During the same period (1920s-30s), another (though lesser known) Islamic scholar in undivided India got smitten by the 1917 Russian revolution and Marxism.
Hafiz Rahman Sihwarwl saw Islam and Marxism sharing five elements in common: (1) prohibition of the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the privileged classes (2) organisation of the economic structure of the state to ensure social welfare (3) equality of opportunity for all human beings (4) priority of collective social interest over individual privilege and (5) prevention of the permanentising of class structure through social revolution.
The motivations for many of these themes he drew from the Qur’an, which he understood as seeking to create an economic order in which the rich pay excessive, though voluntary taxes (Zakat) to minimise differences in living standards.
In the areas that Sihwarwl saw Islam and communism diverge were Islam’s sanction of private ownership within certain limits, and in its refusal to recognise an absolutely classless basis of society.
He suggested that Islam, with its prohibition of the accumulation of wealth, is able to control the class structure through equality of opportunity.
Basically, both Sindhi and Sihwarwl had stumbled upon an Islamic concept of the social democratic welfare state.
Building upon the initial thoughts of Sindhi and Sihwarwl were perhaps South Asia’s two most ardent and articulate supporters and theoreticians of Islamic Socilaism: Ghulam Ahmed Parvez and Dr. Khalifa Abdul Hakim.
Parvez was a prominent ‘Quranist’, or an Islamic scholar who insisted that for the Muslims to make progress in the modern world, Islamic thought and laws should be entirely based on the modern interpretations of the Qu’ran and on the complete rejection of the hadith (sayings of the Prophet and his companions based on hearsay and compiled over a 100 years after the Prophet’s demise).
After studying traditional Muslim texts, as well as Sufism, Parvez claimed that almost all hadiths were fabrications by those who wanted Islam to seem like an intolerant faith and by ancient Muslim kings who used these hadiths to give divine legitimacy to their tyrannical rules.
Parvez also insisted that Muslims should spend more time studying the modern sciences instead of wasting their energies on fighting out ancient sectarian conflicts or ignoring the true egalitarian and enlightening spirit of the Qu’ran by indulging in multiple rituals handed down to them by ancient ulema, clerics and compilers of the hadith.
Understandably, Parvez was right away attacked by conservative Islamic scholars and political outfits.
But this didn’t stop famous Muslim philosopher and poet, Muhammad Iqbal, to befriend the young scholar and then introduce him to the future founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
