Family Background and Education

Few today remember the reason for the founding of McGill University's Islamic Institute. This Institute is largely the product of the inspiration and work of Wilfred Cantwell Smith.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith was born in Toronto on 21 July 1916. His father, Victor Arnold Smith came to Canada from Grenada, British West Indies, at the age of eighteen. He became a successful self-made businessman and was a influential elder of the Knox Presbyterian Church. He possessed a belief characterized by Internationalism. His mother was a U.S. citizen by birth and came to Canada upon marrying Mr. Smith. She taught Classics at Ohio Wesleyan University in the days when few women went to university.

As a small child, Smith attended the Victor Arnold and Sarah Cory (Cantwell) School in Toronto. He left Toronto's sheltered life¹ and Upper Canada College and spent a year, at the age of seven, at the Lycée Champollion in Grenoble, France. At the age of seventeen he was elected Head Boy at Upper Canada College of Toronto. Also at age seventeen, Smith spent a year in Spain and Egypt. In 1939 he married Muriel Mackenzie Struthers,² the daughter of Dr. Gordon Struthers of Toronto. They had five children: Arnold, Julian, Heather, Brian and Rosemary.

In 1939, Smith obtained a B.A. Honours in Oriental Languages (Classical Semitic Languages and Eastern History) from the University of Toronto. From 1938-40 he was a research student in theology at St. John's College and Westminister College in Cambridge, England. Accompanied by his wife, he lived seven years (l940-46) as a missionary in India. He taught Indian and Islamic History at the Forman Christian College in Lahore, India and studied the life of the Indian Muslim Community.³ In 1944 Smith was ordained in the United Church of North India. When his book Modern Islam in India: A social analysis was published in 1946, it was banned in India, because of its alleged communist approach.⁴

In 1946, Smith left India to return to North America to complete a doctorate in the Department of Oriental Languages at Princeton University under the Arab historian Philip K. Hitti. The title of his dissertation was "The Azhar Journal: Analysis and Critique," a study of the Arabic monthly journal published at the seat of Islamic Orthodoxy in Cairo. He obtained his Ph. D. degree in 1948.

In 1948, Smith came to the McGill Faculty of Divinity as the W. M. Birks Professor of Comparative Religion. There he continued to pursue his interest in Islam and seized the opportunity to found the McGill Institute of Islamic Studies in 1951. At McGill Professor Smith found a good friend and ally who helped him push through his ideas; this gentleman was none other than Dr. S. B. Frost, subsequently Dean of the Faculty of Divinity and Dean of the Graduate Faculty at McGill University.

History of the Institute of Islamic Studies

The Institute of Islamic Studies opened its doors in Divinity Hall with only eleven students, in September, 1952. It was the first. Until that time there had been no institution in any university in Canada or in United States with the specific purpose of pursuing a detailed study of Islam. Professor Smith placed great emphasis on religion, since he was convinced that the history of the Muslim peoples could not be understood without recognizing that religion was the key, as well as the most important single force in the formation and development of the Islamic civilization.

At the end of the three year experimental period, the Institute of Islamic Studies proved a success, and its continued existence was justified. The university authorities therefore decided to make the Institute a permanent part of the university structure.

Professor Smith was only thirty-three years of age when, as the Director of the Institute, he gathered a community of international scholars around him and persuaded the university and foundation authorities in Canada and the United States that the Institute's work was important, relevant, and timely. In 1957, the Institute moved to an old but important building at the top of Redpath Crescent in Montreal.⁵

Every afternoon at four o'clock, Smith rang the bell from the top floor of the house at Redpath Crescent for the tea break, as if calling his disciples to assemble. All the members of the Institute and the library staff were expected to attend; tea was served in the living room. There, East and West met to discuss and resolve misunderstandings. Christmas parties found Smith's family all ready to help. These parties were held at Smith's home. Mrs. Smith prepared the food and the children entertained the members of the Institute by each playing a musical instrument; all the children were exceptionally talented. With gentle smiles, they said farewell to their guests till next gathering, which was the Spring Barbecue Picnic held in some remote part of scenic Québec.

