An Alternate Academia

I believe in hierarchies. By this, I mean two things. First, that hierarchies are not a matter of opinion but a fact of existence. They are as real as the sun and moon, as concrete as the Pacific Ocean. Their presence does not require moral endorsement, they simply are. Some form of hierarchy will always persist, for the structure of being itself is hierarchical. Second, I believe that certain hierarchies are not only inevitable but essential, they are good and must be defended. In fact, to defend such a hierarchy is not an act of oppression, but of justice. For justice, in its true sense, is to place each thing in its proper place: to exalt what deserves to be exalted, to subordinate what ought to be beneath. Allah asks in the Qur’an: “Are those who know equal to those who do not know?” (39:9). It is a rhetorical question, a divine reminder that truth itself is hierarchical. Knowledge stands above ignorance. Submission stands above rebellion. The cosmos, from angels to atoms, is arrayed in order, not chaos. Deny this, and you deny the very architecture of reality.

In a recent discussion on how we ought to engage with academia, I presented a route that might sound radically different from what is often proposed. The details of that conversation are beyond the scope of this essay, but one core principle must be stated here: if hierarchies are an ontological reality, then elites will always exist. Academia is one such elite, and despite its many failures, it remains an elite that will always exist. In our situation, it is an elite divorced from the soul of society. An elite that drowns in abstraction, that reduces real crises to theoretical puzzles, yes. Where we search desperately for the needle in the haystack, academia builds haystacks in order to find a needle. It crafts entire labyrinths of jargon to solve problems it has itself created, and often fails even at that. It asks how many angels can dance on the tip of a needle, then forgets what a needle is. Its discourse is so layered and convoluted that one feels paralyzed before the magnitude of the supposed “problem.” Its solution: more papers, more panels, more paradoxes. And through all this noise, it accomplishes just one thing, it convinces the masses that they are nothing. Having convinced them of their ignorance and worthlessness, it feeds on them, both materially and metaphysically. Yet, in all its sickness, academia is still an elite that will always exist. And if hierarchies are inescapable, then the question is not whether academia should exist, but what kind of academia should exist.

We cannot abolish academia – for as long as knowledge exists, there must be custodians of it. And we should not wish to abolish it either, for there must be those who call to what is right. Allah commands: “Let there arise from among you a group who call to what is good, who enjoin what is marūf (customary* good) and forbid what is munkar (deviance).” But this leads us to a crucial question: if the current academic elite is corrupt, what is to be done? One proposal is to reform academia from within. This was, in fact, the solution suggested in the very discussion I referred to earlier. And at first glance, it seems noble. It appeals to our preference for slow evolution over violent revolution. It avoids chaos, respects continuity. But is it truly workable? I believe it is not – for two reasons.

One reason I believe reforming academia from within is not workable is this: academia is a rigid, endogamous body that constructs itself through the systematic exclusion of outsiders. When the very entry into its discourse is blocked, how can one ever hope to reform it from the inside? Some may argue that despite its insularity, academia remains open in principle, that anyone willing to undergo its training, obtain its degrees, write according to its methods, and think in its frameworks can eventually be accepted. At first glance, this seems reasonable. But a deeper look reveals how far this is from the truth.

Even if these visible criteria, degrees, papers, training, were all that mattered, it would already be troubling enough. For that would mean that what we call “education” is, in fact, a long process of indoctrination, beginning in childhood and ending in complete submission to a system whose boundaries one does not question. A person is declared “qualified” only when he has learned to imitate his masters, a tamed monkey performing tricks, a trained parrot repeating what his teachers repeated from their teachers. Repetition is not, in itself, the problem, the real question is: who is being repeated, and what is being transmitted to the masses through this repetition?

