Article: "Muhammad 'Abduh's Critics: Religious Nationalism and Tabloid Journalism."This presents a revisionist perspective on the nineteenth-century Islamic reformer Muhammad 'Abduh, who is regarded by many as the 'Martin Luther' of the Islamic world. Although he suffered a great deal from ad hominem campaigns against him, no one has yet investigated the campaigns themselves, largely because the required sources are obscure and often in colloquial Arabic. This article traces the motives behind the attacks, the accusations made, and a trail of political intrigue that ties tabloid rabble rousers to key figures at the Azhar University and to the Egyptian viceroy 'Abbas Hilmi II himself. |
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Book manuscript based on dissertation (defended 2000) entitled "Beyond Modernism: Opposition and Negotiation in the Azhar Reform Movement, 1870-1911." My research explores a discarded history of opposition to educational reform at Azhar Mosque in nineteenth-century Cairo, Egypt. We have assumed that famous Islamic modernists such as Muhammad ‘Abduh instigated the reform movement and the conceptualization of modern religious life that emanated from Azhar and permeated Islamic society, and that opposition to reform arose from a faction of religious conservatives who were mired in scholastic ‘traditionalism’. However, opponents to reform engaged many of the same issues as the reformers, the two factions agreed on ultimate aims and even had fluid memberships, and some so-called opponents formulated alternative visions of reform that eschewed the modernists’ social-scientific terminologies of progress in favor of an ‘adaptive preservationism’. In fact, the texts of reforms show greater attention to the concerns of the conservatives than to the original programs of the modernists. Furthermore, conservatives chaired the very committees that generated and implemented reforms. Had religious conservatives not had any input into the reforms of the early 20th century, as historians have assumed, the reforms would have lacked the crucial cultural assonance that permitted them to become rooted in public life. Most importantly, the conservatives’ predictions about the dangers of modernists’ plans, for example that they would undermine the rule of law by encouraging lay legal interpretation, were correct. In short, this work constitutes a critical revision of our knowledge of Islamic reform.
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I have deliberately left this web abstract vague in the interest of protecting my intellectual property. If you would like me to send you an explicit statement of my thesis, an outline, or a chapter, please email me.
Copyright © 2004 Indira Falk Gesink
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