Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and the Egyptian Enlightenmentmovement FAUZI M
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Taylor & Francis, Ltd. and British Society for Middle Eastern Studies are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:05:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions British Journal Middle Eastern Studies, November 2004 CarfaxPublishing of Taylor& Francis Group 31(2), 195-213 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and the Egyptian EnlightenmentMovement FAUZI M. NAJJAR* ABSTRACTFully aware of the pressing need for change in the Arab-Muslim world, a group of Egyptian intellectuals have formed the Egyptian Enlighten- ment Society to promote the necessary reformfor the challenges of the twenty- first century. They seek to restore a liberal-secularist trend by disseminating the ideas of rationality,freedom, equality, emancipation of women, and so on. They champion a civil society as against the religious society advocated by the Islamists. The advocates of enlightenment have mobilized the ideas and theories of Egyptian and Muslim liberal thinkers, in particular those of Ibn Rushd (Aver- roes), the great commentator and interpreter of Aristotelian philosophy, re- garded by many as one of the key figures in the development of the European Enlightenment.Averroes, a defender of the freedom of rational investigation, and a precursor of the modern scientific outlook, sought to reconcile philosophy and religion, and thus introducephilosophy into a Muslim society governed by the shari'. The future of the Arab-Muslimworld will depend on the outcome of the struggle between enlightenment and Islamic fundamentalism. Introduction 'What has happened to the tradition of enlightenment that had become part of Egyptian culture from the middle of the 19th to the middle of the 20th centuries?' asks Jabir 'Asfur, one of Egypt's leading intellectuals and founding member of the present Egyptian Enlightenment Association. What 'Asfur is referringto are those reforms in government, law, religion, education and other aspects of Egyptian culture that took place during that period. The nineteenthcentury was the formative period during which Egypt received the distinctive features of its modem culture. Following Napoleon's expedition in 1798, the pace of European intervention in Egypt and the Muslim world moved more rapidly. So did the process of modernizationor Westernization.In addition to the military and technical reforms introduced by Muhammad 'Ali, more than the externals of Western civilization were adopted. New social and political ideas and practices penetratedinto Egyptian society and culture. By the mid-nineteenth century, Muhammad 'Ali's grandson, Khedive Isma'il, could declare, not without extravagantexaggeration, that 'Egypt has become a part of Europe.' Instrumentalin this process of change was the rise of a new kind of literature, * College of Social Science, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA. ISSN 1353-0194 print/ISSN 1469-3542 online/04/020195-19 @ 2004 British Society for Middle EasternStudies DOI: 10.1080/135301904042000268213 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:05:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions FAUZI M. NAJJAR which played a leading role in disseminating modernist ideas and views. It has been said that the printing press was 'far and away the most revolutionaryand influential of all contributionsof Europe to the Moslem world.' The establish- ment of British control in Egypt in 1882 caused the Westernizing movement to broaden out and expand in different directions. Education reforms and the adoption of Western laws, commercial, criminal and civil, underscored the modernist transformationof Egyptian society. Lebanese immigrants played a decisive role in expanding journalism and literary, scientific and political publications. By the turn of the twentieth century, European political thought was generally accepted, consciously and unconsciously. A parliamentarysystem of government and certain constitutional reforms were established. Freedom of the press, fundamentalhuman rights and secularist education were championed along with democratic institutions. The secularist conception of the nation-state had for all practicalpurposes replaced the notion of an Islamic caliphate or unity. A new political consciousness was created amongst the mass of the people by the rapid rise and extension of journalism. An impressive general political and intellectual level was raised. The pioneer of that 'tradition of enlightenment' (tanwir) was Rifa'a Rafi' al-Tahtawi (1801-1873), who as Muhammad 'Ali's appointed Imam of a study mission in Paris, had learned French and studied Europeanthought, in particular the works of Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. Tahtawi was instrumentalin transmittingthe liberal thought of the French Englightenmentto his Egyptian compatriots. The present Tanwir Association regards him as its intellectual mentor, and it has recently organized a conference under the title 'Rifa'a al-Tahtawi Pioneer of Tanwir,' at which eighty-five papers dealing with his life and works were discussed by Arab and Western scholars.' The reform movement inauguratedby Tahtawi was developed and sustained by a number of intellectuals, religious and political leaders. Two main trends were generated. The first was a religious reform movement culminating in the works of Muhammad 'Abduh, a disciple of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, and an advocate of religious reform in Islam. To this day, 'Abduh remains the symbol of Islamic reform, and the author of the fundamentalproposition that Islam and modernity are not incompatible.To be modern does not necessarily compromise Islamicity. His book al-Islam Din al-'71m wa al-Madaniyya (Islam is the Religion of Science and Civilization) remains the landmarkin the Islamic reform movement. The second was a liberal-secularisttrend representedby the dissemination of ideas such as rationality, freedom, equality, constitutionalism, independent judiciary, government responsibility and separation of powers. Movements and political parties calling for social justice, equality before the law, free public education, free press, and emancipationof women were formed. Most important was the idea of a national secular society, strongly opposed by religious conservatives to this day.2 In his seminal work, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Albert Hourani 1 al-Ahram, April 20, 2002. 2 See Muhammad Nur Farahat, 'al-Qanun w-al-Tafa'ul al-Thaqafi fi Misr al-Haditha,' (Law and Cultural Interactionin Modem Egypt), in MuradWahba and Mona Abousenna (eds.) Nadwat al-Tanwir, (Cairo: Goethe Institute, 1990), p. 88. 196 This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Sat, 24 Jan 2015 14:05:34 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions THE EGYPTIAN ENLIGHTENMENT MOVEMENT stresses the liberal-secularcharacter of that period, secular 'in the sense that it believed that society and religion both prospered best when the civil authority was separate from the religious, and when the former acted in accordance with the needs of human welfare in this world, liberal in the sense that it thought the welfare of society to be constituted by that of individuals, and the duty of government to be the protection of freedom, above all the freedom of the individual to fulfill himself and to create civilization.'3 The religious reform movement has been fully covered by Charles C. Adams in his book Islam and Modernism in Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933), and Malcolm Kerrin Islamic Reform: the Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad cAbduh and Rashid Rida (University of California Press, 1966). Otherworks have dealt with the political, constitutionaland educational changes of that period, notably Qassim Amih's Tahrir al-Mar'a (Emancipation of Woman). Amin was the first Egyptian to attack the inferior position of Muslim women, the Islamic practice of polygamy, divorce and the use of the veil. The liberal reform movement was carried forward by writers like Taha Husayn, Lutfi al-Sayyid, and 'Ali 'Abd al-Raziq, among others. In his book Mustaqbal al-Thaqafafi Misr (The Future of Culture in Egypt), Husayn called upon the Egyptians to turn their faces West, urging them to adopt Western culture, science and techniques. As minister of education, he introduced educa- tional reforms, stressing freedom of academic research and the freedom of the university from governmentcontrol. Similarly, al-Raziq, in his book al-Islam wa cUsul al-Hukm (Islam and the Principles of Government), shocked the Muslim world with his argumentthat Islam is a religion and not a state, as he called for the separation of the two. Government systems and laws depend on the circumstances and requirementsof the public interest, he argued. Many other writers added to these landmarkson the road to Tanwir. It is this traditionof Tanwirthat the modem Tanwiriyyun,as the advocates of enlightenment are called, claim is at risk from two major developments