The Life of the Mind

C h a p t e r 8n o t e s b y D e n i s B a š i ć

NAHDA19th century Arabic literary renaissancean attempt to rejuvenate Arabic literature, to recover it from inhitat (decline) simplifying forms of expressionextending the reach of their works among Arabic speakersinfusing new formssimilar ventures were undertaken by Turkish and Persian belletristsmore often than not, intellectuals who identified with nahda were Syrian and Lebanese Christians in the country and abroadthey represented only a small fraction of all Arab writers

Khalil Gibran

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THE PROPHETGibran's best-known work is The Prophet, a book composed of 26 poetic essays. During the 1960s, “The Prophet” became especially popular with the American counterculture and New Age movements. “The Prophet” remains famous to this day, having been translated into more than 20 languages.Juliet Thompson, one of Khalil Gibran’s acquaintances, said that Gibran told her that he thought of `Abdu'l-Bahá, the leader of the Bahá'í Faith in his lifetime, all the way through writing “The Prophet.” `Abdu'l-Bahá's personage also influenced Jesus, The Son of Man, another book by Gibran.Besides nahda, other intellectual and religious movements emerged in the indirect response to the effects of integration into the world market and peripheralization, defensive developmentalism, and imperialism. Let us mention two movements that originated in Persia - Babism and Baha’ism.

Read The Prophet

BabismThe Babism (bä´bĬzəm), system of doctrines proclaimed in Persia in 1844 by Ali Muhammad of Shiraz. Influenced by the Shaykhi Shiite theology that viewed the Twelve Imams as incarnations of the Divine, Ali Muhammad proclaimed himself the Bab, the living door to the twelfth Imam and the knowledge of God, and sent missionaries throughout Persia. He also announced a series of revelations, detailing the cosmogonic sequence, abrogating Islamic obligations and replacing them by a new set, structured around esoteric concepts such as the importance of the number 19. The year was hence divided into 19 months of 19 days each; the community was led by a council of 19 members. The movement placed special emphasis on the coming of the Promised One, who would embody all the tenets of the new religion. In 1848 the movement declared its complete secession from Islam and all its rites; upon the accession of a new shah, the Babi (the Bab's followers) rose in insurrection and were defeated. Many of the leaders were killed, and the Bab was executed at Tabriz in 1850. Two years later, after an attempt on the life of the shah, there followed more persecutions. In 1863 the Babi were removed to Istanbul and later to Edirne and Cyprus. After 1868 one group had its center in Acre under the leadership of Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri (known as Baha Ullah), the founder of the Baha'i faith, who declared himself the Promised One.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. | 2013

BAHA’ISM from the Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed, 2013

BAHA'ISM, religion founded by Baha’ Allah /Glory of God/ (born Mirza Huseyn Ali Nuri) and promulgated by his eldest son, Abdul Baha’ (1844-1921). It is a doctrinal outgrowth of Babism, with Baha’ Allah as the Promised One of the earlier religion. Baha'ism holds that God can be made known to man through manifestations that have come at various stages of human progress; prophets include Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, the Bab, and Baha Allah. Baha'is believe in the unity of all religions, in universal education, in world peace, and in the equality of men and women. An international language and an international government are advocated. Emphasis is laid upon simplicity of living and upon service to the suffering. The teachings spread in the 20th cent., particularly in Africa. The center of the faith in the United States is the great house of worship at Willamette, Ill. The administrative center of the world faith is in Haifa, Israel, the site of Baha’ Allah's tomb. There are some 5 million Baha'is in the world, with the largest communities in India and Iran. Prior to the Iranian revolution (1979) there were about 1 million Iranian Baha'is, who, despite widespread societal discrimination, had generally prospered. Under the Iranian Islamic republic, which regards the religion as an Islamic heresy, Baha'i religious institutions were closed and property confiscated. Baha'is were removed from government posts, thousands were imprisoned, and several hundred were executed.

New Movements & Success

In order for the new religious movements to be successful, their vision of political community had to be compatible with the world system of nation states and the modern world economy.

Some movements attempted to reform the society by reforming Islam. Can that be done? And how?

TWO Sources of the Decline of the Islamic World

Some criticized the tendency of the Muslims to blindly follow the teachings of earlier generations of religious scholars (from the 11th century). The harshest among them condemned their predecessors for misinterpreting or falsifying the original precepts of Islam that included ijtihad (reasoning), which had to be harnessed again to revise Islam and make it applicable to the contemporary conditions. These are Islamic Modernists.

