Intellectuals and Civil Society in The Middle East: Liberalism, Modernity and Political Discourse 9780755611256, 9781848856288

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book emerged out of a workshop entitled ‘The Social Role of Intellectuals in the Middle East’, organized in March 2008 in conjunction with the ninth annual meeting of the Mediterranean Research Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. I would like to acknowledge the financial and logistical support offered by the Mediterranean Programme, which helped bring together researchers and observers who had little direct connection with each other before, and thus helped start the collaboration out of which this volume emerged. Personally I would also like to thank Salim Tamari, who took part in the earlier stages of planning this book and offered helpful guidance both in formulating the topic and selecting participants. Many thanks also go to members of the workshop who participated early on but could not stay with the project, notably Shiva Balaghi, Sylvia Saba-Sa’di, and Anicée van Engeland. I am also particularly thankful to those who took part in our deliberations as observers and offered valued comments and contributions that helped us organize our thoughts better, in particular Michael Kennedy, Armando Salvatore, and Hatsuki Aishima. Many thanks also go to participants in a follow-up Thematic Conversation session with the same title held in Boston in November 2009 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, and organized by a sub-group of the original workshop’s participants. We all learned a great deal from the engaged responses of the audience, who helped us clarify our central themes and focus our contributions on selected key ideas. The same is true for members of the Berlin seminar ‘Europe in the Middle East, the Middle East in Europe,’ who generously commented in June 2011 on a summary presentation of this project. In this connection I am particularly thankful to Georges Khalil, Fadi Bardawil, and Elias Khoury for thorough critiques. Finally, many thanks are owed to the staff at I.B.Tauris and especially Jenna

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Steventon for editorial comments and encouragement, and Nicola Denny for invaluable help in putting the book in a publishable format.

1 Introduction: The Social Dynamism of the Organic Intellectual Mohammed A. Bamyeh

The question as to who qualifies as an intellectual, and moreover what counts as intellectual activity, are questions around which there is an enormous body of literature concerning the West, most recently addressed in John Michael’s Anxious Intellects. In the case of the Middle East our group began from the ground up, asking such questions as: what are the distinctive features of intellectuals in the region? What makes a certain way of formulating ideas more readily propagated, accepted, or debated than otherwise in the public sphere? How do intellectuals influence public life and public debates? How does the work of intellectuals circulate under condition of relative openness or censorship, respectively? What is the audience of intellectuals, and how segmented or stable is it? What are the meaningful ways of measuring the influence of intellectuals in society? What sort of relation exists between intellectuals, ‘street politics,’ and civil society? What are the main idioms of public and organic intellectual discourse? What are the institutional venues of public and organic intellectual life, and how effective, stable, or flexible are they? Do public intellectuals provide a common regional discourse that blends together sentiments in more than one country? How are intellectuals connected (in structured or ideational ways) to social movements? Is the level of activity of intellectuals in any given country a good predictor of the quality of political or other kinds of leadership? These questions gained more currency with the revolutions of the Arab Spring that, lacking clear organizational or leadership structures, magnified the role of ideas in providing a sort of everyday intellectual compass, that is,

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a guide for revolution that operates in more diffuse ways than clearly defined organizations or hierarchies. The environment of the revolutions highlighted the role of everyday intellectual activity, since under conditions of spontaneity the revolutions needed to define themselves by themselves, and the best means to do that was through constant dialog in public gatherings. Indeed, most of the intellectual activity during the Arab revolutions tended to be of a type appropriate for movements characterized by spontaneity and lightness. Cairo’s Tahrir Square, for example, was not simply a central symbol of a revolution, but moreover a space permeated throughout by debating circles. Debates in the Square over basic meanings of now common terms—peoplehood, regime, civic state, popular versus constitutional legitimacy, liberalism, freedom, enlightened awareness (wa‘y), and so on—were as constant as those over what the next step should be. The revolution, in a sense, was a conversation about meanings and ideas, none of which had been clarified before. The young members of the Muslim Brotherhood, for example, very quickly found out in revolutionary times that the tired slogan ‘Islam is the solution’ had become even less compelling, since more than at any other time before, the slogan appeared to lack intellectual substance and the demand for depth that characterized revolutionary curiosity in general. And thus Islamic political thought itself developed at a faster pace in revolutionary times, since much more was expected of it than before. While the studies in this volume were all begun before the Arab Spring, the questions they were based on have become more pressing after revolutionary movements required all intellectuals to think more seriously about their role in society. When we originally posed our research questions, we noted that while there existed a great body of literature on individual Middle Eastern intellectuals, there were few systematic studies of the social role of intellectuals as a specific social category. Yet, the systematic understanding of the social, as well as political and cultural, roles of intellectuals was crucial for the proper appraisal of several other flourishing areas of research and commentary in Middle East studies. Those included studies of civil society; leadership; social movement; the public sphere and the character of public debates. All these areas had clear relevance to understanding patterns and meanings of participation in the region. The clearest type of intellectual with a social impact is what is called the ‘public intellectual.’ Public intellectuals may be understood as articulate thinkers whose role consists in either: (1) popularizing existing, complex intellectual systems for the benefit of a public rather than academic audience; (2) founding original systems of thought in a language that captures broad public audiences; or (3) expressing existing public sentiments, feelings, and

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attitudes in intellectual and systematic but accessible formats (be it in the form of philosophical theses, literary works, expository exegesis of ‘tradition,’ systematic analysis of current affairs, or popular artistic experiments). There are many venues for the dissemination of the works of these respective intellectuals: popular treatises and commentaries; memoirs; literary works; old and new media; and so on. But persons identified as public intellectuals tend to be those that add intellectual substance to the public sphere; crystallize what is otherwise called ‘street politics’ into intelligible and referenced arguments; provide ideational support for the further evolution of civil society as well as social movements; and establish or defend criteria for the quality of social leadership. Contributors to this volume were asked to identify one intellectual or a group of intellectuals who have had a role in social life. They then set out to systematically explore the intellectuals in question as a social phenomenon; to assess them in terms of the areas mentioned above; to identify meaningful methods and theories as guides for empirical studies of the phenomenon of intellectuals; to explore fruitful theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of intellectuals; and to identify further directions of research. While there are various studies of patterns of intellectual thought, there is little in the way of explorations of the precise social dynamics that make one idea or way of stating it more socially effective than another—although a foray into that terrain was attempted in a brief study of the intelligentsia by Saad Eddin Ibrahim earlier in his career. Important surveys, such as Albert Hourani’s Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age; Sadiq Jalal al-‘Azm’s (himself an important public intellectual in his own right) The French Revolution in Nahda Thought; or Hamid Enayat’s Modern Islamic Political Thought, explore largely the history of ideas rather than the social nature of intellectual activity. A possible exception here may be Nadim al-Bitar’s al-Muthaqqafun wa alThawra, an excellent study from 1987 informed by a Marxist perspective and centered on the thesis that the influence of revolutionary intellectuals increased precisely when other material sources of revolutionary potential were weak, such as working class organizations or when faced with an ‘underdeveloped’ socio-economic reality. In that case, according to Bitar, intellectuals become more important precisely because they provide reality with something that is actually missing from it, that is, with thought that provides revolutionary credentials such reality does not in fact possess. Yet this thesis, otherwise supported by a wealth of historical examples, fares poorly in the context of the Arab revolutions of 2011, which caught all Arab intellectuals by surprise, including intellectuals who had opposed everything about the old regimes and sincerely wished for a revolution. Of course, revolutionary scenarios have been

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portrayed in Arabic literature and cultural life before the revolutionary wave— most recently in Mohamed Salmawy’s novel Ajnihat al-Farasha published just days before the Egyptian revolution, and we can also note earlier outlines of future revolutionary principles, as in Elias Khoury’s prediction of a third, democratic Arab nahda. But the revolutions seem to be experimenting with their own intellectual language, and none seem to be based on prior knowledge of any intellectual system outside of that provided by customary civic ethics. The fact that an intellectual like Burhan Ghalioun appeared as a consensus candidate to represent the Syrian revolution was not because the revolution was caused by his thought, but because his earlier democratic credentials seemed so well fitting for the discourse of the revolution underway. This more dialectic sort of relation between a specific intellectual and a social movement tends to be more typical than that in which a proscriptive or predictive intellectual work is widely read and then inspires a movement. In recent years there has been some scholarly interest in the history of intellectuals as a group, in a way closely linked to the study of genealogies of civil society. This interest has clustered around studying the role of the ‘ulama’ or (religious) scholars in Islamic history, who may be seen as a synthesis of two types of intellectuals—the ‘public intellectual’ and what Antonio Gramsci calls the ‘organic intellectual.’ Particularly noteworthy here is the extent to which the ‘ulama’ viewed themselves, rather than governments, as guardians of moral and social order, and the extent to which scholarly self-fashioning in the public sphere involved contesting governmental over-extension of authority. But clearly significant here is how such a self-understanding highlighted the authoritative role of expert knowledge in society. The common conclusions, expressed for example by such commentators as Richard Bulliet or John Kelsay, among others, is that modern authoritarianism in the Middle East was related in at least one way to the weakening of the ‘ulama’ as a social class and their cooptation by modern governments. Stated differently, modern authoritarianism seems here related to the general weakening of intellectual authority (one dimension of which being that of Islamic knowledge) in society.1 The questions this project raises are vast, likely greater than what could be answered in a single volume. But what could at best be outlined in this introduction are ways of approaching some elementary propositions: • If we begin with intellectual activity itself, the question would be how does such activity involve seeing society from a distance? Put otherwise, what produces this propensity to look at things from a distance, this alienation, that seems to be the primary basis of intellectual activity? Is modern education perhaps a culprit, and if

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so, why does it affect certain species that we come to understand as ‘intellectuals’ more than others? • Is alienation only part of the experience of the intellectual in society, the other part being the intellectual’s ‘organic’ or embedded nature? • How is this duality of alienation/organicism connected to the dialectics of innovation or novelty? • And finally, from what ‘locations’ (institutional, geographic, mediated, and so on) do intellectuals come to exercise a measurable impact on social life and civil society? In what follows, I would like to suggest some modes of examining these themes. Intellectuals and Modern Alienation It is not a novel discovery that what we generally call ‘modernity’ produces a feeling of individualization and constant reflexivity, which we often summarize as ‘alienation.’ For Edward Shils, who does not use the word ‘alienation,’ intellectual activity seemed premised on lack of satisfaction (by a small minority) with the appearance and concreteness of things, which then generates a quest to commune with more general principles or expressions.2 But the intellectual quest itself resolves the alienation, since for Shils—writing at a time when theories of order defined sociology—that quest transforms the intellectual from an alien creature into a guardian of the social order and a voice of its cohesion. In contrast to this view, more pervasive contemporary views regard the alienation of the intellectual as part of his very identity as an intellectual. For Edward Said, the clearest example of this was Theodor Adorno, whose difficult style and impenetrable tastes marked his view of the intellectual as someone who lived more or less in a permanent state of exile.3 Said’s own advice was that the intellectual was someone who, while viewing reality from some distance, nonetheless lived with it and allowed it to energize his curiosity, rather than compel him to conquer it—more like Marco Polo than Robinson Crusoe.4 For an earlier generation of modernist reformers in the Middle East, however, intellectual alienation was a novel rather than ancient feature, and also had a very specific source. That source was located neither in the naturally exilic nature of intellectual activity, nor in an overall abstraction called ‘modernity.’ Rather, alienation was rooted in a specific tool of modernity, namely its educational systems. That was the main point of Fazlur Rahman’s Islam and Modernity, where ‘modernity’ was identified specifically with transformations in educational systems rather than with macro social processes, including

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economic or political transformations. For Rahman, the fundamental problem with nineteenth-century Ottoman educational reforms, for example, was their lack of sufficient radicalism. The reformers lacked the courage to contest the traditional educational system, so they ended up with two opposing systems: a modern system for the elites, and a traditional one for the masses.5 The outcome was the emergence of an educated elite that had no connection with the heritage of the masses, and whose alienation from the masses therefore could be expressed in forms ranging from heroic paternalism to frustrated impotence. Muhammad ‘Abduh, who is often seen as a synthesis of modern and traditional intellectualism, likewise saw modern education to lie at the root of this alienation, and in a very concrete way. More than a century ago, ‘Abduh saw modern education as only producing unemployed, resentful individuals.6 The educated were no longer expected to respond to or even know a heritage that most of their own people still adhered to in some way. At the same time, their education could most easily be deposited into a European socio-economic grid that did not yet exist in their home country. Underlying that critique was the notion that the ‘traditional’ intellectual, which ‘Abduh wanted only to modernize without alienation, still had a role, and the intellectual in general ought to play a leading role in society, just like before. But he could do so only to the extent that his education did not produce such a profound alienation from such society. However, modern educational systems seemed to be capable only of producing disconnected, alienated individuals, who not only became discouraged given the magnitude of the modernist challenge of which they were custodians. They also had no natural role in a society that has no institutions in which to house their expertise, and no natural connection to their own society and its traditions. Writing from the point of view of a later generation, Taha Husayn saw things differently; the alienation of the intellectual lay less in any specific style of education and more in the character of the society towards which he was answerable. For example, while both rural and urban ‘ulama’ may be equally traditional,7 rural ones enjoyed far more prestige in their small local environments than did urban ‘ulama’,8 who could not as effectively dominate their more complex social environment. But as Dale Eickelman argues, such prestige may in fact be based on nothing more than the limited rather than extravagant expectations from traditional intellectuals by their communities.9 This is in contrast to modern vanguardist intellectuals who expected much and of whom much was expected, thereby magnifying disappointments against which old traditional education had guarded its people well. These objections do not simply offer a critique of modern education. Implicitly they also endorse an old expectation; if the scholars are the inheritors

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of the prophets, according to the famous saying attributed to Muhammad, then their scholarly authority also suggests a form of social authority as well. But this authority means little if it is not validated by its public. And hence the role of the public sphere in shaping the intellectual and keeping him organic, unalienated, and responsible. Implicit in this view is a verdict: modern education alone will not produce the intellectual we want, especially if such education ignores a traditional expectation that intellectuals are judged, in addition to their peers, also in some way by a public sphere. And this expectation assigns for the intellectual an organic role in society, while producing a public towards which such an intellectual must remain accountable. That traditional expectation of intellectual activity is what modern education destroys, with its separation of spheres, specialization of knowledge, and autonomization of education from public judgment. While traditional education was by no means egalitarian and involved certain elitism, elitism is precisely the character that is most advanced in modernity—not in the sense that the intellectual becomes more elitist, but in the sense that his ordinary elitism is all that remains to him once modern education succeeds in isolating him from society and makes him unfit for it. Of course, one may state the same point without reference to ‘tradition’ as such, but by only focusing on the alienation and meaninglessness produced by modern education—as for example is evident in Munir Fasheh’s more contemporary critique. Fasheh focuses especially on the standardization and bureaucratization of modern education in the Middle East, where all individual creativity is squelched in favor of ‘correct’ answers. But he also notes the lifeless form of this education, its distance from local wisdom, and its preference for mass-oriented systems than diverse traditionalism. As a mathematics teacher and school inspector working for the Jordanian Ministry of Education, Fasheh describes his discovery of the serious alienation and mystification produced by modern education as a sort of epiphany, while living in the West Bank under Israeli occupation in the 1970s.10 The occupation, which deprived schools of resources and eliminated previous connections to the educational hierarchy, also unwittingly allowed one to explore new approaches to knowledge and education, unbounded by any authority. School textbooks, for example, could be dispensed with not simply because they were dated or unavailable, but because the new situation revealed that what modern education had done was to obfuscate reality rather than explain it. In the absence of such resources, the students could then be encouraged to explore their environment, neighborhoods, folk stories, the mathematics of everyday life, abundant insects, and so on, directly and experientially, and in a way that did not easily lend itself to mass measurement as in examinations.

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Fasheh describes this epiphany, his insight into the scientific nature of everyday life, most clearly as he describes his mother’s ordinary yet invisible mathematics:11 My ‘discovery’ of my illiterate mother’s mathematics, and how my mathematics and knowledge could neither detect nor comprehend her mathematics and knowledge, mark the biggest turning point in my life, and have had the greatest impact on my perception of knowledge, language, and their relationship to reality. Later, I realized that the invisibility of my mother’s mathematics was not an isolated matter but a reflection of a wide phenomenon related to the dominant Western worldview…In the 1970s, while I was working in schools and universities in the West Bank region in Palestine and trying to make sense out of mathematics, science and knowledge, I discovered that what I was looking for has been next to me, in my own home: my mother’s mathematics and knowledge. She was a seamstress. Women would bring to her rectangular pieces of cloth in the morning; she would take a few measures with colored chalk; by noon each rectangular piece is cut into 30 small pieces; and by the evening these scattered pieces are connected to form a new and beautiful whole. If this is not mathematics, I do not know what mathematics is…Her knowledge was embedded in life, like salt in food, in a way that made it invisible to me as an educated and literate person. I was trained to see things through official language and professional categories. In a very true sense, I discovered that my mother was illiterate in relation to my type of knowledge, but I was illiterate in terms of her type of understanding and knowledge... A division, which I find more significant than literate and illiterate, would be between people whose words are rooted in the cultural-social soil in which they live—like real flowers—and people who use words that may look bright and shiny but without roots—just like plastic flowers. This view differs in substantial ways from Paulo Freire’s similar interest in local knowledge, since what Freire proposes, as John Michael argues, is basically a manipulative process oriented to unearthing a single truth rather than accepting a plurality of worldviews.12 The point Fasheh makes, that intellectual activity is a feature of ordinary life rather than specialized knowledge systems, differs as well from what Rahman or ‘Abduh were seeking to defend: a modernized form of traditional education, including specialization and certain ordinary elitism. But in either case what is noted is the alienating effect of modern education; in Rahman and ‘Abduh’s formulation, alienation

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is produced because the intellectual is no longer fit for an old space he had occupied in society; in Fasheh’s case, alienation is produced by systems that sever continuity between the intellectual nature of everyday life and that of specialized knowledge systems. Organic Intellectual Implicit in either critique, however, is the notion that un-alienated intellectual activity is in some sense ‘organic,’ but in a different sense than suggested by Antonio Gramsci’s famous definition. Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual is tied up in a Marxist conception of social order:13 Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields. This seminal definition of the organic intellectual starts out, as is obvious, from the social group rather than the intellectual. The organic intellectual is assumed to be understandable in terms of the larger symbols and activities that provide an already constituted group with more cohesion and homogeneity than would be produced, presumably, by its material activity alone. Organic intellectual activity, far from being dispensable luxury, seems socially unavoidable. I think this approach makes only partial sense; it is certainly easier to accept (that is, without additional explanations in terms of ‘hegemony’ and so on), if we approach the notion of a ‘social group’ at a more general level, rather than understanding it strictly as a ‘class’ or in terms of its economic function. It also makes sense if we understand social groups as changeable and permeable, rather than as set in stone. And that fluidity further allows us to understand better shifts, transformation, and debates within intellectuals who presumably stand in for a group. But most importantly, the priority assigned to the social group suggests that there is little point in starting out with the intellectual rather than with the group. All this means that exploring the social nature of the activity of the intellectuals anywhere suggests the need for at least four important amendments to this conception of the organic intellectual. First, while the organic intellectual may be a product of a social group, he may also be understood as a producer of such a group. Second, organic intellectual activity may be traced to the intellectual demands of complex everyday life. Third, the organic intellectual tends to have a nuanced connection to ‘high culture,’

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which he regards as a vehicle for his own social program rather than as its own fetish. And fourth, the effectiveness of the organic intellectual is related to his ability to transform reality even as he claims to preserve it. First, organic intellectual as producer of community. An intellectual may assume a clear role vis-à-vis his community not simply by expressing its homogeneity and cohesion, but also by defending it in changing contexts. This is evident, for example, in the career of Murad Farag as illuminated by Lital Levy. Here Farag appears clearly to act as an organic intellectual. However, he may also be regarded not simply as a defender of a community, namely the Cairo Karaite Jewish community, but moreover as a producer of such a community. What is evident in this story is that Farag was doing more than simply asserting old theological principles and explaining them to a wider public. In every sense he was modernizing an old religion, including justifying ancient beliefs in modern language, dismissing others, and defending a new understanding of his community’s (sectarian) identity with particular reference to how it ought not to contradict larger nationalist, but also universal modernist, loyalties. And Farag had to do this because, as Levy explains, he came into his own in the environment of the Arab nahda that altered the term of debate for the intellectuals of all communities. Thus someone like Farag was refashioning an old community in the new language of his time. His role was, indeed, to persuade his community to the virtues of this modern understanding. And the fact that what he was proposing explicitly required ‘edification’ and acculturation in a way that may not have appeared necessary a generation before, elaborates the intellectual’s self-understanding of his responsibility to a given community: a community is made by its intellectuals, who for that reason become organic to it. Second, organic intellectualism as everyday activity. Organic intellectuals may however be best understood in terms of what they themselves claim to do, namely as defenders of ‘local knowledge’ in general, rather than of any specific community. This applies most to what Gramsci suggests is a general endowment, namely the fact that everyone is in one sense an intellectual, although few are intellectuals by profession. Gramsci makes clear that ordinary intellectual activity, natural as it is to life, does not in itself make one into an intellectual, just like cooking in itself does not make one into a professional cook. Yet to the extent that one encounters lively street politics, where it is not unexpected for an ordinary individual to have to define an intellectual argument at least once a day, we can recognize organic intellectual activity as an everyday rather than professional pattern, and as part of the continuum in which intellectualism guides social deliberation in its totality.

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This organic intellectual activity, practiced by ordinary individuals, produces mental work that is intellectually significant in local settings (including producing cultural memory). The collective role played by such everyday intellectual conduct may be brought into light by academic intellectuals, as is often the case in anthropology. Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety, as a recent example, demonstrates the significance of local women preachers in the dissemination of systematic conceptions of piety, but also shows how the meanings of that piety are not foretold, even though piety may have dialogic and performative features that could be predicted. But the thought process itself, in this case fostered by a quest to integrate what Max Weber calls ‘the metaphysical needs of the mind’ to mundane everyday situations, produces a dynamic social scene of questioning and answering more so than final answers. The fact that we may not like the answers because of their apparent conservatism, obscurantism, or orthodoxy does not in itself negate the fact that they are products of intellectual experimentation at the street level, and that they need to be said and defended because they are not (or no longer) self-evident. But the value of everyday organic intellectual activity consists in that it evidences a constant, and often only partially successful, attempt at systematizing and elaborating a legitimate ‘local knowledge.’ The assertion that such knowledge may only be specific to a certain social group in a specific town does not invalidate the fact that it reveals an explicit effort to communicate with global systems in one’s own local way, and sometimes in ways that introduce new social facts and even social movements. Third, organicism and high culture. The critique of education-as-alienation may be less common if we take stock of another familiar tradition of thought, where education serves to reproduce the social order—and by implication justify it. In doing so, such education may in fact resolve any possible alienation of the educated person from her milieu, or at least simply justify the existing order. This thesis has been explored most systematically by Pierre Bourdieu, who argued that education, and more generally standards of taste, serve primarily to reproduce class distinction. This implies that education, and the intellectualism that is based on it, cannot be simply understood as ‘enlightenment,’ since it takes place in a segmented society whose segmentation needs to be intellectually justified, if possible for all of its segments. A more general form of this thesis is familiar to us in Edward Said’s Orienatlism, where the issue is less one of education reproducing social order as much as an already accepted image of the world. It is known, for example, that Said thought of Orientalism as a companion to his much lesser known book from the same period, Covering Islam, which deals with popular media and culture whereas Orientalism was devoted to high culture. Taken together,

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however, the two books were meant to reinforce the thesis that high Western intellectualism was little more than a sophisticated regurgitation of more base stereotypes. According to this view, the high culture of the established intellectuals only reproduces the same conceptions of ‘others’ that prevail in low culture, but in less vulgar and thus more accepted ways to those who consider themselves more sophisticated. Each in his own way, Bourdieu and Said seem to have little faith of what is here called organicism, to the extent that the term refers to the intellectual reproduction of already existing hierarchies or ways of seeing. Now this attitude may appear fully justifiable in times of general stability, where no educational reforms are suggested or where there are no social upheavals that galvanize intellectual activity into new and sometimes unexpected channels. In times of stability, where no change of perspective is demanded or necessary, the intellectual may operate more as a willed resistance rather than as a creature borne out of objective reality. Such will is evident precisely in the notion that what such an intellectual is doing is considered ‘original’ or at least unexpected. But the fact that ‘originality’ is a common expectation of what counts as important intellectual work readily suggests that one of the expectations of genuine intellectualism is precisely a defiance of normal expectations—that is, of organicism in its simple form. This defiance is sometimes easier to see in times of social transformation, where tomorrow is unknown, so that one has to consciously propose new systems or ideas rather than fall back on the familiar. An illustrative case is provided by Elizabeth Williams, who shows how a woman like Nazik al‘Abid could not only find a role for herself as a public intellectual, but also experiment with promoting new conceptions of womanhood precisely in the brief period of new possibilities in Syria opened up after the end of Ottoman rule and before the arrival of French colonialism. But in this case, one had to be conscious of the fact that the world has suddenly opened itself up for novel reconstruction for which the script is not readily available: it is the intellectual who would provide such script (until of course her efforts are overpowered by a colonial army—but that is a different discussion). However, an intellectual may not even be aware of how novel her situation might be. During the same period when Nazik al-‘Abid was organizing her society in Damascus, other intellectuals such as Ma‘ruf al-Rasafi of Baghdad or ‘Aref al-‘Aref of Jerusalem maintained nostalgia for Ottomanism even though they had become Arab nationalists, and the former even briefly sought a career in Istanbul after World War I, apparently not realizing the scale of the change that has just happened.14 All intellectuals educated in the Ottoman system had to adjust to a new game, but especially

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in the case of Rasafi we find an epitome of a mixed attitude that saw new modernist opportunities but rejected their agents—notably colonial powers and their client regimes. A prominent public intellectual and a poet in his own time and a member of the Iraqi parliament, Rasafi maintained his derision of the Arab revolt, which had exported a royal house to Iraq and under which he worked; he saw the new ‘independent’ regime to offer no compensation for what had been lost with the end of the Ottoman system. Particularly scornworthy for him was the Arab regime’s subservience to British designs and the failure of the leaders of the Arab revolt (and here he was quite accurate) to understand the unreliability and deception of their British allies. On the other hand, Rasafi’s apparent nostalgia for the Ottomans and rejection of the nahda-allied Arab revolt, must be seen as exemplifying another facet of intellectual self-understanding in times of transformation: the intellectual as a guardian of conservative but controllable familiarity over and against novelties whose agents are unaccountable. That Rasafi’s position was not simple reaction or nostalgia is evident in his denunciation of the old Turkish educational system in Baghdad, which he regarded as retrograde even though he himself was one of its products.15 The question Rasafi posed then was not what transformation to pursue, but who should be in charge of it. As a public intellectual, that was for him the more important question, since a retrograde old system which an organic intellectual knew to be such was still preferable to a modern system whose enlightened promises were to be executed by new guardians who, unlike the organic intellectual, have proven that they could be deceived by outsiders and lured into distant games of geopolitical power. Fourth, effectiveness of organic intellectuals. If we mean by effectiveness the impact of intellectuals on the public sphere, we are proposing something that could in some way be measured: number of books or pamphlets sold or distributed; attendance at public lectures; frequency of presence on air waves; size and number of clubs or parties devoted to the study or dissemination of the thought of certain intellectuals; number of quotations in public debates; and so on. Yet in conditions of censorship this information is more difficult to gather, and clandestine distribution networks may in fact be better gauges of effectiveness, such as in the case of Said Nursi in Turkey before 1956, when more than half of million hand-copied versions of his banned Risale-i Nur (Epistles of Light) were already in circulation, or, more recently, Muhammad Shahrur in the Arab World, where his Al-Kitab wa al-Qur’an (The Book and the Qur’an) became unofficial best-seller in the 1990s. Effectiveness, however, is a conceptual and not simply an empirical question. If Gramsci is right, we would expect the most effective organic intellectuals to be those who provide a group with a sense of ‘homogeneity

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and an awareness of its own [economic, social, political] function.’ This is easier said than observed. All public intellectuals, for example, may be said to be organic in one sense or another, since their very publicness presumes that they have struck a chord of contention that already exists somewhere within a broad audience. But publicness, or even popularity, do not necessarily indicate acceptance. It only indicates that an idea has become established as another organizing tool of public or private debates. Did such an idea exist before? Or is the novelty not in the idea itself but in the manner of its elaboration and in the uses to which it is now put by some intellectual? Steve Tamari’s study of ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi in eighteenth-century Syria suggests elements of an answer to these questions. One crucial finding reinforces the conclusions of other historians of the period such as Leila Sabbagh, Abdul-Karim Rafeq, and Judith Tucker, namely that the ‘ulama’ did not operate as a cohesive unit standing in for a conservative society and regarding themselves as guardians of its traditions, but rather as a divided house that teemed with disagreements, divergent fatwas, and even acrimonies—as all academics today know from their own profession. However, the fact that some ‘ulama’ were more popular than others suggests certain public expectations that some intellectuals fulfilled better than others. And that was not the expectation to deliver any specific idea, but to defend tradition at a higher level than was needed before—and in the process alter that tradition simply by adding more philosophical substance to it. Al-Nabulusi therefore was an organic intellectual, not simply because he represented and defended popular traditions that were then under attack by puritan reformers in Istanbul. Rather, in defending such traditions he found it necessary to re-argue them in a philosophical language that, because it aimed at the public, could itself then become part of its tradition in a way that did not seem necessary before. This is not simple ‘conservatism,’ since the very notion that an old and familiar tradition needs now a philosophical layer that is useful both against detractors and for its own popular reinforcement, already provides such tradition with more depth and meaning—it is no longer accepted simply because it had been familiar. So the fact that here the organic intellectual defends the familiar does not mean that he is not also producing new social facts by his own activity. A tradition that had no reason before now has one, and the very idea that a reason is expected becomes an element in the further evolution of tradition. Organicism and Novelty If, as argued above, organic intellectuals are implicated in processes of change rather than simply in preserving traditions or elaborating a group’s cohesion,

Introduction

15

we may ask ourselves how, precisely, do they develop a persuasive language that conveys the virtue of change while highlighting the other virtue of continuity and historical rootedness? The question must be posed so because organicism presupposes a claim to rootedness, whereas novelty, which is what the organic intellectual is actually pursuing if she is an intellectual at all, implies a search for knowledge beyond that which is already available and known. The first step in understanding how organicism may be related to novelty involves an elementary distinction of two possible routes: first, when an intellectual develops a new language to express old sentiments; and second, when an intellectual uses an old language to express new sentiments. First, when a new language is used to express old sentiments. An example here may be drawn from the history of Spanish peasant anarchists, many of whom were apparently attracted to a novel doctrine to a large extent because it expressed old and familiar peasant patterns of cooperation in the absence of authority.16 The novelty here would be the language in which an old tradition or an old grievance is expressed. While intellectual propagandists may have had an influence on the Spanish anarchist movement as a whole, it appears that all that an intellectual activist needed to do was to package, perhaps unknowingly, already existing traditions in terms that acknowledged the lost liberties of traditional life, while elaborating those same liberties in a modern language rather than that of the tradition. Why that has to be so may depend on a widespread feeling that while an old tradition is passing and can no longer be proclaimed as forcefully as before, it included nonetheless important attributes (for example, autonomy or local control), that are still regarded to have enough virtue to be defended. Thus one way to understand the Kharijite rebellion in early Islam, for example, would be to recognize how pre-Islamic ethos of tribal autonomy could be expressed through it, but now in the language of Islam itself rather than in the language of tribalism. M. A. Shaban suggests something along these lines when he observes how the territories and tribes that witnessed most Kharijite agitation tended to be the same that had just three decades earlier experienced the ridda wars after the death of Muhammad.17 But the change of discourse is significant: whereas the ridda wars contested directly the prerogatives of a new Islamic state, and even what later would be enforced as some tenets of Islam, the Kharijite movement spoke forcefully and even fanatically in the name of pure Islam. In the lead-up to the ridda wars, for example, there was no intellectualization of tribal language, and Musaylima explicitly saw claims to prophethood as an added element to the prestige and claims upon resources of a specific tribe. Less than three decades later, this tribalism is replaced in Kharijite discourse, like that of all Muslim factions

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East

then, by universal standpoints. Those were new, and thus required the work of the Kharijite intellectuals. In both the Kharijite movement and ridda wars, the important doctrines concerned at their root the question of autonomy and an explicit rejection of the Islamic state as it was emerging. And in both cases, one could do so because of one’s familiarity with older ethos of tribal autonomy and resistance to rule by outsiders—or at least to rule with principles including monopoly of power by a certain group and lack of consent. But it was the Kharijites rather than the ridda warriors who had to elaborate an intellectual argument, since the old autonomies could no longer be defended on the basis of the ethics of tribalism alone. The consolidation of Islam as a common, transtribal reference point meant that whatever virtues of tribal life one wanted to safeguard could now be safeguarded best by being defended in the name of Islam itself. And it is here that one requires the work of the organic intellectual who would elaborate that language, as the Kharijite philosopher-poets sought to do. To the extent that such thought experiments become socially established and more systematic, they become part of the discursive system whose language they are using—here Islam. In the process they expand even further the range of social issues and principles that could be addressed by Islam. This does not mean that any such organic intellectual novelties would succeed socially, only that such activity is likely to be unavoidable. Lisa Anderson suggests, for example, that Qaddafi’s Green Book is rooted in the ethics of Libyan tribal life,18 even though this cannot be acknowledged, apparently, because the agent that is expressing those ethics is now a state that sees itself to be above tribalism and also to be modern. The status of the Green Book as an intellectual experiment illustrates another dimension of organic intellectual activity. An intellectual experiment such as the Green Book may, justifiably I think, be dismissed by most intellectuals as superficial or poorly thought out. But the important point here is that Qaddafi thought it important to produce a book, which state leaders, in Libya or elsewhere, could obviously do without. Thus providing direction for social transformation, even where such transformation is fully controllable by state apparatus and bureaucracy, may still require being surrounded by an intellectual aura, which, as in this case, entails a book whose most remarkable feature is the appearance of originality. If this is the case, could we say that all modern discourses concerned with organizing social life in its totality—for example nationalism or communism— also express old rather than new sentiments? It is not possible to give a full answer to such a question without a full study, but it is not difficult to see that to a certain extent these notions expressed at their point of origins, as

Introduction

17

in Europe, communitarian sentiments that had earlier been invested at local levels.19 The doctrines of nationalism or communism were new, of course, but it is difficult to see how they could have taken any social root (to the extent that they did) if the soil in which they were to be planted was not suitable for them. This is not to suggest that there are never any new ideas. But from the point of view of intellectual influence, the question would be what predisposes an apparently novel idea to become broadly audible. Institutional factors may be important, such as control over education as in the case of Sati‘ al-Husari in Iraq or dominance over the airwaves as was the case with Egypt’s Sawt al‘Arab. But an idea does not develop a lasting and deep emotional appeal simply because it is capable of being said loudly, and many ideas that are said loudly, as Lisa Wedeen demonstrates in the case of Syria, may still generate nothing more than lethargic ambivalence.20 This means that a new idea may be felt (rather than simply forced by pompous displays by a regime or formulated logically by a cold intellect) if we are already familiar with some organic commitments into which such an idea could be deposited and translated. Thus it is easy to understand why powerful communist parties in the Middle East, for example in Iraq, had mass following so long as what they demanded cohered with organic sentiments and grievances, but suffered loss of membership and support when they played an alien game—notably following Moscow’s line on the new Israeli state after 1948. Decisions of that nature, which greatly compromised the potential of communism in the Arab countries even where large communist parties were already in existence, clearly show that the social force of any intellectual idea must retain some organic connection to felt sentiments, and cannot be formulated only as a question of ‘global strategy.’ This is especially so if such a strategy can be explained only as logic and rationality, rather than organically understood with far less explanation that would be necessary otherwise. The other strategy of innovation, namely the use of an old language to express new sentiments, tends to be a more common strategy of organic intellectuals. It is quite familiar to us, and examples are virtually endless. Islamic modernity as a whole can easily be understood as part of this dynamic. Over at least the past century, the clearest trend in Islamic intellectual thought addressed to the public sphere has involved the virtual disappearance of traditional Islam, and its replacement by instrumental and hermeneutic varieties of Islamic thought, both of which reorient an old faith to a broad range of modern tasks.21 Reusing an old language in new ways appears to be the most established feature of socially engaged intellectual activity, since it is far easier to introduce novel concepts with the aid of a familiar language.

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East

And the vitality of that old language was itself premised, for centuries, on its usefulness for accommodating new claims. This does not mean that any new idea succeeds simply because it is expressed through familiar idioms. Again, organicism means that such an idea must express connection to a broadly felt social reality. Just like the sacrifice of Abraham, the martyrdom of Hussein is an ever present, eminently modernizable theme that could be repackaged to express both the emotional intensity and logical nature of a modern struggle, and not just to remember an old story for its own sake. In a prototypical example, a preacher thus explains the meaning of Ashura to a modern congregation in Lebanon22: In every age there is an oppressor and an oppressed. And this history always repeats itself, throughout all eras. Ashura reminds us of this, so we will never forget that there is a Yazid and a Husayn in every time, in every nation, in every government…oppression doesn’t have a specific identity; it is general, it exists all over the world, in all confessions, in all religions. People should have this spirit of religion against oppression because time repeats itself, history repeats itself, and in every age there is injustice. The story here is familiar. Hussein and Yazid are metaphors of a present struggle, but if there are dimensions to the present struggle that are not covered in that tale, there are other tales from the inexhaustible reservoir of tradition that cover what may still be needed. Before the contemporary Islamic revival, for example, students of the Middle East were familiar with an earlier genre of leftist literature, where heroic figures from early Islamic history such as ‘Ali or Abu Dharr al-Ghifari were mobilized as spokespersons of modern socialism.23 Indeed, it was their familiarity with this usage that has motivated leading Muslim intellectuals such as Sayyid Qutb and Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr to insist that Islam was its own system, meaning that it should not be understood as a metaphor for such modern conceptions as socialism, nationalism, or liberalism. Obviously they would not have needed to make such an assertion had they not known that Islam was, or at least could be, used precisely in that fashion. Alongside that earlier experimentation in left intellectual thought, especially since the 1970s we witness the emergence of voluminous, encyclopedic works by secular intellectuals who scoured the Islamic heritage for signs of desired ‘materialist,’ nationalist, or scientific elements—and also sought to isolate opposing elements in the heritage that did not fit what were seen to be the demands of our times. The best known of such engaged intellectuals

Introduction

19

include Ismail al-Faruqi, Muhammad ‘Abid al-Jabiri, Tayyib Tizini, Hussein Muruwwah, and Ali Ahmad Said (Adonis)—just to mention some of those who operated in the Middle East and had significant secular commitments. These intellectual experimentations have of course been evaluated on the basis of their accuracy or reasonableness, but that is not the point here. The question from the point of view of the social ground of intellectual activity is why they were attempted at all, and the extent to which they influenced or sought to influence the public sphere. Every one of the encyclopedic intellectuals mentioned above devoted many years and in some cases almost a lifetime to such works, and all of them undoubtedly wanted and did enjoy some public attention—as in being reviewed or interviewed in newspapers and debated within organized segments in various political parties. Their work corresponded to an earlier demand to show how Islam could speak the language of science, leftism, or national liberation, just as today significant intellectual efforts and talents are heavily invested in showing how Islam could speak the language of democracy, participation, pluralism, civil society, or women rights. But Islam does not say anything. Sociologically speaking, a religion is made to speak through humans, and indeed in early Islam ‘Ali already recognized that fact in his famous reply to the Kharijites: the Qur’an, even at that early stage in the social life of the faith, did not according to ‘Ali speak but was spoken for or of by the faithful. Thus even if the Qur’an was divine, our reading of it was always human. Put otherwise, it was precisely that feature of the Qur’an, namely that the word of God could only be interpreted through human activity, that provides a lasting organic basis for the word of God. Even though God possesses infinite wisdom, He could speak to us in the only way we are able to understand him at a given moment. This meant that the word of God was an invitation to intellectual activity that may or may not be targeted to a public audience. To the extent that it is, it adds to (while claiming to draw from) an ancient reservoir that has always been revisited with new demands. In the process, an intellectual activity becomes organized in such a way as to always modernize religion so that it could speak to its times. But for this to succeed, the interpretation being propagated by one intellectual or another needs to be already established in society, since God cannot speak to a society that cannot understand Him. And this means that whatever interpretation becomes socially established, it is so not necessarily because it is theologically consistent or even established in the deep history of the tradition itself. If gender equality becomes widely acknowledged as an Islamic ideal, for example, it will be because enough people believe or are predisposed to believe in the argument already, as Fatma Tütüncü shows

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us, and not because the argument expresses the ‘truth’ of Islam. Countless arguments have already been made about gender equality in the Qur’an, but an argument of this nature succeeds best, socially, when enough people are already prepared to listen to it. The work of the intellectual here consists not simply in elaborating the logic of the argument, but in recognizing the outer limits of what a historical moment would allow. Such outer limits she may be able to recognize more than others not because she is an intellectual in general but specifically an organic one. Locations of the Intellectual Organicism may be an unchosen location or a willed way of seeing. The encyclopedic efforts to rearrange the Islamic heritage by secular intellectuals from the 1960s–1980s were in a way a combination of both possibilities. Unchosen, in the sense that such intellectuals saw themselves as responding to crises that were profound enough—stalled modernization or frustrated national aspirations—to require profound and original answers that could only be provided by them. But their readings of the heritage were unorthodox and clearly set them apart from the more conservative guardians of the heritage. Muruwwah was murdered for his work, and assassinations or attempts at the lives of many other intellectuals in the Middle East clearly show that the questions raised by public intellectual life are literally issues of life and death rather than of idle sophistry. Thus it would be the degree of risk an intellectual accepts, and not the conclusion of one’s work, that defines an intellectual activity as a willed way of seeing. But not all intellectuals are organic in the way described here, and technical specialization, as a dimension of intellectual work, may appear to have little to do with it. Carl Boggs developed further Antonio Gramsci’s distinction of technocratic competence as defining a specific type of intellect24—or at least a specific type of intellectual activity. The point is familiar enough, and much of the Third World literature is invested in denouncing precisely the pressure to transform intellectuals from grand thinkers into petty technocrats who serve the status quo or at best are allowed to work out only technical solutions. The point could be generalized further, since technical competence or expectation is a feature of specialized training, which on its own does not negate the possibilities of grand thoughts. The issue is rather whether an intellectual is allowed to express in her work only the technical dimensions of her training. So this is not simply a question of what an educational system produces, but of how the subsequent work of the intellectual is managed and channeled into specific directions—be it by governments, research agencies, or academic disciplines.

Introduction

21

But again, there is no need to suggest that a certain research or academic culture and institutions serve as large prisons of intellectuals who then do not need to be imprisoned in the usual way. Thomas Brisson shows, for example, that such prominent public intellectuals as Edward Said and Mohamed Arkoun were themselves not only products of highly specialized and conservative educational systems. In fact their own earlier works conformed precisely to the specialized and technical expectations of that education. This means that while technical or specialized expertise may form part of an intellectual’s training, there are facilitating conditions as well as ‘willed struggles,’ as Said calls them, which establish continuity between technical expertise and public intellectual life. Facilitating conditions may include location, in geographic, institutional, or cultural sense. For example, Brisson and Nedal al-Mousa show us that the effectiveness of some diaspora intellectuals, like Said, Arkoun, Halim Barakat, or Hisham Sharabi, owed a great deal to their exilic locations. Not only did such locations offer some freedom from normal restrictions in their home countries, but exilic life seems to be associated with the discovery or pursuit of new possibilities and ways of seeing, and to result in a combination of perspectives in a different way that would be possible otherwise. Being ‘out of place,’ thus, is not simply a misfortune, but perhaps a logical continuation of the alienated conditions of intellectual life in general. That diaspora or exile does not resolve alienation but either deepens it or reroutes it into different channels is evident enough in any intellectual biography, and in a way that suggests that the exilic intellectual is in effect out of place everywhere, including his own country; but in that he may differ only in degree from the organic intellectual, who in as much as he is organic, is also alienated and only in feeling alienated could he notice organicism as a problem. Regional audiences are also part of the question of location, in the sense that an intellectual may see herself as speaking above the national level but not to a universal audience. Common regional languages, such as Arabic, facilitate that, but it is not a question of a regional language alone, since the intellectual must speak in idioms that may cross borders and speak to common concerns. Today, just as before, ‘Islam’ offers an ideal candidate for such usage, just as Arabism could at moments, or just as idioms of struggle against common outsiders (as in colonialism and imperialism) may offer idiomatic communion even in the absence of common linguistic or ethnic reference points. On the other hand, at any point in modern history, intellectuals expressing regional idioms could find themselves sharing a local scene teeming with alternative intellectual idioms that glamorize local parochialism and distinguish it from all-surrounding regional associations.25

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None of these considerations of location predict the social effectiveness of any specific intellectual program, only the size of the indicated audience and the claimed rootedness of the intellectual in local, regional, or universal planes. Furthermore, the question of location is complicated by the role of modern communication technologies. Abdolkarim Soroush made effective use of the radio, as did Muhammad Shahrur of satellite television, and reform intellectuals in Iran now heavily rely on the Internet. It is likely that not a single intellectual in the Middle East today fails to partake in some global discussion list (perhaps with notable exceptions, like Amin Maalouf who seems to enjoy a splendid and productive isolation on a Mediterranean island). These technologies provide both new opportunities and restrictions. One may enjoy a broader audience for a moment, but access may be limited and audibility uncertain, as are quality controls over intellectual discourse in the public sphere. But whatever the situation might be, there is no way out of the basic principle that any intellectual idea may enter the public sphere only if it is capable of being translated across genres. Obviously, an idea originally formulated to address a community of scholars or jurists would have to be translated for a broader audience. Now such translation cannot simply be that of the verdict—although one often hears such refrains as ‘summarize your book for us in two sentences. Preferably one.’ But even such a demand, insufferable as it may seem, points like everything else in the same direction: the requirement that intellectual authority in society be based on the meanings it expounds, and not on a claim to it by the simple virtue of holding a formal appointment as an intellectual of some sort. Thus the verdict of the intellectual needs to be substantiated, and we may here be reminded of how different this situation is from a scenario observed by Dale Eickelman in Morocco in the 1960s, when the traditional rural judge rendered his verdict in a classical Arabic incomprehensible to the agrarian litigants, and let his aides ‘translate’ that verdict to them in one or two colloquial words, indicating only who won and who lost.26 A scenario of that nature was possible only when the authority of the traditional intellectual, in this case a judge, was not only unquestioned, but also when his knowledge was assumed to be of a nature that was inaccessible to—or at least not the business of—the laity. Translation across genres would of course not be attempted if there were no presumption that an argument could be translated to begin with. The translated argument itself is assumed to be universally comprehensible, otherwise one would not need to worry about translation or put any effort into it. This effort usually means that one has to find ways to convey it through existing communication systems; but in some cases one has to create the communication channel that would be suitable to carry one’s translation into

Introduction

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civil society. An argument considered compelling enough by its author (or original audience) may itself create the means of communication suitable for it. Again, Nazik al-‘Abid’s early twentieth-century journal, Nur al-Fayha’, was established precisely because a journal that translated otherwise isolated ideas was seen as an instrument in the making of the new society. Translation is also a question of personal skill. Not all translations across genres succeed equally, and the ones that become most popular may not necessarily be the most faithful. But one remarkable feature of intellectual activity in the public sphere consists precisely in how it is involved in the knitting together of genres. Earlier theologians of Islam knew that feature of public intellectual life very well, and therefore rarely saw it sufficient to master a well-defined body of intellectual materials—say jurisprudence or the arts of interpretation. Some of the most prominent theologians, for example Malik or al-Shafi‘i, were also accomplished poets in their own right. The command of language in all of its dimensions was indispensable for any premodern intellectual, since only through such a command could he translate an idea across several genres—poetry, story, philosophy, theology, history, politics. Many of the most regarded modern public intellectuals in the Middle East also saw it fit to invest in a polyvalent interplay of genres, as Michelangelo Guida shows in the case of Turkey. That an engineer could become a theologian, as in the case of Shahrur, or a poet a historian or a philosopher and vice versa, as in the case of Adonis, Soroush, or Ali Shari’ati could be regarded as a continuation of an old feature of intellectual organicism: because social life in its totality is conducted across genres, the organic intellectual speaking to or of it must know something about the translatability of ideas across genres. While such translation delivers ideas in different formats, it also revivifies a genre by depositing into it intellectual materials that had been manufactured in a different genre—perhaps through a different thought process altogether. That itself expands the repertoire that a genre had been able to house previously, and again poetry may be cited here since historically it came to accommodate almost all possible ideas, so much so that the seriousness of any intellectual could be measured by the extent of his poetic command. Even if he did not produce poetry himself, he was expected to know thousands of verses that, like vocabulary, could be reassembled at any moment to address any public question. Today this sensibility may seem hard to imagine, but it was only a few decades ago that both the opposition leader and the prime minister in Lebanon could readily debate each other in parliament over the debacle in Palestine, insulting each other with selected verses of classical Arab poetry. That exchange was the only memorable part of that debate.