In some other respects the beginning was less than auspicious. When classes opened, the Institute possessed a library of perhaps two hundred and fifty books, housed in the shelves along one wall of the small room that served as lounge and common room. Journals were locked up in cupboards and newspapers were placed in the bathtub. Students were often compelled to borrow books from the private collection of their professors, and even so, for many subjects of importance, there was no literature of any kind available at that time.⁶

Obviously, a solid and broad collection of Islamic materials in the form of a scientifically ordered library was essential, and the assembling of a library was a central concern of Professor Smith. William J. Watson was a student at the Institute, and in 1952, the Institute paid for Watson to go to the Library School at McGill. In 1955, Watson was appointed Professional Orientalist Librarian of the Islamic Studies Library.⁷ Smith and Watson became close friends and the two devised a new classification system to suit Middle Eastern and Islamic Libraries.⁸

Professor Smith took a sabbatical leave from his post at McGill in 1963 and returned to India again together with his family. A year later, he accepted a post at Harvard University and resigned his post at the Institute. But Smith did not forget Canada or his commitment to his country. After nine years at Harvard, Smith, by then age fifty-seven, resigned to go to his third major appointment at Delhousie University. Smith's resignation surprised many who knew the energy and dedication with which he had been devoting himself to questions of academic policy at Harvard. Smith returned to Canada, to take up a McCulloch Professorship at Delhousie University in Halifax and to be the first member of its religion department. After Delhousie, Smith returned briefly to Harvard.

The Islamic Studies Library (ISL) opened its doors in Birks Building of Divinity Hall. Because of continuous expansion, ISL moved several times and in 1983 settled in the former Presbyterian College of Montreal, McGill's Morrice Hall.⁹ From 250 books at Smith's time, the ISL is now housed on three floors and comprises more than 125,000 volumes, approximately half of them in Oriental languages. The greatest number of works are in Arabic, but the library is also distinguished by the number and scope of the volumes in Urdu it has collected. Another of its strengths is its excellent assemblage of periodicals, including several runs in Oriental languages that are not easily found elsewhere. The ISL must be counted among the major North American collections in Islamics, and it continues to expand its holdings at the rate of approximately 5,000 volumes per year.¹⁰ ISL virtually owes its existence to the efforts of Professor Smith.

The Goals of the Institute

Smith wrote the Constitution of the Institute of Islamic Studies. Its attempt to understand and interpret the Muslim faith and the Islamic tradition and to clarify their modern dynamic is carried on as an essentially co-operative enterprise undertaken jointly by Muslims and Westerners. The global quality of the study is also enhanced by the participation of some scholars who are neither Muslim nor Western. Insofar as it is feasible, the teaching and research staff and also the student body numbers are approximately half Muslim and half Western.

The Institute endeavors to offer to Westerners a serious encounter with a civilization other than their own. It recognizes that such an experience, in order to be valid, may require a creative modification of one's own terms of reference. It strives to help Western students understand and appreciate an important, rich and varied civilization.

To Muslims, the Institute aspires to offer an opportunity to study their own society in a serious, disciplined, scientific, and sympathetic environment, and to understand the international setting in which their society is currently involved and the problems that in modern times their faith must face.

The Institute was founded for the purpose of engaging in the serious study of the modern Muslim world. The innovative element was Smith's conviction that this could not be done effectively by non-Muslims studying in a non-Muslim institution and without the participation of Muslims. The design for the Institute, including the design for the library, was the result of his creative response to the dilemma, as he saw it, of how to study Islam in a way that would involve Muslims and non-Muslims. The goal was to use the best of contemporary scholarly methods to approach and analyse the realities of the tumultuous Muslim world.¹¹

At present, both Indonesia and Iran are sending Muslim students at government expense to the Institute of Islamic Studies.¹² In itself, this fact is probably the most striking and irrefutable proof of the success of Smith's innovative experiment.¹³ Muslim students are drawn by the library.¹⁴ They are also attracted by the presence of Muslim faculty members and the quality of publications by the non-Muslim faculty.

Interpretation of Smith's Major Publications

Smith's knowledge of Oriental languages helped him not only to do research in primary sources, but to enter into dialogue with the elite and the `ulama'. Smith published many books, the most important being Islam in Modern History.¹⁵ His philosophy and message presented in Islam in Modern History¹⁶ and The Meaning and End of Religion¹⁷ will be summarized, together with a brief discussion of some of his later works.

