Muhammad Abduh

by Mark Sedgwick

  INTRODUCTION TO POLITICS

  After graduating with his alimiyya degree in 1877, at the age of twenty-eight, Muhammad Abduh was entitled to teach at the Azhar, which he did for two years until 1879, when he was banished from Cairo as a result of his political activities. Probably through the intervention of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s patron Mustafa Riyad Pasha, he was also employed to teach at the rival Dar al-Ulum, a smaller institution that had been established five years earlier as a teacher training college on contemporary French lines, as part of a general reform of education that was one of the major projects of the new khedive, Ismail. Muhammad Abduh also held a third teaching post, at the Khedival School of Languages, where he taught Arabic. The duties attached to these teaching posts were evidently not excessive, since Muhammad Abduh still had time for journalism, and for participation in Afghani’s political activities.

  Muhammad Abduh continued to dress as an Azhari, wearing the turban of a religious shaykh rather than the fez that was becoming the standard wear of the modern government official or intellectual, generally worn with European dress or with military uniform. His activities over the years following his graduation, however, had little or nothing to do with Islam. Although he would later became world famous as a religious figure, we catch only occasional glimpses of his own stance on religious questions during this period.

  Though he did not himself play a leading role in either journalism or politics between 1877 and 1879, Muhammad Abduh was a member of a group that tried to take advantage of the deteriorating position of the khedive to replace khedival absolutism with constitutional representative government. He participated at close quarters in extraordinary events that must have had a deep impact on a man in his late twenties, and shifted his attention from mystical Islam and philosophy to politics.

  MUHAMMAD ABDUH’S TEACHING

  The classes for which Muhammad Abduh is remembered were on philosophy, history, and what would now be called sociology and political science. At the Azhar, where teachers still selected their own texts, he taught the Tahdhib al-akhlaq (“Training in ethics”) of Ahmad ibn Miskawayh, and a translation of the History of Civilization in Europe of François Guizot. These were both highly unusual works. Ibn Miskawayh was a remarkable historian and philosopher of the tenth century who drew deeply on the Greek tradition, notably on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, as well as on Islam. Guizot was even more remarkable.

  Now generally remembered only as a nineteenth-century French prime minister, Guizot was once extraordinarily famous as a historian, appointed professor of modern history at the Sorbonne at the age of twenty-five. His History of Civilization in Europe followed the basic model of historical development with which most non-specialist Westerners today are familiar, and with which historians today would in part disagree. According to this model, the rational light of the ancient world was lost at the start of the dark ages, replaced by “theocratic” government that extinguished reason. Then came the Reformation, which Guizot called “the insurrection of the human mind against absolute power in the intellectual order.” Two further developments showed the way to the civilized ideal of liberal pluralism – the revolution against the absolutism of King Charles I in England that led ultimately to representative government, and the Enlightenment in France that led to the rediscovery of reason.

  What Guizot added to this narrative was a focus on social and intellectual history, and on the complex relationship between them and political history. Such an approach is fairly standard nowadays, but was pioneering in 1828, when Guizot’s book was first published. The bureaucratic centralization of eighteenth-century France, for example, was seen by Guizot as leading to a deterioration in the character of individual Frenchmen – the political influencing the social. The exposure of the crusaders to new ideas in the East was seen as leading to an opening of the European mind, and so to an increase in liberty and an improvement in the character of individual Europeans – the intellectual influencing the political and the social.

  The History of Civilization in Europe was important for the development of the thought of Alexis de Tocqueville, of John Stuart Mill, and of Karl Marx. It was also important for the development of the thought of Muhammad Abduh, who accepted not only Guizot’s historical narrative, but also many of his other views – the negative impact on the individual of absolutism and “theocratic” rule, for example, and the positive impact on society as a whole of individual reason. Guizot, who opposed the attempt of the Bourbon Restoration to re-establish a version of the social and political system that had existed in France before the French Revolution, had a political agenda when he wrote his History of Civilization in Europe. Both book and author took a very clear side in the culture wars that split France for most of the nineteenth century. Muhammad Abduh seems to have adopted a political agenda that was not much different from Guizot’s, perhaps encouraged by echoes of Guizot in some of the classic Islamic texts he knew.

