This essay provides an interpretation of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī, a controversial figure in nineteenth-century Islamic political thought. One aspect of this controversy is the tension between “Refutation of the Materialists,” Afghānī's well-known defense of religious orthodoxy, and a short newspaper article entitled “Reply to Renan” that dismisses prophetic religion as dogmatic and intellectually stifling. In this essay I argue that close attention to Afghānī's theory of civilization helps resolve this apparent contradiction. Afghānī's interest in Ibn Khaldūn and the French historian Guizot is well known, but has not been fully explored in the literature. I suggest that understanding Guizot's distinctive approach to the concept of civilization illuminates Afghānī's writings on the political utility of religion. Afghānī was an ardent anti-imperialist and his goal was to encourage reform in Islamic countries while resisting Western hegemony. He concluded that the tension between prophetic religion and critical thought could help Islamic civilization to flourish.
Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press); Jennifer Pitts, A Turn to Empire: The Rise of Liberalism in Britain and France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004); Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
2.
Leela Gandhi, Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (New York : Columbia University Press, 1998 ).
3.
Perhaps the best known example of this criticism is Mahatma Gandhi's early essay Hind Swaraj. In Hind Swaraj, Gandhi argued that Indians would not achieve independence if they modeled their society on the British, since Western civilization was the cause of degradation and ruin. See Mohandas Gandhi, "Hind Swaraj," in The Penguin Gandhi Reader, ed. Rudrangshu Mukherjee (New York: Penguin, 1993), 15. See also Bhikhu Parekh, Colonialism, Tradition and Reform: An Analysis of Gandhi's Political Discourse (London: Sage, 2000).
4.
Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn al-Afghānī, "The Truth about the Neicheri Sect and an Explanation of the Neicheris," in An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn "al-Afghānī," trans. Nikki R. Keddie and Hamid Algar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). Hereafter cited as Afghānī, "The Truth about the Neicheri Sect."
5.
For an interpretation emphasizing this argument, see Elie Kedourie, Afghānī and `Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London: Cass, 1966).
6.
For example, Afghānī implies that prophetic religion is necessary to foster social order through religious law. Ibn Khaldūn explicitly denies this position; in The Muqaddimah he concludes, This proposition of the philosophers is not logical, as one can see. Existence and human life can materialize without (the existence of prophecy) through injunctions a person in authority may devise on his own or with the help of a group feeling that enable him to force the others to follow him wherever he wants to go. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958), 93. I would like to thank Thomas Pangle for drawing my attention to this passage.
7.
This essay relies on the following primary sources in translation: six important essays that are translated by Nikki Keddie in An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn "al-Afghānī" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); two dozen newspaper articles and letters by Afghānī as well as reports about Afghānī, translated into French by Homa Pakdaman in her book Djamal-ed-din Assad Abadi dit Afghānī (Paris: G. P. Maisonneuve et Larose, 1969); thirteen additional newspaper articles translated by Marcel Colombe into French. These appeared in the journal Orient, issues 21-25 (1962). One of the classic secondary sources is Albert Hourani's Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798-1939 (London: Cass, 1962).
8.
There are debates about the best terms for the different strands of Arabic and Islamic political thought. Hisham Sharabi prefers the term "Islamic Reformism" to describe the position formulated by Afghānī and developed by `Abduh. See Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West: The Formative Years, 1875-1914 (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970). The most common term is probably Islamic Modernism. See Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad `Abduh (London: Russell and Russell, 1968).
9.
See Nikki Keddie, Sayyid Jamāl ad-Dīn"al-Afghānī,": A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
10.
In this essay, I use the term radical instead of fundamentalist for two reasons. First, following Bobby Sayyid I think that the term fundamentalist primarily marks that which seems alien, threatening, and inassimilable to the West. Second, scholars have suggested that the term is confusing and imprecise because many Islamic radicals employ novel and allegorical readings of scripture that depart from traditional interpretations. The term "radical" communicates two key elements of contemporary Islamist movements: a return to roots and also a sense of dramatic change. See Bobby Sayyid, A Fundamental Fear: Eurocentrism and the Emergence of Islamism (London and New York: Zed Books, 1997); Evrand Abrahamian, Khomeinism (London: IB Tauris, 1993).
11.
See Nikki R. Keddie , Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Iranian Tobacco Protest of 1891-1892 (London: Cass, 1966), 15-27.