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This kind of translation involves the manipulation of the genre into which an idea is translated, so that it serves new and constantly modern purposes. So intellectuals who are involved in this work of translation become responsible for maintaining the life of genres into which they deposit ever more materials for new purposes. Unlike the technician, who simply abides by the familiar dictates and themes of a genre, an organic intellectual is someone who manipulates it so as to expand the intellectual range it could handle. And in doing so, she shows how genres of intellectual life in the public sphere live not for their own sake, but for the purposes deposited into them by the inexhaustible crises, pressures, and negotiations of which civil society itself is made. Notes I think that this is a more accurate way of stating the transformation than saying than modern governments had weakened or sought to weaken ‘Islam.’ What they did was however more specific: they deprived Islam of credible intellectual guardians—credible, that is, in the sense of being independent of the state. 2 Edward Shils, The Intellectuals and the Powers and Other Essays, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972. 3 Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual, New York: Pantheon, 1994, pp. 56–57. 4 Ibid., pp. 59–60. 5 Fazlur Rahman, Islam and Modernity: Transformations of an Intellectual Tradition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 48–49. 6 Muhammad ‘Abduh, al–A‘mal al–Kamila, ed. Muhammad ‘Imara, Beirut: al– Mu’assah al–‘Arabiyyah lil–Dirasat wal–Nashr, 1972, vol. 3, p. 111. 7 Gramsci suggests that only peasant intellectuals may be called ‘traditional’ (see Selections From the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith, New York: International Publishers, 1971, p. 14). For our purposes, however, it is more useful to designate by ‘traditional’ a type of education, rather than its location, even though the effects of ‘traditionalism’ in urban areas may differ from rural ones. 8 Taha Husayn, al–Ayyam, Cairo: al–Ahram Institute, 1992 [1954], p. 69. 9 Dale Eickelman, Knowledge and Power in Morocco: The Education of a Twentieth– Century Notable, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, p. 166. 10 See especially his, ‘The Reading Campaign Experience within Palestinian Society: Innovative Strategies for Learning and Building Community,’ Harvard Educational Review 65/1 (1995), pp. 66–92. 11 Munir Fasheh, ‘How To Eradicate Illiteracy Without Eradicating Illiterates?’ paper presented at the UNESCO’s meeting on International Literacy Day, Paris, 9–10 Sept., 2002. 12 John Michael, Anxious Intellects: Academic Professionals, Public Intellectuals, and 1

Introduction

25

Enlightenment Values, Durham: Duke University Press, 2000, pp. 52–53. 13 Gramsci, p. 5. 14 For an article that places ‘Aref al-‘Aref in a larger intellectual context, see Salim Tamari, ‘With God’s Camels in Siberia: The Russian Exile of an Ottoman Officer From Jerusalem,’ Jerusalem Quarterly 35 (2008), pp. 31–50. 15 Ma‘ruf al-Rasafi, Al-Risalah al-‘Iraqiyya fi l-siyasa wal-din wal-ijtima‘, Cologne: al-Kamel Verlag, 2007, pp. 223–224. 16 I am indebted to John Markoff for pointing out that likelihood. While the relevant historical narrative apparently still needs to be reconstructed, the point is made clear by one of the movement’s main proponents, Francisco Pi Y. Margall: ‘Spanish anarchism is nothing more than an expression of the federal and individualist traditions of the country.’ He moves on to explicitly reject the proposition that the movement was borne out of abstract intellectual discussions (quoted in Robert Alexander, The Anarchists in the Spanish Civil War, vol. 1, London: Janus, 1999, p. 8). 17 M. A. Shaban, Islamic History, a New Interpretation. Vol. 1, A. D. 600–750 (A. H. 132), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971, p. 96. 18 Lisa Anderson, ‘Tribe and State: Libyan Anomalies,’ in Philip Khoury and Joseph Kostiner (eds.), Tribes and State Formation in the Middle East, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991, pp. 288–302. 19 See Mohammed Bamyeh, ‘The City and the Country: Notes on Belonging and Self–Sufficiency,’ Arena Journal, summer 1994. 20 Lisa Wedeeen, Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 21 For a more extended discussion see Mohammed Bamyeh, ‘Between Activism and Hermeneutics: One Hundred Years of Intellectual Islam in the Public Sphere.’ The Macalester International, vol. 14, 2005. A slightly more extended version has appeared as ‘Hermeneutics Against Instrumental Reason: National and Post–national Islam in the Twentieth Century.’ Third World Quarterly, vol. 29/ 3, Spring 2008 (republished in Radhika Desai, ed., Developmental and Cultural Nationalism, New York: Routledge, 2009). 22 Cited in Lara Deeb, The Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi’i Lebanon, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 152. For a similar exploration of the appropriation of Aisha by migrant Iraqi women to express their own predicaments, see Tayba Hassan Al Khalifa Sharif, ‘Sacred Narratives Linking Iraqi Shiite Women Across Time and Space,’ in Miriam Cooke and Bruce Lawrence, eds., Muslim Networks From Hajj to Hip Hop, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2005, pp. 132–154. 23 For a representative work of these attempts, see Muhammad ‘Imara, Al-Fikr alIjtima‘i li ‘Ali Ibn Abi Talib, Cairo: Dar al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, 1977. 24 See Carl Boggs, Intellectuals and the Crisis of Modernity, Albany: SUNY, 1993, p. 3. 25 Elia Zureik has critically identified such sub–regional claims as ‘primordial.’ See

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his ‘Theoretical Considerations for a Sociological Study of the Arab State,’ Arab Studies Quarterly, 3/3, 1981. 26 Eickelman, p. 22.

2 Nazik al-‘Abid and the Nur al-Fayha’ Society: Independent Modernity, Colonial Threat, and the Space of Women

Elizabeth Williams

The period from October 1918 until 24 July 1920 under the Faysal government in Damascus represented a fertile period for nationalist mobilization in the name of ‘complete independence’ for Syria ‘within its natural boundaries’—an independence that seemed, for many of those twenty-two months, elusive yet possible. 1 Among those who spearheaded efforts in support of the nationalist cause during that turbulent and uncertain period was a young intellectual Nazik al-‘Abid. In January 1919, she established, in cooperation with a number of other elite local women, the Nur al-Fayha’ (Light of Damascus) Society, which she would lead until French forces defeated the Syrian Arab army in July 1920 and she was forced to flee into exile. The society’s activities and discursive frameworks clearly reflect the rather patrician social milieu of its members. However, despite their close connection to and support for the Faysal government, they would forge a unique discourse that, in the process of vying for public appeal, would engage and be critical of both those who were more sympathetic to their cause and those who were less so. Activities such as establishing the School for the Daughters of the Martyrs would invoke a symbol meant to appeal to the nation as a whole. On the other hand, their journal, while giving them a venue to publicly address concerns typically reserved for the private sphere, would also allow them to make their case for progress by arguing that the application of modern ideas could complement and reinvigorate traditional Syrian practices. In advocating a coherent vision for a Syrian nation, they made the role played by women central not only

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to building a strong national community but to staving off the undesired, but looming possibility of foreign occupation. To this end, al-‘Abid and her collaborators would use the journal to urge women and men to mobilize in defense of the nation, especially as tensions over the impending mandate intensified. Syria, 1918–1920: The Discursive Context Following the entry of Faysal into Damascus in the fall of 1918 with the Arab and advancing British forces, there ensued a flurry of activity in the public sphere as various individuals and groups sought to advance their competing visions and interests in shaping the future of Syria. James Gelvin has provided a detailed analysis of two of the most predominant and influential of these groups—the mutanawwirun and the popular committees.2 Another organization promoting its own specific vision would come into being officially in early 1919 with the establishment of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society. Initiated by Nazik al-‘Abid, the Society was established in January 1919 with the goal of addressing the nation’s need for ‘women’s awakenings, literary societies, and philanthropic works’ and helping Syrian women span the gap between them and their Western comrades in terms of ‘knowledge’ (‘ilm) and ‘progress’ (ruqiy).3 In February 1920, it would make its debut in the public sphere when the first issue of the Nur al-Fayha’ journal was published with al-‘Abid as editor-in-chief. In adopting a discourse that privileged ‘progress’ and ‘modern ideas’ (afkar haditha), the Society revealed its affinities with the discourse of the mutanawwirun, or ‘enlightened ones,’ men from the upper and upper-middle classes of Damascene society whose affinities lay with the Arab government and to whom many of the women involved in the Society were related.4 However, over the course of its existence, the Society would produce a discourse that would distinguish itself from that of the mutanawwirun and, while still remaining loyal to the Faysal government, would show its sensitivity to the rising popularity of the discourse espoused by the popular committees. Unlike many other nationalist movements in which constructions of the nation and the national developed in direct response to colonial occupation, the nationalist discourses that developed under the Faysal government were able to make their claims and propound their ideas under a government that theoretically was independent. Of course, some nationalist activism had started when the Ottomans, portrayed by their critics as oppressive rulers, were still in power and, while this image would at times linger in patriotic verse, it served more as a reminder to the audience of what nationalists had already overcome than as something still to be struggled against. Thus, the challenges facing nationalists in Egypt, which was under European occupation,

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were quite different from those facing nationalists elsewhere in the Ottoman Empire. With the advent of Faysal and his Arab government the difference in context only increased.5 As a result, in vying for appeal to various segments of the Syrian population, nationalist activists during this period focused their energy less on defining themselves in opposition to a colonial power and more on detailing how the national community should be constructed and imagined.6 In so doing, many, such as the mutanawwirun or the women of Nur al-Fayha’ made reference to and appropriated without hesitation ideas and norms from the colonizers who would ultimately ‘decide the fate of their nation.’ 7 Such strategies have been analyzed as an effort to demonstrate an advanced level of civilization in the context of Wilsonian principles, since a nation’s readiness for independence was predicated on its ability to meet ‘the strenuous conditions of the modern world.’8 Yet the very fact that nationalists felt they had to demonstrate this readiness meant that the prospect of further colonial domination was never completely out of the picture. Thus, as the months progressed and the Faysal government, which derived its strongest support from the mutanawwirun, proved itself less and less adept at representing and defending local desire for complete independence within Syria’s natural boundaries, other discourses, such as that of the popular committees, would gain momentum, challenging that of the elite and, by extension, the ideas and norms of the future colonizers.9 Both discourses delineated a particular role for women within this Syria. The mutanawwirun, who emphasized the slogans of progress and democracy and promulgated a ‘program of civic nationalism’ with ‘the goal of joining the ranks of “civilized nations”,’ urged women to imitate those in the West, to engage in charitable acts, to study arts and culture, and to live modestly.10 Some encouraged women’s education and suffrage—contentious issues that were the subject of intense deliberations by the Syrian National Congress.11 However, according to Gelvin, lurking behind these ideas about women and progress was the notion of two distinct spheres based on gender roles, with men in the public sphere sustained by women in the domestic.12 In contrast, the popular committees, which gained support by providing services where the government failed, incorporated blatantly Islamic symbols into their discourse and, as described by one of their proponents Muhibb al-Din al-Khatib, worked from the assumption that ‘public opinion…is derived from a synthesis of historical traditions and those transitory events that “the people compel to be compatible with their traditions.”’13 Thus, women’s suffrage and state-supported education were viewed as ‘treacherous and divisive, a threat to the invisibility and purity of the historic Syrian community.’14 On the other hand, the popular committees encouraged women’s participation in the public

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sphere. Not only did they agree with the mutanawwirun and support women’s participation in demonstrations, they went even further and allowed them to solicit funds for local committees. Some women even joined the committees’ local militias in order to fight.15 By the beginning of 1920, when al-‘Abid began to publish her journal, tensions had mounted significantly. During the Evacuation Crisis of September 1919, Faysal’s government had proven itself unable to prevent developments that threatened the achievement of Syria’s independence within its natural boundaries. As a result, those discourses that competed with that of the government began to gain ground.16 The journal thus provided a vehicle through which the Society could enter the fray and articulate and circulate its own particular discourse about how the nation could best be constructed, what defined progress, and how modern ideas should be negotiated with traditions (taqalid). While its emphasis on women’s education and progress echoed the mutanawwirun discourse, it also professed sensitivity to the importance of traditions and customs (‘adat) and ambivalence about adopting European modernity and civilization wholesale. It sought to suggest ways of imagining the Syrian community as an organic whole with a common identity—a trope key to the discourse of the popular committees.17 Furthermore, from its inception the society had been sensitive to religious issues, starting the School for the Daughters of the Martyrs expressly for Muslim girls and using language such as ‘the straight path’ (al-sirat al-mustaqim) to describe where it hoped the new knowledge and path to progress would take its students.18 In examining the evolution and activities of the Society and its school as well as the arguments and ideas it presented on the pages of its journal, a discourse emerges that is unique. This discourse reveals the women’s awareness of the limits they faced, but also their creativity in producing a response that attempted to address and negotiate the challenges of the times.19 The Nur al-Fayha’ Society When Nazik al-‘Abid gathered a group of a hundred and some elite women together on Thursday, 2 January 1919 to form the Nur al-Fayha’ society, she was only twenty-one. She had studied at a mission school in Beirut and Gertrude Bell described her ‘as the most advanced lady in Damascus.’ 20 A voracious reader, she was praised by Labiba Ahmad, a journalist in Egypt, not only for her ‘support for Syrian independence and her struggle to get the vote for women,’ but also for her ‘willingness to brook ‘‘eccentricity” because she closeted herself to read ‘‘all she could find.”’21 Her father, Mustafa Pasha al‘Abid, had governed Karak and Mosul under the Ottomans and her mother, Farida al-Jilad, had a reputation for being a woman who ‘sought knowledge.’22

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Prior to the end of WWI and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, al‘Abid had gone into exile with her family in Izmir, but had returned after the war eager to contribute to the building of an independent Syria. Thus, having initiated the meeting, she put before the women her plan to establish a school for the ‘daughters of the martyrs’ and the Nur al-Fayha’ society—nur al-fayha’ representing the enlightenment that could be effected through the city’s, and by extension the nation’s, women.23 Thus, the Society’s school would ‘scatter darkness and enlighten the [student’s] spirit with the luminous light of civilization (nur al-madaniya).’24 It would also promote philanthropic work and literary circles.25 Her proposal was eagerly taken up by the assembled women, and prominent guests gave speeches emphasizing the need to take an interest in the girls’ futures, to ‘raise the torch of knowledge and the banner of compassion,’ and to bring them the ‘light of civilization’ so that they could throw off their ignorance and walk down the ‘straight path.’ Three hundred Egyptian pounds were collected from members of the Society and prince Zayd, Faysal’s younger brother, donated an additional 100 when he heard of the initiative.26 According to Widad Sakakini, in establishing the School for the Daughters of the Martyrs, the Society aimed to provide educational opportunities for Muslim students in particular, since private and missionary schools had already been established for Christian students in the countryside and cities.27 However, in addition to being Muslim, a critical mass of the students would also be girls whose fathers had died in the war (sahat al-wagha).28 While those who had been executed on the orders of Jamal Pasha would gain a special symbolic significance under Faysal, the ‘martyrs’ in the school’s name referred, more generally, to the men who had died fighting on the field of battle.29 The students’ status as daughters of the martyrs—i.e. daughters of those who had died for the sake of the nation—allegorized the new, not fully defined, nation as an organic community born of sacrifice, and the students would often play a prominent, symbolic role in official ceremonies. Descriptions of the school also suggest that a number of the daughters of the martyrs probably came from lower-class backgrounds. Gertrude Bell notes that ‘[b]esides the orphans there were an equal number of girls of good Damascene families who pay for the education they receive…[and who] were not seen by the men of the party.’30 This effort to include girls who might not be able to otherwise afford an education indicates an intention on the part of the Society to reach across class lines, albeit in philanthropically minded ways symbolically significant to nationalist discourse. Charitable acts in honor of the girls, such as the donation of several Egyptian pounds or ‘two bags of good rice’ from one of the ‘capital’s best merchants,’ are scrupulously recorded in the Society’s journal.31

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The Society sought to instill in its students nationalistic sentiments, which included loyalty to the Faysali government. In particular, the students, having lost their fathers, were encouraged to view the Arabs as their family and King Hussein, the father of Faysal and Zayd, as their father.32 During an event in May 1919, the teachers sang to the students: ‘Daughter of the Arab martyr/ Do not be sad, do not mourn/Your father had died a proud person/You are a daughter of the Arab.’ The students replied, ‘My family are the noble Arabs/… Hussein, King of the Arabs/He relieved my orphanhood and distress/… Concerned like a father/The King became to us.’33 At the same event, the students called on God to let Faysal, who was in France at the time seeking to gain support for Syrian independence, obtain his goal, insisting they would not accept anything less than that.34 The journal proudly notes that on the occasion of his return, the students of the Nur al-Fayha’ school, along with students from the Christian and state schools as well as the Alliance Française school, were dressed each in a different color of the Arab flag and sang a song to his convoy as it passed.35 Gertrude Bell, who was extremely impressed by the school and its directors, described one of its events that she attended in the fall of 1919: Girls and children were brought out into the large garden which surrounds the house to sing patriotic songs. In one of them a chorus of the elder girls addressed the orphans, reminding each one that her father died in the cause of liberty and bidding her never to forget that she was ‘bint al-‘Arabi’ (daughter of the Arabs) while the children replied that they would never forget their birth, or King Hussein who fought for their race, nor finally (this stanza was specially prepared for the American Commission) President Wilson who laid down—save the mark—the principles of freedom.36 Certainly the intention to impress on the Americans Syria’s readiness for independence and her people’s insistence on the principles of freedom— namely, freedom from British or French mandatory rule—was high on the Society’s list of priorities. Not only did they have their students sing about it, but al-‘Abid and eleven other women visited the King-Crane Commission at the end of June 1919 to express their support for Syria’s independence and freedom.37 Identified by a member of the Commission as a group of Muslim women and ‘relatives of the martyrs of Jemal Pasha’s terrorism,’ the delegation also appealed to the Commission for ‘complete independence.’38 Establishing the School for the Daughters of the Martyrs with its nationalist activities and nationally significant students as well as engaging in their own

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diplomatic overtures enabled al-‘Abid and the women of the Society to present their vision for the nation in a variety of contexts. With their activities often recorded in the government’s official newspaper, al-‘Asima, the women’s discourse did begin to gain some exposure to the public sphere, and by the beginning of 1920 they were ready to take more control over how their voice was heard. The Nur al-Fayha’ Journal and the Importance of the Public Sphere In an effort to spread their ideas more systematically beyond the confines of the school, the members of the Society began publishing a journal in the tense days of January 1920. The decision came in the wake of the fall’s Evacuation Crisis during which the French and British severely hindered the Arab government’s ability to provide security, meet its financial commitments, and control its borders, sending the Syrian economy into a decline that proved irreversible during the Faysal period.39 To make matters worse, in January 1920 Faysal signed the Faysal-Clemenceau agreement, which not only undermined the Arab state’s sovereignty but, by agreeing to different administrations in the eastern and western zones, conveyed to the local population that the Faysal government was sanctioning Syria’s partition.40 Such developments accelerated the social organization of the popular committees, who stepped up their coordination in order to provide protection or fulfill functions that the government was no longer capable of carrying out.41 Al-‘Abid and the members of Nur al-Fayha’ perhaps saw this as a crucial time to ensure that their ideas had a wider audience. Perhaps aware of the competing allegiances to different social groups or different concepts of the nation that characterized the multiplicity of national visions and mobilizations, as well as anticipating resistance to a narrative initiated by women, al-‘Abid as editor-inchief of Nur al-Fayha’ declared in the first issue: And even if a male writer and a female writer argue and fight about a subject, they are capable of understanding each other and arriving at truths worth expressing, so as to lift this wretched nation from the ruin of misery to the peak of happiness, and build an impenetrable fortress between them and the sick, measly ideas that shame and despair bequeathed to us.42 In addition to the lofty goal of encouraging dialogue and cooperation between men and women for the sake of the national cause, the journal encouraged ‘learned and unlearned Syrian women’ to express their ideas and provided them a space in which to give vent to their pain and suffering.43 The magazine

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also claimed that it would help women ‘know their duties, demand their legitimate rights, and improve themselves until they are in charge of what they must do: from household management and raising children and living with husbands, to serving their beloved nation and [in so doing] follow [the example of ] living nations.’44 The decision of Nazik al-‘Abid and the other members of the Society involved in the magazine to enter the public sphere indicates an evolving and ambitious conception of the role they hoped to play in producing the modern and independent Syrian nation. In addition to providing what they saw as a progressive education for disadvantaged (but symbolically important) girls and thereby contributing to the formation of exemplary modern national subjects, the Society now added its own voice, which ranged from strident to sardonic, pedantic to defensive, to those of the men who almost exclusively dominated the discourse of the public sphere. Al-‘Asima even congratulated them on their accomplishment.45 Habermas’s contention that the public sphere in Europe operated as a space in which individuals, coming together as a public, could engage in debate and ‘criticism of public authority’ is perhaps not completely applicable here. For Nur al-Fahya,’ the importance of the public sphere was not only the opportunity it provided to enter into conversation with other intellectuals and their rival discourses, but the openings it provided for debate over social relations and for mediation between family and public.46 The journal’s editors and contributors sought to provide a space through which discussion of matters typically relegated to the private sphere and to family discussions could gain purchase in the public sphere. Furthermore, the urgency of addressing these concerns was delineated as a matter of political activism that could best be taken up by women. This was an innovative framework for presenting these issues that had not had a place in the Damascene public sphere prior to 1920.47 How many women the Nur al-Fayha’ journal actually reached is hard to gauge. However, it does appear to have been intended for circulation beyond Syria, as the subscription price indicates two amounts: one for subscribers in Syria and another for those outside.48 In addition, while most women were not literate, at 50 to 60 piasters per yearly subscription, the magazine was most likely beyond the reach of middle and lower class women, especially since in the fall of 1919 the value of the Egyptian pound had fallen dramatically.49 Nonetheless, to the extent that the journal circulated, Widad Sakakini characterized it as ‘a mobile school that enter[ed] houses and society, carrying a vision of societal and national development and expressions of the cultural awareness that had been attained by Western women.’50 The journal opened to public debate issues which had previously been primarily confined to

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the private, family sphere (e.g. marriage) and conveyed a didactic expertise regarding matters typically reserved for home instruction (e.g. treating illness). Sakakini’s assessment, however, fails to acknowledge the journal’s relatively ambivalent attitude towards the West. Established at a critical juncture under the Faysali government, one of the journal’s explicit goals was to support the national cause through educating women about modern ideas. Appropriating and offering ‘modern ideas’ to a public packaged as an essential element in the fight for Syrian independence did not, however, mean accepting Western practices or mores wholesale. While the authors portray certain desirable, modern ideas and practices as being more prevalent in the West, they argue that this does not in fact mean that these ideas and practices are necessarily of Western origin. Furthermore, when applying these ideas and practices in Syria, Western versions should be tempered by the extent to which they are compatible with Islamic historical precedent and Syrian Arab traditions. Relevant here is Chatterjee’s argument that nationalist discourse had to demonstrate the falsity of the colonial claim that the backwards peoples were culturally incapable of ruling themselves in the conditions of the modern world. Nationalism denied the alleged inferiority of the colonized people; it also asserted that a backward nation could ‘modernize’ itself while retaining its cultural identity. It thus produced a discourse in which, even as it challenged the colonial claim to political domination, it also accepted the very intellectual premises of ‘modernity’ on which colonial domination was based.51 The editors of Nur al-Fayha’ certainly operated under the premise that a hierarchy of modern versus backwards nations did exist, but they held that Syrians, both men and women, were well on their way to adopting various modern ideas and thus the need for colonial domination was superfluous. In appealing to its Syrian audience, the journal was careful to negotiate a path between ‘modern ideas’ and ‘traditions,’ stressing that the two were not always necessarily mutually exclusive. Its insistence on preserving certain essential customs (‘adat) and traditions (taqalid) would locate its discourse as uniquely Syrian and Arab, while selected modern ideas would serve as the measure by which worn-out customs could be pruned away.52 As Timothy Mitchell has argued, ultimately modernity ‘must be staged as that which is singular, original, present and authoritative. Its authority and presence can be produced only across the space of geographical and historical difference…defined by its claim to universality…Yet this always remains an impossible unity, an incomplete

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universal.’53 While various contributors to the journal may have understood themselves as working within a universal concept of modernity, the terms in which they constructed modernity’s implications for the people of Syria were specific and original. They invoked the universal to justify why a mandate was unnecessary for Syria, while simultaneously upholding the difference derived from specific traditions to define how the modern, independent Syrian nation could be imagined.54 Constructs of Modernity and Civilization Much scholarship has been devoted to elucidating the ways in which discourses on modernity have been used to demarcate new roles or reinvent traditional ones for women.55 From ‘managers of the house’ to ‘mothers [of the men] of the future,’ women have often been ‘localized…as backward and ignorant but simultaneously…[as] a sphere of transformation.’56 Within the context of nationalist struggles, the degree to which certain constructs of modernity figured into this transformation were often determined by a contested and intricate process of negotiation based on a number of factors such as the intensity of colonial oppression, the discourse of colonizing regimes, the goals of the nationalist movement, or the extent of reconfiguration of traditional roles required to effect the transformation. Nur al-Fayha’s discourse on modernity was not constrained by needing to defensively define itself in opposition to the direct rule of a colonial power. Rather it sought to assert Syria’s readiness for independence in the face of international pressure to impose a mandate on the area. While this position did at times elicit a defensive critique of Western practices deemed inferior to Syrian ones, the journal’s contributors primarily focused on constructing modernity in terms compatible with local practices and precedents in an effort to make their ideas resonate most broadly with their local audience. One of the key sites of negotiation between modernity and tradition throughout the journal is the institution of marriage and the relationship between a husband and wife. The journal repeatedly encourages compatible and companionate relationships according to bourgeois concepts of marriage. The editors do insist, though, that the traditional right of the family to approve a marriage partner should be respected.57 Marriage as an institution featured prominently in women’s writings of the period as a successful marriage was considered central to a young women’s future happiness and determinant of her ability to contribute to the ongoing reproduction of the nation.58 Ibrahim al-Khatib, a prominent local intellectual, wrote the journal’s opening article, which insisted on the importance of and historical precedents for women’s right to choose in the matter of marriage. He claims that, contrary to the illusions

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some are under, Arab women, such as al-Khansa’, have had a long tradition of choosing their future marriage partners as long as they did not embarrass their family.59 He cites such precedents to indicate the general progressiveness of Arab women historically, arguing that allowing them such a right today is not about imitating Western or American norms, but rather about harking back to an ancient Arab tradition in which women had the same rights that Western and American women have only recently laid claim to.60 Khatib’s argument constituted the opening salvos of the journal on this issue, which would be a recurrent theme throughout. Another article that argues for the virtues of companionate marriage tries to preempt the issue’s potential for controversy by opening with the caveat that if a person wants ‘to improve his nation with new ways and modern ideas’ he will no doubt face criticism, especially if these ideas are perceived as going against cherished customs.61 The acceptance of such ideas requires time for people to become aware of their value. According to the author, traditional marriage arrangements, which prevent potential fiancés from getting to know each other before the marriage, often lead to polygamy or divorce as well as much pain and anger, especially for women. A woman can even joke with shopkeepers ‘without supervision’ yet she cannot sit alone with a potential suitor so that he can ‘discover her spirit and probe her character.’62 The woman, on the other hand, does not get to know her potential fiancé well and may end up with a husband who is impatient and short-tempered.63 The journal’s editors carefully target the modern ideas offered for consideration—they do not all represent values that are desirable or superior to local standards. One article exemplifies the ambivalence towards values and behaviors that are regarded as accompanying the transition to modernity and civilization in Europe and are deemed not only undesirable, but fundamentally incompatible with Syrian traditions and practices. The article’s author, who goes by the name Arabiyya S., juxtaposes the Bedouin woman, who will ultimately come to represent the essence of local ethics and mores, with the modernity of the city woman and poses the question: who is ‘closer to virtue and farther from desire?’64 The author admits that her first instinct is to think of the Bedouin as better than her civilized sister, and yet she asks how can this be when one compares the Bedouin woman’s ‘roughness,’ ‘dirtiness’ and ‘wildness’ with the city woman’s ‘delicateness,’ ‘cleanliness’ and ‘urbanity.’ 65 ‘How,’ she asks Does the Bedouin exist with her savageness and barbarity at the same time that we also see the dignified and noble civilized woman—an example of haughtiness and luxury and grandeur—who does not milk

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sheep or herd a camel, nor does she serve herself or nurse her children, does not serve a guest and does not entertain a visitor—protected, respected, hidden, advanced, nothing preoccupies her except decorating herself and acting according to her personal concerns, and nothing in the world concerns her except satisfying her husband who sees her devoting her life to him…she has a relaxed mind and a comfortable conscience, far from the hardships of life…she is spoiled…she does not go out of her house except to stroll or accept invitations or attend parties donned with jewelry…66 The author details various European innovations that enable the transformation of the civilized women, but to which the Bedouin woman does not have access. The author wonders: can the water of ablution remove this transformation? 67 In response, she makes a tongue-in-cheek comparison of the rituals of religion and those of modernity: The Bedouin does not understand the meaning of civilization (madaniyya), did not learn a foreign language, and has not heard the word ‘toilette’… and does not understand its meaning—that it is wudu’ [ablution] and that what they call ‘gymnastics’ designates prayer. If you don’t know the meaning of civilization (al-hadara), I will describe to you the modern (mutamaddina) woman. When you ask me about her wudu’ and her prayer and…her fasting, you are told that they imposed wudu,’ prayer and fasting when religion emerged, as the Arabs were in the state of savagery like the state of the Bedouin today. The wudu’ was imposed upon them because they would walk barefoot, bare of head and arms. So God made him clean the exposed parts of his body. As for prayer it was also imposed for exercising the body; the wisdom for mandating group prayer lay in making the Arabs accustomed to submission to the order of one ruler, when before that they were all claiming for themselves sovereignty, and it was hard for them to obey others. Now they learn every system and rule in school, in military barracks and political conferences. So there is no need to undertake prayer after studying the science of civilization (‘ilm al-madaniyya). As for fasting, it was to discipline the self and to teach it to give up bad things and arrogance, so that the rich would feel the pain of the famished, starving poor and so give alms to him and be in heart-felt solidarity out of love for them, nothing else. But now man has learned all things from the study of civilization (durus al-madaniyya) as I mentioned; he learned that he needs his human brother, without going hungry himself and feeling pity.68

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The rituals of modernity order and teach, but the resulting institutions and knowledge are superficial, lacking in spiritual depth and lived experience. The author continues her comparison, suggesting two distinct images of companionate marriage. One, based on the relationship of the civilized sister with her husband, is a parody of the modern ideal of companionate marriage. The modern woman, she contends, not only beautifies herself for her husband, but works for him because she is created to serve his desires and he, in turn, serves her since they have learned from the study of civilization (durus almadaniyya) the importance of the nuclear family (al-‘a’ila al-baytiya) and the raising of enlightened children.69 The civilized wife, she notes, may be considered a good Muslim because she covers herself according to the will of her husband and may be regarded as pure because she is ‘imprisoned.’ Is such behavior, she challenges the reader, enough?70 After all this version of companionate marriage is characterized by a studiedness and artifice stemming from a purely formal application of modern ideas, and is facilitated by the wife’s access to certain modern products. Ultimately it is confining since she must stay at home and devote herself solely to her husband’s desires and wishes. To the journal’s middle and upper class readers, the author’s description of this modern marital relationship would likely evoke recent shifts in conceptualizations of the nature of the marital relationship exemplified, for instance, in the writings of Qasim Amin.71 In contrast, the Bedouin woman’s relationship with her husband offers another version of companionate marriage, which the writer admits may seem initially somewhat risqué and lacking in intimacy. After all she is not educated and does not work inside her house—attentive solely to her husband’s desires. Rather she works with him ‘hand in hand…side by side, helping him in his hard work,’ which requires her to be uncovered. How, the writer asks, can she be considered a good Muslim and a chaste ‘life partner to her husband, sharing the good and the bad’ when she ‘milks sheep and raises goats, hosts visitors to her house and offers them good things’ even in her husband’s absence, not to mention the fact that she appears to him ‘in her natural image’—i.e. without the cosmetic aids available to the civilized woman?72 Such seeming deficiencies and improprieties, according to the author, actually hold important lessons for the patriotic reader. First, the Bedouin woman is compatible—one of the factors to be considered in arranging a marriage according to Islamic law as promoted by the journal—with her husband.73 Their level of knowledge is about the same and they do not, the author contends, ‘yearn for civilized customs (al-taqalid al-hadariyya) or look down on those below them or envy those above them.’74 Furthermore—and here the author reaches the crux of the matter—the Bedouin woman ‘understands the meaning of natural life and

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walks in her way,’ whereas the modern woman has only ‘become an object that the influences of the customs of civilization (al-taqalid al-madaniyya) play with until they make her forget her natural state, her Arab customs (‘awa’idha al-‘arabiyya) and her religious beliefs (‘aqa’idha al-diniyya).’75 To illustrate this conclusion, the author narrates a story that exposes the dangers posed by modern European practices to local traditions. Having heard of a very progressive (raqiya), civilized (mutamaddina) young woman, she calls on her to request her assistance with philanthropic aid and literary societies. The woman’s servant answers the door and takes her card, requesting that she write her name on it in French as her mistress, despite the fact that her name is Fatima Kareema al-Sheikh Muhammad, does not know Arabic. The author, in consternation, exclaims, ‘Go and tell your mistress orally that I am so-andso, that I want to meet her and that I am Arab Syrian and not Frenchified European.’ The servant, after a long time, returns and tells her the mistress only receives visitors on Saturday. The author responds in anger, ‘Inform your Frenchified mistress that I am Bedouin and that I did not study formalities in the foreign schools.’ She leaves, cursing civilization for ‘making nothing but blind, unquestioning imitation’ and then she thinks of ‘a Bedouin woman in her tent and of her hospitality and her generosity,’ and concludes ‘wretched is civilization and the civilized woman and long life to the Bedouin—excellent is the Badawa!’76 This comparison between the Bedouin sister and her civilized sister affords the author the opportunity to combine a critique of modernity with an affirmation of essential Syrian Arab customs and practices. The Bedouin, lacking artifice and offering hospitality, represents the essence of local Syrian practices that are likely to be lost if foreign practices are adopted and imitated mindlessly.77 The juxtaposition also enables the author to claim solidarity with her fellow countrywomen while living a lifestyle quite different from them. For although the author expresses a healthy skepticism about the rituals of modernity, it is unlikely that she intends to convey a rejection of cleanliness or exercise, access to knowledge, or the raising of enlightened children. Rather, her problem with modernity arises from the perceived impact it could have on cherished social customs or religious practices that are seen as constituting an essential part of Syrian Arab national identity. In particular, the use of modern innovations to pursue frippery and guile or the possibility that modern ideas could encourage idleness, self-absorption, and arrogance are the targets of attack. The author portrays the Bedouin woman’s ‘savageness,’ stemming from her poverty and lack of modern education, as preferable to the civilized woman’s refinement because, above all else, the Bedouin remains true to essential values of local culture, such as hospitality, and is committed to

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hard work and lack of guile. It is also possible to see in the author’s argument a subtle critique of certain other, non-essential, local practices, such as the veil. The Bedouin woman’s valorization despite not wearing the veil is perhaps a restrained way of suggesting that the absence of such a practice would not inherently threaten basic traditions. Such a strategy is indicative of how the journal approaches the veil as yet another issue that the men and women of the new nation must negotiate amongst themselves, weighing its importance as a traditional practice against the possibilities suggested by modern space. Overall the editors portray the gradual disappearance of the veil from public space as a positive development, but are adamant that its continued presence is in no way indicative of the oppression of women or the need for foreign intervention. The stakes involved for Nur al-Fayha’s nationalist aspirations are alluded to in the journal’s response to an editorial, reprinted by the editors, from the pro-British Egyptian Gazette. The editorial, ‘Who Would Rip the Veil,’ supports colonial rule on the basis of how women are treated, calling for the ‘liberation of women from slavery to men’ and insisting that ‘it is not possible before [such] reform for Egyptians and Syrians to gain independence’—an assertion to which Nur al-Fayha’ takes indignant exception. The editorial’s author, who identifies herself as an Egyptian woman, declares that the power of men over women in Egypt and Syria is greater than in any other country—that women don’t have any rights or freedom in their own houses. Syria comes in for special criticism as a place that is ‘ten times more savage than Egypt,’ where men not only hit women but murder them as well. The editorialist concludes by asserting that women cannot overcome these powers arrayed against them, so she hopes the ‘time is not far away when educated men and women will stand up and take an interest in the women of their nation, effect a war against the hangers of the veil and rescue the Muslim woman from her misery and slavery.’78 Nur al-Fayha’s stinging response to these accusations questions the author’s self-identification as Egyptian, declaring her ‘ignorant’ and ‘mendacious.’ The journal’s commentary then becomes an opportunity to reiterate its nationalist stance while pronouncing its own philosophy on the veil. Referring to Egypt and Syria as two great countries (qatarayn), Nur al-Fayha’ identifies the editorialist’s real goal as political—an attempt to smear national reputations and provide a pretext for the civilizing mission of colonial powers.79 The editors of the journal are clearly sensitive to the veil’s manipulation by colonizers or potential colonizers looking for a pretext to justify their oppressive imperialism as a liberatory project. The journal frames its argument for why such a project is misguided in terms that recognize the veil’s importance as a tradition that women adhere to whether men want it or not. The reason, they claim, that

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the veil remains is not due to the cowardice of women or the power of men, but rather [to the fact] that our surroundings place obligations on us, ‘[so that even] if our men were content to abolish [the veil] our women would not accept.’80 The presence of the veil thus is presented not as a simple question of oppression, but as one of the structure of mutual obligations that inhere in an environment created by men and women that hold to certain traditions. At a Society event on 20 May 1920, ‘Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, minister of foreign affairs, spoke at length and to great applause about the veil. He argued that women at present ‘could not lift it as long as the environment around them is separated from the space of modernity by so many degrees.’81 Such a speech, directed as it was towards a Syrian audience, seems designed to encourage Syrians to produce this modern space over time. However, the ultimate goal is not to have all women throw off their veils, but merely to create a space in which women who want to forego the veil can do so. The journal’s editors seem optimistic that such a space is in the making. In fact, a number of the women involved in Nur al-Fayha’ had already begun to experiment with removing their veils in certain situations. Several had removed them during their meeting with the King-Crane Commission; al-‘Abid, her mother, and another Muslim member of the school’s board removed them while socializing with men during Bell’s visit in the fall of 1919; and al-‘Abid even went for a period without the veil in public, although she eventually had to put it on again after the defeat at Maysalun because of street hecklers.82 Creating a space, limited as it might have been, in which more urban women felt comfortable throwing off their veils indicates the extent to which ‘modern ideas’ had permeated Syrian society. According to the journal, achieving this space was obviously not a priority for colonial occupiers, rather it was an intensive project to be undertaken by Syrians who were intent on fostering women’s education as well as women’s rights in marriage and work within an independent, progressive and distinctly Syrian nation. Producing National Space From its first issue, the magazine contextualized its emancipatory discourse and many of its proposed reforms regarding women’s rights and responsibilities as something historically Islamic or indigenous to Arab (and by extension Syrian) culture. According to the journal’s editors, laying claim to those rights and incorporating a generous dose of the most modern ideas, while remaining true to certain practices and traditions deemed essential in religious or social terms, would enable women to partake in effective national citizenship. But what would this nation look like? How would it compare to other nations?

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What kind of nation would result if women, persuaded by this particular discourse, could make themselves into more modern subjects for its sake? A number of the journal’s articles tied the increasing access that women were gaining to education as well as to professional or political roles in the United States and Europe to national strength and maturity. Several articles featured specific women such as Lady Astor, Florence Nightingale and Peggy Hull who respectively, as first female member of the English Parliament, wartime nurse and the first female war correspondent, were portrayed as pushing gender boundaries and defying traditional norms for female behavior to serve their nations.83 Another article provided statistics about the increasing number of women working outside the home and gaining access to jobs in factories, offices, banks, and warehouses; providing railroad, telegraph and telephone services; and holding positions as merchants, treasurers, clerks and servants in countries such as Germany, the United States, England and France.84 The journal also quoted statistics on women’s increasing access to higher education. At the same time, the journal highlighted women from Islamic history who were politically active, such as Nur Jahan, or who were involved in the public sphere and respected for their wit, literary contributions, or intellectual acumen; along that line it published short biographies of alSayyida Sakinah and Sayyida Zeinab as examples.85 Such articles sought to establish that women’s education and participation in politics and the public sphere have historically been a part of Arab culture and Islam: they are not just modern innovations being introduced into Arab society from the West (although the specific forms they take may be reflective of modern disciplinary techniques). By emphasizing that such a public role for women is not an inherently Western phenomenon and is in fact a rather recent development in the West, the editors cast their arguments for women’s increased access to the public sphere as yet another feature of a cohesive, modern nation that ‘wants life’— as evidenced both from tales of contemporary change as well as precedents in Syrian and Arab history.86 In general, the tone of the journal intensified during the spring of 1920 as tensions rose following decisions made at the San Remo Conference that further undermined the possibility of Syria gaining independence without a fight. During that period, more strident calls to patriotic action combined with efforts to envision how the cohesion of the nation might be better achieved. While men were urged to support the establishment of girls’ schools and recognize women’s essential contribution to producing the nation, women were also enjoined to be visible, actively struggle for the national cause and support each other. They were not merely to be bound to the domestic sphere envisioned for them by the mutanawwirun.87 In fact, the journal

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warned that men may call women to support the national cause and claim to support them, then turn on them and assert that they could not participate unless it were ‘within the walls of your house,’ something the journal’s editors, as fellow women, assured their readers they would never do.88 They called on women to remind the nation of its duty to ‘uproot from the garden of the nation the thorns of ignorance and corruption…chasing away the poisoned insects from tradition and customs.’89 Again, traditions and customs are not bad in themselves, rather, due to ignorance, they have accumulated certain harmful aspects that should be done away with for the sake of the nation. Furthermore, the author insists that ‘as long as blind fanaticism leads us and personal desires guide us,’ women will be unable to come together. In fact, the writer concludes, real betrayal of the nation consists not in ‘leading the enemy to an army post…or revealing the country’s political secrets,’ but in ‘failing [to support] the efforts of your female citizens who demand rights, work and literary freedom.’90 The ultimate patriotic duty involves creating a national space in which women have the right to pursue both the public and private activities that they desire and are affirmed in doing so. In addition to calling for public, ideological engagement in the struggle for women’s social, economic and intellectual freedom, the journal also urged women to make personal economic choices that would value women’s traditional handicrafts as a matter of national pride. Following a trip by al-‘Abid and Mrs. Fisher, head of the local orphanage, to the villages of Duma, Menin, and Ma’ri on the outskirts of Damascus to enquire into local handicrafts, the Society undertook a project dedicated to the revitalization of ‘national’ handicrafts. Marveling at the beauty and delicacy of what they found, they brought back samples, established a workshop for their production, and encouraged the spread of this handwork among their associates, especially those who care for ‘economic benefits and serving the nation.’ Mrs. Fisher even composed a list of ‘commandments’ to encourage women to support such work: • • • •

Stimulate national actions Renounce Western clothes Be patriotic and use the special products of your country Don’t forget that in Syria factories weave the most beautiful silk and cotton products and that they are greater in their beauty than the majority of European products • Remember that the raw materials of the most beautiful products are present in this country and it is possible to make them with ease for a lower price than the prices of Europe

Nazik al-‘Abid and the Nur al-Fayha’ Society • Remember that your sight has become accustomed to beautiful national products, but if you also desire to use them, encourage those who make them, paying special attention to their coloring and improvement • Remember that in simple, national clothes there is a beauty in the pattern and simplicity in the design above that of Western clothes in terms of elegance and beauty and remember also that the most skillful foreign seamstresses take their models from the origin: eastern clothes • Use the clothes of your nation and work for their improvement and don’t imitate… • Don’t decorate your national clothes except with national work • Do your utmost to spread the products of your nation in the West and with this you serve your nation instead of providing opportunities for ambitious Western designs—‘Be patriotic’91

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Such a list, aimed at the elite women who would have had the option of wearing local versus Western-made clothes, emphasizes how basic consumer choices can impact the national cause. By making and wearing clothes from locally produced fibers embellished with traditional designs, elite women could stimulate the national economy, while demonstrating the frugality, industriousness, and national pride so valued throughout the journal’s pages. Also evident in this initiative is an attempt to reach across class lines in support of the national struggle. Although it is unclear when exactly al-‘Abid conceived this project, it may have been in part a response to attacks by lowerclass youths from the popular committees on women who dressed in Western styles.92 As these attacks intensified following the Evacuation Crisis, al-‘Asima called on women to avoid ‘ostentatious displays’ in public, and by April the government had appointed functionaries ‘to admonish the guardians of every woman who transcends the limits in her adornment and who departs from custom’.93 Still, such admonitions could have been avoided by wearing more modest clothes or by covering up Western-style clothes in public. In contrast, the emphasis in Nur al-Fayha’ is on the very beauty and simplicity of local designs and the inherent superiority of ‘national products’ to those of the West. It is a call to take pride in and support traditional work, rather than a reactive call to sacrifice. 94 While encouraging economic choices that would ostensibly reach across class lines, the journal’s editors and contributors also attempted to elucidate a vision for how the ideologically and religiously disparate elements of Syrian society could coalesce into a national unity. Most likely responding to French

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designs for a mandate in Syria, which had been sanctioned at the April 1920 San Remo Conference, the journal made a desperate plea for unity in a poem entitled ‘The Arab Doctrine.’ With preparations underway for occupying the country and removing the Arab government, Nur al-Fayha’ declared that ‘The voice of God is calling the Arab nation’ and urged the ‘children of the Syrian nation’ to claim ‘a future that is almost within reach.’95 In order to save the nation from the ‘greedy,’ it must be united under the ‘Syrian flag.’ Given the rising popularity of the popular committees’ discourse and the potentially divisive question of religion, Nur al-Fayha’ suggested language as a source of unity: ‘O those who debate whether in history there is among us/A reason for a cohesive community if one so desired /Return to the language of unity/ If there is not kinship, this is sufficient for kinship/Religion is to God and the nations are one/This is the right—this is the Arab Doctrine.’96 Religious difference preoccupied the journal’s editors as a source of potential conflict within the national community. Thus the journal’s first effort to engage its readership in envisioning how national unity could be achieved was the question: ‘What is the most wholesome means by which to eradicate sectarian hatred in our country?’ Suggestions included relying on the respect for other faiths inherent in all religions, undertaking more interfaith exchanges, separating religious tradition from materialistic interests, and recognizing that ‘we live in one nation beneath one sky [with] shared interests and common benefits, preferring national interests above all interests’ (Mrs. Fisher).97 Al-‘Abid herself declared that ‘the belief that in religions are to be found the refinement of human emotions, the education of thoughts, and the serving of humanity, [this belief ] perceives rancor between the sects as mere selfishness.’98 Clearly, for the majority of these responses, religion was something very much to be grappled with, not something that could be dismissed or wallpapered over with mere slogans about citizenship.99 Five of the twelve responses suggested a unified national education. It is unclear to what extent this might have been a reaction to sectarian differences being aggravated by local religious and missionary schools (although one respondent was especially critical of the deleterious influence of foreign schools).100 Still, the responses give some sense of how the journal’s audience envisioned the unification of a national Syrian Arab community with regards to an issue that its editors considered potentially divisive. Reports on demonstrations and theatrical performances by the school’s students illustrate further how the Society used its key symbols and particular ideology in calls for nationalist action based on an allegiance to the Arab government. At ceremonies commemorating the Day of the Martrys and the ‘eid of the Arab Revolt, the school’s students recited poems that emphasized

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their status as ‘Daughters of Syria,’ calling on those present to sacrifice and fight for independence and freedom. An especially impassioned plea for national unity at an Arab Revolt celebration on 27 April 1920 even posited ‘Faysal as the Ka‘ba of Nationalism.’101 But one of the most revealing performances by the school’s students took place on 20 May 1920 in honor of Faysal (now King Faysal) and Zayd. A student representing Syria and wearing an ‘Arab dress’ lay chained on the floor surrounded by other students wearing torn clothes to represent the miserable condition of the poor and hungry of Syria during the war. A poem was read that detailed the cruelty of the Turks under which Syrians had suffered. Then another student entered, representing the Hijaz, waving a sword and proclaiming herself a ‘daughter of the badia’ who then rescued ‘Syria’ from her chains. More students entered wearing clothes of ‘Arab soldiers’ and danced the ‘Arab debka’ to demonstrate their happiness, singing ‘There fell the tarbush and the anuria /Long live the agil and the kuffiya/Dear to me is the liberation of my country /Dance artfully now that you have hope / We have been delivered from Turkey/Our Lord has given us all freedom/Long live the Arabs and Arabism/Long live Faysal and the rebels.’102 Yet, disaffection with the Faysal government’s inability to effectively represent what it had claimed to represent—Syrians’ desire for an undivided, independent Syria—had by then reached a peak, especially in the post-San Remo period with the country facing the very real possibility of French occupation. Such rhetoric, simultaneously expressing a desire for Syria’s complete independence and reminding the audience of the role Faysal and the rebels had played in initially liberating Syria, was perhaps one last-ditch effort to draw attention away from his failure to hold colonial designs at bay and to encourage allegiance to his leadership. While it is unlikely that their strategy generated any additional loyalty to Faysal, when the French invasion was imminent, the desire to defend the nation itself proved the strongest motivation, and volunteers, many unarmed, turned out in droves to defend it from foreign rule.103 Conclusion When Syrian forces went out to meet the advancing French soldiers at Maysalun, al-‘Abid, who had organized the Red Star Society in accordance with a 7 July 1920 decree from Faysal, joined with other members of the Society and accompanied the forces to the battlefield.104 Intent on tending the wounded, they sought to perform the very roles so championed in their journal. After the French victory and the installation of mandate rule, the Society and school were disbanded and al-‘Abid was forced to leave the country.105 When the French granted a general amnesty in 1921, she was

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allowed to return on the condition that she would not engage in any political activities. She settled down on a farm and agreed to organize the Syrian Red Crescent in 1922.106 The brief period of independence and its accompanying nationalist mobilizations had ended. In rather indulgent terms, al-‘Abid’s husband hailed the Society some 35 years later as the ‘pivot of the activity of the women’s movement,’ established on the ‘Arab spirit of independence.’107 Such a characterization of its contribution seems a bit overstated, given that there appears to have been no coherent ‘movement’ beyond the members of the Society. Nonetheless, the Society and its journal—both products of a period of intense uncertainty and rapid change—provide insight into the formation of the intellectual. While accepting funds from the politically well-connected and calling for loyalty to an unpopular leader may seem to compromise their intellectual independence, they insisted on laying claim to a discursive territory that was ultimately their very own, taking on both those more sympathetic to them and those less so. By opening a school to educate the daughters of the martyrs, the Society invoked a symbol—the dead of the nation and their descendants—that sought to appeal to the people of Syria as an organic national community with a common mission: for those who had fallen fighting for the nation, death had not discriminated between religious sects or different classes. With the establishment of the Society’s journal, al-‘Abid and the women of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society produced their own mode of engagement to compete with other discourses vying for appeal in the public sphere. In doing so, they created a public space in which women could not only express themselves on matters typically reserved for the private sphere, but could also engage in articulating their own particular vision of the Syrian nation based on their experiences from that vantage point. The result was a multi-faceted publication addressed to both men and woman that made its own unique claim to a national vision, manifesting its sensitivity to alternative discourses each seeking to appeal to the Syrian population. While this discourse emphasized concepts such as ‘progress’ and promoted women’s education along the same lines as that of the mutanawwirun, unlike them, it refused to limit women’s activism primarily to the domestic sphere. During its short existence, the Society argued that its ideas about modernity complemented the religious and social traditions of ‘Syria,’ and that negotiating between the two when it came to understanding women’s roles was what would ultimately lead to the construction of the strongest possible Syrian Arab national community.