  At the Dar al-Ulum, Muhammad Abduh taught Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima, the work on the philosophy of history to which he had previously been introduced by Afghani. On the basis of these lectures, he wrote his third book, Falsafat al-ijtima wa al-tarikh (“The philosophy of society and history”), the manuscript of which was lost when he was banished in 1879. It probably applied Guizot’s model to Arab history. Certainly, when Muhammad Abduh turned again to Arab history in about 1885, Guizot’s influence is very visible in the Risalat al-tawhid (“Essay on theology”).

  POLITICS

  Mehmet Ali had been an absolute ruler, and Egyptian politics had since then been mostly court politics. An opportunity for others to intervene in the political process, however, was provided by the gradual erosion of the Khedive Ismail’s power in the face of increasing European intervention after Egypt defaulted on her international debt in 1876. This default led to the creation of a Commission of the Public Debt, which included representatives of foreign banks, and to joint European and khedival control over the revenues raised by the Egyptian Railways and the Port of Alexandria. A Commission of Inquiry, established in April 1878, started by investigating the possibility of confiscating some of the khedival estates, and ended as almost a shadow government. As the khedive progressively lost control of Egypt’s finances to the Commission, a number of leading politicians began to promote their own solutions to Egypt’s financial problems, and also to promote their own visions for Egypt’s political future, often in opposition to the khedive, and sometimes in cooperation with the French and British governments. One of the first major figures to go into opposition was Afghani’s patron Mustafa Riyad Pasha, who had been appointed to the Commission of Inquiry by the khedive, but soon began to operate independently.

  The exact nature of Afghani’s relationship with Riyad during this period is not known. It seems that he moved from supporting Riyad to promoting his own agenda, carrying with him the group of followers that included Muhammad Abduh. Although Afghani had been involved in education in Istanbul and had been passing his time in Cairo teaching young men such as Muhammad Abduh, he was first and foremost interested in politics. Before moving to Istanbul, he had been a close adviser to Muhammad Azam Khan, prince of Kabul and ruler of much of Afghanistan, until the prince was displaced by his half-brother Shir Ali. After leaving Cairo, Afghani would again be involved in politics at a high level in Persia, and then finally would be carefully excluded from politics by the Ottoman sultan, who treated him with honor but placed him under house arrest. Afghani’s ability to gain quick access to the highest political circles in several different countries is striking, and hard to explain. He was later described by a pupil of Muhammad Abduh as “a revolutionary whose patriotic spirit descended from Garibaldi and whose hatred of existing institutions, and inclination towards radical means, descended from Bakunin,” but neither Garibaldi nor Bakunin enjoyed Afghani’s easy access to princes and crowned heads.

  FREEMASONRY

  Afghani’s entry into Egypt’s political life came partly through his r
elationship with Riyad, who played a leading political role, and partly through his membership of a key Masonic lodge, the Kawkab al-Sharq (“Star of the East”), to which he had been introduced in 1875 by Raphael Borg, a Maltese who was serving as the British vice-consul in Cairo and who was the master of the District Grand Lodge. Afghani was already a member of an Italian Masonic lodge.

  Freemasonry had become popular across Europe during the eighteenth century. It was in theory a voluntary and philanthropic brotherhood that stood above religion and politics. It was also secret, both with regard to details of the membership of individual lodges and with regard to the rituals and discussions that happened inside them. The rituals, which have become known in several versions, are elaborate. Their symbols relate on the one hand to the craft of the stone mason and architect, and on the other to moral and ethical qualities. They are both a means of instruction and a focus for reflection. While in one sense these rituals are definitely religious, they are not specific to any religion. Except in Scandinavia, Freemasons are not required to be Christians.

