Muhammad Abduh’s correspondence with Taylor confirms the picture suggested by earlier glimpses of his religious views, of a man whose understanding of Islam was highly unusual. It does not suggest an atheist, though atheism was to be found in Beirut. Adib Ishaq, the Christian member of the Afghani group who had edited Misr and Al-Tijara in Cairo and had been in Paris when Muhammad Abduh arrived there, had died in Beirut at the age of twenty-eight, while Muhammad Abduh was still in Paris. Known for his dissolute lifestyle, and having refused the attentions of a priest on his deathbed, Ishaq was initially refused a Christian burial by the Church, on the grounds that he was an atheist.
RISALAT AL-TAWHID
Muhammad Abduh’s lectures from the Sultaniyya were published as Risalat al-tawhid (“Essay on theology”), and are often called in English “The Theology of Unity” – tawhid means “unity” as well as, approximately, “theology.” This is now Muhammad Abduh’s most famous work, but its fame is mostly posthumous. It was published in a small edition in Cairo in 1897, and seems then to have attracted little attention. It was republished after his death, in 1908, and since then has been frequently reprinted, as well as translated into French, English, and other languages. The 1908 edition, however, differed in several ways from the 1897 edition, as the editor removed or toned down Muhammad Abduh’s more unusual passages. The comments below relate to the original edition.
Despite its title, Risalat al-tawhid is not really about theology. It is about Islam and Muslims in the modern world, and in effect argues for an Islamic Enlightenment or an Islamic Reformation. It is a religious work, then, if not a theological one. It is addressed to the sort of Muslim who Muhammad Abduh was teaching at the Sultaniyya – Muslims who knew European languages, studied modern European philosophy and science and history, and who needed to find a way of being progressive and rationalist and Muslim at the same time. Otherwise, as Muhammad Abduh wrote, some Muslims might look at the ignorance of the Muslim ulema and turn away from Islam, regarding it as “a kind of old thobe in which it is embarrassing to appear” – a thobe being the old-fashioned robe still worn by the poor, but no longer used by the educated. Ishaq was probably not the only atheist in Beirut. His atheism became generally known only as a result of the Church’s initial refusal to bury him; the atheism of others probably remained concealed.
Muhammad Abduh was not the only teacher at the Sultaniyya who addressed modern Muslims. One of the directors of the school, Husayn al-Jisr, also wrote on Darwin, in his Risala hamadiyya fi haqiqat al-diyana al-islamiyya wa haqiqat al-shari’a al-muhammidiyya (“Essay on the truth of the Islamic faith and the truth of the Muhammadan sharia”). Al-Jisr argued that Islam does not contradict science and that “so long as you believe that God is the creator, whether or not you believe that all of His creatures were created at once or gradually in evolutionary stages, your faith as a Muslim remains uncorrupted.” Risalat al-tawhid may be unusual in an Islamic context, then, but was less unusual in the context of the Sultaniyya.
Risalat al-tawhid starts somewhat philosophically. After arguing that Islam was at its origin identical with reason, even if this relationship was later destroyed, Muhammad Abduh deduces the existence of God from the need for a prior cause, and argues that God can be known rationally. Reason cannot penetrate the divine essence, however, which is one reason for revealed religion.
Moving from philosophy to sociology, Muhammad Abduh argues that although humans – who have free will – could in theory act rationally, judging the value of acts on the basis of their consequences, in practice they often act foolishly or ignorantly, once again giving rise to a need for revealed religion to guide them. Not only is revealed religion necessary, but the revelation of religion through human agents is also possible. Just as some men are cleverer than others and grasp immediately things that it takes other men ages to understand, some “see the things of God as if by natural vision.” These are the prophets.
