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“The Imam of modern Egypt was a sceptic”: Mustafa Sabri's Radical Critique of Muhammad ʿAbduh and Modernist Theology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2021
Abstract
This article re-examines the theology of Egyptian ʿalim Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) through the writing of Late Ottoman sheikh ül-Islam Mustafa Sabri (1869–1954) and his radical critique of the Muslim reform (tajdīd) movement. One of Mustafa Kemal's most implacable foes, Sabri was alarmed to find Egyptian ʿulamaʾ and intellectuals advancing the positivist-materialist agenda he had challenged in Istanbul before fleeing in 1922 from Ankara's victorious nationalist forces. Debating the leading lights of the modernist movement in Egypt of the 1930s and 1940s, Sabri came to see its reform theology as little more than a calque on Enlightenment notions of religion; his ideas became influential through his close relationship with Hasan al-Banna and other figures from the Muslim Brotherhood. Examining Sabri's work in Istanbul and Cairo, ʿAbduh's early and later writing, and texts such as ʿAbduh's famous debate with Farah Antun, the islāmiyyāt literature of Egypt's liberal age, and material by Sayyid Qutb, I argue that Sabri was instrumental in formulating the hostile discourse that came to dominate Muslim views of ʿAbduh in the later twentieth century once the ideologies of Salafism and Brotherhood Islamism had eclipsed that of the reformers.
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- Research Article
- Information
- Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 32 , Special Issue 2: Divine Sovereignty, Morality and the State: Maududi and His Influence , April 2022 , pp. 463 - 485
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal Asiatic Society
References
1 I am extending the years of Egypt's “liberal age” beyond Hourani's endpoint of 1939 in Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1789–1939 (1962) up to 1952, the year of the Egyptian military coup.
2 Sedgwick, Mark, Muhammad Abduh (Oxford, 2009), p. 128Google Scholar.
3 There are many studies on ʿAbduh, later political movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and general overviews, but few on liberal modernism and its collapse per se. The most direct study is Leonard Binder's Islamic Liberalism (Chicago, 1988), which rued its passing; see also Kurzman, Charles, Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook (Oxford, 1998)Google Scholar and Kurzman, Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Sourcebook (Oxford, 2002).
4 Sabri was among Istanbul ministers condemned to death for treason by the Ankara High Court in July 1920.
5 Sabri uses ithbātiyya in Arabic rather than al-falsafa al-waḍʿiyya which was preferred in Egypt; Mustafa Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql wa-l-ʿIlm wa-l-ʿAlam min Rabb al-ʿAlamin wa-Rusulihi, 4 vols. (Beirut, 1981 [1949]), i, p. 147, footnote 3. The Ottoman term was isbatiye.
6 The Young Turk movement was influenced by the French positivism of Auguste Comte and its notion of religion as an impediment to societal progress and the German materialism of Ludwig Büchner and its belief in natural forces as the organising principle of the universe. For an overview see M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, Atatürk: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, 2017), pp. 48–67.
7 Ibid., i, p. 23.
8 Massad, Joseph, Islam in Liberalism (Chicago, 2015), pp. 4–6Google Scholar.
9 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis, 1991), pp. 115–117Google Scholar.
10 Asad, Talal, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore, 1993), p. 207Google Scholar.
11 See Özervarlı, M. Sait, “Alternative Approaches to Modernization in the Late Ottoman Period: Izmirli Ismail Hakkı's Religious Thought against Materialist Scientism”, Int. J. Middle East Stud., 39/1 (2007), pp. 77–102CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also, Amit Bein, Ottoman Ulema, Turkish Republic: Agents of Change and Guardians of Tradition (Stanford, 2011) and Ahmet Şeyhun, Islamist Thinkers in the Late Ottoman Empire and Early Turkish Republic (Leiden, 2015).
