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1
A Quest for Reason and Freedom
At the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, a group of Muslim scholars, based primarily in Egypt, reflected on the crisis of the Muslim world. Determined to defend their belief in the inerrancy of the Islamic revelation and its ability to serve as an all-encompassing guide also in modern times, they pointed to the absence of scientific and political progression in their societies as the root of that crisis, and offered a unique approach to its resolution. The scholars, associated by work and mentor-student relations, include Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838/9–1897), Husayn al-Jisr (1845–1909), Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905), Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865–1935) and ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854/5–1902). Drawing a historical distinction between Christianity and Islam, and introducing mechanisms for accommodating revelation to new scientific and political concepts, their approach suggested that an Islamic society can be revelation-based without being theocratic and without forfeiting any of the blessings of reason and freedom. This approach was modernist in its recognition that certain Western scientific and political concepts can and must be absorbed into Muslim societies if those societies wish to survive and revive themselves. It was apologetic in its promise that adopting modern concepts does not constitute imitation of the West, but a return to the true message of Islam, a message that safeguards and encourages scientific and political freedoms, which had been abandoned through the ages. No single intellectual contribution has had a prevailing impact on Arab societies as much as has that of the modernist-apologists. And no set of ideas has been misconstrued to the extent that those associated with this group have been.
The modernist-apologists were not the first to recognize that something had gone wrong for the Muslim world. They were also not entirely original in identifying freedom and reason as important assets of Western societies, and in explaining them in Islamic terms. Already since the late eighteenth century, the technological superiority of Western powers had been recognized by Ottoman rulers and politicians and by the autonomous dynasty established by Muhammad ‘Ali in Egypt, and efforts—at times intense—to modernize political, military, economic, judicial and academic institutions were made.
Early attempts at learning from the West paid little attention to socio-political structures and philosophies, focusing instead on technical aspects of Western power. The reasons were other than analytic blindness. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, liberalism and constitutional monarchism were but a few of the several faces of European powers, and were not the only face of any of them. The most liberal and politically stable among those powers, the British Empire, stood for Christian values, missionary zeal and Spartan education as much as for individual freedoms. France’s revolutionary form of secular republicanism witnessed defeat and anarchy after a period of triumph and glory, and for a while, with the return of monarchism, seemed as no more than a tragic historical anecdote.
Already in the 1830s perspectives began to change. In 1826, Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi (1801–1873) was sent by Muhammad ‘Ali to Paris as the imam of a delegation of Egyptian students who studied a variety of fields, from medicine to warfare to agriculture, in the French capital.1 The Quintessence of Paris, the book al-Tahtawi authored on his impressions from his six-year sojourn in the city, described French advancements in science and technology and noted the freedoms enjoyed by the subjects of the country, who, shortly before his return to Egypt, witnessed the 1830 July Revolution and the establishment of a more restricted form of monarchism. For example, Tahtawi noted that in France the king is not above the law, freedom of religion is maintained, and any subject can speak his mind freely so long as he does not break the law.2
While The Quintessence of Paris introduced liberal political concepts to Egyptian readers, there is some exaggeration in Abu-Lughud’s analysis, according to which al-Tahtawi explained French ascendance through the gradual creations of sound political systems based upon freedom and political justice, and the openness to learn from Islam.3 While detailed, al-Tahtawi’s depictions of the French political system are not the main theme of his book, and are descriptive. His interpretation of freedom is rather limited (in one place he equates it with justice, and equates justice with the rule of law and equality before the law).4 There is nothing in his text to suggest that Egypt should adopt the political ways of France or that these are, in essence, the ways of Islam; on the contrary, he emphasized that the laws of the French are not revelation-based.5
Abu-Lughud’s analysis is more apt for a later observer of the West, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (1822–1890). The reform-minded Khayr al-Din was the first president of the Tunisian legislative and executive (yet appointed) Supreme Council that was established in 1860 based on a constitution that he participated in drafting. Following a dispute with Ahmed Bey, the ruler of Tunisia, as to whether ministers should be responsible to the Bey or to the Supreme Council, he resigned in 1862. Having retired for a while from frenetic engagement in political intrigue, he had the opportunity to author The Surest Path to Knowledge Regarding the Condition of Countries.6 In this book, Khayr al-Din, who encountered Western culture firsthand through his sojourn in Paris in 1852–1856, suggested Muslim societies should follow the example of the West.7 He commented that the example of the Prophet teaches that Muslims may learn useful concepts from non-Muslims.8 Learning from the West, however, did not imply, in his mind, blind imitation and neglect of Islam, but rather a reclaiming of a cherished past. Western concepts and achievements, as he depicted them, either have their parallels in Islam or find their roots in Muslim societies. He attributed the economic and scientific rise of the West to its interactions with Muslims in the Middle Ages.9 He praised the freedoms prevailing in the West (including the rule of law, participatory politics and freedom of speech) as the roots of its success, and drew parallels between Islamic norms and Western freedoms (for example, that parallel to participatory politics, Islam established the communal duty to forbid what is wrong).10 All that, he believed, had little to do with Christianity, for better or for worse; in his mind, liberal political structures emerged in the West independently of Christianity, because it separates between religious and worldly affairs.11
The modernist-apologists, starting most prominently with ‘Abduh, took these ideas a step further. They, too, attributed the failures of Muslim societies to their neglect of rationalist scientific pursuit and political freedom. Yet they also drew a direct link between the diminishing role of religion in the West and its ascendance. They came to the conclusion that the strong position of Western societies was due to a scientific revolution that had rationalized explorations of the natural world and freed them from the arbitrary interventions of religious authorities, and to a political revolution that had made decision-making more inclusive, restricted the powers of rulers, and separated Church and state. This view was encouraged, in part, by several French and Arab liberal analyses, which they read and debated, and that convincingly made the case for the separation of religion, science and politics as being the cornerstone of national ascendance in the Christian world.
