N – Hybrid Learning

NUSAYRIYAH

Batoota — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 15:49:08 +0000

NUSAYRIYAH. See ‘Alawiyah.

NURI, FAZLULLAH

Batoota — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 15:36:16 +0000

NURI, FAZLULLAH (December 24, 1843 in Mazandaran – July 31, 1909 in Tehran), more fully, Hajj Shaykh Fazlullah ibn Mulla `Abbas Mazandarani Nuri Tihrani, a distinguished Iranian Shi’! scholar. His father, Mulla `Abbas Nuri, was a prominent jurist. Nuri studied Shi’i jurisprudence with Hajj Mirza Muhammad Hasan Shirazi (d. 1312/1894) in Najaf. Shirazi is famous in nineteenth-century Iranian history because of his antitobacco edict during the Tobacco Revolt of 1891-1892. Finishing his studies in Najaf, Nuri returned to Tehran and became a maija` altaqlid (“source of exemplary conduct”) in the Qajar capital. Among his writings is Tadhkirat al-ghafil wairshad al -jahil, which contained a harsh condemnation of proconstitutional ideas and forces (see Dabashi’s translation of this text in Arjomand, ed., 1988, PP. 354-70; see also Hairi, 1977b).
Nuri played an active but controversial part in the Constitutional Revolution of Iran (1905-1911). His role along with that of the entire clerical class has been debated extensively (for the nature of this debate, see Haiti, 1977a; cf. Lahidji’s “Constitutionalism and Clerical Authority” in Arjomand, ed., 1988, pp. 133-158). Most historians of the constitutional period are critical of his anticonstitutional stands. Some, including Ahmad Kasravi and Faridun Adamiyat, are more moderate in their observations, although others, such as Nazim alIslam Kirmani, are extremely critical and even accuse him of greed and charlatanism (see Kirmani, 1983, vol. I, pp. 565-566; see also Qazvini, 1984, vol. 4, p. 880). A combination of religious convictions and personal and professional interests must have guided Nuri’s contradictory positions in this period. Initially, he appears to have been one of the most active supporters of constitutional government, but gradually he shifted his position and relentlessly opposed it (Kasravi, 1951, PP. 285-296; Kirmani, 1983, vol. 2, Pp. 535-537). Contrary to Sayyids Muhammad Tabataba’i and `Abd Allah Bihbahani, the two prominent proconstitutional clerics, Nuri became increasingly concerned with the dangers that he felt constitutional government posed for Islam in general and for Islamic law in particular. The phrase mashrutah -yi mashru’ah (“constitutional government compatible with the Islamic law”) is chiefly identified with Nuri, who somewhat diffusely argued for tying the very foundations of a secular form of government to the requirements of Shi’l law.
Historians of the constitutional period insist that personal rivalries between Nuri and Bihbahan-i were instrumental in Nuri’s opposition to constitutional government (Dawlatabadi 1983, vol. 2, p. 185; Kasravi, 1951, pp. 285-286; Adamiyat, 1976, vol. I, pp. 429-430). Adamiyat holds that their opposing positions cloaked their personal rivalries and a struggle for power. He quotes Nuri as having said: “Neither was I an absolutist nor were Sayyid Abdullah and Sayyid Muhammad constitutionalists. They were against me, and I was against them” (Adamiyat, 1976, vol. I, Pp. 430-431). Kasravi, too, believes that none of the clerical antagonists “knew the precise meaning of constitutionalism, or the consequences of the propagation of European laws. They were not quite aware of the blatant incompatibility of constitutionalism with the ShN faith” (Kasravi, 1951, p. 287).
Nuri emphasized the necessity for Islam of both saltanat (monarchy) and niyabat dar `umur-i nabaviyah (clerical viceregency in matters of prophethood; see Martin, 1989, pp. 28-29).
Because of his anticonstitutional activities, Nuri was captured and executed by the constitutionalist forces on 13 Rajab 1327/31 July 1909. One of Nuri’s sons, Shaykh Mirza Mahdi, was, against the wishes of his father, a staunch proconstitutionalist. He is reported (Kirmani, 1983, vol. I, p. 566) to have been a militant advocate of constitutional government and was murdered by anticonstitutional forces in 1333/1914.
[See also Constitutional Revolution.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adamiyat, Faridun. `Idi’uluzhi-yi Nahzat-i Mashrutiyat-i Iran. 2 vols. Tehran, 1355/1976.
Arjomand, Said Amir, ed. Authority and Political Culture in Shi’ism. Albany, N.Y., 1988.
Dawlatabadi, Yahya. Hayat-i Yahya. 4 vols. Tehran, 1362/1983. Haiti, Abdul-Hadi. Shi’ism and Constitutionalism in Iran. Leiden, 1977a Haiti, Abdul-Hadi. “Shaikh Fazlullah Nuri’s Refutation of the Idea of Constitutionalism.” Middle Eastern Studies 23.3 (1977b): 227239
Kasravi, Ahmad. Tdrikh-i Mashrutah -yi Iran. Tehran, 1330/1951. Kirmani, Nazim al-Islam. Tarikh-i Bidari-yi Irdniyan. 2 vols. Edited by ‘Ali Akbar Sa’idi Sirjanii. Tehran, 1362/1983.
Martin, Vanessa. Islam and Modernism: The Iranian Revolution of 1906. London, 1989.
Mu’allim Habibabadi, Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali. Makarim al-asar dar ahval-i rijal dawrah-i Qajar. 6 vols. Isfahan, 1976-1985.
Nuri, Fazlullah. Lavdyih-i Aqa Shaykh Fazl Allah Nuri. Edited by Huma Rizvani. Tehran, 1362/1983.
Qazvini, Muhammad. “Hajj Shaykh Fazl Allah Nuri.” In Maqalat-i `Allamah Qazvini. 4 vols. Edited by `Abd al-Karim jurbuzah-dar. Tehran, 1363/1984.
HAMID DABASHI
NURSI, SAID. See Nurculuk.

