Islam to East and West
by Khwaja Kamal-ud-Din
Lecture at Cairo (Delivered at Cairo, Egypt on June 25, 1923)
Your Highness, Your Excellencies, and Brethren in Islam, Lord Headley has said something as to the spread of Islam in England. He has said that there are thousands of people in England who are Muslims though they do not know they are Muslims. He has only reiterated in Egypt what he has said many a time at public meetings in England. The statement has naturally excited surprise in certain quarters, and therefore demands some explanation, which I venture to offer. But first of all, allow me to thank his Lordship for so kindly undertaking to thank you on my behalf as well as on his own for the reception accorded to us here. He has styled it — and very rightly — a grand reception: a reception unique in its character. The reception, however, has suggested a comparison between two widely different psychologies — one, that of the Westerner, which Lord Headley possesses, and the other that of myself, who am a Muslim by birth and an Easterner. If Lord Headley says that he did not and could not expect, or even imagine, that which he has seen and found in the expression of love, brotherhood and hospitality accorded to him by his brethren-in-Islam in Egypt, it is quite natural. The Western heart does not throb — perhaps the cold and rigorous climate has given it its peculiar mould — with that warmth and loving-kindness which streams from the heart of the East. The materialism of the West has killed those finer feelings of kindliness and regard which a Muslim heart cherishes for his those emotions which arise in the Muslim mind on the adhesion of a new soul to his faith — emotions with which the minds of the disciples beat in the days of the Master. Moreover, a guest in the West, after a meal or two, becomes his own host. Every nation has its own ways, most suited to it perhaps. Lord Headley has also remarked that he would not venture to ascribe the welcome that has been given him to his personal significance, but rather that he saw in it that hearty, ever-ready spirit of greeting which the East is always eager to extend to the West. The remark is just the truth, and it is a pregnant truth. Islam, and Islam only, can now unite West and East in such a way as to put an end to all that strife and discord which unfortunately separates them today and is the cause of so much trouble for the whole world.
Egypt, for the treasures and memorials of her antiquity, has now riveted the attention of the whole world; she is drawing the Western world, as brothers, to her various places of interest. Peers by the score and commoners by the hundred, from the West, are seen every year walking in the streets of Cairo and Alexandria without attracting the attention of the people here, except on account of their own personal relations. But no sooner does the news of Baron Headley’s visit reach Egyptian shores than it arouses a strong and ever-increasing wave of love, affection and respect in each heart, irrespective of rank and grade.
The reason is not far to seek. The Muslim is welcoming a Muslim. A new soul is born in the family of Islam; and where lies a family in the world whose members do not rejoice at the birth of a new soul?
As to my own heart it, however, could not be moved in the same way at the sight of that which the wondering eyes of the British Peer saw in your reception. The insignificant sacrifice of my worldly concerns — insignificant, I say advisedly, when I think of the sacrifices made in the cause of Islam by my predecessors-in-faith — which men say that I have made in the service of Islam has not remained unrewarded at the hand of the Almighty. Wherever I have been in the Muslim world I have been treated with unique love, affection and regard. Today I am dining at the same family table with illustrious Princes, the jewels of the Egyptian Royal Family. It naturally reminds me of my visit to Hyderabad, the Premier State in India, in 1915, when His Exalted Highness the Nizam and King of Deccan was gracious enough to allow me to break bread with him at his own table, as well as to invite me to tea in his Palace. Besides Hyderabad, I have visited other Indian Muslim States — Bhopal, Bahawalpur and Khairpur — where I have been treated in the same way. All this respect and regard is not a personal matter. It can be claimed from the Muslim world by every servant of Islam, though such a thing is known in the business-like world of the West. But — after my thanks to God — what chiefly fills my heart with gratitude towards the illustrious princes and other brethren-in-Islam assembled here, is this, that they have created an occasion which has actually proved to the hilt all that I have told Lord Headley and others in the West concerning the hospitality, brotherhood and fellow-feeling in Islam.