Others accused later Muslim societies themselves of corrupting the islamic precepts by mixing Islam with folk customs, such as saint worship, mysticism, and divination (prophesying the future by supernatural means.) These are the Salafis, also often called Islamists.

SUFISvs.

SALAFIS

Sufism = Islamic Mysticism Sufism, mystical Islamic belief and practice in which Muslims seek to find the truth of divine love and knowledge through direct personal experience of God. It consists of a variety of mystical paths that are designed to ascertain the nature of humanity and of God and to facilitate the experience of the presence of divine love and wisdom in the world.

Though the roots of Islamic mysticism formerly were supposed to have stemmed from various non-Islamic sources in ancient Europe and even India, it now seems established that the movement grew out of early Islamic asceticism that developed as a counterweight to the increasing worldliness of the expanding Muslim community; only later were foreign elements that were compatible with mystical theology and practices adopted and made to conform to Islam.

Sufism = Islamic Mysticism 2By educating the masses and deepening the spiritual concerns of the Muslims, Sufism has played an important role in the formation of Muslim society. Opposed to the dry casuistry (the use of clever but unsound reasoning) of the lawyer-divines, the mystics nevertheless scrupulously observed the commands of the divine law.

The Sufis have been further responsible for a large-scale missionary activity all over the world, which still continues. Sufis have elaborated the image of the Prophet Muhammad —the founder of Islam—and have thus largely influenced Muslim piety by their Muhammad-mysticism.

Without the Sufi vocabulary, Persian and other literatures related to it, such as Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Sindhi, Pashto, and Punjabi, would lack their special charms. Through the poetry of these literatures, mystical ideas spread widely among the Muslims.

In some countries Sufi leaders have been also active politically.

For more on Sufi teachings, check our website.

SALAFISThe Salafis are those critics of the previous generations who advocated using the first Islamic community called al-salaf al-salih (pious ancestors) established by Muhammad in Medina as a model for the political and moral regeneration.

Salafis disregarded all other sources, but the Qur’an and Hadith.

They advocate تَْقليد /taqlid/ - unquestioned imitation of the first Islamic community surrounding Prophet Muhammad.

Do not forget that all Islamic movements - Islamic modernists and Sufis, as well as Islamists - claim that they are true to the original message of Muhammad

Therefore, there would be no اجتهاد /ijtihad/ (the consensus إجماع ijma/ of the community based on reasoning).

But, this is easier said than done!

Challenges

Was it acceptable to use the telegraph to transmit the sighting of the new moon marking religious holidays?

Did the digging of artesian wells violate the injunction of forbidding Muslims from drinking of standing pools of water?

How should Muslims respond to the dictate of their colonial rulers? (predetermination/fatalism or free will)

TURUQ - Sufi NetworkingTURUQ (pl. of TARIQA - path) - Sufi (Islamic Mystical) orders. Turuq (associations) were used for centuries to connect initiates with their spiritual guides. According to Gelvin, in the 19th century, some members of tariqas were merchants or artisans who joined the order to find solution to common problems. The leaders of tariqas traveled around the Islamic empires collecting the knowledge about the current social and political issues and discussing the possible solutions with other leaders. Hence, besides being highly spiritual and even mystical, the Sufis are also pragmatic and political, more or less so depending on their specific order, place and time where they live.

Sanusiyya TariqahA political-religious organization in Libya and Sudan founded in Mecca in 1837 by Muhammad bin Ali al-Sanusi (1791-1859), known as the Grand Sanusi. Sanusi was concerned with both the perceived decline of Islamic thought and the weakening of the Islamic world. His call for political activism was influenced by the Wahhabi movement in Arabia, to which he eclectically added some Sufi teachings from several different Sufi orders. The Sanusis unsuccessfully fought (1902-13) French expansion in the Sahara, and in 1911 the Italian invasion of Libya forced them to concentrate there. During World War I they attacked British-occupied Egypt. A grandson of the Grand Sanusi became King Idris I of Libya in 1951. In 1969, the king was overthrown by a coup led by Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi. A third of the population in Libya, and fewer in Sudan, are still affiliated with the Sanusi organization.