NURCULUK

Batoota — Fri, 16 Jun 2017 15:21:27 +0000

NURCULUK. The modern Turkish religious movement known as Nurculuk takes its name from its founder and leader Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (18761960).
He was born in the village of Nurs in the province of Bitlis in eastern Turkey in a region with a largely Kurdish population. In the 1870s the Ottoman government had only recently established centralized administrative structures in this area, replacing a flexible, decentralized system that relied on the local aristocracy. The fall from power of the local notables gave impetus to the growth of the fideist/fundamentalist Sunni
Nagshbandi (Tk., Naksibendi) order, who took over local functions of conciliation among the tribes as the old system of law and order disintegrated. A branch of the Naqshbandiyah had established local seminaries and had spread from northern Iraq to Anatolia and to the Russian Empire in Kazan, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. It combatted the expansion of Russia and the spread of Russian Orthodox Christianity. Said Nursi was educated in a Nagshbandi circle; in Bitlis, however, his outlook was also shaped by the presence of an Ottoman administration modeling itself increasingly on western Europe. He realized that the Turkish modernization movement was establishing new criteria differentiating between the more modern Turks of western Anatolia and the Balkans and his own comparatively backward Kurdish region, and this moved him to take up the defense of his kin. An Islam that brought all Muslims under the umbrella of a common faith but added the advantages of Western technology and knowledge was his solution to this cultural bifurcation, which he considered to be a great danger for all Muslims. This foundation of his thought reappears in his later writings in diverse forms and also underlies his followers’ selfassumed task of teaching advances in knowledge.
The Young Turk revolution of 1908 led Said Nursi to hope that his sociopolitical program could be carried out, but the new rulers’ ambivalence toward Islam resulted in a series of conflicts in which he was temporarily exiled, although he later collaborated with the Young Turk regime. He eventually fought as an Ottoman patriot on the Caucasian front during World War I, and was taken prisoner by the Russians. Back in Turkey, he sided with the national resistance movement of Mustafa Kemal (later Ataturk), but he was forced into exile in Bitlis when his program of religious revitalization clashed with the aims of the founder of the Turkish Republic. Accused of complicity in the Kurdish uprising of 1925, he was sent to further exile in the province of Isparta. His proselytizing and the group of disciples he was able to influence resulted in yet further exiles to Kastamonu and Denizli. He was also imprisoned several times for contravening the Turkish Republic’s laws against religious organizations. He died in 1960).
Said Nursi’s disciples are known in Turkish as “Nurcu,” or men of Nursi (or, alternatively, since nur [light] is an important symbol in the Qur’an, “men of the light”). The Turkish authorities repeatedly accused Said Nursi of having established his own religious order, an action punishable under Turkish law since the dissolution of Sufi orders in 1925. Both Said Nursi and his followers rejected this classification, indicating that their aims were the wider ones of the revitalization of Islam as a whole. Said Nursi’s own writings, collected under the title Risale-1 nut (Epistle of Light), seem to confirm this claim. The Nurculuk is better seen as a faith movement eventually having institutionalized none of the links between shaykh or pit (religious mentor) and murid (disciple) that characterize Sufi orders. The group, which originated as a religious movement in rural areas and provincial towns, has spread to larger cities and has gathered around it persons of increasingly high educational credentials, including university professors. It is extremely active in publishing the writings of Said Nursi as well as brochures explaining the foundation of modern science, and it has for many years published a newspaper, Yeni Asya. Divisiveness within the group has spawned a number of competing submovements; the rationales of these splinter groups are not easy to ascertain, and the factionalism appears to stem from leadership rivalries.
[See also Nagshbandiyah.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi: Panel. Coordinated by Faik Bilgi. Istanbul, 1991. Proceedings of a conference on Said Nursi (in Turkish). Bruinessen, Martin van. Agha, Shaikh and State: On the Social and Political Organization of Kurdistan. London, 1992.
Mardin, Serif. Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey. Albany, N.Y., 1989.
SERIF MARDIN

NUBUWAH

Batoota — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 16:01:54 +0000

NUBUWAH. See Prophet-hood.

