Yaser M. Haddara

This is a loose abridged translation of one of the biographies from the book Prominent People in the Contemporary Islamic Movement and Call. Previously I put up posts on Dr. Mohammad Natsir, Sh. Muhammad al-Khidr Hussein, and Ustadh Mohamed Abdelhamid Ahmed.

Sheikh Abdul Fattah Abu Ghudda, rahimahullah, has been described by those that met him as someone that manifested humility, warmth, noble character, great manner, straightforwardness when he talks, depth of understanding, and precision in scholarly issues.

He was born in Rajab 1336 A.H. (1917 C.E.) in Aleppo, Syria. His father and grandfather used to trade in woven material, and his father was keen to attend the presence of scholars and keep up with their classes and lectures. He attended a private Islamic elementary school, then a high school for religious education (al-Khusrawiyya). After his high school graduation he went to Egypt to study at al-Azhar where he attained the `aalimiyya degree in 1948. He also specialized in Education in the Faculty of Arabic Language at al-Azhar and obtained a degree from that faculty in 1950 before returning to Syria.

Sh. Abdul Fattah came to be known among the greatest caliber of the scholars of Syria and the most prominent of the leaders of the contemporary Islamic movement. He studied with many of the leading scholars of his time, most prominently Sh. Ahmad al-Zarqa of Aleppo and his son Sh. Mustafa al-Zarqa, rahimahum Allah jamee’an. His students include scholars and activists throughout Syria, the Arab World, and beyond. He taught in Aleppo, Damascus, and Riyad. He followed the Hanafi school and disliked for people to search out rukhas or opinions that were in the extreme minority. At the same time he disliked partisanship in following madhhab.

Books

Sh. Abu Ghudda authored or edited close to 100 books mostly in the sciences of hadeeth. Some of his most prominent texts:

• Risalat-ul-Mustarshideen by al-Harith al-Muhasiby: one of the earliest books of tasawwuf, this is a beautiful masterpiece addressing those seeking self-purification and guiding them to key practices and attitudes for the journey. Sh. Abu Ghudda’s commentary is extensive and I found it to be of immense value in highlighting key passages, adding reminders, and explaining concepts.
• Al-Ihkam fee tamyeez al-fatawa ‘an al-ahkam wa tasarrufat al-qady wa-l-imam by al-Qarafy: this is one of the most important books of all time dealing with specific issues in usool and in the proper understanding of sunnah. Sh. Abdul Fattah brought to it his vast scholarships in both fields.
• Safahat min sabr al-’ulamaa (Stories of the perseverance of scholars): this is a beautiful book he authored about the struggles and sacrifices of scholars and their dedication to the pursuit of knowledge.
• Qeemat al-zaman ‘inda-l-’ulamaa (The Value of Time for Scholars): another immensely enjoyable text that he authored that describes our scholars’ attitude towards time and recounts some of their habits and practices in investing their time as well as their thoughts and reflections on the subject.

He authored books on biographies of classical and contemporary scholars, on the study of sunna, on the practices of scholars through the ages, on some of the significant debates in Islamic theology and their impact and relevance, and on numerous other subjects. He edited books written by prominent scholars on various aspects of hadeeth methodology, fiqh, and usool. He was aware of the tremendous scholarly legacy of the scholars of the Indian subcontinent in the area of hadeeth sciences. He traveled to India to obtain some of the valuable manuscripts of her scholars and returned with a treasure trove of manuscripts for Imam Abdul Hayy al-Lucknowy, Imam Ahmad al-Uthmani al-Tahanawy, and Imam Muhammad Anwar al-Kashmiri. He was particularly keen to work on these manuscripts and get them into publication with scholarly notes.