WAHHABISM... is a reform movement in Islam, originating in Arabia; adherents of the movement usually refer to themselves as Muwahhidun [unitarians]. It was founded by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab (c.1703-1791), who was influenced by another Islamic theologian, Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) and taught that all accretions to Islam after the 3d cent. of the Muslim era—i.e., after c. 950—were spurious and must be expunged. This view, involving essentially a purification of the Sunni sect, regarded the veneration of saints, celebration of Prophet Muhammad’s birthday, ostentation in worship, and luxurious living as the chief evils. Accordingly, Wahhabi mosques are simple and without minarets, and the adherents dress plainly and do not smoke tobacco or hashish. The male adherents wear long beards with no or very short mustache and often pants the length of about one foot from the ground. Their female adherents are usually completely veiled in public.

Driven from Medina for his preaching, the founder of the Wahhabi sect, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab, went into the NE Nejd and converted the Saud tribe. The Saudi sheik, Muhammad ibn Saud, convinced that it was his religious mission to struggle (jihad) against all other forms of Islam and began the conquest of his neighbors in c.1763. By 1811 the Wahhabis ruled all Arabia, except Yemen, from their capital at Riyadh. The Ottoman sultan, nominally suzerain over Arabia, had vainly sent out expeditions to crush them. Only when the sultan called on Muhammad Ali of Egypt for aid did he meet success; by 1818 the Wahhabis were driven into the desert.

WAHHABISM 2

In the Nejd, the Wahhabis collected their power again and from 1821 to 1833 gained control over the Persian Gulf coast of Arabia. Their domain thereafter steadily weakened; Riyadh was lost in 1884, and in 1889 the Saud family fled for refuge into the neighboring state of Kuwait. The Wahhabi movement was to enjoy its third triumph when Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud advanced from his capture of Riyadh in 1902 to the reconstitution in 1932 of nearly all his ancestral domain under the name Saudi Arabia, where it remains dominant. Wahhabism served as an inspiration to other Islamic reform movements from India and Sumatra to North Africa and the Sudan, and during the 20th century has influenced the Taliban of Afghanistan and Islamist movements elsewhere.

WAHHABISM 3

The Salafi movement is often described as synonymous with Wahhabism. At other times, Salafism has been described as a hybrid of Wahhabism and other post-1960s movements, i.e. as a larger term than Wahhabism. The Wahhabis consider the term "Wahhabi" derogatory, for it implies that they follow and venerate Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahab (c.1703-1791) as Christians follow and venerate Jesus (as a Son of God or God Himself), which is a blasphemy in their opinion. They prefer being called “Muwahhidun” (Unitarians) or “Salafis.”Following the same rationale, Muslims do not like being called “Muhammadans.”

Listed to this excellent documentary program by Tarek Osman of the BBC entitled Sands of Time : A History of Saudi Arabia

NOMENCLATURE

Salafis vs. Sufis

For more on the conflict between these two islamic sects, check these links:

Salafis and Sufis in Egypt (click on “Full Text”)

Sufis vs. Salafi - A Believer is His Brother's Mirror

Islamic Modernists

vs.Middle eastern

Secularists

ISLAMIC MODERNISTSvs. Middle Eastern Secularists

Islamic modernists argued that the true Islam that had preserved the Greek philosophy during Europe’s Dark Ages was not incompatible with science and reason, modern ideas and progress. Unlike the pure Westernizers, who frequently blamed Islam for the “backwardness of the Middle East” and promoted the adoption of such Western ideas as secularism, Islamic modernists were more selective in what they chose to borrow.Secularists wanted a drastic change, however, realizing that the majority of the population does not share their view, sometimes they sought to manipulate people using a conservative, even religious rhetoric.

Young Ottomanswere a group of Ottoman nationalist intellectuals formed in 1865, influenced by such Western thinkers as Montesquieu and Rousseau and the French Revolution. They developed the concept of Ottomanism, aligned with these thinkers. They advocated a constitutional, parliamentary government.The Young Ottomans were bureaucrats resulting from the Tanzimat reforms who were unsatisfied with its bureaucratic absolutism and sought a more democratic solution.Their ideology was based on the indigenous Islamic principles, namely of the principle of shura (council). In the early Islamic civilization this council’s task was to elect Muhammad’s successor. The Young Ottomans used the same idea to call for the Ottoman parliament and constitution. Besides influencing the establishment of the Ottoman constitution and parliament, they influenced the ‘Urabi rebellion in Egypt, as well as the Persian Constitutional Revolution of 1905.

