Introduction

Like many modern secularists, Kirmani and his friends blamed religion for the disorders of their nation. They believed that the Arabs had foisted Islam upon the Iranian people to their detriment, and so they tried to create a Persian identity based on their sketchy knowledge of pre-Islamic Iran.
Their view of the West was equally inadequate and naive, based on an unsystematic reading of European books. These reformers did not fully understand the complex nature of Western modernity, but regarded its institutions as a sort of “machine” (that nineteenth-century symbol of progress, science, and power) which could infallibly and mechanically manufacture the entire European experience. If only Iranians could acquire a Western secular law code (instead of the Shariah) or a European-style education, they would be modern and progressive too.
They did not appreciate the importance of industrialization and a modern economy. A European education would certainly open new doors to young Iranians, but if the infrastructure of their society remained unchanged, there would be little they could do with their education.
Modernization was not yet even in its infancy in Iran;
Iranians would have to undergo the wrenching and distressing process of transforming their agrarian culture into an industrialized, technicalized society.
This alone would make it possible for Iranians to have the kind of liberal civilization that these reformers wanted, where everybody could think, write, and explore whatever ideas they chose. An agrarian society could not support this freedom. Western institutions might be beneficial, but they could not by themselves transform the mentality of a people whose horizons were still those of the conservative period.
Indeed, the reformers themselves still had a foot in the old world.
This was hardly surprising, given the rudimentary nature of their exposure to modern society. They had come by their progressive ideas through Babism, the mystical philosophy of the school of Isfahan, and Sufism, as well as by reading Western books. These Shii spiritualities had given them the freedom and courage to throw off old restraints, but in a thoroughly conservative manner. Kirmani used to claim that he was a total rationalist: “reason and scientific proofs are the sources of my words and the bases of my deeds,”4? he insisted. But his rationalism was entirely bound by a mythical and mystical perspective.
He had an evolutionary view of history, but identified Darwinism with Mulla Sadra’s vision of the progressive development of all beings toward a perfect state. Mulkum Khan did the same. They were simply expanding the ancient Muslim conception of Ilm (“essential knowledge”) to include Western scientific rationalism. The reformers tended to argue more like medieval Faylasufs than modern philosophers. They all promoted the ideal of a constitutional government that would limit the powers of the shahs, and by opening this debate in Iran, they had made an important contribution.
But they were as elitist as any premodern philosopher. They certainly did not envisage a government based on the will of the majority.
Mulkum Khan’s vision was more like the old Falsafah ideal of a philosopher king guiding the ignorant masses than the democratic vision of a modern political scientist. Talibzada was unable to see the point of a multi party system; in his view, the role of the opposition was simply to censure the ruling party and to wait in the wings, ready to take over in a crisis.
It had taken Western people centuries of economic, political, industrial, and social change to evolve their democratic ideal, so, again, it was not surprising that the reformers had not grasped it fully. They were--and could only be-transitional figures, pointing their people in the direction of change, but unable yet to articulate modernity fully.
Intellectuals like Kirmani and Mulkum Khan would continue to play an important part in the development of Iran, and they would often find themselves in conflict with the ulema. But toward the end of the century, the clergy showed that they were not always immersed in old texts but were prepared to intervene in politics if they felt that the shahs had put the people’s welfare in jeopardy. In 1891, Nasir ad-Din Shah (1829--96) gave a British company the monopoly on the production and sale of tobacco in Iran. The Qajar shahs had been granting such concessions for years, but hitherto only in areas where Iranians were not involved. But tobacco was a popular crop in Iran, and provided thousands of landowners, shopkeepers, and exporters with their major source of income. There were huge protests all over the country, led by the bayaris and the local ulema. But in December, Hajj Mirza Hasan Shirazi, the leading mujtahid in Najaf, issued zfatwa that banned the sale and use of tobacco in Iran. It was a brilliant move. Everybody stopped smoking, even the non-Muslim Iranians and the shah’s wives. The government was forced to climb down and rescind the concession. It was a prophetic moment, and showed the potential power of the Iranian ulema, who, as the sole spokesmen of the Hidden Imam, could even command the obedience of the shahs. Thefatwa was rational, pragmatic, and effective, but made sense only in the old mythical context, deriving as it did from the Imam’s authority.