NIGERIA

Batoota — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 14:57:35 +0000

NIGERIA. A federal republic, Nigeria comprises thirty states plus a Federal Capital Territory at Abuja. The most recent census, in 1991, did not ask questions of religious or ethnic identity, but put the total population at about 90 million; however, several international organizations use population estimates for Nigeria ranging from 100 to 115 million.
Religious Identity and Demographic Patterns. The last official census that was accepted was in 1963, at which time questions of religious and ethnic identity were asked. The overall percentage of Muslim adherents was 49 percent, and of Christian adherents 34 percent; the remainder identified with traditional forms of religion. The major so-called ethnic identity groups were Hausa (Hausa-Fulani), Yoruba, and Igbo. Estimates of the number of language groups in Nigeria range from 350 to 400, with ten major groups accounting for about 90 percent of the population.
It is generally considered that Nigeria is about half Muslim and half Christian at present, since both major world religions have gained over the past twenty-five years at the expense of traditional religions. However, traditional customs still affect the variety of forms in both Christian and Muslim communities. To some extent there is a regional pattern of religious distribution, with high percentages of Muslims living in the states associated with the nineteenth-century Sokoto caliphate and its twentieth-century successor states, such as Sokoto (now Sokoto and Kebbi), Kano (now Kano and Jigawa), Katsina, Bauchi, Kaduna (including Zaria), Kwara (now Kwara and Kogi), and Gongola (now Adamawa and Taraba). In addition, the state of Borno (now Borno and Yobe) has been identified as a Muslim state for about a thousand years and was never conquered during the Sokoto reformist period. Borno has one of the longest traditions of affiliation as a Muslim state in all of Africa.
In the southwest, there has been an indigenous pattern of Islamic culture throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in the Yoruba-speaking states of Oyo, Osun, Ogun, and Lagos. However, Yoruba patterns of religious identification are “mixed,” and even within the same extended family members may be Muslim, Christian, or traditionalist. City-state identities are generally regarded as the predominant factor in Yoruba political life.
The “middle belt” of Nigeria-including such states as Kogi, Plateau, Benue, and the Federal Capital Territory at Abuja-has witnessed a significant number of Muslim converts in the past several decades. The identity of “Three-M-ers” (Muslim, Middle Belt, Minority) has become highly visible in recent years because Ibrahim Babangida, president from 1985 to 1993, is from that area.
While the four geographical areas mentioned above form the bulk of the Muslim population in a zone stretching from northern Nigeria through southwest Nigeria down to the coast, Muslim immigrants or converts can be found throughout Nigeria, including the largely Christian southeast.
Much of the interpretation of these demographic patterns in relation to such factors as ethnicity, age, occupation, and education is a matter of speculation, since the period after the 1963 census has been one of considerable transformation in Nigeria. This includes the civil war of 1967-1970, the oil boom of the 1970s, the recession of the 1980s, and the preparation for return to civilian politics in the 1990s It is not clear how the flow of peoples across national borders in west Africa has affected patterns of religious identity in Nigeria. For example, during the serious Sahelian drought in the mid1970s, large numbers of Hausa-speaking Muslim people crossed from Niger into Nigeria and blended into one of the most rapid processes of urbanization in the world. The question “Who is a Nigerian?” was eased in 1992, when it was ruled legal for Nigerians to have more than one citizenship/nationality.
Religious Organization and Thought. Several recognizable subcategories of identity within the Nigerian Muslim community may be noted: Sufi brotherhoods, anti-innovation legalists, adherents of the caliphal/Medina model, women’s groups, and “big tent” national organizations. It should be added that there are a large number of Nigerian Muslims of all ages and backgrounds who simply identify themselves as “Muslim,” without overt attachment to an organization or school of thought.
In the nineteenth century Qadiriyah affiliation became part of the identity of the Sokoto caliphal leadership. In addition, during the two decades after the death of Usuman Dan Fodio in 1817, the Tijaniyah brotherhood was spread in what later became northern Nigeria by `Umar Futi and his followers. Thus the Qadiriyah and the Tijaniyah became the two major Sufi brotherhoods in the region, especially within the caliphal areas. By contrast, the leaders and scholars of Borno were not for the most part affiliated with Sfifi brotherhoods.
During the twentieth century the Tijaniyah spread extensively in Kano, the commercial and industrial capital of the north. Because of the social networks that extended out of Kano through the long-distance Hausa trading system, the Tijaniyah spread throughout Nigeria. A reformed version of Tijaniyah emerged that accommodated many of the modernizing developments of the era after World War II. The leader of this reform movement was Ibrahim Niass, of Kaolack, Senegal, but its Nigerian base was in Kano under the leadership of Tijjani Usman and others; the emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi, eventually became the “caliph” in Nigeria.
After World War II, the Qadiriyah also experienced a reformation, associated with Shaykh Nasiru Kabara of Kano. He reauthorized (through his own chains of authority) many of the emirate notables who had been associated historically with Qadiriyah, and he also attracted large numbers of young people to study and
In the period leading to independence (1949-196o) and in the early period of independence (1960-1966), the Sufi brotherhoods were major vehicles for religious organization and identity. The system of social networks allowed for the scale expansion of the Muslim community and facilitated interethnic contact. Importantly, the brotherhoods facilitated the high rates of rural-urban migration occurring in many Nigerian cities.
In the 1970s, with the oil boom providing dramatic changes in Nigerian educational opportunities, many of the younger generation became interested less in brotherhood affiliation and more in Western education and, at the same time, getting back to the basics of the Qur’an and hadith. Brotherhood affiliation is still significant, but it has been largely superseded by efforts to strengthen broader Muslim identity.
Another transformation during the oil boom of the 1970s, accompanying the enormous increase in higher educational opportunities, was the growth at Nigerian universities of Muslim student groups, especially the Muslim Students Society (MSS). Often these students were from families associated with brotherhood organizations, but the need to transcend Sufi identities seemed imperative in the face of secular challenges to the whole idea of religious commitment.
Many of these students were influenced by Abubakar Gumi from Gumi village in Sokoto, who had been grand kadi (Ar., qadi) of Northern Nigeria during the first republic and had then retired to teaching from his home in Kaduna. Gumi had close connections with Saudi Arabian scholars and notables through his involvement in the pilgrimage process. He began to teach and preach a “return to basics”-the Qur’an and hadith-and came increasingly to regard Sufism as innovation.
Gumi formed a network called Izala (Izalah), which directly challenged many of the brotherhoods’ leaders and practices, utilizing radio and television effectively. He was the first to translate the Qur’an into Hausa; when he died in September 1992, it was estimated that his translation had sold millions of copies. His anti-innovation and legalist approach, combined with his emphasis on each person having direct access to the Qur’an, became one of the major Muslim reformations in the 1970s and thereafter.
Even though the real impact of Gumi and the Izala may have been a “back to the Qur’an” movement, it was not a literalist interpretation of classical precedents. He asked his students, many of whom were leaders in higher education, to interpret the Qur’an in the light of modern times. A result in some quarters, however, was a revival of interest in recreating some approximation of the Sokoto caliphal model or the earlier Medina model in their personal lives or in the political communities of Nigeria. Many of the scholars and students who were exploring the ideals and relevance of the Sokoto caliphate and the early Medina model to the contemporary situation were at the major universities within the current boundaries of the Sokoto caliphal states-Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, Bayero University in Kano, and Usmanu Danfodiyo University in Sokoto. In practice, many of these teachers and students participate in Nigerian affairs in various ways, but their classical training always creates a dynamic tension between present sociopolitical realities and the ideals of an earlier period.
Another outcome of the focus on original sources was to provoke a reassessment of the role of women in Muslim society. As students and teachers went back to the Sokoto caliphal model or to Qur’anic sources in place of the inherited cultural patterns of the past two centuries, they became more aware of the Islamic emphasis on the education of girls and women. (Indeed, the daughter of Usuman Dan Fodio was a distinguished scholar in her own right.) The opportunities for women in Western education during the oil boom were also strong incentives to consider women’s issues.
