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As an IIUI faculty member and academician, have you ever heard about the meetings of university’s Board of Governors (BoG), Academic Council, Deans and Directors Committee, Board of Studies, IIUI Purchase & Procurement Committee etc.? Any chance, though accidentally, to go through the minutes and decisions of such meetings? Have you ever considered that who represents you in these meetings about certain very crucial issues of academic nature and career path? Who decides that who would be your representative and how do some handpicked representatives perform on these forums? Have they ever reported back to their constituents to solicit feedback and response formulation? Have you ever been asked at IIUI to chose your representative for various committees’ membership?

If you are absolutely shocked with these questions and finding yourself a “missing person” in the discourse then come along and share your thoughts about these issues with us for our upcoming post on this topic. Please send your thoughts to: iiuiblog@gmail.com

Renowned scholar, eminent educationist Dr. Khalid Alvi passes away

ISLAMABAD: http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=136375

Renowned scholar and eminent educationist Dr. Khalid Alvi died this evening due to heart failure. He was 68 years old.

Dr. Khalid Alvi was PhD from University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He taught forty years in various institutions. He had served as Director General Dawah Academy-IIUI, Islamabad, Director of Islamic studies at Birmingham University and Director of Sheikh Zayed Islamic center-Lahore.

He had more than twenty books in English, Arabic and Urdu to his credit. Presently he was serving as Dean of Arts and Humanities in WISH (Women’s Institute of Science and Humanities) Islamabad. He is survived by a wife and a son.

Prayers for the departed soul will be offered in Faisal Mosque Islamabad after Zuhr prayers. Maulana Abdul Jabbar Shakir will lead the prayers. He will be buried in the graveyard of the Punjab University after Isha prayers. Qazi Hussain Ahmad Ameer -e-Jam at -e-Islami will lead the prayers in Lahore.

Not just Europe

Author: Dr. Asad Zaman, Professor, International Institute of Islamic Economics-IIUI,

Email: asadzaman@alum.mit.edu

The article below has appeared in The News (http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=142730)

Friday, October 24, 2008

Future historians writing on the basis of official US documents would be convinced that the USA selflessly invaded Iraq to bring benefits of democracy and civilisation to a barbarian nation, and to protect the entire world from weapons of mass destruction possessed by a mad dictator. They would not pick any clue in these documents to the fact that the war destroyed the lives of millions of Iraqis so that the USA could control their oil.

For the past few centuries, people of European origin have been telling us about the wonderful effects of the modernisation of Europe. The other side of the story is not well known. The self-centred and self-glorifying point of view of Europeans, which completely disregards the problems and difficulties of modernisation, is implicitly absorbed by anyone who consumes their literary, cinematic or other intellectual or social products – a category to which virtually every reader of this column belongs.

Earlier, Henri Pirenne showed how the attempt to picture themselves at the centre stage of history at all times has led Europeans to a substantially distorted understanding of world civilisations, their close interrelationships, dependency and balances, and their contributions to weaving the fabric of global history and society. Many recent books show how Eurocentric bias has led the West to claim the achievements of other cultures in the invention of (notably) democracy, universities, capitalism, individualism and science. Efforts of such scholars have led to the understanding that much of our common stock of wisdom about human beings and their history in the past few centuries is "Eurocentric."

Deep and valuable insights about ourselves emerge when we try to learn about the achievements of other cultures, and also the failures of Europe, which are all suppressed in European writings.

One of the central themes of the European view of the world is the idea that the whole world was in darkness and ignorance, and the dawn of the age of reason first occurred in Europe. The term "Age of Enlightenment" was used by 18th century European writers, who were "convinced that they were emerging from centuries of darkness and ignorance into a new age enlightened by reason, science, and respect for humanity. The period is also often referred to as the Age of Reason." This led to the "White Man's Burden" to take his civilisation and powers of reasoning to ignorant people living in darkness all over the world. This picture of world history, which ignores the presence of many ancient and advanced civilisations, is embedded deeply into Western intellectual traditions.

All non-Europeans who acquire a Western education automatically imbibe this story, which results in an exaggerated respect for Western traditions and an inferiority complex about one's allegedly savage and primitive ancestors.