12 See his defence of the fez, “Fes ve Kalpak”, Beyanülhak, 3 Teşrinisani 1324 (16 November 1908), 1/7, pp. 146–149; on polygamy, “Teaddüd-ü Zevcāt”, Beyanülhak, 1 Kanunuevvel 1324 (14 December 1908), 1/11, pp. 226–231; on divorce, “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: Talak”, Beyanülhak, 16 Mart 1325 (29 March 1909), 1/26, pp. 595–598; on Islamic inheritance, “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: İrs, Zekve”, Beyanülhak, 22 Şubat 1325 (7 March 1910), 2/50, pp. 1060–1062; he objected to photography (which ʿAbduh approved of), “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: Suret”, Beyanülhak, 26 Kanunusani 1324 (8 February 1909), 1/19, pp. 426–428; on action and work ethic (without referencing ʿAbduh), “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: Say ve Servet”, Beyanülhak, 8 Şubat 1909 (21 February 1909), 2/48, pp. 1020–1023; on insurance, “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: Sigorta, Kumar”, Beyanülhak, 21 Şubat 1326 (6 March 1911), 4/100, pp. 1858–1861; and the limits of permissability in music, “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: Musiki”, Beyanülhak, 24 Mayıs 1326 (6 June 1910), 3/63, pp. 1258–1262.
13 Sabri, “Din-i İslam'da hedef-i münakaşa olan mesailden: Mukaddime 3”, Beyanülhak, 27 Teşrinievvel 1324 (9 November 1908), 1/6, p. 107. ʿAbduh said microbes could be understood as a form of jinn and jinn could be responsible for epilepsy: ʿAbduh, “Bab Tafsir al-Qurʾan al-Hakim”, al-Manar, 23 June 1906, 9/5, pp. 334–335.
14 Bigiev's first book to provoke controversy in Istanbul was Rahmet-i İlahiye Burhanları (Proofs of God's Mercy, 1911). A modern Turkish edition was published along with Sabri's book; Ömer H. Özalp, İlâhî Adale (Istanbul, 1996).
15 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History (Mineola, NY, 1956), pp. 355–360.
16 Afghani, Hakikat-i Madhhab-i Naychari, ʿAbduh cited as translator into Arabic as al-Radd ʿala al-Dahriyyin, 3rd edition (Cairo: Maṭbaʿat al-Mawsuʿat, 1903 [1886]), pp. 65–66; he refers to Guizot's discussion of the Reformation in Histoire générale de la civilisation en Europe (1851). Bigiev as Luther was advanced in Istanbul by Haşim Nahid, Türkiye İçin: Necat ve İğtila Yolları (Istanbul, 1912), p. 214.
17 Musa Jarullah Bigiev, Rahmet-i İlahiye Bürhanları, in İlâhî Adalet, (ed.) Ömer Özalp (Istanbul, 1996), pp. 263–271.
18 Mustafa Sabri, Yeni İslam Müctehidlerinin Kıymet-i İlmiyesi (Istanbul, no date), p. 68. Muhammad ʿAbduh (ed. Muhammad ʿImara), al-Aʿmal al-Kamila, 5 vols. (Cairo, 1993), v, pp. 375–381.
19 Muhammad ʿAbduh (translation Mehmed Akif), “Tefsir-i Sure-i Gaşiye, 17–26”, Sebilürreşad, 24 Şubat 1327 (9 March 1911), 8/1, pp. 183–184.
20 Mustafa Sabri, Masʾalat Tarjamat al-Qurʾan (Cairo, 1932), pp. 35–67.
21 Brett Wilson, Translating the Qurʾan in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey (Oxford, 2014), pp. 186–209.
22 Mustafa Sabri, Mawqif al-Bashar Taht Sultan al-Qadar (Cairo, 1933), pp. 20–22.
23 Some question the degree to which he should be viewed as a disciple; Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement (London, 1933), p. 208; Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 189–192.
24 Charles Adams considered it to be ʿAbduh's work, while Muhammad ʿImara left it out of his collected works of ʿAbduh first published in 1972. From personal papers he examined in Tehran, Sayyid Hadi Khusraw Shahi supported this view of Afghani as the primary author, a view also upheld by Rotraud Wielandt; “Main Trends of Islamic Theological Thought from the Late Nineteenth Century to Present Times”, in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Theology, (ed.) Sabine Schmidtke (Oxford, 2016),” pp. 716–719.
25 Vincent J. Cornell, “Muhammad ʿAbduh: A Sufi-Inspired Modernist?” in Tradition and Modernity: Christian and Muslim Perspectives, (ed.) David Marshall (Washington, 2013), pp. 108–111.
