No God But God

by Reza Aslan

  Despite his name, al-Afghani was in fact not an Afghan. As his excellent translator, Nikki Keddie, has shown, al-Afghani was actually born and raised in Iran, where he received a traditional Shi‘ite education in the Islamic sciences. Why he decided to pose alternately as a Sunni Muslim from Afghanistan or as a Turk from Istanbul is hard to say. In light of Shah Wali Allah’s popular puritan movement, which had reached all corners of the Muslim world, al-Afghani may have considered it expedient to hide his Shi‘ite identity so as to disseminate his reformist agenda more widely.

  At the age of seventeen, al-Afghani left Iran for India to supplement his religious education with the so-called Western sciences. The year was 1856. Nearly two thirds of the Subcontinent was under the direct control of the British Empire. The economic policies of the East India Company and its various affiliates had allowed Britain to annex vast tracts of native-owned property. Regional rulers had been forcibly deposed and the peasantry stripped of their meager earnings. All through the country, rebellion was brewing.

  At first, al-Afghani seemed unconcerned with the momentous events taking place around him. As his earliest biographer, Salim al-Anhuri, notes, he was too engrossed in his academic studies to concern himself with the plight of the Indian population. But the following year, when Indian grievances erupted into open rebellion, al-Afghani was suddenly roused to action. The young man was traumatized not only by the violence with which the British reasserted their control, but by the hypocrisy they showed in preaching such exalted Enlightenment values while cruelly stifling Indian appeals for liberation and national sovereignty. His experiences in the Subcontinent engendered in his heart a lifelong loathing of the British and a single-minded devotion to freeing the Muslim world from the yoke of European colonialism, which he considered to be the gravest threat to Islam.

  Yet al-Afghani rarely spoke of Islam in religious terms. Perhaps his greatest contribution to Islamic political thought was his insistence that Islam, detached from its purely religious associations, could be used as a sociopolitical ideology to unite the whole of the Muslim world in solidarity against imperialism. Islam was for al-Afghani far more than law and theology; it was civilization. Indeed, it was a superior civilization because, as he argued, the intellectual foundations upon which the West was built had in fact been borrowed from Islam. Ideals such as social egalitarianism, popular sovereignty, and the pursuit and preservation of knowledge had their origins not in Christian Europe, but in the Ummah. It was Muhammad’s revolutionary community that had introduced the concept of popular sanction over the ruling government while dissolving all ethnic boundaries between individuals and giving women and children unprecedented rights and privileges.

  Al-Afghani agreed with Sayyid Ahmed Khan that the Ulama bore the responsibility for the decline of Islamic civilization. In their self-appointed role as the guardians of Islam, the Ulama had so stifled independent thought and scientific progress that even as Europe awakened to the Enlightenment, the Muslim world was still floundering in the Middle Ages. By forbidding rational dialogue about the limits of law and the meaning of scripture, the Ulama, whom al-Afghani likened to “a very narrow wick on top of which is a very small flame that neither lights its surroundings nor gives light to others,” had become the true enemies of Islam.

  But al-Afghani was no member of the Aligarh. In fact, he considered Sayyid Ahmed Khan a tool of the colonialist powers for his doting emulation of European ideals. As far as al-Afghani was concerned, Europe’s only advantages over Islamic civilization were its technological advancements and its economic prowess. Both of these attributes would have to be developed in the Muslim world if Islam were to regain its former glory. But the only way to achieve lasting social, political, and economic reform in the region would be to contemporize those enduring Islamic values that had founded the Muslim community. Merely imitating Europe, as Ahmed Khan would have Muslims do, was a waste of time.

  Al-Afghani’s burgeoning political ideology was reinforced during his tenure as a member of the Educational Council in the Ottoman Empire. There, al-Afghani came into contact with a passionate group of Turkish reformers dubbed the Young Ottomans. Led by a handful of writers and academics, the most famous of whom was the brilliant poet and playwright Namik Kemal (1840–88), the Young Ottomans had developed an intriguing reformist agenda based on fusing Western democratic ideals with traditional Islamic principles. The result was a supernationalist project, commonly referred to as Pan-Islamism, whose principal goal was the encouragement of Muslim unity across cultural, sectarian, and national boundaries, under the banner of a single, centralized (and obviously Turkish) Caliphate—in other words, the revival of the Ummah.