Today Al-Farooq [Lord Headley] of England finds the theory of Muslim brotherhood in actual practice. He has had occasion to read all about it in our literature, and yet he has expressed his surprise when he saw the potentialities of the Muslim heart in this direction actualised. The reason is obvious. The self-centredness prevailing in the Western world is such as to prevent even a Muslim mind from anticipating all. Thank God, all this, that might well have been treated as something from the land of dreams when I talked of Muslim hospitality in England, has today become a reality. Now as to the other remark which Lord Headley let fall as to the Muslim nature of the English mind in general. He speaks of thousands of hearts that are Muslim and yet are not aware of this newly developed psychology. The statement, true as it is, can hardly fail to excite surprise, curiosity and doubt, as has indeed been hinted at in some of the local non-Muslim newspapers, though in a very guarded language. The question of questions which must be agitating many a mind here after hearing Lord Headley’s words is probably this: Does the Church in the West repel the average mind so much that it is seeking shelter elsewhere? It does not become of a Muslim preacher to throw mud at others; it is against the teaching of the Quran, but I will narrate certain notable events which have occurred within the short space of the last five years and will leave it to your judgement to appraise the statement of his Lordship as you shall decide. It was, I think, in the year 1917 that some prominent Churchmen questioned the validity of the oath usually administered to those about to be ordained. This oath required them to believe unfeignedly in the Divine origin of the Bible. This, they asserted, they could not do. They could not believe, for example, in Noah’s Ark, nor could they accept the story of Jonah, forgetful of the fact that Jesus himself had tacitly admitted the validity of the latter event by comparing his own rising from the tomb with the coming of Jonah out of the fish. The form of the oath, they said, ought to be changed, and this was done. It was also recommended, and from the pulpit as well, that some of the psalms should be expunged from the Prayer Book; and this, too, was done. Thus, the authenticity and genuineness of the Bible as the Word from God was questioned. Thirteen hundred years ago the Quran said the same thing, but Christendom would not listen to it, and now the Church itself has come forward under the very nose of the Archbishop of Canterbury to bear testimony to the truth related in the Quran. It tickles my curiosity. How could a person accept the genuineness of the rest of a book if the correctness of a portion of it has been impugned, especially when there does not exist any independent proof of the events therein narrated? In this connection, I may refer to another important statement made by the Dean of Westminster in 1922 while speaking about the retention of the Bible in the curriculum of education:
“If the legends of the Book of Genesis,”
the Dean is reported to have said,
“were to be taught to children, they will think that the last generation had a very low standard of truth.”
It is not difficult to read between the lines. The legends referred to are not true in the judgement of this dignitary of the Church. The Reverend Doctor did not, however, seem to appreciate the bearing of his remarks on the superstructure of the Pauline Church. If the story of the fall of Adam was untrue, the theory of sin in nature will fall to the ground as well, and in its train the theory of the atonement and Divinity of Jesus. In short, the genuineness of the Bible was officially questioned at Canterbury in 1917. The next year put another important question in issue: Was the Church in the West ever founded by Jesus himself? The conference took place in Cambridge. The debate was opened by Dean Inge, who replied to the question in the negative. In his remarks he also said that Jesus was a Jew; that he observed the Laws of Moses strictly; that he never thought of any schism in the then existing Church; and that he was a firm believer in the observance of the Law. All this led him to assert that the Church passing under the name of Jesus was never founded by him, but that it was founded by St. Paul. This statement startled many, but the trend of opinion in the conference was in support of the Dean’s contention. If the Church in its present form in the West had nothing to do with Jesus, why should a follower of Jesus subscribe to it?
Then came the year 1921, and another Conference took place at Oxford, the deliberations of which shook the very foundation of Christianity. It is an open secret that few in the West believe in the Divinity of Christ, in the current sense of the word, which therefore needed some explanation in terms acceptable by an average mind. The task fell on Dr. Rashdall, the Dean of Carlisle. His theory of the Divinity of Jesus, plausible as it was, surprised the Christian world. The explanation, which was supposed to be going to strengthen belief in the Divinity of Jesus, destroyed it altogether.
The learned Doctor maintained that Jesus was not God, but a man in every sense of the word. His birth, his miracles, and all that has been narrated of him, even if taken as reported, could not clothe him with Godhood. The Divinity of Jesus lay in his reproduction of Divine morals. Jesus imbued himself with Divine attributes, and in this sense he possessed Divinity. The explanation, perturbing as it was to Christian minds, however, did not fail to meet our approval. I at once wrote to the Dean in 1922, when I returned to England, that his explanation of the Divinity of Christ endorsed the Muslim view on the subject. In Islam, I said, the goal of humanity was to clothe oneself with Divine attributes.
