METHODOLOGY FOR STUDY OF THE QUR'AN
Ansari Memorial Series
The Ansari Memorial Series of books is published in loving memory of Maulana Dr. Muhammad Fazlur Rahman Ansari (1914-1974) who was a Sufi Shaikh of the Qaderiyyah Sufi Order, a philosopher, an outstanding Islamic scholar of the modern age, a roving missionary of Islam, and my teacher and spiritual mentor of blessed memory. My love for him, and my continuously increasing admiration for both his Islamic scholarship as well as his philosophical thought, more than 40 years after his death, is such that I cherish the very dust on which he walked.
I began writing the books of the Ansari Memorial Series in 1994 while I was still resident in New York, and functioning as Director of Islamic Studies for the Joint Committee of Muslim Organizations of Greater New York. I started the Series of books in Maulana’s honour because I wanted to offer a gift to my teacher on the 25th anniversary of his death. The first six books of the Series were launched in the Masjid of the Muslim Centre of New York in Flushing Meadows, Queens, New York, in 1997, and in the years which have since passed, many more books were added to the Series. A complete list of books in the Series can be found at the end of this book.
The latest book in the Series, entitled From Jesus the True Messiah to Dajjal the False Messiah – A Journey in Islamic Eschatology, promises to be the most difficult and challenging of all. The subject is both difficult and challenging because, among other things, it takes a scholar directly inside the Zionists’ hornet’s nest, and as a consequence there are few scholars who are prepared to risk writing or speaking on this subject. But let us recall that the blessed Prophet (s) said: “One learned (scholar) is harder on Satan than a thousand worshipers”. (Sunan Ibn Majah)
Hence scholarly books and lectures on Dajjal whose Fitnah (evil) is described by Prophet Muhammad (s) as greater than that of Satan, will surely be a means through which our readers would be able to identify true scholars of Islam. I pray that my humble pioneering book on Dajjal might pass the test of scholarship, and if it does do so, Insha’ Allah, that it might encourage the learned scholars of Islam of the modern age to also address this important subject.
I recognize the subject of Dajjal to be the ultimate test of Islamic scholarship, and that implies that it constitutes the ultimate test of methodology for study of the Qur’an and for assessment of Hadith. I am convinced that only an authentic Sufi scholar can write credibly on the subject of Dajjal because only he has the proper methodology for the study of the Qur’an and the assessment of Ahadith, the Sufi epistemology of spiritual insight with which to interpret religious symbolism, as well as the tangible vibrating spiritual bond with Nabi Muhammad (s), which are all indispensable for penetrating the subject; and this is why I have to devote attention to the religious thought of Maulana Ansari, the authentic Sufi Shaikh. I could never have written my book on Dajjal without the benefit of his religious thought. The methodology of the scholars of ‘Islamic Modernism’, of the Salafi, Shia, Deobandi, Brelvi or of a Tabligh Jamaat, for example, will not allow a scholar whose primary identification is with those sects, to successfully penetrate the subject of Dajjal. I invite them, gently so, to prove me wrong.
I met Maulana Ansari for the first time in 1960 in my native Caribbean island of Trinidad when I was just 18 years of age. I had done some studies in science, and I was quite surprised to learn that a Maulana (an Islamic religious scholar of a very high rank) would be visiting Trinidad from Pakistan, and that he would lecture at my Montrose Village Masjid on the subject of ‘Islam and Science’. (The Masjid was subsequently named after him as Masjid al-Ansari.) My response to the news was quite skeptical, since at that young age I knew of no possible link between Islam and science.
On the night of the lecture he astonished me with his scientific scholarship, as well as with knowledge of Islam of which I was hitherto quite ignorant. I was surprised to learn that the Qur’an had, time and again, appealed to ‘observation’ and to ‘inductive reasoning’, and hence to what is today called ‘scientific enquiry’, as the method through which one should seek to penetrate and understand the reality of the material universe. I was also surprised to learn that knowledge which had come to the world these last few hundred years from some of the discoveries of modern science, such as in embryology, had already been present in the Qur’an.