Many of his personal qualities were remembered and recounted by contemporaries, peers and scholars:

• He had a sensitive soul and his tears would freely flow when summoned by the plight of man or the remembrance of God. People saw him weeping simply because one of his students was weeping in grief, and they saw him weeping as he stood in the Prophet’s mosque supplicating.
• He had dignity, integrity, and precision. He did not allow his knowledge or credibility to be the subject of trade or compromise.
• Dr. Muhammad Aly al-Hachmi speaks of his relationship with sh. Abdul Fattah as a brother, as a colleague, and as someone related through marriage. In all these spheres of interaction he was characterized by compassion, kindness, loyalty, chivalry, nobility, integrity, and forgiveness. “Hearts wept for him before the eyes.”
• Sh. Muhammad Abu Zuhra wrote to him after a trip they had together saying, “The happy days that I spent in your company showed me the sincerity of muttaqeen, the good humor of believers, and the patience of good friends.”
• Sh. Mustafa al-Zarqa called him, “My most beloved brother, who has in my heart a love greater than my heart, and in my self a reverence even though he is younger in age.”

He taught his students that, “A book does not divulge its secret until you have read the whole of it,” and that, “The privilege of the scholar is to alert the mind by the shade of the Law.”

He met Hasan al-Banna in the forties while he was studying in Egypt and called him the mujaddid (reviver or renewer) of the Islamic call in the fourteenth century. He joined the Muslim Brotherhood and was one of its leading scholars and symbols, as well as assuming the leadership of the group in Syria twice including the period 1986-1991.

Shaykh Abdul Fattah died in Riyad in 1997 and was buried in Madeena in accordance with his wishes. His website is http://www.aboghodda.com/ and has some material in English as well as in Arabic, and there is also a wikipedia page for him (in Arabic). His son, sh. Zahid Abu Ghudda is one of the well-known and respected scholars here in the GTA. He has a blog at http://zahidabdulfattah.blogspot.com/.

This is the third abridged translation of a bio of one of the figures of the modern Islamic movement as told in the book by sh. Abdullah al-Uqail.

They called him “father of the collegians” because he was one of the first group of university students to work with Imam Hasan al-Banna to establish the Muslim Brotherhood on university campuses in Egypt.

Born in 1911, his family was one of knowledge and deen. His father had earned the 3aalamiyya degree from al-Azhar and worked as a lawyer in sharee3a courts. He himself wound up in the Egyptian University (now Cairo University) studying in the Faculty of Humanities graduating with a B.A. in Arabic Language in 1938.

Ustadh Mohamed was introduced to the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in 1933 by Sh. Tantawy Johary (an author of a Quranic tafseer in the early part of the 20th century that was distinguished by its consideration of Quranic references to modern scientific knowledge). Ustadh Mohamed and some of his colleagues had approached the sheikh with the idea of forming an Islamic society on campus. He suggested instead that they should join the ikhwan because they understood Islam as a comprehensive whole that encompasses every aspect of life not only worship, and because they focused on a holistic tarbiya (character development/growth) that utilizes practical (not only intellectual) means to facilitate the development and growth of the entire human being. He praised to them the founder of the movement, Imam Hasan al-Banna, who had been nominated by the rector of al-Azhar, Sh. Mustafa al-Maraghi, to be the editor al-Manar magazine after its founding editor, sh. Rashid Rida, had passed away.

Ustadh Mohamed and his colleagues (there was a group of six) accepted sh. Johary’s advice and joined the brotherhood. Mohamed Abdelhamid Ahmed was selected as the naqib (captain/representative) of the students in the movement.

Sh. al-Uqail came to know this brother through his writings in the al-ikhwan al-muslimoon magazine in the late forties. He later met him in Egypt as he had continued his activism with university students sharing his experiences and helping them organize on campuses.