26 Rida rebukes ʿAbduh for neglecting to mention Ibn Taymiyya in his edition of ʿAbduh's Risala; Risalat al-Tawhid (Cairo, 1942), p. 26, footnote 2.
27 Mohammad Hassan Khalil, Islam and The Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (Oxford, 2012), pp. 111–112.
28 The ideas were said to be Afghani's but the words ʿAbduh's. See Nikki Keddie, “Al-Sayyid Jamal al-Din ‘al-Afghani’”, in Pioneers of Islamic Revival, (ed.) Ali Rahnema (London, 1994), p. 28; Rashid Rida, al-Ustadh al-Imam al-Shaykh Muhammad ʿAbduh, 3 vols. (Cairo, 2006), iii, p. 190.
29 Sabri, Mawqif al-Bashar, pp. 27, 46.
30 Afghani and ʿAbduh, al-ʿUrwa al-Wuthqa (Cairo, 2014), p. 87.
31 Muhammad ʿAbduh (ed. Muhammad ʿImara), Risalat al-Tawhid (Cairo, 1994), p. 61. See Toshihiko Izutsu, The Concept of Belief in Islamic Theology (Kuala Lumpur, 2006), pp. 108–119.
32 Ibid., pp. 61–62.
33 ʿImara says this in a footnote; Rida makes no comment.
34 Sabri, Mawqif al-Bashar, p. 45.
35 Philipp Bruckmayr, “The Particular Will (al-irādat al-juzʾiyya): Excavations Regarding a Latecomer in
Kalām Terminology on Human Agency and its Position in Naqshbandi Discourse”, European Journal of
Turkish Studies, 13/2011, pp. 2–20. ʿAbduh did not use this language.
36 Sabri, Mawqif al-Bashar, pp. 56, 148.
37 Ibid., pp. 47, 72.
38 Ibid., 93–94. As outlined in his last Turkish work Dinî Müceddidler (1922) and first Arabic work al-Nakir ʿala Munkiri al-Niʿma min al-Din wa-l-Khilafa wa-l-Umma (1924).
39 Ibid., pp. 145, 160–163, 219–220.
40 Ibid., p. 33.
41 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 305. Sabri uses the term raybī.
42 I used the standardised English term Brotherhood although Brethren would be a more correct translation.
43 Ali Ulvi Kurucu, interview, in Mufarrih ibn Sulayman al-Qawsi, Mustafa Sabri: al-Mufakkir al-Islami wa-l-ʿAlim al-ʿAlami wa-Shaykh al-Islam fi al-Dawla al-ʿUthmaniyya Sabiqan (Damascus, 2006), pp. 442–443; Saraç, interview, in al-Qawsi, Mustafa Sabri, p. 430; and Ali Yakub Cenkçiler, Hatıra Kitabı (Istanbul, 2005), pp. 25, 40-41, 91, 116, 118, 127.
44 Ibrahim Munir, deputy general guide of the Muslim Brotherhood; interview, London, 30 January 2019. Other advisors included Afghan ambassador Shaykh Sadiq Mujaddidi and Algerian shaykh al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi.
45 Ali Yakub Cenkçiler, Hatıra Kitabı (Istanbul, 2005), p. 116.
46 Ibid., pp. 25, 155.
47 M. Ertuğrul Düzdağ, Üstad Ali Ulvi Kurucu Hatıralar, 5 vols. (Istanbul, 2007), ii, p. 234. The meeting took place after al-Husayni left France for Cairo in May 1945 when Britain sought his arrest.