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2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22

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Notes See James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. x, 150– 1 for a map indicating the ‘natural boundaries’ of Syria and for details on how ‘complete independence’ was envisioned. Syria throughout this chapter does not refer to the geographical area encompassed by the borders of the current nationstate of Syria, rather it can be understood as referring more broadly to bilad al-sham, or ‘Syria within its natural boundaries’ as it was referred to in various discourses at the time. See also Khairia Kasmieh, al-Hukuma al-‘Arabiyyah fi Dimashq bayna 1918–1920 (al-Qahira: Dar al-Ma’rifa, 1971), p. 47. See Ibid. ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 27. Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 64, 65. Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, p. 154. Of course this did not mean that Syrian exiles in Egypt were particularly excited about Faysal’s rule; in fact they viewed his Arab government with a great deal of suspicion. See, for example, Gelvin’s discussion of different slogans’ appeal (Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 149). Ibid., pp. 12; James Gelvin, ‘Modernity and its discontents: on the durability of nationalism in the Arab Middle East,’ Nations and Nationalism v/1 (1999), p. 77. Gelvin: ‘Modernity and its discontents,’ p. 77. Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 87–88. Ibid., pp. 184, 191. Ibid., p. 192. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., pp. 136, 185. Ibid., pp. 213, 215. Ibid., p. 213. See for example, Ibid., pp. 88, 148, 175. Ibid., p. 209. ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 28. See, for example, Gelvin’s discussion of how this played out in the mutanawwirun discourse versus that of the popular committees in his chapter on ‘The Power of Rival Nationalist Discursive Fields,’ Divided Loyalties, pp. 196–221. Gertrude Bell, ‘Syria in October 1919,’ 15 November 1919, in Jane Priestland, (ed.) Records of Syria: 1918–1973, Vol. 1: 1918–1920 (Chippenham: Archive Editions, 2005), pp. 97. She had studied English, French and German. Sami Moubayed, Steel and Silk: Men and Women Who Shaped Syria 1900-2000, (Seattle, WA: Cune Press, 2006), p. 360. Marilyn Booth, May Her Likes Be Multiplied: Biography and Gender Politics in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 49. Widad Sakakini, Sabiquat al-‘asr, (Damascus: al-Nadwa al-Thaqafiya al-Nisa’iya, 1986), p. 22.

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23 ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, pp. 27, 28. Fayha’ is an epithet for Damascus that also means fragrant or vast. 24 ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 28. 25 ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 27. 26 ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, pp. 28–29. 27 Sakakini: Sabiquat al-‘asr, pp. 23–24. 28 ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 27. 29 Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 175–180. Gelvin discusses how the mutanawwirun and the popular committees used differing interpretations of the symbolic martyrs in their respective discourses. The mutanawwirun represented the martyrs as those executed by Jamal Pasha whose deaths inspired Faysal to launch the Arab Revolt. The popular committees represented them as ‘the martyrdom of the entire Syrian nation during the war’ and as ‘exemplars of revolutionary struggle’ (179). Ultimately Nur al-Fayha’’s interpretation of the martyrs in rhetoric and practice seems closer to that of the popular committees. Bell: ‘Syria in October 1919,’ p. 97. 30 Bell: ‘Syria in October 1919,’ p. 97. 31 ‘Monthly Happenings of the Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, pp. 26. 32 ‘History of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 13 April 1920, pp. 150. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid., pp. 148, 149. 35 Ibid., p. 151 36 Bell: ‘Syria in October 1919,’ p. 11. 37 While I have been unable to find the names of all twelve women who visited the Commission, at least one was Nazik al-‘Abid and it seems likely that other women involved in the Society and the school were also present. 38 Harry N. Howard, The King-Crane Commission, (Beirut: Khayats, 1963), p. 111. Mr. Crane was so impressed by al-‘Abid that he asked her to select several students for whom he would provide scholarships to the American College for Women (Sakakini: Sabiquat al-‘asr, p. 27). 39 Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 35–6. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid., p. 88. 42 Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, pp. 3, quoted in Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 121. [Translation slightly altered]. 43 Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 2. Since most of the contributors wrote under their initials, it is difficult to trace the extent to which they may have been representative of the ‘learned and unlearned women’ targeted by the journal. The last page of the first issue does ask contributors’ forgiveness as the magazine had received more articles than it could print. The editors indicate that they will print what they can in the next issue and urge future contributors to keep their articles to two pages.

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44 Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, pp. 2–3. 45 Al-‘Asima, 12 February 1920, pp. 5. 46 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 27, 51. 47 In Egypt, a number of women’s periodicals had been circulating for some time, many of them run by Syrians who had moved to Egypt for the greater intellectual and cultural opportunities it offered and some of them ‘showed seeds of Arab nationalism’ (Beth Baron, The Women’s Awakening in Egypt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 107; Booth: May Her Likes Be Multiplied, pp. 49). But in Syria, particularly in Damascus, such periodicals were relatively rare. During the same period, only Mary ‘Ajamy, who also contributed to Nur al-Fayha’, appears to have published a magazine for women, al-‘Arus. The periodical was less stridently nationalist however and was allowed to continue after the French occupied Syria. 48 Actually the first issue indicates a price of 50 Egyptian piasters for the capital (i.e. Damascus) and 60 piasters for outside. Later issue indicates 50 piasters for Syria and 60 for ‘outside.’ 49 Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 31. 50 Sakakini: Sabiquat al-‘asr, pp. 24. Apparently referring to journals in such terms was not unusual. Beth Baron has noted that Fatat al-Nile was referred to as a ‘school for girls and ladies’ and another journal was labeled ‘a traveling school.’ See Beth Baron, Egypt as a Woman: Nationalism, Gender, and Politics, (Cairo: the University of Cairo Press, 2005), p. 118. 51 Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse?, (London: Zed Books, for the United Nations University, 1986), p. 30. 52 Sakakini, Sabiquat al-‘asr, p. 23. 53 Timothy Mitchell, (ed.), Questions of Modernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 24. 54 It should be noted that, in writing this analysis, I only had access to issues 1, 5 and 6. The sixth may have been the last one, although it is possible that a seventh was published in July before the Battle of Maysalun. 55 See Afsaneh Najamabadi, ‘Crafting an Educated Housewife in Iran,’ in Lila AbuLughod (ed.), Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), pp. 91–125; Omnia Shakry, ‘Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child Rearing in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt,’ in Remaking Women, pp. 126–170; Baron: The Women’s Awakening in Egypt. 56 Shakry: ‘Schooled Mothers,’ pp. 128,130; Najmabadi: ‘Crafting,’ pp. 104. 57 For a discussion of the resonance of this discourse on marriage from the early twentieth century to the present in Egypt see Lila Abu-Lughod, ‘The Marriage of Feminism and Islamism in Egypt: Selective Repudiation as a Dynamic of Postcolonial Cultural Politics’ in Remaking Women. 58 The title of the most prominent and longest-running women’s journal of the

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66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East period, al-‘Arus, which was published by Mary ‘Ajamy, who also contributed to Nur al-Fayha’, is indicative of this concern. ‘The Rights of the Arab Woman: Before Islam and After It,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 7. Ibid, p. 8. ‘The Misery of Couples,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, p. 179. Ibid., p. 179. Ibid., pp. 179–80. ‘The Two Muslim Sisters in Civilization and the Badia,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 13 April 1920, p. 131. The terms for civilization (hadara) and modernity/civilization (mutamadan) are used interchangeably throughout the article. ‘The Two Muslim Sisters,’ p. 131. The reference here seems clearly directed at the local Bedouins from the Syrian Badia instead of the Hijazis. However, the valorizing of the Bedouin and the Badawa in this article is interesting, given that by as early as November 1918, the term bedu had become a pejorative and had gained such negative connotations that the Hijazis, particularly those in the government and army, were forced to abandon their headdresses and accept the ‘civilized’ dress of the mutanawwirun (Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 147). ‘The Two Muslim Sisters,’ pp. 132. Ibid., p.133. Ibid., pp.133–4. One reader completely missed the irony of her tone in this passage, scribbling in the margin, ‘You are an infidel, O ignorant one! For prayer and fasting and zakat (giving alms) are the pillars of Islam and the bases of religion.’ ‘The Two Muslim Sisters,’ p. 134. Ibid,. p.135. See Abu-Lughod: ‘The marriage of feminism,’ pp. 255–261 for a discussion of these shifts. ‘The Two Muslim Sisters,’ pp. 135–136. See for example the article ‘The Misery of Couples,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, p. 181, which concludes with a list of the most important factors that should be taken into consideration when determining compatibility. Ibid., p.136. Ibid., p.135–6. Ibid., p.137. As noted above, Gelvin has indicated that the term bedu acquired a negative connotation (147) yet throughout Nur al-Fayha’, both bedu and the badia are contested entities. There is a clear distinction made between the badia as an unmodernized space in comparison to the city and yet the bedu are depicted as being preservers of the most treasured traditions of Syrian Arab society such as hospitality and religious sincerity while also representing a trait central to Nur al-Fayha’’s vision of a strong, national society—hard work. ‘Response Against Unfair Attack,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, pp. 182–3.

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83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

93 94

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Ibid., p.184. Ibid. ‘History of the Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, p. 204. Howard: The King-Crane Commission, p. 111; Bell: ‘Syria in October 1919,’ p. 11 (97); Thompson: Colonial Citizens, p. 128. Furthermore, such acts cannot merely be seen as isolated experiments—they were deeply imbricated in what the women no doubt considered their far more crucial mission of conveying to the Commission and Bell their acceptance of ‘modern’ ideas and to convince them to use whatever powers they might have at their disposal to stave off foreign occupation. No doubt by removing their veils and interacting with the men of the Commission or Bell face to face they thought they would have more of an impact. Their calculation apparently worked as the foreign visitors always scrupulously recorded such moments—Mr. Lybyer noted in his diary that there were ‘two or three very good looking’ women among the delegation (Howard, p. 111) and Bell meticulously details which women go unveiled and which ones do not and even describes an episode in which a woman is convinced to remove her veil much to everyone’s delight and the woman’s embarrassment (Bell, pp. 11–12). See ‘Lady Astor,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, pp. 15-16; ‘Florence Nightingale,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 13 April 1920, p. 139 and ‘First Female War Correspondent,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 13 April 1920, p. 119. ‘Working Women,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, p. 187. ‘Famous Women,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 13 April 1920, pp. 113–4; ‘Famous Women,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, pp. 169–70. ‘To Take Note Of,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 8. Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, p. 191. ‘Girl of the Nation, Where Are You?,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 13 April 1920, p. 118. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid., p. 118. ‘Factory for the Revitalization of National Handicrafts,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, pp. 185–6. It is possible that it was started as early as late 1919. At al-‘Abid’s birthday party on 18 January 1920, a lottery was held for the first rug made in the Society’s workshop. ‘Monthly Happenings of the Nur al-Fayha’ Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 1 February 1920, p. 26. Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, pp. 215, 148–9. It is interesting to compare this list of ‘commandments’ to another set of resolutions agreed upon by a women’s association in Aleppo in December 1919 (see Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, p. 214). Whereas Nur al-Fayha’ makes a point of emphasizing the superiority of national products and Eastern designs over those of the West and thus presents it as only logical that Syrian women should buy and make these products, the Aleppo women’s organization represents their program of using national cloth and exercising frugality by delaying purchases as one of temporary sacrifice. It is unclear if their goal to establish ‘a place to teach tailoring and styling’ involved preserving traditional crafts or if it was merely about

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encouraging women to make simpler clothes (Gelvin, p.214). 95 Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism, 1920–1945, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 40; ‘The Doctrine of the Arabs,’ Nur al-Fayha’, Issue 5, p. 115. 96 Ibid., p. 116. 97 ‘Answers to the Suggestion,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, pp. 197–199. 98 Ibid., p. 198. 99 See Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, p. 183 for how these tropes were used in the mutanawwirun discourse. 100 ‘Answers to the Suggestion,’ p. 198. 101 ‘Monthly Happenings,’ p. 145; ‘History of the Society,’ Nur al-Fayha’, 15 June 1920, p. 204. 102 ‘History of the Society,’ p. 207. 103 Gelvin: Divided Loyalties, p. 3. 104 Muhammad Jamil Bayhum, Fatat al-sharq fi hadarat al-gharb, (Beirut: Matba’at Kalfat, 1952), p. 117. 105 Sakakini: Sabiqat al-‘asr, p. 26. 106 Bayhum: Fatat al-sharq, p. 57. Despite the restrictions on her activism, her reputation led to an invitation to chair a women’s conference in Lahore, India in 1931 (‘Important Letter,’ Il-Mar’ah, October 1930, pp. 18–19). 107 Bayhum: Fatat al-sharq, p. 117.

3 Edification between Sect and Nation: Murad Farag and al-Tahdhib, 1901–1903 Lital Levy

Born in the late nineteenth-century Levant, the ‘modern Arab intellectual’ can be viewed as the progeny of two youthful parents: the professional middle class (effendiyya) and the emerging public sphere in Beirut and Cairo. As Ilham Makdisi has argued, in this period, Levantine intellectuals were coalescing as a distinct social class, one shaped by a number of common characteristics. To begin with, this class was the product of a certain type of ‘modern’ education, which played a major role in its construction of a shared worldview. It enjoyed privileged access to the press, through which it was able to ‘carve its own discursive space’ and create broader, sometimes even transnational networks.1 Moreover, it saw itself as possessing both the mandate and the authority to reform and modernize society. In all these respects, the Egyptian jurist, scholar, journalist, and poet Murad Farag (1866–1956) would seem a paradigmatic example of the modern Arab intellectual.2 Born in Cairo to a family of craftsmen, he studied law and integrated into the bourgeoisie. Over the course of a long career in the law he also published prolifically, contributed regularly to the press, and briefly operated his own newspaper. But if Farag represented a prototype, he was also a unique case: neither Muslim nor Copt nor even part of the mainstream Jewish community, he was a scion of Cairo’s inveterate Karaite community, one of the last remnants of an historically important but now greatly diminished Jewish sect (on which I will elaborate shortly). As the self-appointed representative of an obscure religious confession in a society still defined largely (if not primarily) along religious-communitarian lines, Farag faced a complex task vis-à-vis his multiple audiences. His role as an Arab

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intellectual in fin-de-siecle Cairo became something of a juggling act in which he moved between different spheres and belief systems, variously addressing the issues and needs specific to each. Farag came into his own at the height of al-nahda, the modern Arab ‘renaissance’ or ‘revival,’ a term that connotes the collective activities of this new intellectual class. The protagonists of this phenomenon viewed themselves as the anointed guides on a long collective ascent to the twin peaks of modernity (hadatha) and enlightenment (tanwir). The main path on this upward climb was that of reform (islah). In nahda discourse, islah was something of an obsession. Whether a given debate focused on language, religion, society, government, education, or the family, it inevitably returned to the same conclusion: the need for reform. This remained true well into the twentieth century, when intellectual activity became increasingly dominated by the nationalist cause. As Yoav Di-Capua puts it: Whatever discussion took place on one level or another in literary salons, learned societies, welfare organizations, the burgeoning media, political clubs, colonial offices, Masonic lodges, and secret societies, it was driven by a social philosophy of progress whose mantra was reform, and it gradually replaced civilization with nation.3 Because Arab intellectuals gave themselves such a broad and powerful mandate for social reform, the role of the intellectual in this period was virtually synonymous with that of reformer. This chapter revisits the nahda and its worldview through the lens of Farag, a minor and little known figure, to discern what the case of a Karaite Jew might be able to tell us about the Arab intellectual as a social reformer in the fin-de-siecle Levant.4 Throughout his lifetime, Farag remained deeply rooted in the Karaite community and immersed in its internal struggles. He labored to inculcate a modern, progressive consciousness within it, encouraging its members to view themselves as part of the emerging national body while adhering to their traditional core values. A reading of his journal al-Tahdhib (Edification) shows how Farag adapted nahda discourse to a Karaite context, while also revealing the distance between those lofty nahda ideals and the social realities they aimed to correct. Placed in a broader historic context, Farag’s journal stands as a kind of anti-monument to the past: a reminder of the nascent Jewish participation in modern Arabic thought and culture, a project which was never to achieve its full promise and was subsequently forgotten. Karaites (in Hebrew, ha-kara’im; in Arabic, al-yahud al-qara’in) are a separatist Jewish sect that rejects the legal authority of the Talmud. While in

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medieval times Karaism had posed a serious threat to the rabbinic leadership, by the twentieth century, only small pockets of Karaism remained in Egypt and in Europe, primarily in the Crimea.5 Karaites were present in Egypt since the ninth century. By one estimate, in 1877, there were about 2,000 Karaites in Egypt; in 1948 there were only some 5,000 (out of a total Jewish population of 75,000–80,000, the majority of whom had immigrated to Egypt from the Ottoman provinces in the nineteenth century).6 In contrast to the greater Egyptian Jewish community, much of which was Francophone, the spoken language of Egyptian Karaites was and remained Egyptian Arabic. With the departure of Egypt’s Jewish population beginning in the 1950s, the Karaite community was to disperse, resettling primarily in Israel and the United States. In nineteenth- and twentieth-century Cairo, however, many Karaites lived in the narrow alleys of the harat al-yahud al-qara’in, adjacent to the well-known Jewish quarter, harat al-yahud. Despite the proximity of the two communities, Karaite and Rabbinite religious leaders in Egypt banned intermarriage between the two rites7—a dictate Farag personally opposed and worked to reverse. Farag was the first modern Karaite to stake a claim in Egyptian public life. Like other members of the emerging intellectual class, he could be described as a ‘vocational intellectual,’ Karl Mannheim’s term for those for whom being an intellectual was a lifelong career.8 Among the most popular—and most influential—routes for the vocational Arab intellectual was that of journalism. Although a relatively new medium in the Arab world, journalism quickly became increasingly important in public life in Egypt, Syria, and beyond. Dyala Hamzah argues that as early as the turn of the twentieth century, journalism was already supplanting the discursive hegemony of ‘ilm, the Islamic and Islamicate concept of knowledge.9 In other words, Arab intellectuals used journalism to claim authority and exercise influence upon the public, challenging the longestablished predominance of the ulama or clergy. Journalism was utilized in this manner by the Syrian Christian secularizing intelligentsia10 as well as by Islamic reformists.11 The content of their cultural or ‘literary-scientific’ journals (majallat ‘ilmiyya ’adabiyya) included, inter alia, articles on science, geography, and history; translated literature; and readers’ letters. As Stephen Sheehi notes, the journals were also ‘crucial sites for debates on secularism, Islamic and Arab history, Arabic language, women’s rights, and national independence’: in short, the major themes of Arab cultural modernity.12 The editors of these journals, many of which were based in Cairo, developed an authoritative discourse whereby they positioned themselves as the conduits of universal knowledge.13 In this discourse, they saw themselves as the arbiters of enlightened morality versus ignorance and superstition, combating the latter

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in the service of cultural regeneration and renewal. The distinction between enlightened morality and ignorance was not given to subjective reasoning but, in their view, could be determined by a social/scientific ‘truth.’14 The reformist discourse of journals such as al-Hilal (The Crescent), alMuqtataf (The Selected), and al-Manar (The Lighthouse) has already been the subject of extensive research and analysis. What is not widely known is that the medium of the press was also utilized as a tool of reform by a minority section of the population heretofore overlooked in the discussion of Arab modernity: Arab Jews.15 Murad Farag was not the only Jewish writer of Arabic in his time; some other examples include the famous satirical journalist, playwright, and political agitator Ya‘qub Sanu‘ (1839–1912); the Beirutborn journalist, translator, and feminist Esther Azhari Moyal (1873–1948); and the author and journalist Nissim Malul (1892–1959), a Cairo-educated native of Safed. Farag is, however, the sole known example of a modern Karaite writer of Arabic prior to Egyptian independence. The handful of Egyptian and Syrian Jewish intellectuals who took part in the nahda project adapted the discourse of reform and enlightenment to their own needs. But unlike many of their Christian and Muslim counterparts, they could not take their own participation in this discourse for granted, and often consciously had to address their own place (and the place of their communities) within the emerging Arab and/or national collectives. This is not because there was an inherent contradiction between ‘Jewish’ and ‘Arab’ identities; to the contrary, Arab Jewish intellectuals at the fin-de-siecle were operating decades before these identities hardened in political opposition. Rather, it was because Jews constituted a tiny minority, between one percent to two-and-a-half percent of the population in various parts of the Empire, that had historically managed its own affairs and generally tended to see itself (and to be seen) as autonomous in matters of religion, culture, and identity. Although Arab Jewish intellectuals in the nahda, including Farag, argued that Jews were and had always been an integral part of Arab society and culture,16 Jews were still typically excluded from the purview of ‘Arabness’ (a category of identity then undergoing explicit negotiation in nahda discourse).17 For instance, in 1899 the introduction to the first issue of al-Jami‘ya (The Federation) stated that the journal intended not only to educate all of ‘the peoples of the East’ and ‘bring modern knowledge,’ but through such means, to ‘forge a new brotherhood between the Muslim and Christian Arabs,’ making no mention of Jews.18 Due to their invisibility within the larger ‘imagined community,’ be it defined in regional, ethnic, or national terms (as ‘Easterners,’ ‘Arabs,’ or ‘Egyptians’), Arab Jewish intellectuals were impelled to position themselves as a bridge between their communities and the larger public sphere—a role

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exemplified by Farag. He was in equal measure a proud Karaite Jew and a loyal Egyptian nationalist and patriot, who harbored no sense of conflict between the two identities and who moved fluidly between them. He navigated the social, cultural, and political realms of modern Egypt for his community and conversely, he represented the community to the Egyptian public. As such, we can identify three different social ‘spaces’ in which he exercised his influence: firstly, within the Karaite community, as a community leader, a ‘guide’; secondly, on the border of the Jewish community and the greater Egyptian public, by representing the Jewish community to the latter; and thirdly, within the Egyptian public sphere, as a judge and legal, political, and social commentator. As we shall see in greater detail, Farag’s journalistic writing addressed multiple audiences and transposed discourses from various spheres into new frameworks. Farag was born in 1866 to a respected Karaite family of goldsmiths by the name of Elisha‘ (Lisha‘a).19 Although it was probably expected that he would continue in the profession, he managed to acquire training in both Arabic and Hebrew and then in the law. A member of the first graduating class of the Khedival Law College (madrasat al-huquq al-khidiwiyya), his classmates included the future leader of the Egyptian independence movement, Sa‘d Zaghlul (1859–1927). In 1902, Farag gained a widespread reputation for his successful defense at the Court of Appeals in Cairo of a Jew indicted in Port Said on the charge of ritual murder. He served as legal counsel to the khedive ‘Abbas Hilmi (r. 1892–1914) and also participated in the drafting of the original Egyptian Constitution in 1923. In recognition of his services, he was given the honorary Ottoman title Bey [Bek]. Although he was neither trained nor ordained as a rabbi, Farag devoted much of his scholarly career to works on religion and also served as dayan (religious judge) to the Karaite court (beyt din) in Cairo. His erudition in Jewish and Islamic law is quite evident in his theological works and translations; my visit to the library of the Karaite synagogue in ‘Abbasiyya revealed a number of books on topics in shari‘a and fiqh (Islamic law and jurisprudence) bearing his personal stamp.20 As a lay leader of the Karaite community, he became known for his efforts to promote solidarity and breach gaps between Karaite and Rabbinite Jews, spearheading (as mentioned above) a long campaign against the local ban on Rabbinite-Karaite intermarriage. In 1932 he retired from the law to devote himself to his literary pursuits and to the Jewish community. Farag enjoyed an unusually long and prolific writerly career, publishing a few dozen volumes on law, theology, Biblical exegesis, Hebrew grammar, and comparative Arabic and Hebrew philology; his earliest published works (1889–1894) were in law.21 In addition, he was a prolific essayist and poet. His

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literary works included Diwan Murad, a four-volume collection of original poetry that appeared between 1912 and 1935, as well as a volume of Hebrew poetry published in 1928, which he translated himself from the Arabic.22 Throughout his lengthy career, Farag emphasized the historic interrelation and cultural proximity of Judaism and Islam as well as of Hebrew and Arabic, often extrapolating the cultural and the historic from the philological.23 In the 1920s and 1930s, he persistently and passionately argued for the compatibility of Egyptian and Jewish national aims, even as it became increasingly and painfully evident that this was a hopelessly quixotic task.24 As noted above, the growing popularization of Arabic-language journalism allowed Farag to adapt nahda discourse and its underlying weltanschauung to meet the particular needs of the Karaite community. Between 1901 and 1903 Farag wrote and edited al-Tahdhib, a weekly journal for the community. From 1908–09, he was also involved in another Karaite periodical titled al-Irshad (Guidance).25 Around the same time, he became a frequent contributor to several mainstream Egyptian newspapers and periodicals. According to Sasson Somekh, ‘[his] articles and poems appeared inter alia in al-Jarida (edited by Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid) and al-Mu’ayyad (edited by Shaykh ‘Ali Yusuf )—two epoch-making newspapers that came out in the decades before World War I.’26 Decades later, he contributed numerous articles and poems to the Egyptian Jewish newspapers Isra’il and al-Shams as well as the Karaite community journal al-Kalim (The Speaker, 1945–57). How involved was Farag in Egyptian political life? A review of Farag’s essays and poetry reveals an uneven approach to political matters. His first book meant for the general public was a collection of essays, Maqalat Murad (Murad’s essays, 1912). Somekh notes that ‘[i]n a great many of the fifty-five essays included in this book, the author writes as a reformer, preaching a dramatic improvement in interpersonal and interdenominational relations.’27 Concerning the latter, for instance, Farag cites the example of the Young Turks, who had proclaimed equality for all members of the Empire. Another essay from the collection, ‘Harb al-watan’ (The struggle for the homeland), which was originally serialized in the Egyptian newspaper al-Jarida in 1908, deals with interreligious tensions in Egypt.28 Here Farag expresses optimism about the prospect of an inclusive Egyptian nationhood and passionately advocates a constitution under which Egyptians of all faiths could cooperate in the national project. He denounces discriminatory practices, such as the custom of addressing Muslims and non-Muslims with different greetings, as detrimental to national unity and as a violation of the true spirit of Islam.29 However, as Somekh notes, references to current political affairs (e.g. the Dinshaway affair, the actions of Lord Cromer) are, for the most part, conspicuously absent from

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the volume of essays, which focus instead on abstract or philosophical topics such as happiness, belief and heresy, and language and communication.30 Farag’s four-volume diwan does reflect some political events; in one poem from the first volume (1912), Farag rebukes Lord Cromer for his disparaging remarks directed at Egyptians.31 In the second volume, from 1924, he writes a poem in which he asserts his loyalty to Egypt: Egypt is my homeland and my birthplace, where I was taught and raised She is my teacher and provider, my abode in sleep and wake I have no other refuge, and to her my gratitude is paid, May she live free and independent, though to her I am enslaved.32 Although marginal in the diwan’s earlier volumes, Jewish topics become more prominent in the later two volumes. In his other book of poems, al-Qudsiyyat (1923), Farag openly expresses his identification with the Zionist project in Palestine.33 Farag’s authorial tendencies—his avoidance of overtly political topics, emphasis on intercommunal relations, and proclivity for philosophical didacticism—were already evident in his earlier writings in al-Tahdhib, which was more or less a one-man enterprise in his hands.34 Despite its potential contribution to the study of interconfessional relations in late Ottoman Egypt and of minorities in the nahda, the journal has not yet been tapped by scholars, and this brief study represents an initial foray into its content. Published from 1901–03, as the nahda was in full bloom in Cairo, al-Tahdhib was one of the first Jewish periodicals in standard Arabic (as opposed to Judeo-Arabic), and it is almost certainly the oldest extant example thereof.35 Like the predecessors and counterparts on which it was modeled, al-Tahdhib was didactic in tone, and its content was highly eclectic. Articles ranged from long essays promoting reform, exhorting morality, and dispensing advice to short humorous anecdotes, jokes, Bible commentary, and disquisitions on the Biblical origins of Jewish holidays. Al-Tahdhib was written entirely in standard literary Arabic (with the exception of the jokes, which drew on Egyptian colloquial), but Farag would print Hebrew-language terms such as kashrut (ritual dietary laws) or brit mila (circumcision ceremony) in Hebrew characters, sometimes glossing them with Arabic translations. For instance, the Hebrew term beyt knesset (synagogue) is glossed with masjid al-yahud, literally, ‘Jewish mosque.’36 Hebrew characters were also employed when quoting Biblical verses in discussions of topics such as the scriptural origins of the fast for Yom Kippur or the injunction against marrying siblings.

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In addition to his writings on Jewish themes, Farag devoted many essays to questions of family relations, such as the rights of women in marriage, which was then a hot topic of the Arabic press,37 and to broader philosophical questions, such as the nature and possibility of true freedom.38 He also printed his own poetry in its pages, much of it on similarly broad or general subjects. Topics in classical Arabic language and culture were featured from time to time, as in a short piece on the Abbasid-era poet Abu Nuwas and the Caliph al-Ma’mun.39 A few articles were explicitly addressed to students, and on at least two occasions the paper printed translation challenges for them.40 Supplementing its news and cultural content, the journal published advertisements and announcements (lottery winners, death notices, welcome notes, holiday reminders, etc.), and always congratulated Muslims on the major Islamic holidays and feast days. The first issue of al-Tahdhib appeared on 12 August 1901. Its masthead reads, ‘al-Tahdhib: Jarida tahdhibiyya ‘ilmiyya fukahiyya akhbariyya li-‘l-ta’ifat al-isra’iliyin al-qarayin bi-misr’ (alTahdhib: an educational, scientific, humorous, informative newspaper of the Karaite Jews in Egypt).41 Mimicking the Islamic rhetoric with which Arabic newspapers introduced themselves, but adapting it to Karaite culture, the paper opens with the invocation: ‘Bismi-’llah al-fattah al-‘alim. Wa-’l-hamdu li-’llah rabb al-‘alamin wa- l-salat wa-’l-salam ‘ala nabihi Musa al-kalim wa-ba‘d,’ ‘In the name of God, the providing, the all-knowing. Thank God, Lord of the Universe, and peace and prayers be upon his prophet Moses’— substituting Moses for Muhammad as in the standard Islamic invocation [alnabi] Muhammad salla-’llahu ‘alayhi wa-sallam.42 It continues, ‘This is the first issue of an Arabic newspaper issued in the city of Cairo, intended for a specific sect, the Karaite Jews in Egypt and edited by a number of members of the sect’s committee.’43 Farag proceeds to explain that the title, al-Tahdhib, is [derived] from the verb hadhdhaba–yuhadhdhibu, which means moral cleansing or purification or reform [al-tanqiyya aw al-tathir aw al-islah]; as it is said, hadhdhab al-shay’, meaning the rectification of faults and the edification of morals, these being some of the intended goals of this newspaper.44 Farag then elaborates on the journal’s reformist mission through a descriptive list of rhetorical modes. The paper, he says, will dedicate itself to the service of the sect by means of ‘a literary phrase that benefits the mind and repairs the spirit, or a religious expression behind which are science and the eradication of ignorance,’ or even a ‘humorous tale to lighten the heart and gladden the mind’ or ‘a historical story to reveal before the present what days past had concealed.’45

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In short, the introduction places the journal within the kulturkampf of the nahda, with its fundamental belief in the power of the pen to reform society: any mode of address, whether literary, religious, humorous, or historical, is a potential vehicle of social transformation. The newspaper’s first essay delves directly into the question of the community’s identity and cultural orientation. Titled ‘The Honor of the Individual Comes from his Nation or Sect’ (‘Sharaf al-fard al-wahid min sharaf ummatihi aw ta’ifatihi’), it begins: If you happened upon or crossed paths with, for example, a British soldier, wouldn’t you look upon him with honor and respect? And is that not because he comes from an important, powerful, esteemed, and respected nation? All of that is represented to you by one individual, and you see him as if he is the English nation in its entirety. Then suppose that the man you met was a zanji, that is, a Sudanese from the savages [al-mutawahhishin] who live in the middle of Africa; would he receive the same consideration and respect from your glance? Not at all; rather, you’d regard him with disdain and contempt, because in his very face he represents his sect’s personhood, its low status and lack of honor [li-annahu yatamaththal fi wajhihi ma li-’l-ta’ifa allati huwa min-ha min al-nafs wa-di‘at al-sharaf wa-inhitat al-miqdar]. After expounding on the role of the individual as a representative of the collective and vice-versa, Farag concludes: ‘Thus it is incumbent upon every member of our sect to aspire to and strive for the reform of its affairs [an yasa‘ wa-yajtahid fi islah umurha] and the advancement of its concerns […] for individuals constitute its glory.’ Speaking in the first person plural (as was the custom in other periodicals of the time), Farag thanks God for the ‘new spirit’ found in the sect, one manifested in organizational reform such as a new legal system and in the increased willingness of parents to educate their children, including girls—the education of girls being another frequent topic of nahda discourse.46 Finally, readers are instructed that ‘ilm, knowledge or learning, is what leads to happiness and well-being; that, indeed, it is what raised the American nation (ummat al-amrikan) to its high degree of progress and civilization.47 The essay is a straightforward adaptation of nahda discourse, with its concurrent emphases on progress, enlightenment, reform, and cultural renewal, to the context of this minority community in Egypt. It is also a classic example of the role played by hierarchical theories of race or ethnicity in enlightenment discourses—and in particular, of the internalization of

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the colonial perspective by colonized and subaltern intellectuals. References to ‘savage’ peoples and to differing levels of civilization appear frequently throughout nahda discourse as early as in Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi’s 1834 travelogue Takhlis al-ibriz fi talkhis bariz (The Extraction of Pure Gold in an Overview of Paris).48 For a marginalized figure such as Farag, who as a Karaite was not intervening in nahda discourse but rather using it as medium of integration into the Egyptian national body, the wholesale acceptance of such hierarchical structures is hardly surprising. Indeed, such thinking serves as a poignant reminder of the power dynamic shaping both Farag’s immediate world and the world at large. Hence Farag’s message is unequivocal: in order to restore its lost glory, the sect needs to model itself after Britain and the USA, not after the ‘savages’ of the Sudan (such disparaging characterizations of the Sudanese being common to Egyptian elite discourse of the period).49 But it is important to specify that for Farag, being ‘like’ the British or the Americans does not mean adopting their language or culture. It simply means adopting the accoutrements and the habits of modernity such as literacy, physical fitness, orderly eating, and so forth while still remaining an observant Jew and, moreover, while still speaking, reading, and writing Arabic. Farag opens the second issue of al-Tahdhib with a disturbing report about a break-in and theft at the Karaite community school.50 Later, he appeals to members of the sect to support the newspaper through subscriptions, and assures readers that the newspaper is meant to further the interests of the sect; that it ‘is not intended to harm or defame, but rather, to heal the mind as a doctor heals the body’ (again, invoking the spirit of nineteenth-century scientific positivism). He adds that whatever revenue exceeds production costs will be added to the communal treasury.51 The newspaper’s didactic platform continues well into the third issue, which contains an article entitled ‘al-Quwa fi-’l-ittihad’ (Power is [found] in unity), in which Farag again calls for solidarity and unity in the sect. The group, whether nation or confession (umma or ta’ifa), he explains, is essentially a conglomeration of individuals; if the ‘knot’ binding them becomes undone, they will be like a diseased body whose organs or limbs cease to work together. An organ is useless alone, and this, says Farag, is why we see that every nation or sect suffering from that dysfunction is quick to disappear. By contrast, when the nation-body functions correctly, the sky is the limit: [w]e also find that every nation or sect that has come together and enforced its unity has strengthened itself, attaining incomprehensible power and dominion. These enormous kingdoms could not maintain themselves or their interests without unity and cohesion. Take France

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and America and many others; they could not have gained their independence and freedom, to the degree that they became prosperous republics after having been wretched and downtrodden, without unity of will and word. Look also at a group [ta’ifa] of workers, such as the cigarette rollers and others [who protested and went on strike], who banded together to better their situations and to repel harm.52 Farag’s comparison of the nation to the body is another historical signpost; the nation-as-body or as super-organism was a common trope of enlightenment discourses. In Arabic thought, for instance, the concept was employed by both al-Afghani and al-Tahtawi.53 Despite these light overtures to national and international politics, however, al-Tahdhib was largely apolitical and parochial: it did not generally engage political affairs in broader Egyptian society, nor did it express interest in Jewish communities outside Egypt, with the notable exception of a few articles on Karaite communities in Europe. By contrast, the later Arabiclanguage Jewish periodicals printed in Egypt from the 1920s through the 1940s (Isra’il, 1920–33 and al-Shams, 1934–48), in which Farag was also involved, were much more politically engaged and transnational in scope.54 The single social or political topic that garnered the greatest amount of coverage in the newspaper was the appearance of the blood libel in Egypt. Farag’s self-appointed role in representing the Jewish community to the Egyptian public can be well illustrated through his efforts to refute the noxious claims then circulating within the Levant. The term ‘blood libel’ denotes the false allegation that Jews kidnap and slaughter Christian children to use their blood for ritual purposes; some variations, including that which circulated in the Levant, claimed that the Talmud enjoins the ceremonial use of Christian blood. This old anti-Semitic doctrine was prevalent in premodern and early modern Europe. With the economic decline of the Ottoman Empire, the longstanding economic competition between Jewish and Christian communities in Syria grew more acrimonious. Orthodox communities in the mashriq revived the blood libel doctrine to secure Muslim support in this political and economic struggle.55 Blood libel accusations took place in Syria from 1810 on but increased in frequency during the period of the tanzimat or Ottoman reforms, particularly following the notorious Damascus affair of 1840.56 For their part, leading nahda journals such as al-Hilal and al-Muqtataf attempted to convince their readers that such beliefs were a relic of the dark ages. For instance, al-Muqtataf wrote in 1890:

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East [W]e have studied this matter for several years and compared the evidence supporting and refuting the blood libel, and found that the accusations against the Israelites don’t stand the test of truth. We were convinced of the invalidity of the accusations, especially given that the crime is not at all permitted by their religious books.57

This was an issue Farag personally combated on two fronts, in the courts and in the press. As mentioned above, Farag was directly involved in the 1902 blood libel case in Port Said. The case was a turning point for him, awakening his profound interest in the Jewish question and in Zionism, then a little-known ideology among Egyptian Jewry.58 In late 1901 or early 1902 (accounts differ), a Jewish adolescent in Port Said was arrested on charges of the attempted kidnap and murder of a Christian girl. The indictment fanned anti-Jewish sentiment within the Egyptian public, which was further incited by certain elements of the Arabic press. Farag took upon himself the youth’s legal defense. In December 1902, after a retrial before the Court of Appeals in Cairo, the youth was acquitted and the court decided that there was no factual basis to the blood libel.59 The journal would have seemed to Farag an ideal organ for a broader public campaign. He published a long string of articles in al-Tahdhib refuting the blood libel from February–March 1902 and in December 1902, and once again in April–May 1903.60 One of his poems in the first volume of his diwan also reacts to the Port Sa’id incident, beginning with the lines ‘Tell Christians to keep away from the children of Moses/ Let them refrain from shedding their blood.’61 In al-Tahdhib, however, Farag emphasizes fraternity and neighborly relations between Jews and Christians, painting the accusers as hateful provocateurs and rabble-rousers: ‘I would not be surprised if this hatred persists in some of their minds, inciting the allegation. They may plot what they will plot, but the situation is such that Jews and Christians are on good terms and in accord, are friends and neighbors, cooperate, work together, and befriend one another without any consideration of who is Christian or Jewish.’62 In his series of articles for the journal, Farag attempts to debunk the charges through logical argumentation, declaring at the head of the first article: ‘One is often drawn by concern into writing about this accusation to expose its malice and immorality [fasadha] with indisputable rational evidence.’63 He reminds the reader that the Torah forbids murder, and that accordingly, such debased practices would explicitly contravene Jewish teachings. One of the articles in the series examines verses from the Gospels that have been used by Christians to support the blood libel, and refutes them point by point.64 It is worth

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noting that the blood libel issue put Farag in the curious position of having to defend the Talmud, a vast corpus of texts whose legal authority Karaites do not accept. In his final installment in the series, Farag distances himself from the Talmud, explaining that while his year-long refutation of the libel was meant to apply to both Karaites and Rabbinites, he himself has neither the requisite knowledge nor the right to take a position on the Talmud: [The last point discussed and refuted in this series] pertains only to the other sect [i.e. the rabbinites], which is not our sect of the Jews. It is that their book, known as the Talmud, supports the accusations. As for us, God forbid, there is nothing between us and that sect that would cause us to denigrate them; to the contrary, there is only unity, the source of religion […]. Thus, our refutation of the [blood libel] accusation was not meant for our sect to the exclusion of theirs. God knows that our refutation of this accusation over the course of a whole year pertained to Jews in general. All of the previous arguments we made in the refutation are specific to the Torah, which is the same for both sects, and thus apply to both. We are not obligated to take up or to challenge the Talmud, because we have no business doing so. We know nothing of it, and we cannot pass judgment on the validity of what is attributed to it, but we leave it to them [the rabbinites] to do that since they are its rightful possessors, and for that we apologize profusely. Even as Farag tactfully disassociates himself from the Talmud, he strongly emphasizes unity between the two Jewish sects and insists that both the blood libel accusation and his refutation of it pertain equally to both groups. He concludes the piece by reiterating his faith that incendiary superstitions and misguided beliefs would ultimately disappear with the spread of rationalism. In another article from the following year titled ‘Man and the Twentieth Century,’ Farag condemns the Christian attack on a synagogue in Alexandria as a crime not just against Jews but against God and humanity, and questions how false beliefs such as the blood libel, premised solely on hatred and ignorance, can persist into the twentieth century, whose ‘gifts’ are those of ‘civilization and refinement.’65 The prominence of the blood libel issue within the pages of al-Tahdhib also suggests that Farag intended, or at least hoped, for the journal to circulate beyond the Jewish community to the wider Egyptian reading public. In other words, Farag tried to use the journal as a medium for social action and intervention on behalf of his minority community. Whether or not his writings reached a broader audience remains a matter for further research.

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Al-Tahdhib’s continuous appeals to the language of rationalism and progress, its urging of reform in the community, and its ecumenical message of tolerance and understanding among religions all mark it as a nahda periodical. While the journal was a modest, community-oriented newspaper, as the first sustained adaptation of nahda discourse to a Jewish audience, Farag’s twoyear experiment remains a milestone. Through his writings in al-Tahdhib, he attempted to guide his community into what he perceived as the ways of modernity and, concurrently, to integrate it into the emerging national community. Yet at the same time, he also used the paper as an organ to refute the false and inflammatory beliefs behind the blood libel accusations and, corollary to that, as a means of mediating between the two different social spheres in which he was engaged. In discussing the intellectual, the late Edward Said, building on Gramsci, argues that [a]n intellectual is an individual with a specific public role in society […] [T]he intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public. And this role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma […] and whose raison d’etre is to represent all those peoples and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. The intellectual does so on the basis of universal principles: that all human beings are entitled to expect decent standards of behavior concerning freedom and justice from worldly powers or nations […].66 Said is speaking here of the twentieth-century committed intellectual, likely thinking of his own intellectual and political trajectory as someone who chose to take on the mantle of the Palestinian cause and to represent it to the West. Yet despite the obvious differences in the historic context of the two figures as well as in the significance of their respective causes, Said’s observations are pertinent; for they can aid us in thinking about the social role of any intellectual who represents a minority community or polemical issue to an ignorant and, at times, hostile public. In many ways, Said’s humanistic and universalist stance reads as a natural development of the principles espoused by the first wave of Arab intellectuals in the nahda, by figures such as Farag. At the same time, when viewed from a more rigorously historical perspective, Farag’s project in al-Tahdhib might leave us with less nostalgia and with somewhat more mixed conclusions. Farag’s unwavering insistence that rationalism must lead

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inevitably to tolerance and acceptance—despite his own familiarity with extreme prejudice—indicates the power of nahda discourse upon his thinking. On the one hand, his very presence within that intellectual class as a producer of Enlightenment discourse reflects the early success of the nahda in creating an ecumenical intellectual community. Yet the fact that he had to continually explain and defend Jewish beliefs and practices, and to insist on the nationalist fealty of non-Muslims, reveals the wide gap between the discourse and the social reality it was attempting to change. Furthermore, the dissonance between his progressive and humanistic language when discussing interfaith relations in Egypt or the need for mutual tolerance, on the one hand, versus his reference to Sudanese ‘savages,’ on the other, exposes the limitations of nahda discourse and underscores its internal contradictions. Such discursive aphorias would not vanish as the national cause came to dominate Egyptian intellectual life in the coming decades. Indeed, as pertains to the case of Arab Jews, conflicted perceptions of and attitude toward local Jewish communities in Egypt, Iraq, and Syria would only intensify as the unfolding drama in Palestine became increasingly intractable and complex. Due to circumstances far beyond Farag’s control (and which, writing in 1903, he could hardly have anticipated), the foremost promise that the nahda held out to him—that of Jewish integration into the Egyptian national community—would never be fulfilled. A brief anecdote can serve as a postscript. Some years ago I left a comment on an internet site devoted to Egyptian Jewry, seeking information about Farag’s descendants. A few years later, much to my surprise, I received an e-mail from a gentleman who identified himself as Farag’s great-grandson. After a brief flurry of correspondence, a phone call was arranged. I soon discovered that Farag’s sole direct descendant, his granddaughter, had left Egypt in the 1950s for the USA. Many years later, her American-born son converted to Bahaism and she followed suit. Our conversation found mother and son both living in Port-au-Prince, where they had moved (in his words) ‘to help consolidate a weak Bahai community.’ Whatever possible futures the Egyptian Karaite intellectual Murad Farag might have anticipated for his descendants, there is no doubt that this scenario would not have been among them. But by the same token, given today’s political realities and the deplorable state of relations between ‘Jews’ and ‘Arabs’ (as reified identities) in the contemporary Middle East, Farag’s own story as a Karaite Jew in the nahda might appear equally fantastic to some. Although it is but a small historical footnote, al-Tahdhib offers a record of modern Arab intellectual life as viewed from the margins. It is a reminder of the possibilities that existed for the first generation of modern Arab intellectuals, whose common beliefs and commitments enabled them to

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transcend communal boundaries and imagine a new society—one that would need to be defined and defended by intellectuals more than any other group. 1 2 3 4

5

6 7

Notes See Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, ‘Levantine Trajectories: The Formulation and Dissemination of Radical Ideas in and between Beirut, Cairo, and Alexandria, 1860–1914’ (PhD. Dissertation, Harvard University, 2004), pp. 64–6. In standard Arabic, his name is rendered ‘Faraj.’ In this chapter, I follow the Cairene dialect in which the letter ‘jim’ is pronounced as a hard ‘g.’ Yoav Di-Capua, Gatekeepers of the Arab Past: Historians and History Writing in Twentieth-Century Egypt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009, p. 26. The small body of literature on Farag consists of the following sources: Sasson Somekh, ‘Participation of Egyptian Jews in Modern Arabic Culture, and the Case of Murad Faraj,’ in Shimon Shamir, ed., The Jews of Egypt, A Mediterranean Society in Modern Times (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1987), pp. 130– 40; Sasson Somekh, ‘Lost Voices: Jewish Authors in Modern Arabic Literature,’ in Hanna Wirth-Nesher, ed., What is Jewish Literature? (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1994), pp. 188–98; Leon Nemoy, ‘A Modern Karaite-Arabic Poet: Mourad Farag,’ The Jewish Quarterly Review 70 (April 1980), pp. 195–209; idem, ‘Mourad Farag and His Book,’ The Karaites and the Rabbinites,’ Revue des Études juives t. 135, no. 1–3 (1976), pp. 87–112; and Reuven Snir, ‘Faraj, Murad (Morad Farag),’ in Glenda Abramson, ed., Encyclopedia of Modern Jewish Culture, vol. I (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 252–3. Karaism developed from an eighth-century dispute over the head of the Babylonian exilarchy (the leadership of the worldwide rabbinate). It eventually grew into a separate branch of Judaism distinguished by its rejection of rabbinic Judaism, i.e. of the Talmud and Mishna as sources of legal authority and of rabbinic methods of scriptural interpretation. Karaites consider the Hebrew Bible the sole source of religious law and have interpreted it literally and contextually, writing their own separate medieval commentaries. The movement peaked in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as Karaites conducted famous polemics with major rabbinic figures, and declined after the twelfth. Small communities remained in Egypt and the Crimea as well as in Turkey, Lithuania, Poland, and elsewhere. On Karaism in Egypt, see Yosef al-Gamil, Ha-yahadut ha-kara’it bi-mitsrayim ba-’et ha-hadasha (Karaite Jews in Egypt in modern times) (Ramle: Ha-mo’atsa ha-artsit shel hayehudim ha-kara’im be-yisra’el, 1985); Morad al-Kodsi, The Karaite Jews of Egypt, 1882–1986 (Lyons, NY: Wilprint, 1987); and Joel Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics, and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2005), pp. 2–5. See Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, pp. 2–5; Jacob Landau, Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (New York, NYU Press/ London: University of London Press), 1969, p. 4, n. 5. Beinin, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, p. 3.

