The Nahdah (renaissance)

The Nahdah (renaissance)

One of the most important events in the nineteenth century in the Islamic intellectual world was the creation of the Nahdah (rebirth, renaissance). This really started in Syria but achieved its real momentum in Egypt, then as subsequently the intellectual engine room of Islamic intellectual life. The Nahdah movement represented an attempt to do two things. One was to introduce some of the main achievements of Western culture into the Islamic world. The other was to defend and protect the major positive features of Arab culture and revive them despite the assaults of Western imperialism (see IMPERIALISM AND EMPIRE). The important aspect of the movement is the attempt to combine these policies, to react to the apparent decadence of the Arab world not by rejecting Arab culture but by purifying it and introducing in the Arab world aspects of modernity from without that were seen as acceptable from an Islamic point of view.

The main Nahdah thinkers were al-Tahtawi, al-Afghani and ‘Abduh, who in their different ways sought to confront modernity not by rejecting it or by rejecting Islam, but by effecting some kind of synthesis. Although we are only concerned here with the nineteenth century, it is worth pointing out that later remained this significant topic in the Islamic world, and indeed in earlier centuries also it was very much on the intellectual agenda. Islamic culture has often sought to revitalize itself in response to the criticisms of other systems of thought that appear capable of presenting a more attractive or modern view of the world. Some areas of the Islamic world have on occasion totally rejected the importation of foreign ideas, and also sometimes completely given itself up to them. The Renaissance movement suggested that this was a false choice, one could accept some ideas and reject others, thus preserving tradition while adopting modernity at the same time.

The Nahdah movement argued that Islam is itself a profoundly rational system of thought, and has no problem in accepting science and technology. So there is no reason for Muslims to abandon their faith while at the same time accepting the benefits of Western forms of modernity. On the other hand, the significance of reviving Islam or

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Arabism played a considerable part in the political rhetoric of the time. Some thinkers sought to reject the carving up of the Middle East into nation-states by Western imperialism, and argued for the Islamic world to be formed into an international ummah or community as it was originally, at least as ideally perceived. On the other hand, the Ottoman Empire, which represented one way of doing this, was a generally unsatisfactory alternative to the idea of the nation-state, since that empire was characterized by the very decadence so criticized by many of the Nahdah thinkers. Perhaps, though, if the empire was revived in a more modern form it would be capable of resisting the encroachments of the West on its territory, and only something like a revival of the former caliphate was likely to be able to muster sufficient force and support for such resistance to be a viable policy.

The most important intellectual figure in this movement was undoubtedly Sayyid Jamal al-Din Afghani (1838–97), who as his name suggested had close connections with Afghanistan, where part of his early education took place. He seems to have been deliberately unclear about his precise ethnic origins to prevent that from being a divisive factor in his attempts to address the whole Islamic community. A similar question hangs in the air as to whether he was a Sunni or Shi‘a Muslim, doubtless for the same motive of transcending deep divisions in the Islamic world. At the age of around 18 he moved to India where he came across the thoroughly modernist ideas of Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–98), which he was later to attack in his Refutation of the Materialists. Ahmad Khan bent over backwards in his writings to show the British rulers of India that Islam was a religion capable of accepting rationality, and it was this apologetic tone at which al-Afghani directed his barbs. In 1870 he visited Egypt and Turkey, and was welcomed by the Ottoman authorities and thinkers who were involved in the Tanzimat changes designed to modernize the empire, and regarded al-Afghani as having a like mind. In 1883 he spent some time in London and Paris, summoning to the latter city Muhammad ‘Abduh from Lebanon to work with him on a journal. While in Paris his refutation of the views of the famous orientalist ERNEST RENAN is important in establishing a view of Islamic culture that is independent of that current in the West. In 1886 the Shah of Iran invited al-Afghani to advise him, but political differences caused him to leave for Russia and he ended up in Istanbul where he spent his last six years, sometimes supported by the Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid II and often under suspicion of involvement in subversive activities.

The internationalist nature of al-Afghani’s career is significant; it represents nicely his belief that the Islamic world should be united. But his arguments were not based on Islam alone; they also borrowed a great deal from what he regarded as science and philosophy. Islamic philosophy is perfectly compatible with modern science and technology, and should encourage Muslims to acquire the necessary skills in order to resist the impact of Western imperialism, he argued. Part of the Islamic Renaissance ideology is that there should be a rebirth and rediscovery of the main intellectual and political achievements of the Islamic world during its heyday. At that time, as the supporters of the movement never tired of reciting, there was an openness to new ideas, wherever they came from, which was sadly, in their view, lacking in the decadent years of the nineteenth century.

Al-Afghani wrote very little, but it had considerable impact. His Refutation of the Materialists suggests that the source of evil is materialism, the philosophical doctrine that argues that the world has developed out of a set of material preconditions. He also

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criticizes the theory of evolution, which he sees as denying God’s role in designing the world. His critique has a social aspect also in that materialism is held to reject founding society on any common moral values, and in being critical of religion as such, and of Islam in particular. This sort of critique of what is seen as Western culture has since the nineteenth century become quite common in the Islamic world.

In his response to Renan, al-Afghani tries to show that the Arabs and Islamic civilization are capable of producing philosophy and science. Al-Afghani argues that Muslims had in the past been in the forefront of science and philosophy, and there is no reason to think this would not be repeated in the future. On the other hand, he accepts that religion and philosophy are in constant conflict, but suggests that Muslims could catch up with Christians who rejected aspects of their religion after the Enlightenment. It is not clear from his response how much of traditional Islam is expected to survive such a transformation of intellectual life, and al-Afghani set up the issue in such a way as to dominate the continuing discussions of this topic in the Islamic world through the nineteenth and subsequent centuries.

The influence of his ideas was amplified by the efforts of Rashid Rida (1865–1935), who founded in 1898 the journal al-Manar (The Lighthouse) in Cairo. The central theme of the journal was that there is no incompatibility between Islam on the one hand, and modernity, science, reason and civilization on the other. It might be said that Rida tended to emphasize religion and was a firm opponent of secularism, the latter doctrine always being a tempting prospect for the thoroughgoing modernist. This general compatibility thesis was supported in various forms by a variety of Arab intellectuals, and it was instituted in the framework of Arab society in various ways. For example, Rifa‘ah Rafi ‘al-Tahtawi (1801–73) was sent to Paris in 1826 to find out what Western culture was all about. He was at that time a teacher at al-Azhar, the ancient Islamic university in Cairo, but had also started reading Western books and learning French, a language of which he became an able translator. One of the most important things he brought back to Egypt from his experience of Europe was the desire to establish a European-style university in Egypt, a university that would base itself on universal knowledge, not just the Islamic sciences, and which would study seriously the intellectual contributions of the West. It is worth pointing out how far his efforts here were supported by the state; the ruler of Egypt Muhammad ‘Ali encouraged al-Tahtawi’s efforts, and promoted him within the state structure. Although changes of regime did lead to occasional hiccups in the modernization campaign, al-Tahtawi did manage to place that campaign firmly within the bureaucratic structure of the state, going so far as to initiate the education of girls.

One of the links he managed to make was not only between modernity and Islam, but also between nationalism and Islam. He took control for a period of Egyptian antiquities, and opposed their transfer abroad, arguing that there is no incompatibility between the universal message of Islam and the desire of an Egyptian to celebrate his country’s heritage. Of course, within the context of the Ottoman Empire nationalism turned out to

be a much more dangerous doctrine than modernity. Modern Arab commentators on al- Tahtawi often criticize him for being too close to the West, but they fail to recognize his situation as an Egyptian intellectual within a distinct imperialist environment, that of the Ottoman Empire, for whom what the West had to offer was in part an escape from that empire. Although al-Tahtawi was definitely not a thinker of the stature of al-Afghani and his entourage, he was perhaps more effective in that he spent his life within the

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administrative structure of Egypt and helped bring about material changes in that structure, especially in its educational institutions. A similarly placed bureaucrat in Tunisia, Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi (1810–89) also initiated secular education in his country, based on the same ideas that progress meant science and was not incompatible with Islam. This spirit of reform was widespread throughout the Middle East, and small groups of intellectuals campaigned in favour of both science and liberalism, seen to be part and parcel of the same ideological movement.

Muhammad ‘Abduh (1849–1905) used his position as head of al-Azhar, the leading theological university in the Sunni Islamic world, to propound the message of the Nahdah that the Islamic world should accept modernity while at the same time not rejecting Islam. The period of stagnation that he identified with the tenth to the fifteenth centuries CE was a time when the early scientific and philosophical progress of the Islamic cultural world came to an end and the political and religious authorities had a mutual interest in maintaining control by restricting the intellectual curiosity of those over whom they ruled so effectively. What was now needed, he argued in the nineteenth century, was reform of all the institutions of the Islamic world, while preserving the timeless truths of Islam itself. He suggests that the connection between religion and modernity, in particular between Christianity and modernity, is entirely misplaced. After all, as he argues, Christianity advocates belief in the transience of every-day life, not the concern for possessions and comfort so characteristic of modern industrial societies. Yet it found no inconsistency in combining the religion with modern ways of operating, so this need not

be a worry for Muslims either. The effective broadcasting of his views throughout the Islamic world through the media, and the liberal futuwa (legal rulings) from al-Azhar, played a leading role in defining a relevant role for Islam within the framework of the modern state.