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In Translation: Modern Muslim Thinkers
Series Editor. Abdou Filali-Ansary
Books in the series include Islam: Between Message and History
Abdelmadjid Charfi
Islam and the Foundations of Political Power
All Abdel Razek
Governance from the Perspective of Islam
Ayatullah Aga Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Ndini
With a Commentary by Ayatullah Sayyid Mahmud Taleciani
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ALI ABDEL RAZEK
Translated by Maryam Loutfi
Edited by Abdou Filali-Ansary
EDINBURGH University Press IN ASSOCIATION WITH
THE AGA KHAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF MUSLIM CIVILISATIONS
The opinions expressed in this volume are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations.
© All Abdel Razek, 1 9 24
Introduction Abdou Filali-Ansary, 2011
English translation © Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, zoo.
Edinburgh University Press Ltd at George Square, Edinburgh shi8 97z www.euppublishing.com
Typeset in Garamond Premier by Koinonia, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon ciao 4 7Y
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The right of Ali Abdel Razek and Abdou Filali-Ansary to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All Abdel Razek was born in 1888 in Abu Jirj, middle Egypt, to a family of wealthy, politically active landowners. His father and brother were renowned as liberals, who opposed both the Wafd Nationalist Party that fought against British rule in Egypt and the conservatives, who were mostly allies of the monarchy. Abdel Razek was educated in the traditional Islamic curriculum and graduated from al-Azhar University as an 'dim' in 1915.
Following his graduation from al-Azhar, Abdel Razek received an introduction to modern university education, enrolling for courses at the newly founded Egyptian University. He also spent a few months at Oxford University, where he studied politics and economics; however, his time there was cut short with the outbreak of the First World War. He later became a teacher of Arabic and a judge (qadi) in the traditional Islamic courts of Alexandria.
It was during his time as a qadi that he began to investigate the founders of the Islamic justice system. He went on to examine the caliphate as the institution which lies at the root of the "Islamic" social order and of which the justice system is an instrument. It must be added here, that it was the overall context at the time that provided a pressing initiative for such reflections; especially with the abrogation of the caliphate and the angst it had created.
After being stripped of his title of 'dim and banned from any positions related to it, it is said that Abdel Razek immediately changed his external appearance, adopting European clothes and displaying a disregard for traditional style, habits and appearance.
Following the storm of criticism stirred by his essay, he made only a short return to public office (as minister of Islamic affairs). Abdel Razek eventually withdrew from the intellectual scene, took refuge in a stubborn silence and built himself a room in a tower where he dedicated the remainder of his life to study.
It was still dawn outside when the sound of the dawn call to prayer seeped into my ears, waking me to the dawn of Cairo's freezing winter. As a young boy of nine or ten, it was my daily ritual to jump out of my warm bed in my room on the top floor of the old and noble house that was our family home. I would follow the voice of my grandfather, Ali Abdel Razek, in his steady recitation of the Qur'an, until I arrived at his rooms located on the ground floor. He would acknowledge my greeting with a smiling nod, continuing his recitation of the holy book uninterrupted.
Once he had finished his recitation, we would fall into our playful banter of teasing and tickling each other like school children, with my grandfather seeming to magically cross an age gap of seventy years. I would then be seated in a corner and would watch him silently while he paced back and forth between his dressing room and the bath, grooming himself for the Fajr prayer, whilst reciting from memory his constant zikr.
Half a century later, this image of my grandfather, Sheikh Ali Abdel Razek or All Pasha Abdel Razek remains indelible in my memory. To this day, I have not encountered anyone who prays and prepares for prayer with the singular dedication of my grandfather. It seemed to me that he used to have a sacred daily date with his beloved Allah. I recall Ali Abdel Razek as a man who was gifted with everything: the gift of a true and solid belief; an enlightened mind; wisdom; a warm and generous heart; self-esteem ; professional renown and recognition; and perhaps most of all, spiritual richness. However, despite these natural gifts, he was a most humble person. He lived his life preoccupied with his relationship to God.
Our traditional daily dinner was not like that of other Cairo families. In the household of Abdel Razek, the table comprised brimming platefuls of stewed vegetables and salads, what my uncles would sarcastically call "the daily plate of grass': Occasionally, these might be accompanied by cups of fresh yogurt, or cubes of locally made white cheese called Qareesh. The meal would be eaten with local dried bread that was brought in daily from Ali Abdel Razek's native village, Abu Jirj, in middle Egypt.
1 A traditional scholar or theologian.
My belief is that every person is created with a mission in life. And no one passes away before fulfilling this mission, and thus satisfying his or her divine fate. Islam and the Foundations ofPolitical Power was Ali Abdel Razek's heavy mission in the name of Islam and of humanity. He has fulfilled it perfectly. Moreover, he went on to live a long life afterwards, confident of having completed his mission and without ever altering a single word of the book.