“Imbue yourself with Divine morals,”
said the Holy Prophet [Muhammad (pbuh)] to his followers; and Muslims believe that all the prophets of the world, including Jesus himself, reproduced Divine morals. And if Jesus was to be taken as God simply on account of his being clothed with Divine attributes, then every man was potentially Jesus and a “God.” But the Muslim conception of Godhood was very high and transcendental.
وَ لَمۡ یَکُنۡ لَّہٗ کُفُوًا اَحَدٌ ٪﴿۴﴾
“Nothing like the likeness of Him,” [The Holy Quran, 112:4]
says the Quran. Our conception of God goes even beyond the realm of simile and metaphor. This I wrote to Dr. Rashdall, but he could not see eye to eye with me on the question; so he replied, for reasons too obvious to give here. He, however, allowed me to publish the correspondence. It is clear that the religion dogmatised by the Church in the West could not stand any longer in the West after receiving the expression of such ideals from those who had to defend it. Then it became incumbent on them to formulate their religion. This was done in 1922, when the bishops and dignitaries of and from various dioceses met in Oxford, where it was stated that the real feature of Christianity was love, and other religions — Buddhism, one of them — also shared with it in this respect.
Is it any wonder then to find churches empty and the parsons addressing empty benches and pews on Sundays? Is it surprising then to see the Sabbath of the Lord being more observed in golf, cricket and football than in the churches and chapels? The situation became critical, and the custodian of the people’s conscience became apprehensive when the Archbishop of York struck a very timely note, remarking in one of his sermons that though religion attracts people, yet the Church repels. Thus, His Grace clearly hinted that the religion which appeals to man is something quite different from what is taught by the Church. The remark of the Archbishop led to a very interesting discussion carried on in the columns of a monthly called Pearsons Magazine,and other papers by men of note, both clerical and lay. It clarified the whole question and established that the Church so wrongly named after Christ was not wanted but that the people want a religion simple and practical and free from dogma — a religion which may create love and fellow-feeling and establish universal brotherhood in the world — a religion the ideals of which may receive practical shape, which may concern itself with this world and base man’s betterment in the coming world on his action in this world. The religion needed is the religion of action and not of beliefs, a religion that should not crush human cravings, but control them and sublimate them with something better and holier.
Allow me to put it to you — and you are an assembly almost wholly Muslims, with ulama [learned scholars] and sheikhs, with men highly educated and cultured — whether the sketch of the ideal religion that was drawn in England in the year 1922 was any other than that of Islam. Yes, it was a true picture of Islam. And Lord Headley has very aptly observed that in England there are thousands of Muslims who do not know that they are.
Far be it for me to claim any credit for all this. Nor would it be right on my part to do so. One thing, however, I can confidently say: that whatever has come about is not just chance. To me it appears the will of the Lord, which in these days is working itself out in the West. It was His will that brought about such a radical change in the Western religious conception. And when it was His will that Church religion should dissolve of itself, even as salt does in water, He created circumstances which urged me to betake myself to English shore, for the purpose of spreading the light of Islam. Call it a happy chance or, as Lord Headley takes it to be, a Divine decree.
His Lordship has made generous references to my work and the achievements of my Mission during the past ten years. I would put it down to His Lordship’s personal attachment to me rather than to anything on my part. One thing, however, he has substantiated by facts and figures. In an article ten years ago, which he read out to you today, he had shown his disappointment at the spread of Islam in England. Such was the horrid picture drawn in those days. And now he says from firsthand knowledge that during these ten years the trend of religious thought has undergone a wholesome metamorphosis. This he has kindly inclined to attribute to my humble effects.
In conclusion, I would make but one request. When a single individual’s efforts can bear fruit so enormous, is it incumbent only on one Indian to push the cause? Is it not equally up to you to rise to the height of the opportunity and be up and doing? These are the spring days of Islam. The vital power of growth is at its best. Heaven is pouring down its showers. Breezes are gentle and wholesome. This is all God-sent. But no crops are to be expected, even under conditions so ideal, until and unless the husbandman takes to the farm, ploughing, tilling and sowing. Arise, therefore, you farmers of Islam! Take advantage of the season! Else, do not forget the Divine warning:
یَسۡتَبۡدِلۡ قَوۡمًا غَیۡرَکُمۡ ۙ ثُمَّ لَا یَکُوۡنُوۡۤا اَمۡثَالَکُمۡ ﴿٪۳۸﴾
“Another nation shall take your place that will better fulfil the Divine purpose.” [The Holy Quran, 47:38]
Source: The Islamic Review, September 1923, pp. 307–313