Religion deals with things of the spirit, not with everyday things – it has no bearing on astronomy, for example, although it may establish general principles in such areas as economic life. Religion has certainly led to social discord, but actually has a positive and constructive social function, especially for the masses, whom it makes content, industrious, submissive, and respectful. The argument here echoes Afghani’s emphasis on the social utility of religion in his Haqiqat-i mazhab-i naichun. It is not so much that religion is justified by its social usefulness, as that it is not to be condemned as a social evil.
After thus establishing the necessity, possibility, and positive social function of religion, Muhammad Abduh turns to the case of Islam. The Prophet Muhammad came at a time of general collapse and disarray, bringing arguments that convinced people by their rational force, and a Quran than convinced people by its logic. The result was Islam, which freed humanity from irrationality and exploitation, and provided the basis of civilization, a pattern for the good life. This might be difficult to believe, looking at Muslims now, and seeing their ignorance, laziness, dishonesty, and disunity, not to mention the way that they lack all independence, following tyrants and enslaving others. This, however, is because of what happened afterwards. Theological disputes first led Muslims to turn away from reason, making room for the adoption of strange and false beliefs, which finally led to a situation where “complete intellectual confusion afflicted the Muslims under ignorant rulers.” However, a return to the true Islam of the first Muslims, the salaf who had been cited by the earlier reformers that Muhammad Abduh may have encountered in Damascus, might once again establish a rational civilization, and a good life.
Muhammad Abduh was more concerned to explain and promote his version of “true”Islam than to justify it. Earlier ulema had devoted much time to questions of interpretative methodology, on the basis that the right methodology would lead to the right interpretation. Most classic methodologies gave equal weight to the Quran and to the hadith, the reports of the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad. Some Indian reformers – including the followers of Ahmad Khan whom Afghani had attacked in Haqiqat-i mazhab-i naichun – had proposed greater reliance on the Quran than on the hadith, partly as a result of doubts raised by European Orientalist scholarship concerning the authenticity of many of the hadith. Muhammad Abduh did not spend much time on these methodological questions, but he too preferred to emphasize the Quran. He argued, relatively briefly, that the hadith should be used much more carefully than was generally the case. Only those whose authenticity was beyond all doubt should be accepted, while ensuring that they either made sense or were understood in a way that made sense.
According to Muhammad Abduh, a careful reading of the Quran shows that men are free and equal. Man was liberated by true Islam “from the bonds that tied him to the will of others”– of rulers and masters, of those who pretend to represent God – and also from the illusion that divine power might be inherent in “tombs, stones, trees, [or] stars.” True Islam asks man to work according to his abilities, and gives him the fruit of his labors. It forbids taqlid (strict adherence to precedent), and encourages the use of reason, giving man “independence of will and independence of opinion and thought,” the very qualities that “one of the Western sages” (in fact, Guizot, though he is not named) found to be the basis of European civilization. True Islam also includes rational worship. Islam makes clear the nature of man and society, showing the courses of action that lead to unfortunate consequences for individuals, and the transgressions that lead to disaster for societies. The salaf lived by these principles, and prospered. Others foolishly supposed that prosperity could be achieved by prayer and intercession, and did not prosper. Finally, Islam gives the poor some right to the property of the rich, eliminating social envy, and forbids the origins of several major social evils – alcohol, gambling, and usury.
Certain major misconceptions about Islam are also addressed. One concerns violence, a major issue in the nineteenth century just as it is today. As well as arguing that the
revelation of the Prophet Muhammad triumphed by virtue of its logic, Muhammad Abduh specifically denies any use of force – by avoiding all mention of the armed struggle between the Prophet and the early Muslims on the one hand, and the reluctant polytheists of Mecca on the other. Although he could not avoid reference to the conquest of half the Byzantine Empire and the whole of the Persian Empire by the early Muslims, he attempted to present these as acts of self-defense: the Byzantines and the Persians attacked first, and once conquered were treated with exceptional kindness and fairness. Muslim fighting during the crusades was also defensive, and was anyhow very much to the benefit of Europe, which discovered true civilization in the Muslim world – a discovery which gave rise to the Reformation, which not only advanced European civilization, but also gave rise to Protestantism, a somewhat Islamized (because more rational) form of Christianity.