God bless the soul of my beloved grandfather, and God bless the readers and scholars of his work.
Sincerely
Amr K. Hamed
Many scholars consider the publication of the essay Islam and the Foundations of Political Power: an Inquiry into the Caliphate and Government in Islam by Ali Abdel Razek' in 1915 to mark an important event in the contemporary history of Muslims. Not merely an exceptional intellectual or literary event, the publication of the book signalled an actual historical turning point, one that had a formative, long-lasting impact on the development of Muslim societies during the twentieth century.'
It was in the early 199os that I learned, to my great surprise, that what in his time had been a ground-breaking work by Ali Abdel Razek still awaited translation into any of the major languages of Europe. By then, Islam had come to occupy centre stage in world awareness. Beyond the media, academics were turning their attention to contemporary expressions of thought, as well as to political movements in what is called the "Muslim world". A number of works by Muslim thinkers, translated into European languages, had become the object of extensive study in specialised circles. It was surprising to find that most of these works were representative of conservative, fundamentalist trends in Islam. Enormous attention was devoted to, among other things, trends that would later come to be grouped under the heading of Islamic fundamentalism.
This interest had significance beyond academia. It encouraged the idea that these thinkers were, in one way or another, "authentic" spokespersons for Muslims and Islam in the modern world. It also gave the impression that these works were representative of dominant, if not exclusive movements, of thought in Muslim contexts. This notion in turn influenced Muslim minds. The resulting distortion and misrepresentation is evident to anyone who is aware of the acute intellectual controversies which have been widespread in modern Muslim
I No full translation of the essay into English has yet been published. Excerpts can be found in Charles Kurzman (ed.), Liberal Islamhz/ Sourceboak, NewYork: Oxford University Press, 5998. Myown translation into French has been published as Ali Abdel Razek,L7slam et les fondements du pouvoir, Paris: Editions la Decouverte, 1 994.
z For discussion of the impact of Abdel Razek's essay, refer to Mohammad 'Amara, Al-Islam wa Unit al-tIukm: dirassah wa wathdiq ["Islam and the Foundations of Political Power: The Study and Documents"], Beirut: Al-Mulassassa al:Arabiya li al-Dirasat wa al-Nahr.1971.
Islam and the Foundations of Political Power contexts, and of the intensive debate instigated by publications that were neither conservative nor fundamentalist, but rather, critical and progressive. It was a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs where essentialist and static-minded works by such reformers as Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb were available (some of them in multiple editions and various languages), and were widely read and commented upon, while others of equal, if not greater, importance and consequence in the modern Muslim world were wholly ignored. That Islam and the Foundations of Political Power by Ali Abdel Razek in particular, was not available in English (apart from short excerpts published in various anthologies) is indicative of this curious situation that has affected on-going debates about Muslims and the practice of Islam.
The present translation was conceived shortly after the publication of my French translation of Abdel Razek's essay in 1994. It has taken far too long, with many interruptions arising from administrative responsibilities (I could echo here what Ali Abdel Razek says about the circumstances of writing his book). Ms Maryam Loutfi volunteered a first set of translations from the Arabic into English. Shortly afterwards, I was lucky to come into close contact with Dr Aziz Esmail, former Dean and present Governor of the Institute of Ismaili Studies, who kindly agreed to undertake a complete rewriting with a view to rendering it into a plain and readable English. Using my French translation as a template, and referring where necessary to the Arabic original, he carried out the laborious task of what amounted to a fresh translation into English.
The result, to my mind, is a faithful rendering of a text which was after all not a scholarly disquisition in the technical sense (although it was based on meticulous attention to sources). Ali Abdel Razek's work is an essay in the best sense of the word. It interrogates and provides a perspective on prevailing interpretations of the Islamic past and attitudes about the relationship between politics and religion that have become widespread in contemporary contexts. It is a "historic" piece. In my introduction, I argue that it has played a significant role in shaping emerging debates about Islam and politics in Muslim contexts.
I would like to thank Sikeena Karmali Ahmed, Raahat Currim, Chloe Greenwood, Ashleigh Young, Charlotte Whiting, Mohamad Meqdad and Vera Pestell for their dedicated effort in preparing the manuscript for publication.
Finally, it must be emphasised that I alone bear the responsibility for any omissions or errors that may have gone undetected in the text.
Abdou Filali-Ansary xis
The question of the caliphate, as it re-emerged in the 192.os, galvanised wide circles of people, mainly among learned elite Muslims. As an institution, the caliphate had until then experienced a rather turbulent thirteen-century history. It was created immediately after the death of the Prophet Muhammad to manage the community he had founded and to maintain the momentum created by the then new religious message. The title of caliph, meaning "deputy" or "successor", was also created shortly after the demise of the Prophet. It was initially given to some of the Prophet's prominent companions who had been co-opted by circles of influential members to lead the community. Each of the first four caliphs, considered afterwards by the Sunni majority as the "legitimate ones'', was appointed in a different manner.'
