The development of Islamic revivalism is closely tied to the life histories and intellectual contributions of particular individuals. Ziauddin Sardar’s life and thought is worthy of particular attention in this regard. His writings are prolific, and as his ideas developed, his emphasis shifted from widely shared Indo-Muslim traditions to narrowly-interpreted Islamic doctrines.

Born in Dipalpur in 1951, he moved to the United Kingdom with his family at an early age, completing education at the City University in London with a degree in Physics and Information Sciences. During a career spanning more than four decades, whether as Advisor to Anwar Ibrahim in Kuala Lumpur or as Reporter on Eastern Eye in London; whether as Editor for Futures or as a Professor of Postcolonial Studies at Middlesex University, Sardar has been putting forth a view of Islam with an invigorated, pristine, and uncompromising outlook that would galvanise Muslims into an ideologically uniform community.

Considered a pioneering author on Islam and cultural issues, he’s penned more than fifty books in thirty years, including two volumes of autobiography: Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim and Balti Britain: A Provocative Journey through Asian Britain. His biography of Mecca, and the most recent Reading The Quran present a humanist and pluralist reading of the sacred text of Islam.

Below are excerpts from a conversation held in Karachi:

The News on Sunday: I am much curious to discover how you developed interest in Islam as an adolescent?

ZS: My family was always religious, one way or the other. Sufism influenced my father to an extent, and my grandmother was a very traditional woman. Discussions on Islam, especially on what children should be taught in England where, in my parents’ opinion, there was no Pakistani or Islamic culture, were a common fare. In other words, there was always an interest in Islam.

My father was an engineer in a biscuit factory in Sahiwal. (If you know Sahiwal, formerly Montgomery, it is basically famous for two things: the biscuit factory and the jail). He was a Union Leader, and organised a strike in 1956 that turned long and conflicting. He was told that Martial Law was soon going to be imposed, and that he might be arrested for organising strike, so he should leave the country. My father left quickly for London in 1958 just before Ayub Khan’s Martial Law, and we were there for the initial two years of the military regime until 1961. My father was frustrated in various ways -- job wise and even family wise. You must have noticed that my sir name is Sardar when our actual family name is Durrani. My father was very close to my grandfather who was in British Army. He had fought in Afghanistan and China as a result of which the British benighted him in 1932. I still possess a photograph of him standing by the Delhi Darbar with the sword of honour and medals. In fact I use that photograph to base my own history, and out of respect for family history that he was not suppressed. While the rest of the family remained Durrani, my father used the title ‘Sardar’ that the British had conferred upon my grandfather.

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TNS: How did that interest [in Islam] augment?

ZS: If there’s anyone to be declared guilty for it, it should be my mother! (Laughs). Mothers’ love can be doting! My father wanted me to read Urdu literature, such as Khutoot-e-Ghalib, etc. I was quite desperate to learn English; on the contrary, because when I went to England I wanted to do well at school. My Urdu was not great, and my father would pressurise me into reading classics like Tauba-tun-Nasooh, etc., what I used to regard as ‘bizarre’. I am glad that he did that otherwise my Urdu would have remained poor. From the mother’s side, pressure was on for reading the Quran and Hadith. Because I was the eldest son, these pressures had been there right from the beginning, increasing every Saturday and Sunday, at the expense of ignoring my sister and my brother.

When I was a student, I was involved in students’ Islamic Societies. In fact, for a number of years, I was the General Secretary of the first federation of the Students’ Islamic Societies. In those days, Islam was an open establishment -- there was no Shi’ite-Sunni divide, and everybody was just ‘Muslim’. As a student, I saw it as my duty to do as much as I possibly could to serve Islam. We developed a system called ‘Usra’ where you had one particular established scholar whom you studied under in a traditional way.

We invited Jaffer Sheikh Idrees who was a PhD student of Islamic Philosophy at Cambridge University. The group of 6-7 students met every Thursday, reading classical texts systematically including Tafseer Ibn Kathir and the Masnawi. Idrees taught us a lot because he was a full-fledged traditional scholar/philosopher. He was Sudanese and came from a Wahhabi background. While he was doing PhD, he was quite open-minded and open to criticism and questioning that we used to engage him in. We developed quite a rapport with him, inquiring, debating and discussing.

Traditional texts have a lot of discrepancies if you engage with them critically. You realise that certain things that have been reported are either exaggerated or not as authentic as they should be. There is no indication so you cannot even connect with them. If you simply say they are sacred texts and nobody can question them, then that’s a separate issue.

TNS: They say that The Quran is a modified version of the earlier Books of Revelation.