  Discussions in Masonic lodges take two forms: formal discussions in a set place during a long ritual, and informal discussions among members of a lodge after a ritual has been completed, often over dinner. For Masonic purposes, it is the formal discussions that matter; for general purposes, the informal discussions may matter more. Sometimes they are purely social, but sometimes they are the occasion for making arrangements of various sorts between men who may be rich or powerful, and who know they can trust each other. Many of Afghani’s fellow members of the Kawkab al-Sharq were both rich and powerful.

  Freemasonry is nowadays considered by most Muslims to be something definitely un-Islamic that no Muslim should be involved in, but this view was not held among the Muslim elites of Egypt and the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century. Views on the compatibility of Freemasonry and of Christianity have also varied from time to time and place to place. Freemasonry had first become established in Egypt during the reign of Mehmet Ali with the foundation of several lodges answering to the Grand Orient in Paris, led briefly by Prince Muhammad Abd al-Halim, a son of Mehmet Ali who hoped to succeed Ismail as khedive until Ismail changed the rules of succession in favor of his son Tawfiq. Banished in 1868, Prince Abd al-Halim became a persistent opponent of both Ismail and, later, Tawfiq.

  Afghani’s lodge, Kawkab al-Sharq, had been established under the United Grand Lodge of England in 1871, joining eight other “English”lodges and the earlier “French”lodges. It was unusual in that it carried out its proceedings in Arabic rather than a European language. Its members included the khedive’s son and heir Prince Tawfiq, leading politicians such as Muhammad Sharif Pasha, a graduate of the French St. Cyr military academy who had served as a minister in several Egyptian governments, and grandees such as Butrus Ghali Pasha (a descendant of whom later became secretary general of the United Nations) and Sulayman Abaza Pasha (whose descendants remain rich and influential in Egypt even today). Several of Afghani’s circle joined this lodge with him, including Muhammad Abduh and Saad Zaghlul. As a result, Muhammad Abduh – in his late twenties, the son of a small farmer from a village in the Delta – found himself in close contact with the highest of Egypt’s elite. Such social mixing is not unusual in Masonic lodges, since it is a key principle of Freemasonry that all Masons are equal brothers within the lodge, irrespective of differences of class or religion.

  The enthusiastic participation of Egyptians such as Muhammad Abduh in Freemasonry was later explained by Alexander Broadley, a British Freemason and the lawyer who defended Muhammad Abduh and others after the failure of the Urabi Revolt:

  The Egyptian patriots found a strange fascination in the mystic tie which was to unite all men in the common bond of liberty, and believed the same machinery which had helped the Italians in their struggle for freedom and unity would materially assist the Egyptian cause.

  Broadley’s explanation is probably the right one. Although the English lodges were often conservative and part of the establishment, others were not. Freemasonry is in theory non-political, but there is no ban on the promotion of general human welfare, an activity that can often take very political forms. Since Freemasons take their vows of secrecy very seriously, Masonic lodges lend themselves well to revolutionary activity – they are very hard for outsiders, including spies, to penetrate. As Broadley recalled, Freemasonry had been central to the efforts of the Italian revolutionaries during the Risorgimento. It would later play a similar role for the Turkish revolutionaries of the Committee of Union and Progress who took power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908. In the end, it never played quite such a role in Egypt, but through the members of the Kawkab al-Sharq, it came close to such a role. Afghani, then, was trying to use Freemasonry in a way that it had already been successfully used before, and would be successfully used again.

  THE OPPOSITION PRESS

  The most visible activity of Afghani’s group was in the field of journalism, then in its infancy in Egypt. Afghani encouraged Yaqub Sannua, a playwright who had once been welcomed as “Egypt’s Molière” by the khedive, to start a satirical political newspaper, Abu naddara al-zarqa (“Mr Sunglasses” – a reference to Sannua’s own nickname). This was only the fourth private newspaper in Egypt’s history, and only one of the other three, Al-Ahram (“The pyramids,” established in 1875), had survived for more than a few issues. Abu naddara was the first newspaper ever to use the colloquial Arabic spoken by normal Egyptians rather than the less-accessible formal language of scholarship. It was also the first Egyptian newspaper to publish cartoons, and was remarkable for its biting satire. Although it only survived for fifteen issues before it too was closed down, it invented Egyptian popular journalism.