Eventually, the caliphate was taken over by a succession of ruling families, beginning with the Umayyads and ending with the Ottomans. The change from co-opted and religiously inspired rulers, as they were later perceived, to a monarchical caliphate was considered by many in the community, and recorded later by historians, as a kind of coup d'etat, constituting a violation of the principles associated with Islam and of the integrity and freedom of the umma or Muslim community. These monarchical systems which ruled over Muslim communities were generally accepted as more or less unavoidable. However, they were not considered to be fully legitimate. Over the centuries, the title of caliph lost its prestige. The Ottoman rulers, following many others, initially claimed for themselves the title of sultan or king rather than caliph. During the eighteenth century, at a time when their authority was seriously challenged, the Ottomans felt the need to reclaim the title of caliph. Early in the twentieth century when
Historical surveys of Islam's "founding moments" are numerous. Among the scholarly works that attempt an overall survey and understanding of the deep processes of change one should mention, in the English language, Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, Chicago, IL: Universiry of Chicago Press, '975 and Ira Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, noon. See also J. P. Berkey, The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East,Coo—nzoo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1003.
Islam and the Foundations of Political Power
during a period of close proximity like the French occupation of Cairo in the aftermath of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt in 1898, there was no effective exchange of ideas between European invaders and local intellectuals. He adds that nothing, or nearly nothing, changed in the way that indigenous societies viewed the natural and historical order of the world. With the exception of a very small elite, such as the chronicler Abdelrahman al-Jabarti,4 local thinkers had not been able to access the intellectual world of the savants who accompanied the occupying forces.
However, roughly a century later, Muslims were becoming aware of other ways of looking at the world that embraced a better knowledge of the physical world, science and philosophy. A print press in the Arabic language had been born. A new "space of public communication" was created for the expression of ideologies, ambitions and desires that had originated in modern Europe, but had been infused with new life in non-European contextnebates about Islam and modernity shaped a new awareness, which was articulated by leading thinkers such as Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani' and Muhammad AbduliMuslim societies were no longer bound by their traditional views of the world. Initial advances towards the evolution of these new ideas were made by Arab Christians, who were the first to be receptive to modern European trends and to convey them to wider circles within the Arab world.
In this light, and for the first time in the modern history of Muslims, Ali Abdel Razek articulated a perspective_ that allowed for the examination of Islamic religious traditions from external, historical and critical points of view. This was to have major consequences. The first was a return to rationality as a pivot around which discussions about politics and religion would take place in ways that differed from the rational approaches previously adopted in the history of Muslim thought. In the early Muslim community, the rational analysis of religious matters had been, in a sense, common practice. Religious attitudes and obedience to divine commandments were initially understood as "requirements" of rationality in societies formerly bound by narrow traditions.
Rational thinking in early theology reached its peak with the Mu'tazilites and a host of other literate elites, who attempted to sketch rational perspectives about religious systems that could work as blueprints for Muslim forms of understanding and social order. Over generations, however, once an impressive
4 1753-182 5.
s 1838-97.
6 1849-19o5.
corpus of theology and law had been endowed with authority, the implementation of reason in religious matters became progressively unacceptable and intolerable. All Abdel Razek hence spearheaded the return to a call to reason in religio-political matters. Implicitly, he challenged reformist and_apologetic groups for whom rational discourse had to remain within the boundaries of established truths as they had been formulated within the domain of "tradition" and, furthermore, had been restricted to defending the faith against critics.
The reintroduction of reason in debates about religion also took place in the following decades by way of new disciplines, such as the humanities and social sciences. These new scholarly approaches would include historical critiques of canonical texts, the critical study of political and religious institutions, as well as commonly held perceptions and myths. They would function without paying heed to the authority of elders and of authoritative interpretations. A secularisadon of world views and a form of disenchantment took place through the elaboration of new forms of knowledge.
Through the discussion initiated by Ali Abdel Razek, the ultimate criteria for truth came to be rationally supported views, rather than the established, authority-backed interpretations of revealed truth. This became a basic stake in the battle that Muslims were on the verge of engaging in, pitting reason, secular and free thought against the authority of tradition±Although Muhammad Abclul endeavoured to demonstrate the rationality of beliefs and practices associated with Islam, his attempt was to a large degree ap_ologittic and limited by the need to restore the confidence and pride of Muslims in theirownicligious heritage. It was Ali Abdel Razek who made the first advances in the direction of applying processes of critical reasoning to what were considered to be religious matters that had been settled by authoritative tradition. He attempted to solve, through critical inquiry, an old dilemma that had created the most intense drama in the remote past of the Muslim community and one that was resurrected with the restoration and abolition of the caliphate.
Ali Abdel Razek's ground-breaking essay, Al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm, is widely credited with having had a great impact on subsequent socio-political events across the Muslim world, generating what has been considered by some to be the greatest controversy in the modern history of Muslim societies. It created a kind of intellectual exchange that did not exist in traditional societies, involving
Islam and the Foundations of Political Power
polemics on a large, public scale and reaching out to popular opinion through the written press. One could argue that the intense conflict of interpretations generated by the book revived something similar to what Muslims had experienced in their early history: the Fitna al-Kubra, or Great Dissent, which had "broken" the community into the denominations — Sunni, Shi'a and Khawarijthat thrive to this day. The trauma of that age-old confrontation, which brought into existence deep and long lasting lines of division among Muslims, was still vivid in the collective memory.
The book led to the first trial of an intellectual for his ideas in modern times. The battle over the book raged in the press and was brought to court by the decision of King Fouad of Egypt, who was offended by it. Indeed, some parts of the book were very critical of despotism and the monarchical system in general. Moreover, it was UndersMod that Abele' Razek ridiculed the ambition of reviving the title of caliph, an ambition that was nourished in many Middle Eastern royal courts of that time, including that of Egypt.
The court before which Ali Abdel Razek was tried was originally a disciplinary commission of the al-Azhar University for the oversight of the behaviour of its faculty members. The case of Ali Abdel Razek was the first to be brought before this institutional body, which had for the occasion called upon eminent traditional scholars and members of the faculty from al-Azhar. They were asked to determine whether the ideas presented in the book were acceptable from an orthodox point of view and whether the author could still hold onto his title of idim (theologian). The fact that Ali Abdel Razek was a traditional scholar, whose role was understood as a guardian of orthodoxy, was clearly a source of discomfort for the authorities of the time. Not only were deeply held beliefs and prescriptions being challenged, they were being challenged by a then duly certified faculty member of al-Azhar University. He was later stripped of his title of calim and had to observe a strict reserve; in fact, he seems to have suspended all research on the topic.
Islam and the Foundations of Political Power also resulted in a deep political crisis in Egypt. At the time, the Egyptian government was a coalition of two parties. The Liberal-Constitutionalists represented mainly landowners and the upper classes, which included many relatives and friends of Ali Abdel Razek. The second party in government had been created by the king to resist the overwhelming influence of the Wafd nationalist and populist political movement that enjoyed strong support among the population. The book provoked a deep
disagreement between the two coalition partners. The Liberal-Constitutionalist Party, siding with Ali Abdel Razek, declared itself in favour of freedom of thought. The second party sided with the king and the traditionalists, rejecting Abdel-Razek's views and urging his exclusion from all official functions. The Ali Abdel_Razek case led to the eventual fall of the cabinet and the failure of the conservative, monarchist coalition. It became clear that the alliance of conservative and liberal ideologies was unable to offer a solid alternative to the nationalist and populist movements represented by the Wafd Party_ _
Furthermore, the book had a negative influence on attempts at the time to revive the institution of the caliphate. After the abrogation of the caliphate in Turkey by Mustapha Kamal Atatiirk in 19/3, prominent Muslim scholars and political activists began to call for reviving the caliphate, which was understood to be an essential institution for Muslims and a symbol of the unity and conti_ nuitymf_their community. It was chiefly in the "peripheries" of the Muslim world, in countries where Muslims were a minority, such as India or East Africa, that the need for restoring the caliphate was most intensely felt. However, it was mainly in the "central" areas, such as the Middle East, that the moral and political benefits of holding the title were perceived. The then kings of the Hijaz and Egypt competed for the title, and no agreement could be reached about who would next hold the tide of caliph. Ali Abdel Razek, on the other hand, speaking as an al-Azhar scholar, argued that the caliphate was not a religious obligation for Muslims and that having been taken over by despots, it had in fact inflicted intense suffering and produced deep and devastating dissent within the_community:Rhis verdict on the part of Abdel Razek is believed by many to have impeded the revival of the caliphate and discredited the arguments of its supporters.
Perhaps one of the most important arguments regarding its influence on modern historical developments is that Abdel Razek'sgsay induced the birth of Islamist movements within Muslim societies as a reaction to on-going events and the way they were interpreted in his essay. Observers have pointed out a "troubling coincidence'', linking the book's publication in 1925 to the creation in Egypt three years later of the Muslim Brotherhood, the first Islamist organisation in the modern Muslim world.' Was there a "cause and effect" relationship between these two events 'F'undamentalism is seen as an outraged reaction of
7 See Mohammad Amara, Al-Islam wa U‘sal al-Idukm: dirassah wa wathdig [Islam and the Foundations of Political Power: The Study and Documents"], Beirut: Al-Mu'assassa al-'Arabiya li al-Dirasat wa al-Nahr, 1971.