Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 The Controversy of Shaykh 'Ali 'Abd Al- Raziq James Broucek Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES THE CONTROVERSY OF SHAYKH ‘ALI ‘ABD AL-RAZIQ By JAMES BROUCEK A Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Religion In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Fall Semester, 2012 Copyright © 2012 James Broucek All Rights Reserved James Broucek defended this dissertation on August 13, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: John Kelsay Professor Directing Dissertation Michael Ruse Outside Committee Member Sumner B. Twiss Committee Member Adam Gaiser Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My parents helped support me financially while I lived on graduate student wages, and for that I thank them. I received only encouragement, support, and patience from the faculty members of Florida State University’s excellent Department of Religion, and for that I thank them. More specifically, I owe Dr. David Kangas and Dr. Martin Kavka thanks for first sparking my interest in religious studies, and allowing me to take their graduate seminars when I was still too young and ignorant to contribute much to them. I owe Dr. John Kelsay, Dr. Sumner B. Twiss, and Dr. Adam Gaiser, and Dr. John Corrigan thanks for teaching me how to think, as much as it is possible to teach someone like me how to think. I also made many friends in the religion department during my time at FSU, which made it possible for me to have a life, and in some cases continue learning, outside of school. Michael Pasquier, Kelly Baker, Howell Williams, Betsy Barre, Nahed Zehr, Richard Harry, Tamara Marks, Jenny Collins-Elliot, Dianna Bell, Kirk Essary, Andrew Gibbs, Frank Pittenger, Adam Park, Shem Miller, Bryan Cuevas, and Matthew Goff were all people who served terms of service as my friends, and for that I thank them. During graduate school I lived in Muscat, Oman for two years while attending the Institute of Shari‘a Sciences. I lived those two years in constant enjoyment of other people’s company and hospitality, and for that I have literally hundreds of people to thank. Most notably, Shaykh ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Salimi secured my enrollment in the Institute. Shaykh Nasr al- Masroori and Shaykh Khaled al-Khawaldi were always present to provide me with any help or advice that I might need—even if I wasn’t wise enough to take it. Rabi‘a al-Rabia‘i took me on many road trips and welcomed me into his family and his home on countless occasions. Lastly, all of the students at the Institute were brothers to me, and treated me with kindness and respect. These relationships, and hundreds of others, made my time in Oman so wonderful that it is painful to remember now. To all of my friends in Oman, thank you. Please call on me if I can repay the favor. In the Fall of 2011 I was hired as a lecturer at Missouri State University, where I had the opportunity to work with another great faculty and make new friends. Dr. Jack Llewellyn, Dr. Victor Matthews, Dr. Martha Finch, Dr. Austra Reinis, Dr. Leslie Baynes, Dr. Mark Given, Dr. Kathy Pulley, Dr. Micki Pulleyking, Dr. John Schmalzbauer, Dr. John Strong, Dr. James Moyer, Jane Terry, and Lora Hobbs were all excellent colleagues who showed me kindness and support—and for that I thank them. I am now working at Iowa State University, where I have had the fortune of falling into a new group of friends and colleagues. Ames is good thanks to my new friends, and for that I thank them. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………v INTRODUCTION: THE CONTROVERSY OF SHAYKH ‘ALI ‘ABD AL-RAZIQ…………...1 1. ISLAMIC POLITICAL THOUGHT AS A CONTEST OF INVENTED TRADITIONS……..7 2. INVENTED TRADITIONS IN MODERN EGYPT: THE CALIPHATE, THE LIBERAL SHARI‘A, AND THE NATION…………………………………………………………………67 3. ‘ABD AL-RAZIQ’S CHALLENGE: ISLAM AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF GOVERNMENT………………………………………………………………………………..122 4. ‘ABD AL-RAZIQ’S CRITICS………………………………………………………………189 CONCLUSION: IN DEFENSE OF ‘ABD AL-RAZIQ’S CRITICS…………………………..215 REFERENCES…………………………………………………………………………………228 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH…………………………………………………………………...235 iv ABSTRACT Often regarded as the first Islamic defense of political secularism, ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s Islam and the Foundations of Government provoked emotionally-charged repudiations that culminated in his dismissal from Egypt’s corps of ‘ulama. Setting ‘Abd al-Raziq’s work in historical context, this dissertation explains what ‘Abd al-Raziq intended to do when he wrote Islam and the Foundations of Government. Most immediately, ‘Abd al-Raziq intended to protect Egypt’s fledgling constitutional monarchy from the threat of Egypt adopting the caliphate institution. ‘Abd al-Raziq’s work aimed to undercut proponents of an Egyptian caliphate by demonstrating that