WHAT IS FAMILY? 

“As matters stand in the Muslim world today, it is the decline of religious leadership from the Islamic standard in a serious measure that constitutes a major cause of its inability with regard to its emergence from the abyss into which it has been descending since some time. The remedy for the situation is obvious.” - Fazlur Rahman Ansari, ‘The Qur’anic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society’.

The Quranic Foundations and Structure of Muslim Society (in two volumes) was written by the distinguished Islamic scholar and Sufi Shaikh, Maulana Dr. Muhammad Fadlur Rahman Ansari (1914-1974), and was first published in Pakistan in 1973 just a few months before his death in 1974. It is not only a masterpiece of modern Islamic scholarship, but it also courageously identifies serious deficiencies in contemporary Islamic scholarship as one of the major causes of the decline of the Muslim world. The author of the book, who holds a doctorate in philosophy, was a graduate of Aligarh Muslim University, India, where he studied philosophy and religion. He derived his Islamic philosophical and spiritual thought from the outstanding Islamic scholar, Dr. Muhammad Iqbal, as well as from his spiritual mentor, Maulana Abdul Aleem Siddiqui, and the great teacher who taught him Islam at the Aligarh Muslim University, Professor Syed Sulaiman Ashraf.

In a Christmas and New Year’s message published in the ‘Trinidad Guardian’ (December 25th, 2005) the misguided head of the ASJA (an acronym for a Muslim Organization in Trinidad and Tobago) declared:

“Once more, as we approach the end of another year and the great event of Christmas, we join with the rest of society and particularly our brothers and sisters of the Christian faith in celebrating this joyous season. Certainly, the Muslim community recognizes the common beliefs and practices that we share and which are the embodiment of the respective faiths that are represented in this blessed country and emanate from the central doctrine of the fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of mankind.”

Although some time has passed since the publication of this strange statement, the leadership of ASJA appears to have made no effort to retract or modify it in any way. Nor has there been any response to it so far from the many scholars of Islam in this country, or from the leaders of the Muslim community. This could perhaps be so because many people, very sensibly, no longer read the daily newspapers. But it could also be the result of either unwillingness or incapacity on their part to recognize anything so profoundly wrong and dangerously misguided in that message as to warrant a response.