  Al-Afghani enthusiastically embraced the philosophy of the Young Ottomans, especially their call for the rebirth of the united Muslim community—one that included Shi‘ites and Sufis as equal members—in order to combat European imperialism. In 1871, bolstered by his newfound faith in the prospects of Pan-Islamism, al-Afghani went to Cairo—then as now the cultural capital of the Muslim world—ostensibly to teach philosophy, logic, and theology, but in truth to implant his vision of the Modernist agenda into the political landscape of Egypt. It was in Cairo that he befriended a zealous young student named Muhammad Abdu (1845–1950), who would become Egypt’s most influential voice of Muslim reform.

  Born a fellah in a small village on the Nile Delta, Abdu was an extremely devout boy who by the age of twelve had memorized the whole of the Quran. As a young disciple of the Shadhili Sufi Order, he had excelled in his studies of the Islamic sciences, so much so that he was sent to al-Azhar University in Cairo to continue his education. But despite his piety and indefatigable intellect, Abdu immediately clashed with the rigid pedagogy and traditionalist teachings of al-Azhar’s Ulama. At the same time, he was struck by the ways in which Europe’s lofty principles were so blatantly contradicted by its colonialist agenda.

  “We Egyptians,” he wrote, “believed once in English liberalism and English sympathy; but we believe no longer, for facts are stronger than words. Your liberalness we see plainly is only for yourselves, and your sympathy with us is that of the wolf for the lamb which he designs to eat.”

  Disenchanted with his religious and political leaders, Abdu became an avid disciple of al-Afghani and, under his tutelage, published a number of books and tracts advocating a return to the unadulterated values of the salafs (“the pious forefathers”) who founded the first Muslim community in Medina. Labeling himself a “neo-Mu’tazilite,” Abdu called for the reopening of the gates of ijtihad, or independent reasoning. The only path to Muslim empowerment, he argued, was to liberate Islam from the iron grip of the Ulama and their traditionalist interpretation of the Shariah. Like Sir Sayyid, Abdu demanded that every man-made source of law—the Sunna, ijma, qiyas, and the like—must be subject to rational discourse. Even the holy Quran must be reopened to interpretation, questioning, and debate from all sectors of Muslim society. Muslims do not need the guidance of the Ulama to engage the sacred Revelation, Abdu argued; they must be free to experience the Quran on their own.

  While Abdu did not believe that Islam need separate its religious ideals from the secular realm, he categorically rejected the possibility of placing secular powers in the hands of religious clerics, whom he deemed totally unqualified to lead the Muslim community into the new century. What was needed instead was a reinterpretation of traditional Islamic ideals so as to present modern democratic principles in terms that the average Muslim could easily recognize. Thus, Abdu redefined shura, or tribal consultation, as representative democracy; ijma, or consensus, as popular sovereignty; and bay’ah, or the oath of allegiance, as universal suffrage. According to this view, the Ummah was the nation, and its ruler the Caliph, whose sole function was to protect its members by serving the welfare of the community.

  Together, al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu founded the Salafiyyah movement, Egypt’s version of the Modernist project. After al-Afghani’s death, Abdu joined forces wi
th his close friend and biographer, Rashid Rida (1865–1935), to push the Salafiyyah’s reformist agenda to the forefront of Egyptian politics. Yet, despite its growing popularity throughout the region, the ideal of Pan-Islamism, which was at the heart of Abdu’s reformist project, remained exceedingly difficult to implement.

  The problem with Pan-Islamism was that the spiritual and intellectual diversity that had characterized the Muslim faith from the start made the prospects of achieving religious solidarity across sectarian lines highly unlikely. This was particularly true in light of the rising Islamic puritan movement, which sought to strip the religion of its cultural innovations. What is more, large and powerful groups of secular nationalists throughout the Middle East found the religious ideology behind the Salafiyyah movement to be incompatible with what they considered the principal goals of modernization: political independence, economic prosperity, and military might. Ironically, many of these secular nationalists were inspired by al-Afghani’s brand of Islamic liberalism. In fact, Egypt’s most influential nationalist, Sa‘d Zaghlul (1859–1927), began his career as a disciple of Muhammad Abdu.