12.
Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism.
13.
See Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit, Occidentalism: The West in the Eyes of its Enemies (New York: Penguin Press, 2004); Cemil Aydin, "Between Occidentalism and the Global Left: Islamist Critiques of the West in Turkey," Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 26, no. 3 (2006): 446-61.
14.
One example of this approach was the Khayr al-Dīn, The Surest Path, trans. Leon Carl Brown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967).
15.
Binnaz Toprak, Islam and Political Development in Turkey (Leiden: EJ Brill, 1981).
16.
For a particularly harsh assessment of the incoherence of Islamic modernism (which he calls Islamic reformist) in general and Afghānī in particular, see Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, 6-7. Kedourie suggests that given the conditions of "oriental despotism" it is futile to even expect the kind of coherence that Western intellectuals aspire to. See Afghānī and `Abduh, 2. Finally, Sylvia G. Haim concludes that Afghānī was basically a political activist and opponent of religion who use professions of faith strategically. See the introduction to Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964).
17.
Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 57-73. See also Aziz Ahmad, "Sayyid Ahmad Khān, Jamāl al-din al-Afghānī and Muslim India," Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).
18.
Afghānī, " The Truth about the Neicheri Sect," 141.
19.
On Islamic Philosophy, see Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004).
20.
Muhsin S. Mahdi , Alfarabi and the Foundation of Islamic Political Philosophy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
21.
Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 114.
22.
See for example, Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York : Penguin, 1982).
23.
Afghānī, " The Truth about the Neicheri Sect," 142.
24.
I would like to thank one of the anonymous referees for making this point.
25.
Afghānī, " The Truth about the Neicheri Sect,"142.
26.
Ibid.
27.
Ibid., 147.
28.
Ibid., 146.
29.
For an excellent overview of the contemporary scholarship on Afghānī in the Arabic world, see Rudi Matthee, "Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and the Egyptian National Debate," International Journal of Middle East Studies21, no. 2 (1989): 151-69.
30.
Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage , 1979), 133.
31.
Afghānī, "Answer of Jamāl ad-Dīn to Renan," in An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 187. Hereafter cited as Afghānī, "Answer of Jamāl ad-Dīn to Renan."
32.
This is the reading emphasized by Kedourie in Afghānī and `Abduh.
33.
Afghānī, " Answer of Jamāl ad-Dīn to Renan," 184.
34.
Ibid., 187.
35.
See especially Kedourie, Afghānī and `Abduh, 45. As evidence, Kedourie cites the following passage from a letter from `Abduh to Afghānī: "We regulate our conduct according to your sound rule: we do not cut the head of religion except with the sword of religion."
36.
Sharif al-Mujahid, Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī: His Role in the Nineteenth-Century Muslim Awakening, master's thesis, McGill University, April 1954. For a more negative assessment, see Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, 24-52.
37.
G.A. Cohen, If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You are So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000 ).
38.
Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West, 30.
39.
Edward Said, Orientalism.
40.
For an interesting example of this method applied to the inconsistencies in American political ideologies, see George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
41.
Afghānī, " Answer of Jamāl ad-Dīn to Renan," 187.
42.
Ibid.
43.
Ibid.
44.
Roxanne L. Euben, "A Counternarrative of Shared Ambivalence: Some Muslim and Western Perspectives on Science and Reason," Common Knowledge 9, no. 1 (2003): 61. In Euben's early work, she calls Nikki Keddie's argument that Afghānī may have been criticizing actually existing Islam and promoting his more philosophical variant "particularly plausible." See Roxanne L. Euben, Enemy in the Mirror: Islamic Fundamentalism and the Limits of Modern Rationalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 103.
45.
Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 114.
46.
For a discussion of these two dimensions of the concept of civilization, see John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Society (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977).
47.
See Daniel O'Neill, The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate: Savagery, Civilization, and Democracy (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State Press, 2007), 42; Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
48.
According to the Scottish historian William Robertson, "Commerce tends to wear off those prejudices, which maintain distinction and animosity between nations. It softens and polishes the manners of men." Cited in O'Neill, The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate, 42.
49.
Afghānī, "Unité et Souveraineté ou Concord et Victoire," trans. Marcel Colombe, Orient22 (1962): 126.
50.
Afghānī, " The Truth about the Neicheri Sect," 169.