Shortly after graduating he spent some time teaching in Iraq. He was joined there by another member of the MB, Kamal al-Deen Hussein, who was teaching in the Engineering Faculty in Baghdad. The two of them worked to advance the ideas of the Islamic movement in Iraq. Shortly thereafter sh. Muhammad Mahmoud al-Sawwaf, an Iraqi scholar who was studying in al-Azhar and was introduced to the MB there, came back to Iraq. The three of them together established and strengthened the presence of the Islamic movement in Iraq (Sh. al-Sawwaf would later lead ikhwan volunteers from Iraq in Palestine in 1948).

Ustadh Mohamed’s stint in Iraq finished in 1946 and he returned to Egypt and continued where he left off as a writer, teacher, and activist. A year later, Hajj Abdellatif Abu Qoura, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan requested his appointment in Jordan to teach in the Islamic College there. He spent one year in Jordan and returned in 1948 only to face a government crackdown on the Brotherhood and a prime-ministerial edict banning the organization and ordering the arrest of most members. He would later face arrest and torture again in 1954, 1960, and 1965. When he was finally released from prison he settled in Saudi Arabia and worked in various capacities as a teacher and magazine editor finally settling as an instructor in the Da’wa Department in the Faculty of Sharee’a in Umm al-Qura University (the department head at the time was sh. Mohamed al-Ghazzali rahimahullah). He continued in this position until his retirement in 1985 and continued to live in Makka until his death in 1992.

Contributions

Those that knew Ustadh Mohamed attest that to his dying days he was tireless in his work to call people to work in the service of Islam. He focused on students and encouraged them to feel their responsibilities to their deen and to use well the years of keen intellect and physical fitness. He held classes, gave lectures, participated in panel discussions, and wrote. Sh. al-Uqayl describes how he benefited with his colleagues from Ustadh Mohamed’s efforts during his studies in Egypt 1950-54. Ustadh Mohamed’s lectures invariably challenged the dominant anti-religious views that were well-subsidized and systematically propagated in Egypt for the first half of the 20th century.

He is described by Ustadh Mohamed Hamed Abulnasr (the 4th General Guide of the Muslim Brothers) with a fitting epitaph,

“Believers are many. But there are among the belivers ‘men that were truthful to the covenant they made with God; some of them have passed away, others still wait, and they have altered none of their covenant or integrity.’ Among those that were truthful in their covenant my noble brother the pioneering educator Mohamed Abdelhamid Ahmed – he is that in my estimation though I do not presume to inform God of the nobility of His servants. . . (Our brother) was the first to carry the idea of the ikhwan into the Egyptian University . . . He carried his da’wa and sacrificed everything he had in the path of da’wa. . . At a time when ideas opposed to Islam had dominated in our society and received every manner of support, he persevered and struggled and worked tirelessly until he met Allah with his perseverance hoping for God’s pleasure.”

About his own experiences Ustadh Mohamed reminisces that he and his colleagues established the first prayer room on their university campus when they convinced the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities (Dr. Mansour Fahmy) to allow them to use a room that used to be storage space for academic dress (caps & gowns). They started to call the adhan, which came as a surprise to a faculty that had a single Egyptian instructor! They would invite students that came to the prayer to listen to the lectures of Imam al-Banna, attracting many of them to the movement of MB.

When Imam al-Banna spoke at a meeting for the student members of the ikhwan in 1937 he said, “. . . I would be remiss as I start this talk if I did not salute with you that blessed moment four years ago when I met with six of your brothers reminding one another of the responsibilities that University students have for Islam . . . By the second year this annual gathering included forty of your brothers. At the end of the third year you numbered 300. We come now to your fourth annual gathering and you increase and not decline, ‘And the pure land: its plants grow out of the earth by the permission of its Lord.’”