Smith's Islam in Modern History deals with the point and purpose of Islamic studies and presents the topics in a brilliant and compelling fashion. Smith writes that the Church, in particular, and the West, in general, must undergo a very searching reappraisal of its attitudes and its aims vis-à-vis its ancient rival in the East. The Christian Church is thus faced with a choice between two alternative attitudes. It can either adopt the hostile approach, or it can think its way through to a new attitude of co-operation and co-existence. Thus, Islam should not be regarded as a rival or enemy to be overcome.

Islam should be recognized as a historical reality. It exists and has played a significant role in the spiritual development of mankind and cannot cease to exist without an incalculable loss to a large part of the human race. Civilization and cultures, on so large a scale as the Islamic structure, cannot be destroyed and made to disappear; even if that could be done, it would not be a true Christian attitude on the part of the Western world to wish to see something so rich in achievement and so fine in promise, as Islam is, simply disappear and cease to be. Moreover, the cause of true religion is not furthered by making individual converts from Islam, whereby a man or even a group is seized forcibly from his social, religious and political setting.

Smith's aim was to demonstrate that the truly Christian endeavor is to seek to understand Islam, to appreciate its achievement and its promise, and to encourage within its own culture and thinking patterns all that contributes to the final kingdom of God. For after all, this final kingdom is certainly something greater than organized Christianity or Islam, or Judaism, or any of the religious structures we know.

Christians, according to Smith, have made such an unfortunate exhibition of their ways that the pseudo-glory of Western political and technological superiority was not impressive; Christianity is thus even less likely to have any attractiveness for a Muslim. All this raised searching and vital questions for Christian thinkers. Smith provided much food for thought, discussion, and earnest heart-searching.

Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion is a landmark in the academic study of religion. In this challenging book, Smith considers the outer and inner convictions of, among others, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Manichees, Zoroastrians, and even the modern idealogy of Marxists. His profound knowledge of religion and history of different faiths allowed him to demonstrate the similarities among them. He writes: "Religion is universal in human societies. This is an empirical generalization, an aggregate of a multitude of specific observations."¹⁸ His main contention is that God is one, and that men may come to Him along many paths, some shorter than others, but they all lead to the same destination. The static concept of religion must be rejected and replaced by a dynamic concept of faith which would allow for a kind of faith that is a world-wide fact. He came out with a new theory designed to cope with all aspects of every religious tradition; his approach is both scientific and theological.

Smith examines the history and the communities of different faiths from Christian to Hindu and Zoroastrian, and brings them into one common focus by concentrating on the human being and how the human being can behave in this common world of ours. To Smith, the most important thing is to be a believer (mu'min), as opposed to an atheist (kafir). His approach to religion is new and wide; sometimes it is termed revolutionary, and the approach is seen as radical.¹⁹ Although he was a Christian missionary for several years in India, he finally did not believe that people should convert from one religion to another.²⁰

In his Belief and History, Smith mentions that Western secular culture and dogmatic Christianity have failed to grasp the importance of understanding other cultures and religions with openness and respect.²¹ Smith's Towards a World Theology: Faith and the comparative history of religion²² is another landmark in the academic study of religion. Smith argues that a theology which is based on one tradition, on faith in only one of its forms but tries to be inclusive of aspects of other traditions and faiths, is inadequate and hypocritical. He writes: "Faith can be theologized only from the inside."²³ Therefore, any attempt to understand another faith from one's own viewpoint subordinates that other faith to alien categories.²⁴ According to Smith, it is possible for us to participate in more than one faith, in all of them, through the concept of "Corporate Critical Self-Consciousness." Smith reiterated, that to understand persons in other communities, we need corporate self-consciousness, a consciousness of them not as "others" but as "us".²⁵ Smith declared that accordingly we become participants secondarily in other traditions in addition to our own.²⁶

Smith's Views on Some International Affairs

In Islam and Modern History, Smith covers a wide range of Muslim communities: the Arab countries, Turkey, Pakistan, India, and Indonesia. In the last chapter of Islam and Modern History, he states that he profoundly believes that "Islam will indeed have such future development... The religion is alive and dynamic."²⁷ He asks whether this future development will leave the Muslim with a divided personality, torn between the technological demands of the atomic age and a nostalgic loyalty to an irrelevant religion; or whether it will cause a retreat into an emotionalized closed system, from which the Muslim will burst forth only in isolated acts of frustrated violence; or whether Islam will broaden into "an open, rich, onward vision, an effective inspiration for truly modern living."