In Egypt too, modern Europe was regarded as exciting and inspiring during the 1870s, It was also seen as congenial to the Islamic spirit, and this despite the difficulties and pain of the modernization process. This enthusiasm is clearly reflected in the work of the Egyptian writer Rifah al-Tahtawi (1801--73), who was a great admirer of Muhammad All, had studied at the Azhar, and served as an imam in the new Egyptian army, an institution for which Tahtawi had the deepest respect. But in 1826, Tahtawi became one of the first students sent by Muhammad All to study in Paris. It was a revelation to him. For five years, he read French, ancient history, Greek mythology, geography, arithmetic, and logic. He was particularly enthralled by the ideas of the European Enlightenment, whose rational vision he found very similar to Falsafah. Before returning home, Tahtawi published his diary, which gives us a valuable early glimpse of the modern West as seen by an outsider. Tahtawi had his reservations. He found the European view of religion reductive and modern French thinkers arrogant in their lofty assumption that their rational insights were superior to the mystical inspiration of the prophets. But Tahtawi loved the way everything worked properly in Paris. He praised the clean streets, the careful education of French children, the love of work, and the disapproval of laziness. He admired the rational acuity and precision of French culture, noting that the Parisians “are not prisoners of tradition, but always love to know the origin of things and the proofs of them.” He was impressed that even the common people could read and write, “and enter like others into important matters, every man according to his capacity.” He was also intrigued by the passion for innovation, the essential ingredient of the modern spirit. It could make people changeable and erratic, but not in such serious matters as politics.
“Everyone who is master of a craft wishes to invent something which was not known before, or to complete something which has already been invented.”
When he returned to Egypt and became director of the new Bureau of Translation, which made European works available to Egyptians, Tahtawi insisted that the people of Egypt must learn from the West. The “gates of ijtihad” (“independent reasoning”) must be opened, the ulema must move with the times, and the Shariah adapt to the modern world.
Doctors, engineers, and scientists should have the same status as Muslim religious scholars.
Modern science could be no threat to Islam; Europeans had originally learned their science from the Muslims of Spain, so when they studied Western sciences the Arabs would simply be taking back what had originally belonged to them. The government must not stamp down on progress and innovation, but lead the way forward, since change was now the law of life.
Education was the key; the common people should be educated as they were in France, girls to the same standard as boys. Tahtawi believed that Egypt stood on the brink of a glorious future. He was intoxicated by the promise of modernity; he wrote a poem in praise of the steam engine, and saw the Suez Canal and the transcontinental railways of the United States as engineering feats that would bring the far-flung peoples of the earth together in brotherhood and peace. Let French and British scientists and engineers come and settle in Egypt! This could only accelerate the rate of progress.
During the i87os, a new group of writers from what is now Lebanon and Syria came and settled in Cairo.” Most of them were Christians who had been educated in the French and American missionary schools and thus had access to Western culture. They were practitioners of the new journalism and found that they had more freedom in Khedive Is mail’s Cairo than in the Ottoman territories. They established new journals, which published articles on medicine, philosophy, politics, geography, history, industry, agriculture, ethics, and sociology, bringing crucial modern ideas to the general Arab reader. Their influence was enormous. In particular, these Christian Arabs were keen that the Muslim states should become secular, and insisted that science alone and not religion was the basis of civilization. Like Tahtawi they were in love with the West, and communicated this enthusiasm to the people of Egypt.
