically modern twist to his study by stressing the ways in which social and political life was transformed by the Prophet's leadership. Gandhi accepted this paradigm as a self- evident model for himself and his followers.

In addition to his interest in the example of Muhammad as a man who changed the world by putting his faith into action, Gandhi also studied the Qur'an regularly. He wanted, as he often said, to know from the inside the hearts of his Muslim fellow-workers, and he believed that understanding their scripture was the way to understanding them. There were a number of areas in which he believed that he recognized similarities of themes between the insights he had gained from his understanding of Hindu scriptures, and the Qur'an. The word 'surrender' is one instance. This is the common English translation of the word Islam and is acknowledged to be the basic affirmation of all Muslim faith, namely surrendering to God, and to God alone. Gandhi felt that this was similar to the understanding of surrender he gained from an Upanishadic passage. Gandhi thought there was no significant difference between the Qur'an and the Upanishads on the issue of the necessity for total self-abandonment to God. Half- hearted self-giving was impossible for serious faith.

Another similarity he discerned was the teaching that one should respond to evil with good. This seems to have one of the earliest affirmations that he took very seriously to heart when he learned it from a Vaishnava hymn There is a very similar moral teaching in the Qur'an.

Gandhi said that dharma meant firmness in upholding truth. This would be similar to his understanding of the Qur'anic imperative in Surah Fatiha to remain on the straight path, and not be led astray.

He also believed the teachings about the attributes of God to be very similar in the scriptures of the two faiths.

He speaks of Caliph Ali as a model of restraint, and thus as a model for those who would take up the method of satyagraha.

You must know how to restrain your anger, if you desire to maintain non-violence in action for any length of time. Hazrat Ali, the hero of Islam, was once spat upon by an adversary, and it is my conviction that if he had not restrained his anger at the time, Islam would not have maintained its unbroken career of progress up to the present time.

Gandhi found in both Hindu and Muslim scriptures the notion of the inscrutability of the will of God.

Inscrutable are the ways of Providence, I feel that I am dancing to His tune. I, therefore, feel light and buoyant in spirit. Whilst, therefore, no one may feel elated before the end, I feel secure in the faith that He in whose name the work was undertaken will also bring it to successful issue.

A similar statement prior to one of his fasts indicates how he had internalized the lessons he had gained from the scriptures about self-abandonment.

My claim to hear the voice of God is not new Unfortunately, there is no way of proving my claim except through results. God will not be God, if He allowed Himself to be the object of proof by His creatures. But He does give His willing slave the power to pass through the fiercest of ordeals. The greater the surrender to Him, the greater has been my joy.

The theme that God would not be God if he answered calls of proof from his creatures is Qur'anic, but also could be said to represent a characteristic awareness of serious religious consciousness generally. The Qur'an says unbelievers displayed their irreligious vanity when they tried to tempt God to work a miracle in order for them to believe.

We can get some further clues as to how Gandhi understood the Qur'an by looking at the Commentary on the Qur'an written by Maulana Azad.

The attributes of a good person, and the spirit of devotion and commitment to God Gandhi believed were necessary if a person was to become an effective fighter for a better world. The Mahatma was convinced that if persons would seriously internalize and act upon the imperative to return good for evil, just about everything else could be solved.

Repeal evil with that which is best.