In fact, the story of the Western transition to a secular system of politics and thought is not, as we are told, a story of the triumph of reason over superstition. The emergence of secular thought in the West was a consequence of the moral bankruptcy of the upper echelon of the Catholic Church. In The March of Folly, by Barbara Tuchman, the crisis caused by the openly flaunted moral corruption of a sequence of Popes (which involved living extremely luxuriously, legitimising bastard progeny, selling pardons for sins to raise money for supporting lavish lifestyles, etc.) has been termed "the most momentous event in the history of Europe." Tuchman has documented how this directly led to the rise of the Protestants, who attempted to preserve their faith while breaking from the corrupt Catholic Church. The Protestants split into several different Christian sects and factions, which fought among themselves as well as with the Catholics. The intolerance of these sects for each other, and battles, carnage, oppression and injustice, all carried out in the name of Christianity, convinced Europeans that religion could not serve as a basis for ordering a society.

Even religious leaders realised that social harmony required principles which could be agreed to by all members of the society without invoking controversial and conflicting religious principles. Secular thought developed due to the lack of character among religious leaders of Europe, and aimed at development of higher character by using reason and factual knowledge instead of religion. The Enlightenment thinkers hoped to create a more humane and just society which was free from poverty, wars and social evils of all kinds.

Have the hopes of the enlightenment thinkers been borne out by subsequent history? Religion provided the basis for morality, which has gradually become weaker and weaker in Europe. The consequences of this weaking of moral forces in the Western civilisation have been noted by many authors, and are visible for all to see.

For example, Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book The De-moralisation of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values, has documented the increase of violent crimes and illegitimate childbirth as a consequence of the decline of Victorian concepts of morality in England. The resulting breakdown of the family in Europe and the USA has led to an epidemic of social disorder. The Social Justice Foundation in England has documented how the children of single parents, now the majority of all European children, are likely to have poor outcomes in terms of education, mental health, drug abuse and criminal offending.

Julie Reuben, in her book The Making of the Modern University: Intellectual Transformation and the Marginalisation of Morality, shows how a university education was aimed at developing character in students up until early twentieth century. However, this mission was abandoned by modern universities in favour of providing a purely technical education, without any spiritual or moral guidance. The results have been disastrous as students learn how to build bombs, but nothing about ethics of killing. About the Nazi gas chambers used to burn millions of innocent men, women and children, Holocaust scholar Franklin Littel writes that "the credibility crisis of the modern university arises from the fact that the death camps were not planned and built by … illiterates, ignorant savages, but were by-products of one of the best university systems in the world. In The Brightest and the Best, David Halberstam has documented how graduates of the best universities ran the Vietnam War on the pattern of an efficient business, with callous disregard for human suffering. Much of Vietnam became, in essence, a free-fire zone -- more than one million civilians died as "collateral damage" in the mass bombings and napalming -- and atrocities and massacres were common. Villages were torched and destroyed in order to "save" them, in the famous words of a US major. Then defence secretary Robert McNamara now repents his role in that slaughter, and urges America's leaders not to repeat a similar history in Iraq.

With the widespread breakdown of family values, and the abandonment of the moral mission by universities, children growing up in Europe and the USA have no place to learn ethics and morality. In single-parent families, now the majority, children do not know their fathers, and do not experience the warmth and love of their working mothers. In addition, Hollywood and TV promote highly immoral lifestyles; for example, people who murder innocent civilians for money are portrayed as normal, decent, loving and kind human beings in Mr and Mrs Smith and many other similar movies. This has resulted in monstrosities such as the public statement in a CBS "Nightline" TV interview by former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright that it was acceptable to kill half-a-million Iraqi children to achieve objectives of US policy. She has a vastly better public relations team than Genghis Khan and Hitler, whose names have been blackened forever in history for far lesser deeds.

Many of our leaders and modernised elites insist on blind imitation of the West as the only route to progress. For example, ministries were established to teach European dancing, music and theatre to the Turkish people, and similar efforts are under way all over the Islamic world. The point of this article is to argue that we must be discriminating. Certainly we must learn from the West, but we need to distinguish between their failures and success, and avoid the former while adopting means to acquire the latter.

The writer teaches economics at the International Islamic University of Islamabad. Email: asadzaman @alum.mit.edu

Islamic Studies Published

The latest issue of Islamic Studies, a research journal of Islamic Research Institute-IIUI, is now published.