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10 11 12 13 14

15

16

17 18 19 20 21

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See Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West: The Formative Years, 1875– 1914 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), p. 4, and Khuri-Makdisi, ‘Levantine Trajectories,’ p. 65, n. 4. See Dyala Hamzah, ‘From ‘Ilm to Sihafa or the Politics of Public Interest (Maslaha): Muhammad Rashid Rida and his journal al-Manar (1898–135),’ in Hamzah, ed., The Making of the Arab Intellectual: Empire, Public Sphere, and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood (forthcoming) (Routledge, 2012). E.g. al-Jinan, founded by the Bustanis in 1870, al-Muqtataf, founded by Ya‘qub Sarruf and Faris Nimr in 1875, al-Ahram, founded by the Taqla brothers, also in 1875; and al-Hilal, founded by Jurji Zaydan in 1892. E.g. al-Afghani and Abduh’s short-lived al-Urwa al-Wuthqa, 1884, and Rashid Rida’s journal al-Manar, founded in 1897. See Stephen Sheehi, ‘Arabic Literary-Scientific Journals: Precedence for Globalization and the Creation of Modernity,’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25/2 (2005) 438–48; quotation from p. 444. See also Khuri-Makdisi, ‘Levantine Trajectories,’ pp. 64–6. Michael Gasper, ‘Abdallah al-Nadim, Islamic Reform, and “Ignorant” Peasants: State-Building in Eygpt?,’ in Armando Salvatore, ed., Muslim Traditions and Modern Techniques of Power (Yearbook of the Sociology of Islam, vol. 3, 2001), pp. 76–92; quotation from p. 76. On the subject of the Arab Jew and modernity, and for more information on modern Arab Jewish writers of Arabic, see Lital Levy, ‘Jewish Writers in the Arab East: Literature, History, and the Politics of Enlightenment, 1863–1914’ (PhD. dissertation, University of California at Berkeley, 2007); idem, ‘Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq,’ in Jewish Quarterly Review 98/4 (Fall 2008), pp. 452–69; and idem, ‘Partitioned Pasts: Arab Jewish Intellectuals and the Case of Esther Azhari Moyal (1873–1948)’ forthcoming in Dyala Hamzah, ed., The Making of the Arab Intellectual (1880–1960): Empire, Public Sphere, and the Colonial Coordinates of Selfhood (Routledge, 2012). This was, for instance, the position of Murad Farag, the subject of this chapter, as well as Dr. Shim‘on Moyal. For more on Farag’s views on this topic, see Somekh, ‘Lost Voices,’ 190. On Moyal, see Levy, ‘Jewish Writers in the Arab East,’ Chapter Three. On the negotiation of Arab identity in the nahda, see Stephen Sheehi, Foundations of Modern Arab Identity (Gainsville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2004). Farah Antun, ‘Introduction,’ al-Jami‘ya 1 (1899). Quoted in Sheehi, ‘Arabic Literary-Scientific Journals,’ p. 445. As is customary in Egypt, Farag took his father’s first name as his surname. I paid a brief visit in November 2004. His earliest published works are a section of an edited volume, Risala fi quwat al-ahkam al-madaniyya: wa-hiya sharh li’l-maddah 232 min al-qanun al-madani, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Kahil, ed. (Cairo: al-Muqtataf, 1889) and two books on the law: Risala fi sharh al-amwal ‘ala al-qanun al-madani al-ahli (Cairo: Matba‘at al-

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East mahrusa, 1893) and Kitab al-majmu‘ fi sharh al-shuru‘(De la tentative): ‘ala alqanun al-masri al-ahli (Cairo: Matba‘at al-mahrusa, 1894). See Ha-kodshiyot (Holy Offerings) (Cairo: Matba‘at Samwil Rahamim Ashir, 1928). In the preface, Farag says that the 1923 original, al-Qudsiyyat, was written for the sake of Judaism and for Jews throughout he world, and that he was inspired to compose it after having witnessed violent events in Jerusalem (presumably the 1920 ‘Nabi Musa’ riots in the Old City). In his 1928 Tafsir al-Tawrah, a translation (tafsir) with commentary on the Book of Genesis, Farag attempts to translate every word of the Bible from Hebrew into its morphological equivalent in Arabic to prove that Hebrew and Arabic share the same root. He continued this philological method in his massive compendium Multaqa al-lughatayn al-‘ibriyya wa-’l-‘arabiyya (Crossroads of the Hebrew and Arabic languages), a four-volume Hebrew-Arabic etymological dictionary whose writing occupied him for the better part of two decades (1930–50). See Farag, Tafsir al-Tawrah (Interpretation of the Torah) (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-rahmaniyya, 1928) and idem, Multaqa al-lughatayn al-‘ibriyya wa-’l-‘arabiyya (Crossroads of the Hebrew and Arabic languages). 4 vols. (Cairo: al-Matba‘a al-rahmaniyya, 1930–50). For more on this topic, see Somekh, ‘Lost Voices,’ p. 191. See Snir, ‘Faraj, Morad,’ 252; I have not seen this journal nor seen Farag’s participation in it noted elsewhere. Sasson Somekh, ‘Participation of Egyptian Jews in Modern Arabic Culture,’ pp. 134–5. Somekh, ibid., p. 135. Murad Farag, Maqalat Murad (Cairo: Matba‘at Ibrahim Ruzintal, 1912), pp. 200–23; discussed in Somekh, ‘Lost Voices,’ p. 192. Somekh, ibid. Somekh also notes that Farag ‘marshals a variety of quotations from the Koran and its commentators to prove his point’ and concludes that ‘one is indeed impressed by his amazing familiarity with Islamic sources.’ (ibid.). Somekh, ‘Participation of Egyptian Jews,’ p. 136. Somekh remarks that one long essay does mention Butrus Ghali, the assassinated Coptic chief minister, in passing, describing him as a great Egyptian patriot and as a defender of national unity. Ibid., 136. The poem is written in the khafif meter. In a literal translation, it reads:

22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32



My homeland is Egypt, and she is my birthplace [masqatu ra’si]/ In her I was brought up, and in her I was educated She is my teacher [ustadhati] and the source of my livelihood/ She is my abode, in which I awaken and where I return to sleep [ashu bi-ha wa-abitu] I have no other refuge, and the gift/ of gratitude is owed her, to match the gifts she gave me [qadr ma bi-ha qad hubeytu], May she live free, even though I, by/ my excessive love for her independence, have been enslaved.

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33

34

35

36 37

38 39

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See Diwan Murad, vol. II (Cairo: Matba‘at al-I‘timad, 47); my translation is based on Nemoy’s rendering in ‘A Modern Karaite-Arabic Poet,’ p. 201, with modifications. Nemoy also notes that Farag glosses the poem with a footnote: ‘“[Written] in reply to a certain person’s query,” who presumably questioned the loyalty of non-Muslim citizens in Egypt’s struggle for independence from Britain’ (ibid., n. 14). Somekh, ‘Participation of Egyptian Jews,’ p. 137. As Somekh further notes, however, while the volume is Jewish in content, it is not addressed to an exclusively Jewish audience. Rather, it demonstrates ‘frequent recourse to the theme of Jewish-Arab and Jewish-Muslim brotherhood, a brotherhood based on a common ancestry, similar traditions, and an affinity of language.’ Indeed, the poems on Zionism seem motivated by a desire ‘to persuade his fellow Egyptians that Jewish national aspirations are just and legitimate’ (ibid.). Jewish and Zionist themes are prominent in Volumes Two and Three of the diwan (published in 1924 and 1929). In Volume Four, however, which appeared in 1935, ‘the accent on Jewish nationalism is much reduced’ and indeed the ‘modern nationalist context, Egyptian or Jewish, is conspicuously absent’ (ibid., pp. 137–8). Given the political mood in Egypt at the time, this sharp turn away from Zionist themes is hardly surprising. A weekly for the first year, it appeared irregularly during its second year, apparently for lack of funding. The journal was reviewed favorably in both al-Hilal and alManar (quite warmly in the latter), and is mentioned by Philip di Tarrazi in his history of Arabic journalism, as well as in an index of Egyptian periodicals. See al-Hilal p. 11, no. 3 (1 November 1902), p. 93; al-Manar p. 5, no. 14 (18 October 1902), p. 552; Philip di Tarrazi, Ta’rikh al-sihafa al-‘arabiyya (The history of the Arabic press), vol. IV (Beirut: al- Matba‘a al-amirkaniyya fi bayrut, 1933), p. 179; and ‘Ali Dhu al-Faqar Shakir and Yusuf Khuri, eds., Mudawwanat al-sihafa al‘arabiyya (Arabic periodical literature) (Beirut: Ma‘had al-anma’ al-‘arabi, 1985), p. 113. By ‘Jewish periodical’ I mean a publication that takes up Jewish themes and targets a Jewish audience. Farag was not the first Jewish intellectual to experiment with publishing a newspaper in fusha (standard Arabic); a number of (mostly short-lived) Arabic periodicals published by Jews (for either Jewish or general audiences) appeared in Cairo in the last decades of the nineteenth century. al-Tahdhib 1, no. 24 (23 January 1902), p. 99. See, for instance, ‘al-Rajul wa-imra’tu’ (Man and his woman, or Man and his wife), which ran in four installments from February to March 1902 (al-Tahdhib 1, nos. 26–31), or ‘al-Mara’ taht hukm zawjiha’ (The wife under her husband’s dominion), in al-Tahdhib 2, no. 11 (30 January 1903), 86, and no. 12 (9 February 1903), p. 87. ‘Hal al-insan hurr?’ (Is man free?), al-Tahdhib p. 2, no. 24 (12 June 1903), pp. 185-7; no. 25 (21 June 1903), 193–7; and no. 26 (30 June 1903), pp. 204–8. ‘Abu Nuwas wa-amir al-Ma’mun,’ al-Tahdhib 1, no. 36 (10 May 1902), p. 150.

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40 In the first case, students were asked to translate a short passage from Arabic to English, and the winning submission (by three fourth-graders) was printed in the newspaper; the second challenge was an English-to-Arabic translation. See al-Tahdhib p. 1, no, 14 (8 November 1901), p. 62, and ibid., no. 17 (28 November 1901), 74 (‘A Story of a Monkey’). 41 ‘Misr’ could also refer to Cairo rather than to Egypt. 42 The term kalim, for one who speaks with God, is traditionally used by Muslims in referring to Moses. 43 It adds that the paper is being published in the Karaites’ own press, which is located in their school, and that it will appear irregularly until its circumstances become more stable. 44 al-Tahdhib 1, no. 1 (12 August 1901), p. 1. 45 The sentence continues for a while in this vein: ‘or a wise exhortation that will chase the bane of evil from the soul, or sound advice that will be like medicine for one suffering psychologically […]’ and asks God’s assistance in realizing these goals (ibid.). 46 In a later issue, he writes: ‘I feel here that with God’s help, the sect will make swift and great progress in these years and will reach, God willing, what every rational person who wishes for the progress of humanity desires. We notice in any case that all members of the sect are sending their boys as well as their girls to school to learn the sciences and to gain useful knowledge so that both can be raised well’. See ‘al-Rajul wa-imra’tu’ (The man and his wife), al-Tahdhib 1, no. 30 (20 March 1902), p. 126. 47 al-Tahdhib 1, no. 1 (12 August 1901), p. 1. 48 See, for example, Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al-Tahtawi, ‘The Extraction of Gold, or an Overview of Paris’ in Charles Kurzman, ed., Modernist Islam, 1840–1940: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 31–9, especially pp. 32–3 and p. 36. In the same volume, see also Khayr al-Din, ‘The Surest Path,’ pp. 40–9, especially p. 49, and Qasim Amin, ‘The Emancipation of Women and the New Woman,’ p. 63. In his introduction to the volume, Kurzman notes the prevalence within modernist Islamic discourse of purportedly ‘biological’ social or civilizational hierarchies, revealing the influence of then-popular theories of social Darwinism. See ‘Introduction: The Modernist Islamic Movement,’ pp. 3–27, especially p. 18. 49 On this issue, see Eve Troutt-Powell, A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt, Great Britain, and the Mastery of the Sudan (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003). 50 al-Tahdhib 1, no. 2 (15 August 1901), p. 5. 51 Ibid., p. 3. 52 al-Tahdhib 1, no. 3 (22 August 1901), pp. 11–12. 53 As al-Tahtawi writes on the rights of the citizen: ‘Only in this sense are they patriots and natives, meaning that they are considered members of the [national] community. They relate to it [i.e. the homeland] as organs relate to the body. This is the greatest privilege in civilized nations.’ See Kurzman, (ed.), p. 34. As for al-Afghani: ‘The nation for Afghani is akin to a body, and although he changed

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54 55

56

57

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his mind over what constituted a nation, in the final analysis he devalued ties of ethnicity and, to a lesser extent, of language to the advantage of the bond of religion. A nation consists of estates analogous to parts of a body, or of individuals whose organic unity is that of the parts of a vital organism. This organism is infused with a vital force like that which permeates its individual organs, and the power of this individual vitality is directly proportional to that in the whole organism.’ See Aziz al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1996), p. 44. Al-Azmeh also points out that this ‘organismic, vitalist paradigm has its major notions […] in medieval Islamic natural philosophy’ (ibid., pp. 44–5). See Levy, ‘Historicizing the Concept of Arab Jews in the Mashriq.’ On the economic background to the emergence of the blood libel in the mashriq, see Jacob Landau and Moshe Ma’oz, ‘Jews and Non-Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt and Syria,’ in International Conference on Jewish Communities in Muslim Lands ( Jerusalem: Institute of Asian and African Studies, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Ben Zvi Institute, 1974); Moshe Ma’oz, ‘Communal Conflicts in Ottoman Syria during the Reform Era: The Role of Political and Economic Factors’ in Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis, eds., Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire, Vol. II: Arabic-Speaking Lands (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1982), pp. 91–101, especially p. 92–; Jacob M. Landau, ‘Relations Between Jews and Non-Jews in the Late Ottoman Empire: Some Characteristics,’ in Avigdor Levy, ed., The Jews of the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, New Jersey: The Darwin Press, 1994), pp. 539–46. ‘In Syria, there were instances of ritual murder accusations in Aleppo (1810), Beirut (1824), Antioch (1826), Hama (1829), Tripoli (1834), Damascus (1840), Dayr al-Qamar (1847), again in Damascus (1848), Aleppo (1853), and yet again in Damascus (1890).’ See Landau and Ma’oz, ‘Jews and Non-Jews in NineteenthCentury Egypt and Syria,’ p. 4. As for the 1840 Damascus affair, in February 1840, an Italian Franciscan friar and his Greek servant went missing. Charges of ritual murder and blood libel were brought against numerous members of the Jewish community, and were supported by the Turkish governor as well as the French representative to Syria. Under torture, a Jewish barber confessed to the crime and named others. Other Damascene Jews died under torture or converted to Islam to evade torture; sixty Jewish schoolchildren were incarcerated for two weeks and held as hostage to induce confessions. The 1840 affair drew wide international attention. For more on the affair and its aftermath, see Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: ‘Ritual Murder,’ Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and ‘The Damascus Affair (1840)’ in Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History, 2nd edition (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 313–14. See also David Biale, Blood and Belief: the Circulation of a Symbol between Jews and Christians (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007). al-Muqtataf 14 (1890), pp. 688–9. The blood libel was a persistent concern for

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Arab Jewish intellectuals. 58 See Aharon Zakay, ‘Murad Farag z’l, pe’alav vi-yetsirotav’ (Murad Farag, his achievements and writings), Mahberet (Notebook) ( June 1958), pp. 134–6, 135, and al-Gamil, Toledot ha-yahadut ha-kara’it, p. 166. 59 Zakay, ‘Murad Faraj,’ 134–5, and al-Gamil, Toledot ha-yahadut ha-kara’it, pp. 165–6. 60 See ‘Tuhmat al-dam’ (Blood libel), al-Tahdhib 1, no. 25 (6 February 1902), p. 103–4; no. 26 (13 February 1902), p. 109–10; no. 27 (26 February 1902), pp. 111–14; no. 28 (6 March 1902), pp. 116–18; no. 29 (13 March 1902), p. 122; and no. 30 (20 March 1902), pp. 124-5; ‘Hadithat bur sa‘id—tuhmat al-dam’ (The Port Said incident—blood libel), al-Tahdhib p. 2, no. 8 (21 December 1902), p. 63; no. 9 (31 December 1902), pp. 65–70; no. 16 (3 April 1903), pp. 125–8; no. 17 (10 April 1903), pp. 129–32; and no. 19 (8 May 1903), pp. 151–2. It is not entirely clear that the articles were inspired specifically by the Port Said incident, as in the first of the series of articles (from February 6, 1902), Farag explains that he was impelled to respond to accounts he had recently read in the press (in alMuqattam, Misr, and al-Ra’id) at the end of January; he notes that the newspapers had reported to their readers that a youth had gone missing from his family and that Jews were blamed, but that the youth had resurfaced unharmed. See ‘Tuhmat al-dam,’ al-Tahdhib 1, no. 25 (6 February 1902), pp. 103–04. 61 Somekh, ‘Participation of Jews in Modern Arabic Culture,’ p. 137 (his translation). 62 al-Tahdhib 1, no. 28 (6 March 1902), p. 118. 63 Ibid., p. 103. 64 ‘Tuhmat al-dam,’ al-Tahdhib 1, no. 26 (13 February 1902), p. 109. 65 See ‘al-Insan wa-’l-qarn al-‘ashrun,’ in al-Tahdhib p. 2, no. 18 (26 April 1903), pp. 132–4. 66 Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994), p. 11.

4 The Public Intellectual and the Secret Society: al-Kawakibi and His Legacy Sanaa Makhlouf

As for the sayings of the folk of fortitude [of action]: the defiant one says: ‘the malady is to withstand shackles and the remedy is to stand up against humiliation’ the steadfast one says: ‘the malady is the unrestrained leaders and the remedy is to bind them with heavy chains’ the free one says: ‘the malady is unjust arrogance and the remedy is to humiliate the arrogant’ and [finally] the martyr says: ‘the malady is the love of life and the remedy is the love of death.’ (Prologue to Tabai‘ al-Istibdad1) In what proved to be the first of many other assassinations in the history of modern Egypt, Egypt’s prime minister Butrus Ghali was assassinated in 1910. Police investigations led to the discovery and arrest of Ibrahim Nasif al-Wardani. Ghali’s assassin, a twenty-three-year-old pharmacist, belonged to the educated elite of the early twentieth century; he was a member of the nationalist Watani Party and had studied in Lausanne, Paris, and London. But as was duly unveiled, the self-confessed assassin had also been a member of a secret society called Jam‘iyyat al-Tadamun al-Akhawi ‘The Society of Fraternal Solidarity’, which was founded earlier in 1905 under the name Jam‘iyyat alTa‘awun (The Society of Mutual Help) for purposes of study. Its members included young professionals and students, most of whom were students at the School of Engineering. In 1906, the society was renamed Jam‘iyyat al-Ittihad

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al-Islami (The Society of Islamic Union) and engaged in propagating literary, moral, and political issues. Following the murder of Butrus Ghali, the British founded a special Secret Service Bureau to conduct investigation of Egyptian secret societies: their membership, organization, and objectives. Published in June 1911, the ‘Report Respecting Secret Societies’, detailed no less than 26 secret societies operating in Egypt in that period. With titles that ranged from the overtly religious to the secular, these societies attracted young Egyptian and Ottoman subjects who were politically, socially, and intellectually active and included members who were to play very important roles in shaping public consciousness, like Muhammad Rashid Rida.2 The great majority, if not all, of these societies had explicit nationalist principles though not all were officially recognized by the Nationalist party; but it may be safely said that they are all more or less connected with some of the leaders of that party. The Report on societies in Cairo was drawn up with the ‘greatest difficulty’ as stated in its opening passages, understandably so after the Wardani affair; the ‘Nationalists’ had taken all precautions against detection, and many persons known or suspected to belong to the more serious societies withdrew from them or caused them to suspend or cease their meetings, or to be transformed into apparently benevolent societies.3 To add to the confusion, several societies had similar names, or existed under different names. Though the Report was wrong on many levels with regard to the exact nature of some of these societies, their true objectives and background, and the real identities of their membership, it pointed to a growing form of ‘secret’ popular activism that seemed to resemble Western secret societies and activism more so than earlier Ottoman and Egyptian ‘palace intrigue’ killings.4 Donald Reid’s study of Egyptian assassinations concluded that while earlier Islamic history provided precedents, twentieth-century Egyptian assassinations seemed closer to the nationalist assassinations of the modern West with its members coming mainly from middle class families, having had exposure to modern thought and belonging to a youthful intelligentsia of students and professional men.5 Secret Communities Ironically, these ‘secret’ societies had been imagined and their inner workings made ‘public’ in a work of literature authored more than a decade before by the political and social thinker and activist, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi (1854–1902), namely, in his novel Ummu l-Qura: Proceedings of the first Conference on Islamic Renaissance 1316 H. Published as a novel in Egypt in 1899 under his pseudonym, al-Sayyid al-Furati, and later as excerpts in

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Shaykh ‘Ali Yusuf ’s newspaper, al-Mu’ayyad, the semi-autobiographical novel tells of fictional meetings and proceedings of the Conference on Islamic Renaissance [mu’tammar al-nahda al-islamiyya] purportedly held in Mecca, 1898. Convening in Mecca, under the protective guise of the Hajj season, the unidentified protagonists state in full confidence the one single factor that is behind the rise of the Western nations (sirr nash’at al-ummam al-gharbiyyah): societies and organizations6 being the secret of success for all serious endeavors.7 With this discovery, these social and political activists turn their backs on their own tradition of Sufi fraternities and ‘ulama’ networks: where these have failed, the Western models have succeeded. Accordingly and in emulation of the progressive West, the twenty-three political activists of the conference lay the foundation for their secret society ‘Ummu l-Qura’ (lit. mother of all cities, or Mecca) or, as referred to later in the novel, the jam‘iyyat ta‘lim al-muwahhidun, ‘Society for Educating the Monotheistic Believers’. Though written as a fictional record of their meetings and proceedings, the boundaries between reality and imagination are deliberately kept nebulous— with locations, nationalities, identities well spelled out, so much so that many readers of al-Kawakibi have speculated on the reality of the characters and events of the novel.8 There are certainly enough parallels between the novel and real characters to warrant a reading of the novel as more than fiction and to find in it a rare instance where secret becomes public and public actors construct the secret societies that perhaps helped shape Egyptian, Arab, and Islamic modern identity for more than a century. Author Protagonist Writing under the pseudonym of al-Sayyid al-Furati, al-Kawakibi wove fictional and real encounters, and strangely enough foretold in predictable details the following few years of his remaining life. By tracing bold strokes of his biography with his writings, I hope to reveal more the making of the modern public intellectual for whom he was one inspiring model. Born in Aleppo in 1855 to a noble family of Kurdish origin, the historic ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi graduated from a traditional school, and by the age of twenty-two had been appointed editor of Aleppo’s official newspaper.9 Two years later, he began publishing his own newspaper, al-Shahba’ (April 1877–78), in which he called for the implementation of reforms and openly criticized the Ottoman administration in Aleppo. Paying the heavy cost of political and social activism—the newspaper was banned from publication three times and al-Kawakibi incurred financial losses—nevertheless, he continued with his reform message for more than sixteen issues, trying to

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awaken the public to the necessity for change and reform before the paper was finally closed down. The same fate befell his second newspaper, I‘tidal ( July– September 1879), which he began publishing a year later.10 Al-Kawakibi then began to engage in politics, while occupying various positions in the Ottoman civil service, trying to get the public to accept the need for reform and change: it is the common people who find it hard to change and accept something different from what they are accustomed to, he acknowledged in his early writings.11 But his opinions once again led him into trouble with the authorities. Reports of his mixing with foreigners, and ‘unknown individuals with strange habits and attitudes, [ashkhas majhuli al-ahwal wa’l-atwar wa ‘l-ifsadat]’ finally led to the authorities accusing him of secretly working for the British. He was put on trial in 1883 in Beirut where he spent over eight months in prison.12 In what seems to be the basis of his novel’s settings written a few years later, he supposedly rented a private house in order to hold secret meetings with his ‘foreign’ friends and discuss with them the state of affairs of the times.13 He himself became the subject of several alleged assassination attempts, the final one tragically ending his life by poisoning at the age of forty-seven in Cairo in 1902. In 1899, al-Kawakibi left Syria secretly together with the manuscripts of his books and went to Egypt.14 A few days later, the Egyptian newspaper alMu’ayyad began to publish sections of what will become his second book, The Attributes of Despotism [Tabai‘ al-Istibdad]. The novel, Ummu l-Qura, written and narrated under the pseudonym of al-Sayyid al-Furati, was presented to Egyptian Khedive Abbas II who sent Shaykh Muhammad ‘Abduh and Shaykh ‘Ali Yusuf to find out more about this intriguing author. Admiring his rhetorical power, Khedive Abbas extended his patronage to alKawakibi.15 Shortly afterwards, both books appeared in print and aroused much commotion. Henceforth the remaining two years of his life witnessed an almost exact reproduction of the personal account of the travels of the author recounted in the introduction to the novel: he was sent by Khedive Abbas to propagate the ideas expressed in his novel, addressing namely the seminal question of ‘what went wrong with the Muslims?’, and consequently how to retrieve the values of al-Islamiyya, the pure Arab-based version of the faith; both the question and the answers laid out in the novel would pave the way to a hegemony of a rationalist Salafi ideology wedded to a centralized nation-state.16 Al-Kawakibi accordingly went on a six-month journey to East and South Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and India where he visited Karachi and Bombay, Indonesia, East Asia and South China. He travelled from Yemen on

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board an Italian navy ship to the Eastern coastal towns of Arabia. Returning to Cairo, he died three months later, allegedly poisoned in a Cairo café while sipping coffee with Muhammad Rashid Rida.17 Though he had revised and written sequels to his two books, he died before he was able to publish them.18 However, somewhere in his writings, al-Kawakibi had introduced a new idea that enflamed the imagination of Arab youth. His writings inspired countless cosmopolitan ‘secret societies’ that spoke directly to the minds and hearts of Arab and Muslim youth. Fictional Encounters Understand! For the religion has lost its might When once it was mighty without any weakness! For then, it had its folk who gave it all its due of guidance, teaching, and proper doctrination! Wherefore has it come to when the [so called] folk of knowledge confine themselves to the comforts of their homes [in the embraces of their women]? Has it not become a religious obligation [fard] to put an end to this weakness/feebleness? Come forth together to exert our effort! Lest by its neglect the faithful incur sinfulness! Come forth to Ummu l-Qura and conspire/confer! Do not despair from the mercy of an all-protecting Lord. For that which swords could once accomplish Now, needs no more than tongues! (Prologue, Ummu l-Qura19) In the introduction to his second book, Tabai‘ al-istibdad, al-Kawakibi admits that he had been searching for over thirty years for an answer to the question of ‘what went wrong?’ This would mean that he had started his search for causes of the decline even as a very young man. By 1898 he had found out that the answer lay in more than publishing protests and formulating theories; thought had to be embodied in collective action for effecting change. His findings were the starting point of his travel to Egypt and the subsequent construction of networks of activists throughout the colonized Muslim world. In Ummu l-Qura, he tells us that he had travelled to the main Arab cities in search of similarly minded activists who would be worthy of collaboration on such a precarious project. Using the crowded Hajj season as a protective cover for their presence and movements, al-Kawakibi, alias al-Sayyid alFurati, rents a house in a secluded suburb of Mecca under an assumed identity

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of a Daghestani national, who as a Russian foreign subject is safe from the Turkish city administration. With no previous knowledge of each other, the activists recognize each other as collaborators in a joint endeavor. Their leader and organizer had selected them from amongst the writers and intellectuals of the main Arab cities: Northern Syria, Beirut, Damascus, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Alexandria, Cairo, Suez, al-Hadida (Yemen), Sana‘a, Aden, Oman, Ha’il (Najd), Marrakesh, Tunisia; and from Muslim communities from all over the world: Istanbul, Tbilisi, Tabriz, Kabul, Kashgar (Uyghur, China), Kazan, Peijing, Delhi, Calcutta and, surprisingly, Liverpool. All those activists recognize secrecy as necessary for the success of their enterprise. Though al-Furati had compiled for each of them a brief biography of the other participants we, as readers, come to know them only through their fictitious national affiliations. Layers and layers of secrecy build up as al-Furati supplies the participants with a cipher code as an added protection so that they can send messages without detection. Al-Furati then turns to the readers to tell their ciphered names: ‘22548553667121897215183134412326576891940472323346253 87275639523148.’20 In this world of secrets, even the reader can be suspect. They start the meeting by swearing allegiance to their cause and take an oath of jihad and secrecy [‘ahd Allah bi’l-jihad wa’l-amanah]. There are no attempts to hide the necessity for secrecy and al-Kawakibi explains why in the first few pages. Secrecy is necessary as a protection for their safety and their lives, but it also ensures that all speak their mind freely with no fear or restraint.21 Though most of the proceedings are recorded by al-Furati/Kawakibi, some sessions are withheld from the readers and some remarks are offered only in unintelligible ciphers. The novel holds the tension between the desire to be known and the fear of discovery. The reader is only allowed a glimpse into some sessions and can only wonder at the deeper layers of secrets withheld from it. Rhetoric of Crisis What brings these activists-intellectuals together is the attempt to answer the question of ‘what went wrong with the Muslim?’ al-Furati, who is writing down the minutes of the meetings gives the floor to the Meccan Chair who outlines ten questions; they vary between the diagnostic and proscriptive: • • • • • •

Locate the illness? Describe the symptoms? Determine the modes of infection (the microbes)? Identify the remedy[ies]? How to apply the remedy? Define the concept of Islamism (al-Islamiyyah)?

The Public Intellectual and the Secret Society • • • •

Identify the means to practice it (taddayun biha)? Determine what is hidden shirk (worship of false gods)? Determine how to fight [dangerous] innovation (bid‘a)? Formulate laws and by-laws for the establishment of an educational society.22

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Though each speaker offers in turn his analysis of what ails the umma, trying to locate within its traditional structures the sources of the infection, none stops to question the validity of the diagnosis itself: the lowliness of the Muslims is all too evident. They all agree that the decline started ‘more than a 1000 years ago’ when the Arab Umayyad dynasty lost its powers to ‘non-Arab elements.’23 Increasingly it becomes clear that these activists see themselves only in terms of their ‘illness’ or subjugation to the West. Thus, the regression that supposedly had begun long ago and had remained largely unnoticed could now be identified precisely because the activist-intellectuals at the meeting are able to see it as though from the ‘outside.’ In other words, they are willing to leave behind their ‘inherited means of comprehension’ and do for Islam what ‘Luther and Voltaire had done for the West.’24 The usefulness of this ‘outside’ vantage point appears clearly when alKawakibi has his Kazan delegate report a meeting between the Mufti of Kazan and a newly converted Russian Muslim Orientalist. Their cross-cultural dialogue shows that Orientalism can serve not only to expose the inadequacy of traditional ‘ulama’, but also to showcase the virtues of original Islam as rediscovered by the scientific tools of Western scholarship (347–52).25 Al-Kawakibi’s characters are totally unperturbed by the irony that a nonArab West would be partner to an Arab-centered Muslim awakening. His Ikhwan26 never doubt the religious and cultural authenticity of their enterprise while they denounce the ‘ulama’ and Sufis alike for appropriating the culture of the Western church and the cult of priesthood. Best Jihad: Silencing the Tradition The highest form of jihad of our times is to publicly humiliate the hypocritical ‘ulama’ and transfer the gaze of the public to the legitimate ‘ulama’.27 The question of ‘what went wrong?’ further helps the activists to delineate a specific intellectual identity of themselves as authentic spokesmen of the umma, yet distinct from a variety of traditional sources: foreign Islam (nonArab effects on Islam), false Islam (Sufism), or dead Islam (traditional ‘ulama’). The reason given for the need to distinguish themselves in opposition to

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those three elements unfolds as the conference proceeds: all three elements representative of ‘traditional’ (pre-modern) Islam have been found to be the ‘causes of what went wrong’, since they all enable ‘resistance to modernization.’28 Ironically, for the proponents of pure Islamism, the causes for ‘backwardness’ and, thus, the targets of reform were located in the traditional institutions and repositories of knowledge that had for centuries informed and shaped the pluralistic diversity of the Islamic self. Namely, they targeted the ‘ulama’ and jurists, keepers of the ‘outward’ knowledge of the law, and the Sufis, keepers of the ‘inward’ knowledge of the heart. All of these had to be changed, silenced or sacrificed in the relentless march toward reform.29 Having seen the light, the Indian participant repents his traditional Sufi origins and reforms himself by departing from his Naqshabandi Sufi Order. He also expresses his intention to enlighten the rest of his Order so as to save them from the shackles of irrational superstitious beliefs and customs.30 In response to the inner evils of Islam so perceived, the Ikhwan al-Tawhid commit themselves to jihad against the enemies of true Islam, hoping, thereby, to regain the former glory and power of their ‘pure’ Arabian heritage. Accordingly, they declare that the best jihad for the times consists in humiliating the ‘hypocrite’ ‘ulama’.31 The novel suggests therefore a specific strategy, role and understanding for the emerging modern intellectual activist. Such an individual should understand himself as guardian of a true tradition that had undergone various abuses and distortions, and which is thus in need of being reconstructed and salvaged from the ruins of its own history. The community of like-minded activists will guard this salvaged pure tradition by suspiciously monitoring the traditional institutions so as to filter the authentic from the contaminated and the useful from the harmful.32 In cooperation with the newly founded institutions provided by the nation state–like state schools and universities, the Ikhwan propose to use all rhetorical, political and educational means to wage a battle against the existing ‘ulama’ institutions and Sufi Orders and help monitor their activities and public functions.33 One of their recommendations is to place ‘dissenting’ ‘ulama’ ‘under quarantine’, until they conform their teachings, religious fatwas or counsel to the line endorsed by the modern intellectual activist. Rehabilitated ‘ulama’ would then help educate the commoners in the basics of tawhid and zealously guard public morality. Sufis would be persuaded to reform their innovative practices to orthodoxy and guide their disciples to gainful employment. Reformed orders would provide social networks to serve the community and carry on roles of civic philanthropy like running orphanages and social services.

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Intellectual Legacies Al-Kawakibi’s writings quickly became staple food for the Egyptian-influenced awakening and dissemination of Islamism in the Muslim world. Through the speeches of the Ikhwan, it becomes clear that the question of ‘what went wrong?’ does much more than give a direction to the quest of coming to know oneself. It frames the entire intellectual enterprise and precludes other inquiries outside of that frame. Thus the price that these Ikhwan pay for coming to know their role is to accept a view of the Muslim ‘ailing’ collective self and not reject it. Indeed, the latter attitude would be taken as a sign of being ineligible to join this vanguard. Throughout the secret meeting, the modern intellectual activists find it necessary to repeatedly confirm their shared worldviews, mission, goals, and common enemies. According to al-Kawakibi’s own admission, he spent more than thirty years searching for the root answer to the question. His co-conspirators seem to parallel that lengthy questioning by exploring circular arguments and causal chains that emerge from and feed on the question of decline. One by one, they dismantle the traditional institutions of Islam that had informed its pluralistic culture for so many centuries. Curiously, none truly explores the veracity of the historical or intellectual assumptions that the question is based on. But al-Kawakibi’s life-long search for an answer to this question also points to the addictive nature of the question: it gratifies the intellectual self even as it taunts its other features. One can almost hear the self-congratulatory note in each speaker’s words. This is perhaps one reason why the question remains alive and as pertinent today as it was more than a century ago. The question cannot be answered and is not designed to be answerable. But it provides modern activist intellectual activity with a vast mission that is independent of traditional modesties. Al-Kawakibi’s writings, helped by the state institutions of Khedive Abbas and the British Consul-General, Lord Cromer, inspired the Egyptianinfluenced Arab awakening and the dissemination of an anti-Ottoman Islamism in the Muslim world. Yet it also fostered an ambivalent attitude towards an admired but detested colonial West. The secret societies operating in Egypt in less than a decade following his death show the strong influence of his ideas on Arab youth. The principles and structures of the Muslim Brotherhood and Tablighi Jamaat societies owe much to his ideas. Yet the structure of thought and organization he proposed also helped restrain the scope of intellectual inquiry and social role, since it proposed a straightforward breaking up of a riddle, after which the solution seemed only too obvious to require additional complexities, much less revision or second thoughts. The conclusions immediately invited concerted action by a self-confident

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vanguard, and from then on further deliberations or re-questionings of the core modernist mission seemed redundant and dispensable. The ensuing century witnessed a growing role of a religious rhetoric that mobilized youth towards political action—much of it subversive—and such action itself took precedence to critical self-examination and even moral thinking. The public intellectual as proposed by al-Kawakibi was more than anything else a rhetorician of organized vanguardism that saw itself to be responsible for the public even when it itself had no public character 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16

Notes Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Tabai‘ al-Istibdad, in The Complete Works of alKawakibi [Al-a‘mal al-kamila lil-Kawakibi], edited by Mohamed Jamal Tahhan (Beirut, 1995), p. 436. Eliezer Tauber, ‘Egyptian Secret Societies, 1911’, Middles Eastern Studies 42/4 (2006), pp. 603–23. Ibid. Donald Reid, ‘Political Assassination in Egypt, 1910–1954’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 15/4 (1982), pp. 625–51. Olivier Roy and Gilles Kepel offer similar theses regarding more recent times. Pl. jam‘iyyat, sing. jam‘iyya. Mohamed Jamal Tahhan, (ed.), The Complete Works of al-Kawakibi [Al-a‘mal alkamila lil-Kawakibi] (Beirut, 1995), p. 283. Ibid. Tahhan, p. 18: One of his teachers was Najib al-Naquib, a previous teacher of Egypt’s Khedive Abbas. Al-Kawakibi also spoke Persian and Turkish. Al-Kawakibi wrote in the first issue of al-Shahba’ in 1879: ‘al-I‘tidal is one and the same as al-Shahba’, in every aspect, and it takes upon itself the function of all national newspapers: to applaud good institutions, publicly expose the misdemeanor of official administrators, voice the needs of the nation to those in command, and publish all that would promote virtuous behavior and expand general knowledge’, quoted in Tahhan, p. 72. ‘We initiated this Arabic language journal… our driving force was our patriotic jealousy and passion for Arabism [al-ghira al-wataniyya wa al-himiya al‘arabiyya…]’, quoted in Tahhan, p. 66. Ibid., pp. 26–28. Ibid. Coincidently, less than a year earlier, another young Syrian writer, notably Muhammad Rashid Rida, migrated from Syria to Egypt to join the same circle of political activists of Muhammad ‘Abduh. First published in Port Said, 1899 by Muhammad Rashid Rida, a revised version appeared in Rida’s (and ‘Abduh’s) al-Manar in 1902. I have explored the role that this question plays in the reform literature and emphasized its centrality to reformist discourse in my ‘A Question of Concern? A

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Rhetoric of Crisis’, ISIM Review 19 (2007), pp. 44–45. 17 Tahhan, p. 30. 18 Eliezer Tauber, ‘Three Approaches, One Idea: Religion and State in the Thought of ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, Najib ‘Azuri and Rashid Rida’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 21/2 (1994), pp. 190–98. 19 Opening lines of Ummu l-Qura attributed to al-Sayyid al-Furati, Tahhan ed., p. 276. 20 Ibid., p. 278. 21 Ibid., pp. 280–81. 22 Ibid. p. 284. 23 Ibid., p. 280. 24 Ibid., p. 373. 25 Ibid., p. 347–52. 26 Though this appellation now refers to the Muslim Brotherhood almost exclusively, by using it I hope to show the rhetorical continuity between early Salafi, Wahhabi and present day Ikhwani thought and nineteenth century ‘liberal’ reformers. 27 Tahhan, p. 308. 28 See for example: Tahhan, pp. 294–303; 310–12; 313–28, 343–50; 360–74. 29 See Tamara Albertini’s provocative thesis in ‘The Seductiveness of Certainty: The Destruction of Islam’s Intellectual Legacy by the Fundamentalists’, Philosophy East and West 53/4 (2003), pp. 455–70; the damage done to Islam’s intellectual and scholarly legacy is the result of a ‘well thought out strategy designed to remove any scholarly resistance to fundamentalism from within the Muslim world.’ 30 Tahhan, p. 343. 31 Ibid., p. 308. 32 Ibid., pp. 382–84. 33 For the dependency of the reformist framework on the nation state and the centrality of the state to Islamism see Irfan Ahmad, ‘The State in Islamist Thought’, ISIM Review 18 (2006), pp. 12–13.



5 The ‘Alim as Public Intellectual: ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731 CE) as a Scholar-Activist Steve Tamari

Is it possible to consider a pre-modern ‘alim as a public intellectual? Given the prevailing understanding of the term ‘public intellectual’, the answer is probably no. Discussions about the role and significance of the public intellectual are immersed in references to essentially modern conditions. Concepts associated with the study of public intellectuals such as ‘civil society’, ‘social movements’, ‘public life’ and ‘street politics’ appear ill-suited to describe political life before the establishment of the modern nation-state or mass politics. I would like to offer a gentle protest against what I perceive as excessive modernism in the study of Muslim intellectual history. I would like to suggest that if we (however briefly) suspend our understanding of the ‘modern’ as unique and without precedent, we may recognize many presumably modern features as familiar rather than foreign to the role of Muslim thinkers, writers, and activists in pre-modern times. For the sake of this discussion, I would like to focus on the Damascene ‘alim (pl. ulama) ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1731 CE), who was intellectually, socially, and politically active during the last third of the seventeenth century and the first third of the eighteenth.1 Before launching into a discussion of his life and times and into an exploration of their significance for the study of public intellectuals more broadly, I will try to justify the contention that modernism (as the tendency to see all things ‘modern’ as without precedent) obscures important continuities between the conventional division of history between our modern period and its prehistory.

