Al Afghani & the Legacy of Islamic Modernism
Al Afghani and the Legacy of Islamic Modernism
As one Islamic scholar puts it, "There is little in twentieth century Islam that is not foreshadowed by Al-Afghani." Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897) is one of the most influential and mysterious figures in Islamic history. In the latter decades of the 19th century he moved between Persia, India, Afghanistan, Egypt, Istanbul, and France, working for a political and spiritual renaissance of Islam. Al-Afghani emerged when the impact of European imperialism was being recognized for what it was-- the greatest challenge to Islam since the civil wars that produced the Umayyad dynasty. About thirty years ago, thanks to the biographical researches of Nikki R. Keddie, al-Afghani's birthplace was conclusively located in Persia. (A new edition of Keddie's 1972 biography, Sayyid Jamal al-Din "al-Afghani," was published in 1991.) It appears that al-Afghani assumed his famous pseudonym from the time of his residence in Afghanistan in the 1860s, in order to be politically involved with Sunni Muslims without being stigmatized as both Shiite and Persian. The legacy of anti-imperialist resistance that is historically assigned to al-Afghani chiefly depends on two moments of his career, in both of which his most famous disciple, Muhammad Abduh, plays a role. In the 1870s, al-Afghani was the activist mentor for an emerging Egyptian nationalist intelligentsia. In the 1880s in Paris he promoted a pan-Islamic movement in a failed but immensely influential effort to combat European imperialism. It was the beginning of what we now call "political Islam."
The 1870s saw the birth of Egyptian nationalism under the troubled rule of Ismail, who postponed bankruptcy by giving Britain and France what was known as "Dual Control" over the Egyptian economy. In 1875, Ismail sold controlling shares in the Suez Canal--opened by the French in 1869-- to Great Britain. Throughout this period, France and Britain backed the Ottoman sultan's efforts to assert sovereignty over Egypt, whose semi-autonomous status had been maintained by Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim (Ismaili's grandfather) since 1805. In the 1870s, Egyptian army officers joined with nationalists in the Assembly to oppose the role played by Turkish officers and officials in running the country. There was also a growing resistance to European cultural influence, led by the ulama and their conservative supporters.
In 1871, Egypt's chief minister Riaz Pasha offered al-Afghani financial support if he would become an unofficial teacher and guide for an elite group of young nationalist intellectuals, including several scholars at al-Azhar, then as now the educational center of the Islamic world. Al-Afghani had been teaching in Istanbul, but was expelled for giving a lecture denying that philosophical reason could threaten religious faith. Although Al-Afghani only spent eight years teaching and lecturing in Egypt, it provided him with the opportunity to develop and disseminate the basic terms of what is now called Islamic modernism. Islam must strengthen itself, al-Afghani argued, by returning to its essentials, which are not incompatible with science. Muslims must re-open the "gates of ijtihad,” or interpretation, which traditionalists had closed in the 10th century to the detriment of Islamic education. And political and religious leaders must emerge who are committed to the renewal of Muslim society. This required assimilating the most useful aspects of Western science into a truly Islamic social, ethical and spiritual system.
Al-Afghani's Egyptian group included a young Syrian scholar, Muhammad Abduh, whose life work became the implementation of Afghani's ideas as an educational program. (Abduh eventually was able to modernize the curriculum at Al Azhar.) In Cairo, al-Afghani taught philosophy, theology, logic and mysticism. Abduh, in his idealized biography of al-Afghani, described his mentor as a mystic. The other famous figure in al-Afghani's group was young Saad Zaghlul, who was to lead the 1918 revolutionary movement in Egypt and establish the nationalist Wafd party (named after the "delegation" he tried to bring to the postwar Versailles conference). The point is that al-Afghani’s philosophical and religious teachings encouraged political activism in the context of increasing European pressures. His experience in Egypt showed that the likely consequences of Western imperialism would be devastating for the region and its peoples, even it the Ottoman Empire remained intact.
In 1879, the Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II was pressured by Britain and France to curtail the growing nationalist movement in Egypt by deposing Ismail and replacing him with his son Tawfiq. This done, the British had al-Afghani deported to India, where they kept him "under restraint”until 1882. During this period, al Afghani challenged the founder of the modernist movement in India, Sayyid Ahmad Kahn. Ahmad Kahn, who had been educated in Britain, argued that Islam must purge itself of superstitions by learning from Western liberal intellectual traditions. Al-Afghani attacked Kahn’s prioritizing of Western education over the indigenous resources of Islamic culture. Although he shared Khan’s modernizing impulse, al-Afghani fiercely opposed its pro-British, secularizing application. In al-Afghani’s only extended work, The Refutation of Materialism, he challenged Kahn’s liberalizing program, arguing that divine revelation, anchored in the Quran, must guide all applications of human reason. The political survival of the Islamic umma was at stake in the matter, he argued, since sowing doubts about religion would destroy Muslim unity.