48 Kurucu, interview, p. 442.
49 Ibid., pp. 442–443.
50 Hourani, Arabic Thought, p. 254.
51 Farah Antun, Ibn Rushd wa-Falsafatuhu (Alexandria, 1903), dedication (Ihdaʾ al-Kitab).
52 Ibn Rushd, Tahafut al-Tahafut (Beirut, 2005), pp. 372–375.
53 Antun, Ibn Rushd, p. 34.
54 Ibid., p. 34.
55 Ibid., pp. 36–37. On Ibn Rushd's concept of universal (active) and individual (habitual/material) intellect see R. Arnaldez, “Ibn Rus̲h̲d”, in Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, (ed.) P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs; http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0340 (accessed 14 December 2020). Also, Taylor, Richard C., “Averroes on the Ontology of the Human Soul”, The Muslim World, 102/3–4 (2012), pp. 580–596CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
56 Antun, Ibn Rushd, p. 90.
57 Ibid., p. 96.
58 Ibid., pp. 76–84.
59 Ibid., p. 98, p. 104.
60 Ibid., p. 121; see al-Ghazali, Tahafut, pp. 215–216. On Ghazali's notion of taʾwīl see Martin Whittingham, Al-Ghazālī and the Qur'ān: One Book, Many Meanings (London, 2007). Also, Frank Griffel, Al-Ghazālī's Philosophical Theology (New York/Oxford, 2009), pp. 71, 118.
61 Ibid., p. 122. This thinking can be traced back to Descartes’ Meditationes de Prima Philosophia (1641) and Blaise Pascal's Pensées (1669). See John Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane Approach (New York, 2014), pp. 13–17.
62 Ibid., pp. 124–125.
63 Ibid., pp. 133–141.
64 Ibid., pp. 140–141.
65 Ibid., pp. 151–152.
66 Ibid., pp. 158–159.
67 Ibid., p. 171.
68 Ibid., p. 182.
69 Ibid., pp. 182–183.
70 Ibid., p. 208.
71 Ibid., p. 218. See Muhammad ʿAbduh, al-Islam wa-l-Nasraniyya fi al-ʿIlm wa-l-Madaniyya (Beirut, 1988), pp. 196–198.
72 Antun, Ibn Rushd, p. 225.
73 Charles Adams, Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muḥammad ʿAbduh (London, 1933), pp. 86, 89–90.
74 Rida, Tarikh, i, pp. 805–816.
75 Samira Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality, and Modernity (Stanford, 2009), p. 98.
76 Sedgwick, Muhammad Abduh, pp. 53–54. See also D. M. Reid, The Odyssey of Farah Antun: A Syrian Christian's Quest for Secularism (Minneapolis, 1975), pp. 80–97.
77 Hourani, Arabic Thought, pp. 255–257.
78 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 133.
79 Ibid., i, p. 23 and iv, p. 17. Antun, Ibn Rushd, p. 183.
80 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, pp. 304–305.
81 Ibid., iii, p. 360; hayūlā is derived from Aristotle's hulē.
82 Ibid., i, pp. 14, 103 (footnote 1), 134, 143, 223 (footnote 1), 370, iv, pp. 345–346. Also, Mawqif al-Bashar, p. 23. ʿAbduh discusses stagnation at length; al-Islam wa-l-Nasraniyya, pp. 133–167.
83 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, iv, p. 18, footnote 1.
84 Ibid. i, p. 305, ii, p. 210. Sabri relied to some degree on Ahmad Amin and Zaki Nagib Mahmud's study of European philosophy, Qissat al-Falsafa al-Haditha (Cairo, 1935) for his views of the European philosophers.
85 Ibid., ii, pp. 149, 151. On Descartes, ii, pp. 211–228, and Kant, ii, pp. 228–233, iii, pp. 66–75.
86 Ibid., ii, p. 51.
87 Ibid., ii, pp. 62–63.
88 Ibid., ii, p. 155.
89 Ibid., i, p. 304. Earl of Cromer, Modern Egypt, 2 vols. (London, 1908), ii, pp. 179–180.
90 Robert Wisnovsky, “Avicenna's Islamic reception”, in Interpreting Avicenna: Critical Essays, (ed.) Peter Adamson (Cambridge, 2013), p. 191, footnote 4. See Alnoor Dhanani, “Al-Mawāqif fī ʿilm al-kalām by ʿAḍūd al-Dīn al-Ījī (d. 1355), and Its Commentaries”, in The Oxford Handbook of Islamic Philosophy, (ed.) Khaled El-Rouayheb and Sabine Schmidtke (New York, 2016), pp. 375–398.
91 This is the proof referred to in kalām as buṭlān al-tasalsul, or burhān al-taṭbīq.
92 Al-Afghani and ʿAbduh, al-Taʿliqat ʿala Sharh al-ʿAqaʾid al-ʿAdudiyya (Cairo, 2002), p. 217. See Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 230 and iii, pp. 365–389.
