The Essence of Brotherhood in Islam
One of the gentlemen there delivered so thunderous and pelting an address against the idol-makers of rigidity and the worshippers of elders that it seemed as though the cloudbanks which had been gathering for years upon the horizon of thought had suddenly burst open. In his words there was the crack of lightning and the down-pour of rain. He said that some people have woven the love of their great men into the very fabric of creed, so that even the light of evidence now hurts their eyes. The pronouncements of the elders are for them lines cut in stone, no matter how many question-marks the changing times, the revolving circumstances and the new forms of problems may place around those lines. Respect for the elders has its own place, yet between respect and captivity there is a difference. To take light from a lamp is one thing; to bind the lamp upon one’s eyes and then walk is quite another. By the first way the path is illumined; by the second a man falls into a pit, and then begins to look for arguments to prove that the pit itself is the sunnah of his elders.
During this conversation someone asked me: “What is the condition of Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ?” I replied that Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ came into being precisely to put an end to these factional divisions and to kindle, among the Muslims, the lamp of mutual affection and love. Its very foundation was laid upon the concept that all Muslims are brethren. Whatever a person’s school, disposition, dress or outward form may be, if he is a Muslim, then the door of praying in another Muslim’s mosque cannot be shut in his face. No one may be barred from entering Nadwah merely on account of his school, nor may any Muslim be deprived of praying behind another Muslim.
The concept of religion held by Nadwat al-ʿUlamāʾ is not confined within sectarian fences; rather, it breathes beneath the broad sky of Islamic brotherhood. Its purpose is not that everyone should erase his own intellectual identity and don a uniform of one single colour, but that, despite disagreement, breadth in the hearts, gentleness upon the tongues and grace within the demeanour should endure. The beauty of a garden lies not in all its flowers being of one hue; its charm is born of the gathering of blossoms of many colours. Were every flower to insist on dyeing the others in its own colour, there would remain a painter’s shop, not a garden.
This is the very creed and intellectual spirit of Nadwah:
kullu muslimin yuṣallī khalfahu wa-yuṣallī ʿalayhi
al-muslimūna tatakāfaʾu dimāʾuhum wa-aʿrāḍuhum wa-ḥurumātuhum
innamā al-muʾminūna ikhwah
al-muslimu man salima al-muslimūna min lisānihi wa-yadihi
Within these principles there is brotherhood, equality, mutual respect and the inviolability of human life and honour. Their demand is not that differences should altogether disappear, but that disagreement must not be allowed to harden into enmity. The task of knowledge is to brighten pathways, not to erect barbed fences upon them; the office of fiqh is to loosen the knots of life, not to place ten new knots around every one; the objective of fatwā is to guide man, not to render him a stranger upon the very threshold of his own religion.
In short, among the Nadwīs there is such elegance and charm that one is moved to say:
Wherever the eye alights upon that all-encompassing beauty,
The heart desires: here let me spend my life!
The breadth of disposition in Nadwah is in truth the living spirit of its intellectual temperament. This breadth is not a name for lack of principle, nor is it an invitation to blur the distinction between right and wrong. It is rather the awareness that disagreement of opinion among truth-seekers is a natural reality, and that the vessel required to endure this reality is not the heritage of narrow hearts. It is by virtue of its vastness that the ocean embraces the river; to the paltry pond every new wave seems to be exceeding its limits.
Someone inquired: “Are the Nadwīs upon this very school?” I answered: expansiveness is the mother-tongue of the Nadwīs.
In that sentence there is not merely an attractive phrase; it is the summary of the entire intellectual history of Nadwah. A mother-tongue is that in which a human being speaks his heart without affectation, in which his emotions breathe, whose words are the natural extension of his temperament. For the Nadwīs, breadth of outlook is something of this very sort: it ought not to be a lesson learned, a cloak donned or a display arranged. It is the spontaneous part of their scholarly training, their religious insight and their human relationships.