  But while Zaghlul and his nationalist colleagues accepted the Salafiyyah’s vision of “Islam as civilization,” they rejected the argument that imperialism could be defeated through religious solidarity. One need only regard the petty squabbles of the Ulama to recognize the futility of the Pan-Islamist project, they argued. Rather, the nationalists sought to battle European colonialism through a secular countermovement that would replace the Salafiyyah’s aspirations of religious unity with the more pragmatic goal of racial unity: in other words, Pan-Arabism.

  Practically speaking, Pan-Arabism was deemed easier to achieve than Pan-Islamism. As one of its leading proponents, Sati al-Husri (1880–1968), reasoned, “Religion is a matter between the individual and God, while the fatherland is the concern of us all.” Nevertheless, the Pan-Arabists considered their movement to be both political and religious because, in their view, Islam could not be divorced from its Arab roots. To quote the nationalist ideologue Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz, “The most glorious pages of Muslim history [are also] the pages of Arab history.” Thus, while Pan-Arabists agreed with the Pan-Islamists that Muslims must return to the values of the original community in Medina, they defined that community as uniquely Arab. Muslim unity, it was claimed, could not be realized except through Arab unity, and Pan-Arabism was seen as “the practical step which must precede … Pan-Islamism.”

  Of course, the Pan-Arabists had a difficult time defining what exactly they meant by Arab unity. Despite their claims of racial solidarity, there is simply no such thing as a single Arab ethnicity. Egyptian Arabs had practically nothing in common with, say, Iraqi Arabs. The two countries did not even speak the same Arabic dialect. In any case, regardless of the Ummah’s Arab roots, the fact is that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Arabs accounted for the tiniest fraction of the world’s Muslim population—as little as 20 percent. In response to such obstacles some nationalists sought to connect themselves with the ancient cultures of their home countries. For example, Egyptian nationalists appealed to an imagined Pharaonic legacy, while Iraqi nationalists strove to return to their Mesopotamian heritage.

  The Arab nationalists were given an unexpected boost at the end of the First World War, when the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the hands of Kemal Ataturk. The Caliphate that had, despite its declining powers, symbolized the spiritual unity of the Ummah for nearly fifteen centuries was suddenly replaced by a radically secular, ultranationalist Turkish republic. The Empire was broken up by the victors of the war, particularly Britain, into individual, semi-autonomous states. In Egypt, Britain seized the opportunity to sever all ties with the Turks, simply declaring itself the country’s sole protector. The khedive was declared king of Egypt, though he was still a puppet of the colonialists.

  With the Caliphate dismantled and Egypt firmly under British occupation, Pan-Islamism was discarded as a viable ideology for Muslim unification. And though Pan-Arabism was thus left as the principal voice of opposition to colonialism, it could no longer hope to extend beyond national boundaries. Muslims were being forced to identify themselves as citizens of nations, not members of a community. With Pan-Islamism waning and Pan-Arabism powerless as a political force, it was left to a new generation of Muslims, led by the charismatic young socialist Hasan al-Banna (1906–49), to revive not only Egyptian aspirations for liberty and independence but the aspirations of Muslims throughout the Middle East to shake free the chains of colonialism and Western imperialism.

  Hasan al-Banna came to Cairo in 1923 to pursue a higher degree in education. Profoundly influenced by the mystical teachings of al-Ghazali, al-Banna had joined the Hasafiyyah Sufi Order at a young age in order to dedicate his life to preserving and renewing the traditions of his faith and culture. Later, as an ardent and bright university student, al-Banna devoured the works of al-Afghani and Muhammad Abdu, feeling, as they did, that the decline of Muslim civilization was the result not only of foreign influence, but of a lack of dedication on the part of Egyptians to the original principles of Islam preached by Muhammad in Medina.

