Why Islamic History - I

The great Indian Islamic scholar and historian Abu Al-Hasan 'Ali
An-Nadwi observes, like other sages of Islam have before, that Islam,
being the last and universal religion of Allaah, has a unique history
of internal revival, reform and self-rejuvenation.
Allaah Almighty sent the messageof Islam at a chosen moment in the
development of human history where the technological, scientific and
intellectual understanding of humanity as a whole was reaching a stage
of final maturation and ripening. Instead of geographically confined
nations and tribal systems which all received their own messengers
from Allaah, thehumanity was now ripe for one, universal, perfected
and final message of Allaah.
The development of the Islamic Ummah in history was amazingly rapid.
It was full of trials and tribulations and encounters with other
cultures and religious systems. As a result, the final message of
Allaah was embodiedin a civilization that was enrichedby all the great
civilizations of theworld. Within the first century of its birth,
Islam spread across half the known and majority of the civilized world
of that time. As different people became Muslims or came under the
rule of Islam, the scholars and thinkers of Islam came from
increasingly diverse regions, thus enriching the flowering and
protection of Islamic scholarship and tradition with their own
cultural strengths. The contributions of the Persians in bureaucracy
and culture, the Hindus in mathematics, the Greeks in logic, the Turks
in military and architecture fields, just to name afew, all became
sources of strength of Islam. On the other hand, the previous
philosophical and religious systems of the new lands both challenged
and influenced the Muslim scholars and thinkers. All these factors
make the history of Islam extremely fast-moving, diverse and filled
with conflicts, debates and upheavals. Each of these experiences,
however, also helped it mature and develop.
Whenever the Ummah of Islam faced a new danger, internal or external,
Allaah Almighty raised among the Muslims scholars, leaders and groups
who protected the true religion of Allaah Almighty and revived it in
its true, pristine form. This ubiquitous phenomenon is known to the
historian as revivalism or tajdeed.
The Ummah of Islam, with its preserved source-texts (the Quran and the
Hadeeth), scholarship and legacy, has survived all its enemies only
because of the special Divine arrangements. In history, this
protection and guidance of AllaahAlmighty has been actualized in the
form of the rise of great scholars and leaders, fields of scholarship
like the sciences of the Quran, of Hadeeth, of jurisprudence and its
principles, the preservation of the Arabic language and so on.
Today, the Muslim Ummah faces great challenges from all sides. But an
observer of Islamic historyrecognizes that the situation is neither
new nor hopeless: in fact,these trials and challenges are part of
Allaah's plan to take the Ummah of Islam and the message of Islam up
to a new level of strength and recognition in this world.
To learn Islamic history is to inquire how Allaah's ways have worked
and His will carried out atthe hands of myriads of individuals and
groups and how His promises have come true. To look at history
Islamically is to keep an eye on the moral, spiritual and ethical
dimensions of all episodes in history, however big or small. This is
precisely why the Quran makes learning history in some ways an act of
faith and a source of wisdom.
Why learn history:
Reasons from the Quran
Just as the food we eat constitutes our bodies, our history
constitutes our minds. Our ideas, concepts, sentiments, and
preferences, in short, what makes us human, is largely a result of our
past experiences. Individuals, peoples, institutions, or nations, all
acquire their particular nature or identity primarily because of their
unique histories. We cannot know ourselves without knowing where we
have been and come from. Not knowing where we come from leaves us
without our sense of selfhood. Loss of identityleaves us without a
purpose, like a ship without destination, at themercy of merciless
winds. This loss of identity has been mentioned in the Quran as a
punishment from Allaah. He Almighty Says (what means): {Andbe not like
those who forgot Allaah, so He made them forget themselves...} [59:
19]
People who forget who they were may forget who they ought to be. This
leads to self-deceit and arrogance. Allaah Almighty reminds every
human being again and again of his or her individual 'history,' to
shake them up from their disbelief and arrogance. Allaah Says (what
means): {Had he not been a sperm from semen emitted? Then he was a
clinging clot, and [Allaah] created [his form] and proportioned [him].