51.
Afghānī, " Answer of Jamāl ad-Dīn to Renan," 182.
52.
Birgit Schaebler , "Civilizing Others: Global Modernity and the Local Boundaries (French/German, Ottoman, and Arab) or Savagery," in Globalization and the Muslim World: Culture, Religion, and Modernity , ed. Birgit Schaebler and Leif Stenberg (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2004). The Muqaddimah was translated into Turkish in 1749 and was known among the Turkish imperial bureaucracy in the nineteenth century. It was also printed in Cairo in 1858.
53.
Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, trans. Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1958). For an alternative view that reads Khaldūn as a sophisticated chronicler of North African history rather than a social theorist, see Aziz al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation (London: Routledge, 1990).
54.
The similarities may not be a coincidence. At least one scholar has argued that Ibn Khaldūn's ideas may have influenced Montesquieu. See Warren E. Gates, "The Spread of Ibn Khaldūn's Ideas on Climate and Culture," Journal of the History of Ideas 28, no. 3 (1967): 415-22.
55.
Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, 282-85.
56.
Ibid., 286-90.
57.
Ibid., 318-21.
58.
In vol. 1, chap. II, section 26, Ibn Khaldūn argues that "Arabs are the least willing of nations to subordinate themselves to each other. . . . But when there is religion (among them) through prophecy or sainthood, then they have some restraining influence in themselves" (The Muqaddimah, 305). In several passages, however, Ibn Khaldūn emphasizes that religion in not a necessary precondition of civilization. See note 6 above.
59.
Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 55; Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 132.
60.
Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 114. For an interesting discussion of developmental history in relation to John Stuart Mill's writing on imperialism, see Uday Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).
61.
See for example Mansoor Moaddel, "Conditions for Ideological Production: The Origins of Islamic Modernism in India, Egypt, and Iran," Theory & Society30, no. 5 (2001): 695.
62.
I am not using the term "influence" because it is difficult to establish whether Guizot influenced Afghānī or if, instead, Afghānī endorsed Guizot's ideas because they reinforced his own pre-existing views.
63.
See O'Neill, The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate.
64.
See Christopher J. Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997); Ronald Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
65.
Guizot argues that the causal arrows go in both directions. In the first lecture, Guizot states, "If we address ourselves to the history of the world, we shall receive the same answer. We shall find that all the great developments of the internal man have turned to the profit of society; all the great developments of the social state to the profit of individual man." See Francois Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe (New York: Penguin, 1997), 20.
66.
There has been some scholarly debate about whether the historiography of the Scottish Enlightenment was based on a materialist theory. For evidence in favor of this view, see Meek, Social Science and the Ignoble Savage. For an overview of some criticisms of this view, see Berry, Social Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment. According to Larry Siedentop, Guizot was influenced by the "stadial" approach to history but modified it considerably to create a more pluralist account that emphasized the relationship between political institutions, social structures, and ethical values. See his introduction to Francois Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe (New York: Penguin, 1997), xx.
67.
For an excellent account of Guizot's thought, see Aurelian Craiutu, Liberalism Under Siege: The Political Thought of the French Doctrinaires ( New York and Oxford: Lexington Books, 2003).
68.
Guizot, The History of Civilization in Europe, 21.
69.
Ibid., 109.
70.
Ibid., 156.
71.
"(The Reformation) was a great movement of the liberty of the human mind, a new necessity for freely thinking and judging, on its own account, and with its own powers, of facts and ideas which hitherto Europe had received, or was held bound to receive, from the hands of authority." Ibid., 203.
72.
Afghānī, " The Truth about the Neicheri Sect," 172.
73.
See Mahdi, Alfarabi, 45. According to the Mu'tazilites, revelation functions to provide guidance to individuals without the time, ability, or inclination to achieve knowledge through reason.
74.
See Ernest Dawn, "From Ottomanism to Arabism: The Origin of an Ideology,'" Review of Politics 23, no. 3 (1961): 386.
75.
Afghānī, " Answer of Jamāl ad-Dīn to Renan," 187.
76.
Ibid.
77.
See Simone Chambers, "How Religion Speaks to the Agnostic: Habermas on the Persistent Value of Religion," Constellations 14, no. 2 (2007): 210-23; Jürgen Habermas, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, ed. Eduardo Mendieta (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002).