93 Sabri says this because ʿAbduh discusses the proof in terms of rival creative forces causing disorder in the universe, rather than to establish that no god could be God if he was obliged to negotiate creation with another entity; Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, pp. 136–138, ii, pp. 83–84, footnote 1. See ʿAbduh (ed. ʿImara), Risalat al-Tawhid, pp. 46–48.
94 Ibid., i, p. 141.
95 Ibid., i, pp. 142–143. For Sabri's discussion of these themes see Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 30, iv, pp. 5–16, 40–42.
96 Afghani and ʿAbduh, al-Taʿliqat, pp. 152–153.
97 ʿAbduh (ed. ʿImara), Risalat al-Tawhid, pp. 81–82.
98 Ibid., p. 178.
99 Ibid., pp. 61–63.
100 Ibid., pp. 78–79, p. 175; “the law came to clarify that which exists, it is not the creator of good” (muḥdith al-ḥusn).
101 Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion, p. 30.
102 ʿAbduh (ed. ʿImara), Risalat al-Tawhid, pp. 181–183.
103 Ibid., p. 177.
104 Ibid., pp. 140–144.
105 Ibid., p. 146.
106 Ibid., p. 160.
107 Sedgwick, Muhammad Abduh, p. 16.
108 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, iv, p. 4. Muhammad Farid Wajdi, “Muhammad Salla Allah ʿalayhi wa-Sallam fi Taqdir Qudat al-Raʾy fi Urubba”, Majallat al-Azhar, 8/5 (1937), pp. 358–361.
109 Among the contemporary texts Sabri discusses are: Zaki Mubarak, “Asmaʿuni Sihat al-Haqq”, al-Risala, 27 February 1939, 7/295, pp. 387–389; Wajdi, “al-Sira al-Muhammadiyya Taht Dawʾ al-ʿIlm wa-l-Falsafa”, Majallat al-Azhar, 11/7 (1940), pp. 385–390; Wajdi, “al-Sira al-Muhammadiyya Taht Dawʾ al-ʿIlm wa-l-Falsafa: Muqaddima”, Majallat al-Azhar, 10/1 (1939), pp. 12–17; Wajdi, “Ma Hiya al-Nubuwwa wa-Ma Hiya al-Risala wa-l-Adilla al-ʿIlmiyya fi Imkan al-Wahy”, Majallat al-Azhar, 10/2 (1939), pp. 90–98; Wajdi, “Ma Rabahahu al-Din min al-ʿIlm fi al-Zaman al-Akhar”, al-Risala, 6 January 1947, 15/705, pp. 12–13; ʿAbbas al-ʿAqqad, ʿAbqariyyat Muhammad (1942); Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Hayat Muhammad (1935); Shibli Shumayyil, Falsafat al-Nushuʾ wa-l-Irtiqaʾ (1910).
110 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, iv, p. 16.
111 Ibid., iv, pp. 48–62. Muhammad Husayn Haykal, Hayat Muhammad (Cairo, 2001), pp. 46–50.
112 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, iv, pp. 209–217, p. 241. Shaykh Shaltut said in series of opinions in 1942 that there are no binding explicatory hadith asserting that the Qurʾan requires belief in the resurrection of Jesus; “Rafʿ ʿIsa”, al-Risala, 11 May 1942, 10/462, pp. 515–517 and later issues 516–519. Wajdi shifted position from rejecting both corporal and spiritual resurrection to accepting spiritual resurrection only.
113 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 175. See Wajdi, “Madhhab al-Qurʾan fi al-Ayat al-Mutashabihat”, al-Ahram, 30 August 1933, in Sabri, iv, pp. 407–412; Wajdi, “Madhhab al-Qurʾan fi al-Ayat al-Mutashabihat”, al-Ahram, 10 September 1933, in Sabri, iv, pp. 432–438; Wajdi, “Tafsil Baʿd Ma Ajmalnahu min al-Mutashabihat”, al-Ahram, in Sabri, iv, pp. 450–453. See also Ahmad Zaki Pasha, “Ayna Wadi al-Naml al-Madhkur fi al-Qurʾan?” al-Ahram, 6 August 1933, in Sabri, iv, pp. 391-396, Wajdi's response, “Wadi al-Naml wa-Madhhab al-Qurʾan”, in Sabri, iv, pp. 397–339, and Sabri's response to Wajdi and defence of Ahmad Zaki, “Wadi al-Zalal Baʿd Wadi al-Naml”, al-Ahram, 26 August 1933, in Sabri, iv, pp. 400–406.
