Zafar Ishaq Ansari: Glimpses in Memoriam​

Allah keeps as His friend one who has three characteristics: generosity like that of a river, from which whosoever desires can drink; warm affection like that of the sun, which illuminates every place; and humility like that of the earth, which permits both the good and the wicked to live on it.” This saying of Muʿīn al-Dīn Chishtī (1141-1236), the founder of the eponymous sufi order in the Indian subcontinent, aptly describes Zafar Ishaq Ansari as I found him during the course of a friendship that extended over a quarter century: he was generous of heart, freely giving his time, kind words, and possessions to all; he saw only good in others and lavishly praised them for it, bringing out more good. He was always warm and affectionate, even when he himself was going through difficult times. He was humble; I never heard any boast from him.

We first met in Islamabad at my office on a fine winter morning. “I am sorry to have come without advance notice,” he said. “I just heard so much about you from Iftikhar Arif that I thought I would stop by and say salam before going to my office.” He was then almost sixty, not a tall man but exuding a robust energy. Iftikhar Arif, our mutual friend, was chairman of the Pakistan Academy of Letters, for which I had recently edited the first issue of the journal Pakistani Literature. I was then working at the Organization of Islamic Conference Standing Committee on Science and Technology (COMSTECH), and Ansari was the Director General of the Islamic Research Institute (IRI) at the International Islamic University, Islamabad (IIUI). The warmth of that first encounter was to endure over the next twenty-five years across the contexts in which we interacted—conferences, funerals, marketplaces, official meetings, family settings, work-a-day routines, among friends, and in extremely tense circumstances involving high stakes for Pakistan’s premier institutions.

He was among the last of that highly-cultured generation of scholars from the Indian subcontinent who knew their Qurʾān, Hadith, and fiqh, and who could also recite couplets of Rumi and Iqbal with ease. That generation witnessed and participated in historical events which shook the world. Born in a scholar’s home, Zafar Ishaq Ansari’s personal and intellectual makeup was, in many respects, formed by that of his father, Mawlana Muhammad Zafar Ahmad Ansari (1908-1991), who was a gifted scholar with zeal to apply Islamic solutions to contemporary problems. He was the author of the Ansari Commission Report (1983) which reestablished the primacy of Islam in Pakistan’s attempt to formulate a new constitution. Born and raised in Allahabad, Mawlana Ahmad left his teaching career at Allahabad University in 1942, when Liaquat Ali Khan (1895-1951, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1947 until his assassination) invited him to join the All-India Muslim League. Zafar Ishaq, then ten years old, saw his father devote the next seven years of his life to the struggle for Pakistan, serving as the Secretary to the Central Parliamentary Board and Assistant Secretary to the All-India Muslim League.

Journal of Islamic Sciences, Vol. 14 (Summer 2016) No. 1

Muzaffar Iqbal

Muzaffar Iqbal is the President of the Center for Islamic Sciences and the General Editor of the Integrated Encyclopedia of the Qurʾān.