ZS: The basic claim of the Prophet (PBUH) was that he was not bringing a new religion; he was building on the Abrahamic tradition and on books of the earlier prophets. So, it should not surprise us that many things in The Quran can also be found in Torah and The Bible. But the Quran is a totally different text than the earlier books. To begin with, the Bible has a beginning, a middle and an end. The Quran does not have a beginning, a middle and an end. The Bible is a narrative history -- the stories follow a succession. The Quran does not have any narrative structure.

So you have to see the Quran in a very different light; it’s a unique text like none other. And the uniqueness of its text is that its revelation took twenty-three long years of the Prophet ‘s (PBUH) life. When the Quran says it has a context, the context is the life of the Prophet (PBUH), the community around him, the social structure, the technology and the tribal structure of the time. And it is only in this context that it can be appropriately interpreted and can actually make sense.

What I am against is when you pick up a verse from it at random and proclaim this is what it means. The Quran may say something else, somewhere else within a different context. The text itself is talking to itself. It’s a dynamic interrelated text, which you cannot segregate.

TNS: How should the Quran be interpreted in the contemporary context?

ZS: The primary thing is that if you look at the context of the Quran, you will discover that certain things make sense within their own context only and not in any other. Take, for instance, Surah-e-Lahab. Abu Lahab was dead. If you look at the context of the Surah, it’s basically about him, his wife, and about what will happen after he dies. These events have already taken place. This particular Surah had a context when Abu Lahab was still alive. Now, when we interpret the Surah, we have to look at the metaphor and the allegory it employs and learn from it.

Likewise, the Quran talks about certain punishments simply because in that society there was no notion of sending the accused to the prison. It was a stark tribal society. In matters of crime and punishment, they were almost black and white. So you have to realise that certain things in the Quran make sense only in the context in which they were revealed.

How to distinguish between what is universal and what is not is a challenge. And what is universal in the Quran is very simple. The Quran says there is no compulsion in religion. That’s a universal instruction for life. If we believe there is no compulsion in religion, then we cannot possibly say to somebody else that his religion is ‘bad’. It’s his choice. We cannot tell anyone: You are a Shi’ite and I am a Sunni, and my religion/sect is superior to yours. We cannot tell anybody that if he does not convert to Islam, we will kill him. We seem to have forgotten the universal aspects of the Quran.

There’s a very simple verse in the Quran: ‘Free the slave!’ When this verse was revealed, the Prophet (PBUH) and the Sahaba immediately freed their slaves. But the ones who came later did not. Slavery ended in the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the 18^th-century when the Ottomans abolished it but eventually when Saudi Arabia declared so in 1962. There were riots in Makkah because they believed slavery was essential in Islam.

What we’ve done is we’ve ignored the universal verses and instead adopted the context-specific ones. If you look at the life of the Prophet (PBUH), he existed in a particular period in time. He dressed the way everybody in the society dressed according to what was the norm. What was specific to the Prophet (PBUH) or to his time, we have adopted. We need to differentiate between what was universal in the life of the Prophet (PBUH) and what was specific. For example, on the occasion of Fateh-e-Makkah, he asks the Makkans: ‘What shall I do with you?’ the response was: ‘you are a good brother. You will do well’. The Prophet (PBUH) replied: ‘This day you are all forgiven’.

It was an incredible and practical demonstration of magnanimity and forgiveness. That forgiveness is universal, not that he dressed in a particular way or that he rode a camel. We suppress the universal message of his life whereas the contextual things, relevant only to the context they were revealed in, we emphasise upon and think we follow the Sunnah. If you are wearing a long beard and an Arabian djellabiya but treating fellow human beings with hatred and disdain, then what kind of Sunnah are you following?

TNS: In your opinion which is the most authentic biography of the Prophet (PBUH)? Some quote Martin Lings and Muhammad Haykal while others swear by Leslie Adamson, Maxine Rodinson and Karen Armstrong. Likewise, when it comes to the translation of the Quran into English, N J Dawood or Tarif Khalidi?

ZS: ‘Seerah’ is very important to us because it’s the second source on which we shape our faith, and of what we understand about our faith. Seerah is something that we need to write and rewrite regularly in the context of the new times. But what happened is that when Ibn Ishaq wrote Seerat Rasul Allah (PBUH) and Ibn Hisham edited it, it became a standard and everyone who succeeded followed it as a formula. All Seerah begin the same way. Take any as an example: Arabia before Islam, birth of the Prophet (PBUH), childhood, marriage with Hazrat Khadija (Razi Allah Ta’ala Anha), etc. Martin Lings followed the same formula although what he does is he connects the Quran and Seerah quite nicely and sheds some new light on the subject but he doesn’t ask any questions.

