ABSTRACT
IT must be manifest to the least observant that within recent years a great change, change for the better, has come over us. As a community we are striving strenuously to improve ourselves, and we are beginning to realize that no progress or advancement, in any real sense of the word, is possible without unity and co-operation. In fact recent events have revealed the extent to which the spirit of unity and co-operation has developed. Verily it is encouraging, and augurs well for the future. The first Literary Conference, still fresh in our minds, is one of the unmistakable manifestations of this new and welcome spirit. We shall make no reference to politics, but shall consider here matters purely educational. Education is a subject of absorbing interest and of utmost utility—look at it from whatever point of view we may. We need not go over the ground traversed since the dawn of reasoning; namely, the usefulness of education in the making of a good citizen. It is now as clear as day. Education enlarges the mind and uplifts the soul. It gives a clearer and wider outlook on life; it instils sympathy and it inculcates tolerance; it fashions character and teaches the dignity of man. No one will dispute the benefits that education has conferred upon humanity and will continue to confer to the end of time. It must then be our solemn duty to do all we can towards its advancement. I shall not take up time in discussing university education in India. Whether the universities here have attained the ideal which they aimed at; whether they have succeeded in making their alumni what a university, true to its ideal, is supposed to make them; whether any or what reform is needed—these questions are not meant for us, nor need we linger over them. I propose to discuss a question, affecting us nearer home; namely, the question regarding our own Islamic Learning. I propose to discuss what our duties and obligations are to our own learning—Arabic, Persian and Hindustani; how far we have discharged those obligations; and what must needs be done in future. Great admirer as I am of European culture, I set our own learning first and foremost in the curriculum of our studies. And this for obvious reasons; our own learning is the embodiment of our hopes, traditions, aspirations. It is the reflection of our civilisation, the mirror of our character. It is the monument of our achievements. It is our glory, our very own heritage from the past. I have called it, you will notice, our own learning. Though Arabic and Persian are not our own languages yet they are the two languages in which the highest achievements of Islam lie enshrined. And to us Muslims they have a priceless value; an invaluable interest; an interest which binds us to them for evermore; an interest which transcends the barriers of race and nationality. The tie is religion—the unbreakable tie. Arabic is the language of the Qur’an. Besides, it contains a literature worthy of a great nation. The heralds and pioneers of the Middle Ages, it was left to the Muslims—amid the tumult of fallen and falling things—to carry on the traditions of learning, to uphold the torch of culture. We may find in Von Kremer, Bebel and Dierds (to mention only a few) some acknowledgment of the great debt which Europe owes to Muslim civilisation. And yet to our eternal shame, while France, Germany and England are engaged in the study and exploration of Islamic culture and civilisation, we sit with folded hands, heedless of our obligations and oblivious of our duty.
Wie von ein bösen Geist im Kreis herumgefuhrt
Und ringsherum liegt schöne grüne weide.