114 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 34, pp. 360–362. This opinion was argued by Shaykh Shaltut.
115 Ibid., iv, pp. 285, 359; citing Shaykh of al-Azhar Mustafa al-Maraghi in the periods 1937–1929 and 1935–1945, as reported in al-Ahram, 28 February 1936.
116 Ibid., i, p. 52. See Wajdi, “al-Din fi Muʿtarak al-Shukuk”, al-Risala, 15 January 1945, 13/602, pp. 57–60.
117 Ibid., i, p. 123.
118 Ibid., i, p. 210, ii, p. 235 re Wajdi. Sabri's predecessor as Ottoman Grand Mufti Musa Kazım was among reformists interested in Spiritism; Midhat Cemal Kuntay, Mehmet Akif: Hayatı-Seciyesi-Sanatı (Istanbul, 2015), 42–43; and Marwa Elshakry, Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 (Chicago, 2013).
119 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, ii, p. 304.
120 Ibid., iii, p. 90.
121 Ibid., iii, pp. 85–315.
122 Ibid., i, pp. 441–442.
123 Ibid., i, p. 433.
124 Ibid., i, p. 30.
125 Zahid Al-Kawthari, “Al-Lamadhhabiyya Qantarat al-Ladiniyya”, al-Islam, 6/40, 24 December 1937, in Maqalat al-Kawthari, (ed.) Yusuf Banuri (Cairo, 2000 [1953]), pp. 129–136.
126 On early modernist usage see Henri Lauzière, “The Construction of Salafiyya: Reconsidering Salafism from the Perspective of Conceptual History”, Int. J. Middle East Stud., 42/3 (2010), pp. 369–389. On the term's transformation see Andrew Hammond, “Producing Salafism: From Invented Tradition to State Agitprop”, in Salman's Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia, (ed.) M. Al-Rasheed (London, 2018), pp. 147–164.
127 Al-Kawthari, “Manshaʾ Ilzam Ahl al-Dhimma bi-Shuʿar Khass wa-Hukm Talabbus al-Muslim bihi ʿInd al-Fuqahaʾ”, al-Islam, 11/23, 26 June 1942, in Maqalat, p. 227.
128 Al-Kawthari, “Kashf al-Ruʾus wa-Libs al-Naʿal fi al-Salat”, al-Sharq al-ʿArabi, 30 May 1947, in Maqalat, pp. 165–180.
129 Sedgwick, Muhammed ʿAbduh, p. 101. The incident is recounted in Jacques Jomier, Le Commentaire
Coranique du Manar: Tendances Modernes d'Exégèse Coranique en Egypte (Paris, 1954), pp. 100-101, footnote 2.
130 Muhammad ʿAbduh Blog, 18 April 2012, http://Abduhinfo.blogspot.com/2012/04/solution-to-problem-ofwhy-muhammad.html.
131 Richard Hattemer, “Atatürk and the Reforms in Turkey as Reflected in the Egyptian Press”, Journal of Islamic Studies, 11/1 (Jan 2000), pp. 21–42.
132 Mahmud Abu Rayya, (ed.), Risalat al-Tawhid, 1st edition (Cairo, 2003), p. 14, footnote 1; the pages removed in subsequent editions are at pp. 53–55.
