Modernist Reformers in Islam, Hinduism and Confucianism, 1865-1935

Peripheral Geoculture in the Modern World-System

Christian Lekon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317284642
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This volume presents a comparison of seven major religious reformers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: For Islam, Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad 'Abduh and Muhammad Rashid Rida; for Hinduism, Dayananda Sarasvati and Swami Shraddhananda; for Confucianism, K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao. Each of these reformers attempted to bring a major world religion in line with global modernity by creatively reinterpreting the traditions on which this religion was based. The book outlines the lives and major ideas of these reformers, highlights the similarities between them, interprets their agenda as expressions of peripheral geoculture (centrist liberalism, antisystemic movements, positivism) in line with the Modern World-System (MWS) approach and links them with their 'fundamentalist' successors from the mid-twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries. This way, the author seeks to redress the Eurocentric bias that sometimes sneaks into the MWS perspective.

While there are numerous studies dealing with each of these reformers, the original contribution of this book is to provide a systematic comparison between them and to interpret them within a larger theoretical framework. It will be of interest for scholars and students working on issues related to religion, modernity and historical sociology.

1 Islam

Salafiyya

Islam

Together with Judaism and Christianity, Islam is one of the three ‘Abrahamic’ religions whose origins lie in what is today called the Middle East. As the reference to Abraham (or Ibrahim, as he is known to Muslims) indicates, these three religions share quite a few things with each other – not only many of their major mythical protagonists but also the basic creed that salvation is to be found through faith in one, and only one, God. Like Christianity, but unlike Judaism, Islam is a universal religion keen to convert; like Judaism, but unlike Christianity, Islam puts strong emphasis upon specified rules concerning both worship and human affairs.

The core of Islam is the belief in a transcendental God whose unity is not compromised by any internal divisions, such as the Christian Trinity or the existence of lesser gods. However, Muslims do believe in supernatural beings like angels. Again and again, God has sent prophets to humanity, among them Nuh (Noah), Ibrahim and Musa (Moses); for Muslims, ‘Isa (Jesus) was also a prophet rather than the son of God. Muhammad (c. 570–632), who received his revelations in Arabia during the early 7th century, was the last of these prophets. The prophetic message includes the warning of a final judgement, when the dead will be resurrected and allocated their place in the afterlife, i.e. heaven or hell, according to their good and bad deeds when alive. There is a tension between the notions of qadar (divine predestination on who will and will not be saved) and human free will to choose between good and evil, which has been subject to theological controversies. The bulk of those theologists belonging to the Sunnis (the majority branch of Islam) rather emphasizes the former notion while scholars of the minority Shi’is tend to stress the latter. In terms of ritual, Islam requests a number of ‘ibadat (acts of worship), the most important being the five pillars: first, the testimony that there is only one God and that Muhammad is His prophet; second, the five daily prayers; third, fasting during the month of Ramadan; fourth, giving a specified alms tax; and fifth, doing the pilgrimage to Mecca, the town of the Prophet, at least once during one’s life. The sacred scriptures of Islam are the qur’an and the hadiths. The former is believed to be the speech of God directly revealed to the Prophet in the Arabic language; the latter consists of traditions about the sayings and doings of the Prophet and his close companions. While there is unanimity about what counts as a verse of the qur’an, there is no complete consensus among Muslims about which specific hadith can be considered genuine.

The core group of Islam is the ‘alims, who are the theological and legal scholars interpreting the sacred scriptures. The outcome of their interpretations, the shari’a (‘Islamic law’), distinguishes human actions into those which are obligatory, recommended, neutral, reprehensible and forbidden. Besides the scriptures, this codex is based upon a number of supplementary considerations. One is qiyas (analogy). To use a well-known illustration: the qur’an forbids the drinking of wine. Since this prohibition is referring to wine’s intoxicating character, one can extrapolate that other alcoholic drinks not mentioned in the scriptures are likewise not allowed. Other considerations include ijma’ (the consensus of the legal scholars on a particular issue) and maslaha (the welfare of the Muslim community). Among the Sunnis, there are four legal schools going back to the 8th and 9th centuries. Since then, the process of ijtihad, i.e. the independent interpretation of the scriptures by referring to the previous considerations, was seen to be completed. Instead, the later Sunni ‘alims practiced taqlid, i.e. following the previous scholars unquestioningly. The Shi’is have their own two legal schools going back to the 8th century. Among them, ijtihad continued to be practiced.

The original split between Sunnis and Shi’is revolved around the question of who would be the leader of the Muslim community. Upon the time of his death, the prophet Muhammad, then based in Medina, had become the ruler of a substantial portion of the Arabian Peninsula, and during the subsequent century, the Muslims founded an empire stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus river. Divine revelation had come to an end with the passing away of the Prophet. However, nominal headship of the Muslim community rested in the office of the khalifa (‘Caliph’), i.e. the successor of the Prophet. Between 632 and 661, four close companions of the Prophet succeeded each other as khalifa, the last one being his cousin and son-in-law ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib (r. 656–661). Later on, Muslims idealized this phase as the rule of the four rashidun, i.e. ‘rightly guided’. Upon this supposedly golden age followed the dynasties of the Umayyads in Damascus (661–750) and the ‘Abbasids in Baghdad (750–1258), whose members were descendants of Muhammad’s segmentary unit (or ‘tribe’), the Quraysh. This line of Caliphs is recognized by the Sunnis. However, the Shi’is assert that, as the Prophet’s closest male relative, ‘Ali should have been Muhammad’s successor from the beginning and that his descendants, and not the Caliphs, were the legitimate rulers of the Muslim community under the title imam. The Shi’is are divided into three major sub-branches. The biggest among them, the Twelvers, recognize twelve imams, beginning with ‘Ali. They believe that the twelfth of them went into occultation in 872, continues to live in hiding and will return before the end of the world.