Islamic Modernism in Persia

In the mid-19th-century Persia a new class of intellectuals arose from the Daru-l-Funun in Tehran.

Some other Persian intellectuals were educated in Europe, especially later during the reign of Shah Reza.

These Persian, as well as Ottoman, intellectuals were under the influence of European thinkers, such as Auguste Comte (1798-1857) and Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825).

AUGUSTE COMTE

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Comte’s Positivism in the Middle East

POSITIVISM is a philosophical doctrine that denies any validity to speculation or metaphysics. Sometimes associated with empiricism, positivism maintains that metaphysical questions are unanswerable and that the only knowledge is scientific knowledge. (Mystics often quote paranormal phenomena such as xenoglossy and proven memories of past lives as counter arguments.)The Committee of Union and Progress [إتحاد و ترقى, İttihad ve Terakki Cemiyeti] that took the Ottoman Government in 1913 derived its name from the Positivists’ watchwords unity and progress.Comte believed that societies evolve through stages like biological species - from religion based societies, through philosophically based societies, to scientifically based societies.Comte also believed that the society should be guided by a class of technocrats called savants. In Persian there were monavvar al-fekr and among Arabs mutanawwirs (the enlightened ones). Persian, Ottoman, and Arab intellectuals identified with these roles.

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Henri COMTE

DeSaint-Simon

Henri Comte de Saint-Simon

French Utopian socialist who took part in War of Independence of the United States; opposed Deism and promoted the study of Nature. Saint-Simon was a determinist, holding that everything in Nature and Society was governed by Laws, knowledge of which would allow us to understand the course of history. He held that the driving forces in history were science, morality and religion.He tried to demonstrate the objective nature of the historical process and the role of property relations in its development.He envisioned the establishment of a planned socialist-style economy run by benevolent industrialists - the sort of people many of the graduates of Daru-l-Funun wanted to become.Comte was first to use the term “sociology” back in 1838 and in the Western world he is considered “the father of sociology.” However, the Middle Easterners believe that the father of sociology and demography is actually the Islamic polymath Ibn Khaldun who lived in the 14th century, four centuries before Comte.

ANJUMANHA -19th century

Persian Secret Societies

ANJUMANHA - Secret Societies

Persian intellectuals thought of themselves as a privileged enlightened class that was united by its opposition to royal despotism, religious fanaticism, and foreign imperialism.

Many joined together in secret societies called anjumanha (sg. anjuman) where they could engage in political conspiracy.

Historians have highlighted the careers and influence of two particular members of the anjumanha societies Mirza Malkom Khan and Jamal a-Din al-Afghani, none of the two being a secularist in the absolute sense of the word.

Mirza Malkom Khan

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Mirza Malkom KhanMirza Malkolm Khan was an Armenian Christian that may or may not have converted to Shi’a Islam. He grew up in Paris where he got his education. Upon his return to Persia, he worked as a teacher at the Dar-al-Funun and later for the government as an ambassador.

Like Comte, Malkom also believed that the religion would be superseded by humanity and reason. However, he did not exclude Islam. He believed that religion, as well as ‘ulema, can be harnessed to build a new Persia.

He especially liked the legal institution of ijtihad (reasoning) through which, he believed, reason could be applied on religion.

He organized several secret organization that included intellectuals, guild builders, ulema, and sometimes even the members of the Qajar dynasty. Many of his followers participated in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905.

His Book of Reforms was inspired by the constitutionalist ideas of the Young Ottomans.

Jamal al-Din Al-Afghani

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Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

Though his name (al-Afghani) leads toward the conclusion that he was of Afghan origin, most probably he was born in Persia, but used the pseudonym al-Afghani to obscure his Shi’a heritage so that he could be more influential among the Sunni Muslims.

He traveled extensively and lived in Paris, Cairo, and Istanbul. Thus, he borrowed extensively from the French and Ottoman ideas about the social evolution and the special role of the intellectual elite in such a society.

Like Malkom, al-Afghani also organized secret societies and also attempted to harness religion for the sake of reforms.