Following the English occupation of Egypt in 1882, the crisis of Islam as a comprehensive system that was able to satisfactorily address all the problems of life became all the more evident, and called for radical solutions. The recognition that the Powers that dominated the Middle East ascended whilst transforming from revelation-based to doubt-based orders produced a great sense of distress. The originators of the modernist-apologetic approach to scientific and political freedom strongly believed that there was God, that He had sent to humanity a final Prophet, and that the final Prophet provided humanity with a final revelation and with Prophetic examples, all of which are absolute truths that must serve as the premise for conduct in all aspects of life, including the scientific and the political. These truths were the bases of their education and the compasses that directed their personal lives and their conduct as intellectual and public figures. Nothing they saw in their interactions with Western texts or societies changed their absolute conviction that these long-held truths were, indeed, absolute truths. But if the experience of the West instructed that science, technology and politics were greatly advanced only after the Church lost its power to delegitimize ideas, what were the implications for Muslim societies? Perhaps that those societies, too, must become doubt-based?
This option was inconceivable for the early modernist-apologists. It clashed with their deep faith in the revelation as an inerrant, all-encompassing, universally binding guide. To give up one’s identity in order to protect it from elimination made no sense. Herein lay the conundrum they faced. Western Powers had come to dominate the East as a result of a process that limited the authority of religious texts. But if Muslim societies were to do the same in order to reassert their independence, they would no longer be truly Muslim or truly independent, at least not in the sense in which the modernist-apologists understood these terms.
The solution to what seemed an unsolvable paradox was the drawing of a theological and historical distinction between Christianity and Islam that introduced theological discussions, historical narratives and interpretive mechanisms to make the case for the feasibility and desirability of an Islamic revelation-based society that was guided by reason and freedom no less, and in fact more, than the doubt-based West. The modernist-apologists Islamized modernity as a means of making a case for the possibility of modernizing Muslim societies without relinquishing revelation as the foundation of the mind and of social life. They argued that whereas Christianity is an irrational faith, the truths of Islam can and must be ascertained through reason, and thus embracing them is not a matter of blindly adhering to traditional metaphysical beliefs, but of abiding by the dictates of logical thinking. They further argued that whereas Christianity is hostile to science and to freedom, Islam encourages and protects both, and was the conveyer of empiricist methods and political liberties to the Christian world; and that whereas many modern scientific discoveries are incompatible with the Christian revelation, Islamic revelation either anticipates those discoveries, or allows for reinterpretation that ensures that revelation and science never conflict.
The promise of an Islamic revelation-based society that will be as strong as, and in fact stronger than, any doubt-based Western society is a promise to meld the best of all worlds without giving anything up: tradition and modernity, a life of virtue and an afterlife of reward, faith and reason, authenticity and reform. While this promise is far-reaching, the theses and narratives on which it rests are not radical (as opposed to the potential revolutionary implications of applying the approach to actual scientific and political issues). The modernist-apologists asserted, rather than challenged, the traditional notions of Islamic revelation as a perfected, universal message, that is appropriate for all times and places. As will be demonstrated in this chapter, the most vital mechanism they introduced for assuring the compatibility of modern concepts and Muslim revelation—the notion that the revealed passages can be accommodated to anything science proves—finds its roots in medieval Muslim orthodoxy. Thus, despite the novelty of specific arguments and conclusions the modernist-apologists made, it was difficult even for rivals who deemed their ideas outrageous to classify them as heretics.
According to a tradition narrated by ‘Abdallah b. ‘Umar, the Prophet said: “The best people are those living in my generation, and then those who will follow them, and then those who will follow the latter. Then there will come some people who will bear witness before taking oaths, and take oaths before bearing witness.” The tradition implies that the closer Muslims were to the days of the Prophet, the better their conduct was. It is a basis for the consensus among Sunni jurists that the first three generations of Islam—the Prophet’s Companions (sahaba), the following generation (al-tabi‘in), and the generation after that (tabi‘ al-tabi‘in), known collectively as the pious ancestors (salaf)—provide the example which all Muslims should follow and, thus, are the ultimate reference. The genius of the early modernist-apologists was to associate modern concepts with the times of the salaf. Their overarching argument was that an understanding of Islam that is true to its roots, i.e., to the days of the Prophet and the salaf, cherishes free scientific investigation, allows accommodation of the revelation, forbids political despotism and commands political participation. Still, as noted by Henri Lauzière, while from the late 1910s until the 1990s academic literature, first in French and later in other discourses, described al-Afghani, ‘Abduh and their disciples as leaders of a salafi modernist trend in Islam, the term salafiyya hardly resonates in al-Afghani’s and ‘Abduh’s works.12 In contemporary popular and academic discourses, the term has been almost monopolized by the Saudi Wahhabi religious establishment and groups that identify with certain aspects of its creeds while challenging others. This is cause for much terminological confusion, all the more so because contemporary modernist-apologists also associate their views, albeit not in a prominent way, with this term.
A Prevailing Legacy
The foundational texts of the modernist-apologetic school were authored in li...