But the deeper problem is this: these external criteria are only the surface. The real conditions for admission into academia are far more invasive. To enter, one must subscribe to the entire paradigm, and academia functions entirely within paradigms. These paradigms leave no space for disagreement on fundamentals. You are permitted to question details, rearrange the furniture, but the foundations must remain untouched. Of course, defenders of academia might object: “Paradigms are necessary! And besides, paradigms can change. History proves it.” On a superficial level, yes, that seems fair. But examine closely and you will see: paradigm shifts are never neutral. They follow a pattern. They evolve only in one direction: away from tradition, away from transcendence, away from the supernatural.

Elsewhere, I write, “Any explanation that nullifies the need for a supernatural explanation is to be hailed as a discovery for having raised us above the medieval vulgarity of submission to the supernatural. It is to be hailed, for it liberates us from immaterial.” This is the spirit of modern academia. Its paradigm shifts are not paradigm shifts at all, they are only deeper entrenchments into a metaparadigm of secularism, of separation from Revelation, from religion, from the people and their God. It views the masses not as custodians of wisdom, but as raw material, a canvas upon which it must paint its own image. It assumes that their customs, their beliefs, their gods are all wrong. It rejects them and what they stand for. Then it puts itself in God’s place, demanding worship from the very people it seeks to “enlighten.” It devours knowledge like a glutton, not out of reverence but hunger. And poisoned by this knowledge, it poisons everything it touches.

This philosophical foundation has profound repercussions for how education and knowledge are handled within academia. For once the supernatural is denied, knowledge itself is stripped of life. We believe it is God who gives life; whatever is cut off from Him is lifeless. Academia, then, is not merely misguided – it is dead. Its halls are graveyards, its libraries mausoleums, its classrooms sepulchers where living minds are embalmed. Even those who enter with sincere intentions, desiring truth, desiring to serve, are quickly suffocated. The environment convinces them that they are wrong, that their intentions are flawed, that their actions are futile, that their goals are worthless. Slowly, they are reshaped into the likeness of the institution: spiritually empty, intellectually arrogant, morally dead.

The Godlessness of the entire space convinces the best of the best, and if, by rare providence, one manages to resist this corrosion, if he holds his ground and refuses assimilation, academia responds with violence. It murders him, not with swords but with erasure. This intellectual assassination is politely named “canceling,” as if to soften the enormity of the crime. But make no mistake: it is murder, the silencing of a soul. If outright cancellation fails, they exile you to the margins, a “fringe scholar,” condemned to obscurity. You are neither alive nor dead: your books not recommended, your work not read, your thesis not discussed. Anyone daring to revive your voice is met with the same hostility.

Meanwhile, academia congratulates itself on being a force for good, its actions noble, its goals righteous. It insists it is “reforming,” “enlightening,” “liberating.” Yet Allah says: “In their hearts is a disease, and Allah increases their disease. When they are told, ‘Do not spread corruption on the earth,’ they say, ‘We are only reformers.’” (Qur’an 2:10-11). They claim allegiance to Allah, to His Messenger ﷺ, even to ʿAli (as) and Ḥusayn (as), but in truth, they recognize none of them. Their sight is veiled, their hearts sealed. They denounce Yazīd in words, yet unknowingly embody him in spirit, for tyranny disguised as reform is tyranny still.

One might still argue: even if academia is in such a condition, it remains reformable. Perhaps, with enough time, gradual change will occur. This line of thinking is not without appeal, and I myself, by temperament, prefer evolution over revolution. For spreading fasād fīl-arḍ (corruption on earth) is a greater evil than the ills we already face. But if there exists a way to achieve the same ends, a restoration of true knowledge, without strife, and to achieve it faster, more effectively, and with fewer costs, then wisdom demands that we take that path. And such a path does exist: the creation of a parallel academia. This is the second reason I reject the project of “reform from within”, not only is it futile, but it is unnecessary, for there is a superior alternative.

This alternate academia would be educated and disciplined, sound in body and spirit, built on firm metaphysical ground, capable of wrestling the bull of modernity by its horns. It would refuse dependence on the institutions and services of the current academia, and instead, with time, establish its own. This parallel body would itself become the new elite, replacing the corrupted one that now reigns. For as I have said before, the choice is never between elite and no-elite, it is between a good elite and a bad elite.