The Quran asks us to be rational. It asks us to think seriously about things, to reflect, to question -- not to be dumb and blind. Not to be like sheep and donkeys. There are spiritual events that nobody has seen. The fact that the scribes describe them in such a graphically detailed way means that they are presenting them as physical accounts, which is impossible. You will find similar accounts in all books because they are not questioning. The Quran doesn’t tell us to revere; it tells us to respect. I’ll accept everything you say by sheer reverence that I may show you. When I respect you I can say: Respectfully Sir, this doesn’t make any sense; Respectfully Sir, I don’t think you’re quite right here; or respectfully Sir, I disagree with your opinion because the evidence suggests otherwise.

In our culture, there is enormous reverence and no respect.

TNS: It has been said that all the major conflicts have religion as their basis, and that religions generate violence and bloodshed. Comment.

ZS: I don’t have to respond to it; history responds to it very well. The twentieth century is the bloodiest century in history. The wars in the 20^th-century have killed more people than all the wars in the earlier centuries. Take the two World Wars, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution in China, and so forth -- none of these was a war of religion.

To say that religion has been the cause of violence is absolute nonsense. It’s true that there’ve been wars of religion in history like The Crusades, for example, but there’ve been wars in history that were not motivated by religion. All the wars that Napoleon fought or the wars of Genghis Khan, for instance. It is a kind of mythology created around the notion that all wars in history were religious wars or that religion fans fire. Human beings generate chaos -- some are religious, some are not. The conflict that spread in South Africa in the name of apartheid had nothing to do with religion. Even the West Bank conflict is not religious in nature. It’s about power and territory since the territory is invaded by the Jewish that are claiming today that God had promised them this piece of land 2000 years ago.

Likewise, Karbala is again not religious in context and is much about khilafat. On one side, you had the grandson of the Prophet (PBUH) while on the other side there was a secularist ‘king’ who wanted to claim khilafat. It was a political engagement but we have given it a religious interpretation because the Prophet’s (PBUH) household was involved.

TNS: You’ve been repeatedly referred to in the media as a ‘critical polymath’. How do you respond to that appellation?

ZS: Basically, I am a dissenter by nature. I believe that thought is promoted by dissent. If you have a deep conversation with me, I will find certain things in it that will not satisfy me. That lack of satisfaction then leads me on to engage with you and ask questions. And it’s that lack of satisfaction that will enrich us both, mutually, through the synthesis that we create from our conversation.

So, I am against disciplines and disciplinary boundaries. Physics and chemistry are disciplines. Nature or God has not created the world in such a way as to structure it into a discipline. The highest discipline develops its own mystical terminology.

I do not buy disciplinary boundaries because I really think you cannot understand the world (which is my passion) through the lens of a single discipline. But disciplines are there for a reason because they do enhance knowledge in some aspect of reality. You have to show respect to a discipline by learning its terminology, its methodology, and understanding its basic text before you can master it. I deliberately try to grasp different disciplines and then cross their boundaries because I don’t quite accept them. This has been very problematic from a personal point of view.

It also comes from my background as a Muslim student in England, trying to understand and appreciate Islamic history, Islamic traditions, Islamic literature, and so forth. If you look at the history of ideas, the Muslims have produced more polymaths than any other culture or civilisation.

We invented polymathy, and we didn’t produce only a dozen or a hundred or a thousand polymaths; instead, we produced hundreds and thousands of them. Take, for example, Al Biruni. He can be a scientist who can measure the specific gravity of metals, and determine the coordinates of cities. Or he can go to India and be a social scientist, and write a brilliant text on Indian culture and civilisation, giving them due respect. When Al Biruni travels to India, he doesn’t end up concluding that the Indians are pagans and kafirs. On the contrary, he surmises that the Indian thought is so sophisticated that if you wish to understand the cosmos, you should try to comprehend their concepts. Today, they’re trying to prove that yoga is an anathema (forbidden). In the 12^th-century AD, Al Biruni had declared that yoga is such a sophisticated system that the only way to learn it is to get inside the conceptual structure of yoga. He could write a theological text upon his return. But he also tells you that each mode of enquiry has its own methodology. Imagine how profound he was and how profoundly he looked at the world! If I had a hero, it would be Al Biruni.

I have to admit that I was not aware that I had been called a critical polymath. It was my friend Ashis Nandy who first called me a critical polymath, and then other people picked it up until it became a common description.

This is an extended version of the interview that was published in The News on Sunday.