  Abu naddara was extraordinarily popular, which was one of the reasons Ismail banned it and sent Sannua into exile. It was replaced almost immediately, however, by Misr (“Egypt”). Misr was started by Adib Ishaq, a Freemason who had studied under Afghani with Muhammad Abduh, using a permit to publish obtained with the help of Riyad. Misr was thus more tightly connected to Afghani and Riyad than Abu naddara had been. It became the leading opposition newspaper, probably surviving because the increasing weakness of Ismail’s position made it impossible for him to close it.

  Misr was joined by several other papers, all of which were edited by followers of Afghani: Al-Tijara (“Commerce”), also edited by Ishaq, in 1878, Mirat al-sharq (“Eastern mirror”) in 1879, edited first by Salim Anhuri and then by Ibrahim al-Laqqani, and Misr al-fatat (“Young Egypt”), again edited by Ishaq. By 1879, then, almost the whole of the Egyptian press – other than Al-Ahram and the official government papers – was edited by followers of Afghani, with contributions by others in the group. Muhammad Abduh, for example, wrote in Al-Tijara and Mirat al-sharq, as did Abdallah al-Nadim and Salim al-Naqqash, who coined the famous slogan “Misr li’l-Misriyyin” (“Egypt for the Egyptians”), which was still in use seventy years later, and remains well known today.

  All these newspapers took much the same line: on behalf of the oppressed ordinary citizen, they attacked the khedive and the foreign bankers and governments who were increasingly taking control of Egypt’s affairs, especially the British government. They argued for an Egyptian renaissance against both despotism and foreign rule. They were remarkably radical for the period. Adib Ishaq wrote with approval of all enemies of “despotism and the tyranny of tradition” who attempted to “light the way for liberty.” He approved not only of the French Revolution of 1789, but also of contemporary revolutionaries everywhere, including those who would today be called terrorists, and were then as generally condemned as terrorists are today, though different words were then used. He praised Prussian socialism and Russian Nihilism. He welcomed the shooting of a Russian chief of police in 1877 by the young female Nihilist Vera Zasulich, and attempts on the life of the German kaiser and the shah of Persia. The attempt on the life of the shah that he welcomed was made by Babis, members of a Persian religiou
s movement that later gave rise to the Baha’is. The Babis were in violent conflict with the Persian state as a result of that state’s attempts to suppress them, but even so were and are generally understood as a religious rather than a political movement. For Ishaq, however, they were a “manifestation of the fire of liberty in the East.”

  Afghani wrote mostly against the British, whose imperialism he had seen at first hand as a young man in India, and also wrote cautiously in favor of the Russians and French, who he evidently saw as a counterbalance to the British. He also stressed the need for unity across religions against the common European threat, referring approvingly to Hindu–Muslim unity in India during the Mutiny of 1857, and criticizing the way in which followers of different religions “split their community and incite division and animosities.”Founders of religions, such as Zoroaster, Jesus, and Muhammad, in contrast called for “the recognition of the origin of truth – that is, God – and the call to virtue and the practice of good.” This rather utilitarian view of religion was not unusual in Europe in the late nineteenth century, but was as unusual in Egypt as was Adib Ishaq’s praise for Russian Nihilism.

  Although this opposition press referred to religion – as in the article by Afghani just referred to, and as when Al-Tijara argued that “patriotism is a religious duty, and defense of the homeland is jihad” – it was in no way Islamic. Sannua was a Jew, and Abib Ishaq (whose newspaper called for jihad) and Salim al-Naqqash were both Syrian Christians. This Christian presence was partly because many Syrian Christians had moved to Egypt in search of opportunity, and partly because modern political doctrines were especially attractive to religious minorities in the Muslim world. The older Ottoman conception of the community, which was primarily religious, excluded them, while the newer European conception of the nation that ignored religion included them. Jihad fought on behalf of the homeland was obviously a more attractive idea to a Christian than jihad fought on behalf of Islam.