Moreover, this proposal is more pragmatic for another reason: those who discuss reform, who long for an alternative, are almost always outsiders. For such outsiders, it is practically impossible to begin anew and climb the ladder of academia, and those already inside are exceedingly difficult to move toward change. Why would they dismantle the very system that feeds them? Thus, the voices for reform are canceled before they can even be heard. Newspapers refuse to publish them. If they are invited to panels, it is only to be mocked, told they “know nothing.” This ridicule is carried out through the deployment of jargon: “Do you know hermeneutics? Do you know ontology? Have you studied metaphysics? Do you even understand the unconscious?” These terms are wielded as weapons, not as tools of understanding, to trick outsiders into silence, to mask the fact that many insiders themselves do not truly comprehend what they recite.

Consider the physicist, asked the simplest of questions: What is time? – the very cornerstone of his discipline. Watch him stutter. Consider the psychologist speaking with confidence about the “subconscious” and “unconscious”, until pressed to define them. His nose begins to run, as Bob Marley put it with piercing wit: “Scholars teach in universities and claim that they’re smart and cunning. Tell them to find a cure when we sneeze, and that’s when their nose starts running. The Earth was flat, if you went too far you would fall off. Now the Earth is round, if the shape change again, everybody woulda start laugh.” So it is: they change their models with every season, yet pretend mastery of knowledge. But when it comes to the most profound realities, the soul (rūḥ), the very essence of man, they fall silent, or forbid others from speaking. For they have no tools, no language, no life within their halls to confront what is truly alive.

Can an alternate academia be created at all? It already exists! For academia has monopolized knowledge, stripped it from its rightful owners, and cast it into the shadows as if it did not exist. But knowledge belongs to those who live it, not to those who dissect it. The task now is to restore ownership to its true heirs.

How dare the Urdu professor tell me that I do not understand Ghalib? He may have spent his life burning midnight oil, scrutinizing every intricacy of Ghalib’s diction, and for this the institution declares him “eligible,” while it declares me “unqualified.” But let us reject this premise entirely. It is possible to see and yet not see, to hear and yet not hear. Such a professor may master grammar and rhetoric, but miss the very soul. He gazes at the trees and misses the forest. He offers the tithe of spices, mint, dill, cumin, but neglects the weightier matters: justice, mercy, faithfulness, love, companionship, the living self. He polishes the outside of the cup, while inside it remains full of greed and indulgence. He is a whitewashed tomb, beautiful on the outside, but within filled with death. Midnight oil spent on alliteration and onomatopoeia is not the same as knowing Ghalib!

Who understands Ghalib more truly, the professor counting syllables, or the lover who burned his heart out in longing, whose candle was not lit but extinguished by tears? They know the ism, the fael, the alankār, the metaphor in qaid-e-hayāt o bandhe gham, “the prison of life and the shackles of grief.” But do they know the torment of separation that breathes through those words? Do they know the wound that bleeds behind the grammar? How dare the psychologist or neurologist tell Ranjha that he does not understand love? How dare the feminist tell Meera she does not? Who is the true knower of love, the one who says: “rāñjhā rāñjhā kar dī nī maiñ aape rāñjhā hoī, saddo nī mainūñ dhīdo rāñjhā, hīr nā aakho koī” (I called Ranjha’s name until I myself became Ranjha. Do not call me Heer anymore, call me Ranjha!), or the one who reduces love to a shift in oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin, vasopressin? To such “experts” of the Qur’an, our Alamdar Nooruddin Reshi says “Quran paraan konu moodukh, Quran paraan konu goi soor. Quran paraan zinda kati roodukh, Quran paran dodh mansoor.” If one’s state is not the state of Mansur al-Hallaj he has not understood, period.

Academia cloaks itself in an aura of knowledge and expertise. Quote Alamdar, and they summon an “Alamdar expert.” Speak an idiom in Kashmiri, and they bring a linguist. Cite the Qur’an, and out comes their hermeneutics specialist. Share your lived experience, and they counter with a neurologist or a psychologist. Expert! Expert! Expert! Expert! Expert! The implication is clear: none may speak, because none is an expert in all fields. And so, by this impossible standard, the only permissible voice is theirs, while the One who is already the Expert of all, Allah Himself, is denied entry into their halls.

