Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics (9 page)

89 Ibid., 12.

90 Ibid., 124.

91 Ibid., 145–86.

(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 28–34, 41–71.

of the Two Holy Places.”

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 23, no. 3 (Winter 1993): 495–522.

109 Ibid., 36–7.

110 Ibid., 37.

Washington Post, November 4, 2001.

(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 15, 18, 23, 180.

New York Times, November 9, 1999.

New York Times, February 22, 1995.

2

Egypt

As with virtually any historical movement, one can begin the history of Islamism at any of several points. In Egypt, one possible starting point for examining this movement’s history can be the ideas of three significant intellectuals, all of whom were born in the nineteenth century and spent significant portions of their lives in Egypt – Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838–97), Muhammad (Abduh (1849–1905), and Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935). These intellectuals formulated their Islamically-based ideas in the midst of enormous change and turmoil in Islam, in Egypt, and in the rest of the majority-Muslim world.

One of the most significant historical forces in Egypt and in much of the majority-Muslim world during modern history was Western colonialism. Some powerful Western countries with substantial colonial interests in the Muslim world were Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. The Western country that had the greatest influence on Egypt during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was Great Britain. Those countries’ colonialist influence was felt in the majority-Muslim world in ways that were military, cultural, economic, religious, linguistic, and educational. The nineteenth century was a time in Islamic history when some Muslim intellectuals inside and outside of Egypt critiqued colonialism and attempted to assert authentic Islamic identities in the face of colonialism’s onslaught. Afghani, (Abduh, and Rida were three such Muslim intellectuals.

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani was probably born in the Shiite-majority country of Iran, but he claimed his familial lineage was rooted in Afghanistan, which is

Modern Islamist Movements: History, Religion, and Politics, First Edition. Jon Armajani.

© 2012 Jon Armajani. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

majority-Sunni, so that his ideas and actions would have greater impact in the Sunni world.1 After finishing high school, he went to the cities of Najaf and Kerbala (both of which are in modern-day Iraq) to study Islamic law, an unusual course of action for a Sunni since both of these cities were and are centers of Shiite education. Afghani traveled to India in 1857 and participated in anti-colonialist activities there.

In 1891 Afghani had a leadership role in a grassroots movement of political dissenters against a specific policy of the Iranian Qajar king Nasir al-Din Shah. In 1890, this king had granted an English company the exclusive rights to produce, sell, and export Iran’s entire tobacco crop. As a result of this enormous concession, many Iranians, who were already discontent with many of the king’s policies and were suspicious of British colonial involvement in Iran, united in a series of large-scale protests against him. Afghani and much of Iran’s ulema (Muslim religio-legal scholars) organized demonstrations and a large-scale tobacco boycott – collectively known as the Tobacco Protest – against the use of tobacco by Iranians.2 Afghani and the ulema urged the population to join them in preserving the dignity of Islam in the face of growing foreign influences in the country.3 Afghani and the ulema portrayed the king’s concession as a transgression of Sharia (Islamic law) and they used their power base – which was in many respects independent of the king’s authority – to mobilize political and religious action against the king. In 1891, a mujtahid, or member of one rank within the Shiite ulema, issued a decree proclaiming the use of tobacco – which is ordinarily permitted in Islam – a violation of Sharia until such time as the concession was canceled (since, according to his reasoning, its use under the system of concessions was tantamount to allying oneself with the infidel British). In the wake of the Tobacco Protest, the king rescinded the concession. This was among the first Islamically-based political demonstrations in Iran’s history and reflected Afghani’s interest in integrating religious and political dimensions in his ideas and actions.

Afghani devoted much of his life to attempting to defend majority-Muslim countries, many of whose inhabitants believed they were threatened by European colonial expansion.4 Afghani’s main objective was not necessarily to contribute to the political strength of individual majority-Muslim regions by nurturing nationalism, but to persuade Muslims to understand Islam in a way that Afghani believed was correct. Afghani maintained that Western countries had gained substantial advantages over nations in the majority- Muslim world because Muslims had ignored the teachings of the Quran and Hadith and had, as a result, become disunited and ignorant, and had begun to exhibit less individual and societal virtue.5 Afghani believed that if Muslims focused on, developed, and implemented the most important religious aspects of Islam, they would produce a thorough-going, authentic Islamic civilization that would successfully oppose the West’s corrosive influences.