Muslim women in Nigeria have usually reflected the ethnolinguistic cultures of which they were a part. Thus, in the predominantly Hausa-Fulani emirates, urban women in the twentieth century have tended to be secluded. Muslim women in Borno have generally been less secluded and in recent years have been very active in educational and commercial pursuits. Muslim women in Yoruba societies have not been secluded and are virtually indistinguishable from non-Muslim Yoruba women in many respects. In the Muslim/Middle Belt/ Minority areas women have tended to be educated, and they have no tradition of seclusion.
In the mid-1980s the impact of the spread of education began to be felt more clearly among Muslim women. Some participated in organizations such as Women in Nigeria (WIN), which was widely regarded in Nigeria as “feminist.” Others, educated through the secondary or university level, began to reclaim their own sense of Muslim identity. One result of this trend was the organization of the Federation of Muslim Women’s Associations in Nigeria (FOMWAN). This group was established in the 1980s to give coherence to
Muslim women’s organizations throughout Nigeria; it focused on the need to counteract the role of custom in Nigerian Muslim society. By the 1990s there were about four hundred member organizations in FOMWAN, distributed throughout Nigeria but with a majority in the Yoruba-speaking areas. Each state selects representatives to a national committee, which publishes a magazine, The Muslim Woman, and holds annual conferences on topics of special concern. The main language of communication is English, and FOMWAN acts as a liaison with other national and international Muslim women’s groups. Many of the leaders of FOMWAN are also active in state and national affairs. Lateefa Okunnu of Lagos has served as president of FOMWAN and has also been presidential liaison officer in Lagos State. In October 1992 she was appointed by the president of Nigeria to be national organizer for one of the two political parties, the National Republic Convention, during the transition to civilian rule.
The emphasis on national-level activities reflects a widespread concern among Nigerian Muslims that they not be divided by sectarian loyalties. During the 1960s there was an attempt in northern Nigeria to form an ecumenical Muslim movement called the Society for the Victory of Islam (Jamatul Nasril Islam). Later, during the military periods, the ecumenical “big tent” approach was broadened to the national arena, mainly through the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (SCIA). The head of the Supreme Council was the sultan of Sokoto, the vice president was the shehu (shaykh) of Borno, and the secretary was a leading Yoruba Muslim lawyer. In a sense, this format reflected an emerging establishment with ties to the political, economic, and military sectors within Nigeria. With the succession of Ibrahim Dasuki to the sultanship in 1988 (partly because of his close association with the Supreme Council of Islamic Affairs) the council took on a new importance. It had to deal with a wide range of Nigerian Muslim identities and values and also try to serve as an effective liaison with its counterpart, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).
Relationships to Transnational Patterns. The nationally based federations of Muslim groups, such as FOMWAN and SCIA, tend to mirror the existing international system and are often seen as an intermediate step toward closer cooperation within the global Muslim community (ummah). It should be noted, however, that the Sufi brotherhoods, the anti-Sufi legalists, and the adherents of the classical model are also essentially transnational. How then do these groups relate to broader global trends?
The Sufi brotherhoods include transnational and national forms of community organization. Because of their grassroots nature and their connection with longdistance trade, the branches of the Tijaniyah in particular have close ties throughout West Africa. (The reformed Tijdniyah is based on the mosque in Kaolack, Senegal.) The Tijaniyah in general is also connected to mosques in North Africa with Tijani affiliation, such as the tomb of Ahmad Tijani in Fez, Morocco, or some of the clan mosques in Algeria. Likewise, the reformed Qadiriyah has ties to the Qadiri mosques in Iraq. Because of the traditional Nigerian pilgrimage routes through Sudan, there are connections to the Tijdni and Qadiri networks in Khartoum and elsewhere in Sudan. Some members of the Sokoto caliphal dynasty had close ties to the Mahdi in the Sudan in the 1880s. Other members migrated to Sudan as a result of the British conquest of northern Nigeria at the turn of the twentieth century. In the late colonial period, the British actually encouraged contact between Nigeria and Sudan because the pilgrimage link was seen as a reinforcement of the policy of indirect rule. A number of distinguished Nigerian Muslim legalists studied the higher levels of Arabic in a school near Khartoum, and the Sudanese penal code was a model for reforms in northern Nigeria in 1959.
The anti-innovation legalists often have close ties to some of the official levels of religious activity in Saudi Arabia; Abubakar Gummi was central to this link. There is strong acceptance of the nation-state boundaries as appropriate units for international cooperation among Muslims, reflected in the model of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which is often associated with a Saudi approach to international relations. On the other hand, the emphasis on non-Arabic Qur’dnic interpretation-especially through the Hausa language-creates a strong incentive for localism and Nigerian-based reforms rather than slavish imitation of Arab cultural models.
The adherents of the caliphal or Medina model have a strong sense of ummah or community of believers, but with due provision for trust (amanah) relations with people of the book and for tributary (i.e., taxation) relations with “pagans.” Within the modern national state system, there is a strong sense of federalism with insistence on local autonomy, especially for Muslim communities that want to follow a shari`ah model. Yet Nigerian Muslim links are clearly with the classical idealized past rather than with any particular contemporary community. Insofar as there are like-minded communities of believers throughout the world-whether in Africa, the Arab world, the Persian world, Asia, western Europe, or the Americas-there is a sense of solidarity that transcends nationalism and nation-state loyalties. The military regimes in Nigeria have often been suspicious of such adherents because of their obvious transnational loyalties.
The national umbrella organizations in Nigeria, including women’s groups, seem to welcome the national focus of their activities. They appear at ease in dealing with a variety of other national religious groups and nongovernmental organizations. The leaders of such organizations tend to have higher education and to be fluent in English. The national nature of the annual pilgrimage seems to reinforce the appropriateness of the nation-state unit and of international organizations like the OIC. The strength and the weakness of such national umbrella groups are their closer identification with national-level sources of political power than characterizes the other types of Muslim organizations in Nigeria.
In conclusion, the large scale and complex nature of Nigerian society, combined with the rapid transformations associated with “riding the tiger” of an oil-based economy, make it difficult to generalize about the demographics, organizations, belief patterns, and international linkages of particular segments of the Nigerian Muslim community. What is clear is that a legacy of reformation continues as print and electronic media allow both vernacular languages and languages of wider communication to expand the awareness of all Nigerians with regard to the larger changes going on within the Muslim world and the global economy as a whole.
[See also Islam, article on Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa; Qddiriyah; Sokoto Caliphate; Tijaniyah; and the biography of Dan Fodio. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Clarke, Peter B. West Africa and Islam. London, 1982. Historical overview, with many case references to contemporary Nigeria. Coles, Catherine, and Beverly Mack, eds. Hausa Women in the Twentieth Century. Madison, Wis., 1991. Historical and anthropological case studies that provide insight into Muslim women in northern Nigeria.
Gbadamosi, T. G. O. The Growth of Islam among the Yoruba, 1841-1908. London, 1978. Classic study by the Dean of Humanities, University of Lagos.
Hunwick, John O., ed. Religion and National Integration in Africa: Islam, Christianity, and Politics in the Sudan and Nigeria. Evanston, Ill., 1992. Contributions by scholars presented at a conference in May 1988.
Last, Murray. The Sokoto Caliphate. London, 1966. Classic study. The Muslim Woman, 1990-. Journal of the Federation of the Women’s Association in Nigeria (FOMWAN), available from the Federation at P.O. Box 29, Minna, Niger State, Nigeria.
Olupona, Jacob, and Tonin Falola, eds. Religion and Society in Nigeria: Historical and Sociological Perspectives. Ibadan, 1991. Selection of articles on religion and cultural life, human welfare, economics, politics, and nation-building.
Paden, John N. Religion and Political Culture in Kano. Berkeley, 1973 Early study of the Sufi brotherhoods in northern Nigeria. Paden, John N. Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto: Values and Leadership in Nigeria. London, 1986. Background on religious policies and developments in the 1950s and 1960s, especially reflecting power politics in Kaduna.
Sulaiman, Ibraheem. A Revolution in History: The Jihad of Usman Dan Fodio. London, 1986. Sympathetic but scholarly account of ideas of the nineteenth-century reformation that led to the Sokoto caliphate. Usman, Bala, and Nur Alkali, eds. Studies in the History of Pre-Colonial Borno. Zaria, 1983. Conference papers from Ahmadu Bello University History Seminar, 1972-1973.
JOHN N. PADEN