133 On these accusations, see Indira Falk Gesink, Islamic Reform and Conservatism: Al-Azhar and the Evolution of Modern Sunni Islam (London, 2010), pp. 93–97. Those discussing ʿAbduh as a neo-Muʿtazili include Elie Kedourie, Afghani and Abduh: An Essay on Religious Unbelief and Political Activism in Modern Islam (London, 1966), pp. 13–14; Khalid, Detlev, “Some Aspects of Neo-Muʿtazilism”, Islamic Studies 8/4 (1969), pp. 320-321Google Scholar; Caspar, Robert, “Un aspect de la pensée musulmane moderne: le renouveau du moʿtazilisme”, Melanges de l'Institut Dominicain d'Etudes Orientales du Caire 4 (1957), pp. 141–202Google Scholar; Louis Gardet, “Signification du ‘renouveau Muʿtazilite’ dans la pensée musulmane contemporaine”, Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, (ed.) S. M. Stern, A. Hourani, V. Brown (Oxford, 1972), pp. 63–75.
134 Zahid Al-Kawthari, Taʾnib al-Khatib ʿala Ma Saqahu fi Tarjamat Abi Hanifa min al-Akadhib (Cairo, 1990 [1941]), pp. 107–108.
135 Al-Kawthari, “Raʾy Shaykh Muhammad ʿAbduh fi Baʿd al-Masaʾil”, in Maqalat, pp. 468–470; al-Kawthari, “Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab wa-Muhammad ʿAbduh fi Nazar Sahib al-Thaqafa”, Maqalat, pp. 333–338.
136 Scharbrodt, Oliver, “The Salafiyya and Sufism: Muḥammad ʿAbduh and His Risālat al-Wāridāt (Treatise on Mystical Inspirations)”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 70/1 (2007), pp. 89–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
137 Gibb, H. A. R., “Studies in Contemporary Arabic Literature — III”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 5/3 (1929), pp. 451, 459, 465Google Scholar.
138 Adams, Islam and Modernism, vi.
139 Ibid., pp. 137–138.
140 Israel Gershoni, “The Theory of Crisis and the Crisis in a Theory: Intellectual History in Twentieth-Century Middle Eastern Studies”, in Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century, (ed.) Israel Gershoni, Amy Singer, Hakan Erdem (Seattle, 2011), p. 138.
141 H. A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam (Chicago, 1947), pp. 73, 128.
142 Gershoni, “The Theory of Crisis”, p. 169.
143 Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition, pp. 98–99, 113.
144 See Sedgwick's appraisal, Muhammad Abduh, p. 119. The Egyptian Civil Code of 1948, merging shariʿa, French, and American law and becoming the basis for civil codes in numerous post-colonial Arab states. Full executive control was established over Al-Azhar and remaining shariʿa courts abolished in 1961. Turkey ended the İlmiye and shariʿa system in the period 1924 to 1926.
145 It continued through the scholarly work studying the phenomenon of figures such as Fazlur Rahman, Leonard Binder, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, and others in Western academia.
146 Cottingham, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 35–39; John Gray, Seven Types of Atheism (London, 2019), pp. 9–23.
147 John Voll, “Foreword”, in The Society of the Muslim Brothers, Richard Mitchell (New York, London, 1993), pp. xxiii-xxiv.
148 Abul Hasan Nadvi, Madha Khasira al-ʿAlam bi-Inhitat al-Muslimin (Cairo, 1994), p. 27.
149 In Fi Zilal al-Qurʾan (In the Shadow of the Qurʾan), composed between 1952 and 1961, Qutb cites widely from al-Jihad fi Sabil Allah, the 1960 Arabic translation from Urdu of Mawdudi's al-Jihad fi al-Islam (1927). See Muhammad Qasim Zaman, “The Sovereignty of God in Modern Islamic Thought”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 25/3 (July 2015), pp. 389–418. On Ibn Taymiyya, see Emmanuel Sivan, Radical Islam: Medieval Theology and Modern Politics (New Haven/London, 1990), p. 94, p. 102. On Lenin, see John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (London, 2010), p. 16, p. 231; and Glenn Robinson, “Jihadi information strategy: sources, opportunities, and vulnerabilities”, in Information Strategy and Warfare: A Guide to Theory and Practice, (ed.) John Arquilla and Douglas A. Borer (London, 2007), p. 92.