This denial is not just arrogance; it is usurpation. By excluding the voice of the people, by silencing lived wisdom, by fencing off revelation, academia reserves the authority of knowledge for itself alone. But this has consequences, for both knowledge and those shaped by it. When children are trained to dismiss everything outside academia, they grow deaf to legitimate authority, they scorn collective wisdom, they mock generational values, they rebel against the very culture that sustains them.

Yet the true purpose of knowledge is not to decorate the intellect with jargon, but to transform the being. Knowledge that does not touch the soul is no knowledge at all, it is exoskeleton without life. Epistemology without metaphysics is blind. And indeed, they mirror one another: bad epistemic roots produce bad beings, bad beings produce corrupt epistemologies, and both together corrupt entire institutions. This is why modern academia, despite its pomp, often possesses knowledge only at a bare minimum. Its students know facts but not meanings, formulas but not truths, words but not wisdom. It manufactures clever minds but rarely complete human beings.

This is a grave injustice. The existing academia does not even possess the tools to understand what it claims to teach. This is true across the sciences, but it is most glaring in the humanities and social sciences. Take the teaching of poetry, for example. Can anyone imagine that Alamdar recited his verses in a vacuum? He spoke to disciples who shared his vocabulary, his codes, his symbols, words and phrases that carried meanings hidden to outsiders but alive within their circle. Consider my own phrase “Eat my noodles.” Those who have listened to my longer live sessions know it does not mean eating noodles at all, but receiving my thoughts. You call your beloved “pumpkin,” and she understands instantly what outsiders cannot. Hazrat ʿĀ’ishah (ra) would ask the Prophet ﷺ how the knot was, and he would reply that it was strong as ever. Who could have understood what this meant but the two of them? Meaning is not exhausted by the literal. True meaning often rests in shared symbols, living metaphors, the subtle tongue of intimacy. Such meaning cannot be unlocked by grammar alone. It requires insight, spiritual perception, and a place within the living tradition. Knowledge here is seena ba seena, chest to chest, heart to heart, passed from master to disciple, confirmed by presence, not merely by paper. To be well-learned in Alamdar’s poetry does not mean to master Kashmiri linguistics. It means to have received some share of what Alamdar himself possessed, a heart attuned to his gifts, a soul that has tasted what he tasted.

And so, who teaches better? Ghalib, taught by an Urdu professor, or by one who has been consumed by love? Iqbal, taught by a certified “expert,” or by a Sufi revolutionary who burns with his vision? Keats, taught by an English specialist, or by a romantic who has truly felt his longing? Sheikh-ul-Alam’s kalam, taught by a linguist, or by a Rishi Sufi Buzurg who has walked in his footsteps, or even by a simple, spiritually sound Kashmiri villager who lives his tradition daily? In each case, the latter grasps more of the essence. This is why we say: the so-called academia is no academia at all. The real academia already exists, alive in tradition, in love, in faith, in transmission from being to being.

At the highest levels, words are incapable of carrying meaning, instead they limit meaning, so do all the rules the academia have developed. How are we to know what, for example, Alamdar meant and what he was feeling himself? What his state of being was, he put in words, this state of being is his alone, only he knows what it felt like to be Alamdar at that particular moment. Thus the ultimately real meanings remains hidden from all of us. The Kashmiri expert can’t know it.

When I say “I love you” or “I am hungry,” the exact texture of that experience is mine alone. No one else among all creation feels it precisely as I do. Is there then no way for another to know? There is one way: to become me. To know Alamdar, you must become Alamdar. But how can one become another when one is distinct? Only by annihilating what makes one distinct – the self. The self gives you identity, it separates you, it makes you “you.” To know him, you must destroy that self, merge with his, until there is no division. As the mystic verse declares:

Man tu shudam, tu man shudi,
Man tan shudam, tu jān shudi.
Ta kas na guyad bād azīn,
Man dīgaram, tu dīgarī.