NIGER

Batoota — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 14:46:56 +0000

NIGER. More than 90 percent of the 7,469,000 people of the Republic of Niger are Muslim (national census, 1988). Niger is situated in the Sahel region of Africa; its northern half is Sahara desert. Agriculture, including livestock rearing, is the primary economic activity of 85 percent of Niger’s population. The two major droughts of 1973-1974 and 1984-1985 caused significant population displacement, forcing many nomadic groups to take refuge in towns. This accelerated Islamic reform as formerly marginal groups established links with Islamic associations or communities in the urban centers.
Niger is strongly multiethnic: the Hausa comprise 35 percent of the population, the Zarma-Songhay 21 percent, the Tuareg (Berbers) II percent, the Fulbe 10 percent, the Kanuri-Manga (Kanem-Bornu) 5 percent, and the Tubu, Arabs, and Gourmantche each less than one percent. All these ethnic groups have played major roles in the diffusion of Islam in the western Sudan. The Hausa, Songhay, and Kanuri states contributed significantly to early conversions to Islam (c.1100-1200 CE) during the course of territorial and political expansion. Much was also achieved through the establishment of local madrasahs in the spirit of tajdid, or peaceful reform. Although some individual Fulbe were known for their contributions as `ulama’, the Fulbe and their affiliate group the Tukolor (or Torobe) are most noted for the reformist jihad movements that they carried out throughout West Africa in the early to mid-eighteenth century.
Some communities in Niger have historical ties to ancient Muslim communities such as the Dyula, Soninke, and Lamtuna Berbers who traveled the Saharan-Sahelian trade routes from the seventh to ninth century. Others were swept into Islam by forces unleashed by the Fulbe jihads in the early nineteenth century. The region’s first contact with Islam, however, occurred around 665 CE when the Arabs conquered the Berber territories under Uqba ibn Nafi al Fihri, who had founded Qayrawa at the northern edge of the Sahara desert and later traveled south to Kaouar.
In the eighth century the Iberkorayen, Berbers who had been islamized in the preceding century, began moving south. Approximately two centuries later, longdistance trade through the Soninke state of Ghana extended the influence of Islam through the western Sudan. The Songhay empire was first established along the eastern portion of the Niger River at Dendi, and today the eastern region of Niger is populated by many groups from Songhay who fled during the Moroccan invasions there in 1492-1510. Islamic theory and practice had already been diffused throughout the region before the invasion, and many communities had already drifted eastward into present-day Niger. During the era of the empire of Mali, founded by Sundiata Keita around 1200 CE, Islamic practice spread, especially among the elites. The Mali expansion encouraged the eastward movement of Songhay communities. Merchant/missionaries are said to have traveled eastward from Niani to the Hausa kingdoms to establish the practice of Islam there. Today more than 98 percent of Hausa people in Niger are Muslim. Among some contemporary Songhay and Zarma people in Niger, Islamic practice is syncretized with that of spirit possession, but this is not accepted by more purist Muslims in the country.
At the other geographical extreme of present-day Niger, the king of Kanem, Mai Houme, is reported to have encouraged the practice of Islam during his reign (c.1085). He established the Saifawa dynasty, which later expanded to Bornu. Under Mai Idris Aloma the Tuba populations came under the Islamic influence encouraged by the state. Many Islamic reforms were established during his reign, and there was also great commercial activity. By the fifteenth century, scholarly communities were established throughout Kanem and Bomu.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Qadiriyah was introduced in Katsina (a Hausa area), Gao (Songhay), and the Air (Tuareg). Although Katsina now lies in northern Nigeria and Gao in eastern Mali, their influence as centers of Islamic philosophy and education are still felt in Niger today. An Islamic teacher from Touat known as Al Majhili is credited with introducing Maliki tenets during this period, and this school is the most widely followed in the region now. With the fall of the Songhay empire to the Moroccans in 1591 and the extension of Malinke influence over the eastern Niger River area under the Mali empire, successive migrations took place from the Macina plains (including those of Fulbe dissenters with Shaykh Ahmadou) and from Gao and Koukia to the town of Say, which has since been a religious center. Say in southwestern Niger enjoyed a religious and cultural renaissance at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the arrival of the famous wala Alfa Mahamane Diobbo, who had in 1804 proclaimed a jihdd against the Hausa king of Gobir in present-day Niger. He also supported similar jihads in what are now northern Cameroon, northern Burkina Faso, and in Niger at Say, Lamorde, Torodi, and Lamorde Bitikiinkobe. This renaissance was encouraged by the great Fulbe Islamic leader Shaykh Usuman Dan Fodio, a member of the Qadiriyah.
Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the Qadiriyah was the only Islamic brotherhood among the nomads of Niger, as well as among the sedentary communities of Maradi, Dakoro, Tahoua and Zinder. During the later nineteenth century, the Tijaniyah brotherhood supplanted the Qadiriyah. Shaykh `Umar Tal, a native of Senegal important in Niger’s history, is remembered for his promulgation of the Tijaniyah there. His influence was unsuccessfully resisted by the son of Usuman dan Fodio, Muhammad Bello, who died in 1837.
Today the Tijaniyah remains the most popularly represented order in Niger; its principal centers of adherence are in Say, Tessaoua, Zinder, Maradi, Goure, and Dosso. There is also a brotherhood that derives from the Tijaniyah, that of the Mamalists, in Say and Lamorde. The Sanusiyah has its largest membership among the Tuareg of Air and the Tubu of Bilma. Other brotherhoods include the Shadhiliyah, which has followers among the Tuareg of InGall and Zinder, and the strict sect of the Yan Koble, with followers near Zinder and among the Fulbe of Goure.
In 1981 an Islamic university was built in Say to commemorate its long history in Islamic learning, with funding contributed from numerous Islamic countries throughout the world. Muslims in Niger remain closely linked to the rest of the Islamic world; in fact, Niger hosted an international Islamic conference in 1982. Current international trends toward Islamic fundamentalism and other reformist movements are apparent in Niger today. Recently some dissent occurred in the Dosso region of Niger between adherents of the Association Izalatoul Bid’a wa Ikamatou Sunnah (Association for Elimination of Innovations in the Religion and for Reinforcement of the Sunnah, called “the Izal”) and the Tijaniyah of that area. (The former association is believed by some observers to derive from the nineteenth-century reformist philosophy of Shaykh Muhammad ibn `Abd al-Wahhab.)
In the early 1990s there continued to be some unease among the various Islamic groups in the country. In Maradi major groups like the Tijaniyah, Qadiriyah, Zarruqiyah, and Shadhiliyah experience less conflict among themselves than occurs between these orders and the Izal. The greatest reported difference between the Izal and the other groups is the emphasis among the Izal on prayers offered in homage to the Prophet Muhammad, specifically what is locally called the “Salatoul Fatih” (prayers of the Fatih).
The coincidence of Islamic practice and philosophy with public ideology and state policy is not new in Niger. One of the major challenges is the development of a coherent judicial process that does not ignore customary and Islamic law on the issues of judicial rights, privileges, the protection of women and the family, and land tenure rights.
[See also Qadiriyah; Tijaniyah; and the biographies of Dan Fodio and `Umar Tal.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dunbar, Roberta Ann. Islam, Public Policy, and the Legal Status of Women in Niger. Washington, D.C., 1992. Probably the most upto-date information available on the status of women and Islamic practice in Niger.
Fugelstad, Finn. A History of Niger, 1850-1960. Cambridge, 1983. Presents a very good overview of Niger’s history.
Hiskett, Mervyn. The Development of Islam in West Africa. New York, 1984. Excellent detailed accounts of the introduction of Islam in the western and central Sudan. Contrasts the views of various scholars. Klotchkoff, Jean-Claude. Le Niger aujourd’hui. Paris, 1982. Not a scholarly work, but a good reference for important dates and figures of Islamic history in Niger.
Levtzion, Nehemia. Ancient Ghana and Mali. London, 1973. Concise and readable narratives of the history of the western Sudan, based on primary sources dating to the tenth century, including most of the well-known Arabic documents from the relevant historical periods.
Lovejoy, Paul. “The Role of the Wangara in the Economic Transformation of the Central Sudan in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries.” Journal of African History 19.2 (1978): 173-193.
Republic of Niger, Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Plan. National Census, 1988, 1992.
Smith, M. G. “The Beginnings of Hausa Society.” In The Historian in Tropical Africa, edited by Jan Vansina, Raymond Mauny and L. V. Thomas. London, 1964.
WENDY WILSON FALL

