Fazlur Rahman: “The successful can be saved from their selfishness”

“Fazlur Rahman Malik whose philosophy is now famous among the Islamic scholars”


The religious book Islam by Rahman Malik talks about experiences of prophets of Mohammad and his study that explored those experiences in a philosophic way. It unfolds the Meccans to accept his teachings, the idea of judgement. Fazlur Rahman Malik (21 September 1919 – 26 July 1988) Pakistani Philosopher, a Renowned liberal reformer of Islam. He was son of famous scholar Maulana Shihab al-Din (interest of studies — Islamic law, prophetic narrations, Quran commentaries and philosophy) He devoted his life to educational reform of Islam from Quran.

Empirical knowledge itself is of little benefit unless it awakens the inner perception of man as to his own situation, his potentialities, his risks, and his destiny

Fazlur Rahman Malik
Quran Manuscript

The philosophers and often Sufi’s did understand the Quran as a unity, but this unity was imposing upon the Quran (and Islam in general) from without rather than derived from a study of the Quran itself […]”
“It must be constantly remembered that the Quran is not just descriptive but is primarily prescriptive. Both the content of its message and the power of the form in which it is conveyed are designed not so much to “inform” men in any ordinary sense of the word as to change their character. The psychological impact and the moral import of its statements, therefore, have a primary role. Phrases like “God has sealed their hearts, blinded their eyes, deafened them to truth” in the Quran do have a descriptive meaning in terms of the psychological processes described earlier; but even more primarily in such contexts, they have a definite psychological intention: to change the ways of men in the right direction.

Manuscript of Quran at Brooklyn Museum

He brought comparative studies of Islamic elements in the education, theoretic considerations and his modern approaches adopted by Muslim theories. It is based on classical Islamic modernism. However, Rahman went through quick exploitation in his homeland by opponent general Ayub Khan and eventually that led him exile in the United state in 1968. As well as, there he started developing his educational field in teaching in the university of Chicago and the University of California.

96th sura of the Quran — the first revelation received by Muhammad.

“It is this God consciousness that sent Muhammad out of the Cave of Hira where he was
want to contemplate, into the world, never to return to that Cave-or the contemplative life-again. What issues from his experience in the cave was not merely the demolishing of a Plurality of Gods, but a sustained and determined effort to achieve socioeconomic justice
[…]

Quranic Inscriptions

In building any genuine and viable Islamic set of laws and institutions, there has to be a twofold movement: First one must move from the concrete case treatments of the Quran taking the necessary and relevant social conditions of that time into account-to the general principles upon which the entire teaching converges. Second, from this general level there must be a movement back to specific legislation, considering the necessary and relevant social conditions now obtaining. […]”

(Early Medieval Period — 5th or 6th century to the 10th century)

His grooming teaching career was consist of teaching Persian and Islamic philosophy. His return to his homeland (Pakistan) in the year 1961 for heading up the central institute of Islamic research held him from making no progress. The writing of Rahman is still a chunk of famous Islamic Scholars. During his active years, he was master in the most spoken languages, Urdu, Persian, Arabic and English. He had also achieved excellence adapting learning classical Greek, Latin, German and French for achieving efficiency in his academic career.

What Rahman believed,

Islamic education of the early Middle Ages (Early Medieval Period — 5th or 6th century to the 10th century) led to less understanding of Quranic teachings.

Also, Read what is mean by Progressive Education by John Dewey and The Emphatic Philosopher Of Strange Confusion, John Stuart Mill