Islamic Reform. The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida

Abstract

Modern Islamic reformism has been generated partly from within but mainly as a response the Western assault, in both its intellectual and political dimensions, against the Muslim world. Modernism born when Muslims for the first time asked the question: why have the Europeans made so much progress while the peoples of the East remain backward? What is the secret behind the progress of the West and the cause for the backwardness of the East? The impulse behind these and similar questions the fear that the political ascendancy of the West, with its intellectual advances and pervasive influences of material civilization, would gradually erode the traditional bases for faith in God and menace Islamic existence. In response this challenge, three broad groups of reformists have evolved in modern Islam. (1) The revivalists, a strongly conservative group, advocate return the purity and literalism of the Shari'a (Islamic Divine Law) as a means of strengthening Islam and uniting the Muslims. (2) The secularists, a Westerneducated group, call for the separation of church and state and for the adoption of Western science and civilization. (3) The modernists who maintain that Islam is not opposed progress, rather it is compatible with it, and consequently a reformulation of Islamic doctrines in terms of modern thought is not only possible but desirable. Their concern is essentially how relate the past the present and the future in a positive and meaningful way-how become modern and remain Muslim at the same time. The dominant figure in this group is Muhammad Abduh, an Egyptian theologian of impressive intellectual ability, whose political and legal theories and those of his disciple, Muhammad Rashid Rida, an Egyptian of Syrian origin, are the subject of the volume under review. Islamic Reform, by Dr. Malcolm H. Kerr, Chairman of the Political Science Department at the University of California at Los Angeles, is purported be a study of the political and legal theories of the two Egyptian reformers. Yet, the author devotes half of the book an exposition of the classical Islamic theories of the Caliphate (Islamic State) and canonical jurisprudence (fiqh). His justification seems be that such an extensive analysis is important or necessary because many modern reformists such as Rashid Rida, under the influence of Muhammad Abduh, proclaimed it their objective make these doctrines serve as . . . a for determining the processes of politics in the modern age. (p. 12) In view of the fact that classical Islamic theories have been adequately expounded by Gibb, Gardet, Khadduri, Laoust and Tyan, whom the author readily acknowledges his debt, the need for such a lengthy 'introduction' becomes questionable. However, he does examine these doctrines with a fresh emphasis and the negative purpose to show that they were not suitable as a basis for determining, with any precision at least, the processes or substance of medieval Muslim politics. Analysis of classical Islamic theories on their formal level reveals that traditional jurisprudence, like the traditional doctrine of the Caliphate, was closely tied its theological foundations. This umbilical relationship between theology on the one hand and constitutional theory and jurisprudence on the other, hastened, in the judgment of the author, the obsolescence of the theory of the Caliphate and restricted the positive evolution of Islamic Law. Even ijma' (consensus of the community) ijtihad (personal opinion) and istislah (public) interest), these promising and dynamic legal sources were also prevented by Muslim jurists from becoming wide-open doors for innovations and adaptations. Istislah, which Dr. Kerr regards as a principle of tremendous potential for positive reform, subordinated by the jurists Koranic considerations and restricted as an independent source of the Law. Only a fourteenth century radical champion of istislah, Najm ad-Din Taufi, asserted that every public interest is a necessity and must therefore take precedence over everything else, including the religious texts (p. 97). As Dr. Kerr later indicates, even the modern reformers have hesitated go that far. After outlining some of the fundamental elements in the idealist tradition of Muslim legal and constitutional theory, and having tried show that these elements were outgrowths of a conservative theology, the author then turns his attention consider how this tradition reformulated in late 19th and early 20th centuries by Abduh and Rida. Although Abduh is the most important figure, less space is devoted him than his disciple, simply because so much has been already said about him that the author admits he can add nothing more. Abduh's dominant position in Islamic modernism derives from the fact that he is the first Muslim thinker attempt a separation of religious issues from the political conflict of the