NEW ZEALAND

Batoota — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 14:44:02 +0000

NEW ZEALAND. See Australia and New Zealand.

NEW YEAR

Batoota — Thu, 15 Jun 2017 14:16:00 +0000

NEW YEAR. See

NAWRUZ

NATURAL SCIENCES

Batoota — Tue, 13 Jun 2017 16:30:27 +0000

NATURAL SCIENCES. Under the impetus of Islamic teachings, a civilization grew up in the first two centuries AH that produced a dramatic change of outlook, arising from the integrated concept of knowledge (`ilm) combining material and the spiritual aspects in a balanced whole. Starting from the commands to observe, to consider, and to reflect, the desire to acquire knowledge had become a deep-seated yearning.

Natural Sciences

This movement for scientific knowledge and progress led by Muslims lasted for at least seven centuries (from 700 to 1400 CE) and produced more than one hundred men of genius recognized as having significantly changed the course of scientific thought (Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1970-1976). Among the best known are Jabir ibn al-Hayyan (chemistry), Muhammad ibn Musa alKhwarizmi (mathematics), Muhammad ibn Zakariya alRazi (medicine), ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Mas`udi (geography), Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni (physics and geography), Ibn al-Haytham (physics and scientific method), Ibn Sina (medicine), `Umar Khayyam (mathematics and astronomy), Abu al-Qasim alZahrawi (surgery), Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd (philosophy of science) and Ibn Nafis (physiology).
Early Institutions. Possibly the first important institution for higher learning in Islam was the Bayt alHikmah founded by al-Ma’mun in Baghdad in 830. It functioned as an academy, a translation bureau, a public library, and an observatory. Observatories of this time were also astronomy schools, just as public hospitals, which also made their first appearance during this period, served as centers for medical studies. But the first Islamic academy to make provision for the physical needs of its students and to become a model for later institutions of higher learning was the Nizalrnyah, founded in 1065-1067 by Nizam al-hulk, the Persian vizier of the Seljuk sultans Alp Arslan and Malikshah and the patron of al-Khayyam. The Qur’an and classical poetry formed the core of study in the humanities (`ilm al-adab), precisely as the classics did later in European universities. Certain details of the academy’s organization were copied by the early universities of Europe: one lecturer was appointed at a time; the lecturer had under him two or more repetiteurs (sg. mu’id, “repeater”) whose duty consisted of rereading the lecture after class and explaining it to the less gifted students-hence the designation “Reader” still current in some universities.
The mosques in almost all Muslim towns served as important educational centers. Through gifts and bequests, mosque libraries became especially rich in religious literature. Other libraries, established by dignitaries or men of wealth as semipublic institutions, accessible to scholars, housed collections of works on logic, philosophy, astronomy, and other sciences. The library (khmanat al-kutub) founded in Shiraz by the Buyid `Adud al-Dawlah in 977-982 had its books arranged in cases and listed in catalogues and was administered by a regular staff. In the same century, Basra had a library whose founder granted stipends for scholars working in it.
Decline, Western Contacts, and Revival. This glorious phase was followed by a period of relative inactivity and even decadence that lasted for more than three hundred years (1400-1750), contemporaneous with the period when Europe was assimilating the scientific contributions of al-Khwarizm-i, Ibn Sina, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Zahrawi, and Ibn Rushd. One may perhaps agree with M. Bennabi’s analogy that “the Qur’anic impulsion being deadened, little by little the Muslim world came to a stop like a motor that had consumed its last litre of petrol. No temporal substitute, in the course of history, could replace this unique source of human energy, that is, faith” (1988, p. 9). There followed a period of considerable turmoil and rethinking for the Muslim world, precipitated partly by the political and then the economic and technological dominance of Europe (and later America) over Muslim countries. Bennabi writes:
On the moral as well as on the social plane, the Muslim was obliged to seek a modus vivendi compatible with the conditions of a new life. From this obscure groping . . . stemmed the historic movements that would give the Muslim world its present physiogonomy. These movements issued from two currents: the `Reformist’, linked to Muslim conciousness, and the `Modernist’, less profound, more fortuitious, and more particularly connected with the aspirations of a new social category, the issue of the Western School” (1988, p. 11).
Both these currents have been active-the first in promoting a philosophical rethinking leading back to original Islam, and the second in impelling Muslims of today to take up seriously the study of modern science and technology as a part of their own heritage, retransmitted to them by the West. The retransmission of modern science to Muslims began in the eighteenth century when Western colonial powers either conquered Muslim lands directly or subjugated their rulers. They needed raw materials for their industrial development and so local resources were surveyed and studied. To maintain continued occupation and supremacy the Western powers had to develop better transport, communications, and defense systems, and so they initiated training and education programs for the indigenous populations. Through this unavoidable transfer of science and technology Muslims became acquainted with the modern sciences. The only exceptions were Turkey and Egypt, which had already developed a definite base of modern technology as a result of commerce and sporadic warfare with European countries during the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Scientific Resurgence. In individual countries there is evidence of modernization early in the eighteenth century, and of scientific activities by the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth, with steady growth thereafter. Thus during the last decade of the eighteenth century, one scientific paper was published by a Muslim scientist in the Indian subcontinent, while the nineteenth century saw exponential growth, with fifty-two papers produced in the period 1890-1909. Thereafter, the growth of scientific activity in the subcontinent was very rapid, as documented by Mohammed Ataur-Rahim (1983).
In Egypt Muhammad `All (r. 1805-1848) had initiated modernization by establishing schools for various sciences, but his policy was reversed by his grandson `Abbas I Hilml (r. 1848-1854) as well as ‘Abbas’s successor Said (r. 1854-1863). Only two nineteenth-century institutions survived, the National Library and the Royal Geographical Society of Egypt, which were founded by Isma’il (r. 1863-1879). The era of modern science in Egypt effectively began at the end of the nineteenth century.
The Turkish adventure into modern science and technology was also catalyzed by the need to strengthen its military capability, which was essential for the Ottoman sultan to maintain his position. A revolution in military technology was marked by the Ottoman adoption of guns and gunpowder, and particularly in the enthusiastic development, production, and use of field and siege guns or cannon after the crucial war years 1440-1448 (Heywood, 1981). A century later, in 1547, the work of casting artillery was carried out in Istanbul by a crew of Germans. Thus began transfer of technology, with associated development of metallurgy and other sciences, which resulted in Turkey possessing a sizable science and technology structure earlier than most other Muslim countries, with some scientific research activity in the nineteenth century.
Islamic Tradition and Western Science. For an objective assessment of the interaction between science and Islam, it is necessary first to distinguish the mainstream of Islamic thought from its secondary components and minor issues. Islamic teaching is essentially based on obeying the commandments of God in the Qur’anic injunctions and following the example of the prophet Muhammad as reported in the sunnah. However, the actual practice as well as the teaching of the Islamic way of life has at various times been encumbered with several accretions. Thus, although Sufism, which may be seen as a form of mysticism, does attempt to trace its origins to the Qur’an and the hadith, in fact, as Hitti observes, “During and after the second Islamic century, [it] developed into a syncretic movement, absorbing many elements from Christianity, Neoplatonism, Gnosticism and Buddhism, and passing through mystical, theosophical and pantheistic stages” (1952 p. 433). S. F. Mahmood writes, “Many Sufi orders now [third century AH] made their appearance and people began to withdraw from the affairs of the world. . . . Convinced that this world was not a good place, they concluded, though fallaciously, that the world was not a reality. The real world, the new teachers began to say, was the world of God; the temporal world was a transient thing” (1960, p. 141). The pursuit of science and technology would be compatible with mainstream Islamic thought, but essentially incompatible with the otherworldliness of Sufism. It is of interest to note that, just as the rise of Islamic science and technology took place two to three centuries after the foundation of Islam, its decline began nearly three centuries after the spread of Sufi doctrine in the Muslim world.