For me, the most inspiring testimonial comes from ustadh Ahmed Abu Shady who talks about him in his memoirs. He says:

God so willed that I was close to ustadh Mohamed Abdelhamid Ahmed in the tribulation of 1965 and that I benefited much from his company. I learned more from him through his example and through living with him day to day than I learned from classes and readings. . . He was an endless ocean of knowledge. He spoke to us of the da’wa that he joined as a young man; he spoke of the poetry of Iqbal to whom he was particularly dedicated – he had memorized much of his poetry and when he recited it he would do so in a melodious voice that would inspire in us a response to the poetry similar to his own; and beyond these he would guide us to live the hikam of ibn Ataa. The hikam were like a song from his lips making steadfast the hearts of those that are oppressed whenever the crises gather and darken, and whenever tribulation bares its teeth and despair finds its way to all gathered . . . Of the hikam that he kept reciting to us until we memorized them:

• Let not the delay in the time of the giving, despite your persistence in the asking, a cause for your despair. For Allah guaranteed you the answering of supplication in what He chooses for you not in what you choose for yourself, and in the time that He wills, not in the time that you will . . . for He does with consistency and overwhelming power what He wills.
• If Allah is with you, then just who is against you? And if He is against you then just who is with you?

I am always moved when I learn of the lives of people like this. He worked tirelessly and he could have been famous or a celebrity. He could have become known as an author, as a political figure, as an activist leader, etc. Instead, what God chose for him was that he would be remembered by those that knew him and that his real impact would be in their character and in their lives, and then in the character and lives of everyone that they reached. He did write a few books. But the most influential of his “books” were the students and the brothers that learned from him in his times of ease and in his times of difficulty. May Allah accept him, forgive him, reward him, and keep us on the goodness in his path and his legacy. Ameen.

A recent news article speaks of Israel’s plans to investigate sheikh Raed Salah. Sheikh Raed is the leader of the Islamic Movement “inside the green line” (i.e. in the parts of Palestine taken for Israel in 1948). He has been routinely jailed by Israel on accusations of “sympathizing” with outlawed groups, etc. The last arrest led to a 2-year imprisonment for leading a banned demonstration (this is of course happens in the “only democracy in the Middle East”).

The accusations for this latest episode are no less amazing. He’s being investigated as a result of his words at a rally protesting the “excavations” at al-Aqsa. Two accusations are made:

1. He called for “an intifada to support al-Aqsa” — this is being labeled as incitement to violence. That makes sense! If the victim asks for help, it must be incitement .
2. He said words to the effect of “Our blood is on your clothes, on your doors, . . .” — this is being labeled as racism. Some old geezers like myself are likely to recognize these words as the lines of a very old poem about the oppression that Palestinians have suffered and continue to suffer. If they’re gonna investigate sh. Raed for the metaphorical reference of ‘my blood is on your hands’ I suspect the next step is to investigate all English teachers for teaching Macbeth!

The gall of it all!

Al-hamdulillah several people seemed to enjoy reading about to Dr. Mohammad Natsir. One comment lamented the absence of North American Muslim figures of a similar caliber. I think this is a sentiment most of us would share. Having said that, I believe that we unfortunately underestimate the great men and women that contributed so much to building a Muslim community in North America. Just to mention a couple of examples, Imam Warith Deen Muhammad’s struggle to lead people from a particular type of ignorance into the light of Islam required much courage and personal sacrifice. Imam Siraj Wahhaj’s campaign to close the crack houses in Brooklyn are legendary among those that still remember them. Dr. Ahmed El-Kadi is a name most of the readers of this blog won’t be familiar with but his sacrifices, his generosity, and his strength have left their mark on the entire North American Muslim community, even as we fail to realize or acknowledge their impact, Dr. Ismail Raji al-Faruqui gave his life for his cause. Most of us only know Dr. Jamal Badawi as a lecturer and speaker, but his contributions both in the intellectual arena and that of activism are far beyond that. Among the women we may wish to explore the contributions of Srs. Iman El-Kadi and Lamia Faruqui.