I was even more surprised when Maulana lectured at Woodford Square in the capital city of Port of Spain, on ‘Islam and Western Civilization’ before an audience which filled the large Square to capacity, and with the Oxford University–trained Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Eric E. Williams, sitting on the platform beside him. Dr. Williams had himself already dealt a severe blow to Western Civilization in his PhD thesis at Oxford entitled ‘Capitalism and Slavery'. The learned Prime Minister was clearly impressed by Maulana's scholarship as he dissected the godless pagan foundations of a barbaric and oppressive civilization that had arrogantly and deceptively presented itself as the best that the world had ever experienced, and would ever experience. Maulana's dynamic Islamic scholarship, and the spiritual impact of his magnetic Sufi personality, changed my life. He inspired me to such an extent that I, also, wanted to become a scholar of Islam. By November 1963, and at the age of twenty-one, I became a student of Al Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, which was the most famous institution of higher Islamic learning in the world. But I could not find in Al Azhar University the dazzling Islamic scholarship to which I was exposed three years earlier in Maulana Ansari. The scholars of Al Azhar appeared to me to have been stuck in time, and could not compare with Maulana in their scholarly understanding of the reality of the strange and challenging modern age, nor in their capacity to offer an Islamic response for example, to challenges posed by the modern scientific and technological revolution, the feminist revolution, etc.
I left Egypt and travelled to Pakistan in August 1964 to become Maulana’s student at the Aleemiyah Institute of Islamic Studies in Karachi, and that was the best decision that I have ever taken in life. (The Institute still exists to this day at the Islamic Center in Block B of the Karachi suburb of North Nazimabad.) I remained his student until I graduated from the Institute seven years later in 1971 at the age of twenty nine with the degree of Al-Ijazah al-’Aliyah, and returned to Trinidad. I never met him again in life, since he died three years later in 1974 in Pakistan at the age of 60. There are many things about Maulana that I would love to write and to record for history, but by far the most important of all aspects of his rich and multifaceted life was his religious thought, and that is what I have attempted to explain in my brief essay on the subject. It was crucially important for me to do so, not only because his exceptional scholarship offers some assistance for modern Islamic scholarship to extricate itself from its present sorry and miserable plight (one cannot find a single prominent Islamic scholar today who dares to declare the present paper-money monetary system to be bogus, fraudulent and Haram), but also because his scholarship has played such an important role in guiding and assisting me in writing my pioneering book on Dajjal the false Messiah, which is the latest book in the Ansari Memorial Series.
Let me also explain that my essay does not provide a comprehensive description of Maulana's religious thought. However it does provide a sufficiently adequate description of his thought for the purpose of introducing him to the gentle readers who are advised to also study his master-piece on the Qur'an entitled The Qur'anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society (in 2 vols.). Our essay on his religious thought can be found at Appendix 1 of this book.
Ansari Memorial Series Books
1. The Prohibition of Ribā in the Qur’ān and Sunnah; 1997
2. The Importance of the Prohibition of Ribā in Islam; 1997
3. One Jamaat One Ameer: The Organization of a Muslim Community in the Age of Fitan; 1997
4. The Religion of Abraham and the State of Israel – A View from the Qur’ān; 1997.
5. The Strategic Importance of Isrā and Mirāj; 1997
6. The Strategic Importance of Dreams and Visions in Islam; 1997. Second edition 2014
7. The Caliphate The Hejaz and The Saudi-Wahhabi Nation-State; 1997. Second edition 2013
8. Fasting and Power; 1997. Second edition 2011
9. The Qur’anic Method of Curing Alcoholism and Drug Addiction; 2000
10. George Bernard Shaw and the Islamic Scholar; 2000
11. A Muslim Response to the 9/11 Attack on America; 2002
12. Jerusalem in the Qur’ān; 2002, Second edition 2002
13. Sūrah al-Kahf Text Translation and Commentary; 2007
14. Sūrah al-Kahf and the Modern Age; 2007
15. Signs of the Last Day in the Modern World; 2007
16. The Gold Dinār and Silver Dirham – Islam and the Future of Money; 2007
17. The Islamic Travelogue; 2009
18. An Islamic View of Gog and Magog in the Modern World; 2009, Second edition 2011
19. Explaining Israel’s Mysterious Imperial Agenda; 2011
20. Iqbal and Pakistan’s Moment of Truth; 2011
21. Madīna Returns to Center-State in Ākhir al-Zamān; 2012
22. In Search of Khidr’s footprints in Ākhir al-Zamān; 2014
23. From Jesus the True Messiah to Dajjāl the False Messiah; 2016
24. Methodology for Study of the Qur’ān; 2016
Aleemiyah Memorial Series
Islam and Buddhism in the Modern Age; 1972
World Federation of Islamic Missions
The Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society in 2 Vols. By Maulānā Dr. Muhammad (s) Fazlur Rahmān Ansārī. First published 1973. Malaysian Edition 2011
[The above books can all be ordered from the On-line Bookstore: www. imranhosein.com].
to be continued .....
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