A similar phenomenon is discernible in the past three centuries, which saw three major reformist movements-the Wahhabiyah in Arabia, Shah Wali Allah in India, and the Zaydiyah in Yemen-reemphasizing tawhid and rejecting the accretions of Sufism. These were followed a century and a half later by the intellectual modernistic efforts of Muhammad `Abduh (1849-1905) and Isma’il (r. 1863-1879) in Egypt and of the Aligarh movement of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1801-1891) in India, reinforced by the uplifting poetry and philosophy of Allamah Muhammad Iqbal (1877-1938). The pattern that appears to emerge is that social and moral upsurge or stagnation precedes a corresponding scientific development or stagnation by a century or two and so presumably provides the basic motivation.
Modern Scientific Activity and Islam. Today the products of science and technology are to be found to some extent in all Muslim countries, but local development and assimilation of scientific and technological innovations are apparent in only twenty of the fifty-five members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Major scientific development and research is occurring in perhaps a dozen countries, with the top eight in 198o being Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, Sudan, Iraq, and Indonesia, which together had about 90 percent of all scientific and technical personnel (Moravcsik, 1983; Qurashi and Jafar, 1992), a total barely equal to the number in Germany and Japan alone.
In most Muslim countries, the scientists and the leaders of religion within the educational system are far apart; recently, however, a few authors have written on the subject of “Islamic science,” or the development of science afresh from an Islamic perspective. Kaleemur Rahman (1987) has attempted a critical description of their efforts. Zia’uddin Sardar (1988) discusses the specific ideological and intellectual stands of four contemporary schools in this field: the Guenon/Schuon School of gnostic/mystical thought, represented by S. H. Nasr; the school of thought represented by P. Manzoor, M. A. Anees and Z. Sardar, who call themselves the “Group of Ijmal”; the Aligarh school of criticism of science, represented by M. Z. Kirmani, M. R. Kirmani, M. Kalimur Rahman, and Rais Ahmad; and scholars like S. Waqar Hussaini, Ali Kettani, Abdus Salam, and Z. R. el-Naijar, most of them actual practitioners of science and technology, who see science as a universal and objective pursuit of truth.
Although S. H. Nasr (1976, 1981) may well be credited with introducing the term “Islamic science”, his viewwhich makes Islamic science akin to gnosticism or mysticism and implying that knowledge of everything (or almost everything) is available in the philosophical/scientific thought of the Muslims of the first four centuries AH-is too facile and one-sided, and it represents an extreme viewpoint. At the other extreme, the view of Abdus Salam, Ali Kettani, and certain other scientists and engineers defends present-day science as such without showing definite ways to reconcile it with Islam. Two facts stand out. First, more than two decades of intensive popularization of science at the grassroots level-in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and several other large Muslim countries-has hardly made a dent in scientific and technological deficiencies. We must ask why, and try to find workable solutions. Second, the problem of reconciling scientific thought with current religious thought still remains virtually unresolved. The problem appears to stem from the fact that there is no direct logical equivalency between the laws of the physical sciences and those of the spiritual disciplines. Accordingly, an extrapolation from one sphere to the other often leads to distressingly contradictory conclusions, and the practitioners of both disciplines retreat into their respective shells.
What is needed is a comprehensive study of the regions of overlap between the spheres, so as to develop a set of unifying principles. Three recent initiatives may lead toward such a synthesis. The Muslim Education Conferences held in 1971 (Mecca) and 1981 (Islamabad) attempted to define the role of education in the Islamic context and to lay down some basic rules for development of appropriate curricula. The islamization of social and natural sciences, as suggested by S. H. Nasr, has been attempted (for social sciences only) at the International Institute of Islamic Thought. Finally, the Islamabad Conference on Science in Islamic Polity (1983) took a coordinated look at the past, present, and future of science in the Muslim world and recommended positive interaction between scientists and religious scholars. Notable pursuant to this are the COMSTECH journal Islamic Thought and Scientific Creativity and recent articles by M. M. Qurashi and colleagues (1982, 1990, 1991, 1992). The future may see both the islamization of the social sciences and changes in current Islamic thought through interaction with the latest concepts of the physical, biological, and social sciences.
[See also Science; and Technology and Applied Sciences.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ataur-Rashm, Mohammed. Contributions of Muslim Scientists during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries Hijri in the Indo-Pakistan SubContinent. Islamabad, 1983. Bibliography, alphabetically organized, of the widely scattered published work of Muslim scientists of this period, together with a tabular, decade-by-decade analysis.
Bennabi, Malek. Islam in History and Society. Translated by Asma Rashid. Islamabad, 1988. Presents an incisive and original analysis of the philosophical crisis facing the Muslim as well as the Western world.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 18 vols. Edited by Charles Coulston Gillispie. New York, 1970-1976. Includes 105 Muslim scientists whose contributions significantly altered the course of science. Heywood, C. J. “Notes on the Production of Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Cannon.” In Proceedings of the International Symposium on Islam and Science, r-3 Muharram, 1401 A.H. (10-12 November 1980), pp. 58-61. Islamabad, 1981.
Hitti, Philip K. History of the Arabs. 5th ed., rev. London, 1951. Iqbal, Muhammad. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Reprint, Lahore, 1960. Contains a critique of modern philosophical thought and its impact on the future of Islamic culture, with emphasis on “The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam.” Mahmud, S. F. A Short History of Islam. Karachi, 1960. Intended to be “an account of Islam and not of Arabs or Persians, Turks, or Indians,” clarifying several misconceptions.
Moravcsik, Michael J. “Scientific Manpower for the Islamic World.” In International Conference on Science in Islamic Polity, 2+2 vols. Science and Technology Potential and its Development in the Muslim World, vol. 1, edited by M. Raziuddin Siddiqi, M. M. Qurashi, and S. M. A. Shah, pp. 340-354. Islamabad, 1983.
Nadvi, S. H. H. Islamic Resurgent Movements in the Indo-Pak Subcontinent during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: A Critical Analysis. Durban, South Africa, 1987. Excellent comprehensive survey of several recent movements.
Nast, Seyyed Hossein. Islamic Science: An Illustrated Study. London, 1976.
Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. Knowledge and the Sacred. Albany, N.Y., 1989.
Personalities Noble: Glimpses of Renowned Scientists and Thinkers of Muslim Era. Edited by Hakim Mohammed Said. Karachi, 1983. Provides concise, two-page accounts of the major scientific achievements of two dozen towering scientific and intellectual personalities of the early Muslim era (third to seventh centuries Hijrah).
Qurashi, M. M. “Muslim Contributions to Science” (Part 2). Proceedings of the Pakistan Academy of Science 19 (1982): 125-137. Contains an original analysis of the recurring peaks in scientific activity vis-a-vis intellectual activity over the first nine centuries AH.
Qurashi, M. M., et al. “A Basis for the Integration of Modern Scientific Studies with Islamic Thought,” “Muslim Contributions to Pure Physics: A Critical Survey,” “Semi-Quantitative Study of the Relationships between Islamic Worldview and the Physical and Biological Sciences.” Islamic Thought and Scientific Creativity i.i (1990) 19-36; 2.4 (1991) 7-26; and 3.4 (1992): 7-19. Series of papers setting out “a basis for the integration of modern scientific studies with Islamic thought, in the light of basic concepts,” including references to psychokinesis and extrasensory perception. Qurashi, M. M., and S. M. Jafar. “Quantitative Study of Industrial
R&D and Its Impact on Economic Growth.” Science, Technology & Development 11.3 (1992): 5-23.
Rahman, M. Kaleemur. “Preface to Islamic Science.” MAAS Journal of Islamic Science 3.1 (1987): 45-56.
Sardar, Ziauddin. “Where’s Where? Mapping Out the Future of Islamic Science.” MAAS Journal of Islamic Science 4.2 (1988): 35-63.
MAZHAR MAHMOOD QURASHI