I have become you, and you me; I am the body, you the soul. So that no one can henceforth say: you are someone, and I someone else. These are matters of being, not mere knowledge. True understanding depends on the state of one’s being. Academia, however, does not even acknowledge such a thing as “being.” It does not work upon it, nor has it the tools to deal with it, even if it wished to. At best, it reaches the first and most superficial level: translation, literal meaning, poetic devices. A few may rise to glimpse the inner wisdom of a text taken as a whole. Students, who are within the tradition, may reach the “inner of the inner.” And the deepest and most hidden meaning remains with the speaker alone, whose state cannot be duplicated.

At every stage of knowledge, therefore, there corresponds a state of being. To ascend in wisdom is to ascend in being. But modern academia refuses this. It denies the self, it denies being, it denies the soul. It hides behind Kant, rides waves of analysis and positivism, and ignores the most basic reality we all share: existence as living beings. What is a being without a soul? Dead. And so this academia is spiritually dead. Its classrooms are dead, its halls and curricula are dead. And what is dead can produce nothing but more death.

Someone had to say it, so I say it. What will academia respond with? Indifference. And this very indifference is proof of its heart’s death. But we – we are alive. And among us are those who are truly learned, not in the impoverished sense of modern academia, but in the living sense of tradition. They are the alternate academia. They fulfill the task that academia should have fulfilled: transmitting real knowledge through real being. They read Alamdar’s Shrukh not with jargon, but with life. They do not analyze his words, they become one with him.

One might respond to academia’s indifference by saying: of course it cannot engage with everyone and everything. Surely there must be criteria, or else chaos would ensue. If anyone could speak on any matter, then knowledge itself would collapse into noise. Thus, the principle emerges: only an expert of a field should speak in that field. At first glance, this sounds fair, simple, straightforward, even necessary. But the real question is: does academia itself live up to this principle? Are its members truly endowed with the tools of a genuine scholar?

The answer is no. For modern academia does not even possess the tools to make a solid student of knowledge, let alone a complete scholar. And this shortcoming goes back to its foundational flaw: its denial of “being” and its flattening of all knowledge into one plane. As Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas has argued in Islam and Secularism, modern academia derives its categories of thought from the West, applying them universally to everything it studies. But these categories themselves rest on flawed epistemic foundations. Thus, the more “rigorous” a scholar becomes within this framework, the more deeply entrenched he is in error. The best of them are, in truth, the most deceived.

This explains why modern scholars no longer understand the great words of wisdom. They cannot hear them, and so they refuse to listen. Instead, they surround themselves with their Western masters, both literally and figuratively, across every branch of knowledge, especially in the human sciences. In doing so, they commit the gravest epistemic crime: the leveling of all knowledge to one category. They collapse the distinction between knowledge that is necessary (fard ʿayn) , without which no other knowledge can even be interpreted, and knowledge that is supplementary (fard kifāyah). But without the former, the latter ceases to be knowledge proper. Just as a ripple in air cannot be understood as “sound” without the presence of a conscious human ear, so too no science can be understood without the grounding of what is necessary. Knowledge, like being itself, is hierarchical. There is an order: foundation and superstructure, root and branch, necessary and supplementary. By denying this, modern academia disqualifies itself. It does not hold knowledge proper at all.

If we pause for a moment to test whether academia actually follows its own principle of “expertise,” we find that it fails miserably. Every discourse bleeds into other fields, no discussion runs in a vacuum. Whatever one says will inevitably have a social angle. But how many of our academics are truly grounded in the social sciences, or in sociology in particular? And even within sociology, once positivism crept in, it has been in constant conflict with Islamic interpretations. So how many of our academics are thoroughly grounded in Islam?