In 1882, the British and French persuaded Abdulhamid II to allow them to put Egypt in order, and they sent a joint naval expedition to Alexandria. France, however, refused to put Alexandria under an artillery barrage and withdrew, leaving the destiny of Egypt in British hands. Egypt remained a British protectorate until 1922, and did not throw off British control until the 1952 revolution. The British invasion of Egypt had two decisive consequences for al-Afghani-- it moved him to flee British India for France, where he could think and act in freedom, and it shifted his emphasis from Egyptian nationalism to the larger goal of pan-Islamic unity.
Living in Paris between 1882 and 1887, al-Afghani was joined in exile by his former student Muhammad Abduh. They collaborated on eighteen numbers of a now famous journal called al-Urwa al-Wuthqa (“The Indissoluble Link”), which disseminated al-Afghani's politicized vision of Islamic revival throughout the Middle East. "The ideas were al-Afghani's, the words were Muhammad Abduh's," as one critic put it. Since Al-Afghani wrote little besides occasional articles, Abduh saw his mission as elaborating and refining his mentor's ideas. However, Abduh’s own thinking about Islamic reform became less political and more educational and religious. What most interested him, finally, was al-Afghani's claim of a positive relation between Islam and natural law, which later became the basis of his al-Azhar reforms.
In 1885, al-Afghani had a famous dispute with the French philosopher Ernest Renan, who had written that the current political weakness of Islam was due to racial inferiority and “Bedouin backwardness.” In this Parisian intellectual context, Al-Afghani exposed the skeptical underpinnings of this thinking, arguing that Islam had not yet had time to develop beyond its traditional intellectual constraints. He stressed the universal relevance of the true Islam, once it had developed sufficiently to throw off its anti-rational elements. (Abduh made sure the Renan debate was not translated into Arabic.) At the same time, al-Afghani was working politically with Sir Wilfrid Blunt, a British devotee of Arab culture whose liberal elite circle was trying (and failing) to disengage England from Egypt.
Al-Afghani played still another political role before his death. In the early 1890s in Iran, the shah's sale of a tobacco monopoly to a British industrialist provoked widespread opposition, and al-Afghani assisted clerical leaders in planning what became known as the Tobacco Boycott. Since the Constitutional Movement of 1905 had its beginnings here, al-Afghani (who was born and raised in Iran) is rightly associated with its oppositional work. Nevertheless, he never supported constitutionalism. He vacillated between French liberalism and traditional Islamic political theory, envisioning a revitalized caliphate that would co-operate with “truly Islamic” political leaders.
11-29-03
As one Islamic scholar puts it, "There is little in twentieth century Islam that is not foreshadowed by Al-Afghani." Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897) is one of the most influential and mysterious figures in Islamic history. In the latter decades of the 19th century he moved between Persia, India, Afghanistan, Egypt, Istanbul, and France, working for a political and spiritual renaissance of Islam. Al-Afghani emerged when the impact of European imperialism was being recognized for what it was-- the greatest challenge to Islam since the civil wars that produced the Umayyad dynasty. About thirty years ago, thanks to the biographical researches of Nikki R. Keddie, al-Afghani's birthplace was conclusively located in Persia. (A new edition of Keddie's 1972 biography, Sayyid Jamal al-Din "al-Afghani," was published in 1991.) It appears that al-Afghani assumed his famous pseudonym from the time of his residence in Afghanistan in the 1860s, in order to be politically involved with Sunni Muslims without being stigmatized as both Shiite and Persian. The legacy of anti-imperialist resistance that is historically assigned to al-Afghani chiefly depends on two moments of his career, in both of which his most famous disciple, Muhammad Abduh, plays a role. In the 1870s, al-Afghani was the activist mentor for an emerging Egyptian nationalist intelligentsia. In the 1880s in Paris he promoted a pan-Islamic movement in a failed but immensely influential effort to combat European imperialism. It was the beginning of what we now call "political Islam."
The 1870s saw the birth of Egyptian nationalism under the troubled rule of Ismail, who postponed bankruptcy by giving Britain and France what was known as "Dual Control" over the Egyptian economy. In 1875, Ismail sold controlling shares in the Suez Canal--opened by the French in 1869-- to Great Britain. Throughout this period, France and Britain backed the Ottoman sultan's efforts to assert sovereignty over Egypt, whose semi-autonomous status had been maintained by Muhammad Ali and his son Ibrahim (Ismaili's grandfather) since 1805. In the 1870s, Egyptian army officers joined with nationalists in the Assembly to oppose the role played by Turkish officers and officials in running the country. There was also a growing resistance to European cultural influence, led by the ulama and their conservative supporters.