Islamic Studies, Volume No 47, Number 1, Spring 1428–1429/2008

Contents:

1. The Notions of Dar al-harb and Dar al-Islam in Islamic Jurisprudence with Special Reference to the Hanafi School
MUHAMMAD MUSHTAQ AHMAD

2. IImages of Religious Others in Textbooks of Religious Education for the Public Primary Schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina
AID SMAJIĆ

3. Islam in Brunei Darussalam: Negotiating Islamic Revivalism and Religious Radicalism
IIK ARIFIN MANSURNOOR

Documents

Civil and Religious Law in England: A Religious Perspective

Book Reviews

Omid Safi. The Politics of Knowledge in Premodern Islam: Negotiating Ideology and Religious Identity
ARSHAD ZAMAN

Caryle Murphy. Passion For Islam: Shaping the Modern Middle East: The Egyptian Experience
IRFAN MOEEN KHAN

Nahid Kabir. Muslims in Australia: Immigration, Race Relations and Cultural History
SAMINA YASMEEN

Saba Mahmood. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject
JUNAID S. AHMAD

Talal Asad. On Suicide Bombing
SADIA MAHMOOD

Absracts:

1. The Notions of Daral-Harb and Dar al-Islam in Islamic Jurisprudence with Special Reference to the Hanafi School
MUHAMMAD MUSHTAQ AHMAD

The article argues that the bifurcation of the world into two domains—Dar al-Isl┐m and D┐r al-╓arb—is essentially an affirmation of the principle of territorial jurisdiction. This principle was enunciated with a high degree of clarity and its implications were worked out with rigour and consistency by the Muslim jurists, especially those of the ╓anaf┘ school. Among the reasons that have mainly led to confusion and misgiving on the question are:

The use of the term D┐r al-╓arb gave rise to the impression that hostility should inform the relations between D┐r al-Isl┐m and all other entities.

The firmness shown by the Prophet (peace be on him) during the last years of his life to root out the forces actively inimical to Islam and establish a secure foothold for Islam in the Arabian peninsula has at times been detached from its space-time context and considered to be the norm for the Muslims in their relationship with all non-Muslim entities.

The paper argues that seventh century Arabia was a very special case and Muslim jurists, especially ╓anaf┘ jurists, consider it sui generis which may not be extended beyond its space-time context. The general principle guiding Muslims in their relationship with non-Muslim entities remains that the Muslims may engage in fighting against the non-Muslims who are belligerent towards them, rather than against non-Muslims qua non-Muslims.


2. Images of Religious Others in Textbooks of Religious Education for the Public Primary Schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina
AID SMAJIĆ

The course of Religious Education and its respective textbooks for pupils of public primary schools in Bosnia and Herzegovina could certainly make a considerable contribution to rebuilding mutual trust between Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims — the three major religious traditions of the country in the post-war period. Obviously, the extent of success in this regard will largely depend on how the Religious Education literature portrays the members of other ethno-religious communities in the country. Our analysis has shown that the greatest space for religious others is allocated in the textbooks of Catholic Religious Education. In general, textbooks of all traditional religious communities in the country tend to avoid direct negative evaluation of religious others, preferring rather to address their teachings and history of mutual encounter in a respectful manner. Exceptions, however, do exist and they are often concerned with how confessions and religious orientations other than traditional Catholic, Orthodox and Islamic are portrayed. Similarly, history and historical categories remain to be the main factors vitiating the portrayal of Muslims in Catholic and — especially — Orthodox textbooks. Accordingly, history textbooks might prove to be the main battle field in the future textbook revisions.

3. Islam in Brunei Darussalam: Negotiating Islamic Revivalism and Religious Radicalism
IIK ARIFIN MANSURNOOR

Bruneians have shown great earnestness in their adherence to Islam. Religious life in Brunei, however, is characterised by a marked degree of peace and harmony which is indicated by the absence of schismatic tensions.

Moreover, the Bruneians’ allegiance to Islam did not problematise their encounter with the religious others.This paper attempts to study the phenomenon and seeks to explain it. While its fuller explanation requires a multi-dimensional analysis, the paper focuses on a careful examination of the religio-ideological factor and arrives at the conclusion that the characteristic Islamic orientation in Brunei—its inclusive approach, its accent on moderation, its ability to incorporate change without creating social convulsion, etc.—is largely because of the Bruneians’ adherence to a well-established traditional Islamic school in which they are firmly rooted.