Smith has no illusions about the difficulties inherent in this last possibility. He suggests that we should find the means to modernize the world Muslim community by seeking to understand its problems and by helping Muslims find Muslim answers; otherwise, they will become a displaced community.

In 1957, in an article to Montreal Gazette, Smith declares that the West should not sit on the fence passing judgment on the Middle East; instead, solutions should be found for the problems of the region.²⁸

In a recent letter to the Globe and Mail, Smith defends the Bosnians and also states: "and lest secularists imagine that it is religious people that are aggressive and war-like, let us remember that since the rise of Secularism last century, secular wars have been the greatest and most devastating that the world has ever seen."²⁹

Open Dialogue Please!

According to Smith, to approach the faith of others is to enter into a human encounter, where "understanding" is not a cold abstraction but a matter of mutual dialogue: mutual dialogue, not only in religious matters, but in political, social and international affairs.

At McGill's Institute of Islamic Studies, he established a "Common Room," where students of various nationalities, during their coffee breaks, sat down together and entered into various discussions. The "Common Room" idea was duplicated at Harvard University, at the Center for World Religions, and at the Arabic Center of the American University in Cairo. Smith thought that it was sufficient to participate intelligently in this common study, thereby educating a small group from each culture by exploring avenues of understanding.

In the first week of April, 1996, Smith with his wife, Muriel, revisited the Institute of Islamic Studies and its library. It was a home-coming. He attended seminars, spoke with students, granted interviews and also gave two lectures: one on "Islamic Resurgence" and another on "The True Meaning of Scripture: The Qur'an as an example," based on his recent book What is Scripture?³⁰

At the top floor of the historic Morrice Hall Building at McGill University on the 3rd of April, 1996, Smith sat in the "Common Room" of the Institute of Islamic Studies surrounded by scholars from East and West, and his debate of open dialogue and of exploring avenues of understanding continued!

Conclusion

W. C. Smith is a man of integrity, who has a strong personality and a dynamic mind. He draws scholars around him-both Muslims and Christians-who want to stay with him, serve him and, in some cases, almost worship him; yet, he is not without his foes. His new approach to the study of religion brought him criticism from both East and West.

Whether he is revolutionary or radical, a minister or a missionary, is unimportant. What matters is that Smith brought a new approach to the study of religion of mankind directed towards promoting understanding among religions. He maintained, "We shall be rewarded if we can convey to the general thinking group in each of our two communities some sense that these problems exist and are important and are worthy of being faced; and some recognition that to become a citizen of the world, one must become a new type of person."³¹

The international perspective was extremely important to Smith in his career.³² From his high school days, when his mother took him for a trip to Egypt, he knew, that he was going to be involved with the Muslim people.³³ His books have been translated into ten different languages and very well read all over the world.

Smith is recovering very well from major hip surgery. With his beloved Muriel at his side and surrounded by his children and ten grand-children, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Professor Emeritus of Comparative History of Religion of Harvard University, holder of Killam award, at 80 years young, continues research and actively contributing to peaceful solutions to the world's problems.

Acknowledgement

I offer my gratitude to my history professor, Dr. C. Miller, Dean of Faculty of Arts of McGill University, who encouraged me to write this article.

¹The Toronto of Smith's boyhood was distinctly different from the bustling, ethnically diverse metropolis which the city has become especially since the mid-1960s. In the years before the Second World War it was a relatively small city, British if not Scottish, and observantly religious. The city was nicknamed "Toronto the Good". Story-tellers reminisce that in those pre-war years, when Sunday-closing legislation was strictly enforced, a Sunday visitor to downtown Toronto would have the streets to himself, lucky even to be able to buy a cup of tea.

²Murphy, Lynn. "From a China mission and tropical diseases to medical librarian." Dalhousie Alumni News, 7 (15) April 14, 1977

³Canadian Who's Who. V. XXX Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995

⁴Smith, Wilfred C. Modern Islam in India: A social analysis. London: Victor Gollancz, 1946. Smith states clearly that he is a socialist with pronounced convictions (p. 9).