While Afghani opposed aspects of the West’s cultural influence, he adapted some Western ideas in his own Islamic ideology. For example, in elucidating his beliefs about Islamic civilization, Afghani was influenced by the ideas of the French philosopher and sociologist François Guizot (1787–1874). Guizot believed that civilization was the most important historical accomplishment and was the highest benchmark by which all other achievements should be judged. For Guizot, civilization in its highest form contained people who hoped for progress and wanted to move forward actively. Guizot suggested two types of development: (a) social development which involves an increase in a society’s power and the collective well-being of the individuals within it and (b) individual development which is the progress and evolution of a person’s own faculties, sentiments, and ideas.6

For Afghani, with at least one important change, Guizot’s vision would constitute a fitting description for his ideal of Islamic society. Afghani believed that during Islamic societies’ great days – from the time of the initial establishment of a Muslim community in Medina under the Prophet Muhammad in 622 until the onset of colonialism in the early seventeenth century – Muslim societies manifested the characteristics of a thriving civilization: social and individual development, belief in reason, unity, and solidarity, which were qualities that began to decay in Muslim communities as a result of colonialism.7 Afghani believed that the office of the caliph (i.e., the caliphate) could be beneficial to Islamic societies since it had the potential to be a rallying point for Muslims and could function as the physical symbol which could provide unity for them. Caliphs were Islamic religio-political leaders who ruled or attempted to rule in a real or nominal manner during various periods of Islamic history. Afghani viewed the caliphate of his time as being seriously weakened.

Afghani maintained that one possible solution to the caliphate’s problems would involve re-crafting the caliphate to reflect in some manner the ideas of the philosopher-king which the Muslim intellectual al-Farabi (878–950) had elucidated in his writings. Afghani believed that one of many problems with the caliphate was that it had become a largely ceremonial office with little influence on the daily religious lives of individual Muslims and on Muslim societies as a whole. For Afghani, the caliphate was in dire need of a thorough-going revitalization that involved each caliph gaining the deepest grasp of the full scope of Islamic teaching. Related to this, Afghani believed that a learned consultant to the caliph – the philosopher – could expand the caliph’s knowledge of Islam while utilizing his interpretation of Islam as a way of helping inform the caliph’s political decisions.

Afghani asserted the importance of the philosopher-king structure because he believed that Islam was an utterly comprehensive system that should form the foundation of every aspect of individual and societal life – including the religious, political, educational, economic, social, legal, and ethical.

Afghani maintained this conviction because he believed that God (who revealed his message to Muhammad and whom all Muslims were obligated to worship) provided Muhammad with a complete set of ultimately truthful and practical principles which Muslims had to fully implement. Since, according to Afghani, during the course of Islamic history, particularly during colonial times, the caliphs had become less and less knowledgeable about Islamic teachings, they came to occupy a decreasingly powerful position, which, in turn, made them less influential in terms of instituting those true Islamic teachings.

In line with these ideas, Afghani believed that one of many corrosive Western influences upon Islam was the idea of nationalism.8 One of the negative manifestations of nationalism for Afghani was that it encouraged Muslims to devote their allegiances to the nations where they lived instead of directing their ultimate loyalty to God through the religion of Islam. Afghani believed that nationalism carried the danger of transforming the state and its leaders into gods. While he knew that it was impossible on a practical level to completely uproot nationalism, he wanted to mitigate its negative impact on Islam as much as possible. While Afghani was aware of what he perceived to be nationalism’s disadvantages, he admired the unity which nationalism seemed to foster in many European countries. He deeply believed that Islam, when properly understood and implemented, could have a similar unifying impact on societies and individuals in majority- Muslim countries. This unity, in turn, could invigorate Muslims and encourage them to Islamize their societies, while they rejected negative Western colonialist influences. This process of Islamization included using crucial aspects of Islam, such as the Quran, Hadith, and the example of the Prophet Muhammad, as ways of influencing the foundational dimensions of majority-Muslim societies.

Concomitantly, Afghani viewed the role of religion in public life in significantly different ways from most secular European intellectuals of his time. While those thinkers believed that Christianity, the majority religion of their countries, constituted an impediment to intellectual, economic, social, and national development, Afghani believed that Islam – because it was the supreme religion and the source of ultimate truth for every area of life – could stimulate every kind of progress. Afghani maintained that the sacred ideas which prophets receive through divine inspiration overlapped in limited ways with the ideas that philosophers could attain through reason.9 While there are some similarities between these two kinds of ideas, prophetic revelation carries ideas about God and law that, while consistent with reason, cannot be independently produced by reason. At the same time, for Afghani, one of the crucial differences between the truths that philosophers produce through reason and those that prophets receive through divine revelation is that the forms of reason and language that philosophers utilize