Another misconception that is addressed is “oriental fatalism,” which many Europeans saw as one of the main causes of the backwardness of the Muslim world. Muhammad Abduh does not disagree that fatalism causes backwardness, and that it is prevalent in the Orient. His argument is that fatalism is not Islamic. He argues that in reality human actions are “derived” from God, “building on capacities given … by God.” For example, it is medicine, given by God, that cures disease – not, by implication, God. God can certainly do things beyond what man can do with what God has already given man, but man has to use what God has given him first.
In some ways, Risalat al-tawhid is more about Muslim history and society than about Islam. It deals with issues such as liberty, independent reasoning, and self-help that were never the concern of the traditional ulema, often using concepts derived from nineteenth-century European thought (especially Guizot) that Muslims of earlier centuries would have had difficulty in comprehending. The contrast between Muhammad Abduh’s work and traditional Muslim scholarship is absolute. The discussions of the necessity of first causes and of predestination use familiar terms and concepts, but to very different ends. The familiar methodology of painstaking exegesis of Quranic texts and of the hadith to derive detailed rules of religious practice is entirely absent – indeed, detailed rules of practice, the main concern of Islamic scholarship for a millennium, are themselves absent, replaced by statements of general principle. Risalat al-tawhid, then, is a thoroughly modern work.
Risalat al-tawhid is well and clearly written, and generally convincing, even though its arguments are sometimes weak. The claim that force played no part in the early history of Islam, for example, is simply a distortion of history. The claim that the Quran convinced by its logic depends on understanding the word balagha as meaning “logic.” The Quran’s balagha had always been accepted as a proof of its authenticity, and this is Muhammad Abduh’s starting point. The term balagha does include a sense of “logic,” but is generally translated into English not as “logic” but as “eloquence,” which is actually closer to the meaning of the Arabic. Stylistic perfection is an important element of balagha, for example. Similarly, Muhammad Abduh asserts that “all Muslims”are agreed that some things can only be understood by reason, and that while some things may be beyond our understanding, nothing in religion is against reason. It would have been more accurate to say that many Persian Shi’i scholars were agreed on this – most Sunni scholars of the time would have flatly disagreed, and to ascribe the view to “all Muslims,” today as in 1885, is contrary to reality. Perhaps Muhammad Abduh’s weakest argument, however, comes in his case for the possibility of prophecy. If a sick person has visions, he asks, why should a prophet not have divine visions? This comparison really works rather better as a condemnation of religion than as a defense of it.
It is interesting to see how Muhammad Abduh deals with the relationship between religions, given the remarkable views on this topic that he expressed in his letter to Taylor. Rather as he did with Taylor, he argues in Risalat al-tawhid for there being a single true religion which emphasizes the existence of one God who should alone be worshiped, and stresses the need to obey certain rules for the general benefit of humanity. The differences between religions, however, are explained somewhat differently – in terms of different developmental stages requiring different types of religion. He avoids a classic evolutionary model, using instead the image of a child growing to maturity. He also rejects racial explanations of development, and reverses the racial and religious hierarchy that Taylor and many others then accepted. In humanity’s infancy, according to Muhammad Abduh, religion consisted of clear commands of the sort that parents use with small children – the reference is clearly to Judaism, though Judaism is not mentioned by name, and echoes one of Afghani’s points in the Journal des débats in 1883. In humanity’s adolescence, a new religion that appealed to human hearts was needed, and so came Christianity. Finally, when humanity came of age, there came at last a religion that addressed reason: Islam. This is not an argument that would have appealed to Taylor. That Muhammad Abduh was presenting two different views on the same topic almost simultaneously suggests a care to adjust the message to the audience that borders on excessive flexibility.
