Professor Syed Ali Ashraf (1925-August 7, 1998)
Obituary
Shaikh Abdul
Mabud
It is indeed with great sorrow that we announce the sudden death of Professor
Syed Ali Ashraf, who passed away at his home in Cambridge on the morning of
Friday, 7th August 1998.
He was Director-General of the Islamic Academy, Cambridge and the Founder and
Vice-Chancellor of Darul Ihsan University, Bangladesh. He was also a member of
the Faculty of Education and a Feliow of Clare Hall, Fitzwilliam College and
Wolfson College, the University of Cambridge.
He was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1925, where he received his primary and
secondary education. After obtaining his Master's degree in English from the
University of Dhaka, he came to the University of Cambridge where he completed
his Honours and PhD, at Fitzwilliam College.
He went on to become a lecturer and then Reader in English at Dhaka University
(1949), Head of the Department of English at Rajshahi University (1954-56),
Professor and Head of the Department of English at Karachi University, Pakistan
(1956-73) and at King Abdul Aziz University, Makkah (1974-77), and Professor at
King Abdul Aziz University, Jeddah (1977-84). He was visiting Professor at
Harvard University (1971) and New Brunswick University (1974). He was the
organizing secretary of the First World Conference on Muslim Education held in
Makkah (1977) and helped to organize all five other World Conferences: the
Second in Islamabad (1980), the Third in Dhaka (1981), the Fourth in Jakarta
(1982), the Fifth in Cairo (1987) and the Sixth in South Africa (1997). He was
also the first Director-General of the World Centre for Islamic Education, set
up by the Organization of Islamic Conferences in Makkah (1980-2).
Professor Ashraf was a man who symbolized Islam, both in his person and in the
cause he stood for. He made an original and considerable contribution to the
regeneration of Islamic education drawn from the Islamic worldview, laid the
foundations of the movement of the Islamization of education throughout the
world, and left a global impact on various aspects of the Islamic philosophy of
education.
A great Islamic thinker and educationalist, he never supported the kind of
education which promotes an unduly anti-faith approach to life, which too easily
breeds scepticism and relativism and leads to the loss of the sacredness of
life, with all the impoverishment of the human spirit, which this can entail. He
fought for the establishment of that kind of education that helps to integrate
one's faith in God with day to day actions and belief in eternal values with
social situations.
He also believed that in spite of differences of religious beliefs and
practices, there is a whole range of values which are held in common and which
have important implications for educational enterprises world-wide. He sought to
find the common grounds among different faiths and thus his educational
contributions have a lot of significance for people of all faiths alike:
Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Buddhism and others. As a
pioneer of faith-based education he tried to achieve spiritual and moral
development through value-based education, the core values of which should be
based on and derived from religion. His contributions in this field will have a
lasting influence on curriculum designing and the teaching methodology for
Muslim communities all over the world as well for non-Muslim scholars who hold
similar views.
He was an author both in English and Bengali, and inspired many people through
his thoughts and writings. Besides his work on creative and critical literature,
his major works on education include the following: general editor of six books
in an Islamic education series (Hodder and Stoughton), of which he co-authored
Crisis in Muslim Education (1978). Among his books are The Concept of an Islamic
University (1984) and New Horizons in Muslim Education (1984). He was the
founder editor of the Cambridge based educational journal Muslim Education
Quarterly (1983-). He was also co-editor with Professor Paul Hirst of Religion
and Education: Islamic and Christian Approaches, and the author of Islam, part
of Stanley Thornes' series for GCSE on World Religions.
In addition to this, Professor Syed Ali Ashraf was a poet, a literary critic and
a writer-both in English and in Bengali. The fields of his specialization were:
Islamization of education (especially of the Islamic concept of education,
curriculum designing and teaching methodology); English language and literature
(especially literary criticism and the teaching of the English language) and
Islamic culture and the relationship between Islam and the West.
Professor Ashraf was a man of great spiritual vision and intellectual thinking,
with indefatigable energy, though he lived a simple life. He was an embodiment
of true faith, a faith which nurtured by knowledge and love. He was loving and
affectionate, and inexhaustibly so. Full of kindness and compassion, he would
always help others wherever and whenever possible. He loved and was loved by
people who happened to come in contact with him from all parts of the world.
He was a treasury of knowledge and wisdom from which we all benefited greatly.
He was a great teacher, a gentle friend and a wise guide and we will remember
him as these as well as eminent scholar who devoted all his life to spreading
the message of Islam all over the world. His death is certainly a global loss:
the world has lost a great Islamic thinker, educationalist and spiritual master.
But even more so, his death is a great personal loss to his friends and
colleagues all over the world.
His body was taken to Dhaka where he was buried at the Darul Ihsan University
campus on 10th August 1998.
May Allah bless him.
Journal of Islamic Academy of Sciences Volume 10, No.4