I could go on listing names. Unfortunately, I do not know enough about the people that I have mentioned. I pray and I hope that as we continue to mature as a community we will learn how to study our own selves. I pray and I hope that there will come a time when the lives of our heroes in the struggle for community are studied, documented, and held up for inspiration. In the meantime, the list above is meant to be neither exhaustive nor representative. Initially I was not going to list anyone, but I could not see how I else could communicate the knowledge that we do have our own homegrown heroes and role models, if we but knew them. There are countless others who lived before, with, and after the examples I list above. There are those whose contributions are leaving their mark on the community day by day. As always, we pray, and we hope. But we should also learn, and we should strive.
And so I want to continue to play my part. So for now, I went back to the book I mentioned before and chose another outstanding character. It is always difficult for an author to convey the greatness of an individual to those that were not contemporary with him, did not meet him, were not directly impacted by his charisma. To try and give some idea of the greatness of the man we’ll talk about here, think about two things:

1. Al-Azhar has had rectors (grand Imams) since the 1600’s (the first shaykh-ul-Azhar passed away in 1690). Of the 49 times that the position has been held, the majority were selected by the scholars of al-Azhar themselves. At some point in the last thirty years (not exactly sure when) the position became a governmental appointment. Of the 40+ times that the Grand Imam was elected by the scholars of al-Azhar, exactly one shaykh was from outside Egypt: sh. Muhammad al-Khidr Hussein, who was Tunisian.
2. If you consider the greatness of students to be a measure of the greatness of the teacher, consider that sh. al-Khidr claims among his students sh. Sha’rawy, sh. Abdel-Fattah Abou Ghudda, and sh. Abdel-Hamid ibn Badis, just to name a few.

Sh. al-Khidr was born in Nafta, Tunisia, in 1876. He memorized the Quran before he was 12 years old, and moved with his family to the capital city, Tunis, in 1888. He then enrolled in al-Zaytouna and studied with some of its leading scholars including his own maternal uncle sh. Muhammad al-Makki ibn Azzouz.

With religious passion and patriotism sheikh al-Khidr turned to anti-colonialist activism. In 1903 he established a magazine called al-Sa’aada al-’Udhma (Ultimate Happiness). The magazine was dedicated to the exposition of Islam and the exposure of colonialism. Two years later it was shut down by French colonial authorities.

Career wise, sheikh al-Khidr became a judge, then resigned that post and settled into teaching at al-Zaytouna. Colonial authorities pursued him for his activism so he escaped to Damascus in 1911, stayed there at length, teaching in al-Sultaniyya. However he had to leave Syria when the French occupied it and he became persona non grata. He settled in Egypt in 1920.

In Egypt he became friends with Ahmed Taymour Pasha and Ustadh Muhibb-ud-Deen al-Khateeb, two leading figures in the efforts for re-awakening the ummah, rejuvenating the intellectual traditions of Islam, and addressing the challenge of colonialism. He quickly became a leading champion of Islamic intellectual forces and wrote two scholarly works responding to Aly Abdel Raziq and Taha Hussein, two authors that, each in his own way, had written books attacking fundamental Islamic concepts and promoting secularism and an abandonment of the Islamic heritage.

Sheikh al-Khidr decided to sit for the final examination from al-Azhar to obtain the degree of ‘aalimiyya (roughly equivalent to a Ph.D.). The examiners were so impressed with his erudition, one of them (sheikh Abdel-Hamid al-Labban) described him as an “ocean without shores”. With the degree from al-Azhar he was counted as one of its scholars and began to teach in al-Azhar.

During the twenties and the thirties sheikh al-Khidr was concerned, together with the leading Islamic intellectuals of his time, with the state of the ummah intellectually, socially, and spiritually. Together with Muhibb-ud-Deen al-Khatib, sh. Rashid Rida, Ahmed Taymour Pasha, and others they championed efforts to address missionary efforts in Egypt and to challenge British colonial authorities as well as the corruption of the ruling class. He was one of several advisors that Imam Hasan al-Banna went to as a young man to rally scholars in defense of Islamic values, and that al-Banna consulted in his activism and establishing al-Ikhwan al-Muslimoon. During that period, sheikh al-Khidr and his friends Taymour Pasha and Muhibb-ud-Deen al-Khatib founded a social organization, Young Muslim Men’s Society (jam’iyyat al-shubbaan al-muslimeen). He also established a society that he called the Islamic Guidance Society and was responsible for the publication or editorship of three Islamic magazines.