The prescriptions of Risalat al-tawhid have struck some later commentators as overemphasizing the moral elements of reform, and underemphasizing the economic and technological elements that are the focus of today’s development experts. Recent scholarly explanations of the European prosperity and power that Muhammad Abduh evidently hoped to emulate focus not on morality but on demography, capital formation, trade, and industrialization. It should be noted, however, that European observers of the nineteenth century focused less on these factors than on precisely the type of moral factor that interested Muhammad Abduh. Europeans were seen as industrious, organized, and progressive, and non-Europeans as lazy, disorganized, and fatalistic. Muhammad Abduh, then, focused on much the same factors as his contemporaries did. Less moralistic versions of this approach are still found today, for example in the section of development studies which focuses on the impact of culture.
The lectures on which Risalat al-tawhid is based presumably went down well at the Sultaniyya. They presented an Islam that was anything but an embarrassing old thobe. Instead, it became a religion that was not only compatible with progress and progressive values, but which was actually in some ways more suitable for the modern age than the Christianity of the Europeans.
Risalat al-tawhid can be seen as the manifesto of modernist Islam. It draws on Guizot, and on views of progress that Muhammad Abduh had first acquired as a student of Afghani’s, and that he had then refined on the basis of his experiences in Cairo, Paris, and London. In some ways it echoes the vision of “true” Islam that he had presented in the pages of Al-Urwa al-wuthqa, but without the radical political agenda that was found in that newspaper. It is also a complete vision, one that is mature as well as daring. Muhammad Abduh was thirty-six years old when he gave the lectures in question.
THE RETURN TO EGYPT
Although Muhammad Abduh was well established in Beirut, he was not happy there. The Syrians “are not like my own people,” he wrote, “and a day spent here is not like a day spent at home.” Muhammad Abduh was an Egyptian, and wanted to return to Egypt. In 1888, this is what he did.
The Egypt to which he returned was very different from the Egypt he had left six years before. The British occupation that started as a response to the Urabi Revolt had become permanent, and although in theory Egypt remained an autonomous province of the Ottoman Empire under the hereditary rule of the khedive, in practice real power lay with Sir Evelyn Baring, the British consul-general and “agent” from 1883 until 1907. Baring, later ennobled as Lord Cromer (by which name he is better known), was the son of a member of the British parliament from a family of bankers, and had first come to Egypt as the British representative on the Commission of Inquiry established in response to the financial crisis of the 1870s. After spending three years in charge of the finances of the British government of India, he returned to Egypt in 1883 to supervise the
evacuation of British troops, but instead stayed on to reorganize Egyptian finances – a task which extended first to the reorganization of the Egyptian economy and then to the reorganization of the entire Egyptian government. The full evacuation of British troops did not happen until after the Second World War. Baring’s power derived from his control of finances and from the presence of British troops, and operated through the appointment of British “advisers” to various government departments. Although in theory these officials answered to the khedive, who paid their salaries, in practice they reported to Baring.
It was Baring who enabled Muhammad Abduh to return to Egypt, by pressing the khedive to pardon him and restore his employment in the Egyptian government service. The absence of employment was presumably what had been keeping Muhammad Abduh in Syria, since his term of exile from Egypt had expired at the end of 1885, and in theory he could have returned home then. It is not entirely clear how Baring had heard of him, but it is possible that he had read and liked a proposal for educational reform in Egypt that Muhammad Abduh had written in Beirut, rather as he had written proposals on the same topic for the Ottoman government. Muhammad Abduh hoped to return to teaching at the Dar al-Ulum, presumably intending to continue the classes he had been giving at the Sultaniyya in Beirut, but the khedive was unwilling to allow this, presumably because he still saw Muhammad Abduh as politically dangerous on the basis of his activities before and during the Urabi Revolt. Muhammad Abduh was instead appointed a judge in the National Court of First Instance in the provincial town of Banha, halfway between Cairo and Tanta, the town where he had run away from school at sixteen. This was a minor position, but at least it paid a salary that he could live off, and was in Egypt.
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