One of his followers assassinated Nasir al-Din Shah in 1896 and many of his followers were active in the Constitutional Revolution of 1905.

‘Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406) & His Muqqadimah

the greatest Arab historian, who d e v e l o p e d o n e o f t h e e a r l i e s t nonreligious philosophies of history, contained in his masterpiece, the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”). The Muqaddimah, or the Prolegomena in Latin, was written in 1377. It records an early Muslim view of universal history. Many modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the philosophy of history and the social sciences of sociology, demography, historiography, and cultural history, and a forerunner of modern economics. The work also deals with Islamic theology and the natural sciences of biology and chemistry.

Ibn Khaldun - Critical historiography

1. ...Partisanship towards a creed or opinion... 2. ...Over-confidence in one's sources... 3. ...The failure to understand what is intended... 4. ...A mistaken belief in the truth... 5. ...The inability to place an event in its real context 6. ...The common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame... 7. ...The most important is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformation of human society."

“All records, by their very nature, are liable to error...

Ibn Khaldun starts the Muqaddimah with a thorough criticism of the mistakes regularly committed by his fellow historians and the difficulties which await the historian in his work. He notes seven critical issues:

ijtihad - reasoningIjtihad (Arabic اجتهاد) is a technical term of Islamic law that describes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the legal sources, the Qur'an and the Sunnah. The opposite of ijtihad is taqlid (تَْقليد), Arabic for "imitation." A person who applies ijtihad is called a mujtahid, and traditionally had to be a scholar of Islamic law, an Islamic lawyer or ‘alim.

The word ijtihad is derived from the Arabic verbal root of ج-ه-د jimm-ha-dal (jahada, "struggle"), the same root as that of jihad.In early Islam ijtihad was a commonly used legal practice, and was well integrated with philosophy. It slowly fell out of practice for several reasons, most notably the efforts of Asharite theologians from the 12th century, who saw it as leading to errors of over-confidence in judgement. Muhammad al-Ghazali (1058-1111) was the most notable of the Asharites and his work, The Incoherence of the Philosophers, was the most celebrated statement of this view.

ijtihad - reasoning 2Long after the 10th century the principles of ijtihad continued to be discussed in the Islamic legal literature, and Asharites continued to argue with their Mutazilite rivals about its applicability to sciences.In Islamic political theory, ijtihad is often counted as one of the essential qualifications of the caliph, e.g. by Al-Baghdadi (1037) or Al-Mawardi (1058). Al-Ghazali dispenses with this qualification in his legal theory and delegates the exercise of ijtihad to the ulema.Ironically, the loss of ijtihad’s application in law seems to have also led to its loss in philosophy and the sciences, which most historians think caused Muslim societies to stagnate before the 1492 fall of al-Andalus, after which Muslim works were translated into Latin and led in part to the Renaissance revival of classical works, using improved methods, although the Muslims themselves were no longer using these methods in their daily life at all.

‘Ulama in Persia

AKHBARI SCHOOL claimed that the ‘ulema were limited in their legal and doctrinal decisions to the traditions of the prophet and the teachings of the twelve imams.

‘USULI SCHOOL asserted that select religious scholars - mujtahids - could act as representatives of the hidden imam. Mujtahids were chosen from among the ‘ulama because of their piety and learning. They had the right to give fresh interpretations to the law - to practice ijtihad - in order to make the law compatible with real-life conditions.

Up until the early 19th century there was no consensus among the ‘ulema in Persia regarding their role in the society.

‘Usuli TheologiansThe ‘Usuli theology emerged victorious in the 19th century Persia, in part because of the weakness of the Qajar dynasty who needed them to legitimize its rule. Thus, unlike the ‘ulema of the Ottoman Empire and Egypt that kept on losing their power and influence, the ‘ulama of Persia held ever stronger monopoly over the education apparatus and over civil law.This ensured that the participation or aloofness of the ‘ulama could make or break such political movements as the Tobacco Protest, the Constitutional Revolution, and the Revolution of 1978-1979.Like al-Afghani and Malkom Khan, the Persian ‘Usuli theologians believed that the ‘ulama had a key role to play in the society and that ijtihad had to be harnessed to revise Islam and make it applicable to the contemporary conditions. They all also believed that Persians have a lot to learn from the West, particularly in the realm of science and technology.However, how is one to reconcile science and religion?