Wherever in the world a Nadwī may be, his recognition should be through the spaciousness of his breast, the loftiness of his resolve and the elevation of his aspiration. He should stand up to save humanity, not to raise still higher the ramparts of sectarian castles. His heart must be so capacious that Muslims of differing persuasions may come and sit with him along with their disagreements, and when they rise from his gathering they feel that someone took the trouble to listen to what was in their hearts rather than to subject their creed to interrogation.
To save humanity is no petty task. It is a trust which at times is buried beneath heaps of religious terminology, whose voice is lost amid the din of jurisprudential hairsplitting, whose face becomes hidden in the throngs of sectarian loyalties. A man becomes so occupied with bringing down his opponent that he forgets that the person he is casting down is also a member of this very Ummah, a confessor of the same kalimah, and a supplicant of salvation before the same Lord.
When anyone encounters a Nadwī, an involuntary cry should arise from his heart: “O spectacle of the world, thy countenance!” And if he beholds him from afar, he should proclaim aloud: “The perfume of the heart rises from this dust!” That is to say, within that person’s personality there ought to be such attraction, such freshness and such human beauty that his nearness perfumes the heart like fragrance. He should not be a mere walking library; rather, a living human being illumined by the light of knowledge: in his discourse the strength of argument combined with the softness of affection, in his stance firmness yet room for the other, in his religious awareness solidity yet in his human relations refinement.
Someone remarked that this was also the method of Shaykh Qaraḍāwī, and for that reason he loved the Nadwīs. I replied that this love was not merely the result of personal connection; it was likewise born of a shared intellectual disposition. Those who regard religion as guidance for life are not willing to imprison it within the cage of party identity. In their view, the greatness of a scholar lies not in how many imitators he has, but in how many hearts are illumined by his knowledge, how many minds are widened, and how many human beings are drawn closer to one another.
If knowledge does not render a human being humble, then the turban upon his head remains naught but a piece of cloth. If fiqh does not create breadth within the heart, its subtleties sometimes merely add to the complexities of the mind. If fatwā does not show the path of mercy, it can become, instead of guidance, yet another wall. And if love of the elders is bereft of justice, investigation and ḥusn al-ẓann, it begins to fashion an idol-house instead of serving as a lamp of guidance.
I said that my longing is that every Muslim become a servant of pure heart: that he grasp the value of īmān and islām, that he learn to respect humanity, that he come out of the prisons of sect-worship, elder-worship and taste-worship, and that he turn his heart from being a warehouse of hatreds into a garden of loves.
Our tragedy is that, under the pretext of protecting religion, we have at times fortified our individual tents, yet have neglected the cracks appearing in the common roof of the Ummah. Each party is busy trimming the edges of its own cloak, even if the cloak of the neighbour be reduced to tatters. Every group is pouring oil into the lamp of its own school, yet gives no thought to whether the smoke of that lamp is filling the eyes of another Muslim. We have raised lofty the minarets of mosques, but the distances between hearts have likewise grown high; we have filled the shelves with fatwās, yet have found no leisure to people the empty chambers of love.
It is precisely at this juncture that the real responsibility of Nadwah begins. It must become, not merely an educational institution, but a symbol of such an intellectual and moral temperament that endures difference, holds prejudice to account, joins knowledge to life and beholds man together with his human inviolability. The connection to Nadwah is not just a name; it is a trust, and the right of a trust is not discharged by repeating the name but by fulfilling its demands.
If being a Nadwī comes to mean nothing more than a link with an institution, then that link is worth no more than an identity card. True Nadwiyyah is that a person’s knowledge be broad, his character gentle, his heart fraternal and his tongue well-wishing. Even in disagreement he does not let go the hem of justice, even in opposition he keeps the honour of the opponent safe, and while holding his own opinion to be right he yet leaves room for the possibility that some aspect of the other’s speech may merit consideration. Our longing is only this, that the breast of every Muslim be as clear as a mirror:
Our way is to keep the heart as shining as a mirror;
In our path harbouring rancour is pure unbelief.