It is poignant to look back at this early admiration in the light of the hostility that developed later. Tahtawi and the Syrian journalists were living in a brief period of harmony between East and West. The old crusading hatred of Islam seemed to have died in Europe, and Tahtawi clearly did not see Britain and France as a political threat, even though his sojourn in Paris coincided with the brutal colonization of Algeria by the French. For Tahtawi, the British and French were simply bearers of progress. But in 1871, an Iranian arrived in Cairo who had come to fear the West, which, he realized, was on the way to achieving world hegemony. Even though he was Iranian and a Shii, Jamal al-Din (1839--97) styled himself “al-Afghani” (the Afghan), probably because he hoped to attract a wider audience in the Islamic world by presenting himself as a Sunni.M He had had a traditional madras ah education, which had included both fiq (jurisprudence) and the esoteric disciplines of Falsafah and mysticism (irfan), yet he had become convinced, during a visit to British India, that modern science and mathematics were the key to the future. Afghani, however, did not fall in love with the British as Tahtawi had fallen under the spell of the Parisians. His visit coincided with the Indian Mutiny against British rule (1857), which left a lasting bitterness in the subcontinent.
Afghani traveled in Arabia, Turkey, Russia, and Europe, and became acutely anxious about the ubiquity and power of the West, which, he was convinced, was about to crush the Islamic world. When he arrived in Cairo in 1871, he was a man with a mission. He was determined to teach the Muslim world to unite under the banner of Islam and to use religion to counter the threat of Western imperialism.
Afghani was passionate, eloquent, wild, and quick-tempered. He sometimes made a bad impression, but had undoubted charisma. In Cairo, he quickly gathered together a circle of disciples and encouraged them to spread his pan-Islamic ideas. There was much discussion about the form that modern Egypt should take at this time. Syrian journalists had promoted the idea of a secular state, and Tahtawi had believed that Egyptians should cultivate a Western-style nationalism. Afghani would have none of this. If religion was weak, in his view, Muslim society was bound to disintegrate. It was only by reforming Islam and remaining true to their own unique cultural and religious traditions that the Muslim countries would become strong again and build their own version of scientific modernity. He was convinced that unless the Muslims took strong action, the Islamic community (ummah) would soon cease to exist. Time was short. The European imperialists were becoming stronger every day, and in a very short space of time the Islamic world would be overrun by Western culture.
Afghani’s religious vision was, therefore, fueled by the fear of annihilation that we have found to be a common response to the difficulties of modernity. He believed that it was not necessary to take on a European lifestyle in order to be modern. Muslims could do it their way. If they merely copied the British and French, superimposing Western values on their own traditions, they would lose themselves. They would simply be bad reproductions, neither one thing nor the other, and thus compound their weakness.” They needed modern science and would have to learn it from Europe;
however, this was in itself proof, he argued, “of our inferiority and decadence.
We civilize ourselves by imitating the Europeans.” Afghani had put his finger on a major difficulty. Where Western modernity had succeeded in large part by pursuing innovation and originality, Muslims could only modernize their society by imitation. The modernizing program had an inherent and inescapable flaw.
Afghani had, therefore, perceived a real problem, but his solution, which sounded attractive, was not feasible because it expected too much of religion.
He was correct in his prediction that a loss of cultural identity would result in weakness, malaise, and anomie. He was also right to argue that Islam must change in order to deal creatively with these radically new conditions.
But a religious reform could not of itself modernize a country and stave off the Western threat. Unless Egypt could industrialize, develop a vibrant modern economy, and transcend the limitations of agrarian civilization, no ideology could bring the country to the same level as Europe. In the West, the modern ideals of autonomy, democracy, intellectual freedom, and toleration had been as much a product of the economy as of the philosophers and political scientists.
Events would shortly prove that no matter how free and modern Egyptians might feel themselves to be, their economic weakness would make them politically vulnerable and dependent upon the West, and this humiliating subservience would make it even harder for them to cultivate a truly modern spirit.
But despite his hunger for modernity, Afghani, like the Iranian intellectuals with whom he was in touch, still belonged in many respects to the old world. He was a personally devout Muslim, who prayed, observed Islamic rituals, and lived according to Islamic law.