In recognition of his scholarship, he was selected as a member of the newly-established Assembly for the Arabic Language (majma’ al-lugha al-’arabiyya). In continuation of his activism he established and headed a Society for the Defense of North Africa that became home to the leaders of patriotic struggles in Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco.

In 1951 he was selected as shaykh-ul-Azhar. By 1953 he resigned in protest of the excesses of Nasser’s regime and his government’s attempts to bring pressure to bear on al-Azhar to support him in his stances, particularly against al-ikhwan. Shaikh al-Uqayl (the author of the book that includes this bio) was studying in al-Azhar during that period and came to know the sheikh personally, to meet with him, to study with him, and see up close the factors that influenced his decision. He says, “To speak of this erudite scholar, who kept himself away from going along with those propagating injustice or running with the tyrannical and insignificant, is to speak of manhood in truest meaning, and of scholarship in its most beautiful suit. Those that lead the circles of knowledge have a duty to keep them honored. Those that wear the mantle of scholarship should be more apt to recognize the value of scholarship and the dignity of the scholar. That was our revered teacher Muhammad al-Khidr Hussain, who brought to life by his stands the example of the real men among scholars old and new.”

Other than his books mentioned above rebutting the efforts of the secularists, most of the sheikh’s scholarship and publications dealt with the Arabic language and its constructs. His courage, his activism, and his character served as a role model for the young people from all over the Islamic World that had come to study in al-Azhar. And his courage against Nasser stood out in a time when men with stronger bodies but weaker souls ran away from tribulation.

Sheikh Muhammad al-Khidr Hussain passed away in 1957 and was buried in the cemetery of the Taymour family in Egypt. May Allah reward him with jannah and bring us together with him on the Day of Judgment.

I haven’t been able to post for the last few days. Last weekend was spent in Montreal leading an LTP (Leadership Training Program) offered by MAC Youth for the Montreal area MSA’s. Inshaa Allah this weekend we’ll have another one at McMaster for the MSA’s of Southwest Ontario. More on LTP’s later inshaa Allah – it was fun! So Thursday & Friday were prep days, and Monday was catch-up day. Now I have to catch-up with my blog and the wheel keeps turning

I picked up a book that I had gotten sometime ago but hadn’t had a chance to go through it yet. It’s written by Abdullah Al-Aqeel, an Iraqi scholar educated in al-Azhar and living in Riyadh.  The book is a collection of biographies, a genre that was pioneered by our scholars of old to serve the dual sciences of history and the narration and verification of traditions. In this case, he’s dedicated the book to biographies of the leaders of Islamic revival, each in his own way scholarly, activist, or otherwise, from different parts of the World. Looking at his table of contents, he has 71 biographies. I counted 37 names that I had never heard before. Says something about my ignorance But it also, and more importantly, says something about how little we who have benefited from the legacy of these scholars, activists, and thinkers, celebrate that legacy. As our scholars of old taught us, the least we can do is make du’aa for these individuals that committed themselves to the service of God and the illumination of His path. Many of us read the books of Dr. Tariq Ramadan, but how many of us know something about the life of his father, Dr. Said Ramadan (rahimahullah)? How many of us have read the biography of Sh. Mohamed al-Khidr Hussein, the Tunisian scholar who became one of the most influential, most courageous, and most outspoken rectors of al-Azhar? Or Sh. Abdelfattah Abu Ghudda who combined eminence in the scholarship of the sciences of hadeeth and other Isalmic sciences with his activism and leadership of the Islamic movement in Syria?