In 1871, Egypt's chief minister Riaz Pasha offered al-Afghani financial support if he would become an unofficial teacher and guide for an elite group of young nationalist intellectuals, including several scholars at al-Azhar, then as now the educational center of the Islamic world. Al-Afghani had been teaching in Istanbul, but was expelled for giving a lecture denying that philosophical reason could threaten religious faith. Although Al-Afghani only spent eight years teaching and lecturing in Egypt, it provided him with the opportunity to develop and disseminate the basic terms of what is now called Islamic modernism. Islam must strengthen itself, al-Afghani argued, by returning to its essentials, which are not incompatible with science. Muslims must re-open the "gates of ijtihad,” or interpretation, which traditionalists had closed in the 10th century to the detriment of Islamic education. And political and religious leaders must emerge who are committed to the renewal of Muslim society. This required assimilating the most useful aspects of Western science into a truly Islamic social, ethical and spiritual system.
Al-Afghani's Egyptian group included a young Syrian scholar, Muhammad Abduh, whose life work became the implementation of Afghani's ideas as an educational program. (Abduh eventually was able to modernize the curriculum at Al Azhar.) In Cairo, al-Afghani taught philosophy, theology, logic and mysticism. Abduh, in his idealized biography of al-Afghani, described his mentor as a mystic. The other famous figure in al-Afghani's group was young Saad Zaghlul, who was to lead the 1918 revolutionary movement in Egypt and establish the nationalist Wafd party (named after the "delegation" he tried to bring to the postwar Versailles conference). The point is that al-Afghani’s philosophical and religious teachings encouraged political activism in the context of increasing European pressures. His experience in Egypt showed that the likely consequences of Western imperialism would be devastating for the region and its peoples, even it the Ottoman Empire remained intact.
In 1879, the Ottoman sultan Abdulhamid II was pressured by Britain and France to curtail the growing nationalist movement in Egypt by deposing Ismail and replacing him with his son Tawfiq. This done, the British had al-Afghani deported to India, where they kept him "under restraint”until 1882. During this period, al Afghani challenged the founder of the modernist movement in India, Sayyid Ahmad Kahn. Ahmad Kahn, who had been educated in Britain, argued that Islam must purge itself of superstitions by learning from Western liberal intellectual traditions. Al-Afghani attacked Kahn’s prioritizing of Western education over the indigenous resources of Islamic culture. Although he shared Khan’s modernizing impulse, al-Afghani fiercely opposed its pro-British, secularizing application. In al-Afghani’s only extended work, The Refutation of Materialism, he challenged Kahn’s liberalizing program, arguing that divine revelation, anchored in the Quran, must guide all applications of human reason. The political survival of the Islamic umma was at stake in the matter, he argued, since sowing doubts about religion would destroy Muslim unity.
In 1882, the British and French persuaded Abdulhamid II to allow them to put Egypt in order, and they sent a joint naval expedition to Alexandria. France, however, refused to put Alexandria under an artillery barrage and withdrew, leaving the destiny of Egypt in British hands. Egypt remained a British protectorate until 1922, and did not throw off British control until the 1952 revolution. The British invasion of Egypt had two decisive consequences for al-Afghani-- it moved him to flee British India for France, where he could think and act in freedom, and it shifted his emphasis from Egyptian nationalism to the larger goal of pan-Islamic unity.
Living in Paris between 1882 and 1887, al-Afghani was joined in exile by his former student Muhammad Abduh. They collaborated on eighteen numbers of a now famous journal called al-Urwa al-Wuthqa (“The Indissoluble Link”), which disseminated al-Afghani's politicized vision of Islamic revival throughout the Middle East. "The ideas were al-Afghani's, the words were Muhammad Abduh's," as one critic put it. Since Al-Afghani wrote little besides occasional articles, Abduh saw his mission as elaborating and refining his mentor's ideas. However, Abduh’s own thinking about Islamic reform became less political and more educational and religious. What most interested him, finally, was al-Afghani's claim of a positive relation between Islam and natural law, which later became the basis of his al-Azhar reforms.
In 1885, al-Afghani had a famous dispute with the French philosopher Ernest Renan, who had written that the current political weakness of Islam was due to racial inferiority and “Bedouin backwardness.” In this Parisian intellectual context, Al-Afghani exposed the skeptical underpinnings of this thinking, arguing that Islam had not yet had time to develop beyond its traditional intellectual constraints. He stressed the universal relevance of the true Islam, once it had developed sufficiently to throw off its anti-rational elements. (Abduh made sure the Renan debate was not translated into Arabic.) At the same time, al-Afghani was working politically with Sir Wilfrid Blunt, a British devotee of Arab culture whose liberal elite circle was trying (and failing) to disengage England from Egypt.
Al-Afghani played still another political role before his death. In the early 1890s in Iran, the shah's sale of a tobacco monopoly to a British industrialist provoked widespread opposition, and al-Afghani assisted clerical leaders in planning what became known as the Tobacco Boycott. Since the Constitutional Movement of 1905 had its beginnings here, al-Afghani (who was born and raised in Iran) is rightly associated with its oppositional work. Nevertheless, he never supported constitutionalism. He vacillated between French liberalism and traditional Islamic political theory, envisioning a revitalized caliphate that would co-operate with “truly Islamic” political leaders.
11-29-03