150 Düzdağ, Hatıralar, ii, p. 301.
151 Sabri, Mawqif al-ʿAql, i, p. 329, footnote 1.
152 Sayyid Qutb, al-ʿAdala al-Ijtimaʿiyya fi al-Islam (Cairo, 1954), pp. 225–227.
153 Ibid., pp. 252–256.
154 Ibid., pp. 132–135.
155 Sayyid Qutb, Khasaʾis al-Tasawwur al-Islami wa-Muqawwimatuhu (Cairo, 2002 [1962]), pp. 18–20. Its original title was Fikrat al-Islam ʿan Allah wa-l-Kawn wa-l-Hayat wa-l-Insan, which bears a resemblance to not only Mawdudi's title al-Mustalahat al-Arbaʿa fi al-Qurʾan: al-Ilah, al-Rabb, al-ʿIbada, al-Din (1955) but also Sabri's Mawqif al-ʿAql.
156 Christmann, Andreas, “Islamic scholar and religious leader: A portrait of Shaykh Muhammad Saʿid Ramadan al-Būti”, Islam & Christian Muslim Relations, 9/2 (1998), pp. 149–169CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thomas Pierret, Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 76–82.
157 Saʿid Ramadan al-Buti, Kubra al-Yaqiniyyat al-Kawniyya: Wujud al-Khaliq wa-Wazifat al-Makhluq (Damascus, 1997). On ʿAbduh and his followers, see pp. 185, 222–235, 327–337 and on Sabri, see pp. 84–85, 94, 148–49, 185, 230, 233, 329.
158 Ibid., p. 85, footnote 1.
159 The leading Islamic journal Hilal's translation of Maʿalim fi al-Tariq was confiscated and its translator arrested after Qutb's execution in 1966 over his discussion of rebellion and violence in the book.
160 These comments were removed from the modern imprint of Sabri's Dinî Müceddidler (Istanbul, 1994), p. 249. See the original Ottoman version: Dinî Müceddidler (Istanbul: Âsitâne Kitabevi, nda [1922]), p. 260.
161 Pro-Sabri works began to appear from the 1980s, such as Sadık Albayrak's Son Devir Osmanlı Uleması (1981) and Hilafet ve Kemalizm (1992). İsmail Kara's three-volume scholarly overview of Islamist thought in Turkey, Türkiye'de İslamcılık Düşüncesi (1986), was a milestone in its comprehensive approach. Articles published since the 1990s include Yusuf Şevki Yavuz, “Mustafa Sabri Efendi”, İslam Ansiklopedisi, vol. 31 (2006), pp. 350–353.
162 Mawqif al-ʿAql was published in 2005 as Şeyhulislâm Mustafa Sabri Efendi'nin Mısır Ulemâsı ile İlmî Münâkaşaları and al-Qawl al-Fasl as Gaybın Önünde: El-Kavlu'l-Fasl in 2019. His Ottoman Turkish works were reproduced in modern Turkish earlier, starting with Dinî Müceddidler in 1977.
163 Mufarrih ibn Sulayman al-Qawsi, Mustafa Sabri: al-Mufakkir al-Islami wa-l-ʿAlim al-ʿAlami wa-Shaykh al-Islam fi al-Dawla al-ʿUthmaniyya Sabiqan (Damascus, 2006), p. 381. English studies include Mehmet Kadri Karabela, One of the Last Ottoman Şeyhülislams, Mustafa Sabri Efendi (1869–1954): His Life, Works and Intellectual Contributions (MA Thesis, McGill University, 2003) and Amit Bein, “ʿulamaʾ and Political Activism in the Late Ottoman Empire: The Political Career of Şeyhülislâm Mustafa Sabri Efendi”, in Guardians of Faith in Modern Times: ʿulamaʾ in the Middle East, (ed.) Meir Hatina (Leiden, 2009), pp. 67–90.
164 Ishaq Musa al-Husayni, al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun: Kubra al-Harakat al-Diniyya al-Haditha (Beirut, 1952), pp. 180–181; published as The Moslem Brethren: The Greatest of Modern Islamic Movements (Beirut, 1956). Sabri was also cited early in Muhammad Husayn, al-Ittijahat al-Wataniyya fi al-Adab al-Muʿasir (Cairo, 1954), p. 348.
165 Mehmet Zeki İşcan, “Türk Basınında Matüridi ve Matüridilik”, Marmara University İlahiyat Fakültesi Vakfı Yayınları, No. 261 (2012), pp. 478–492.