⁵Adams, C. J. "The Institute of Islamic Studies." Canadian Geographical Journal, July, 1962. Adams writes: "High on the south side of Mount Royal, on a site overlooking the centre of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, stands a building that houses a unique Canadian Institution known as Institute of Islamic Studies."

⁶All professors had small office libraries containing, among other books and articles, most likely their own published works in the field.

⁷William J. Watson was the Assistant Director of the University of British Columbia Libraries and is now retired.

⁸Smith and Watson expanded the author Cutter entries of Ibn ('son of') and Abu ('father of'), which are very common in Arabic names. In 1982, the Islamic Studies Library switched from Smith's classification to that of the Library of Congress. The preponderance of catalogue records for the library's 85,000 volumes remains in card form. I have strongly pleaded to McGill University Libraries Administration that, when the card catalogue is converted into machine readable format, the Smith classification system be preserved for historical reasons.

⁹This entire wing was a gift to the Presbyterian college from one man -- David Morrice, a Scot from Perthshire, who made his fortune in Montreal selling textiles. Morrice Hall was built by the architect James Browne in 1881 and renovated by the architect Denis Lamarre in 1981. There is an Islamic connection in Morrice's family. The impressionist artist James Wilson Morrice, son of David Morrice, travalled extensively in North Africa and completed many paintings and sketches depicting that region. He died in Tunis in 1924.

¹⁰Ninety new periodical titles and over 2,200 reference books have been added to the collection recently. Total periodical and serial titles are 970. There are 170 manuscript volumes in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish. The audio-visual resources comprise 535 microfilms and microfiches. The ISL has 1000 rare items in its collection.

¹¹Ferahian, Salwa. "Islamic Studies Library: The Canadian connection." Bulletin Canadian Mediterranean Institute, XIII (1) January 1993: 6

¹²In 1995, Institute of Islamic Studies had 30 Indonesian students coming from different Islamic Universities in Indonesia and 7 students from Qum in Iran.

¹³Ibid.: p. 11.

¹⁴Now the Islamic Studies Library contains over 125,000 volumes, and it is considered a major resource in the field of Islamic Studies.

¹⁵Smith, Wilfred C., Islam in Modern History ([New York]: New American Library, [1957].)

¹⁶ Smith, Wilfred C., Islam in Modern History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1957).

¹⁷Smith, Wilfred C., The Meaning and End of Religion ([Toronto:] The New American Library of Canada [1963]).

¹⁸Ibid. p. 17.

¹⁹Indeed, it was a departure from the traditional methods of studying religion.

²⁰He remained, however, a convinced Christian, and he transferred his ordination from India to the United Church of Canada in 1961.

²¹Smith, Wilfred C., Belief and History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1977): 33 and 39.

²²Smith, Wilfred C., Towards a World Theology: Faith and the comparative history of religion (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1981).

²³Ibid. p. 111.

²⁴Ibid. p. 110.

²⁵Ibid. p. 64-74.

²⁶ Ibid. p. 89-94.

²⁷Smith, Wilfred C., Islam in Modern History (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977. Smith mentions in this paperback edition, "a Muslim might presumably look forward to... another thirteen centuries still to come." p. 11.

²⁸Smith, Wilfred C., "Solution not adjudication needed in Mid-East." Montreal Gazette, Feb. 5th 1957.

²⁹Smith, Wilfred C., "Anti-Islamic Bias shows," The Globe and Mail, July 5th 1995.

³⁰Smith, Wilfred C., What is Scripture?: A comparative approach (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993).

³¹Smith, Wilfred C., "The Institute of Islamic Studies," The Islamic Literature, 5(3) 1953: 176. (broadcast over the Trans-Canada Network of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on April 20, 1952. It is in this article that it has been virtually reproduced as delivered.

³²Ronald, George, "Meet the Commonwealth's Mr. Smith," Readers Digest January 1971. Ronald states that Wilfred Cantwell Smith's brother Arnold Smith is equally known all over the world. Ambassador Arnold Smith, one of the ablest diplomats Canada ever produced, served 32 countries populated by nearly 900 million people. p. 65.

^3/sup>During his visit to McGill University, in April 1996, I was honoured to give a tour of the Islamic Studies Library to Professor and Mrs. Smith. In this tour I learned that at the age of seventeen, Smith's mother took him on a trip to Egypt, and it marked a turning point in his life.

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