Chapter 13 Freemasonry and Islam
Thierry Zarcone
Introduction
Freemasonry was born in an almost purely Christian society with its ceremo nial and rituals heavily influenced by Christian culture and Western esoteri cism. Hence, it is not surprising that in spite of the masonic principle of tolerance, Jews, Muslims, and ‘Pagans’, were not accepted in the Order ([Nogaret] 1742: 14–15). This was the case particularly on the Continent, while the British and Dutch forms of Freemasonry were relatively open to the Jews. In 1755, according to the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of France, a person who was not baptized could not be made a Mason and several contemporary declarations were written by continental Masons, mainly German and Scan dinavian, which underlined the strictly Christian character of the Order (Beaurepaire 2003). It is surprising that the Catholic Church, as indicated in the Papal Bulls of 1738 and 1751, idealized the universal tolerance of Freemasonry and imagined naively that Jews, Muslims, and Pagans were easily accommodated within the Order. Notwithstanding, we do know some cases of Muslims, in general merchants, students or diplomats, who were initiated in England and continental Europe in the eighteenth century, but they were very few and admitted into the Order under exceptional conditions only. Meanwhile, the lodges established in the East in the eighteenth century very rarely wel comed Muslims. These lodges constituted either a powerful commercial net work serving the foreign merchants established in the Empire, or a diplomatic club for members of the legations (Zarcone 1993: 189–193; Beaurepaire 2006; Fozdar 2001: 46–49; van der Veur 1976: 4–6; Stevens 1994). Thereafter, in the nineteenth century, the emergence of liberalism in the West and the increas ing settlement in the Muslim world of colonists and foreigners who were Free masons led to a reconsideration of the principle of tolerance and of masonic discrimination (see the chapters “Freemasonry and Eastern Religions” and “Freemasonry and Colonialism” in this volume for further information).
Muslims in Freemasonry: Colonial Clubs and/or Reformist Circles
Although many lodges were active in the Ottoman Empire, in Egypt, in India and even in Indonesia in the eighteenth and the first decades of the nineteenth
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Mixed-Race Lodges in British India and in the Dutch East Indies
It is worth noting that the masonic lodges in general provided a training ground for Muslims in democratic and constitutional government through the use of by-laws and constitutions, election of officers by universal suffrage, and so on. The lodge was also a neutral ground for various ethnic groups and mem bers of different religions to meet and fraternize: colonizers and native popu lations in India and in North-Africa; Westerners and locals in the Ottoman Empire, and also among the ethnic and religious minorities of these areas: Jews, Christians and Muslims in Turkey and in the Middle East; Hindus, Zoroastrians and Muslims in India; Muslims and Chinese in the Dutch East Indies. On the other hand, secret societies have fascinated the Muslims and this may be one explanation for the success of Freemasonry among them—the other being its social and political character. D.F. Wadia wrote, in 1912, that in