He practiced the mysticism of Mulla Sadra, whose vision of evolutionary change was deeply appealing to him. He also taught his disciples the esoteric lore of Falsafah, and often argued like a medieval philosopher. Like other religious thinkers of this period, he tried to prove that his faith was rational and scientific. He pointed out that the Koran taught Muslims to take nothing on trust and to demand proof; it was, therefore, admirably suited to the modern world.
Indeed, Afghani went so far as to argue that Islam was identical with modern scientific rationalism, that the Law that the Prophet had received was at one with the laws of Nature, and that all the doctrines of Islam could be demonstrated by logic and natural reason. This was patently false. Like any traditional faith, Islam went beyond the reach of logos and depended upon prophetic and mystical insight; and, indeed, that was how Afghani himself experienced religion. In another mood, he could write eloquently of the limitations of science, which “however beautiful, ... does not completely satisfy humanity, which thirsts for the ideal and which likes to exist in dark and distant regions that the philosophers and the scholars can neither perceive nor explore.” Like the Iranian intellectuals, Afghani still had a foot in the old world at the same time as he aspired to the new. He wanted his faith to be wholly rational, but, like any mystic of the conservative period, he knew in his heart that the mythos of his religion gave humanity insights that science could not.
This inconsistency was, perhaps, inevitable, because Afghani was a transitional figure. But it also sprang from his anxiety. Time was running out, and Afghani could not wait to iron out all the contradictions in his thought.
Muslims must make themselves more rational. This must be their top priority.
They had neglected the natural sciences and, as a result, fallen behind Europe. They had been told to close “the gates of ijtihad” and to accept the rulings of the ulema and the sages of the past. This, Afghani insisted, had nothing to do with authentic Islam. It encouraged a subservience that not only was wholly opposed to the modern spirit but denied the “essential characteristics” of Muslim faith, which were “dominance and superiority.” As it was, the West now “owned” science, and the Muslims were weak and vulnerable. Afghani could see that the old conservative ethos, symbolized by the closing of the gates of ijtihad, was holding Muslims back. But like any reformer who tries to make the mythos of religion sound like logos, he ran the risk of producing inadequate religious discourse on the one hand, and faulty science on the other.
The same could be said of his activism. Afghani rightly pointed out that Islam was a faith that expressed itself in action. He liked to quote the Koranic verse: “Verily, God does not change men’s condition, unless they change their inner selves.” Instead of retreating into the madrasahs, Muslims must become involved in the world of politics if they wanted to save Islam. In the modern world, truth was pragmatic;
it had to be shown to work in the physical, empirical realm, and Afghani wanted to prove that the truth of Islam could be just as effective as the Western ideologies in the world of his day. He realized that Europe would soon rule the globe, and was determined to make the Muslim rulers of his day aware of this danger. But Afghani’s revolutionary schemes were often self-destructive and morally dubious.
None of them bore fruit, and they led simply to official curtailment of his activities. He was expelled from Egypt for anti-government agitation in 1879, from Iran in 1891, and, though he was subsequently allowed to reside in Istanbul, he was kept under close surveillance by the Ottoman authorities. The attempt to convert religious truth into a program for political action runs the risk of nihilism and disaster, and Afghani laid himself open to the charge of “using” Islam in a superficial way to back up his ill thought-out revolutionary activism.
He had clearly not integrated the religious imperative with his politics in sufficient depth. When, in 1896, one of his disciples, at his urging, assassinated Nasir ad-Din Shah, Afghani violated one of the central tenets of all religion: respect for the absolute sanctity of human life. He had made Islam look not only inefficient and bizarre but also immoral.
The obvious defects of his thought sprang from his desperation. Afghani was convinced that the Islamic world was about to be wiped out by the imperialistic West. While he was living in Paris during the i88os, he encountered the new scientific racism in the work of the philologist Ernest Renan (1823-92), and the two men debated the place of Islam in the modern world.
