Essay by prof.dr. Nasr Abu Azyd written for the benefit of his lecture in the centre of Initiatives of Change in The Hague, February 11 2004.

Since the French president announced on December 16, 2003 the necessity to introduce a new law in order to prohibit religious symbols, such as the Jewish yarmulke, the big crosses and the female Muslim headscarf, hijâb, to be shown in the national French schools, the reaction generated all over the Muslim World, especially in the Arab World, presents the model of the polemic controversy/dispute/debate/discussion that has been overshadowing the relationship between the Muslim World and the Western World since the late eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. The issue at steak here, from the French view, is the issue of protecting the secular basis of the French society against possible threat of disintegration if the religious symbols are shown in public schools. Religious symbols in the shared public sphere of schools would identify pupils according to their religious affiliation, thus causing a serious threat to their national identity as French citizens. In order to safeguard the national French identity and to enhance the process of integration religious symbols should be prohibited from being shown in public schools.

For the Muslim World, as represented by the `ulama, in reaction to the French presidents' announcement, hijâb is, unlike crosses or yarmulke, not a religious symbol; it is rather an obligatory religious requirement ordained by God and his Prophet. If a Muslim woman fails to wear the hijâb, she is considered a sinner and disobedient to the divine demand, and punishment in the life-after will be inflicted on her. Preventing Muslim girls by law from wearing the hijâb thus represents a Western enmity against Islam and discrimination against Muslims. Following all the articles published in Arabic newspapers dealing with the subject and watching some of the TV programs discussing the issue on some Arab satellites one can easily get the impression that the French move presents a severe threat to the identity of Muslims, not only in France but in the whole Muslim World and to the entire Muslim Nation, umma, as well.

The rector of al-Azhar in Egypt, the oldest and most influential Muslim institution in the Sunni World, tried to take a seemingly moderate position after a meeting with the French minister of interior. In the press conference following the meeting the rector of al-Azhar gave his statement: first, he declared that Islam is based on justice, which means rights are to be given to the appropriate persons/groups/nations etc. Secondly, he explicitly pronounced the fact that the hijâb is a religious obligation for every Muslim woman who will be judged if she fails to perform such an obligation. Thirdly, he pronounced the right of every state to make its own laws in accordance with its own political ideology and the duty of the Muslim citizens of that state to obey the law. Muslim women in France should, therefore, obey the French law concerning the prohibition of wearing hijâb in public schools. This permission is based on the principle of "necessity" as deduced from the Qur'an (ch. 2, v. 173). By such a way rights are given to all.

The shaykh, whose official title is the "grand imam", became a victim of his moderate position, giving the French State its right to organize its society in one hand, and giving French Muslim women a way out by applying the principle of "necessity" to their situation. The majority of the `ulama in the Arab World explicitly condemned the shaykh's opinion, some went even further and declared the apostasy of the grand imam.

If the issue at stake for the French authority is to safeguard the secular nature of the state, the issue at stake for Muslims is, first, to protect the Islamic identity of the French Muslim citizens, and, secondly and more essentially, is to defend Islam against secularism, which happened to be seen as anti-religion ideology. The French secular ideology, according to the most dominant and deeply established Muslim perspective, emerged initially as a protest against the Church's oppression of reason, rationality, scientific progress, and Enlightenment, but it gradually developed an anti-religion ideology. Secularism is, therefore, a Western European phenomenon with which Islam has nothing to do. If Christianity is basically making clear distinction between Cesar and God, preserving for each his own rights, so Muslims would argue, the distinction does not exist in Islam, where both politics and religiosity are one and the same. This view was recently expressed in the context of the hjiâb dispute in al-Jazîra TV channel, known as the Arabic CNN, in a program named "The Opposite Direction" (al-ittijâh al-mu`âkis) broadcasted on January 6th, 2004. One of the two guests was a cleric from the above-mentioned al-Azhar institute of Egypt; he presented the orthodox Islamic anti-secular position. The second guest was Muhammad Arkoun, an Emeritus professor at the Sorbonne, who presented the Islamic liberal view. The debate and dispute between the two guests about the issue of hijâb extended beyond the specific issue into the problem of Islam and modernity. While Arkoun defended modernity and secularism, thus justifying the French political decision as by no means an anti-Islamic, his opponent insisted that it was part of the long history of the Western enmity against Islam and Muslims. He went further in emphasizing his argument by counting the Catholic and the Protestant missionary institutions active in different parts of the Muslim World whose aim is the divert Muslims from their faith. He counted the number of missionary books, including the Bible, they freely distribute, the numbers of radio and TV stations they own as well as the numbers of the audio and videotapes they produce etc.

Modernity, according to the cleric, is a catastrophe to Islam. In his view secularism was a battle against the Church; it was a medicine invented to cure a disease that Islam never suffered. But people like Arkoun, the cleric explained, try to import the disease, the conflict between the Church and the civil society, into the Muslim World in order to introduce secularism as a cure. When Arkoun made reference to Islamic Philosophy, especially to Ibn Rushd, known as Averreos in the West, to prove the openness toward the others in the Islamic heritage the cleric strongly protested against associating the name of a Muslim philosopher with modernism and secularism. However, he apologetically denied that he was propagating a conflict or a clash of civilizations or cultures, quoting the Qur'ân where it is mentioned that God created people in different nations and tribes in order to recognize and know each other (chap.49:13). He also quotes the Qur'an where it is mentioned that it one of God's divine signs that humans are created in different skin-colors speaking different languages (30:22) It was, and still is, according to the cleric view, the West who invaded the Muslim land, thus, exploiting its economic resources and contaminating its culture, thus causing a paradigm of conflict.

Within the broadcasting which allowed viewers to participate by raising questions or by comments the channel opened an electronic vote on the question whether secularism is anti-religion or not. The result of the poll was that 89% of the voters, counted as 983,002900, believe that secularism is anti-religion while only 11% found it not.(2)

Now the question is, why the Muslim World in general, and the Arab World in particular, became so entrapped in discussing the issue of hjiâb as if it were the backbone of Islamic identity for females? On the other hand, one is tempted to question as well the French secularism, what kind of danger or threat quite a number of head-covered girls present to the legacy of the French secular republic? It is even more tempting to raise the dilemma of the version of secularism that despises and disrespects the world of symbols, whether religious, cultural or even ethnic. Why it is so joyful and celebrated in arts, literature, dresses and food while it is so intolerable in the domain of religion? Such questions are essential questions to be talked if we have to reach a point of mutual understanding, a point of meeting in between two fundamentalisms: secular fundamentalism and religious fundamentalism.

The dilemma of polarization -secularism vs. religion- is not new; it does present, for Muslims at least, a continuation of the imperial Europe manipulating its inventions, including Enlightenment, rationalism, democracy and human rights, to dominate the non-European world and get hold of its economic resources? This polemic dispute started as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century?

I have intentionally inserted 'Muslims' in the title of the paper in order to clarify a long and well-established confusion in the Western discourse as well as in modern Islamic discourse. This confusion can be explained in terms of entrapping and being entrapped. If by analyzing the cause of this ailment, we might be in a position to suggest a negotiation strategy to tackle the problem.

Modernity, as it is well known, was introduced to the Muslim World in the context of being dominated by the European colonial power. By the end of nineteenth century, the British had successfully colonized much of India. The French, under Napoleon Bonaparte, occupied Egypt in 1798. France then went into Algeria in 1830; occupied Tunisia in 1881, and Britain marched into Egypt in 1882. There were many other excursions as the West's program of the colonization unfolded throughout the Muslim World.

Within the military power there was an intellectual weapon advocating the necessity of neglecting and abandoning Islam, if this part of the world was to make any progress toward catching with modernity. It is enough to mention the French philosopher Ernest Renan (1832-1892), and the French politician and historian Gabriel Hanotaux (1853-1944) (3), who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs during 1894 and 1898. Renan posited the absolute incompatibility between Islam and both sciences and philosophy. Whatever is labelled Islamic science or Islamic philosophy is, according to Renan in his doctoral thesis, Averroès et l'Averroïsme (1852; "Averroës and Averroism"), mere translation from the Greek. Islam, like all religious dogmas built on revelation, is hostile to reason and freethinking (4). Hanotaux too held Islam responsible for the backwardness of the Muslim world. His allegation was based on the theological difference between Islam and Christianity. According to him the dogma of incarnation in Christianity has its consequence in building a bridge between man and God, thus freeing man from any dogma of determinism. Islamic pure monotheism, tawhîd, on the other hand, has created non-bridged distance between man and God, leaving no space for human free well. By such theological reason Hanotoux explained the political despotism characterizing the Muslim World.(5)

Against these severe allegations against Islam, both Jamâl al-Dîn al-Afghânî (1839-1897) and Mohammad Abduh (1848-1905) responded defensively, relating the backwardness of Muslims not to Islam per se, but to the contemporary Muslims' misunderstanding of Islam. They both argue, if Islam is understood properly and explained correctly, as was the case in the golden age of Islamic civilisation, Muslims would not have been easily defeated, and dominated by European power.

The basic question that confronted the early modern Muslim reformers was whether Islam is compatible with modernity or not. How could a faithful Muslim live in a modern socio-political environment, without losing her/his identity as a Muslim? Does Islam accommodate science and philosophy? Second came the question of the compatibility or otherwise of the divine law (shari'a) that constitutes traditional society, and the positive law that constitutes the modern nation-state. Were modern political institutions such as democracy, elections, and parliament accepted by Islam, and could they replace the traditional institutions of shûrâ, consultation, and the authority of the elite 'ulama (ahl al-hall wa al-'aqd)?

Al-Afghânî was heavily occupied of fighting against the imperial power politically and intellectually, thus combining agitate activism with intellectual maneuver all over the Muslim World, in India, Iran, Egypt and Turkey. "He supported movements working for constitutional liberties and fought for liberation from foreign control (Egypt, Persia). He attacked Muslim rulers who opposed reform or did not show enough resistance to European encroachments. He even envisaged the possibility of political assassination. His ultimate object was to unite Muslim states (including Shi`î Persia) into a single Caliphate, able to repulse European interference and recreate the glory of Islam. The pan-Islamic idea was the great passion of his life. He remained unmarried, made do with the absolute minimum in the way of food and clothing and took no stimulants other than tea and tobacco." (6)

Abduh, on the other hand, concentrated his activity in the arena of thought, especially after he was exiled because of his participation in `Urabî's affair which ended with the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. Influenced heavily by Afghânî, Abduh adopted a synthesis of classical rationalism, and modern socio-political awareness. This made it possible for him to re-examine the basic sources of Islamic knowledge, the Qur'an and the Sunna (the Tradition of the prophet,) as well as the structure of Islamic theology, thus, preparing the ground for what to be known as the islâh, reformation, movement.

The question of Islam and modern knowledge, which was fundamental to Abduh's writings, led him to re-examine Islamic heritage by reopening the 'door of ijtihâd' (free reasonable reflection) in all aspects of social and intellectual life. As religion is an essential part of human existence, he argued that the only avenue through which to launch real reform was through a reform of Islamic thought. He was deeply influenced by Jamâl al-Dîn al-Afghânî (1839-1897) who had brought to Egypt the idea of a new, modern interpretation of Islam.

The movement of reformation first advocated by Afghânî and Abdu represents to us nowadays a process of negotiating tradition as well as negotiating the challenge of the West. Such a movement is still alive and progressing, though unnoticed in the Western public sphere. There is no move from the Western side to reconsider its modernizing values as absolute; these values are the norms to be followed, peacefully or by enforcement, by all the nations on earth. Even with the case of Turkey, where another response to the European challenge is adopted since 1924, i.e., the secular separation between the state and religion, turkey is not yet accepted to join the Western club, the European Union.

It worth noting that when the Kemalist movement abolished the caliphate under the pressure the Western power after the World war one the reaction in the Islamic world was extremely emotional. In my opinion, the united response came about because the whole Islamic world felt it had been left naked by being stripped off this symbolic caliphate--it was already symbolic at that time. Only one year before it was abolished, the Kemalists very wisely separated caliphate and sultanate, which was a radical secular decision. This decision was warmly welcomed--at least in Egypt. One reason was the traditional distinction between political and religious authorities, a distinction that almost unrealized because of the stereotype image of Islam in the West. Another reason, I think, was that the probably Egyptians thought that the caliph would now be the Caliph of all Muslims, not the political leader of the Turks. They believed that the authentic Islamic system was not at all the same thing as the political authority of the Turks, although the Ottoman authority had come to symbolize it. So the reaction was very positive. But the total abolition of caliphate left the whole Islamic world feeling it had been stripped naked. And it is easy to understand the subsequent chain of events: the decision to end the system was taken in 1924, and a new phase of intellectual reaction to the challenge against Islam started.

Nevertheless, one of Abdu's disciples `Alî `Abd al-Râziq, a prominent Azhar cleric, defended the abolition of the Caliphate and argued for the separation of religion and state on grounds internal to the traditional Qur'anic, prophetic, and legal Islamic discourses and narratives. His book, Islam and the Principles of Political Authority Al-Islâm wa Usûl 'l-Hukm, (Cairo 1925), turned, at the time, into a major literary-religious scandal in both the Arab and Muslim Worlds leading to the author's expulsion from al-Azhar. His central argument was that "the Caliphate had no basis either in the Qur'ân, nor the Tradition, or the consensus. To prove each part of this argument, he dealt in some details with the major pieces of evidence which are normally drawn from these three sources in establishing the 'obligatory' of the Caliphate. He rightly said that the Qur'an nowhere makes any mention of the Caliphate in the specific sense of the political institution we know in history. (...) Nor can any convincing proof be extracted from the sayings attributed to the prophet. ... ... To dispose of consensus as the last, conceivable sanction, `Abd 'l-Râziq argued that, judging from concrete historical instances, consensus, whether in the sense of the agreement of the Prophet's Companions and their followers, or that of the `Ulamâ' of the entire Muslim community, has never played any role in installing the Caliphs." (7)

If the position of 'Alî `Abd al-Raziq presents continuation of the reformist trend of thought, the abolishment of caliphate created an opposite reaction led to a rather radical Islamic movement, i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Ikhwân al-Muslimûn, founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Bannâ. It was inspired by the thought of Muhammad Rashid Rida, a disciple and co-editor of the Tafsîr al-Manâr with Mohammad Abduh, who was involved in the dispute against Abd al-Raziq; he emphasised the religious necessity, wujûb, of Caliphate to Muslims to the extent he considered the Muslim World without it as returning back to paganism, JAhiliyya (8). Secondly, contrary to his professor Abduh, who mostly adopted the rationalized Islamic trend of thought as we mentioned above, Rida distinguished himself as follower of the Hanbalî school as was developed by both Ibn Taimiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim (9). It was Muslim Brotherhood Society the organization from which all the radical islamist groups emerged.

Another yet different example is the Iranian case. Although a shi`î state the ayatollah in their moment of victory in 1979 did not proceed to restore the Islamic caliphate nor did they erect an Imamate or vice-Imamate. They proceeded to establish a republic for the first time in Iran's long history, a republic with popular election, a constituent assembly, a parliament, a president, a council of ministers, political factions, a constitution, a kind of supreme court and so on (10). This leads us to uncover the similarity between the secular state of Turkey and the Islamic Republic of Iran. In both instances, as well as in most of the Muslim countries, secularization of life has been an ongoing process regardless of the high voices of radical Islamism. The victory of the reformists against traditionalists in Iran was very visible and very promising until Mr. Bush classified Iran among the evil-axe states.

How much change could be noticed now in the relationship between the West and the Muslim world? How much pressure is still practiced against the Muslim world to protect the economic and political interest of the West? How many unjust political regimes were supported by the political West against the will of the people? How much political manipulation is played against Muslims by presenting Islam as the substitute enemy of the West after the falling apart of the Soviet Union? If the conflict of civilizations is unavoidable, why should Muslims accept the values of a civilization they have to destroy? It is true that the world has become a small village, but in this very small village the poor living in the South are getting more and more poor, while the rich of the North are getting more and more rich. Modernity, Human Rights, democracy are only for the privileged, for the under privileged there is nothing but to cry for justice. In this cry, not in Islam itself, sometimes violent, resides the question of modernity and all its relevance.

Prof.dr. Nasr Abu Azyd(1)

Endnotes:

1 Ibn Rushd Chair: Islam and Humanism, UvH
2 See website
3 A statesman, diplomat, and historian who directed a major French colonial expansion in Africa and who championed a Franco-Russian alliance that proved important in the events leading to World War I. As a French nationalist he was committed to policies of colonial expansion. During his ministry, French domination was established in French West Africa, Madagascar, and Tunisia; inroads were made in Algeria.
4 See, Ahmad Amân, Min Zu`ma' al-Islâh (Some Pioneers of Reformation,) the Egyptian National Books' Organization, Cairo, reprint 1996, 2ed vol., pp. 40-48.
5 See the translation of Hanotaux article into Arabic and Muhammad `Abduh's response in al-A'mal al-Kamilah, (the Complete Works), ed. Muhammad 'Amarah, Beirut 1972-1974, v. 5, p. 201.
6 I. Goldziher and J. Jomier's Article, The Encyclopedia of Islam, 2ed edition, Brill, Leiden, vol. 11, pp. 416-417.
7 Hamid Enauat, Modern Islamic Political thought, The Macmillan Press LTD, London, 1982, pp. 69-79.
8 ibid, pp. 69-79.
9 Cf. Tafsîr al-Manâr (Al-Manâr commentary of the Qur'an), 2ed ed., Cairo, 1961, vol.1, p. 211.
10 Sadik. J. Al-Azm, "Is Islam Secularizable?", unpublished paper presented at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Conference Challenging Fundamentalism: Questioning Political and scholarly Simplification, 26 - 27 April, 1996.