Remarks at the opening of the Wilfred and Muriel Smith Collection at the Oviatt Library, California State University, Northridge
Amir Hussain
April 14, 2000
Al-salaamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatahu.
Peace be upon you, and the mercy and blessings of God. Thank you to all of you for being here this evening, and special thanks to Dr. Brian Smith for joining us from northen California. Let me begin my comments with the ending of a verse from the Qur’an, Chapter 7 (sur’ah al-A’raaf, the heights), verse 176: “fauqsusi al-qasasa la’allahum yatafakkaruuna. So tell the tale, perhaps they will reflect”. The tale that I want to tell is the tale of Wilfred and Muriel Smith. Of course, I cannot tell this tale in its entirety. For those of us who are involved in the study of Islam or the study of comparative religion, Professor Smith needs no introduction. He was, quite simply, the greatest academic that Canada has ever produced in either of these areas. As a Canadian, I make these claims with no small amount of pride. What are the facts to support these claims? Any number will suffice. Let me mention a few highlights from Professor Smith’s career.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith was born in Toronto on July 21, 1916, and died there on February 7, 2000 (his obituary is available at this web page). His first book, Modern Islam in India, was published in 1943. His last original book (a collection of essays would follow), What is Scripture?, was published in 1993. That’s fifty years of publishing. He wrote 13 books. They dealt with the most basic concepts in our field, and showed the depth of his scholarship. What do the words religion, faith, and belief mean. He wrote 4 books explaining and discussing the meaning of those 3 words.
He began his teaching in 1949, so he was “Professor” Smith for over 50 years. He first taught at McGill University, then, as now, one of the finest universities in Canada. In 1951 he created the Institute for Islamic Studies, which he directed until 1963. So he not only taught at McGill, but created a brand new institute there. In 1964, he moved to Harvard University, then, as now, one of the finest universities in America. He not only taught at Harvard, but was one of the people who created the Centre for the Study of World Religion, which he directed and where he taught for two decades. While at Harvard he wanted to return to his Canadian roots, and so he established a religious studies program at Dalhousie University in Halifax. In 1985, he retired to his native Toronto, and was associated with the University of Toronto’s Centre for the Study of Religion, which is where I first met him. He received honorary degrees from 13 universities. In January of this year, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, which is the highest award that Canada has for its citizens.
His thinking revolutionized the study of religion. He reminded us that “religion is best understood as the living, vital faith of individual persons rather than as an abstract set of ideas and doctrines.” At the time that he began his work, before the Second World War, the study of Islam consisted almost entirely of the study, by non-Muslim scholars, of texts written by Muslims. Growing up in Canada, where there were very few Muslims, he went to India, which at the time was the country with the largest number of Muslims. This was a revolutionary idea. To actually live with Muslims, and to actually ask them what they thought, and then to actually write about it. Predictably, Cambridge wanted nothing to do with his dissertation, and rejected it. Imagine, the audacity of writing about what Muslims actually thought and did and passing that off as “scholarship”, when everyone knew that “scholarship” meant writing a lengthy treatise on an obscure Arabic or Persian text that most Muslims had never heard of, let alone read. And, of course, everything old is new again. Nowadays, the current thinking is that, to do proper ethnographic scholarship, one must have a deep knowledge of the culture that one writes about. Professor Smith was doing this in 1941, almost 60 years ago.
When he set up the Institute, he wanted Muslims to be involved with it. Again, a radical idea. Muslims, being involved in the study of Islam? To quote from his obituary, “He recruited Muslim scholars and students to the faculty and graduate student body, involving them in a joint venture of scholarship formerly carried on largely by Western orientalists. By giving emphasis to numerically dominant South and Southeast Asian Islam, he also balanced earlier reliance on classical Arabic, Persian, and Turkish texts.”
To this point, I have only been talking about Professor Smith. However, there is more to the world and the sky than just one half. The collection that we are celebrating today is the Wilfred and Muriel Smith Collection. Wilfred and Muriel met and married as undergraduates at the University of Toronto. They were together for 60 years. From Toronto, they travelled to England, and from there, to India. Imagine that. Two newly wed Canadians in their 20s moving during the Second World War from their home in Toronto to Cambridge, and then from Cambridge to Lahore. It was in Lahore that Muriel completed a medical degree, and Wilfred published Modern Islam in India. And I cannot think of Wilfred without thinking of Muriel, or think of Muriel without thinking of Wilfred. They were together. Colleagues and companions, husband and wife. Wilfred’s penultimate book, What is Scripture?, carried the simple and beautiful dedication, “To, and with, Muriel”.
But his scholarship, brilliant and innovative as it was (and remember, he’s the best that my country has ever produced) was only a part of who he was. Let me tell two stories, the first from my own experience, the second told to me (but the isnad is sound). The first time I formally met Wilfred was almost exactly a decade ago. I had written a paper that had been accepted for the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the Study of Religion, and as an MA student about to make his first major presentation, I was excited and nervous. The meeting was in Victoria, BC, and we had a small conference in Toronto preceding the meeting to first test out our papers. My paper, as part of its methodology, used some ideas from Wilfred’s magnum opus, The Meaning and End of Religion. Just before I was to present my paper, in walks Wilfred. I was mortified. What was he going to say about my use of his ideas? I had no idea. I presented, and thankfully, the paper was well received. At the reception afterwards, Wilfred came up to me. He thanked me for my paper, and asked if he could shake my hand. I’ll never forget that gesture of kindness as long as I live. Here was Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and he was asking if he could shake my hand. That’s the first time I thought I might be able to make it in this profession.
In the years after that, as I got to know Wilfred and Muriel, I understood that this was simply how they were. Kind and decent people in a world in which kindness and decency are in such short supply. And there was no egotism there at all. After they made the donation to our library, I visited them at their old house in the Annex section of Toronto, on Brunswick Avenue. I asked if they wanted the books to be part of the circulating collection, or part of the special collection. And Wilfred simply said, “oh, we don’t think we’re very special.” And, of course, he meant it. That’s the sort of person that he was.
The other story is not mine, but was told to me by the Very Reverend Dr. Bruce McLeod, a student of Wilfred’s and a former moderator of the United Church of Canada. Wilfred was once asked by a student, “Professor Smith, are you Christian?” Of course, Wilfred was an ordained Presbyterian minister. But he said nothing for a few moments. Then, slowly and deliberately, he repeated the question. “Am I Christian? I don’t know. Maybe I was, yesterday, at lunch, for about an hour. But if you really want to know, ask my neighbour”.
And that was Wilfred. A Christian who was a better Muslim than I am. On the day that I found out that Wilfred had died, I was listening to a cd by Gillian Welch that contained a contemporary hymn, and it was that song, “By the Mark”, that helped me to get through that day:
“When I cross over
I will shout and sing
I will know my savior
By the mark where the nails have been
By the mark where the nails have been
By the sign upon his precious skin
I will know my savior when I come to him
By the mark where the nails have been”
Wilfred was my mentor, my teacher, my friend. I miss him very much, but rejoice in the fact that I can visit with him every time I enter the Oviatt Library.