| Shah
Waliullah
Shah Waliullah (1702-1762)
was among those personalities whose appearance on the scene
of history in the early 18th Century marked the beginning
of a new life in the Muslim East: an innate impulse in the
society that was thwarted by the onslaught of European colonialism,
perhaps only temporarily, and is now gradually becoming
more visible again.
In ‘The Principle
of Movement in Islam’, the sixth lecture in The
Reconstruction of Islam (1930/1934), Iqbal offers
his perception of Waliullah’s role in the genesis
of modern Muslim thought in the following words:
The prophetic method
of teaching, according to Shah Waliullah, is that, generally
speaking, the law revealed by a prophet takes especial
notice of the habits, ways, and peculiarities of the people
to whom he is specifically sent. The prophet who aims
at all-embracing principles, however, can neither reveal
different principles for different peoples, nor leaves
them to work out their own rules of conduct. His method
is to train one particular people, and to use them as
a nucleus for the building up of a universal Shariah.
In doing so he accentuates the principles underlying the
social life of all mankind, and applies them to concrete
cases in the light of the specific habits of the people
immediately before him. The Shariah values (Ahkam) resulting
from this application (e.g. rules relating to penalties
for crimes) are in a sense specific to that people; and
since their observance is not an end in itself they cannot
be strictly enforced in the case of future generations.
|
Special
thanks to Iqbal Academy Pakistan