Consider Islam itself: Imam al-Ghazali, in his al-Mustasfa, argues that to master jurisprudence one must also master philosophy, by which he means logic and the first principles of thought. How many academics today have this depth? Very few. The reality is that most academicians resemble lab rats trained for a narrow function. The era of the generalist is gone; the age of the polymath has vanished. They take pride in being “specialists,” but in doing so they cut themselves off from the wider consequences of their words. For every field touches another. If this is so, then no academician can truly be called an expert even in his own domain, because his work inevitably carries repercussions into domains he does not understand.

Consider Islam itself: Imam al-Ghazali, in his al-Mustasfa, argues that to master jurisprudence one must also master philosophy, by which he means logic and the first principles of thought. How many academics today have this depth? Very few. The reality is that most academicians resemble lab rats trained for a narrow function. The era of the generalist is gone; the age of the polymath has vanished. They take pride in being “specialists,” but in doing so they cut themselves off from the wider consequences of their words. For every field touches another. If this is so, then no academician can truly be called an expert even in his own domain, because his work inevitably carries repercussions into domains he does not understand. Should they not, then, restrict their speech to journals and conferences, far away from impressionable students? For the interface between the academic and the young mind is too large to ignore. What a student absorbs in Quantum Mechanics shapes how he imagines reality. What he is taught in sociology or political science shapes how he perceives his family, his culture, his place in society. And is it not the case that students emerging from these laboratories we call universities often return hostile to the very societies that nurtured them? Is this not the fruit of partial knowledge parading as complete?

Push the argument to its highest level: who is academia, really? Most of it is populated by individuals with little clue about what is happening, even within their own disciplines. How many of them embody the buzurgi we expect from a true man of knowledge? How many radiate the moral character that should accompany wisdom? Almost none, and none for practical purposes. I do not claim moral superiority for myself either, I know my shortcomings. But at least I do not pretend to possess what I do not, nor boast of ignorance as if it were knowledge.

There are, without doubt, good people within academia, men and women many of us have met and benefited from. Yet the striking thing about them is that the best among them have, in truth, ceased to be “modern academics” in the real sense. They belong to a different spirit altogether. We may look at these individuals in two groups. The first consists of those simply carrying on with their jobs, aware on some level of the futility of the system, but striving to make a living, to help their families, their students, and their communities in whatever ways they can. These are not malicious; they are merely asleep. Their intentions are noble, their hearts still alive. And when truth is spoken to them, they recognize it instantly, like a child recognizing his mother. They embrace it with the eagerness of a baby clutching his mother’s breast, nourishing themselves on what flows from it. Such people, once awakened, naturally become part of the alternate academia.

The second group are those already awake. They know the truth, and they are consciously struggling within the system to change it. These are the alternate academia who chose the first path, “reform from within”, which, though we may doubt its viability, we still respect. They labor to transform the university from a cold factory that manufactures laborers into something warm and life-giving, like a mother’s womb nurturing new life. For their success, we sincerely pray. If they succeed, the need for creating a separate alternate academia will dissolve sooner rather than later. We trust their good intentions, and perhaps in time they themselves may see the futility of reforming what is beyond repair.

But let it be clear: whether outside or inside, the goal of the alternate academia remains the same. To seek knowledge from God; To preserve the self; To preserve reason; To uplift the downtrodden; To preserve religion; To strengthen faith; To ease suffering, calm hearts, and heal wounds; To preserve lineage; To improve the human condition in this world and secure salvation in the next. Both groups are seekers who have left their homes in pursuit of knowledge, and the Prophet ﷺ said “Whoever sets out on a path seeking knowledge, walks on the path of Allah” That being said, we must also acknowledge the reality: the overwhelming majority of today’s academics are of the kind we have already described earlier, spiritually dead, intellectually hollow, morally unanchored. And it is to them that the term “academia,” as used in this essay, properly applies and is applied.

This brings us to another aspect of the alternate academia: how does it work, and where does it exist? To begin with, it must be understood that the alternate academia is not a secessionist project, not a breakaway institution. It is more profound than that, it is a state of mind, a condition of being. It is composed of the very same people who may inhabit the current academia, yet they stand on different metaphysical and epistemic ground. They are rooted in tradition, anchored in true being. Their senses are in the service of their inner self, and their knowledge is deployed according to the real priorities of the human soul, the state, and society.