Besides the more theologically and legally oriented approach to Islam, there is also the mystical one, called sufism. There are several sufi orders based around master-pupil relationships. Sufis use specific rituals (for example, the famous ‘whirling dervishes’) to get themselves into a spiritual state close to God. They also tend to make use of an allegorical, rather than literal, interpretation of the scriptures. The more extreme among the sufis reject the shari’a in favour of their direct access to God. Prominent sufis, but sometimes also other important persons not connected to sufism, are popularly believed to be saints. A believer may ask a saint, whether alive or dead, to intercede with God in his or her favour. These instances of saint worship stand in potential tension to mainstream Islam’s emphasis upon the unity and uniqueness of God. A synthesis between mainstream, scholarly Islam and more moderate versions of the sufi approach was achieved by Abu-Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058–1111). Another approach to Islam at variance with the mainstream was that of the philosophers. They were inspired by Aristotelean and Neo-Platonic Ancient Greek thought, which they combined with the tenets of Islam. According to them, reason and divine revelation were two different, but equally valid, ways to get access to the truth. Like the sufis, with whom they sometimes overlapped, the philosophers based their claims upon allegorical interpretations of the scriptures. After the 13th century, Greek-inspired philosophy fell from favour in the Sunni branch of Islam but continued to flourish among the Shi’is.

Over the centuries, Islam has become the majority religion in North Africa and Southwest Asia as well as in substantial parts of West Africa, Central Asia, the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. The unitary Islamic state ruled by the ‘Abbasid Caliphs broke up into several components during the 9th and 10th centuries. This politically fragmented Islamic world suffered the invasions of the Crusaders (late 11th to mid-13th century) and of the Mongols (13th century), after which its centre shifted from Baghdad to Cairo. During the Early Modern period, the dar al-Islam (house of Islam) was dominated by three impressive gunpowder empires: the Ottoman Empire ruling over Southeast Europe and most of North Africa and Southwest Asia; the Safavid Empire encompassing what is today Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia; and the Mughal Empire dominating the bulk of the Indian Subcontinent. However, by the mid-19th century, their days of glory were gone: he Safavid Empire had collapsed and been replaced by the rule of the Qajar dynasty over Persia, the Mughals had become mere figureheads for de facto British colonial rule over India and the Ottoman Empire suffered territorial losses against both European great powers and separatist uprisings in the Balkans.¹

Islam clearly qualifies as a religion within the Weberian parameters mentioned earlier. It centres on the belief in one God, who is the creator and maintainer of the universe and who confronts the believers with ethical requirements. Islam recognizes a line of prophets, with Muhammed being the last. Strictly speaking, the ‘alims are religious scholars and not priests but many of their activities, like leading the prayer or preaching, come close to a priestly function. In terms of theodicy, there is the belief in the last judgement and (at least among the Sunnis) a strong emphasis upon predestination. Islam’s message is about salvation, which can be achieved through one’s own activities (the five pillars) and – in the case of the sufis – mystical contemplation; at the same time, faith is given prime importance. Side by side with stressing the other-worldly rewards and punishments, Islam has a this-worldly element, providing rules for everyday life through the shari’a.

Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838–1897)

Persian, not Afghan, origins

The name ‘al-Afghani’ is not a family name in the Western sense but literally denotes the geographical origin of its holder. In fact, even though Jamal ad-Din usually claimed that he was from Afghanistan, both Persian and British documents have proven that he was born and grew up in Persia. This also means that he was born a Shi’i – a fact that he preferred to hide when active in countries with Sunni majorities. At the same time, his mother tongue was Farsi, Persia’s major language. Since a dialect of Farsi is also spoken by many Afghans, who are mainly Sunnis, it made sense for Jamal ad-Din to claim Afghan origins. Significantly, neither in Persia nor in Afghanistan itself did he make these claims.²

Jamal ad-Din was born in 1838 in a village in north-western Persia. His father belonged to the highly respected status group of the sayyids, who trace their descendance back to the Prophet. While in terms of profession he was a middling farmer, the father seems to have been well-connected with several prominent Shi’i scholars. Young Jamal ad-Din studied under some of them, first at Qazvin and Teheran in Persia and later at Najaf in what is today Iraq. Apparently, Jamal ad-Din faced hostility on the part of many scholars at Najaf. The reasons given by different sources are his studying philosophy; his charismatic personality, which allegedly made some people believe that he was no one else but the twelfth imam; and his lax approach to Islamic rituals. However, the main reason may have been his interest in Shaykhism, a heterodox group within the Shi’is, out of which later Baha’...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Islam: Salafiyya
• 2 Hinduism: Arya Samaj
• 3 Confucianism: Kung-yang
• Coda: An ideal type of modernist religious reformers
• 4 Centrist liberalism
• 5 Antisystemic movements
• 6 Positivism
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Index