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When did the ulama become Intellectuals? A Review of Dominant Trends in the Historiography of Muslim Syria During the earliest period of Muslim rule in Syria, the ulama barely existed even though Damascus was the seat of the first Muslim empire. At first, the Umayyads depended on legal norms and institutions inherited from their Byzantine and Sassanian predecessors. By the end of the eighth century, however, Muslim scholars began to express opposition to legal practices they considered violations of Islam and thus began the process of establishing a distinctively Islamic jurisprudence. The process was haphazard and varied from region to region, but by the second century of the Abbasid dynasty in the tenth century, the ulama had established themselves as the arbiters of the shari’a, which became the single most important practical definer of Islam for populations that were self-consciously Muslim. The period of the consolidation of the ulama and of the shari‘a coincided with the beginning of a long history of political decentralization and fragmentation throughout the Muslim world. In Syria, the period between the establishment of the Seljuk emirates in the eleventh century to the Ottoman conquest in the sixteenth is one in which foreign forces traded military and political control in exchange for some degree of legitimacy through patronage of the ulama. Some of these regimes were short-lived like the critical era of Nur al-Din al-Zangi (r. 1154–74) who established a mini-empire with Damascus as its capital. Some were much longer lived, like that of the Mamluks, the immediate predecessors to the Ottomans. Damascus had been a center of Islamic learning from the earliest years of the Muslim era because many of the Prophet’s companions settled there and thus attracted scholars interested in hadith and the traditions of the earliest Muslim community. In Damascus, the period between Nur al-Din’s reign and the beginning of Mamluk rule (1260) marked a transition in the history of the ulama from self-employed, freelance scholars to an institutionalized and professionalized elite that became increasingly bureaucratized by Mamluk times. The process of professionalization reached a critical stage under the rule of Nur al-Din.2 By making Damascus the center of his empire, he restored to Damascus the position it had held under the Umayyads. Institutionalization took place through the proliferation of awqaf to support and maintain a growing army of scholars and scholar-judges. This creation of new posts and institutions intensified under the Mamluks and reached its apogee under the Ottomans. The link between the ulama and ruling groups as well as their dominion over so many institutions made many of them formidable social and political actors. They were increasingly self-conscious of these roles and, beginning in

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the Ayyubid period (1169–1260), one sees the proliferation of biographical collections detailing the lives and achievements of generation after generation of members of the ulama in Damascus. Two factors, the increasingly important socio-political role of the ulama and the rich biographical source material, have shaped the interests of historians and provided them with a well-spring of valuable source material. For the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods, historians of Damascus have used these biographical collections to recreate the social and political history of the city. In Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages, Ira Lapidus mined biographical and other sources to write the social history of Mamluk Cairo, Damascus, and Aleppo.3 His was one of the studies to articulate the view that the ulama functioned as the ‘representatives of urban communities.’4 Albert Hourani’s seminal article ‘The Changing Face of the Fertile Crescent in the XVIIIth Century’ applied a similarly functionalist approach to the ulama of the Ottoman Arab provinces in the eighteenth century.5 What evolved into the ‘politics of notables’ paradigm became a mainstay of analyses of the urban politics in the Arab cities of the Ottoman Empire.6 For the most part, however, the intellectual achievements of the Syrian ulama up until the period of reform and Ottoman centralization in the nineteenth century have been of little concern to historians. Part of this is due to the prevailing view that once collections of reliable hadith and the seminal works of the four Sunni schools of legal thought became part of an Islamic canon, the opportunity for the exercise of independent reason had ended. This took place around the end of the tenth century and is known to historians as the closing of the doors to ijtihad.7 Notwithstanding the fact that important post-classical Damascenes, such as Ibn Taymiyya (d. 1328), explicitly rejected this notion, the idea that the ulama functioned primarily as preservers of inherited tradition has stuck. Michael Chamberlain is one of the few to interpret the ulama’s continuing purpose as scholars, albeit with an approach oriented toward their social and political, rather than intellectual, role. In Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, he uses a comparative perspective and the insights of cultural anthropology to explore how religious scholars in the medieval period were able to manipulate the secular power of military elites through ‘lineages of learning.’8 In Europe and China, landed nobilities and state-trained bureaucracies provided the foundations for emerging states and for the longevity of aristocracies and dynasties. In contrast, argues Chamberlain, Islamic civilian elites developed a ‘nobility of learning.’ This nobility was characterized not by descent through family lines, but through insertion into scholarly genealogies. The cultivation of ‘ilm, or knowledge, was not preparation for service or a profession but was a kind of

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ritual in which one acquired loyalties and ‘cultural capital.’ Chamberlain’s view is instructive on several counts, not the least of which is the ubiquity of chains of transmission, isnad, in the manuscripts and documents from this and later periods in Damascene history. However, his conclusion is that the substance of what these scholars taught, read, and wrote is of little or no significance. The implication is, once again, that the ulama played little if any role as intellectuals. Again, the predominant view is that the ulama functioned primarily as a bulwark against social and political chaos and were political mediators and preservers of shared tradition. They served as a kind of social ‘glue’ against the slings and arrows of constantly changing political fortunes. As suggested above, the view of the ulama as the guardians of tradition holds for most scholarship on the Ottoman period, well into the nineteenth century. The second half of the nineteenth century is when the ulama of Damascus finally meet their end at the hands of Ottoman centralization and modernization and Western-inspired technical and administrative curricula. The stalwarts of tradition are finally overcome by their sons and grandsons who were educated in Istanbul or the local government schools. The new generations, increasingly secular in orientation, are no longer members of the ulama but have become ‘reformers’ and, unlike their predecessors, ‘intellectuals.’ David Commins’ study of Islamic reform in Damascus follows this process through three generations of the Qasimi family. Commins uses the Weberian construct of a ‘status group’ to identify the ulama: the ‘possession of religious knowledge constituted the basis of the ulama’s status.’9 But, by the last decades of the century, this kind of knowledge has lost its power and prestige and new factions emerged ‘that met the ideological challenge of new Ottoman intellectuals.’10 Commins associates the old guard with tradition and a stable, unchanging body of religious knowledge. As with Chamberlain’s interpretation of the medieval scholars, this knowledge is more akin to cultural capital than to ideas. The new generations, on the other hand, are associated with ‘ideology’ rather then heritage and operate as ‘intellectuals’ rather than as members of the ulama. This negative assessment of pre-modern intellectual life in Ottoman Syria is reflected in the few studies which address intellectual life directly. These assessments may be the result of the reflections of the new intellectuals themselves on the generations of their fathers and grandfathers. Arab nationalists and advocates of Islamic reform blamed the Ottomans for all the misfortunes that befell Syria, and the Arab and Muslim worlds at large. However, the Syrian scholar Iskandar Luqa, writing about literature in the nineteenth century, blames popular fear of the West: ‘There is no doubt that the most important factor supporting [traditionalism] in literary

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production [prior to 1875] was the people’s attachment to a society closed upon itself, fearful of anything coming from the civilized West, and incapable of overcoming their own condition.’11 Luqa’s view is reminiscent of the conclusions reached by H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen about education and intellectual life in the eighteenth century in Islamic Society and the West, a standard Orientalist text on the Ottoman Empire and one of the first to deal with the eighteenth century in depth. Even though lengthy, the passage below deserves to be read in full for the uncompromising and emphatic nature of the conclusions drawn: Neither teacher nor pupil regarded [education] as anything other than the acquisition of a certain amount of ‘knowledge’, all such knowledge being a known or knowable quantity with strictly defined boundaries… the inevitable result of such a system, over which no quickening breath had blown since at least the beginning of the sixteenth century, was to intensify both the narrowness of the educational range and its narrowing effect upon the minds of the educated… If the dead-point of a society is reached when the educational forces are no longer effective to influence or to direct its development, it must be admitted that the dead-point was long since passed in Islamic society. Education had ceased to set before itself even the hope of molding society in the direction of its ideals, and had sunk to the level of merely holding society together by the inculcation of tradition.12 One can hardly imagine a more emphatic declaration of decline and stagnation, one that is almost poetic in its description of such a dismal fate. Abraham Marcus, whose painstaking study of court records to reconstruct Aleppan society in the eighteenth century, shares the hallmarks of the best in recent social history, nevertheless sounds remarkably like Gibb and Bowen in its treatment of intellectual life in Aleppo during this period: Aleppo’s educated men were not part of an intellectual world drawn to new frontiers and experiences. Education dipped them in a stable pool of knowledge undisturbed by the great waves of exploration, discovery, or doubt. It instilled in them a reverential sense of an established order within which they must take their place and whose values they must preserve… They did not claim greater wisdom than earlier generations nor did they place a premium on innovation.13

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In sum, all of these studies hold that the ulama were never intellectuals. Intellectually, they were stifled by the closure of the gates to ijtihad, constrained by their social role as preservers of Muslim tradition by means of an unchanging shari‘a, and pre-occupied with their political role as mediators between foreign military powers, on the one hand, and the urban masses, on the other. They never had a chance. There was no time or place for thinking for its own sake. It was not until the impetus provided by Ottoman centralization and the creation of new schools on the European model as well as by more direct European influences, that the new generation of thinkers, genuine intellectuals, was able to overcome the strictures that had confined their predecessors among the ulama. ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi and Muslim Intellectuals of Pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Syria Two factors stand out from this brief review of the historiography of the Syrian ulama: (1) they were most important as conservative social and political actors; and (2) their intellectual significance was negligible. However, recent studies have begun to demonstrate some cracks in this dismal picture of the intellectual life of the ulama. Here, I will focus on the scholarship of pre-Tanzimat Ottoman Syria, which is the field of study I know best. The first detailed study of intellectual life in the early Ottoman period is Layla Sabbagh’s exhaustive examination of Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi’s biographical dictionary of the seventeenth century.14 In particular, she points to intellectual ferment in theological debates between Sufis and their detractors, and she is emphatic that the study of ifta’, legal opinions, demonstrates that the gates to ijtihad were nothing if not wide open. She suggests that Muhibbi’s chief concern was with the preservation of classical Arabic styles and usage in the context of what he considered excessive borrowing from Turkish and Persian. Sabbagh’s indication of the value of fatawa for research into the liveliness of intellectual life is right on the mark, since these sources have proven to be some of the richest for mining the intellectual history of the time. The social historian Abdul-Karim Rafeq was perhaps the earliest scholar to mine the fatawa for their insights on a range of legal and non-legal issues, such as ethnic loyalties and attitudes toward the Ottoman central state.15 He demonstrated the opposition of key elements of the Damascene ulama to the over bureaucratization—in the interests of state craft—of Ottoman legal reforms in the Syrian provinces. Judith Tucker’s study of Khayr al-Din al-Ramli, the seventeenth-century mufti, likewise challenges the idea that there was no room for ijtihad between the ‘classical’ and modern periods. Her reading of Ramli’s fatawa uncovers a mind that is nothing if not liberal and open-minded

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in dealing with the rights of women and the complexities of a gendered social system.16 What distinguishes these historians from their predecessors is that they have delved beyond the biographical sources and the chronicles and into the texts—most of which remain in manuscript form—which were produced, in this case, during the first three centuries of Ottoman rule. Two factors stand out in relation to this trend in the study of the ulama. One is the fact that innovation, speculation, and independent reasoning were part and parcel of the work of those muftis, like al-Ramli, who had the inclination to interpret the shari‘a as they saw fit. Second, all three historians have demonstrated that the ulama of Damascus never operated as a unit. They were divided by class, madhhab, and Sufi affiliations, and degrees of association with the Ottoman state. The case of ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi demonstrates better than any how rife Damascus (and, by extension, the Empire as whole) was with social, political, and intellectual cleavages among members of the ulama. ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi was born in the middle of the seventeenth century and raised in the heart of the old city of Damascus. The family home was just around the corner from the Umayyad Mosque, the religious, cultural, and intellectual center of the city and of the Province of Damascus as a whole. His ancestors had come from Jerusalem in Palestine (by way of Nablus) many centuries earlier during the period of the Crusades when Palestinian refugees fled the Frankish assault and settled in Damascus and its vicinity. His great grandfather was an accomplished scholar and was well connected with Ottoman officialdom. He managed to amass a fortune which went some distance in helping our ‘Abd al-Ghani pursue the life of the mind when his time came. ‘Abd al-Ghani was a worthy successor as a scholar and as a popular, if controversial, public personality. Like many boys his age, he memorized the Qur’an at a very young age and went on to devour books and to study at every opportunity. His most recent biographer, Samer Akkach, argues that Nabulusi’s approach to books was precisely the opposite of that described by scholars of the medieval and Ottoman-era ulama. For Nabulusi, the ultimate authority was not the sheikh or the isnad, the chain of authority, but the book itself. Akkach quotes Nabulusi directly on the primacy of books for learning: I have seen in this time of ours a community from all ethnic groups, the Arabs, the Persians, the Indians, the Turks, and other ethnic groups as well, all of whom reached—by reading the books of truth (i.e. Sufi texts)—the levels of the masters, and acquired from them (i.e. the books) the objects of their hopes. If after that one supports his knowledge with

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additional practice and devotional struggle one becomes among the perfect men…17 Clearly the substance of the texts mattered enormously. There is even the insinuation in this short passage that devotional practice is secondary to mastery of texts. Not surprisingly, at a very early age, Nabulusi earned a reputation as an upstart and maverick for his propensity to respond critically to the works and ideas of much older and respected scholars. Akkach characterizes this aspect of Nabulusi’s career as that of the ‘self-made’ scholar. He treated his teachers more as colleagues than as masters.18 Historians of Sufism have distinguished between tariqa Sufis and Akbari Sufis.19 Tariqa Sufis are predominantly concerned with the life and practice of a particular tariqa, or order. Akbari comes from the moniker for the greatest of Sufi intellects, Muhi al-Din ibn Arabi (d. 1240), also known as ‘al-Shaykh al-Akbar’, the Greatest Sheikh. Akbari Sufis were scholars, philosophers, and theologians, intellectuals in every sense of the term. Nabulusi was the greatest of the Akbaris, at least over the course of the Ottoman period. His commentary on Ibn Arabi’s concept of wihdat al-wujud (‘unity of being’), titled al-Wujud al-haqq  (The Real Being), was his most important single work. But, it was only one of many works in a whole variety of fields. As mentioned earlier, he initially made his mark as a poet and literary critic and he eventually produced a multi-volume diwan of poems. He wrote several works of literary criticism, a study of the popular Qur’anic tafsir by Baydawi, a work on hadith, all manner of texts on Sufism, travel memoirs, and a series of books on more secular subjects like dream interpretation, agriculture, and architectural aesthetics. In addition to his study of Ibn Arabi, he is well known for his polemical treatises in defense of popular Sufi practices such as tomb visitation, listening to music, and drinking of coffee. During a long writing life, the better part of his 90 years, Nabulusi produced almost 300 separate books scattered among the host of topics mentioned above. As Akkach correctly points out, Nabulusi has incorrectly been pigeon-holed as a Sufi master. In fact, the range of his work eludes any effort to characterize him as one kind of scholar or another. Given the scope, number, and multi-faceted character of his prodigious intellectual achievements, it is remarkable that Nabulusi has not received more attention from scholars. As will become apparent below, his contemporaries recognized his greatness, and the accolades he was showered with during his long life and for generations afterwards are without parallel at least among Damascenes during the entirety of the Ottoman period. The majority of his works remain in manuscript form, but the fact that almost 10 percent has been published suggests that the reading and publishing worlds are more aware of

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his significance than scholars. The only books of his that interested scholars until a very recent spate of studies were his travel works, which were useful for reconstructing the political geography of rural Syria and Syrian cities outside of Damascus. Only in the last 15 years have serious studies of his work been published, beginning with Bakri Aladdin’s edition of al-Wujud al-haqq in 1995.20 The first book-length published study of his work in a European language did not appear until 2005, although Barbara von Schlegell’s important dissertation on Nabulusi came out in 1997.21 Akkach’s 2007 study is the most recent in what is proving to be a mushrooming interest in a scholar and, as I will argue below, an activist who has been ignored for too long. The main reason for ignoring Nabulusi is that evidence of intellectual vitality does not fit into existing paradigms. Any serious look into his intellectual production would contradict nationalist, Islamic reformist, and Orientalist assumptions about decline. The degree of intellectual ferment and disputation would contradict assumptions of ulama solidarity as the bulwarks of tradition and as representatives of the urban populace. Before beginning to address his role as a public intellectual, it is worth making another point about Nabulusi’s intellectual significance. Although he wrote on a variety of topics, he is best known for his study and advocacy of the Sufism of Ibn Arabi. In his study of Ibn Arabi, Nubulusi did not simply regurgitate the work of his predecessors or write commentaries on commentaries as those who hold fast to the paradigm of intellectual stagnation would have it. Instead, as Akkach argues, Nabulusi was a significant philosopher/theologian in his own right.22 One of the main concerns of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other philosophers and theologians across the ages has been the nature of the connection between God, on the one hand, and the temporal world, on the other. This has, of course, implications for a whole host of issues including the relative nature and extent of free will and determinism in human affairs. For some, God is involved directly in every cause and effect. This helps one account for the unaccountable but it does leave the door open to fatalism and the irrelevance of divine justice. On the opposite extreme are the rationalists and materialists who argue for the complete autonomy of the natural world. This approach could close the door completely—as it has for some—on the existence of God. During the earliest period in Muslim history, philosophers and theologians wrestled with these questions and their differences animated both advocates and detractors. The Mu‘tazila of the ninth century spearheaded the rationalist trend and had the ear of the Abbasid caliph for a period. The forces of traditionalism, represented by the Hanbali school of thought, were more successful though, and, in the end, a kind of theological-cum-philosophical synthesis, known as Ash‘arism, was adopted by

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the majority of Sunni Muslim scholars. Ash‘arism itself continued to be the subject of debate into Nabulusi’s own time. Nabulusi’s adoption of Ibn Arabi’s concept of the ‘unity of being’ was, in part, an effort to defend the relative autonomy of the natural world in the face of theological trends that strove to amplify the direct role of God in everyday human affairs—a threat to the unity of God in Nabulusi’s mind. The point to be emphasized here is that philosophy—particularly as regards the role of God in human affairs—was part and parcel of debates that engaged scholars from across the Muslim world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Nabulusi became involved in the debate over Ash‘arism in response to two treatises by the Medinan scholar Ibrahim al-Kurani (d. 1698). Akkach makes the point that such debates were central to intellectual life in the Jewish and Christian medieval worlds as in the world of Islam. It was not until the advent of the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that the trend toward dispensing with God altogether gained traction and became widespread. This development changed the nature of the debate once and for all. By the nineteenth century, even Muslim reformers were responding to Enlightenment science by rejecting their immediate predecessors, and sought to argue for religion and Islam on terms established by the Enlightenment. As Karen Armstrong has argued—convincingly to my mind—this is the source of the philosophical and theological misstep that ultimately produced modern fundamentalisms, in their separate but parallel Jewish, Christian, and Muslim varieties.23 In sum, a paradigm that holds the science and philosophy of the Enlightenment up as the standard for evaluating the value of preceding intellectual currents is incapable of appreciating or even seeing the kinds of debates and ideas that animated philosophers and theologians like Nabulusi. It goes without saying that historians—whether North American, European, or Syrian—inspired by the scientific outlook of the Enlightenment are bound to dismiss pre-Enlightenment philosophers who were comfortable with the coexistence of God and nature, if not entirely certain about the precise nature of their interaction. ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, the Public Intellectual In addition to the measured and staid form of his scholarship on the ‘unity of being’, Nabulusi also wrote a host of treatises on topics of much more immediate currency to the people of Damascus, Syria, and beyond. These are the treatises that cover practices such as smoking, tomb visitation, and listening to music. Some of these works are more on the order of polemics aimed at particular individuals and classes of people, who are often not named

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but are clearly adversaries. They are the kinds of works that one might expect to come out of the heat of a social and cultural battle. In fact, they are the product of a ‘culture war’ that took place in the Ottoman Empire during the late seventeenth century. Nabulusi’s most heated polemical works came during a cultural struggle that raged throughout the Ottoman world and pitted an austere, literalist, and reformist interpretation of Islam against prevailing ideas and practices, particularly those associated with popular Sufi orders and the ideas of Ibn Arabi. The Kadizadelis, as the reformists are generally known, were most active in Istanbul but it was not long before the movement had become widespread in Damascus.24 Nabulusi expended great efforts to defend many traditional practices that came under attack by the Kadizadelis. Idah al-dalalat fi-sama‘ al-alat and al-‘Uqud al-lu’lu’iyah defended music and dance; Kashf al-nur ‘an ashab al-qubur and Hawd al-mawrud fi ziyarat al-Shaykh Yusuf wa-al-Shaykh Mahmud the practice of tomb visitation; al-Sulh bayn al-ikhwan fi hukm ibahat al-dukhan smoking; and Ghayat al-matlub fi mahabbat al-mahbub homoeroticism. In general, these works expound what we today would consider ‘liberal’ approaches to religion and life. Nabulusi was a man who was both pious and engaged in the world, with a seemingly equal love of God and life. But, as with the culture wars that rage in our world today, issues as seemingly trivial as smoking or drinking coffee or visiting tombs could enrage and engage. More salient for our purposes here, is that someone like Nabulusi, who could at once be so immersed in seemingly esoteric philosophical disputes could in the next instance write a polemic, publicly deriding his opponents on quotidian affairs like smoking, drinking, and gazing at beautiful boys. This exemplifies a strategy of public intellectual activity, which saw a seamless continuity between philosophical sophistication and ordinary life. To provide a sense of how heated were those public debates, I would like to quote briefly from one of his most vociferous attacks on an unnamed member of the Kadizadeli camp. In addition to their attacks on Ibn Arabi and popular Sufi practices, the seventeenth-century puritans were much less tolerant of non-Muslims than had been the common practice. One indication of this intolerance was the view that non-Muslim ‘people of the book’, namely Christians and Jews, had no chance to making it to paradise in the hereafter. Nabulusi’s rebuttal was titled al-Qawl al-sadid fi jawaz khulf al-wa‘id wa-alradd ala al-Rumi al-anid (‘The Correct Teaching Concerning the Possibility that God will not [Punish Christians and Jews]: A Rebuttal of the Stubborn Turk’).25 The bulk of this text concerns the concept of the ‘promise and the threat’ (al-wa‘d wa-al-wa‘id) in which God promised paradise to believers and hell to non-believers. We will return to Nabulusi’s defense of the spiritual

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equality of Muslims and non-Muslims shortly, but what is of immediate concern here is the fiery diatribe with which he opens his book, one marked by a vociferous ethnocentrism. The book’s subtitle, ‘A Rebuttal of the Stubborn Turk,’ makes this clear from the outset. In the introduction, Nabulusi is explicit about his anti-Turkish and pro-Arab sentiments and loses no time in attacking the ethnicity of his antagonist. He takes aim at this ‘uncivilized and sinister man’ from ‘the land of the Turks’ who accuses the Arab and the son of the Arab with unbelief. He does this even though he is a non-Arab and a son of a non-Arab and even though the ulama have established that the Arabs are masters of the Turks and Persians in matters of religion and that it was they who brought the Turks into Islam in the first place. Perhaps this unfortunate soul who rejects the truth forgets that not long ago he was probably a Christian fighting Muslims, worshiping Jesus, eating pork, drinking wine, and prostrating before idols. Now, he wears the white turban of the religious scholar and dons the apparel of a Muslim. However, only God knows what is in his heart. He has the audacity to charge a believing Muslim with unbelief.26 Both the topic and style of this text are relevant to Nabulusi’s project and are perhaps part of the reason why his arguments struck a chord with a likeminded audience, as we shall see. According to Nabulusi, [ Jews and Christians] are legally assured of happiness by agreeing to pay the jizya and then giving it to the Muslims… With this they become like the Muslims: It is forbidden to fight against them, to interfere with their property and children, to slander, curse or defame them, or generally to harm them.27 He continues: The dhimmis in our time and in other times acquired happiness by giving the jizya and helping the Muslims thereby, since some of the dhimmis were led by God to inner faith (al-iman al-batin). As the ulama taught, faith is believing in the heart only. Showing the faith by means of speech is a condition for applying the laws of this world to them, but it is not part of faith, as has been established in another place. In this case (i.e. if they believe in their heart) their happiness becomes specific happiness and thus they enter Paradise along with the Muslims. They become Muslims according to the laws of the hereafter, but not of this world. The laws of

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the unbelievers apply to them in this world and the laws of the Muslims in the hereafter, since what is in their hearts (i.e. their faith) was not made manifest… Faith (iman) is believing in the heart only, according to the Ash’aris and the Hanafis, whose schools are the true ones. He who believes in his heart but does not express it in his tongue is an infidel in this world and a believer in the hereafter, by God the exalted.28 This statement is vintage Nabulusi in making the case for inward faith over outward expressions of piety. Externally manifest religious identities, such as Christian and Muslim, do not suffice to ascertain all the dimensions of faith. The ‘hellfire and brimstone’ preacher may appear pious, but preachers, just like fellow members of the ulama, are not in a position to be judge and executioner when it comes to the spiritual value of their fellow humans and their fate in the hereafter. Nabulusi’s argument that self-righteous members of the ulama are not positioned to determine right from wrong receives a more general airing in a treatise on the ‘division of labor’ between members of the ulama. In the same treatise, he addresses the notion that innovation (bida‘) is a violation of Islamic principles, a perennial issue for Muslim traditionalists. In Anwar al-suluk fi asrar al-muluk (‘Illuminating Proper Conduct as Regards the Secrets of Kings’), Nabulusi divides the ulama into three categories: those who specialize in the shari’a; those whose focus is the morality of the heart (al-akhlaq alqalbiyya) of a tariqa; and, finally, the ulama of the philosophical interiority of the shari’a (bawatin al-shar‘ia). 29 All three of these, according to Nabulusi, speak a truth that is part of the guiding light of God. The implication of this argument, however, is that religious law and particularly the letter of such law addresses only a limited aspect of the faith. Those, then, who are bent on condemning any behaviors or practices which they consider bida‘, or unacceptable innovations, forget that much of what Muslims take for granted were themselves innovations in their time. Writes Nabulusi: The hajj and the visiting of the tomb of the Prophet, the ships, the clothes, the weaponry, rules of travel, and accompanying officials… none of this existed in the time of the Prophet, the Companions, and the following generation. But they are good and assist in the fulfillment of the requirement to carry out the hajj in the easiest possible manner. Likewise, the five prayers, what the mu’adhdhin says, the fact that there are paid positions in the mosque and for teaching—all these are practices that have been invented. But they are also beneficial and have allowed for the spread of Islam.30

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Given the contests Nabulusi was engaged in with those who wanted to strip Muslim, particularly Sufi, practice of what made it popular, comfortable, and enjoyable to so many, this statement echoes several of the qualities of Nabulusi’s thought mentioned above: his hostility to those excessively legalistic members of the ulama; his defense of popular rituals and practice; and his appreciation for the coexistence of piety and pleasure. The tenor of these expressions also reveals the intensity of the debates, giving the lie to notions of a unified body of ulama espousing the same tradition. The final measure of Nabulusi’s significance as a public intellectual is the reception he and his views received. There is no doubt that he made enemies. Many of his treatises were inspired by direct attacks on him or his person. He was a polarizing person and never shied away from confronting his adversaries directly. There are indications that he paid a heavy emotional toll by persisting to produce polemic after polemic and treatise after treatise. Von Schegell thinks his retreat from public life for seven years was occasioned by a serious bout with depression. Soon after that episode, he abandoned the family home in the heart of Damascus for a house in the Salihiyya suburb north of the city, where he would be closer to his main teaching post at the Selimiyya mosque complex situated around the tomb of Ibn Arabi. Finally, during the latter years of the seventeenth century, he set off on a series of trips through the Syrian countryside and to the towns of Tripoli, Baalbak, Jerusalem, and on to Egypt and the Hijaz for the hajj in 1693–94. He had his enemies and they could be ruthless. The starkest reminder of this came when he was chosen to be Hanafi mufti of Damascus by popular acclaim. Within a month, scheming opponents with the kind of official connections Nabulusi lacked, had him dismissed. In the end, this probably increased his popularity in Damascus and beyond. I do not think it is any exaggeration to say that he was Damascus’s favorite son during his own time and for succeeding generations. Several biographies were written during his lifetime and immediately afterwards, and they generally stand out for their length. His courses at Selimiyya, in the Umayyad Mosque, and at other madrasas were always packed. Muhammad ibn Kannan’s chronicle of Damascus often mentions his inaugural and concluding lectures as among the most important events of the year. He gets high praise from elite members of ulama, such as the biographer and Hanafi mufti Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi, as well as from middling members of the ulama  like Ibn Kannan and the chroniclerbarber Ahmad al-Hallaq. During his travels through Syria, he was received like royalty in both towns and villages.

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Concluding Remarks Does ‘Abd al-Ghani Nabulusi fit the role of the public intellectual as we understand the term today? This chapter has aimed at making the case for pre-modern parallels for what scholars too often assume to be uniquely modern. As Nabulusi’s case demonstrates, scholars have for too long ignored the multifaceted nature of the ulama. They never functioned as a unified block for the sake of social cohesion and the preservation of tradition. They were probably always a house divided, as Nabulusi’s career demonstrates. There were doubtless traditionalists and those who took advantage of patronage to serve political forces of one kind or another. Nabulusi’s intellectual production suggests, on the other hand, that independent reasoning remained a fact of Muslim intellectual life even during Syria’s so-called ‘dark age’ on the eve of the Arab Nahda. His engagement with political, theological, and social adversaries during the late seventeenth-century culture war also demonstrates that such intellectuals did not remain in their libraries or ivory towers, but took up public positions in defense of what they believed in—in the case of Nabulusi’s polemics, the popular practices of Sufis being justified on the basis of carefully formulated and argued philosophical and theological principles. The popular acclaim that accompanied Nabulusi is a measure of how deeply these views resonated with a wider public, a public that felt that it had a clear stake in the debates of its intellectuals. 1 2 3 4 5 6

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Notes All dates below correspond to the Gregorian calendar (CE). This process is studied in Joan Gilbert, The Ulama of Medieval Damascus and the International World of Islamic Schlarship (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1977). Ira Lapidus, Muslim Cities in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, MA, 1967). Lapidus, Muslim Cities, p.7. Albert Hourani, ‘The Changing Face of the Fertile Crescent in the XVIIIth Century,’ Studia Islamica VIII (1957), pp. 89–122. Albert Hourani, ‘Ottoman Reform and the Politics of Notables,’ Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: The Nineteenth Century. Eds. William R. Polk and Richard Chambers (Chicago, 1968). Among similar studies focusing on Damascus are Linda Schilcher, Families in Politics (Stuttgart, 1985) and Philip Khoury, Urban Notables and Arab Nationalism: the Politics of Damascus, 1860– 1920 (Cambridge, 1983). Wael Hallaq, ‘Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed?’ International Journal of Middle East Studies 16 (1984), pp. 3–41. Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus (Cambridge, UK, 1994).

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25 26 27 28

Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East David Dean Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Damascus (Oxford, 1990), p. 7. Commins, Islamic Reform, p. 20. Iskandar Luqa, al-Haraka al-adabiyya fi-Dimashq, 1800–1914 (Damascus, 1976). H.A.R. Gibb and Harold Bowen, Islamic Society and the West (London, 1957), Vol. 1, Part II, pp. 159–160. Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1989), p. 243. Layla al-Sabbagh, Min a‘lam’’ al-fikr al-‘Arabi fi al-‘asr al-‘Uthmani al-awwal: Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi al-mu’arrikh wa-kitabat Khulasat al-athar fi a‘yan al-qarn al-mi’a al-‘ashar, 1061–1111/ 1651–1699 (Damascus, 1986). Abdul-Karim Rafeq, ’The Syrian Ulama, Ottoman Law, and Islamic Shari’ah’, Turcica XXVI (1994), pp. 9–32 and Abdul-Karim Rafeq, ‘Social groups, identity and loyalty, and historical writing in Ottoman and post-Ottoman Syria’ in Dominique Chevallier, ed., Les Arabes et l’histoire creatice (Paris, 1995), pp. 79–93. Judith Tucker, In the House of the Law (Berkeley, 1998). Samer Akkach, Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi: Islam and Enlightenment (Oxford, 2007), p. 34. Akkach, Abd al-Ghani, p. 33. I owe this insight to Barbara von Schlegell, a scholar of the history of Sufism and one of Nabulusi’s biographers. Bakri Aladdin, al-Wujud al-haqq wa-al-khitab al-sidq (Damascus, 1995). Elizabeth Sirriyeh, Sufi Visionary of Ottoman Damascus: Abd al-Ghani alNabulusi, 1641–1731 (London: Routledge, 2005); Barbara von Schlegell, Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World: Shaykh Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731), PhD diss. Berkeley, 1997. This discussion of Nabulusi’s philosophy is based on Akkach, Abd al-Ghani, pp. 79–94. Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God (New York, 2001). For the origins and significance of the Kadizadeli movement in Istanbul, see Madeline Zilfi, ‘The Kadizadelis: Discordant Revivalism in 17th-Century Istanbul,’ Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 45/4 (1986), pp. 251–269. For the movement’s presence in Damascus, see von Schlegell, ‘Sufism in the Ottoman Arab World,’ pp. 64–72. ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, Kitab al-qawl al-sadid fi jawaz khulf al-wa‘id wa-alradd ala al-Rumi al-jahil al-‘anid, Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin, Mq 1581, ff. 29a–46b. Al-Nabulusi, Kitab al-qawl, f. 29b. The translation is Michael Winter’s, ‘A Polemical Treatise by Abd al-Ghani alNabulusi against a Turkish Scholar on the Religious Status of the Dhimmis’ Arabica, 35/1 (1988), p. 98. Winter, ‘A Polemical Treatise,’ p. 99.

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29 Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, Anwar al-suluk fi asrar al-muluk, Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin Lbg. 1016, 3a. 30 Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, Anwar al-suluk, f. 7b.

6 Founders of Islamism in Republican Turkey: Kısakürek and Topçu Michelangelo Guida

Nurettin Topçu and Necip Fazıl Kısakürek are little known outside Turkey, but they can be considered the founders of Turkish Islamism in the wake of the Kemalist revolution. In a new political context, they reformulated the methodology and content of Islamism in the country. While the political and social context of Islamism has changed, its main figures in Turkey today come from conservative religious and political circles that trace their origins in one form or another to these two Turkish intellectuals and their followers. Three well-known, politically active, and vibrant personalities and agents of change in contemporary Turkey are good examples of the continuing influence and relevance of those two founding figures. Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdoğan began his career in politics as a member of the Milli Türk Talebe Birliği (National Turkish Students’ Union, MTTB), which for many years was inspired by Kısakürek.1 The current Turkish President, Abdullah Gül, also might be said to have cut his political teeth in the MTTB, and his admiration for Kısakürek is a matter of public record. Finally, a leading educational and religious voice for change in Turkey, Fethullah Gülen, was certainly influenced, in part, by the work of Nurettin Topçu and, in his Edirne years, he distributed Kısakürek’s review.2 I will first examine the life and the main features of Kısakürek and Topçu’s political views separately. Then, I will analyze the common aspects of their intellectual works and the context in which they operate. However, to understand their life and work, some common aspects must be anticipated. Kısakürek and Topçu represent certainly a new generation

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of Islamist intellectuals. The previous generation—represented by Mehmed Akif (Ersoy) and Said Halim Paşa, for instance—shared with all Islamists the contestation of positivism and a process of modernization based on imitation of the West as well as the firm belief in the superiority of Islam as a source for social and political life. Nevertheless, they were linked to political power and one of their main tasks was to save the Ottoman state. Kısakürek and Topçu represent the vanguards of a new generation that had totally different cultural and political references: they became adults in the newly established Turkish Republic and not in the multicultural Ottoman Empire; they were educated exclusively in the modern and secular education system shaped on the Western model; they were more familiar with modern sciences than with classical Islamic sciences; they found themselves challenging institutional religion, which they saw as an arm of the secular regime; they did not belong to the ruling and cultural elites and they contested their understanding of modernity and associated policies. Moreover, they operated ‘in a society and a political context that has left officially a Muslim styled life and has severed its links with Islam.’3 Consequently, rather than defend the state, they wished to re-establish it on new foundations. When Nacip Fazıl Kısakürek and Nurettin Topçu appeared on the Turkish intellectual scene, the country had fallen under the rule of a one-party system and was controlled by the Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (the Republican People’s Party, CHP), which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk established in 1923. Until the mid-1940s, Turkish politics might be described as a kind of ‘Jacobean secularism.’4 Any public display of religion was condemned as simply reactionary, and talk of belief in God and the virtues of moral living were not only strictly prohibited but punished often draconically as crimes against the state.5 As Mustafa Kara summarize those years: For five years a strong wind blew against mystical Islam [tasavvuf]. With the Menemen episode6 the wind became a cyclone and 27 people were executed. Consequently, talking or writing about these subjects, mentioning Sufis meant being convicted and crushed by violence. 7 After the establishment of the Republic in 1923, the transmission of religious knowledge could only be facilitated by a variety of primitive publishing houses and private, religious institutions. For instance, handwritten copies of the works of the famous Ottoman scholar Said Nursi were secretly distributed by his followers. Formal religious education was removed from the curriculum, and membership in mystical confraternities was outlawed in 1925. In their zeal to create an image of a modern Turkey, secular Turkish intellectuals and

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historians went a long way in the 1920s and 1930s to erase and denigrate the Islamic or religious foundations of Ottoman society which, in turn, led to a profound identity crisis for generations to come.8 Another sense of alienation emerged in the huge gap existing between the intellectuals of Istanbul and the rural population of Anatolia. Capitalism and Kemalism only marginally affected the conservative and peripheral Anatolia. Thus it preserved a good dose of ‘innocence’ that was admired by those early founders of Turkish Islamism. Anatolia seemed to possess something that was ignored by materialist intellectuals and by the regime: spirit (ruh). In a play published in 1935, Kısakürek revisits the unseen face of Anatolia: FERHAD BEY—Do you know Anatolia? TRAVELER—Anatolia has something else that I ignore? FERHAD BEY— It is something completely different. Turn your face and look to Anatolia. What do you see? Here and there places have been touched, but mainly an empty land without confines and corners. Earth-color houses at ground level like a mole’s nest. Rickety bodies covered with rags. At the top of these bodies, pathetic and sulky faces that do not express what they think or hear. This is all that a European traveler can see of Anatolia with his camera. TRAVELER—Is there an unseen side of Anatolia? FERHAD BEY—(suddenly shouting) Its spirit! Spirit is not visible!9 The founder of Islamism in Turkey saw themselves as capable of seeing what secularists could not—into the spirit of a people and a region whence a new political synthesis might be born. Starting from these premises, Topçu and Kısakürek reshaped the conservative tradition and a new understanding of history in contraposition to the Kemalist perception. Moreover, they invented new forms of communications and a new discourse that fitted the new era. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek Necip Fazıl Kısakürek10 (originally Ahmet Necip Kısakürek) was born in Istanbul on 26 May 1905 into a well-regarded family. He studied in different schools in and around Istanbul, spending five years at the Bahriye Mektebi (navy academy) on Heybeyli Island—though he did not graduate. He did, however, enjoy some success as a writer, making the acquaintance of famous Turkish authors who taught at the Academy, such as Yahya Kemal, Aksekili Hamdi Efendi (President of the Directorate for Religious Affairs during the 1950s), and the politician Hamdullah Suphi (Tanrıöver). In 1921, Kısakürek enrolled in philosophy at Istanbul University, winning a scholarship in

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1924 (before completing his degree) to study at the Sorbonne University’s Philosophy Department. In Paris, he preferred to gamble and, in general, a Bohemian lifestyle rather than dedicate himself to academic work. He would come to regret the entire European experience and studying abroad as keeping him from the more important business of religious contemplation and mystical piety (tasavvuf ), and more importantly he regretted it for having kept him away from his beloved Anatolia. The French capital, moreover, became synonymous with all that was wrong with the secular or modern world and the West in particular, namely an environment that was crass, deceptive, hellish, and justly condemned from above: Paris, which symbolizes the entire Western splendor, is like a curtain. The front side with its deceptive embroidery is a great ‘plastic’ wonder. Behind the curtain, it is a suffering head…obscurity and devastation, in despair and depression, until the Day of Judgment…compelled to play puss in the corner…and this is the West!11 Still, there can be little doubt that his brush with Europe gave him some sense of contemporary debates. He met important intellectuals, and came away from the experience with a good working knowledge of French literature and history (which he frequently quotes in his writings). Indeed, looking at Turkey from outside may have helped him look critically at westernization in Turkey and lose his faith in secularism. Contemporary Turkish intellectuals, he contended, were similar to hospital janitors dressed as doctors. Outside the hospital, among illiterates, they are regarded as doctors but they only sweep up dirt.12 Returning to Turkey without his diploma, he made a living as a bank employee and French literature teacher at a private French school in Istanbul, then at the Ankara State Conservatory, the Istanbul Art Academy, Ankara University, and Robert College. Throughout those years, he recounts, he lived a somewhat dissolute life akin to ‘a bug under a flowerpot.’13 His first collection of poetry (Örümcek Ağı) was published in 1925. Ten years later, under the direction of actor and director Muhsin Ertuğrul, Kısakürek wrote his first theatre play, Tohum, an epic tale set in Maraş where his family originated and during the early years of the Turkish National Struggle. The play, unlike the revolution, was a failure. In 1936, he authored a new review, entitled Ağaç. Conceived and published in Ankara, the hub of secularism—political and artistic—he did not have the same reverence for the materialism and statism typical of the leading Kemalists of the day, leaning instead toward aesthetics and mysticism. The idea behind Ağaç was the desperate need for an alternative to the ruling secular academic press in

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Turkey. Consequently it was a publication that sought to address the forgotten spiritual element in society, as well as art and aesthetics from a contrasting viewpoint to the defunct secular review Kadro. Despite some initial success, with authors of such renown as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, Sait Faik, and Falih Rıfkı Atay writing for Ağaç, the review failed to find a popular audience and suspended publication efforts after its seventeenth issue. Kısakürek’s Encounter with Mysticism In 1934, Kısakürek embarked on a new path after meeting the Nakşibendi şeyh Abdülhakim Arvasi (Üçışık, 1865–1943) in Istanbul, becoming a member of his cadre of conservative, Turkish Islamists and devotees of his lectures (sohbet). Born in the southeastern reaches of Turkey, Abdülhakim Arvasi was halife and thus a ‘representative’ of the Halidiye branch of the Nakşibendi mystical order originally headquartered in Başkale, also in the southeast. During the World War I, the Russian advance and Armenian guerrilla warfare had forced him to flee to Mosul. The British occupation of Iraq, in turn, sent him packing, first to Adana, then Eskişehir, and eventually, Istanbul in 1919. Until the closure of all tekkes (lodges) and zaviyes (cells) in 1925, he presided over the affairs of his religious confraternity in Kaşgari Dergahı in the Eyüp district of Istanbul. He would be implicated in the repression following the Menemen plot in August 1930, and sent into exile to Izmir. He died in Ankara in 1943. The brotherhood to which he belonged, the Nakşibendiye, was a Sufi tarikat established by the fourteenth-century mystic, Baha-ud-Din Muhammed Nakshibend. It enjoyed two revivals, one in the seventeenth century with the Mucaddidi school of Ahmed Sirhindi, and another two centuries later under the Ottomans and thanks largely to the genius of Khālid al-Baghdadī and Gümüshanevi Ahmed Ziyaüddin. This tarikat is still known for its orthodoxy and conservative interpretation of Islamic or Shari’a law. The Nakşibendiye Halidiye, named after Khālid al-Baghdadī, originated in the early nineteenth century, defining their mission by a need to return to the Sunna of the Prophet, and downplaying mystical experience below Islamic jurisprudence. In fact, the emphasis on Islamic law is what made the Nakşibendi tarikats a potential political threat since it was not oriented to mystical quietism. Importantly, they exercised considerable religious and political influence during the reign of Sultan Mahmud II and Sultan Abdülhamid II, conflating religion and politics as expressed best seen in their motto: ‘the well-being of the king is the well-being of the world; his corruption is the corruption of the world.’14 Kısakürek remained a devout disciple of the Nakşibendi tarikat and of Abdülhakim Arvasi in particular, describing his new Sufi muse as ‘my savior, my harbinger, my guide, my şeyh, my light, my soul, my lord, my whole life.’15

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Later in life he translated and published two works of the şeyh—Rabıta-ı Şerif and Tasavvuf Bahçeleri—by his own Büyük Doğu press in 1974 and 1983, wrote another book in 1974 on the silsile, the şeyh’s mystical chain of transmitters that trace their origins to the Prophet,16 and an autobiography that discusses his relation with the şeyh, published in the same year.17 Abdülhakim Arvasi’s influence upon the young Kısakürek extended into his personal life. His very happy marriage to Neslihan Babanlar, the niece of Ottoman-Islamist author Babanzade Ahmet Naim, was initiated by Abdülhakim Arvasi. Kısakürek’s second play reflected of his nascent mysticism, Bir Adam Yaratmak,18 playing in Istanbul and Ankara to more receptive audiences. In this play, death and the afterlife, the precariousness of life, and the limits of human strength vis-à-vis destiny are the main themes. A series of fatal accidents attempt to demonstrate the futility of human power and suggest that human beings should leave everything to fate. Bir Adam Yaratmak may be understood less as a celebration of Kısakürek’s new-found Sufism and more as a broadside against the materialistic and logical positivism of Turkish intellectualism and anticlericalism. In hindsight, Paris could not have been all bad, either, for it had introduced him to the radical thought of Henri-Louis Bergson, for whom metaphysics as a diverse plane of experience and a different field of knowledge had certain appeal. Bergson, who taught Kısakürek,19 expressed another side of the European Enlightenment and modern world that proved less antagonistic to faith, and especially to his new-found Islamic sense of mystical rapture and intellectual wonder. This aspect of the Western world was not absorbed by ‘orthodox’ Turkish intellectuals: In the last three to four centuries, in its harshest form in the last 150 years, in its most clear expression in the last fifty years, in short, from the Tanzimat till today, we have been living in a moral prison. As if they had removed my eyes, replacing them with false eyes painted with the lines of a fake world…we are condemned to see only [the fake world], we cannot see outside, we cannot tear the membrane of this prison. Every day, a new membrane covers the older, and we continue in this way!20 Büyük Doğu as Vehicle for Religious Awakening and Conservative Political Activism In 1942, Kısakürek dedicated himself to writing and particularly to his conservative periodical Büyük Doğu (Great Orient), through which he hoped to address ‘the whole fatherland rather than a tiny class of fifty people.’21 He

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succeeded in his aim and, by the 1960s and 1970s, he was regarded as the dominant conservative voice in the country. The first issue of the journal, dated 17 September 1943, enjoyed enormous success. As a political and literary review, it enjoyed a long albeit discontinuous run of some 35 years (ending in June 1978), being published weekly, monthly, and sometimes even daily. On occasion, its religious content incurred the wrath of government ministries and the courts, and Kısakürek was forced to suspend operations in order to avoid censorship and, of course, imprisonment. Büyük Doğu was first ordered to close in May 1944 for publishing this saying by Muhammad: ‘Do not follow those who do not follow God.’22 In the months leading up to the crucial elections of 1950, which brought the Demokrat Parti (Democratic Party, DP) to power and ended the one-party regime, Büyük Doğu became a political association, Büyük Doğu Cemiyeti (28 June 1949). The following year, seven branches were opened in various cities in Anatolia until it was closed by court in 1951. The periodical review continued unabated, acting as a catalyst of young conservative, intellectual discontent with the ruling Kemalist modernist project’s apparent lack of respect for the religious sentiments of the citizens, as well as a platform from which to denounce an endemic lack of moral rectitude in Turkey. For Kısakürek, the road to political and social reform was one of greater religious purity: Büyük Doğu is an officer under Islam’s orders… Büyük Doğu is not a new mezhep [school of jurisprudence] inside Islam, nor a new door of içtihat [independent interpretation]… It is only a passageway to the purest and original Islam in the certain and uncompromising frame described by the expression ‘Sunnet ve Cemaat Ehli.’23 Part of this attitude derived from an orientalist romantic conceit that identified spiritualism with the East and materialism and oppression with the West. According to this view, Turkish Muslims would be wise to orient themselves to the East once again and rediscover their religious identity, rather than continue to be what Kısakürek called ‘monkeys with ties’ and mere imitators of a corrupt world.24 The evolution of Turkey towards a multi-party system and Kısakürek’s subsequent affiliation with the DP and its leadership did not make him immune from the law. In 1952, he was jailed for a year and a half for the attempted murder of the journalist Ahmet Emin Yalman. Yalman had been the target of severe criticism by Büyük Doğu for his Communist sympathies and for being a dönme or ‘secret Jew.’25 Eventually, Kısakürek was acquitted of the charge, which was followed by other charges that were also overturned. During that

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decade, what came to be known as ‘The Malatya Episode’ seriously damaged relations between Islamists, nationalists, and the ruling DP, which, in turn, led to the creation of separate nationalist and Islamist political organizations. The 1960 coup found Kısakürek once again on the wrong side and he served a short jail term.26 In 1964, Büyük Doğu resumed its publishing and cultural activities. Under the direction of his son Mehmet, Büyük Doğu has gone on to become a publishing house of conservative Islamic works and the writings of Kısakürek. Kısakürek’s Political Activism and Religious Radicalism: The 1970s After the 1960 coup, Kısakürek supported the Justice Party of Süleyman Demirel, scion of the DP, despite his concerns about Demirel’s ties to Freemasonry. However, his true loyalties stayed with the Islamist party and titular head of political Islam in Turkey, Necmettin Erbakan. The National Order Party and later the National Salvation Party were seen as the first great opposition to the CHP and as representing conservative values. It was also the first time a political movement in modern Turkey had a religious or Islamic character. Many of the party’s founders moved to it from Büyük Doğu circles. However, it was not long before Erbakan and his party proved too open to compromise for Kısakürek. In January 1974 when Erbakan became VicePrime Minister in a CHP government led by Bülent Ecevit, allegations of political corruption confirmed his worst suspicions.27 Kısakürek, through Büyük Doğu, had kept the lines of communication open with the rightwing Nationalist Action Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) since 1969. His dissatisfaction with Erbakan eventually caused him to ally himself with the MHP in hopes of forming a religious-nationalist coalition. In the elections of 1977, Kısakürek openly supported the MHP and its strong militarist, nationalist, and anti-Communist platform. The party leader Alparslan Türkeş rejected liberal economic reforms in favor of economic solidarity and intended to ‘save the Turkish nation from the status of beggar.’ Islamists and militarists hoped to use each other to achieve power. Kısakürek believed that the ülkücüs (idealists), the militants of the nationalist party, had the necessary instruments of action, whereas the MTTB, the students union established in 1916 and since 1967 strongly nationalist, had the necessary moral sensibility to keep them in line.28 The 1980 coup brought a quick end to all such political bipartisanship. In any case, one suspects that it would not have lasted long given Kısakürek’s inability to compromise on principles and his commitment to what he has termed ‘ya hep ya hiç’ [all or nothing] and ‘ya ol ya öl’ [be or die].’ 29

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In the 1970s, Kısakürek inevitably had to deal with nationalism. In a collection of conferences he reaffirmed that Islam advocated a ‘spiritual nationalism’, which was the greatest bound between Muslim societies and which created equality between its members regardless of their race or origin. ‘In fact—he affirms in another work—according to Islam there are only two nations: Muslims and non-Muslims.’30 Muslims form a united nation (ümmet) defined by its religion. However, after the Arab, Kurdish, and Albanian insurrections against the Ottomans, ‘Turkishness appears…and from the point of the service to religion it can pretend some privileges. In this case we cannot define [Turkishness] as sin.’31 Turkish nationalism was the response to the emergence of other nationalisms, which fragmented the Ottoman Empire. According to Necip Fazıl, Turkishness (Türklük) is inevitably linked to Islam. In fact, he advocated the inseparable link between Muslim identity and Turkish national identity: ‘if the aim is Turkishness, so long as it is Turkish-Muslim, it is Turkish.’32 For Necip Fazıl, the Turks constituted a great Muslim nation unto themselves, leading Arabs and Persians in the creation of the greatest political experiment in world history—the Ottoman Empire—in which Turks reached the height of civil and religious maturity.33 Consequently, when the religious light of the Ottoman Empire was extinguished by Western political chicanery, he believed that darkness fell upon the entire Muslim world; and so, only when Turkey will return to her former glory, the light will shine upon the Muslim world once again.34 With the greatest confidence in his fellow Turks as the greatest lovers of God and His Prophet, the Turkish soul filled one with intense mystical love (aşk), and created an empire devoted to the promotion of the true faith in which race was not a factor.35 Büyük Doğu can be seen as an attempt to create the fatherland, which included Anatolia and Thrace, but also a holy land that would be wholly Muslim and wholly Turk and ‘cleansed’ from what he called the ‘traitor and gloomy components represented by the Jews and Dönme.’36 Here the influence on Kısakürek—and, as will we shall see below, on Topçu—of early twentieth-century French conservative nationalism is evident: they share the discourse of a nation threatened with death, undermined from within by secular forces and Jews as well as by extreme political ideas. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek died on 25 May 1983. His funeral was attended by a large crowd. Among those in attendance were two Turkish Islamist Prime Ministers, Turgut Özal then in power and a young Recep Tayip Erdoğan.