The foundation of their entire edifice is the knowledge of the necessary, fard ʿayn, upon which everything else rests. They are thoroughly trained in the prerequisites of all knowledge: logic, grammar, and rhetoric. They understand the purpose of knowledge: dīn. They understand its scope: the human being, insān. They understand its content and construction: ʿilm and maʿrifah. They understand the relation of man to knowledge so as to derive application: ḥikmah. They understand the deployment of knowledge through ḥikmah, which yields the state of justice: ʿadl. They understand the method of all this: adab. And finally, they understand the institutional form that embodies this structure: the kulliyyah-jāmiʿah** – the true university. In this way, they construct themselves and their spaces. Their university is not a cold machine producing workers; it is a place where individuals, through proper etiquette, learn to enact justice through knowledge applied with wisdom. Out of such a system emerges the complete individual, fulfilling the very purpose for which his Creator fashioned him.

In such a harmonious order, economics is not in conflict with ethics, anthropology is not at odds with religion, sociology is not opposed to culture. Knowledge is universal, coherent, integrated. They trust in human capacities but also acknowledge their limits. They seek knowledge from those who actually possess it, living heirs of tradition. Their outer life aligns with their inner state, their knowledge of the apparent resonates with their knowledge of the hidden. They do not devour knowledge like criminals consuming a victim, but revere it as a trust. This alternate academia heals where the old one harms. It solves real human problems. It upholds life, enlivens hearts, enjoins what is right, forbids what is wrong. It does not destroy, but constructs. It does not exploit, but nurtures. It loves, and it is loved.

O Academia of today! You have no idea what is about to strike you, or rather, what has already struck. The men of real knowledge and authentic being are here. Ghalib himself has met the Urdu professor, and the encounter is unbearable. It is a hot coal stuck in the throat: it cannot be swallowed, it cannot be spat out. It burns and chokes. How will the professor explain Ghalib to Ghalib? If he tries to explain, he loses; if he refuses to explain, he still loses.

For the masses, the very ground you abandoned, now belong to the alternate academia. That is where we make our palace. The alternate academia serves the true inner being of man, his self, his society, his state. And what must the current academia do in response? It must descend to the masses it once despised, and in doing so, it loses its very character. That is our victory. Even if the alternate academia were to lose, even if it were beaten, it would still triumph, for defeat on its own turf is only the embrace of the prodigal son, returning home to truth.

But do not think, for a moment, that modern academia will ever conquer the alternate academia. They will not engage us, they consider it beneath them. And so, instead of dialogue, they rage. They hate us. If Ghalib were alive today, they would despise him, brand him petty, tear down his character. But once dead, they seize his dīwān, deny it to its rightful heirs, and turn it into their property. If Nietzsche or Kierkegaard had spoken in their own times within academia’s halls, they would have been dismissed, scorned, perhaps silenced. Yet today academia clings to them possessively, sealing them away, restricting access, declaring itself the sole custodian. They are “Kierkegaard experts,” but none dare skate across the thin ice to rescue the diamond stranded in the frozen sea. Instead, they turn it into a spectacle, a spectacle of words and jargon. They dress up their impotence in prose, call it “art,” but art it is not. It is a fart, loud, nauseating, unbearable in enclosed spaces, dissipating into nothingness in open air. Nothing remains but shame, and a hollow relief in the gut, for the intestines are all they have left. They possess no heart to relieve, no soul to nourish. All their art is this – a fart: noise without meaning, stench without substance, and no one willing to own it.

* Customary here means what are the established practices of a Muslim society. Maroof comes from the word “urf” which means custom and things are recognized (taaruf) by what custom recognizes them as and such recognition directs our actions and behavior with respect to them.
** This has been taken from Muhammad Al Naquib al Attas’s work published as “Islam and Secularism”.