  In Cairo, al-Banna was struck by the depravity and rampant secularism that had gripped the city. Traditional Islamic ideals of egalitarianism and social justice had been swept aside by the unbridled greed of the country’s political and religious élites, most of whom eagerly colluded with the British colonialists in exchange for wealth and status. Foreigners controlled all channels of government and maintained a monopoly over Egypt’s economy. Cairo had become a virtual apartheid state where small pockets of tremendously wealthy Europeans and Westernized Egyptians ruled over millions of impoverished peasants who labored on their lands and cared for their estates.

  Al-Banna appealed to the Ulama at Egypt’s al-Azhar University, but found them to be as ineffectual and irrelevant as the Modernists had accused them of being. Yet he was convinced that the Modernist enterprise was misguided in its attempts to adopt what he called “the social principles on which the civilization of the Western nations has been built.” Al-Banna also rejected the nationalist ideology of Pan-Arabism, considering nationalism to be the principal cause of the murderous world war that had just ended. In the end, al-Banna concluded that the only path to Muslim independence and self-empowerment lay in reconciling modern life with Islamic values—a process he referred to as “the Islamization of society.”

  In 1928, al-Banna carried his vision of Islamization to his first teaching post in the small village of Ismailiyyah, near the Suez Canal. If the Canal was the crowning achievement of the colonialist system in Egypt, Ismailiyyah represented the depths to which Arabs had sunk under that system. This was a region teeming with foreign soldiers and civilian workers who lived in luxurious gated communities that towered over the squalid and miserable neighborhoods of the local residents. Street signs were in English, cafés and restaurants segregated, and public spaces peppered with markers warning “no Arabs.”

  The iniquity and humiliation facing the residents in a region that was generating such colossal wealth for the British Empire enraged al-Banna. He began preaching his message of Islamization in parks and in restaurants, in coffee shops and in homes. The young and dispossessed, all those who felt betrayed by their feeble government and their ineffectual religious leaders, flocked to al-Banna and his simple message that “Islam is the answer.” Eventually, what began as little more than an informal grassroots organization dedicated to changing the lives of people through social welfare was formalized into the world’s first Islamic socialist movement.

  “We are brothers in the service of Islam,” al-Banna, then only twenty-two years old, announced at the first official meeting of his group, “hence we are the Muslim Brothers.”

  The influence of the Society of Muslim Brothers on the Islamic world can hardly be exaggerated. Al-Banna’s Islamization project quickly spread to Syria, Jordan, Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, Sudan, Iran, and Yemen. Islamic so
cialism proved to be infinitely more successful than either Pan-Islamism or Pan-Arabism in giving voice to Muslim grievances. The Muslim Brothers vigorously tackled issues that no one else would address. Matters such as the increase in Christian missionary activity in the Middle East, the rise of Zionism in Palestine, the poverty and political inferiority of Muslim peoples, and the opulence and autocracy of Arab monarchies were common themes in the Brothers’ preaching.

  Perhaps the most significant aspect of al-Banna’s movement was that it represented the first modern attempt to present Islam as an all-encompassing religious, political, social, economic, and cultural system. Islam, in al-Banna’s view, represented a universal ideology superior to all other systems of social organization the world had known. As such, it demanded a distinctly Islamic government—one that could properly address society’s ills. Yet al-Banna did not believe it was his duty to impose this ideology on the current political system in Egypt. The Muslim Brothers was a socialist organization, not a political party: its principal concern was reconciling hearts and minds to God so as to alleviate human suffering, not bringing about a political revolution. True to his Sufi upbringing, al-Banna was convinced that the state could be reformed only by reforming the self.

  Al-Banna’s apolitical sentiments did not spare him the ire of the government. In 1949, at the behest of Egypt’s khedive and undoubtedly with the encouragement of the colonialist leadership, al-Banna was assassinated. But while this act may have silenced the leader of the Muslim Brothers, it strengthened the Society itself, so that by the 1950s, it had become the most dominant voice of opposition in Egypt, boasting nearly half a million members. It therefore could not be ignored by the burgeoning anticolonialist, anti-imperialist rebellion that had been looming for years in the ranks of Egypt’s armed forces.