} [Quran 75:37-38) {Does man not consider that We created him from a
[mere] sperm-drop – then at once he is a clear adversary?} [Quran
36:77]
In the chapters of Al-Feel and Quraysh, Allaah Almighty remindsthe
people of Quraysh of his favors upon them in the past, encouraging
them to learn morallessons from their history. He Almighty Says (what
means): {Have you not considered [O Muhammad], how your Lord dealt
with the companions of theelephant?} [Quran 105:1] And {For the
accustomed security of the Quraysh – Their accustomed security [in]
the caravan of winterand summer – Let them worship the Lord of this
House, Who has fed them, [saving them] from hunger and made them safe,
[saving them] from fear.} [Quran: 106]
Allaah Almighty repeatedly commands the Muslims in the Quran to
observe, consider, and reflect upon the lessons from thehistory of
bygone nations. Instructing the Muslims in moral and spiritual history
of the earliernations seems to be one of the major emphases of the
Quran. The fact that majority of Allaah's Final Message consists of
stories of moral struggle of earlier peoples is an indication of the
significance of learning history, and learning it with the right
perspective of seeking lessons. Following are a few lessons that can
be drawn from the Quranic perspective on history.
(i) Universality of lessons . The lessons from the rise or fall of any
community in the past are valid for all humanity, for there are some
unalterable, universal laws or principles that apply to all nations
depending on their specific conditions. The Quran calls these laws the
Sunan (established ways of dealing) of Allaah Almighty: {…But you will
never find in the way of Allaah any change, and you will never find in
the way of Allaah any alteration.} [Quran 35:43]
(ii) Moral-spiritual interpretation. While modern historians focus on
different dimensions of history and offer different bases for the
interpretation of history based on their respective belief systems,
the basis of Quranic storytelling is emphatically moraland spiritual.
In other words, Allaah Almighty demands of us tolook first and
foremost at the moral aspects of a nation's history. Nations fall, for
example, not due primarily to economic failures, but due to the
moral-spiritual failure to properly dispense economic justice based on
the correct belief in and obedience to Allaah Almighty. In the chapter
of Al-'Araaf, after relating several stories of encounter between the
truthful prophets of Allaah and their disbelieving people, Allaah
Almighty summarizes the lessonsof these stories by saying (what
means): "And if only the people ofthe cities had believed and
fearedAllaah, We would have opened upon them blessings from the heaven
and the earth; but they denied [the messengers], so We seized them for
what they were earning." [Quran 7:96]
(iii) Learning moral lessons from history is an obligation. The
causeof the downfall of nations one after the other in the
aforementioned verse [7:96] is that they neglected the moral lessons
of the history of their forefathers, and thought that thesame does not
apply to them. Allaah Almighty Says (what means): {And what prevented
thepeople from believing when guidance came to them except that they
said, 'Has Allaah sent a human messenger?' Say, 'If there were upon
the earth angels walking securely, We would have sent down to them
from the heaven an angel [as a] messenger.'} [17:94-95]
(iv) History is the best way to teach and caution. The Quran could
have been a book of abstract theories of laws that govern societies,
or simply a list of do's and don'ts. But the fact that our Creator,
the Most Wise, has chosen story telling as a chiefmeans to caution and
education of the humankind necessarily means that humans have a
propensity to learn from other's examples. Successful teachers and
preachers of Islam always have a good grasp of history.
(v) History of all humanity is relevant. By Islamic history, we often
mean the history of Muslims. But the Quran is full of history of
rebellious nations. We conclude that so long as the framework of
history is Islamic (i.e., moral spiritual), no part of human history
is irrelevant to thebelievers.
(vi) History repeats itself. It has become a cliché that history
repeats itself. This is true inasmuch as all struggles of goodand evil
are bound by the universal Sunan (principles) established by Allaah
Almighty. Inorder to show the Muslim' Ummah its potential failings,
the Quran focuses on the moral stories of the Children of Israel, for
they were, as some scholars have observed, `the ex-Muslim Ummah.'
(vii) Systematic learning of the science of history is a requisite.
The Quran, the Final Message of Allaah Almighty, is a book of guidance
and contains all foundational principles and general moral
exhortations that will suffice all those who seek Allaah Almighty till
the Day of Judgment. The Quran is not a book of history, and the way
it tells stories presumes that the audience has some knowledge ofthe
history being told. If the Quraysh, for instance, did not know the
something about the history of 'Aad, Thamood and thedestruction of the
army of Abrahah and his Elephants, the Quranic references to these
incidents would make little senseto them. The Quran provides the moral
interpretation to the human drama of life and gives many instructive
examples. But itis an obligation of Muslims to learn as accurately and
objectively as possible the facts of history so the Quranic principles
could be correctly applied, since fulfilling the requisites of an
obligation is an obligation itself. To learn objectively the science
of history, therefore, is part of Islamic obligation upon the Muslim
Ummah, without which they cannot fully benefit from the message of the
Quran.

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