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Nurettin Topçu Nurettin Topçu was born in 1909 in Istanbul as Osman Nuri Topçu.37 His father was a cattle trader who immigrated to Istanbul from the eastern city of Erzurum. His grandfather participated in the defense of Erzurum against the Russians, manning a cannon and hence the surname, ‘Topçu’, which means ‘cannoneer.’ In 1928, he graduated from high school and also won a scholarship to study philosophy in France. Before enrolling at the University of Strasbourg, he studied at the Bordeaux secondary school, where he became a close friend of the Catholic philosopher Maurice Blondel, author of the book L’Action (redolent of the title he chose for his periodical review, Hareket, which Topçu started in Izmir in 1939). In 1930, he moved to Strasbourg and obtained a degree in philosophy. In the mean time, Topçu gave Turkish lessons to Louis Massignon. The famous Christian Orientalist had a profound influence on the young Topçu and his study of Islamic mysticism in particular. In 1934, he graduated with PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne in Paris— the first Turkish student to do so—after successfully defending a dissertation, entitled Conformisme et révolte, which would be published the same year.38 The influence of Blondel, Massignon, and also Bergson on his thinking cannot be underestimated, in particular Blondel’s apology for Christianity and Bergson’s ideas concerning morality and mysticism as two modern, European avenues from which to criticize the logical positivism that had spread like wildfire among Turkish intellectuals and politicians. While in France, he established good relations with two conservative students of note, Ziayeddin Fahri Fındıkoğlu and Remzi Oğuz Arık, who went on to become leading figures of Anadoluculuk (Anatolian Turkish Nationalism) and defenders of the Anatolian peasantry. Returning to Turkey in 1935, he accepted a position as professor of philosophy at the Galatasaray lycée and married Fethiye Ulaş, daughter of opposition party politician and family friend Hüseyin Avni (Ulaş).39 However, because he refused to succumb to pressures to graduate a group of undeserving students, he was transferred to Izmir where he lived and worked for many years. A controversial publication alienated him from the larger and decidedly secular academic community and confined him to Denizli where he met Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, who was on trial there from 1943 to 1944 for his religious activities. Topçu eventually returned to Istanbul where he taught in both the secular and religious school systems. Like Kısakürek, Topçu found spiritual sustenance in the teachings of a Sufi master, Abdülaziz Bekkine, a Nakşibendi şeyh, who influenced Tupçu and an entire generation of like-minded conservatives, as well as bureaucrats and politicians like Turgut Özal and Necmettin Erbakan. The tarikat to which

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he now seemed indentured had officially been outlawed ten years earlier, operating unbeknownst and beneath the legal radar. Topçu recalled that ‘my master took me from the pit of doubt and guided me to the heights of faith. [...] I found in him what I have not found in Europe.’40 Topçu eventually distanced from the confraternity because he did not recognize the authority of Bekkine’s successor, the charismatic Mehmet Zahid Kotku. By the 1950s, Topçu was actively involved in nationalist associations such as the Komünizmle Mücadele Derneği (Association for the Struggle Against Communism), the MTTB, and above all, the Türk Milliyetçiler Cemiyeti (Association of Turkish Nationalists, TMC) where he defended his vision of Anatolian nationalism—a mixture of strong Islamist religious values and more than a dash of Turkish nationalism. The attempted murder of the Malatya journalist, Yalman, was also blamed on the TMC by the DP leader, Menderes, and by state officials, which eventually led to its closure in 1953 because of its anti-Kemalist and anti-revolutionary positions. In a statement for the TMC, Topçu wrote: For the first time in this continent, you imitate Nero. After he burned Rome’s Christian neighborhoods, telling Romans ‘the Christians are burning our city’, Nero gave to the ferocious beasts of the circus those innocents that for the first time glorified the name of ‘the only God.’ We walk on the path of our great Prophet who answered with tears and the lightening of revolt to those who were inviting him to relinquish the holy mission entrusted him by God: ‘Even if they put the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left hand, I would not abandon it.’ We gave our promise to the people! We gave our promise to the conscience! We gave our promise to God! We will not lean, we will not go back and so long as the last cell of our brains survives, we will not relinquish this holy mission.41 In 1954, Topçu helped to establish a similar association to replace the TMC, the Milliyetçiler Derneği (Nationalists’ Association). Many Islamist and nationalist intellectuals, such as Ali Fuat Başgil, Peyami Safa, İsmail Hami Danişmen, Şevket Eygi, Tarık Buğra, and Mehmet Kaplan, joined the association and participated in its activities, giving public speeches. His earlier 1953 statement had elevated him to a position of leadership within the movement. With his periodical, he promoted a new Turkish nationalism intertwined with Islam and in contraposition to secular Kemalist nationalism. However, by 1964 the national congress in Istanbul distanced itself from the author; Topçu’s attempts to harmonize spirituality, nationalism, and socialism

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sounded then too much like communism, so much so that he was physically assaulted during the meeting. Left with no other choice, Topçu established yet another nationalist association in 1966, Türkiye Milliyetçiler Cemiyeti (Association of the Nationalists of Turkey), which resumed publication of his periodical review.42 Kısakürek also bitterly criticized him for his sympathies for socialism: ‘in some conferences I almost felt extreme aversion [for him] more than a desire to scold him.’43 Topçu’s disciples attempted a humorous defense of their teacher from Kısakürek’s accusations by holding a trial on the pages of Hareket,44 which ended with a reprimand for his baseless accuser. Despite similarities, the two authors came together few times and enmity prevailed. After the 1960 coup d’état, Topçu joined the ranks of the Justice Party. In the 1961 election, he was also a candidate in the constituency of Konya, but failed to be elected to the Senate. Soon after, in order to dedicate himself more fully to the business of propagating his Islamist and nationalist ideas, he abandoned politics altogether. He also condemned all the attempts to establish political parties on nationalist or religious values. Unlike Kısakürek, Topçu never knew what it felt like to the come close to achieving real political power, not being in league with Erbakan’s party or a major player in the nationalist party politics of the 1960s and 1970s. After 1964, he dropped out completely from the political scene out of disgust. His experience with the secular academy proved no less problematic for him. His valiant attempt at an academic carrier ran afoul of petty ideological skirmishes inside the Turkish academia. He earned the title of profesör with a thesis on Bergson45 but until his retirement in 1974 he would never land a respectable, tenured position because of his religious beliefs and progressive philosophical and political views. Nurettin Topçu died, prematurely, on 10 July 1975 from the effects of pancreatic cancer. Hareket46 Compared to Kısakürek, Topçu took more of an academic approach. His ideas were more moderate and less militant, and he preferred conferences and symposia as a sort of a different kind of sohbet. His periodical review, Hareket, published its first issue in February 1939, constituting the first Islamist review to be published after Sebil’ür-Reşad, banned in the crackdown on Islamist activities and religious opposition associations in 1925. Hareket would come under the same ban after just seven months because of a Topçu article criticizing the one-party system, but was allowed to resume publishing in 1942 only to be shut down again the following year. With the rise of the multiparty system, things did not improve very much for Hareket. With the censure of

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the TMC and a DP deeply suspicious of Topçu and his journal, it ceased operations again in 1953. From 1966 until 1974, it proceeded unencumbered for the most part, and the publishing house and periodical review were taken over in 1977 by Topçu’s disciples, when its name was changed to Dergah. Hareket was certainly a platform for budding conservative writers, academicians, and future politicians. Mustafa and İsmail Kara, D. Mehmet Doğan, Süleyman Uludağ, and Ali Birinci are some of those scholars raised on Hareket; Ali Bulaç, Yaşar Nuri Öztürk, Mustafa Kutlu, and Tarık Buğra are some of the contemporary Islamists who worked for the review in their early career. In 1969, looking back on his work of the past thirty years, Topçu wrote in Hareket: In the last two centuries, currents of materialism, positivism, sociologism, and pragmatism have paralyzed the spirit of entire generations. However, [as we tried] to show that similarly to the divine intuition of Yunus, who said ‘there is me and what is inside me’, the mind’s sun can also warm the heart, we got inspiration and stimulation from Yunus and Mevlana as well as Pascal and Blondel.47 Clearly, the mandate was to harmonize the wisdom of claimed Turkish master-mystics (Yunus Emre and Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi) with that of contemporary, Western philosophy. Related to this was a strong undercurrent in Hareket circles of Ottomanism, understood as the natural continuation of the universal and interfaith vision of the Prophet and his companions. Consequently, they promoted a process of rediscovery and re-evaluation of the lost Ottoman past through research and academic collaboration. The implication for Turks, according to Topçu, was a new identity and an alternative to Kemalism. Topçu’s Historical Rationale for a New Turkish Nationalism According to Topçu’s reading of Middle Eastern history, in the eleventh century, nomadic and newly Islamized Turkmen invaded Anatolia, mixing with the peasant Hittite population. From these two peoples came the Anatolian population and the Turks. The conditions of nomadic life and harsh living conditions of Central Asia added greatly to the physical strength of the Turkmen tribes. The Hittites, for their part, had a long agricultural tradition with strong links to the soil. They were subjugated by Hellenism, which kept them in the darkness of submission throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods. It was the light of Islam brought by the Turkmen tribes that gave to Anatolia the strength to recover and rediscover their lost sense of millenarian

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destiny. ‘The entry of Islam into Anatolia’, he wrote, ‘announced the beginning of our national history.’48 The battle of Manzikert in 1071 CE. symbolized for Topçu the moral as well as military superiority of Islamic Anatolia over that of the Christian world and thus the beginning of Turkish history.49 Certainly, there is no historical or archaeological proof for this. More importantly, however, this thesis flew in the face of the overtly racist Kemalist doctrine and Güneş Dil Teorisi50, which held that the Hittites descended from Turks, the purer of the two races and most certainly not of uncertain ancestry or mixed blood. Topçu’s formulation itself involved an element of racism since it saw Turks to have descended from two equally ‘Turkic’ populations. Still, it did not conform very well to the Pan-Turkish understanding conception of a Central Asian root race. Topçu’s rejection of the latter scenario undoubtedly had something to do with the inability or unwillingness of Turkish Islamists in general to accept the idea of a specifically Turkish jahiliyyah or ‘Age of Ignorance’ pre-Islamic pagan past, which the Qur’an associates with preIslamic Arabia. One of the harshest criticisms of Kemalism by Topçu concerned its refusal to acknowledge the leading role of religion in shaping national identity and its denial of the importance of Islamic-Turkish experience. Indeed, Islam gave to the Turks the necessary spiritual strength and morality that made them great. On the other side, Turks made Islam more powerful: For centuries, from the Great Wall of China to the Byzantine Empire, a heroic people on horseback were waiting for heaven to open its doors in a lucky moment. A race that heroically rides and bravely uses his sword, with a heart full of compassion, life and joy, could not fully express itself inside the spiritless and narrow pattern of the sorcerers’ cult called Shamanism. It needed the doors of hope to infinity, a faith thirsty of eternity, and an ocean of fulfilling love. The Turks found this ocean in Islam. In Islam Turks found themselves; they found the lifestyle that would express fully their qualities. The union of Islam and Turks gave birth to perhaps the grandest marvel of world history.51 Arab revolt against and Albanian independence from the Ottoman Empire were, and still are, cited as the main events that fractured the unity of Muslims along purely religious lines devoid of racial and political considerations. As Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, a pan-Turkish author very popular among nationalist circles in the 1960s explains: ‘Islamic unity and brotherhood is a groundless fear. Even in the eras when religion was the founding principle, it did not appear. Now, after so many episodes of treason and enmity, it will never

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appear.’52 By ‘episodes of treason’ he meant the Albanian Muslims who fought against the Ottomans during the Balkan Wars and the treachery of the Arabs in World War I. Both had a profound effect on a shift in Islamist nationalist thinking from Pan-Islamism and toward something more overtly and narrowly defined as Turkish nationalism. For Topçu, then, rural Anatolia represented the salvation of both Turkey and Islam: Sweetened with love [aşk], this man [Turkish Muslim] awaits prosperity. Others who realize their work as hand in hand combat with other men or with social institutions, live a life of perpetual politics; it is a life of calculations and deceit. The farmer [by contrast] does not make politics; he works with love. Patience nourishes his love. He gains from his own labor and not from gambling. For this reason, we find in him an abundance of spiritual life, higher than the moral of commerce.53 Rural life is free of the moral evils endemic to the modern economic system, and is more in accord with the original, spiritual purity of human concourse: ‘not because the farmer is the first producer,’ Topçu writes, ‘but because he produces without politics and gambling. In other words because he has morality, he deserves [to be regarded as] the vanguard. For this reason he must represent our model.’54 The most debated and yet intriguing of Topçu’s ideas is his notion of a ‘Muslim Anatolian Socialism.’ Topçu may have been misunderstood by many of his religious and political colleagues, but there is no ambiguity about his anti-capitalist rhetoric and condemnation of big business. However, rather than socialism as commonly understood, his economic theorizing resembles that of the Committee of Union and Progress and Italian corporatism (in which he was particularly fascinated). Indeed, he considered private property to be a holy right, but in moderation, and he thought it a natural role for the state to guard against excess inequality and to regulate the economy to that end: ‘Topçu’s socialism has a non-economic function and foresees mainly a romantic étatism that moves from moral motivations. The state would patrol the economic market as a moral police, but by no mean would it be an economic power.’55 Topçu also thought that the old Ottoman guild system (lonca) was best equipped to limit the strength of the big industrial capitals, namely by moderating inequality, determining the standard of goods, fixing prices in order to avoid competition, and making sure that all workers benefited equally from the market. Topçu also assumed that industrialization and urbanization ran counter to good moral, Muslim living, and that rural life lent itself to clean living and enlightened spiritual concourse. A system of farmed and industrial

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cooperatives, for Topçu, was certain to increase a sense of material and spiritual solidarity and thus prevent the amorality of competition. Nacip Fazıl Kısakürek, Nurettin Topçu, and the Republic of Turkey Despite the difficulties both Kısakürek and Topçu faced, they avoided whenever possible clandestine activities and violence. ‘Our path of emergence is legal,’ Kısakürek told a conference, ‘relying on the law we should not fear anything, and we should manifest ourselves in the room left free by the law.’56 That room left open by the law was education, which provided a good chance of reaching a large numbers of potential converts. Topçu and Kısakürek’s attitude toward the law seems similar to that of Arvasi, Abdülaziz Bekkine, and the Nakşibendi confraternities of the early Republican era. On 25 November 1925, as law number 677 became legislation, the National Assembly closed the last of the tekke and zaviye, access to the tombs of historical and religious personalities (türbe), abolished the employment of religious titles, and prohibited the wearing of clerical garb in public. However, religious movements endured. Abdülhakim Arvasi, for example, continued his private ministry as şeyh in a former tekke in the strongly religious Istanbul district of Eyüp. Other Nakşibendi şeyh’s continued their educational work unabated, too. Abdülaziz Bekkine and his postnişin Mehmet Zahid Kotku remained as local imams and employees of the Diyanet. Today, şeyhs also serve as professors in state universities where they enjoy some respect by the secular academy and symbolic capital in Turkish society. Arvasi’s words to Kısakürek when they first met are instructive: ‘The government did not close the tekke; they were already closed by themselves. The government closed empty spaces.’57 What the şeyh meant was that the secular crackdown on religious public space in Turkey only brought an end to the external not the internal, and certainly not the seminary of teacher and student. As Kısakürek would later write: [The tarikat] is established on the pillar of the sohbet. It is a path to the secret light that illuminates the hearts’ antennas as though invisible radio waves. This path does not show any sympathy to the carouses, the uniforms, the appearances, and the ceremonies even in the days held as holy by the state. Consequently, it is so sublime and so delicate that it is not possible to prevent it from reaching the heart, and [what it teaches] will circulate like money from heart to heart.58 Moreover, the Nakşibendi masters taught ways to live their religion despite the regime restrictions and the cultural taboos of republican Turkish society’s elites. For example, one of the eleven principles of the Nakşibendiye is the

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‘halvet der encümen’ (solitude in a crowd), which means that the Nakşibendi believer has to be inwardly alone with God and concentrated on His reality while outwardly immersed in the transactions and relationships that sustain Muslim society. In the words of one of the tarikat’s master: ‘Your hand engaged in work, your heart in love; your hand with profit, your heart with the Loved.’59 This principle is open to many interpretations, but it militates against the pious withdrawal from the world that is characteristic of parts of Sufism,60 and it can indicate the necessity for political and economic activity. Moreover, it brings the believer to a pragmatic approach toward secular society, keeping his faith and his heart pure even while engaging with an anti-religious society. Abdülaziz Bekkine, noting how his long beard typical of religious scholars is unwelcome in secular circles said: In order to save others from the quagmire in which they have lost themselves and keep them from committing big sins, it should be easy for us to renounce personal rewards [sevap61], and not hesitate in committing small sins, but only to the extent that these affect only ourselves. We need to consider the possibility of burning a little in Hell so as to may open the path to Paradise for others.62 A consequence of this approach is that there is no need to openly attack society and the state. Indeed, our authors’ key pleas are for a morality that is not oriented to overthrowing the system and establishing an Islamic state or a Muslim government (even if Kısakürek in his İdeolocya Örgüsü draw the outlines of possible Islamic state). Working to promote a specific kind of morality, Topçu opted even for a withdrawal from corrupted politics and the instrumental use of Islam by politics. The ‘halvet der encüment’ offers also a viable way to oppose the state, but in a way that is difficult to punish by law as well as would be more clear and direct threats to the system. Thus while Necip Fazıl had no problem in asking followers to stick to secular law, Nurettin Topçu affirmed the same point with a different justification: Even the most powerful weapon requires patience in its use. In recent history, those who had believed that this holy struggle [cihad] must be fought with politics saw their mistake. Our struggle must be fought on the fronts of ideas and spirit, morality and faith.63 An alternative to the ‘halvet der encüment’ is the sohbet, which invites companionship rather than solitude. Sohbet are ritualized utterance where the master gives talks but also meets his followers and discusses with them.

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Abdülaziz Bekkine usually held two different sohbets, one in the mosque’s garden and another in his home: one restricted to the closer and trusty talebe (students, followers), the other open to anyone. ‘He was extremely generous’—a follower remembers—‘his door was open all day long. Some nights he was with us. The remaining nights, at whatever hour, if you see in the sohbet room the light on, you can knock at the door and come in.’64 Sohbets provide the basic element of Nakşibendi practice, since they provide a structure in which one could read sacred texts and listen to the master interpretation, as well as bring together followers and create networks among them. At the same time, it was very difficult to pursue them legally. None of Abdülaziz Bekkine’s Friday sermon or sohbet were ever recorded (despite Topçu’s attempts which resulted in a severe admonition).65 Sohbets, then, were held generally in private houses. But Topçu and Kısakürek expanded the tool of sohbet: the review’s circles, with young talebe coming to participate in the realization of the periodical formed in essence a constant sohbet with the two figures. Conferences also were becoming instrument of a wider sohbet network. Here the subjects of debate were not exclusively religious and they were not occasions to simply read hadis or old mystical authors. However, all were attempts to promote a certain morality and a rediscovery of the past, in a proto-academic form with abundant use of selected Western (accepted and widely regarded) authors. This formula remains in effect today, in a much more capitalist environment, with radio, TV, internet, mp3, and so on, where the sohbet system is reproduced in a wider form. Thus the most followed programs on Islamist channels are erudite conversation of public intellectuals—even though it may be said that today’s professionalization and commercialization have transformed sohbet as a ‘consumer item,’ which compromises its earlier form.66 As the example of Abdülaziz Bekkine and Arvasi shows, sohbet was also a tool to approach young students and educate them with a strong Islamic morale and then let them be example and model in their environment. Again in the words of Necip Fazıl: We have to cure our cowardice!... We have to posses all historical, social, spiritual, and public intellectual aspects of the cause…the Ideology… In other words we have to put our intellects into work… We must keep away from opposing the state or government. … We are constructing the honeycomb cell by cell and filling it with honey… [we are] kneading a new learned and passionate generation…and transforming a new youth into a dough kneader… If God wills, we will be successful. For this reason we have to organize their spiritual and cultural focus. Journals,

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collections, films, theatre, conferences, and so on… In other words, to establish a spiritual climate everything needed must be shaped line by line, with the calculations of an engineer and the technique of a jeweler.67 Some aspects of the Turkish Republic helped in their own way in shaping the new approach of this generation of Islamists. Even if European—and particularly French—culture dominated Turkish cultural elites since the second half of the nineteenth century, both Topçu and Kısakürek themselves benefited from government scholarships to study in France. This experience gave them respectability in a society in which whatever was Western was in some way superior. And even a conservative author like Necip Fazıl came to adopt and like a Western educational style in criticizing authority.68 Moreover, while the Kemalist regime was perceived by our authors as a Jacobean system, intolerant and sometimes repressive, it calculated carefully how to use charismatic leadership, military power, or police repression. The republican regime tended to avoid unnecessary brutality and paid meticulous attention to organization and to formal legality.69 All repressions and persecutions went through courts (even special courts), which were nonetheless strongholds of Kemalism until recently. Rarely did the repression of opposition entail the use of unrestricted violence. After the passage to a multi-party system enacted by the Kemalist regime itself, opposition was confined to strict limits yet allowed. The debated article 301 of the Penal Code on offence to Turkishness—to give a contemporary example—is used by courts to harass authors and writers by exposing them to public ridicule and forcing them to go through an arduous legal process, which usually ends with minor charges or discharge. However, the process is public, gives the right to the accused to defend himself, and therefore involves the possibility that the accused may actually emerge stronger in the eyes of followers and the public. The process and execution of Menderes in 1962 did not strengthen the military junta and in effect popularized the image of the DP leader and reinforced the feeling of persecution among conservative circles. Today, Islamists in Turkey have become a powerful elite in the media, in politic, and in society in general. Their discourse is much more moderate on capitalism, democracy, and relations with minorities. Nurettin Topçu and Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, however, have profoundly contributed to shaping contemporary Islamism in Turkey. The historical revision of Kemalism, the method of spreading ideas, and the position toward nationalism are all common characteristics that originate in these two conservative public intellectuals.

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East Notes Ruşen Çakır and Fehmi Çalmuk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Bir Dönüşüm Öyküsü (İstanbul, 2001), pp. 21–2. Ahmet İnsel, ‘Altın Nesil, Yeni Muhafazakarlık ve Fethullah Gülen’, Birikim 99 (1997), p. 68. Rasim Özdenören, ‘Necip Fazıl Kısakürek’, Y. Aktay (ed.), İslamcılık (İstanbul, 2004), p. 143.Özdenören himself is an important living Islamist author. Şerif Mardin, ‘Kültürel Değişim ve Aydın: Necip Fazıl ve Nakşibendi’, Ş. Mardin (ed.), Orta Doğu’daKültürel Geçişler (İstanbul, 2007), p. 213. Originally published in English with the title Cultural Transitions in the Middle East (Leiden, 1994). Mustafa Miyasoğlu, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (İstanbul, 1985), p. 18. On 23 December 1930, a small crowd demanding the reintroduction of the Shari’a fired and killed the local garrison commander and two guards in Menemen (today in the Izmir province). The government reaction was severe, resulting in the hanging of 29 people and the attempted abolition of the Nakşibendiye confraternity, to which the organizer of the protest was linked. Mustafa Kara, ‘Farklı bir Münzevi Sıra Dışı bir Muallim: Nurettin Topçu’, Hece x/ 109 (2006), p. 151. Mardin: 2007, p. 224. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Tohum (İstanbul, 1991), pp. 71–2. On his life: M. Orhan Okay, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (İstanbul, 2000); by the same author İA², s.v. ‘Kısakürek, Necip Fazıl.’ The most important source of information on Kısakürek’s life, however, is his fascinating autobiography O ve Ben (İstanbul, 1998). Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, İdeolocya Örgüsü (İstanbul, 1998b), p. 64. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Sahte Kahramanlar (İstanbul, 1977), p. 203. Kısakürek: O ve Ben, p. 83. Albert Hourani, ‘Shaikh Khalid and the Naqshbandi Order,’ S.M. Stern, A. Hourani, and V. Brown (eds.), Islamic Philosophy and Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1972), p. 93. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Başbuğ Velilerden 33: Altun Silsile (İstanbul, 1993), p. 336. Kısakürek: Başbuğ VeIilerden 33. Kısakürek: İdeolocya Örgüsü. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Bir Adam Yaratmak (İstanbul, 1983). Özdenören: ‘Necip Fazıl Kısakürek’, p. 139. Kısakürek: Sahte Kahramanlar, p. 5. M. Çetin, ‘Türk Edebiyatında Fırtınalı bir Zirve,’ M.N. Şahin and M. Çetin, Doğumunun 100. Yılında Necip Fazıl Kısakürek (Ankara, 2004), p. 39. Büyük Doğu, 30 (1944). ‘The people of the Sunna and consensus.’ Kısakürek: İdeolocya Örgüsü, p. 12. Ibid., p. 18. Dönme is the name of a sect in Turkey formed by a group of Jews upon their conversion to Islam late in the 11th/17th century in emulation of Sabbetai Sebi

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whom they considered the Messiah. As crypto-Jews, they attract many suspicions in Turkey and are frequently at the centre of conspiracy theories. Between 1947 and his death in 1983, Kısakürek will find himself in prison eight times for religious and political crimes against the secular regime. K. Çağan, ‘Necip Fazıl’ın Siyasal Çizgisindendeki Evrilmeler’, Hece 97 (2005), p. 132. Çağan: ‘Necip Fazıl’ın Siyasal Çizgisindendeki Evrilmeler’, p. 133. On MTTB see Okutan, Çağatay M., Milli Türk Talebe Birliği (MTTB), 1916–1980 (İstanbul, 2004). Miyasoğlu: Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, p. 19. Kısakürek: İdeolocya Örgüsü, p. 33. Kısakürek: O ve Ben, p. 66. Ibid., p. 250. Kısakürek: İdeolocya Örgüsü, p. 72. Ibid., p. 476. Ibid., p. 239. Ibid., p. 337. On his life see: Mustafa Kutlu, ‘Suya Hasret’, Hece x/109 (2006): pp. 7–14. Nurettin Ahmet, Conformisme et Révolte: Esquisse d’une Psychologie de la Croyance (Paris, 1934); republished in Ankara: Nurettin Ahmet Topçu, Conformisme et révolte: Esquisse d’une psychologie de la croyance (Ankara, 1990). Topçu wrote pages of admiration to his father in law: Millet Mistikleri (İstanbul, 2001), pp. 9–63. Quoted by Ahmet Nuri Yüksel, ‘Mektep İnsan Nurettin Topçu’, Hareket x/112 (1976), p. 74. Quoted by İsmail Kara, Sözü dilde hayali gözde (İstanbul, 2005), p. 33. Hakkı Öznur, Ülkücü Hareket (Ankara, 1999), II, pp. 96–7. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Babıali (İstanbul, 1985), p. 391. ‘Mahkeme’, Hareket, vol. x, no. 115 (1976), pp. 62–82. Bergson (İstanbul, 1968). On the review Hareket see: D. Mehmet Doğan, ‘Nurettin Topçu’nun “Hareket”i’, Hece x/109 (2006), pp. 360–6. ‘Hareket in Otuz Yılı’, Hareket, 37 (1969), p. 4. Topçu: Yarınki Türkiye, p. 114. Ibid., pp. 110–4. According to the ‘theory of the sun language’, Turkish gave origin to all other world languages. Nurettin Topçu, Milliyetçiliğimizin Esasları (İstanbul, 1978), pp. 24–25. Hüseyin Nihal Atsız, Makaleler, III (İstanbul: Baysan, 1992), p. 474. Topçu: Yarınki Türkiye, p. 118–9. Ibid., p. 119. Süleyman Seyfi Öğün, Türkiye’de Cemaatçi Milliyetçilik ve Nurettin Topçu (İstanbul, 1992), p. 179.

132 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East Kısakürek: O ve Ben, p. 76. Ibid., p. 132. Ibidem. İrfan Gündüz, Gümüshanevi Ahmed Ziyaüddin, Hayatı, Eserleri, Tarikat Anlayışı ve Halidiye Tarikatı (İstanbul, 1984), p. 234. Hamid Algar, ‘Political Aspects of Naqshbandi History,’ M. Gaborieau, A. Popovic, and T. Zarcone (eds.), Naqshibandis, Historical Developments and Present Situation of a Muslim Mystical Order (Istanbul-Paris, 1990), p. 152. Keeping the beard is considered to be a source of sevap. Yüksel, Ahmet Nuri, ‘Mektep İnsan Nurettin Topçu’, Hareket x/112 (1976), p. 74. Topçu: Yarınki Türkiye, p. 13. Ahmet Ersöz, Abdülaziz Bekkine Hazretleri (İzmir, 1992), p. 32. Ibid., p. vi. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge (MA), 1991), p. 164. Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Dünya Bir İnkilap Bekliyor (İstanbul: Büyük Doğu, 1999), pp. 77–8. Mardin: ‘Kültürel Değişim ve Aydın: Necip Fazıl ve Nakşibendi’, p. 221. Metin Heper, The State Tradition in Turkey (Beverly, 1985), p. 57.

7 Islamist Intellectuals and Women in Turkey Fatma Tütüncü

On 28 December 2005 the women activists of an Islamist NGO in Turkey, the Capital City Women’s Platform, organized a press conference to criticize the marital advice pamphlets distributed to newly married couples by one of the municipalities of the Islamist governing party, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP).1 The pamphlets advise men to marry religious women who have never been in a conversation with other men (namahrem), who were good at housework, and whose educational, economic, and social status was lower than their own. The Islamist women in this case harshly criticized the obvious patriarchal content of the pamphlets, although they praised the idea of informing the young about the details of intimate and sexual life. Because the rate of divorce was increasing and families were fracturing, moral degeneration was seen to be a threat in Turkey. Further, given that the country was seen to be on its way to become part of morally loose, sexually uncontrolled, conjugally weak Europe, it appeared that counseling young men and women about the prickly path of modern marital life would be a timely intervention. It is not a coincidence then that a second set of marital advice literature emerged quickly, instrumentalizing Islam as a solution to the everyday quarrels among couples and imitating Western selfhelp books. These religiously blended how-to manuals, which include among other items of advice suggestions for maintaining romance in marriage, warnings against the risks of divorce and polygamy, and hints for buying and designing a perfect house on a limited budget, have become bestsellers among the Islamic public.

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The activists of the Islamist Capital City Women’s Platform clarified that any attempt to protect the traditional structure of familial, marital, and romantic relations would be futile, since regardless as to whether they were raised in a secular or Islamist environment, young women no longer internalized the traditional feminine roles and wanted to have marriages marked by friendship and equality. The Islamist women, first the interlocutors and later the intellectuals of Islamist revivalism in Turkey, have criticized the discourses circulated in those advice manuals because of their patriarchal and consumerist/instrumentalist contents respectively. Indeed, one of the main features of Islamist revivalism among women involved their resistance to both traditional religious patriarchy, because of its subordination of women, and modern capitalist/materialist consumer culture, which they saw as reducing women into sex objects. Islamist intellectual women have tried to produce an alternative discourse on being a good Muslim woman and man, on the meaning of marriage, intimacy, and coupling in Islam, and on the decent way of arranging everyday life within a secular order that is hostile to religious time/space understanding. They have raised a double critique against religious patriarchy and capitalist consumerism. They have criticized the Islamist male intellectuals who are blind to the needs and problems of women as well as the aloof secular intellectuals who are alienated from the common people demanding religious guidance in their everyday life. The Islamist women argue that they are the holders of peculiar (doxic/practical) knowledge, gathered through experiencing womanhood in private and practicing Islam as the shared reference point of ordinary people. Drawing upon Pierre Bourdieu’s argument that ‘[W]e have this mythology of the intellectual who is able to transform his [worker’s] doxic experiences, his mastery of the social world to an explicit and nicely expressed presentation’2 as well as Antonio Gramsci’s assumption that ‘all men[and women] are intellectuals…but not all men [and women] have in society the function of intellectuals’3, this chapter investigates the Islamist women’s function as intellectuals and their ability to transfer and transform pious women’s experiences and knowledge in order to bring about what they regard as a more egalitarian and just society. It explores the public discourse of a group of Islamist women on the private sphere, and their semiotic struggle over the meaning of pious femininity, marital and romantic relationships, and the rights, effects, and affects of Muslim women. Making religious women into public intellectuals in patriarchal secular orders involves many structural challenges, including not only the usual separation of private and public and the gendered division of labor, but also the privatization of religion. Traditional male custodianship of the religious

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realm and old patriarchal interpretations of religions do not help either. The modern worldwide religious revival,4 however, has transformed the discursive field: statements denouncing religiosity as a means of escaping socio-economic realities or as deceptive practices of wish fulfillment have lost currency at the expense of statements valuing the power of religious commitments in a (practical) political and intellectual sense. And religiously committed individuals, once marginalized, are now emerging as organic intellectuals, engaging in public matters, shaping public opinion, and providing normative guidance. Intellectual function here may be measured by one’s capacity to ‘transgress the discursive frontiers,’5 to critique ‘received ideas,’6 to ‘disturb people’s mental habits’, and to ‘reexamine rules and institutions.’7 In mapping the intellectual function of Islamist women in secular Turkey, where the religiously committed intellectual is no longer an oxymoron,8 I compare and contrast the discourse of a group of Islamist women with two varieties of popular Islamist discourse on women and feminism. The first popular discourse, which I call as culturalist patriarchal Islamist discourse, is best represented by an acclaimed male intellectual Ali Bulaç. The second discourse, which I call as instrumentalist Islamist discourse, is not specifically represented by a well-known intellectual group, but is nurtured by various religiously inclined people in best-seller self-help books. I proceed then to discuss the strength and limits of Islamist women’s discourse on femininity, housewifery, patriarchy, justice and equality. Culturalist Islamist Partiarchy Islamism may seem a discourse aimed at mobilizing various religiously inclined people for the same goal, that is the establishment of a society whose main reference point is Islam. Because of that apparent coherence of the Islamist vision, disagreements among Islamist communities, groups and individuals have received insufficient attention. In the Turkish context, Islamists have been divided particularly concerning the issues of economy, the state and gender. The quarrel amongst Islamists as to feminism, gender relationships and family matters dates back to the very early years of politicization of Islam in Turkey. This quarrel became perfectly observable when Ali Bulaç, an emergent intellectual figure in the 1980s, published a provocative article in the daily Zaman entitled ‘The Low Intelligence of Feminist Women.’ A group of Islamist women, whom I call the pioneers of Islamist feminist discourse, were offended by Bulaç’s misogynist discourse, who spoke as if criticizing and diminishing feminists but in effect degraded women in general. Despite the reactions from within Islamist circles, Bulaç continued his anti-feminist and misogynist campaign. Bulaç’s misogyny reached a peak at a symposium

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organized to commemorate Sayyid Qutb, where he gave a speech entitled ‘Accessing Woman and Knowledge in the New Millennium.’ According to Bulaç, modernity makes knowledge and women easily accessible and that is why both lost their value: they have become easy and cheap.9 For Ali Bulaç the West (and its feminism) exploits Muslim women’s needs and demands and destroys the fundamental belief system of Islamic societies. He argues that although women are troubled in all cultures, including the Christian West and the Buddhist East, only Islam is accused of discriminating against women.10 Bulaç systematically targeted feminism and feminist activists. During the celebrations of the International Women’s Days, he repeated the accusation of feminism as a threat to humanity because it challenged the requirements of human nature (fıtrat or fıtrah). Bulaç is more critical when feminist ideas are defended by Turkish women on the grounds that feminist ideas are foreign to Muslim culture. According to him, Turkish women who defend feminist ideas are in fact directed and controlled by the West (the center). In his argument, Western control becomes obvious in their activism and slogans, which are always imitative. In accordance with the mandatory framework of the center (the West) all feminist activities highlight that women are subordinated primarily by religion (Islam) or religiously oriented traditions (Islamic culture). He suggests that this mandatory perspective of the center finds spectacular illustration in the image of the Islamic world, which is symbolized by women who are forced to veil, who are not permitted to walk hand in hand with their lovers, who have no right to go to beaches with men, who have no control over their bodies, who have no right to abortion, who are not allowed to poke fun at male desire.11 Put another way, Western modernity obliges women to appear in public at the expense of a schizophrenic division in their sexuality and character. In the name of freedom and equality, Western modernity compels women to obey an unbearable destiny. And it aims to force the same destiny upon Muslim women. However, in Islamic civilization the protection of women is realized by the veil and by sex segregation. To prove how refined and elevated a civilization Islam is, Bulaç refers to the design of old Kütahya (a city in the Western Turkey) houses, which had two knockers on the outer doors: the big knocker on the left made a deep sound and was used by male visitors, whereas the small one on the right was for female visitors. Thus, the residents would know the gender of the visitor, and the proper person would open the door. For Bulaç, this was a sign of high and refined culture. Two knockers also signify modesty and respectfulness. Modesty refers to one’s self-consciousness of her identity and body. That is why faith and modesty are related: when one loses her faith, she also loses her modesty; when a woman totally loses her faith, she becomes utterly shameless.

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And he connects utter shamelessness to the feminist activists demanding equality in the public sphere: The women, yelling and marching in the streets, performing belly and folk dancing, and playing hide-and seek with the police, do not feel the necessity of learning this [high and refined quality of Islamic civilization]. The [Islamic and Western] worlds are radically different. The problem is that the enlightened militants, the secular missionaries who want to transform our society through the strong modern wind coming from the West have no tolerance for or intention to understand different lifestyles.12 According to the cultural Islamist discourse of certain Islamist men including Bulaç, overcoming the essential difference between the Islamic lifestyle and the Western lifestyle is neither possible nor desirable. The same goes for the essential difference between women and men. Because of the Western influence, feminist organizations provoke women against their husbands and against family values. Within the discourse of feminism on the family and couples, there is no patience, tolerance, and coping with each other for the sake of children. Thus couples are encouraged to resort to court after a simple controversy. Women’s organizations, publications against traditions, and the NGOs, he believes, incessantly provoke women against men, their husbands and family values.13 However, as he mentions in another article entitled ‘Who Will Look After the Children?’: Many Westernizers would be surprised to learn that the West is not successful. Western civilization has failed. There is no point in following their path. The Western attitude in raising children and in familial relationships has failed. Since childhood is the most significant period in the life span, a good childhood must be spent in a proper family climate, in the compassionate arms of the mother and under the protection of the father.14 Bulaç claims that no one, including the father, could be nearer to a child than her/his mother. In his argument, mothering is an innate condition and is stronger than any other basic human need or desire, including hunger, sexuality and security. Mothering is the most intricate craft requiring the mixture of talent, labor, emotion and mind. If the mother exchanges her role with the father, then the ontological balance of human beings would be overwhelmed. Despite the tedious and yet recalcitrant efforts of the ‘missionaries’ of women’s

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rights who do not produce anything but destroy the family by substituting motherhood with fatherhood, the difference between the mother and the father must be kept and maintained.15 Dücane Cündioğlu expresses thoughts in the same vein in his very provocative article entitled ‘The Islamist Women Who Cannot Make Marmalade.’ He explains that he suddenly recognized that many young men want to marry women who know how to make marmalade when a friend’s relative declared this demand clearly. The naivety of such a demand made Cündioğlu laugh and he reflected upon the problem and produced the phrase ‘the Islamist women who cannot make marmalade.’ The phrase, which started to appear as an Islamic graffiti embellishing the walls of conservative neighborhoods, symbolizes the break down of the traditional family. After all, the words ‘woman’ and ‘home’ no longer had clear connections: ‘our daughters started to solve their problems outside of their homes,’ he states. The marmalade or jam, in Cündioğlu’s imagination, connotes maternal love, the warmth of the family nest, and familial morality. However, even young women who are raised in pious families ‘no longer emulate their mothers or grandmothers because they believe that their worlds are different…Since these girls are growing up without eating their mothers’ delicious marmalade, they easily get bored at home, and ‘one should not expect much from these girls.’16 Within the culturalist Islamist discourse, the rising domestic ‘inability’ of young women in pious families is considered as the fault of a group of Islamist women who defend gender equality, who challenge domestic division of labor and who resist the roles symbolized and practiced by their mothers. Cultural Islamist discourse gives great significance to certain daily routines and the socalled traditional practices that contribute much to the maintenance of Islamic rituals and civilization. Accordingly, when a group of Islamist women challenge ‘the tradition’ and search for a clear-cut division between the traditional and Islamic on the ground that it is the traditional misinterpretations rather than Islamic requirements that produce subordinated Muslim women, the advocators of the culturalist Islam, like Cündioğlu, critically underline the futility and even the harm done by these women’s efforts. Cündioğlu states repeatedly that ‘Islamist women’ could not follow their parents because they abandoned any habit which is not written in the Qur’an, and did not pay much attention to the possible implications of seeing their mothers as pitiful creatures because of their subordination to their fathers and husbands.17 As these statements indicate, within the culturalist Islamist discourse, the very piety of a group of Islamist women is questioned when they resist the patriarchal division of labor and when they struggle for the empowerment of pious women in both private and public. Culturalist Islamist patriarchy attacks

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the modernism of pious women, which they believe distorts their religiosity as well as the good upbringing of future generations. Ironically enough, secular groups find these same women to be traditional and criticize their appeal for an ideology which sees them inferior.18 Cultural Islamist discourse promotes the idea that the modern project supposedly aimed at emancipating women from their slavery to male domination, has resulted in the masculinization of women and the feminization of men; and that it brought further burden and slavery for women by forcing them to be strong and active in all spheres of life. Since the process of men’s feminization is not proceeding as fast as the masculinization of women, modern women suffer from depression caused by increased responsibilities. For Cündioğlu, there is a correlation between the modernization and masculinization of Muslim women: when their resistance to modernity and secularization deteriorates, they become less womanly, less wifely and less motherly.19 Thus the strong anti-feminism of culturalists seems to be based on their perception of feminism as the masculinization of women, rather as a demand of justice and equality for women. Given this framework of culturalist Islamism, the gendered division of labor and the traditional complementary roles of women and men in family are articulated as one of the fundamentals of Islamic order. Bulaç particularly calls for ‘a new act of marriage’ amongst the truly Muslim women and men to serve as a model to other modern people who suffer from unhappiness and gender wars. Muslim women have to ignore ‘pointless feminist discourse, the gossip of the NGOs, the babbles made in the platforms’ and to follow ‘the path of God, who created human beings as women and men to complete each other.’20 As opposed to God’s path, Bulaç states, in the modern age men and women are regarded as enemies, although they are created from each others’ souls and bodies. That is why the man always inclines to the woman and the woman always approaches the man as clarified in the Qur’anic Nisa Sura. The woman is not the ‘other’ of the man but his companion. Whereas in the modern age the home is considered a place like hell, Muslim believers are still relatively free from this association; they still try to make their home like a place in heaven. Bulaç foregrounds the argument that Islam invites men and women to enact a marriage where there will be no competition and enmity. Superiority and power will be relative, not absolute, and the men’s and the women’s rights, liberties and responsibilities will be defined clearly. Familial morality, the role of women and men in marriage, and the division of labor have always been core subjects of Islamism in Turkey.21 However, recent Islamic anxiety over familial and marital relationships has generated new efforts to regulate the marital lives of pious people, as evidenced in the AKP’s attempt to criminalize adultery (to protect women), its My Family

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Turkey project, municipalities’ wedding and marriage guides, and calls by certain Islamist defenders of patriarchy for women to return to heavenly family nests. In what follows, I will focus on one of the most interesting alternative discourse that unexpectedly articulates Islamic motifs, a certain degree of gender equality, as well as a modern way of living. I call this a consumerist/ instrumentalist Islamic discourse, which popularizes a new set of advice on romantic love, matrimonial quarrels and familial relations, and which blends Islamic requirements with the type of advice disseminated in Western self-help and motivational books. The type of patriarchy conveyed by the instrumentalist Islamic discourse is quite different from that of culturalist Islamist discourse. Since the Islamism in Turkey is not unified, its patriarchal articulations are diverse. The challenge to patriarchal arguments from within Islamism can best be documented in the discourses of certain women’s groups, who appear in the public sphere as leading members of civil society organizations, columnist of Islamic dailies and independent writers. The Islamist approach of these women, which I will explore in the last section of this chapter, brings about a more radical critique of gender relations, capitalist consumerism and modernity. Instrumentalist/Consumerist Islamic Patriarchy Islamism emerged as an alternative moral and social order in the 1980s, when the left- and the right-wing political activism was crushed by the military regime. The political vacuum was slowly filled by Islamists and in the 1990s the parties rooted in political Islam gained significant local and governmental power. During this period, the anti-system character of Islamist politics persisted. In the 2000s, some leading figures of the Islamist circles abandoned their oppositional political position and their conception of a different world by articulating consumerist and individualistic norms of capitalism. It is obvious that long-lasting secular techniques have affected almost every community and individual in the country.22 However, blending the mundane with the sacred through an obsessive emphasis on ‘life,’ ‘love,’ and ‘success’ cannot be explained simply by external secularizing techniques, but must be detailed from within the logic of the Islamist movement itself.23 The authors of the popular books that familiarize common pious people with the love of life, money and success stopped signifying Islam as the source of peace and serenity for humanity. Instead, they started to voice how peace and happiness would be found in simple details, in the warmth of the family nest and in the true love of a man and a woman rather than in radical political projects targeting society as a whole. The most indicative example of this literature is Salih Yusufoğlu’s 33

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Suggestions for a Happy Nest. Speaking in the name of the unhappy majority, Salih Yusufoğlu states that: While hearts are squeezed by the vices of the modern age, brains are under the bombardment of negative thoughts, feelings are wretched and ideas are confused, we need some simple action. It is a deep contradiction that we are not able to direct our inner self to do these simple conducts, but instead we continuously point out the faults of others, making plans for reforming human beings and the world. We forget that the way of changing the world requires changing our own selves.24 In the 1980s Islamist critique was radical enough to address the imperatives of changing the world as a whole. The newly popularized instrumental Islamist discourse, however, proclaims the difficulty of changing even a simple habit in daily life. That is why Yusufoğlu’s book retains 33 ‘easily adoptable’ suggestions to make life happier and more meaningful. Although the title and the language of the book resemble Western self-help literature, almost all of the suggestions were taken from the Prophet’s hadith and habits, the most significant of which is to educate oneself to say ‘I love you.’ He maintains that the prophet requires Muslims to explain their love (of God) to other Muslim brothers and sisters. While the sentences citing hadith reminds readers of the sacred, the other sentences imitate the mundane character of popular Western happiness guides: ‘what about us, do we express our love to our mates, neighbors, or friends? It is as if human beings are afraid of loving and being loved. Perhaps they hesitate to express their love to their lovers.’ Yusufoğlu, acting as a relationship and communication expert, detects that people easily spell out their animosity and hatred. However, they do not give themselves the chance to speak beautiful words: ‘we prefer saying “devil” to “sweetie,” “get out of here” to “I am with you,” “Damn you!” to “You are great.”’ Reminding once again that the prophet obliges ‘us’ to express ‘our’ love to others, he asks regretfully: ‘how many times do we use these magical words [I love you] with our mates, children, mothers, fathers, neighbors and colleagues?’ His suggestion is easy and obvious: we should make our mouth accustomed to saying ‘I love you,’ after which he once again turns back to classical Islamic sources: In A’raf Sura (16th and 17th verses) Satan tells that he will do everything to pervert human beings from God’s path. Is it not because of Satan that human beings are faced with hardships? Let us together apply the Prophet’s hadith on love to our daily life and express our love to people and make God and the Prophet pleased, and Satan distressed. To gain

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the approval of God and the Prophet, to make angels envious, to deeply sadden Satan, let us proclaim: I love you.25 While some experts on happiness encourage people to voice their love to their beloved, others voice the suffering of people who need to be loved. In his I Need Love Mahmut Açıl argues that for a happy marriage spouses should know each other very well and should love, respect and trust each other. Happiness requires learning how to make someone happy, and in his account, the foundation of making someone happy is love.26 Similarly, Ahmet Mahir Pekşen claims that we would establish healthy relationships if we stop fighting about trivial things and be happy with simple things, because happiness in marital life is hidden in details.27 As mentioned, pious life and love coaches began to produce an immense literature on simple details of life and easy steps of finding and maintaining love. In the media these guide books are considered to be an attempt to heal heartbreaks with Islam. However, a scrupulous analysis of the material indicates that the radical assumptions of Islamism as an alternative to the lifestyle of capitalist modernity is unfounded, and that the fundamental claims of Islamism revolve basically around family values, marital relationship and gender roles—all of which are plagued by the values of the free market and individualistic marketing tips. While the market created its own experts to disseminate magical formulas for happiness and success in (marital) life, there are also other authors who already had recognition among a religious reading public, seeking advice about matrimonial quarrels. Among others, Yavuz Bahadıroğlu in his My Mate, My Child, and Me explains: I have seen that the cry for help is mounting in our most admired and proud institution, the family. Perhaps our sole mainstay, the family, is breaking down. The problem is not that of one group or another [secular or religious]; the problem is everywhere, the problem is everybody’s… The solution must not be sought far away in foreign formulas; the solution is with us; the solution is inside of us.28 Bahadıroğlu observed this fact through his experiences as a journalist and a radio programmer who listened to people’s questions on family quarrels. His advice books in this regard include The Man Searching for the Rose, which mainly recommends smiling and having a positive attitude towards life despite the fact that life is full of hardship. He argues that searching for the rose in a field of thorns requires ingenuity. The rose, as he explains, is a metaphor symbolizing both the Prophet and the divine beauties on earth. Quoting Mark

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Twain who states that all of us live in the huge garbage pile of the earth, but some of us look into the stars, Bahadıroğlu underlines that the problem is not stepping in the garbage, as all are equal on that point. Rather, it is seeing the stars that makes great difference: those who discover the stars (beauties) live happier lives for sure.29 In his Life: a Handful of Rose, a Pinch of Thorn, he assures people that whatever they expect from life and whatever they give to life, life gives them back the same.30 In Bahadıroğlu’s To Lead Life with Love, he attempts to define genuine romantic love, which is unconditional. Unconditional love is not interestbased or hypocritical, but rather simple and respectful. Conditional love is divided into two parts, love ‘because’ and love ‘if ’; examples of the former are I love you because you are beautiful, you are rich, you are famous, and examples of the latter are I love you if you buy me a house, if you buy me a car and so on. Neither is genuine love. Genuine love has no ‘because’ or ‘if.’ It has no condition, and it does not expect anything. Genuine love is love despite, as in I love you despite the fact that you are poor, despite the fact that you are unemployed. When people are able to find genuine love, they must do everything to maintain it. Bahadırdoğlu states that all married couples are faced with some minor or major problems. Not because some couples are free from quarrels, but because they know how to cope with them without hurting each other, some marriages are long-lasting. Soothing the hearts of people by explaining that if God gives a problem, He also gives the solution, Bahadıroğlu recommends that couples learn and respect the rules of argumentation.31 Similarly, Yusuf Ömeroğlu in Peace and Serenity Starts in the Family claims that family is a place of happiness for those who escape from the suffocating and tiring rush of life; it is a sanctuary for peace and happiness. Nowadays it is impossible to find someone who does not complain about how insipid life is, about how restless he or she is. Our God tells us that any lifestyle diverging from His approval will be a restless life. All our material and moral hardships are the products of a lifestyle that is not pleasing God. We should not forget that happiness starts in the family and then is transmitted to the whole society. The most important thing in family life is having peace and a clear conscience. The path for peace needs to be discovered and followed. Human beings can only find genuine peace of mind in the warm atmosphere of Islam. They can be happy only thanks to religion. It is impossible to talk about a decent individual and peaceful family in the place where there is no religion. Accordingly, he argues, the family must be a haven for living Islam, too. Ömeroğlu adds: ‘It is up to you to open the door and enter into the house of happiness.’ 32 Senai Demirci in his And Love Gives Marriage a Hand explains the formula for a loving marriage at a time when marriages are established and maintained.