NATSIR, MOHAMMAD

Batoota — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 13:51:32 +0000

NATSIR, MOHAMMAD (17 July 1908 – 14 March 1993), Indonesian intellectual, journalist, and politician. Natsir was among the first Indonesians to receive a modern European education. He attended Dutch primary and secondary schools where he acquired a solid grounding in European philosophy as well as fluency in Dutch and English. Like most educated Indonesians of his generation, Natsir was a fervent nationalist; he was also a Muslim idealist. Like the Egyptian reformer Muhammad `Abduh, Natsir held that a return to the intellectual and scriptural traditions of classical Islam is essential for the modernization of Muslim societies.

Natsir was affiliated with Persatuan Islam, an exclusivist organization that combined modern education with Islamic fundamentalism and maintained cordial relation ships with fundamentalist organizations in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. He was a prolific author, writing more than ninety books and hundreds of articles. The tension between modernism and fundamentalism is apparent in many of Natsir’s works as well as in his political career.
Natsir understood the nation-state as a tool for constructing an Islamic society. He emphasized the relationship between a just society and the rewards. “of heaven, arguing that the use of the Qur’an and the sunnah of the prophet Muhammad as a sociological model was the means through which both could be attained. Unlike naive fundamentalists, Natsir explicitly rejected the notion that the Qur’an provides the basis for an administrative system. He played an active part in Indonesian politics from the 1920S until the dissolution of his political party (Masjumi) in 1958. From 1958 to 1961 he was affiliated with a Muslim-led insurrection centered in Sumatra. He was imprisoned between 1962 and 1966.
Following his release Natsir founded Yayasan Dewan Da’wah, a missionary organization and publisher of books and periodicals promoting his theological and social agendas. Natsir devoted the remainder of his life to writing, preaching, and facilitating the construction of mosques and schools. He remained active in international Islamic organizations until his death in 1993
Indonesians often distinguish between the young Natsir of the period before 1958 and the older Natsir of the post-1966 era. The young Natsir is revered for his devotion to Indonesian nationalism and development and his struggle to establish a more explicitly Islamic social system. Even those who hold vastly different theological views, including Nurcholish Madjid, recognize Natsir’s enormous contributions to Indonesian Islam.
The older Natsir was the most outspoken and articulate proponent of fundamentalism in contemporary Indonesia. His theological rigidity limited his ability to respond creatively to the social and political realities of the modern Indonesia he had done so much to create. In his later years Natsir became increasingly anti-Christian, blaming Indonesia’s Christian community for the establishment of Indonesia as a secular rather than an Islamic state. While Muslim fundamentalists continued to revere him as “the light of the Muslim community,” many Muslim intellectuals felt that he had become too intransigent to contribute further to the struggle for an Islamic society. Yet however much younger intellectuals may criticize Natsir’s theological and political programs, few would question his personal integrity or his devotion to Islam and Indonesia.
[See also Indonesia; Masjumi.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burns, Peter. Revelation and Revolution: Natsir and the Panca Sila. Townsville, Australia, 1981. Analysis of Natsir’s writings and political career of the pre-1958 period.
Federspiel, Howard M. Persatuan Islam: Islamic Reform in TwentiethCentury Indonesia. Ithaca, N.Y., 1970. Provides insight into Natsir’s theology.
Noer, Deliar. The Modernist Muslim Movement in Indonesia, 1901-1992. London, 1973. Authoritative study of Indonesian Islamic modernism, which includes discussions and partial translations of Natsir’s early works.
MARK R. WOODWARD