When the Other Speaks: Ismāʿīl Gasprinskii and the Concept of Islamic Reformation

Gulnaz Sibgatullina

doi:10.1163/15685209-12341566

Abstract

Abstract Through analysis of the Russian-language writings of the prominent Crimean Tatar Muslim educator Ismāʿīl Gasprinskii, this article engages in unpacking the term ‘Islamic Reformation’. Gasprinskii’s membership of various, not necessarily overlapping social groups, including Russian conservative circles and international Muslim liberal networks, gave rise to the multitude of complex, often mutually exclusive meanings that the term enjoyed in his work. Despite clear references that Gasprinskii made to European and global Islamic discourses on civilisation and progress, his texts remained highly sensitive to Russia’s own insecure stance vis-à-vis Europe. Responding to the nation-building rhetoric of Russia’s elites, Gasprinskii conformed to and simultaneously challenged dominant cultural codes concerning Russia’s ethnic and religious minorities in many subtle ways. His case thus invites a reconsideration of the modes of conversation that existed between the coloniser and the colonised at the turn of the twentieth century, whereby we see them not as instances of uncontested domination by and imposition of European models, but as a complex and multidirectional process in which Muslim figures, like Gasprinskii, could exercise a significant degree of agency.

Highlights

Through analysis of the Russian-language writings of the prominent Crimean Tatar Muslim educator Ismāīl Gasprinskii, this article engages in unpacking the term ‘Islamic Reformation’
It is in the Sankt-Peterburgskie vedomosti article from 1882 that we find probably one of the earliest notes on the Protestant Reformation as a point of reference for the fortunes of Russian Islam: We are standing on the eve of the great religious reformation in the Muslim world, which will have the same influence on the further development of Muslims as Luther’s Reformation had on the Old Catholic world; and this [Islamic] reformation will inevitably revive Islam, temporarily in slumber, to new life and activity
Muslims’ use of the term ‘Islamic Reformation’ seems, at least at first glance, to mark the physical and the intellectual dominance of European colonial powers over their Muslim subjects, it transpires upon closer examination to offer a useful insight into the intricate power dynamics that existed between the ruler and the ruled in various colonial settings throughout the nineteenth century

Summary

Introduction

The (re)interpretation of roots, manifestations and effects of the Muslim reformist movement in the Russian empire of the nineteenth to early twentieth centuries—the movement that has until recently been subsumed under the umbrella term Jadidism (from uṣūl-i jadīd, ‘new method’ of schooling)— continues to fuel discussions among scholars of Russia’s Islam. Recent work on the topic, including certain widely-cited publications that have appeared in this journal, has challenged and deconstructed the previously dominant, dichotomous division of Muslim actors into reactionaries and modernisers, thereby urging a more critical engagement with a broad array of currents within the phenomenon of Muslim modernism. This paper draws on the ongoing scholarly conversation in the field and seeks to further problematise the nature of changes in Russia’s Muslim communities of the time by scrutinising our understanding of the agency that prominent Muslim figures maintained and exercised in their interaction with Russian imperial institutions. This paper draws on the ongoing scholarly conversation in the field and seeks to further problematise the nature of changes in Russia’s Muslim communities of the time by scrutinising our understanding of the agency that prominent Muslim figures maintained and exercised in their interaction with Russian imperial institutions. Such an approach encourages a more sophisticated view of the Muslim reformist agenda and enables the dismantling of an ingrained but misleading imagery of sharp boundaries between Muslim intellectuals and their Russian/Orthodox Christian counterparts. Drawing on the seminal work of Edward Lazzerini, Hakan Kırımlı, James Meyer, and Mustafa Tuna, among others, who have written extensively on Gasprinskii’s ideas and his actions in promoting new-method schooling, here

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Conclusion