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For Demirci, as for many other instrumentalist Islamists, happiness is ‘up to us.’ We can be happy if we want. He invites couples to establish an ideal home together. The magic formula is appreciating what we have and benefit from opportunities. If we do so, we easily recognize that marriage does not kill love; on the contrary it helps to establish love. His main suggestion is to exalt one’s spouse to the highest position one would imagine so that even if s/he does not occupy that position yet, s/he will get there thanks to her/his spouse’s encouragement and motivation. Paraphrasing a bestselling novel in Turkey called Love is Cooked in the Kitchen, Demirci suggests that his readers cook their love in the kitchen: ‘with the heavy fire of your love, the addition of the water of tolerance, and a sprinkling of mutual trust as salt and pepper, you can boil your relationship as soup.’33 At another point he states that in an age which favors speed and pleasure, relationships are not seen as essential. Marriage contracts are signed with the idea in mind that we can divorce if we are not able to cope with each other. Demirci suggests the Qur’anic Fatiha Sura as a treatment to ill marriages: Religion teaches us in Fatiha Sura that human beings should be grateful for the things given to them (hamd); second, religion teaches us to be merciful to those who live with us; and third, Fatiha teaches us to regulate our acts for which we are responsible in the Day of Judgment. When these three features mentioned at the beginning of Fatiha are applied to the relationship between mates, we understand that our mate is a gift for which we should be grateful, the one who is entrusted to us, that we should protect our mate with compassion, and that we should be responsible. We will be judged in eternity for our relationship in this life.34 Ahmet Kurucan, a journalist in the Islamist daily Zaman, performs a kind of matchmaking role by listening to the matrimonial problems of couples, suggesting practical solutions and offering religious guidance to families.35 Drawing upon his experiences, he wrote such books as We are not Playing a Marriage Game and later Do We Marry to Divorce? He refers to the age of the Prophet and suggests the Prophet’s solutions to today’s problems. He argues that since the reality of human beings does not change, the problems arising in the past and their solutions can be a remedy for our own problem. For Kurucan the increasing rate of divorce can be explained by people leaving a pious life as well as by a lack of religious knowledge. Referring to a wellknown hadith, ‘Of all things permitted, divorce is the most repugnant to God,’ Kurucan underlines that permission for divorce does not mean people should

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divorce. The point is to be patient and skillful enough to maintain marriages. Kurucan’s magic formulas to keep up relations include not exposing secrets in the family and realizing that only time will solve certain problems. However, some problems need urgent solutions. In this case couples should honestly talk to each other. Sometimes a few words would solve the problem. For this reason, couples should ask for help from experienced people or the experts. Families should not be too protective of their married children. If they interfere with newlyweds’ disputes, it is better that they be compassionate and positive and do not encourage divorce. And the last suggestion is to pray. Couples should pray to God not only when there is a dispute but always, asking for peace and happiness in their marital life.36 The book argues that the relationship in marital life is different from the relationship during engagements and honeymoons. The writer suggests that couples talk about their faults, lacks and expectations in a friendly manner by expressing a mutual understanding, respect and love. The husband and the wife are not rivals or enemies; on the contrary they are two equal parts completing a whole.37 As mentioned, the instrumentalist Islamist discourse on relationship, marriage and family life advocates a pseudo-egalitarianism of men and women in marriage, but essentially spreads a neo-patriarchal perspective. Polygamy or wife battering are discouraged vehemently, but male supremacy is reinstated through Islamic sources, which help gain active consent of women to be docile and submissive. Men are positioned as the breadwinners, emotionally and psychologically balanced, strong-willed and reasonable figures. Women, on the other hand, are portrayed as essentially domestic, emotionally weak and enigmatic beings who are in need of gentle care, soothing and contentment. Accordingly then, for instrumentalist Islamists ‘love’ appears to be a significant factor in building and maintaining marriage—despite ambiguity about how this much appreciated ‘love’ would emerge amidst warnings against friendship, flirtation and even long-lasting engagement between women and men. Marriage appears as a kind of God-given miraculous act that plants the seeds of romantic affection into the hearts of marrying persons. In the final analysis, although they encourage people to find love, success and happiness in this world, they remind readers that romantic love is not eternal and that worldly contentment cannot be equivalent to eternal contentment. Since this world is ephemeral rather than eternal, a feeling of dissatisfaction, discontent and restlessness is inevitable and will only fade away in the other world. As opposed to the neo-patriarchal discourse of instrumentalist Islamists, culturalist Islamist discourse presents romantic love as unreliable ground for such a significant institution as marriage. Marriage and family are central in the making of Islamic moral/cultural community. For this reason, modern

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culture—including its egalitarian and rights-based discourse—is seen as the main threat. Bulaç argues that modern culture’s encouragement of competition and dissemination of the ideal of equality for all women and men actually injures women. Triggered by the assertive values of modern culture, women are forced to be skilled both inside and outside of the home, thus doubling their burden. Modern men choose to marry women who have public careers outside of the home and yet are docile and industrious inside the home. Rather than criticizing the men who are unwilling to share the burden of life equally with their partners, culturalist Islamist discourse asks women to be domesticated. Neither the instrumental nor the culturalist Islamists consider that a genuine equality between women and men would itself bring happiness, protection and strength to women. Noting this common attitude among various Islamist and pious men, one of the well-known Islamist women Hidayet Tuksal cannot help but ask how many currently pious Turkish men would continue to be pious if the patriarchal interpretation of Islam that benefits them gave way to an egalitarian interpretation.38 In what follows, I will scrutinize a group of Islamist women like Hidayet Tuksal and Cihan Aktaş who promote a peculiar pious Islamist critique that seeks to move beyond the limits of previous Islamist and feminist discourses. Islamist Women as Intellectuals The Islamist women I explore here bring a double critique to culturalist Islamist discourse and instrumentalist Islamist discourse on love, marriage, and relationship themes. While culturalist Islamists like Bulaç criticize Islamist women’s diminishing domesticity and withering femininity, calls them back home to be ‘marmalade-making women’ and asks them to resist being ‘cheap and easy like modern knowledge,’ a group of Islamist women question the Islamism of patriarchal Islamist men. They argue that they try to read the practice of Islamism through the experience of women and to produce their unique knowledge on religiosity, leading an Islamic lifestyle, being a strong woman who is the subject of God rather than any other authority, including the authority of men (particularly the husband). The secular establishment in Turkey is considered to be a hindrance to pious women’s public appearance and agency. However, these Islamist women also underline the negative role of religious men who enjoy public life but define it as dangerous for women, since women in public life lose their abilities in private life. Yıldız Ramazanoğlu, among others, states rightly that when defining the outside world as degenerate, religious men do not consider whether that degeneration could be removed, whether men could be affected by it or how men cope with it and maintain their religiosity and decency; instead they call for women’s imprisonment at

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home.39 She underlines that respect for women does not mean imprisoning them inside walls but depends on the transformation of mentalities: today we all know that the woman behind walls is abused, is subjected to all kinds of violence. Respect for woman is possible only by her participation in [public] life.40 In this way, women would be driven to search for self-realization in private and public by constantly asking: ‘how should I live as a good Muslim in public and in private?’41 Defining Islamism as a movement aiming at leading a pious life in the modern world as well as to producing a unique knowledge on the life one leads, Cihan Aktaş claims that the Islamist critique has two dimensions. First is critiquing the fake and formal lifestyle imposed in the name of modernity, and second critiquing the models of life which are posited as the representative of religion, those nurtured by village culture and lived in shanty towns.42 Islamist women like Cihan Aktaş define Islamism as an alternative lifestyle, which foregrounds virtues such as authenticity, sincerity and self-respect. It also aims at leading a slow and simple life, through respecting and keeping the balance of nature, abstaining from the extravagant and searching for equity and justice. Aktaş argues that Islamists in the 1980s had a very simple lifestyle as a reaction to the bourgeois lifestyle and capitalist ethics. During that period, she further argues, women underlined their lifestyle by their veil and men by their beard and non-ironed trousers; they were slightly different from the poor and the subordinated people of the shanty towns. Her most significant argument is that the Islamist critique has different connotations for women and men in the movement. For many women in contrast to men, Islamism has a feminist connotation to the extent that it highlights feminine challenges and focuses on women’s questions. Tuksal, voicing the similar critique, argues that the segregation of Muslim women and men is mostly affected by the fitnah discourse.43 Tuksal, who has a PhD in theology, further questions the traditional religious books starting from the premise that women and men may desire each other if they speak to each other, if they come together, if they work together. She finds it very unhealthy to see all men and women as potential sexual partners. Criticizing the famous Islamic theologian Ghazali’s reflection on marriage in Ihya’ ulum al-din (Revival of Religious Sciences), Tuksal states: ‘Ghazali starts this section with “marriage is a kind of slavery for women.” His justification for this interpretation is that in the Qur’an God addresses the man with the title “Master” and automatically the woman becomes his slave.’44 For Islamist women with gender perspective, criticizing the traditional interpretations of religion is very important because claiming

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that ‘Islam gives all rights to women’ is not enough. They observe that in social practices femininity and masculinity are constructed through traditional interpretations of Islam, and there appears to be a hierarchy between men and women that requires women’s intervention. In order to empower women against patriarchal discourses of culturalist and instrumentalist Islamisms, Islamist women look for the genealogy of women in Islamic history, particularly the women who lived during the time of the Prophet. Among others, Cihan Aktaş’s biographical book on the Prophet’s daughter Fatima aims at making strong pious women visible. Aktaş underlines: Within the glorious history of Islam it is possible to see women along with men, who are pious, virtuous, who are the symbols of piety and chastity. The peculiarity of these women is that they had internalized the message of Islam and they had lived up to the image of the Islamic woman. Their names were written with golden letters into the history of Islam because they fought against numerous threats, barriers and enemies, and they confronted hunger, poverty and inevitable death, but did not compromise their identities. 45 It is not just Muslim women in Islamic history who are made visible. Other religious women coming from the People of the Book or women who are mentioned in the Qur’an are also made visible. Among others, the book titled Kadın Oradaydı: Vahiy Sürecinde Kadın Rolleri (Women were There: The Roles of Women in the Process of Revelation) that was circulated deliberately on 8 March, International Women’s Day, aimed at presenting the contribution and importance of women in religious history. The lives of twelve women such as Eve, Mother Mary and Fatima were narrated by twelve pious women intellectuals including Cihan Aktaş, Yıldız Ramazanoğlu and Sibel Eraslan. These religious women in history were chosen because, the book editor argues, they were involved in politics, resisted their contemporary conditions, and determined their own destiny. Some of them were full of love, some of them were full of hate, and they were all transformed with the help of divine power, finding good morals and becoming models for future generations.46 In searching for good models in the past, Islamist women frequently underline the exemplary attitudes of the Prophet as husband. In their writing, the Prophet does not appear as a public leader and role model, but his guidance in the private sphere becomes significant for challenging patriarchal patterns at home. As opposed to the cultural Islamist challenge directed against pious women revolving around traditional/modern dichotomy, Islamist women

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underline the hypocritical aspects of culturalist Islamist patriarchy. Tuksal, for instance, criticizes those Islamist men who are very scrupulous about keeping their traditional privileges while easily giving up their traditional responsibilities.47 She argues that certain pious men follow the path of the Prophet by conjuring up an image of him like a commander rather than one who helps his wives with housework, and hence, they have a kind of religious understanding which pointlessly flatters male ego. While Ali Bulaç underlines the necessity of bringing about Muslim marriage as a new model for modern diseases, Tuksal defends civil marriage contact, which is the most important component of Turkish modernism and secular Civil Code. To save young women from the flattered male ego, Tuksal recommends that pious women demand an official marriage contract rather than a religious one which does not secure the rights of women in the Turkish context.48 She clarifies that after having religious marital contracts with their girl friends, some religious men start to emphasize how serious the religious ceremony is and demand everything—implying sexually—from women. However, their egos are hurt over simple controversies, and they easily abandon (divorce) women.49 In a similar vein to instrumentalist/consumerist Islamist discourse, Islamist women also underline the importance of love, the romantic affection and attachment of a woman and man. However, Islamist women do not instrumentalize love or religion in order to maintain a successful life and marriage, but historicize these concepts. Among others, Cihan Aktaş traces the shift from the term ‘sister’ in the early period of Islamism to that of ‘lady’ after Islamists have gained significant power positions. As she explains, the sister symbolized a decent and innocent Anatolian girl, the daughter of Turkish soil, and a potential mother. The sister was the one who was innocent like Virgin Mary, modest like Fatima and tolerant like Rabia. Being a sister or being named as sister was the sole key that opened the door to political activism for women, because it also symbolized a transcendental attachment to the Islamist cause by forestalling personal attachments and passions. Cihan Aktaş questions the Islamists who sacrificed private emotions at the expense of public causes, not because the cause was not important but because private lives, personal attachments and domestic attitudes were not outside of the Islamic cause. She highlights the common mentality of the Islamists in the 1980s as follows: ‘apart from the love felt for the cause, what is the point of love, which would mislead and weaken the love for the cause?’ In her account, Islamists forbade themselves to fall in love and to be happy when there were Muslim sufferers around the world. The discourse of sister became popular precisely when romantic love was rejected. The Muslim could not fall in love with a man or a woman because s/he was in love with God.50 Aktaş further signifies

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that romantic love was also rejected because of its ‘modernist’ character. She harshly criticizes certain Islamist men who defined women’s desire to romance, just like hers for a washing machine at home, as a modernist attitude. To prove their passionate attachments to the cause of Islamism and to bring back fading Muslim community, as Aktaş observes, Islamist women had to hand-wash the laundry, tolerate polygamous marriages and live in extended families. Aktaş traces culturalist Islamist reaction to pious women as follows: when Islamist men were not able to find the warmth of the past, they blamed women whose selfishness and conformity to modernity prevented them from living as in the Golden Age of Islam. As a response, some women arranged a second wife for their husbands in order to prove that they were not egoist, conformist or modernist.51 When certain groups among Islamist men started to gain power in the political and economic systems, they started to ‘remember’ romantic love as they fell in love with the young women, who were no longer sisters but rather ladies that would be potential wives. The instrumentalist consumerist best-sellers prove useful at this period: they both give guidance for romantic relations and for maintaining happy marriages, without abandoning your prosperous order. Among others, Tuksal harshly criticizes men’s abuse of the permission for polygamy in Islam, arguing that their egotistic and hedonistic attitudes damage and demoralize women: I have some friends whose husbands got rich, and they feel very frightened [of polygamy]. I say to them: ‘why do you feel so helpless? Be strong. If you do not want such a [polygamous] marriage you should have the power to say no. Ask your husband if he takes the risk of losing you. You do not have to say that God permits polygamy. Let me give my permission too.’52 As many similar stories indicate, even if women know that they have the right to give or not to give their husbands permission for second marriages, in most cases they do not feel strong enough to resist because they feel powerless and helpless. Women are alienated from power, property and even from sexual desires. Men treat women as if they have no sexuality, while believing they have a right to desire other women. Another example given by Tuksal is as follows: Once one of my friends told me this: ‘when I was praying to God in the morning prayer I said, “God save both me and my husband from the wicked desires of our ego (nefs)”.’ Her startled husband said, ‘are you including your self in this prayer?’ My friend replied, ‘do you not think that I also have an ego (nefs)? Of course I pray against the evils of my own

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ego (nefs).’ …Another friend threatened to leave her husband and their three daughters and marry again if he takes a second wife. Eventually her husband understood that things would be very complicated, and he gave up his attempt at polygamy.53 Islamist women aim at transforming the patriarchal definition of Muslim women, and the patriarchal interpretation of Islam, which curtail the empowerment of women in private as well as in public. To the extent that the Muslim woman is defined as inferior to the Muslim man; considered to be a figure who has no reflexivity, no responsibility concerning her body, her feelings, and her reason; or a figure who can only achieve religious and moral worth through committing herself to an exclusive and blind obedience; to that extent we find Islamist women who are committed to change this by redefining the family, home and marriage and by being active in public life, reading, listening and reinterpreting Islam. As Aktaş clarifies, ‘we wanted to read all of the books in the world, so that we may disseminate correct knowledge and just words…to the people who need knowledge.’ But their pursuit of knowing and delivering the truth to the needy could not be possible within the unchanging structure of the family and the home. They criticize their mothers who were docile when confined by the rules of their fathers. For them, women and men are equal in terms of creation. According to their interpretations, all Muslims are equal in terms of religious and social requirements. However, in the regulation of social life gender roles are defined within the confines of patriarchy. They believe that it is necessary to change the understanding of the relationship between wife and husband, which seems to be a kind of relationship of worship, as if the husband is divinely superior.54 The Islamist women I studied avoid using the label ‘feminist’ in their self-description, but their critiques of the patriarchal interpretation of Islam express a certain similarities with the feminist Muslim theology developed by Amina Wadud, Asma Barlas and Kecia Ali. The feminist Muslim theology underlines the importance of reinterpreting the original sources, the Qur’an and hadith in terms of women’s life experiences, contextualizing the divine and prophetic messages, and bringing back knowledge of the significant women in Islamic history.55 Although they are not as radical as the feminist Muslim theologians, they are committed to disseminating what Leila Ahmed calls the ‘ethical (and egalitarian) vision’ of Islam56 by frequently reciting the verse, ‘Verily, the noblest among you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him.’ They argue that the measure of that consciousness is piety, awareness of God, and fear of God more than of social power.

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Conclusion In this chapter I have elaborated the social role of Islamist women as intellectuals in secular Turkey. I have indicated that the increasing importance of religions all over the world opened a space for religiously committed people to appear and function as intellectuals. I have argued that the predominantly secular and leftist character of intellectualism and the secular and leftist tradition of critique in the Turkish context curtailed the intellectual role of Islamist women. However, the historical convergence of Islam with conservative right-wing politics and its culture of obedience as well as the patriarchal interpretation of Islam have created greater obstacles for women to appear as intellectuals. What is at stake, in fact, are the potential and power of pious women. It is here that Islamist women seem more active than secular and/or feminist men and/or women intellectuals. I have analyzed Islamist women’s discourse on the private sphere, their critique of patriarchal and instrumentalist interpretations of Islam, and their struggle with religiously committed patriarchs over the meaning of femininity, family and equality in religious terms. I have done this by expressing the importance of shifting the intellectual focus from public to private, men to women, secular to pious and epistemic or theoretical to doxic or practical. Rather than reversing binaries, I have underlined the requirement of transgressing the discursive boundaries, which is also a primary indicator of intellectual activism. In operating as intellectuals, with a license to interpret the tradition, Islamist women frequently criticize the secular leftist intellectuals because of their isolation from the religiosity of the people. But there is always a gap between the religion of common people and the religion of intellectuals, between the Islam of common people and the Islam of the Islamists. In fact, every religion, to use Gramscian terminology, is a ‘multiplicity distinct and often contradictory religions.’57 The point then in creating an intellectual and ethical transformation by engaging in religious or secular discourses is bringing about full-fledged equality in appropriating rights and responsibilities in public and private. In a country where political activism and intellectualism have been articulated on the left, whereas religion and obedience have been articulated on the right, Islamist women seem to navigate a terrain where the principles of egalitarianism, equity and justice espoused in leftist discourse are articulated in the language of a faith that had always been associated with conservatism and tradition. 1 2

Notes ‘Gelenekseli korumak Ütopiktir’ (‘Preserving traditional is utopian’), press speech, 30 December 2005. Bourdieu states this in Bourdieu, Pierre and Eagleton, Terry, ‘Doxa and Common Life,’ New Left Review I/191 (1992), pp. 111–121.

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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

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Gramsci, Antonio, Selections From the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (New York, 1971), p. 9. Casanova, Jose, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago and London, 1994). Eagleton, Terry, The Significance of Theory (Oxford,1992) Bourdieu, Pierre, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (New York, 1999). Foucault, Michel, ‘The Concern for Truth’ in Foucault, Michel Politics Philosophy Culture: Interviews and Other Writings 1977–1984, Kritzman, Lawrence (ed), (New York, 1988). In Turkey as a secular Republic committed to the Enlightenment ideals in the Muslim setting, the word intellectual which is translated into Turkish as aydın mostly has signified the leftist, secular, Kemalist, progressive and the male figures. Islam has been articulated by the right-wing political parties and movements. There have been religiously committed intellectuals as indicated by Michalengalo Guido in this book, however they prefer to use münevver, reflecting their committment to the Ottoman Islamic legacy. Bulaç, Ali ‘Kadına ve Bilgiye Ulaşmak,’ (Receiving Woman and Knowledge) Zaman 18 September 2006. Bulaç, Ali ‘Dayak Yiyen Kadınlar,’ (The battered women) Zaman 10 March 2006. Bulaç, Ali, ‘Kadınlar Günü,’ (International Women’s Day) Zaman 8 March 2004. Bulaç, Ali, Zaman 14 March 2005. Bulaç, Ali, ‘Hudut,’ (Boundary) Zaman 26 February 2007. Bulaç, Ali, ‘Çocuğa Kim Bakacak?,’ (Who will Look after Children?) Zaman 16 November 2005. ibid. ibid. Cündioğlu, Dücane, ‘Reçel Yapamayan Islamcı Kadınlar,’ (The Islamist Women Who cannot Make Marmalade) Yeni Şafak 7 March 2004. Acar observes in her leading research on Islamist women that ‘Those trained in the Kemalist discourse often raise a critical question: what motivates women to participate actively in the propagation of an ideology that by definition relegates them to a secondary position in its fight against an establishment officially identified with women’s emancipation.’ in her article Acar, Feride, ‘Women in the Ideology of Islamic Revivalism in Turkey:Three Islamic Women’s Journals’ in Tapper (ed.) Islam in Modern Turkey: Religion, Politics and Literature in a Secular State (New York, 1991) p. 282. Cündioğlu, Dücane, Yeni Şafak 11 May 2001. Bulaç, Ali, ‘Yeni Bir Nikah,’ (A New Marriage) Zaman 15 March 2006. Toprak argues that ‘Islamism defines the parameters of Islamic community in terms of sexual differentiation of social and familial roles.’ in Toprak, Binnaz, ‘Women and Fundamentalism: The Case of Turkey’ in V. M. Moghadam (ed.)

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective (Oxford, 1994), p. 293 Tuğal, Cihan, ‘Islamism in Turkey: Beyond Instrument and Meaning,’ Economy and Society 31 (2002),pp. 85–111. For an elaborate socio-political analysis of the transformation of the Islamists in Turkey, see Tuğal, Cihan, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (Stanford, 2009). Yusufoğlu, Salih, Mutlu Bir Yuva Için 33 Teklif (Istanbul, 2006). ibid. Açıl, Mahmut, Sevgiye İhtiyacım Var (Istanbul, 2005). Pekşen, Ahmet Mahir, Çöpten Kavga Çiçekten Mutluluk (Istanbul, 2004). Bahadıroğlu, Yavuz, Eşim, Çocuğum ve Ben (Istanbul, 2001). Bahadıroğlu, Yavuz, Gülü Arayan Adam (Istanbul, 2002). Bahadıroğlu, Yavuz, Yaşam Bir Avuç Gül, Bir Tutam Diken (Istanbul, 2004). Bahadıroğlu , Yavuz, Hayatı Aşkla Yaşamak (Istanbul, 2001). Ömeroğlu, Yusuf, Huzur Ailede Başlar (Istanbul, 2006). Demirci, Senai, Ve Aşk Evliliğin Ellerinden Tuttu (Istanbul, 2006). Demirci, Senai, ‘Evli Kalmak mı Zor, Boşanmak mı?’ Aksiyon 652, 6 April 2007. www.haber7.com ‘Evlilik bir ‘Evcilik oyunu’ değildir’ 10 July 2005. ‘Evli Kalmak mı Zor, Boşanmak mı?’ Aksiyon 652, 6 April 2007. Kurucan, Ahmet, Boşanmak İçin mi Evleniyoruz?(Istanbul, 2007). An interview with Hidayet Şefkatli Tuksal, Yeni Şafak, 7 December 2005. Ramazanoğlu, Yıldız, ‘Yol Ayrımında İslamcı ve Feminist Kadınlar,’ in her Osmanlıdan Cumhuriyete Kadının Tarihi Dönüşümü (Istanbul, 2000), p. 140. Meriç, Nevin, Fetva Sorularında Değişen Kadın Yaşamı (Istanbul, 2004), p. 227. Aktaş, Cihan İslamcılık Bir Hayat Tarzı Eleştirisi (Istanbul, 2007), p. xxii. ibid., p. xiv. As Ali and Leoman briefly defines fitnah refers to the conditions of chaos and conflicts amongst Muslim believers. Ali, Kecia and Leoman, Oliver, Islam: The Key Concepts (Oxford and New York, 2008) p. 39–40. Çakır, Ruşen, Direniş ve İtaat: Iki Iktidar Arasında Islamcı Kadın (Istanbul, 2000), p. 21. Aktaş, Cihan, Hz. Fatıma (Istanbul, 2007), p. 7. An interview with Elif Çakır, the editor of the book Kadın Oradaydı (Women were there). Akşam 1 March 2004. Aktaş, İslamcılık. The women and men have equal legal rights thanks to the new Civil Code. Religious marriage ceremony (Dini Nikah) is allowed only after official marriage ceremony, (Medeni Nikah). Please see Ayata, Ayşe and Tütüncü, Fatma, ‘Critical Acts without a Critical Mass: The Substantive Representation of Women in the Turkish Parliament,’ Parliamentary Affairs 61/3, pp. 461–475. Tuksal in Çakır Direniş, p. 22. Aktaş, Islamcılık, p. 6.

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51 Aktaş, Cihan, Bacı’dan Bayan’a: Islamcı Kadınların Kamusal Alan Tecrübesi (Istanbul, 2005), p. 11. 52 Tuksal in Çakır, Direniş, p. 26. 53 ibid., p. 27. 54 Aktaş, Islamcılık, p. 226. 55 For feminist theology in a comparative perspective, see Hidayatullah, Aysha, ‘Inspiration and Struggle: Muslim Feminist Theology and the Work of Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza,’ Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 25/1 (2009), pp. 162– 170. 56 Ahmed finds Islam’s ethical vision stubbornly egalitarian including with respect to the sexes. Ahmed, Leila, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, 1992). 57 Fulton, John, ‘Religion and Politics in Gramsci: An Introduction,’ Sociological Analysis 48/3 (1987), pp. 197–216.

8 Leading Arab Intellectuals in the West: The Cases of Mohamed Arkoun and Edward Said Thomas Brisson

One of the noticeable features of the Arab intellectual milieu lies in the significant presence of its scholars outside the geographical boundaries of the Arab world. History as well as recent events account for such a situation. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the figure of the ‘modern’ Arab intellectual has been shaped through a complex dialectic with the West, resulting in numerous missions and migrations to Europe and the United States. In the last decades, the political situation in the Arab world has reinforced this trend and has led many scholars to settle abroad. Our understanding of the social role of intellectuals in the Middle East shall therefore take into account the part played by these ‘intellectuals of the Diaspora.’ The two figures that are the focus of this chapter, Mohamed Arkoun and Edward Said, are sufficiently important, I think, to justify such an attempt. Both of them achieved international recognition as leading intellectuals capable of addressing Western and Arab audiences equally. Intellectuals ‘between two worlds,’ to borrow Said’s words, they owed this specific position to their intellectual legacy: they used Western theoretical apparatus to make sense of the contemporary Arab situation, as well as making an Arab voice audible in Europe and the USA. This chapter discusses how such intellectual positions were shaped. I argue that social and not simply cultural conditions that were instrumental to intellectual formation must be scrutinized. In this respect, the problem addressed concerns ‘non-Western’ intellectuals more generally and not only

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Arab intellectuals. When dealing with Indian, Asian or Muslim scholars, the academic discussion most often focuses on cultural implications, namely on how non-Western intellectuals have faced, or responded to, the West.1 The assumption is that cultural identities account for intellectual commitments: it is as members of a specific community (Muslim, Indian, Asian, etc.) that these scholars are supposed to talk, write or take position. Such is the case for Arkoun and Said. Arkoun’s career is often explained in relation to his origins: as an Algerian-born Muslim, the argument goes, Arkoun found himself, a renowned scholar, asked to take a position on issues dealing with North Africa or Islam. As for Said, his Palestinian origins are usually taken as sole explanation for his commitment to the Palestinian cause. In both cases, this discussion downplays the fact that Arkoun and Said were professors in Paris and New York; that they therefore had to cope with the balance of power in the French and American academia, but also that the audiences they addressed, and the bodies of knowledge they could use, were locally situated. I do not argue that cultural identities are not at stake in intellectual matters. Rather, that approach conceals as much as it reveals, by dismissing other explanations, such as sociological accounts of intellectual careers. As important as their Algerian or Palestinian origins are, to understand Arkoun’s and Said’s commitments we also need to understand their positions inside the French and American academy, the audiences they addressed, their use of specific references and theories and the different stages of their careers. To put it differently, Arkoun’s and Said’s intellectual role should be conceived less in terms of how their Arab origins impinged on this role, than on how their positions in Western academic fields gave them resources they could tap into to shape this very role. As will become clear to the reader, my thesis is premised on Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of field (1970, 1984). A scrutiny of Arkoun’s and Said’s positions in their respective academic fields reveals how their intellectual roles were shaped through structural and objective processes. The structure of the field may allow us to better understand intellectual positions, which, before acquiring global significance, are usually couched in locally significant sociological frames. To do so, I will analyze Arkoun’s and Said’s careers to show how, in each case, their intellectual commitment was determined in academic fields. I will return, in the conclusion, to some of the issues raised by this approach. Mohamed Arkoun: Shaping a Muslim Reformist Position in Contemporary France A French-speaking Berber Algerian born during the time of the French rule, Arkoun originally devoted a significant part of his academic production to

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issues of the Maghreb, and even after having started to tackle questions related to the Mashreq, he kept on stressing his North African identity. Eventually, as a public international intellectual figure, Arkoun has defined himself as a Muslim thinker and has sought to address an audience far beyond Arabs. His relation to the Middle East is rather loose, not to say confrontational, and it is therefore problematic to lump him with other Arab intellectuals. In this respect, he strikingly contrasts with Edward Said who, as an AmericanPalestinian intellectual born in Jerusalem, found a ‘natural audience’ in Middle Eastern societies. Nevertheless, the contrast between Arkoun and Said may help us get a better understanding of the social role played by intellectuals in the modern Middle East. Both intellectuals addressed Arab societies ‘from the outside’ but they did so from different local contexts, determined by different social, historical or political factors. In this respect, the contrast between these two figures is expected to shed some light on the processes through which intellectual positions have been shaped, and have gained recognition, between the West and the Arab world. The working hypothesis I will explore here states that Arkoun’s writings and intellectual involvement must be understood as the result of two complementary processes: first, a migratory process that brought him from 1950s colonial Algeria to the Parisian academia; then, an academic process through which Arkoun participated in building Muslim reformist thought. As will be discussed later, this second process is closely linked to the evolutions of the French academy itself from the 1950s until today. Arkoun’s migration to the West, and his remarkable career, were highly improbable from a sociological point of view. Unlike Said, whose well-off and cosmopolitan family was instrumental in his academic and intellectual achievements, Arkoun had very few economic and social assets. Born in 1928 in Taourirt-Mimoun, a Berber village located in the north of Algeria, Arkoun came from a poor family. None of his parents spoke French. He attended one of the very few French primary schools opened to Muslim pupils, which allowed him to escape the fate of most of his fellow countrymen.2 After joining the high-school (Lycée) in Oran, he entered the University of Algiers according to merit. There, according to merit again, he got a governmental grant to study at the Sorbonne, where he completed a PhD in Arab Studies in 1969 and passed the very selective agrégation of Arabic language.3 To a very large extent, Arkoun’s social and intellectual life has been, to borrow his own words, a ‘marginalized’ one.4 He was born during French colonialism and, as such, was considered a second rate citizen. He was marginalized socially and economically, as well as linguistically (the Berber language, his mother

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tongue, has been historically dominated in Algeria by French and Arabic). Arkoun made it clear that these biographical determinations have decisively influenced his understanding of the Muslim and Arab worlds. Because he was a Muslim himself, and because he directly experienced some of the most tragic events of modern Arab history, he could take a fresh look at the classical questions raised about the Arab world and challenge many ideas shared by his French Orientalist colleagues. Yet it would be misleading to assume that these biographical data alone explain the role played by Arab intellectuals in the West. It is much more fruitful to conceive of intellectual roles less in terms of scholars’ biographies than of the positions they have occupied inside specific academic fields. Biographical data (such as the fact of being Arab, Muslim, an Arabic speaker, a former subject of a colonial Empire and so on) do not directly impinge on the scholars’ works and views; if they do so it is because they have been reshaped inside the academic fields. It is most certainly relevant to ask, as cultural studies of science do, to what extend does gender or ethnicity shape scientific discourses.5 Very likely, if one follows this line of reasoning, there would be a loose agreement that a Muslim scholar does not view Islam exactly the same way his Western colleagues do (or, in this instance, an African-American scholar the history of slavery, or a Jewish one classical Jewish theology). Yet to limit analysis to cultural identity leads us to neglect what shapes the specific positions of non-Western scholars in European or American academic fields. In this respect, Arkoun cannot be understood only as a Muslim or Algerian-born scholar; he is also a scholar who was first trained at the Sorbonne and who occupied various positions inside the French Academia. As an Arab intellectual, Arkoun must be analyzed as the product of a certain French academic tradition that shaped his theoretical choices. It is therefore necessary to examine the evolutions of Arab Studies in France if one intends to understand how Arkoun first gained academic recognition in this field and later emerged as a major intellectual figure. When Arkoun started his doctoral thesis in 1956, philological Orientalism still prevailed in Arab Studies in France. If some innovative scholars, such as Jacques Berque or Maxime Rodinson, had begun to challenge its tenets, Orientalism was still a scientific tradition that could not be ignored. Part of the explanation for this abiding influence lies in the institutional structures of Arab Studies. In the 1950s, the most important academic center for the study of the Arab world was the Institut d’Etudes Islamiques (Institute for Islamic Studies) that Louis Massignon had co-founded in the 1930s. Two decades later, the Institut could be considered the very heart of Arab Studies in France, but its curriculum was still roughly the one set up by its founders.

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This is rather obvious if one looks at the main members of the Institut in the 1950s, who included scholars like Charles Pellat, Henri Laoust, Robert Brunschvig and Regis Blachere. All were Professors at the Sorbonne, directors of the main reviews and highly influential both in France and internationally. They shared a very orthodox conception of what studying the Arab world represented, and remained firmly committed to the philological study of Arab culture. Moreover, these scholars were dismissive of the social sciences and of the progress made by modern historiography, mainly the Ecole des Annales. Consequently, their views on the Arab world, albeit highly erudite, remained very conventional. Not only were they unable to catch up with the advancement of the social sciences,6 but they appeared incapable of grasping the changes which were affecting Arab societies in that period of decolonization. The paradoxical situation of the French Arab Studies in the 1950s accounts for the first positions taken by young scholars who, like Arkoun, started their academic career at that time. As mentioned, the Institut d’Etudes Islamiques could be considered a stronghold of traditional Orientalism; but it was also the most important center dedicated to the study of Arab and Islamic civilizations. In other words, any scholar who intended to specialize on the Arab world had to establish close connections with it. Further, especially in the 1950s when numerous young Arab students came to study in France, the Institut opened its doors to the most gifted in the hope of benefiting from their linguistic skills.7 Arkoun naturally qualified for the job and joined the Institut where he taught and collaborated with the orientalists while writing his doctoral thesis. This explains why Arkoun’s intellectual career started in a rather conventional way. Although he had first planned to write a PhD on the anthropology of modern Algeria under the supervision of Berque,8 he finally gave up the idea and found a more classical topic, namely the medieval thinker Miskawayh. The structure of the field of Arab Studies may account for this shift. In the 1950s Berque was not very influential in the field and his views— largely influenced by social sciences—remained unconventional. On the other hand, the Institut enjoyed a dominating position and appeared to be a better choice for a young scholar who, like Arkoun, was at the very beginning of his academic career. For these reasons, although he was not out of sympathy with Berque’s theoretical choices, Arkoun resigned himself to write his PhD at the Institut and chose a topic that fit orientalist expectations. Arkoun’s initial academic education was thus classical, showing a strong philological and historical bent. His later works as well as his involvement as a public intellectual bear the traces of this background. Even though he has tackled many questions regarding the current fate of Islam, he has always

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sought to explain the present events in the light of history. He has also frequently borrowed from the classical Islamic texts to defend his critical and reformist views. Arkoun’s first writings, too, far from being the groundbreaking works that made his reputation, remained orthodox. They did not seek to reach a large audience, as will be the case later, but were written first and foremost for his colleagues.9 What is more striking is that in these texts, Arkoun never engaged with the question of what makes the specific viewpoint of an Arab intellectual. Nor did he try to embark on a discussion on the effects of decolonization on French Arab Studies.10 Until the end of the 1960s, Arkoun was actually caught between two opposite positions: as a young Algerian scholar in post-colonial France, he was very much in favor of a more critical approach to the Arab world; but at the same time he had to cope with the expectations of the field which brought him to adopt a rather classical viewpoint. Further, during that same decade, Arkoun occupied low positions inside the French academy: he was first a teacher of Arabic in a high school and then an Assistant Professor at the university. He had therefore very little influence in the field and was unable to promote new ways of studying Muslim cultures. In sharp contrast to the following decades, he seldom got involved as a Muslim or Arab intellectual in public debates; and he did it extremely carefully the few times he thought it important to do it.11 Only in the 1970s did Arkoun become an influential scholar and a renowned public intellectual. Only at that time was he eventually able to fully develop the most innovative approaches that had remained latent in his works. To understand why this shift became possible requires examining the evolution of the field in those years and the positions occupied by Arkoun. After 1968 and throughout the 1970s, the French academic field went through a sweeping change, during which Arab Studies evolved from a classical to a more innovative discipline. In that decade, too, Arkoun was appointed to prestigious academic positions and therefore had the opportunity to develop his thought more distinctly. Those intertwined events account for the new intellectual role that Arkoun began to play. Our understanding of Arkoun’s intellectual career is first of all premised on the idea that the main evolutions of the field affect individual positions. As mentioned before, orthodox orientalists had long controlled French Arab Studies. After 1968 these very orientalists began to lose their influence and were challenged by a more critical academic avant-garde. To a large extent these evolutions were tantamount to a process of generational change: the orientalist professors were replaced by their former students and the latter embarked on a critical discussion of what they had studied under the guidance of the former. The scientific impact of this generational shift was made deeper by a set of

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institutional changes that occurred at the same time, namely the university reform launched by De Gaulle in the aftermath of the 1968 students’ revolt. Several universities were created in France to offer better working conditions to a growing student population. For the field of Arab and Islamic Studies, this led to the creation of new departments of Arabic. Until then, the Sorbonne had been the only Parisian University with an institute devoted to the study of the Arab/Islamic world (the aforementioned Institut d’Etudes Islamiques). After 1968, three departments of Arabic were set up in the Universities Paris 3, Paris 4, and Paris 8. In the process the Institut came to lose its monopoly and a great deal of its influence. In the 1970s the balance of academic power was clearly in favor of a new generation of younger scholars. Those became the heads of two of the new departments of Arabic, whereas only Paris 4 remained a stronghold of classical Orientalism. One event exemplifies the scale of the change: in 1973, a new School of Arab Studies was set up as a replacement of the Institut. This step, it was hoped, would foster new perspectives on the Arab world and break the stranglehold of classical Orientalism. With these institutional changes, the field of Arab Studies went through a process of scientific revolution, to borrow (very loosely) Kuhn’s concept. The decreasing influence of Orientalism resulted in the flourishing of new perspectives shaped by the social sciences. Philology was radically challenged by structural linguistics. History, sociology or anthropology, benefiting from the decisive influence of Marxism and Structuralism, helped to shed a new light on problems that had been largely neglected. The epistemological context of the 1970s was much more favorable to Arkoun’s evolving approach. It allowed him to develop his most interesting questions that were already present in some form in his early writings. In that decade, he was appointed to several prestigious positions that gave him more control on the field’s theoretical orientations. He was first an Associate Professor at the University of Lyon, then a Professor at Paris 8 and Paris 3. He also became the head of the Department of Arabic studies at Paris 3 and replaced Pellat as the chief editor of the review Arabica. That move was both symbolic and decisive. First, Arkoun turned the old-fashioned Arabica, the very symbol of classical Orientalism, into a review fully involved in the scientific renewal of Arab Studies. In doing so, he made clear who was now occupying the dominant positions of the field: the replacement of Pellat was not only a generational change; it was also a sign that Orientalism had lost its former hold over the field. The combination of scientific and institutional changes in the 1970s marked the beginning of a second stage in Arkoun’s intellectual career. During that decade, he wrote some of his most accomplished works. He also broadened

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his audience, previously limited to a small group of specialists, and came to be regarded as a leading Islamologist. His introduction to the Kasimirski’s translation of the Qur’an12 and the reprinting of his most influential articles13 are, among other, clear indications of his new position in the field. A close look at these texts also reveals that Arkoun’s aim was not only academic. His writings sought to provide his Muslim audience with critical and scientific tools. In other words, Arkoun was at the same time a renowned specialist of the Arab world working in a Western university and a Muslim scholar, an ‘alim in the classical sense of the word. In the very same texts, and from the very same position in the field of Arab studies, he has been following two complementary lines of reasoning: studying Islam as a scientific object and reopening the gates of ijtihad through a new reading of the Islamic tradition premised on the Western epistemologies. The way he addresses his Arab and Muslim audiences is then deeply rooted in the French academic field, for it is in this very field that he developed a critical reading of the Islamic tradition that has allowed him to speak as a reformist Muslim intellectual. The texts written by Arkoun in the 1970s have to be analyzed on these two intertwined levels. On the one hand, they address scientific issues and aim at producing a new body of knowledge with regard to the Arab World. To do so, Arkoun made recurrent use of concepts and questions coming from the social sciences. His purpose was to take a fresh look at Islamic texts and societies by studying them through the categories of sociology, linguistics, and philosophy. As discussed before, this fresh look is linked to the main evolutions of the field of Arab Studies in the 1970s. One can very easily find traces of this new approach in most of Arkoun’s texts at this time, for instance when he writes: ‘The critical attitude (l’attitude critique) in the study of Islam means that we have to adopt and adapt the whole Western apparatus of scientific investigation.’14 In another article, on the necessity to carry out an interdisciplinary research on the Arab world, Arkoun writes: ‘History shall play an important part in the process, as well as linguistics, ethnology and the philosophy of religions.’15 On the other hand, these texts also have to be read in a theological perspective, addressed more specifically to a Muslim audience. Arkoun is not only a scholar who treats Islamic texts as scientific data, but is also a Muslim intellectual who seeks to raise issues through a scientific reading of these very texts. I have suggested before that Arkoun should be considered an ‘alim, that is to say, a Muslim scholar whose faith is premised on the rational study of the sacred texts. This means that there is no contradiction, for him, neither between science and faith, nor between Western epistemologies and Islamic interpretations.