Renan believed that the Semitic languages Hebrew and Arabic were corrupt and an example of arrested development. They lacked the progressive, developmental qualities inherent in “Aryan” linguistic systems, and could not regenerate themselves. In the same way, the Semitic races had produced no real art, commerce, or civilization.
Islam was especially incompatible with modernity, as witness the obvious inferiority of the Muslim countries, the decadence of their governments, and the “intellectual nullity” of the Muslims themselves.
Like the peoples of Africa, the population of the Islamic world was mentally incapable of scientific rationalism, and unable to form a single original idea. As European science spread, Renan confidently predicted, Islam would wither away and would, in the near future, cease to exist. It is not surprising that Afghani feared for the survival of Islam, or that he tended to overemphasize the scientific rationality of the Muslim vision. A new defensiveness had crept into Muslim thought, in response to a very real threat. The stereotypical and inaccurate view of Islam in the work of such modern thinkers as Renan would justify the colonial invasion of the Islamic countries.
Colonialism sprang from the needs of Europe’s expanding capitalist economy. Hegel had argued that an industrialized society would be compelled to expand “in order to search around outside itself among other peoples... for consumers and thereby for the necessary means of subsistence.”
This quest for new markets would “also provide the soil for colonization toward which the fully developed bourgeoisie is pushed.”
By the end of the century, the colonization of the Middle East was well under way. France had conquered Algeria in 1830, and Britain, Aden nine years later. Tunisia was occupied in 1881, the Sudan in 1889, and Libya and Morocco in 1912. In 1915, the Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the territories of the moribund Ottoman empire between France and England, in anticipation of victory in the First World War. This colonial penetration was a severe shock, which meant, in effect, the destruction of the traditional lifestyle of those countries, which were reduced immediately to secondary status.
The colonized country produced raw materials for export, which were then fed into the European industrial process. In return, it received cheap manufactured Western goods, which meant that local industry suffered.
In order to ensure that the new colony fit into the modern technicalized order, the police and military had to be reorganized along European lines; the financial, commercial, and productive side of the economy also had to be adapted, and the “natives” had to acquire some familiarity with modern ideas. This modernization was experienced as intrusive, coercive, and profoundly unsettling by the subject population.66 Afghani had wanted Muslims to modernize themselves and escape this transformation of their society into an inferior copy of Europe. Colonialism made this impossible.
Middle Eastern lands that came under Western domination could not develop on their own terms. A living civilization had been transformed by the colonialists into a dependent bloc, and this lack of autonomy induced an attitude and habit of subservience that was profoundly at odds with the modern spirit. Inevitably, the earlier love and admiration of Europe, epitomized by Tahtawi and the Iranian reformers, soured and gave way to resentment.
During Afghani’s residence in Cairo, Egypt was gradually being drawn into this colonial net, even though it never became a full colony.
Khedive Is mail’s costly reforms and modernizing projects had bankrupted the country, which now depended entirely on European loans.
In 1875, the khedive had been forced to sell the Suez Canal to the British, and in 1876, as we have seen, the European shareholders had taken control of the Egyptian economy. When Is mail tried to break free, Britain, acting in concert with the Ottoman sultan, deposed him, and the khedivate passed to his son, Tewfiq. In 1881, some of the officers in the Egyptian army staged a coup under the leadership of one Ahmad bey Urubi. They were joined by some of Afghani’s disciples and others who wanted modern constitutional rule in Egypt. Urubi managed to impose his government on the new khedive and after this victory was followed by a popular nationalist uprising, the British government decided to intervene to protect the interests of the shareholders.
On July n, 1882, the British navy attacked Alexandria, and defeated Urubi’s forces on September 13 at Tel el-Kebir. The British then established their own military occupation in Egypt, and even though Khedive Tewfiq was officially reinstated, it was clear that the real ruler of Egypt was the British proconsul, Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer.