What I am writing here pertains specifically to knowledge and scholarship, and has no reference whatsoever to Dr Patricia Martinez's academic credentials and status (' Get back to the real issue

', Jan 5). In particular, I am writing in response to Misnah Fahmi's letter ('Attacks on Martinez work of misogynists', Jan 7).

Scholars are the vanguard of a tradition. Prophet Muhammad himself said this very clearly when he points to the leaders ( Umara ) and the scholars ( Ulama ) as the persons responsible for the integrity or the corruption of the religion practised by that religious community.

Such statements by the Prophet that "The ink of the scholars is holier than the blood of the martyrs" and "Scholars are inheritors of the Prophets" are very well-known hadith memorised by all Muslims alike.

In particular, these hadith point to the importance of knowledge and Islamic scholarship in the preservation of its religion and practices.

Hence, Muslim scholars have taken great pains and care since the earliest days of the rise of Islam to protect the integrity and truth of the religion, formulating very stringent requirements for the acceptance of one into the fold of scholarship.

Take the case of hadith , for example. Scholars of hadith had in the past formulated very stringent rules for the acceptance of a hadith , ranging from the content of what is alleged to have been said by the Prophet, to the credibility of the persons circulating it including their character, to the chain of narrators from the time the hadith is said to have come from the Prophet to the time it is recorded.

Of the many hundreds of thousands of hadiths which went into circulation in the early days of Islam, only a handful were accepted as credible. Not only that, these hadiths were subject to various degrees of grading according to their levels of credibility.

Of the many thousands of scholars of hadith , only six were eventually accepted as competent, with two, namely that of Bukhari and Muslim, as the more reliable of the six. Even then, these scholars were subject to all kinds of tests, ranging from their character, their power of memory, their ability to check the contents and the chain of narration when changed or inverted, and the methodology they use to check the accuracy of their reports.

So is the case with Islamic law. After the demise of the Prophet and following the expansion of the Islamic lands, new problems came up as a result of the contact with the ways of practising social transactions which were never encountered by the Muslims in Mecca and Medina.

Scholars of Islamic law had to deal with how these problems were to be handled in line with the Quranic spirit. Hence the emergence of methodologies of deriving legal rulings ( Ahkam Shar'iyyah ) which were constantly kept in check so as not to depart from its Quranic intents.

Al-Qiyas or analogical reasoning, is not a haphazard product of the genius of the mind in dealing with social problems, but a careful study of what transpired between the Prophet and his companions when some of them were appointed as his emissaries to other places outside of Mecca and Medina.

Muaz Jabal, when appointed as governor of Yemen by the Prophet, was asked by the Prophet as to how he would govern his decisions. First he replied that he would consult the book of God. And when asked by the Prophet that if he did not find anything in the book of God, Muaz replied that he would look into the practices of the Prophet.

And when asked by the Prophet that if he still did not find anything in his practices, Muaz replied that in this case, he would exercise his own judgment ( Ajtahidu bi-ray'i ), deriving a methodology based upon the presuppositions of the Quran and the Sunnah.

It is in this light that scholars of Islam later devised a methodology called al-Qiyas , a way of deriving legal rulings through the extension of a principal case in the Quran or hadith to the new case in question where there is no explicit ruling to be found in these two sources.

Of the many scholars of Islamic law, only four were eventually recognised as competent and which later became the dominant schools of law in Muslim lands. Despite the fact that many competent scholars came into existence after these four personalities, none of them claimed to be competent enough to establish new schools of their own.

And even if they did, their schools did not survive for long. Al-Ghazali, who is considered one of the most encyclopaedic scholars of Islam, never founded any school, be it theology, law or tasawwuf (Islamic mysticism).

He regarded himself a strict student of the Ashaari school of Sunni theology and a close follower of the Shafi'i school of law. Yet his writings influenced the Muslim society for more than 900 years now.

Al-Ghazali is no stranger to any Muslim or non-Muslim after his time, particularly in the Middle Ages. He was a very well-known figure in the Latin West and was known as Algazel. Although he rejected Peripatetic Philosophy, notably that of Al-Farabi and Avicenna, yet before he rejected any of the Peripatetic philosophical contents, he demonstrated his mastery of their ideas.

In his Objectives of the philosophers (Maqasid al-Falasifa) , Al-Ghazali enumerates the details of what philosophical studies constitute, demonstrating his understanding of such topics like logic and ontology.

Thereafter, he wrote The incoherence of the philosophers (Tuhafat al-Falasifa) and showed why the philosophers were incoherent in their defence of some of their philosophical ideas.

In this book, Al-Ghazali did not attack philosophy, but merely demonstrated the methods used by the Peripatetic philosophers in defence of their ideas as incoherent with their claims of the validity of these ideas.

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) who came later after Al-Ghazali, refuted Al-Ghazali's arguments, but not before he demonstrated his mastery over these philosophical issues and ideas, although he was a judge ( Qadi ) and not a philosopher per se.

Therefore, the requirements to speak on behalf of a religious tradition is very stringent and strict, going from the way the scholarship has been formulated.

In response to Misnah's question "How many of them are fluent in classical Arabic by the way", referring to the Muslim scholars of Islam today, and particularly in reference to Malay Muslim scholars, Misnah must make a difference between giving a talk about Islam, like say, giving a talk about Islam to new Muslim converts, and handling knowledge about the religion.

As to the former, any Muslim who has a little background in Islamic studies but who understands and practises the religion correctly, can give a talk about the religion. But in the latter, one must possess the prerequisites of Islamic scholarship because in this case, the truth of the religion is at stake.

Thus, for example, for a lay Muslim to give a talk about Islam and say that the religion is universal without quoting any Quranic verse or even quote it in a translated language, is fine, but for a scholar of Islam to do so is totally rejected.

Not only must the scholar be able to quote the Quranic passage correctly in Arabic, he/she must also be able to analyse the words and grammatical structure underlying it. For example, the verse Qul! Huwallahu Ahad what does the word Qul here signifies as an imperative?

It is okay for a lay Muslim not to know but it cannot be acceptable for a scholar of Islam not to know, because he/she is the vanguard of the religion.

I agree with Misnah that translations of works are helpful for one to understand a topic. It is through translations that many Muslims who have no access to Arabic can understand their religion. Still, translations do not rank in the same degree as the original language in which the works are written.

Those who have studied languages should know this. Take classical Chinese, for example. The fact that a thing is said in a few characters does not mean that there is very little to say and hence the insufficiency of Chinese thought.

Rather, the nature of the characters are such that by just a stroke of one character, many things are said. Obviously, one cannot compare a novice of classical Chinese with that of a scholar of that language who knows why the Chinese sentences are written in such a manner.

In the case of Islam, the source of the religion is in Arabic. The Quran has a passage clearly on this where God says that He has revealed the Quran in Arabic. For Muslims, this is a very important message as it informs them that no matter what happens in the development of knowledge and the emergence of the various sciences pertaining to the study of the religion, one cannot cut off from the source language by which it is revealed and by which these knowledges and sciences are based and derived.

Moreover, many of the sciences which were developed in the periods following the rise of Islam were written in Arabic. And it is through the study of Arabic and the sciences in the Arabic language in centres of Islamic studies like Toledo, Cordova and the like in Muslim Spain that the West rediscover their ancient past in the Hellenic and Hellenistic traditions.

Hence, to deny the historical significance and importance of Arabic in the history of Islam is to do injustice to the religion, the Muslim society, the whole corpus of Islamic scholarship, and the Islamic civilisation and heritage.

Moreover, one must not forget that the Arabic language has been the lingua franca as well as the language of scholarship not only of the lands forming the pax Islamica but also of Europe for more than 800 years.

To deny the significance and place of this language is to obliterate an important chapter in world history and world civilisation. In addition, it is also this language by which many of the languages that form the cluster of 'Islamic languages' such as Persian, Urdu, Malay, Turkish and the likes made their presence on the intellectual landscape of Islam.

I can understand Misnah's grievances and frustrations with the present state of the Muslims in the world today. This present state of the Muslim condition, with all its problems and malaises, is not peculiar to the Muslims alone.

One can see in history how empires have risen and fallen and how civilisations have come and gone. It is just that Misnah finds herself living in a Muslim world which is plagued with all kinds of problems.

Had she been born at the peak of the Muslim achievements during the Umayyad or Abassid dynasties, in places like Damascus, Baghdad, or Andalusia, she would have all the good things to say about the religion and be proud to become a Muslim.

I doubt if she would even make cynical remarks about kopiah , long beards and jubah as these were the distinctive marks of Islamic appearance during these periods of Islamic rule.

In fact, the donning of these distinctive marks of appearance was not peculiar to the Muslims alone. Europeans, too, did it and took these ways of appearance as the mark of high culture.

So what is there for Misnah to be ashamed of her own people and community of donning these things just because they happen to live in an age where the Islamic tide is at its lowest ebb?

It is true that Muslims all over the world are struggling to come to terms with the effects of modern life. Modern civilisation has posed innumerable problems to tradition.

For Muslims, as well as Christians, Buddhists, and Confucians, many of their traditional patterns of life have been disrupted and they are trying to find ways of either adapting them to modern lifestyle or overcoming them.

Misnah was born into a people and a culture that has a long history of Islamic heritage. She must not forget that those who fought against the colonialists and who sacrificed their lives among her own community and people so that their descendants can still practise the religion in its authentic character are people who come from the pondok.

It is therefore not proper for any person in the country and especially a Malay to discredit their role in the fight for independence and who provide for what their later generations could have which they could not.

We may be disappointed that many of the graduates of the pondok system could not provide answers to the woes of the modern world, but we cannot discredit their competence in the Islamic traditions.

The way out is to engage them in a manner by which they could extend their knowledge of the Islamic traditions and be familiar with the issues affecting the modern world.