the caliphate institution found no support in the sources of fiqh, and had no religious significance in early Islamic history. Many studies have attributed the failure of ‘Abd al-Raziq’s work to the innovative nature of his argument. This dissertation argues that communities constantly invent traditions in order to legitimate their emerging forms. Indeed, Egyptian Muslims of the 1920s had already come to accept nineteenth-century Islamic innovations, like the Ottoman doctrine of the caliphate, Muhammad Abduh’s concept of a liberal shari‘a, or the novel belief in an Egyptian nation. In this context, ‘Abd al-Raziq’s innovative reasoning cannot account for his failure. This dissertation attributes ‘Abd al-Raziq’s failure to the threat it posed to the perceived rule of law. Like ‘Abd al-Raziq, ‘Abd al-Raziq’s critics considered tyranny the result of unrestrained, despotic rule. For them, however, God’s laws, expressed in the shari‘a proved the only adequate limitation to fallible human authorities. The caliphate must be reinstituted, they believed, because of all the world’s systems of government, the caliphate alone acknowledged the sovereignty of God’s law. By rejecting the caliphate, they inferred, ‘Abd al-Raziq rejected the institution required for establishing a rule of law that protects citizens from the arbitrary whims and abuses of their rulers. v INTRODUCTION THE CONTROVERSY OF SHAYKH ‘ALI ‘ABD AL-RAZIQ Shaykh ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq is popularly remembered as the “first Muslim secularist.”1 More accurately, he was the first classically trained Muslim scholar to argue that the shari‘a sciences have no bearing on affairs of state. A graduate of al-Azhar and a shari‘a court judge in the city of Mansura, ‘Abd al-Raziq came from a prominent large-landholding family with a long tradition of Islamic scholarship. During the first four decades of twentieth century his family was well known in the elite circles of Cairo. His father, Hasan ‘Abd al-Raziq, helped found Egypt’s first secular nationalist political party, the Umma party, in 1907. One of his brothers, Hasan, became the governor of Alexandria. Another, Mustafa, became the rector of al-Azhar, while a third, Mahmud, co-founded another secularist political party, the Liberal Constitutionalists, after the Umma Party had disbanded. Outside of Egypt, however, ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq’s reputation rests entirely on one book: Islam and the Foundations of Government. Published in 1925, Islam and the Foundations of Government contained ‘Abd al-Raziq’s rejection of Islamic models of statecraft. Most notably, his work targeted the institution of the caliphate. The Ottoman Caliphate had just been abolished the previous year. While many Muslim intellectuals deliberated anxiously about the best way to establish a new caliph, ‘Abd al- 1 Faisal Gazi, “The First Muslim Secularist,” The Guardian, April 9, 2009. See also: Henri Lammens, Islam: Beliefs and Institutions, trans. Sir E. Denison Ross (London: Methuen & Co. LTD, 1929), 109-10; C. C. Adams, The Modern Reform Movement in Egypt and the Caliphate (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1928), 355; Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (New York: Mentor Books, 1957), 254n50; Anthony Black, The History of Islamic Political Thought (New York: Routledge, 2001), 318. 1 Raziq argued that they should not bother, for God never regulated procedures of statecraft. In his infinite wisdom, God left His followers free to establish governments based on soundest conclusions of their reason and experience. ‘Abd al-Raziq’s book provoked a public outcry, at least among many of Egypt’s Muslim intellectuals. Soon, petitions circulated, calling on al- Azhar’s High Council of ‘Ulama to condemn ‘Abd al-Raziq’s work. Ultimately, the Council decided to expel ‘Abd al-Raziq from the ranks of the scholars by revoking his ‘alamiyya degree. Thereafter, ‘Abd al-Raziq formally lacked the qualifications to keep his post as a shari‘a court judge. He spent most of the rest of his life teaching at the secular Egyptian University. In Western scholarship, ‘Abd al-Raziq’s story is often told as a kind of martyr narrative. That is, many scholars suggest that he was persecuted for witnessing the truth. Majid Fakhry described Islam and the Foundations of Government as “the most thoughtful and constructive attempt to re-examine the presuppositions upon which the traditional notion of the Islamic State rests.”2 As Fakhry had it, Muslims could either relinquish their dreams of an Islamic state, as ‘Abd al-Raziq recommended, or face extinction: By freeing the temporal sphere from the fetters of a supernatural authority which legislated for all ages once and for all, he [‘Abd al-Raziq] naturally hoped to pave the way for development and progress in the realm of legislation by reaffirming the validity of the natural, human processes of law-making.