I can’t translate the entire book – I don’t believe in promising myself impossible achievements. I can inshaa Allah, every once in a while, pick one of the biographies and give an abridged translation on my blog.

So here goes. For this entry, I chose Dr. Mohammad Natsir, one of the founders of the modern Islamic movement in Indonesia and the leader of the only party in Indonesian politics that took a clear stand against Sukarno when he sought to move away from a democratic parliament (it appears that Sukarno appealed to Indonesian “custom” but effectively created a dictatorship under the euphemism “guided democracy”). Because I knew so little about Indonesia, I spent some time reading about the history of Indonesian politics, and in particular the work of Sukarno and Suharto, before I put together the summary below. Any comments below on the role of Masjumi in Indonesian politics come not from the text but from my limited research. For those interested in more information I would recommend starting with Wikipedia’s entry on the history of Indonesia and a critical reading of some of the scholarly literature on Masjumi.

Dr. Mohammad Natsir
Born in 1908 in Sumatra, Dr. Natsir was influenced by his father’s scholarly pedigree. He combined religious and public education, received an ijazah from the Faculty of Tarbiya (Education) in Bandung and subsequently an honorary doctorate from the Islamic University in Jakarta. He worked as a teacher, educator, and administrator during the years of Dutch occupation. In 1945 he was approached by Dr. Mohammad Hatta (then Vice-President of Indonesia under Sukarno; Hatta would later resign in protest of Sukarno’s move towards a more autocratic rule) to help with anti-colonial efforts. He became a member of the Indonesian parliament, founded Masjumi (Council of Muslim Associations of Indonesia) in 1946, and was Minister of Information for four years. During his tenure, Masjumi opposed proposals to turn Indonesia into a confederacy and championed the unity of the republic.

In 1950, Dr. Natsir became Prime Minister of Indonesia. Within the year he had clashed with President Sukarno and resigned, remaining as a member of parliament and the leader of Masjumi, which was the 3rd largest party in Indonesian politics at the time.

Sukarno steered the country into a more autocratic direction and allied himself with the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) througouht the 1950’s. By the late 1950’s he had banned Masjumi, and in 1961 he imprisoned Dr. Natsir together with other leaders of the movement. In 1965 a military coup led by Suharto led to the deposition of Sukarno and Dr. Natsir was released together with other political prisoners. With the leadership of the banned Masjumi, they now formed the Indonesian Council for the Islamic Call (DDII) and focused on public education, establishing masajid througouht Indonesia and supporting associations for students, labourers, farmers, and professionals.

Dr. Natsir was highly respected in international Islamic circles for his scholarship, oratory, intellectual output, role in the resistance against occupation, and principled engagement in Indonesian politics. In 1967 he was selected as vice-president of the International Islamic Conference held in Pakistan.

Sayings

“Islam is not merely a faith where the work of the Muslim is limited to worship in the narrow sense of the word; rather, Islam is the path of life for the individual, the community, and the state. Islam stands against the oppression of humanbeings by their brethren, making it imperative for Muslims to struggle for their independence. Islam also provides foundations for a free state, so that it is imperative for Muslims to run their state post-indpendence according to Islamic values.”

In 1989, in an interview he gave to a visiting reporter he said, “I do not fear the future. There is no danger from the future – it belongs to Muslims provided they are upright, and provided they exert themselves to their capacity to be upright in ourselves and in our societies.”

Asked about the people that had considerable influence upon him he said, “Haj Amin al-Husseini, Imam Hassan al-Banna, and Imam Hassan al-Hudaibi. Those are from outside Indonesia. From within it, there are Sheikh Agus Salem and Sheikh Ahmad Sarkati.”

He also has several published essays, articles, and books, mostly dealing with questions of Islam and modern civilization, the foundations of Islamic government, Islam and World peace, and similar topics. He passed away (rahimahullah) on the 15th of Sha’ban 1413, 5th of February 1993.