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On the contrary, Arkoun has been building his position as an Arab/Muslim intellectual through a specific use of Western philosophy and social sciences. Arkoun’s position in the academic field during the 1970s therefore accounts for the shaping of his position as a public Arab intellectual, which means that a focus on his scientific background is more illuminating than one on his Arab identity. Bodies of knowledge to which he was exposed and intellectual discourses that shaped his thought were clearly instrumental. As was discussed before, these bodies of knowledge and intellectual discourses were the ones encapsulated in the field’s main theoretical orientations. Further, we saw that Arkoun’s institutional positions played an important role. Once appointed as Professor and then as head of the Department of Arab Studies, his influence, both in and out of the field, grew considerably. To put it differently, his legitimacy as a public intellectual partly derives from the institutional power he has had in the academic structure. Institutional factors also account for what we will now briefly analyze as the third stage in Arkoun’s intellectual career. Since the beginning of the 1980s, Arkoun’s numerous books and articles have tended to tackle broader issues. They are less focused on purely academic questions and tend to address a larger audience, both in the West and in the Muslim world. They have, moreover, shifted from Arkoun’s first scientific focus—medieval Islamic thought—to contemporary issues. Two sets of events account for these late changes in Arkoun’s career. On the one hand, he had managed to reach international influence. Between the beginning of the 1980s and the middle of the 1990s, he spent some time as a visiting scholar at the universities of Princeton, Louvain and Amsterdam, and at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin. He also gave lectures in numerous countries, especially in the Muslim world, from Morocco to Egypt and Indonesia. In the Islamic context, he is considered a major intellectual figure and his books are held as a fundamental contribution to contemporary reformist debate, whereas in the West he is usually considered a scholar whose erudition may help European societies come to a better understanding of their Muslim neighbors. On the other hand, Arkoun’s intellectual activities between the beginning of the 1980s and the middle of the 1990s must be understood in light of his growing involvement in French political life. During the 1980s and into the following decades he came to be regarded as an expert for questions raised by France’s growing Muslim population. This involvement in national politics culminated when Arkoun took part in the State-sponsored Commission Stasi that was in charge of the extremely sensitive issue of secularism in the French Republican schools. His political influence stemmed from Arkoun’s prior

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academic life and from the symbolic and intellectual capital he had acquired by that time. It is because of his reputation as an outstanding scholar of Islam that he gained recognition in the political arena. I will return at the end of this chapter to the questions raised by such an attempt to analyze academic careers in terms of field, an attempt which apparently leads to dismissing other social and cultural features (such as the fact, for Arkoun, of being a former colonial subject, a migrant, a Muslim, and so on). My point is not that these features do not matter. On the contrary, I believe that Arkoun’s personal history and what he called his own ‘marginalized’ position have decisively impinged on his work. Yet I hope to have made it clear that Arkoun’s biography is not, in itself, sufficient to understand why he became involved in certain political and intellectual issues. What is more important is how the biographical realm interlinks with objective social structures: Arkoun found in the academic field specific resources (references, bodies of knowledge, political recognition and so on) he could tap into to become an internationally renowned Arab intellectual. Had he faced different academic structures, the way he would have defined his Muslim/Arab identity, as well as the role this identity would have played in his intellectual involvement, would have been different. In this respect, field contexts matter more than places of birth, and I shall now consider the implications of this sociological approach through a comparison with Edward Said’s intellectual career. Edward Said: From Literary Studies to the Palestinian Question One of the challenges raised by any sociological understanding of Said’s career lies in the fact that Said himself provided many accounts of his intellectual life. A prolific writer, he wrote one book of memoirs as well as many autobiographical fragments; he also gave several interviews on the roots of his intellectual involvement. Further, he devoted a great deal of scholarly attention to the analysis of writers in exile, from Conrad to Adorno and Auerbach. In doing so, he reflected on his own position: a Palestinian scholar in the United States, an intellectual ‘out of place’ as his autobiography eloquently puts it. Having gone himself through the experience of exile, he was able to describe it in a highly precise and stimulating manner. But this precision is a double-edged sword, for it may conceal as much as it may actually reveal. In other words, the risk paradoxically is to take Said’s words too much for granted and to grasp his career through the very categories he has elaborated, for example, by focusing on his identity of a Palestinian writer in exile as the sole explanation for his writings and intellectual involvement. I do not argue that Said’s Arab/Palestinian origins played but a minor role in his career or that his experience of exile and displacement did not impinge

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on his work. Rather, I argue that other factors account for Said’s intellectual role, namely sociological factors linked to the American academic context. It is very striking that Said has been regularly described as a Palestinian intellectual, bracketing off the fact that he had been working for four decades in American universities. I therefore intend to show that Said’s intellectual position was rooted in the American academic field as much as in his ArabPalestinian origins. As was previously illustrated for Arkoun, the biographic realm interlinks with sociological objective structures. It is therefore necessary to conceive of Said’s career not only in cultural/national terms, but also in terms of social patterns, that is, in terms of the field. For it is according to the evolutions and positions of the American academic field that Said, once a specialist of comparative literature with no focus whatsoever on the Arab world, became one of the most renowned Arab intellectuals and spokesmen for the Palestinian cause. Said was born in Jerusalem in 1935 from an American-Palestinian father and a Lebanese-Palestinian mother (both of them Christians). In 1948 his family settled in Egypt, where he attended Victoria College before being sent, in 1951, to the United States to complete his studies in prestigious universities (receiving a BA from Princeton, and an MA, and PhD from Harvard). Said’s first steps in the American Academy may thus be characterized as very successful (he was awarded the Bowdoin Prize during his studies in Harvard) as well as traditional (he specialized in English and Comparative Literature). He received his first academic position in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in 1963, where he spent almost his entire career (except a few years when he taught at John Hopkins, Yale, and Harvard). His curriculum in literature put Said on a clearly different track than most of the Arab students in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s.16 His curriculum also decisively kept him away from the Area Studies and Middle East Studies, making his position unique compared to other scholars who wrote about Arab issues: Said always defined himself as an intellectual in the general sense of the term, a word he carefully avoided lumping with other terms like ‘specialist’ or ‘scholar.’17 In this respect, he also offers a striking contrast with Arkoun, whose public intellectual role was rooted in a previous academic specialization on the Arab world. Yet, in both cases, the positions they occupied in the field, as well as the evolutions of this very field, account for the public intellectual role they came to play. During the first years of his career—similar, in this respect, to Arkoun— Said’s influence was limited and he occupied a typically junior position in the academic structure. He was involved very little in politics, especially in

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questions of Middle Eastern politics which, Said believed, did not enjoy great publicity during the 1960s: Since there was no political activity then which was centered on the Arab World, I found that my concerns in my teachings and research, which were canonical though slightly unorthodox, kept me within the pale.18 The turning point in Said’s life, if one relies on his own account as well as the one given by many commentators, took place in 1967. Said put it clearly: ‘…the big change came with the Arab-Israeli War.’19 Childs and Williams, too, assume that, had the 1967 War not broken out, Said probably would have continued to follow the path he took at the beginning of his career. The war deeply affected Said who, before 1967, had described himself as close to becoming ‘…an entirely western person.’20 Between 1968 and 1970 he travelled every summer to Jordan to meet friends and family members involved in the fight for the liberation of Palestine and, in 1972, he took a sabbatical year and was entirely devoted to improving his already very good command of Arabic.21 In other words, 1967 seems to divide Said’s career into two parts: before the war, he was a brilliant and rather orthodox scholar of literature; after the war— actually because of it—he became an intellectual involved in the Palestinian cause, which led to a significant shift in his scholarly work. Yet 1967, when conceived as a radical turning point, may hide other factors. Rather, it has to be understood as one among the many events that lead Said to redefine his intellectual life according to purely academic factors. First, a scrutiny of Said’s bibliography (Ramadan, 2005) shows that 1967 did not significantly impinge on his works. It is true that, before this time, all his books and papers had tackled only literary topics. It is true, as well, that his first political text with a focus on the Arab world was published in the aftermath of 1967 (for example, ‘The Arab Portrayed: The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: an Arab Perspective,’ 1970). Yet in the 1970s, Said’s work remained almost exclusively literary. That decade, for instance, saw the appearance of one of his major books, Beginnings, Intention and Method (1975), a book with no political concerns at all. The very few non-literary works he published in that decade were all released in the last years of the 1970s (such as ‘The Palestinian and American Policy’ in 1976 and ‘The idea of Palestine’ in 1978), almost ten years after the 1967 war. In other words, 1967 is only the first step of a much longer process that saw Said gradually becoming the spokesman for Palestine. I suggest that other events have to be taken into account, including

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not only how he responded, as an Arab/Palestinian intellectual, to the events in Palestine, but also to local academic developments. The positions occupied by Said in American universities may account for his political involvement. The fact that Said published very few articles on the Palestinian question in the 1970s may be explained, first, by a lack of institutional legitimacy. As a specialist of Comparative Literature, he could not easily intervene in political debate. Said’s intellectual influence became significant when he was able to conciliate his literary and political concerns, which he managed to do with Orientalism. Moreover, he did not occupy any influential position inside the academic hierarchy before the end of the 1970s. It is quite striking, then, that his political involvement resumed just after 1977, when he was appointed Pass Professor of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia and Old Dominion Foundation Professor of Humanities.22 This tenured position gave him a new legitimacy that allowed him to take part in the public intellectual debate. It also provided him with enough institutional support to stand for an issue which was far from popular in the United States.23 Further, the evolution of the American academic field account for the theoretical resources, Said tapped into to create a new form of intellectual involvement. In the 1970s, new references—most of them coming from Europe—challenged orthodoxies in the humanities. Thinkers like Foucault and Gramsci, Derrida, or Lukács, became sources of inspiration for many scholars. They prompted a re-examination of the classical assumptions on which the American humanities were based by tackling new issues and taking a fresh look at classical questions. Said benefited from this theoretical aggiornamento. Orientalism, which opened a decisive step in Said’s career, is deeply indebted to some of the trends and thinkers previously mentioned, notably Foucault (whose theory of the relation between knowledge and power Said says was crucial for his study of Orientalism) or Gramsci (whose typology of intellectuals is central in Said’s methodological apparatus). Said’s public intellectual position cannot be separated from his positions in the academic field. In this respect, the comparison with Arkoun highlights many similarities. Both Arkoun and Said occupied avant-garde positions in their respective fields and were considered innovative scholars. They used radical and ground-breaking theories to prompt a shift in dominant paradigms. The theoretical resources they used were, of course, slightly different, for the French and American fields were not structured according to the same patterns and bodies of knowledge:24 Arkoun tapped into sociological, anthropological, and linguistic discourses to oppose the classical philological system; Said used other resources, namely philosophical trends, to produce new visions of the social role of literary texts. Despite these differences, however, what is striking

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is that both of them used the most critical bodies of knowledge that were at their disposal in the field, in order to challenge the Western visions of the Arab world. This is why it is most important to keep in mind that Said started his career as a student of literature. As mentioned, in the 1960s this position gave Said very little legitimacy to publicly address Arab politics. The situation changed in the 1970s. First of all, many literary departments became strongholds of academic and political radicalism. This was the case, especially, at Columbia University where Said was teaching.25 In other words, whereas Said’s specialization had been an impediment to his political activity in the 1960s, it turned out to be much more conducive to this very activity during the next decade. Further, the evolutions of Literary Studies in the 1970s not only put Said in a closer relation to the political field but also influenced the theoretical core of his work, allowing him to create an original form of political involvement. As a student of literature, Said was especially concerned with texts. Through his reading of Foucault (among others) he managed to elaborate a vision of the literary text as encompassed in broader relations of power. Inevitably this led me to reconsider the notions of writings and languages, which I had until then treated as animated by a given text or subject—the history of the novel, for instance, or the idea of narrative as a theme in prose fiction. What concerned me now was how a subject was constituted, how a language could be formed—writings as a construction of realities that served one or another purpose instrumentally. This was the world of power and representations, a world that came into being as a series of decisions made by writers, politicians, philosophers to suggest or adumbrate one reality and at the same time efface others.26 This shift had fundamental consequences for Said’s career. It allowed him to conciliate his political activity and his academic concerns, two realms separated until then. Orientalism, as well as many texts written by Said during those years, pursues two inseparable goals: academic goals, in the sense that it offers a reading of canonical literary writings (from Dante to Flaubert), and political goals, through a reflection on how Western writings on the Arab world were instrumental in the domination exerted by the West upon the East. Doing so, Said managed to fill in the gap between the two sides of his career. He grounded his public involvement on an academic competence that could be converted into a political one. His legitimacy to take a stance on Arab politics does not only stem only from his Palestinian origins, but rather from the peculiar position he came to occupy inside the academic field. Moreover, the evolutions of the American field account for another fundamental aspect of Said’s career, namely his growing opposition to Area

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Studies. Contrary to Europe, American Middle Eastern departments have a rather recent history (MESA, for instance, was founded only in 1966). In the 1970s these studies went through a process of institutionalization and came to play a new part in the study of the Arab world.27 This resulted in a confrontation between two ways of speaking about, and for, the Middle East. According to Said, Area Studies departments were the very example of academic knowledge at the service of political and economic interests: knowledge, in other words, turned into instrumental expertise. In contrast to this, he posited his own more general and critical academic and political involvement. The Arab world was not considered a specific object to be deciphered through the Western scientific gaze; rather, it was approached as a general question through which one could reflect on the nature of power, the role of the intellectual, and so on. Said’s strong commitment to the classical definition of the intellectual, as opposed to the scholar or the specialist, is but another sign of his specific position in the academic milieu. Orientalism, in this respect, must be read in its polemical dimension. At many junctures it alludes to Area Studies, for instance when Said discusses the ‘seductive degradation of knowledge,’28 or when, evoking the ‘major shift from an academic to an instrumental attitude,’ he adds ‘this manifests itself in the transition from the would-be disinterested scholar to the Area Studies expert advising successive Western governments on policy towards colonized or post-colonized States.’29 The diatribe between Said and Bernard Lewis, which was launched in the last pages of Orientalism and went on for several decades, must also be understood as the results of the aforementioned opposition. It was not only motivated by political reasons (even though the role played by Lewis as Middle East adviser, first on the side of Netanyahu at the UN, and then for the Republican administration, is central). It was also encompassed in the structure of the academic field and in the balance of power that prevailed at the end of the 1970s (especially with the status of Princeton—where Lewis was recruited in 1974—as a major centre of Area Studies). If Orientalism must be grasped as the result of certain structural determinations in the field, the book also opened a completely new period in Said’s career. Several consequences must be highlighted. First, it led to a significant upheaval in the organization of the field itself and established Said as one of the founding fathers of new disciplines such as Post-colonial and Cultural Studies. His position inside the American academic hierarchy was dramatically changed: Said who had been known as a brilliant scholar, became a ‘campus star,’30 nationally and then internationally recognized. This new academic notoriety contributed to make him the most famous spokesman for the Palestinian cause and brought him to develop new forms of public

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involvement. In those years he contributed to many Western newspapers (The Nation, The Guardian, Le Monde Diplomatique, among others) as well as Arab ones (such as Al-Ahram and Al-Hayat). He progressively diversified the topics he tackled, shifting from the Palestinian question to broader issues (the Middle East or the Muslim World at large, American foreign policy, and so on). He came to be known as a leading radical intellectual and collaborated with other prominent figures of the American Left (including a well-known collaboration with Noam Chomsky). Like Arkoun, this growing notoriety resulted in a broadening of his audience. In both cases, what is striking is the fact that they could address Arab and Western readerships equally. Yet this international standing cannot be grasped solely in terms of a double cultural identity (Middle Eastern intellectuals who happened to live in the West and therefore belong to two worlds). Their notoriety was also fundamentally linked to their milieu. Said and Arkoun became Arab intellectuals through the medium of American or French academic fields, for it is in these very fields that they found the various resources they tapped into to build an international intellectual legitimacy. In Said’s case, his position in the field accounts for at least two important aspects of his intellectual career that I would like to summarize briefly by way of conclusion. First, this position gave him an institutional legitimacy that could be converted into a kind of ‘symbolic capital,’ to borrow Bourdieu’s concept once again. If images and titles matter in the political struggle, then one cannot underestimate the fact that Said was a professor of English Literature in one of the most prestigious American universities. The Palestinian cause being rather unpopular in the United States, this position was instrumental in making an Arab/Palestinian voice audible. Said not only spoke as someone who knew how to speak (that is, who knew the rhetorical codes); he also spoke as someone who had enough social legitimacy to do so and—because he had all the attributes of a respectable scholar—whose arguments could not be dismissed easily. A second point is, I think, more fundamental. The American field shaped what could be described as Said’s intellectual style. One of his main characteristics is the rather unlikely connection he managed to make between (English) literature and radical (Arab) politics. There is, in other words, no discrepancy between Literary Studies on the one hand, and the Palestinian activism on the other31; rather, Said took part in the Palestinian struggle by making a decisive use of the resources he had as a Professor of Literature. This entailed, first, articulating what we could call a ‘politics of the text’, that is, the idea developed since Orientalism that texts are foci of power. Said’s concerns with literary matters, which appeared at first sight as an impediment

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to a political activity centered on the contemporary Middle East, turned out to be an asset when he was able to produce new ways of deciphering the functioning of power. Moreover, these very concerns had another fundamental consequence: they saved Said from taking on an exclusive role as a Middle East expert. Hence, he remained free in his unrelenting commitment to a classical definition of what it meant to be an intellectual, which, as much as in his Arab past, rooted him in the most classical humanistic tradition of the West.32 Conclusion The objective of this chapter was to show that sociological factors such as field structures must be taken into account if one intends to understand how Arab scholars shaped their positions as public intellectuals. The idea was to shift focus from biographical data to structural patterns. This does not mean that we can overlook questions of identity, origins, and culture when tackling an issue such as the role of Arab intellectuals. Instead, I strongly believe—and I think everybody does—that the fact of being an Algerian-Muslim scholar in France or a Palestinian intellectual in the United States, decisively impinged on the theoretical and political choices made. Even though this chapter did not focus on those aspects, it is obvious that biographical dimensions greatly matter in intellectual concerns. Arkoun and Said made it clear that their intellectual commitments were rooted in the sufferings and injustices undergone by the Algerians or the Palestinians; there is no need to question this fact. My aim, rather, was to restate the issue from the opposite point of view. We owe to Max Weber the idea that causalities should be uncovered through the crucial test of the contingency of an historical or sociological event. In Weber’s canonical study, the thesis that the rise of modern capitalism would not have been possible without the Reformation means that the former is causally linked to the latter. Hence the implicit question of this chapter: would Arkoun’s or Said’s roles as public Arab intellectuals have been the same had they been members of different academic fields? The interest of this question lies not in the answer one may give. The interest lies, rather, in the way the question allows us to take a fresh look at actual events such as intellectual careers. In this respect, it shows that Arkoun and Said became prominent Arab intellectual figures through the social patterns of Western academic fields. Being an Arab is not so much a question of prior cultural identity than of a reshaping of a specific intellectual/ political position. As this chapter tried to argue, Arkoun’s intellectual position was premised on his ambivalent links with the Parisian orientalists, the rise of ground-breaking social sciences in the 1960s in France or, among other things, the links between the academic and the political fields at a time where

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France was discovering its Islamic identity. The same is true for Said, whose position was shaped through his initial concerns with literature as well as the evolution of the American field, which led him to oppose the Middle East specialists in the name of a different conception of intellectual activity. In other words, a sociological analysis of this issue should be conceived less in terms of how cultural/national origins impinged on the social role played by Arab intellectuals in the West, than how their position in the West reshaped their relation, and their intellectual commitment, to the Arab-Muslim world. I hope to have made it clear, then, that such a methodology does not preclude a more biographically focused approach. Quite the contrary, far from being opposite, the individual and the structural perspectives should be understood together, as Norbert Elias convincingly argued. This would also allow us to correct the sometimes one-sided approach of a methodology based on the concept of field. Albeit Bourdieu, following Elias, asserted the interdependence of the structures (the field) and the individual (the habitus), many of his studies of the French academic field give the impression that structural positions alone account for the scholars’ writings or political involvements. His foreword to Homo Academicus, for instance, states clearly that Derrida’s or Deleuze’s ground-breaking writings can be explained by their marginal position in the field, leaving aside questions that were crucial in their biographies, such as religion, disease, or psychology. In this respect, the analysis of intellectual careers would certainly gain by taking into account what does not spontaneously fit in our understanding of sociological data relevant for such a question: affects, wounds, memories, trauma of loss or departures, ambivalence of resettling abroad, and so on. The social positions occupied by Arab intellectuals in the West would thus appear more clearly in their manifold dimension, between two worlds as well as between structural and individual realms. 1

2

3

Notes See for instance Hans Hägerdal, Responding to the West: Essays on Colonial Domination and Asian Agency, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009; or John Cooper, Ronald Nettler and Mohamad Mahmoud, eds., London: I.B.Tauris, 1998. The latter includes an article by Arkoun. Fanny Colonna stressed that the right to education supposedly granted to every French citizen by the Third Republic never applied to the ‘Muslim citizens’ of Algeria. Very few of them were educated in the French system (among them Mohamed Arkoun). See Fanny Colonna, Instituteurs algériens 1883–1939, Paris : Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1995. The Agrégation is one of France’s most selective academic concourses. The agrégation of the Arabic language has long been a way of selecting the few

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professors in charge of the study of the Arab civilisation. Arkoun was one of the first Arabs to pass this exam. 4 More precisely, Arkoun described himself as a minoritaire, literally somebody who belongs to the minority. This use of the word is not very common and could alternatively be translated by ‘misfit,’ ‘dominated,’ or ‘unconventional.’ See Hassan Arfaoui, ‘Entretien avec Mohamed Arkoun ,’ in le Monde Arabe dans la Recherche Scientifique, Paris : IMA, MARS 5, pp. 7–30, 1995, p. 10. 5 See Sandra Harding, Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms and Epistemologies, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998, p. 389. 6 As will be discussed later, the question whether Arab Studies should borrow from the social sciences was a major point of contention between the orientalists and more innovative scholars who tried to promote new approaches to the Arab world. One decade later, Mohamed Arkoun will be a strong advocate for the use of modern social sciences. 7 Until the 1950s almost no Arab scholars had been associated with the Institut nor had been working at a high position inside the French Academia, despite the fact that a significant number of these scholars had settled in France since the first half of the nineteenth century. The situation changed when decolonization pushed for an increased cooperation between Western and Arab scholars. 8 Arkoun recalled that ‘Berque had just been elected to the Collège de France and was very willing to supervise a research that would tackle questions similar to the ones he had dealt with in his thesis on the high-Atlas,’ in Arfaoui, p. 15 (All the translations are mine). 9 From his first publication, in 1961 until 1970, Arkoun had six texts published (articles and books) on Miskawayh, one on Mawardi, as well as one translation of the Kitab Tahdib al-Akhlaq and a Contribution to the Study of the Vocabulary of Islamic Ethics. These texts show a strong continuity with the tenets of philological Orientalism and were published in orientalist reviews (Arabica and Annales Islamologiques). 10 In the 1960s, this question had become crucial and was tackled by many Arab and French intellectuals (see for instance Anwar Abd-el-Malek, ‘L’Orientalisme en crise,’ Diogène 44 (1963) , pp. 109–142, and Jacques Berque, ‘Pour l’étude des sociétés orientales contemporaines,’ Actes du colloque de sociologie musulmane, 11–14 septembre 1961, Brussels : Université de Bruxelles, 1962). 11 One of the very few examples of Arkoun embarking on an academic discussion as a Muslim intellectual can be found in his review of a book by Grunebaum, first published in Arabica in 1964 (see his ‘Modern Islam as seen by Professor G.E. von Grunebaum’, in Mohamed Arkoun, Pour une critique de la raison islamique, Paris : Maisonneuve et Larose, 1984, p. 291). At the end of his review, Arkoun critically states: ‘The author’s viewpoint—which consists in systematically opposing the actual fecundity of the Western attitude to the narrow subjectivity of the Muslim one—is problematic if one keeps in mind that some of his readers may be Muslims themselves. Further, it is also problematic from a methodological point of view.

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Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East Had he adopted a less cultural and more conceptual point of view, the author, without changing his scientific conclusions, could have reached a much broader audience among the Muslims—and this would be a very important achievement’ (emphasis added). Needless to stress that Arkoun’s defence of the Muslim point of view is made in a round-about and general way: he does not directly talk as a Muslim. Writing about the Qur’an or attempting to translate it is traditionally considered the prerogative of the most knowledgeable scholars. Jacques Berque, for instance, only published his own translation at the peak of his academic career. Mohamed Arkoun, 1970, Miskawayh, philosophe et historien: Contribution à l’étude de l’humanisme arabe au IVème-Xème siècle, Paris: Vrin ; and Essais sur la pensée islamique, Paris : Maisonneuve et Larose, 1984. Arkoun, Essais, p. 10. Ibid., p. 41. ‘In the 1950s and early 1960s students from the Arab World were almost invariably scientists, doctors and engineers, or specialists in the Middle East, getting degrees at places like Princeton and Harvard and then, for the most part, returning to their countries to become teachers in universities there. I had very little to do with them, for one reason or another, and this naturally increased my isolation from my own language and background.’ In Edward Said, ‘Between Worlds,’ London Review of Books 1998 (May), p. 4. ‘I have noticed that among the Left the use of the word intellectual has fallen into disrepute and disuse. And what instead has appeared are words like professional and scholar and academic. And the use of the word intellectual has been relegated to some pre-modern realm, partly because the intellectual is a concept that suggests something rather more general than something concrete.’ Edward Said, ‘American intellectuals and the Middle-East politics,’ in Gauri Viswanathan, Power, Politics and Culture: Interviews with Edward Said, New York: Random House, 2001, pp. 44–45. Said, ‘Between Worlds,’ p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. ‘Although I went back to the Middle East in the holidays (my family continued to live there, moving from Egypt to Lebanon in 1963), I found myself becoming an entirely Western person; both at college and in graduate school I studied literature, music and philosophy, but none of it had to do anything with my own tradition’, Said, ‘Between Worlds.’ As late as 2009, R. Irwin—a strong opponent to Said’s Orientalism yet a fine reader of the rest of his work—insisted that Said could not speak Arabic (see his comments on the following website: themoornextdoor.wordpress.com/2009/09/02). Said described his experience in Beirut as follows: ‘I had a sabbatical year and took the opportunity of spending a year in Beirut, where most of my time was taken up in the study of Arabic philology and literature, something I had never done before, at least not at that level […],’ Said, ‘Between Worlds,’ p. 5.

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22 It is also in 1977 that Said became a member of the Palestinian National Council. 23 ‘In the US, my politics were rejected—with a few notable exceptions—both by anti-war activists and by supporters of Martin Luther King’, Said, ‘Between Worlds,’ p. 5. In this respect, one has to remember that the support of Columbia University was crucial for Said’s political activity, especially when he came under strong attacks from pro-Israeli activists. 24 This difference explains why similar ideas or debates can have opposite meanings in various national fields. An interesting case study is the critical reading of Orientalism that Abd-el-Malik (1963) launched in France, following the very line of reasoning that Said will later adopt. Yet, due to the differences, among others, in the structuring oppositions of the French and American fields (Orientalism vs. social sciences in France, Area Studies vs. Postcolonial and Cultural Studies in the United States), the same polemic had almost no influence in France whereas it had a huge effect in the American academy. 25 Traces of the political struggle at Columbia University may be found in some parts of Said’s most theoretical works. See for example ‘The Scope of Orientalism’ (in Orientalism) where Said compares Kissinger to Balfour and Cromer. These analyses are actually rooted in the strong protest that followed the decision to appoint Kissinger at Columbia in 1977 (a decision eventually retracted due to this very protest). 26 Said, ‘Between Worlds,’ p. 6. 27 See Ravi Arvind Palat, ‘Fragmented Visions: Excavating the Future of Area Studies in a Post-American World,’ in Michael Peters, ed., After the Discipline: The Emergences of Cultural Studies, Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1999, pp. 87–126. 28 Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985 [1978], p. 328. 29 Ibid., p. 246. 30 See François Cusset, French Theory, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. 31 The two sides of Said are often grasped independently from each other, leading to a radical misunderstanding of the nature of his work. Here are some examples of such partial readings, in Childs and Williams: ‘In his more academic writings, Said is, especially in the heavily inflected world of contemporary and cultural studies, sometimes regarded as rather superficial or opportunistic in his use of theory, while for many conservative colleagues, he is a perfect illustration of senior figures who, leading by example, have surrendered the study of literature to the excess of wild theorists. Similarly, while some people wished that his 1993 Reith Lectures “Representations of the intellectual” had been more challenging, for the Daily Telegraph, they represented a scandalous attempt to blame the ills of the world on the West’ (Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual, New York: Pantheon, 1994, p. 97).

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32 Said’s humanistic bend has been stressed by many commentators (see Emily Apter, ‘Saidian Humanism ,’ Boundary 2, 31/2 (2004), pp. 35–53).

9 Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals: On Hisham Sharabi and Halim Barakat Nedal Al-Mousa

This meeting is held for the purpose of contemplating selfknowing and knowing the Other. If self-knowing requires a form of separation, knowing the Other requires something of its opposite; of communication, a deep empathy. Man, on this level is both ‘knowing’ and ‘coming to know.’ With this in mind a number of Arab intellectuals and writers have been selected, ones which we believe, each in his own field, can realize this coming to know; i.e. a movement of simultaneous separation-communication for self-seeing, away from whims and prejudices, especially ideological ones; to co-exist with the other’s own intellectual activity—his language, innovations, daily life. The Self is a ‘Knowing’ that could not be known except by starting to know the Other’s ‘Knowing.’ The Other here is none but another face of the Self, its yet unrealized potential. It is another form of its very being.1 These remarks by Adonis (the Syrian poet and intellectual) in the opening session of The First Meeting of Arab Intellectuals and Writers in Mahjar (lands of migration), held in Paris in 1986, outline one of the most important vocations of Arab intellectuals and writers living outside the Arab World. Adonis’s reflections seem to echo Edward Said’s notion of ‘intimacy and distance’ put forward in Orientalism. Contemplating the benefits that may accrue from one’s exposure to a foreign culture by living in a foreign country, Said writes: ‘The more one is able to leave one’s cultural home the more easily is one able to judge it, and the whole world as well, with the spiritual detachment and generosity necessary for true vision. The more easily, too, does

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one assess oneself and alien cultures with the same combination of intimacy and distance.’2 The concept of intimacy and distance and the mechanism of separationcommunication as tools whereby an emigrant can achieve a better understanding of native and foreign cultures figure as pivotal issues in a large number of Arabic novels which deal with the theme of the encounter between the East and the West. The most outstanding examples of this type of novel in Arabic literature include Tawfik al-Hakim’s Usfur min al-Sharq (Bird of the East) (1938), Dhu–al-Nun Ayyub’s al-Duktur Ibrahim (Doctor Ibrahim) (1939), Yahya Haqqi’s Qindil Umm Hashim (Umm Hashim’s Lamp) (1944), Suhayl Idris’s al-Hayy-al-Latini (The Latin Quarter) (1958), al-Tayib Salih’s Mawsim al-Hijra ila al-Shamal (Season of Migration to the North) (1966), and Ghalib Hamzah Abu-al-Faraj’s Sanawat al-Daya (Years of Disorientation) (1980). In all of these Arabic Bildungsromane, the hero, like Arab intellectuals in Mahjar, travels to the West where he is given ample opportunity to view his native culture and the foreign culture from a cross-cultural perspective. The result is a more nuanced vision of both cultures.3 The authors of these novels do not of course belong to the category of intellectuals I am dealing with in this chapter, but their dramatization of the attempt to define the relationship between the East and the West has very close bearing on the self-assigned mission of Arab intellectuals in Mahjar to bridge the gap between two cultural universes. Hisham Sharabi and Halim Barakat belong to a category of Arab Mahjar intellectuals who voluntarily live in exile in the West.  Both of them are peculiarly preoccupied with bridging the gap between the East and the West. Their shared concern with the dialectical relationship between East and West runs counter to the famous proverbial saying of Kipling: ‘Oh, the East is East, and the West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ Their perception of the dialectical relationship between the East and the West enables them to reconstruct a unique vision of the Arab culture in which the Self and the Other act as mirrors rather than opposites.  Both of them reject traditional apologetic attitude of Arab intellectuals towards the shortcomings and negative aspects of Arab culture. They are also critical of Western hegemony and orientalist doctrines. Both of them believe that independent thinking and critical consciousness that characterize Western culture are essential prerequisites for promoting modernism in the Arab World. Hence, I would like at the outset to briefly examine the dramatizaton of the theme of the encounter between the East and the West by Arab novelists, in order to compare their efforts in this respect with those exerted by Arab

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 183 intellectuals in Mahjar, where I would like to lay particular stress on the activity of Hisham Sharabi and Halim Barakat. In Tawfiq al-Hakim’s novel Bird of the East, the young hero Muhsin, at the early stages of his stay in Paris, suffers from self-division, which seems to flesh out Kipling’s famous dichotomy of East and West. But in compliance with Tawfiq al-Hakim’s intellectual assumption that reconciliation between the two cultures can be really achieved, Muhsin, in the final phase of his educational journey as an Arab student living in a foreign country, was able to transcend the polarity between two cultures. He even arrives at the conclusion that out of the interaction between the two cultures a kind of universal human culture may emerge in which the spiritualism of the East and the materialism of the West (according to the basic intellectual assumptions operating in the novel) can stand to each in a complementary rather than in an oppositional relationship. Analogy can be drawn between the turn of events in Bird of the East and the narrative conduct in Yahya Haqqi’s novella Umm Hashim’s Lamp. Like his fictional relative Muhsin, Ismail, the young hero of Haqqi’s novella experiences an educational journey in the West, a journey the destination of which is his cultivation of the concept of cultural relativity, whereby he is able to recognize and accept that each of the two cultures has its own relative merits and demerits. The achievement of reconciliation between the East and the West in Bird of the East and Umm Hashim’s Lamp stands in sharp contrast with the rejection of the East and the total attraction to the West on the part of Dr. Ibrahim, the young emigrant hero, in Dhu-al-Nun Ayyub’s novel of that name. Dr. Ibrahim’s attraction to Western civilization is such that he decides to assume the title of gentleman in a British traditional fashion. He even demonstrates readiness to convert to Christianity as a price for his total assimilation to British culture. This contrasts sharply with Mustafa Said’s strong rejection of Western culture in al-Tayib Salih’s Season of Migration to the North, from a later generation. So intense is Said’s hostile attitude towards the West that he becomes involved in retaliatory violence against it. The violent confrontation between East and West in Season of Migration to the North stems mainly from Said’s internalization of ‘traditional’ antagonism towards the West, an antagonism that may be rooted in various historical sources. Yet we have many examples of relatively milder expressions of rejection of the West, expressed for instance as a pivotal issue in Abu-al-Faraj’s Years of Disorientation. In an obvious attempt to bridge the gap between the East and the West, Hamdan, the hero of this novel, marries Helen, an American girl, only to undergo a series of frustrations and disappointments emanating from

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the cultural divide between him and his American wife. In the aftermath of the tragic death of his wife in a car accident, which, it would seem, symbolizes the failure of his attempt to achieve reconciliation between East and West, Hamdan decides to renew his love relationship with his Arab beloved Suad, an unmistakable sign of his newly restored attachment to tradition and Eastern values after he has passed through a prolonged process of disorientation marked with temporary infatuation with the West. Finally among important Arab novels that thematize attempts at EastWest synthesis, Idris’s The Latin Quarter furnishes a unique example of Arabic Bildungsroman in which the unnamed hero fails at the end of his journey of self-discovery in the West to cure himself of his ambivalent attitude towards both cultures. On many occasions in the novel, the hero reveals his resentment against Eastern culture, especially the tyranny of its traditions and societal sanctions which prevent the individual from becoming himself. But in spite of his rejection of the East and his overwhelming attraction to freedom and open horizons which characterize life in the West, the hero is able to retain his sense of patriotism and commitment to native culture. After his return to his country, Lebanon, the hero succeeds in readjusting himself to his new environment, yet he is determined to enrich his life by adopting some elements of the new culture. Arabic literature seems to recast a variety of attitudes towards Western culture in the Arab World, attitudes summed up in the following remarks made by S. A. Morrison: ‘Reaction to Western culture may be classified under the headings of adoption, rejection and reconciliation; though no sharp line of distinction can be drawn between the three groups.’4 The question that I would like to pursue beyond this point is where do Mahjar intellectuals stand in connection to the range of attitudes above. Here I would like to focus on Hisham Sharabi and Halim Barakat, since their investigations into the nature of the relations between East and West concentrate on emphasizing similar themes to those dramatized by the novelists and defined by Morrison, yet they deal with the issues on a more comprehensive scale. Inspired by their position of living between two cultures, they sought to develop a complex, historical understanding of relations between the East and the West as a window from which to look ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ to arrive at a better understanding of Self and Other. I would like at the outset to examine the cultural assumptions, the basic tensions, and intellectual views dramatized in Halim Barakat’s autobiographical novel Ta’er al-Hawm (The Crane) (1962) in connection to the attitudes prevailing in the other Arabic novels referred to above. That should be seen in the light of Barakat’s, otherwise a sociologist, idiosyncratic

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 185 use of the form of novel to serve new intellectual purposes, developed and defined through his employment of the concept of intimacy and distance and the separation-communication formula. Generally speaking, Halim Barakat’s novel (The Crane) belongs to the Arabic Bildungsromane. However, whereas in all of the above-mentioned Arabic Bildungsromane the action involves a great deal of bicultural stress and conflict, which seem, as has been already pointed out, to justify Kipling’s famous static dichotomy of East and West, in Barakat’s novel the protagonist is liberated from the crippling constraints of this polarity that has the effect of blocking dialogue between its opposite ends. Benefiting from his freedom and his insider/outsider position within the ‘émigré’ (Mahjar) environment of the United States, the protagonist engages in a lengthy process of grasping the Self and the Other in a relatively objective manner which up to a point seems alien to the state of affairs in the majority of the Arabic Bildungsromane, which tend mainly to dramatize the lack of mutual understanding between the East and the West. We may take our clue here from Barakat’s expressed desire to establish a generic relationship between his novel and legendary voyages and journeys of discovery of Self and Other in world literature—a mission that seems common enough among Arab intellectuals in the Mahjar: And so, on a symbolic metaphorical level, ships and sea voyages—as in Osiris’s Passage through the Night Sea and Inana and Gilgamish’s voyage to the Ocean of Death and the Nether World and Sinbad’s to the legendary Isles—could all be viewed as an expression of a subconscious desire to discover hidden secrets by crossing Time and Space. This desire assumed for itself new artistic forms. Since time immemorial exile and innovation were coupled together in the mind. In our own times David Malouf, Australian novelist of Arab origin wrote a poetic novel entitled An Imaginary Life inspired by the exile of Ovid, the Roman poet, to a remote village in the Black Sea region and from Ovid’s wanderings in the world of legend. When Ovid began to see the world through the language of ‘The Other’ he saw it differently. By establishing a firm relationship with the Other he was able to discover, and regain, his relationship with himself, i.e. with his childhood, thereby discovering his humanity. This is exactly what happened to me personally in the novel ‘Ta’er al-Hawm’ (The Crane).5 The action of The Crane traverses space and time, dream and reality, thus creating propitious environment for the protagonist who tends to identify himself with

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the circling bird to experience discovery free of all types of restrictions which he associates with life in his original country. The protagonist, however, is not unaware of the great advantages of his position as a traveler who is able to transcend closed horizons and to communicate with others: A habitual traveler between the south and the north (between the dangers of the south and the north) motivated by thirst, hunger, lust and warmth. Each time he crosses a world he discovers a new one. He has a long history with vast distances and open horizons which go beyond his own visions. He also has a history with humans.6 The protagonist’s ‘open horizons’ enable him to view things in his imaginary and real travels in terms of the mechanism of separation—communication described by Adonis. The fact that the action of the novel is geared towards achieving a better view of Self and Other clearly reflect the personal experience of Barakat himself as an Arab intellectual in Mahjar. The intellectual background which informs the narrative throughout The Crane is very well expressed in Barakat’s reflections on his personal experience as an intellectual in exile, who is intent on making use of his freedom in his adopted country to arrive at a new knowledge unburdened by native cultural heritage : The one amongst us who lives outside envies who is inside, and who is inside envies who are outside… When I reject the Other, regardless of the position I occupy, I reject him not because he is different, but because he is an adversary. I will not relinquish the time and space necessary for contemplation without fear and outside the limits and hypotheses imposed since childhood; to think freely on the realities of Arab society, from the inside and outside simultaneously. For us to see the inside from the outside and the outside from a position inside is a necessary condition for the realization of liberation and creativity. We insist, in this case, on having a private perception of our own consciousness of Self, and a secure knowledge of both the inside and the outside.7 Hisham Sharabi, in his turn, subscribes to the notion that self–knowledge and a better knowledge of the Other can be achieved through the mechanism of separation and communication or intimacy and distance. Reflecting on his private experience as an Arab intellectual in Mahjar, Sharabi writes:

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 187 In the American society where I moved to live permanently after the fall of Palestine in 1948, I discovered through direct experience the difference in social relations between hegemonic patriarchy and equal democracy. The Other appeared to me not as a super-self which is intent on subduing me, but as a free self which reflects my freedom. I realized what is called the value of the individual, I discovered also that the primary concern of the society where I was born was not to protect the individual and his dignity; it is rather concerned with diluting the individual and diminishing his value (especially if he is a female), and it tends always to glorify the father.8 Sharabi’s thesis in this quotation brings to mind Albert Hourani’s contention on the results of the confrontation between East and West in the Arab World: Those educated in Western schools became aware of new ideas and norms; they became conscious that the West was judging them in the light of those norms and as the movement of Western learning grew they began to judge themselves in the same way. Thus there arose an inner unrest, a need to justify themselves which might manifest itself equally in an uneasy, defensive clinging to tradition, or in the eagerness to abandon them and accept the manner of those of the Western world.9 Hourani’s remarks seem to be more applicable to the basic tensions in the previously mentioned Arabic Bildungsromane rather than to what Sharabi describes as consequences of exposure to Western culture. Sharabi may experience what Hourani describes as ‘defensive clinging to tradition’ in the West, but this does not prevent him from developing an analytical attitude towards the native culture as part of his mission to promote the creation of critical consciousness or self-critical perspective, from which native culture should be viewed. The following remarks made by Sharabi may illustrate the point: What I would like to emphasize is that my Anglo-American culture does not push me to disown my identity or heritage. I have never assimilated myself to the American culture. Life in America has not resulted in my forgetting of my people or homeland, nor does it separate me from them. What has happened is exactly the opposite. The experience of cultural difference has led me to emphasize my identity and to cling to my heritage as well as to view my Arab society in a new

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analytical framework which has enabled me to understand it in a new deep manner.10 In this, Sharabi seems to be describing a standpoint similar to what Barakat sought to establish in The Crane. In many places in this novel, the protagonist demonstrates his firm and unshakable attachment to native cultural heritage while living in Mahjar. Frequently throughout the novel, whenever the protagonist experiences aesthetic thrill by watching a beautiful scene in one of the American cities, he suddenly invokes the beautiful image of his native village of al-Kafroon. On a particular occasion we read: I was happy that the elevator has stopped before giving my beloved the opportunity to comment. I pulled myself together and we went to gaze through the window at the beauty of Washington which flirtingly and unreservedly reveals its nakedness in front of us. We enjoyed the sight of the Potomac river which bends like an Eastern belly dancer and branches off like arteries which nest small islands…this recalls to my mind the small streams of al-Kafroon which we call rivers.11 The protagonist’s frequent references to the beautiful sights at al-Kafroon provokes his beloved to warn him not to consider al-Kafroon as the term of reference by which he judges life in America; otherwise, she adds, he will not be able to view life objectively in America as he is meant to. However, receptive as he is, the protagonist responds to his beloved’s warning by affirming his open-mindedness and his determination to prevent his native cultural heritage from depriving him of the chance of transcending all sorts of cultural conflict, barriers, doubts, and fears which may act as obstacles towards proper appraisal of self and other, the ultimate destination of his journey of discovery. On the other hand, the protagonist’s strong attachment to native culture does not prevent him from viewing it critically. The main target of criticism throughout the novel is what the protagonist himself describes as eternal hard habits and fossilized traditions whose negative impact on the life of the individual in the East becomes much more obvious when perceived against the background of the liberalism of the West. The combination of attachment to native culture and the assertion of the individual’s right to criticize it receive further emphasis in Barakat’s approving quotation of Mohammad Dib’s reflections on his own linguistic and national exile:

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 189 When I moved out to live in countries other than my own, the milieus of my novels had to change. But my view of my own country did not change. It became more profound. Distance always helps us see things more objectively. [As an example he cites the painter who has to keep a distance from the painting he is about to complete so as to view it more comprehensively…] After Independence it became my right to view my country more critically…if we return to the experience of migrating northwards, it allowed us to discover ourselves as we have discovered others. Undoubtedly, it is remoteness from my country that gave me a deeper, more analytical view of this Islamic world I belong to. Thus, I became more Islamic after I left my Country.12 The particular attention given to promoting the cause of critical selfconsciousness in the Arab World by Sharabi, Barakat, and Dib is (according to Sharabi) part of a general movement based on the efforts of Arab intellectuals in Mahjar: There exists in the West today a group of Arab intellectuals that carries the banner of the new school of criticism. The importance of this movement is intertwined with the increasing intensity of the crisis from which Arab society suffers. Despite the weakness of this group insofar as wielding direct political influence, coupled with the lack of a social and institutional foundation for organized activity, its strength at the intellectual and critical level is increasing day after day by dint of the increase in intellectual suppression in the Arab homeland and the festering hegemony of mystical and authoritarian ideologies.13 The emphasis placed by the three Arab intellectuals on the possible conflict between loyalty to native culture and the commitment to adopting critical attitude towards it is reminiscent of Edward Said’s contention in this regard. In his book Representations of the Intellectual, Said writes: Does the fact of nationality commit the individual intellectual, who is for my purposes here the center of attention, to the public mood for reasons of solidarity, primordial loyalty, or national patriotism? Or can a better case be made for the intellectual as a dissenter from the corporate ensemble? Never solidarity before criticism is the short answer.14 Sharabi views the development of a critical discourse culture in the Arab world as an essential prerequisite for the formation of a new Arab self-image

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to replace the Orientalists’ manufactured version of the Arabs’ knowledge of themselves: The Arab intellectual presently lives amidst the ruins of a torn world, and is indifferent to the task of confronting the challenges involved in rebuilding this world. And instead of assuming the vital task of articulating the essential issues embedded in this circumstance and defining it at the level of thought and theory, which is a task that only he can accomplish, he has in effect relinquished this responsibility to the Orientalists and foreign researchers whose scholarly works have recorded all that the Arab knows about himself, his present and his past. An individual’s knowledge of himself through the intermediacy of the others remains, in the best of circumstances limited, foreign and inadequate. This characterization applies to the cultural atmosphere of the contemporary Arab world, given that it lacks authentic individuality and the capability for profound self-criticism. It is not surprising then for there to exist, behind the soft external façade of self-assurance that is excessively hostile among Arab intellectuals, a deep alienation and an existential loss that await an effective solution which can only be provided by the involvement of the mind in critical thought.15 Sharabi utilizes his involvement in critical thought as it is inspired by his first hand experience of the West not only to expose erroneous Western perception of the East, but also to expose an ambivalent attitude of the East toward the West, especially from an Islamic perspective: Muslim secularism developed a historical theory which attributed to the Arabs and Islam not just an important but a decisive role in Europe’s cultural resurgence during the Middle Ages. Borrowing from Europe was simply an act of retrieving what had previously been given. This theory proved beneficial in two ways. In the first place it justified borrowing; in the second it salved the feeling of inferiority which Muslims felt toward Europe’s obvious superiority in both culture and power.16 Defining the dual function of the Arab intellectual in Mahjar as deconstructing mutual stereotyped images of the East and the West and correcting mutual misrepresentations, Sharabi maintains: In the realm of interpretive practice this shift expressed itself in a deliberate stepping aside in face of certain Western concepts and

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 191 approaches, both conventional and radical. What was rejected were not the analytical categories or methods of interpretation, whether academic or radical, but those special values and insights implicit in an exclusively Western view or perspective on the (non-Western) world. Above all, this rejection involved an attempt to replace the hegemonic Western discourse regarding the Other by an independent discourse, one produced by ‘our’ understanding, representing ‘our’ interpretation, and grounded in ‘our’ experiences and concerns. Though still in the process of formation, this emerging discourse has already begun to deploy its own analytical vocabulary and to fashion its own critical approaches. Perhaps the most significant and lasting consequence of this process in unlearning and criticism since the early 1970s is the attempt to break not only from traditional Western models but also and simultaneously from Islamic fundamentalism and ‘modernized’ Arab neopatriarchy.17 Barakat places these responsibilities of Arab intellectuals described by Sharabi at the heart of his attempt at developing new Arab sociology which transcends the limitations of the metaphysical or patriarchal and neopatriarchal modes of thought, which prevail in the Arab world and orientalist styles of interpretation which dominate Western thought: Simply put, Arab society is presented in this analysis from a self-critical Arab perspective. This effort constitutes an integral part of the task of developing an Arab sociology free both from the metaphysical thinking that traditionally prevails in the Arab world and from Western knowledge rooted in relations of domination (that is, ‘Orientalism’).18 Again here Sharabi’s and Barakat’s views coincide with Edward Said’s when he argues: ‘One task of the intellectual is the effort to break down the stereotypes and reductive categories that are so limiting to human thought and communication.’19 Sharabi’s and Barakat’s efforts to eliminate mutual reductionist interpretations which dominate modes of thought in the East and the West, and their attempts to replace those interpretations with more objective perceptions, are bound to pave the way for creating favorable circumstances for a more proper, critical and profound knowledge of these two cultural categories. It is mainly in these terms that Hamadi Al-Sayd, the head of Arab League delegation to the conference on Arab culture in Mahjar, argues that Arab intellectuals in Mahjar are highly qualified to play the role of mediators

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and conciliators between their native culture and foreign cultures given their ‘hybrid’ position, in the terminology of Homi K. Bhabha, of being simultaneously ‘here’ and ‘there.’20 Al-Sayd’s comprehensive description of what he conceives to be the functions of Arab intellectuals in Mahjar is particularly applicable to Barakat’s and Sharabi’s intellectual and cultural careers: We notice that in all previous attempts to launch dialogue between the two cultures, the organizers hardly thought of inviting people who are qualified to be mediators between Arab and Western cultures. We mean those whose roots are deeply entrenched in the East while having their dimensions extended to the West; those who carry their Arab nationality with its issues and problems in their hearts and minds. Simultaneously they internally live Western civilization, participating in it in an active manner. Those Arab intellectuals who chose to emigrate, have expanded the area of Arab land through their strong grasp of the two civilizations and their dual affiliation with two homelands.21 The title of the paper presented by Sharabi at that conference is ‘How do We Understand the West?’ In this paper, Sharabi presents a perceptive analysis of three paradigms in Arab culture: patriarchy, neopatriarchy, and critical discourse.22 He argues that the basic principles of patriarchy derive from Islamic fundamentalism which tends to view the East as being superior to the West in terms of its celebration of spiritualism in comparison with the West’s worship of materialism. Whereas neopatriarchy is based on a form of reconciliation between West-inspired secular ideas and traditional cultural heritage derived indirectly from Islamic precepts. Sharabi maintains that patriarchy has a long history in Arab Islamic culture, whereas neopatriarchy came into being as a result of the marriage between Arabic culture and imperialism in the first part of the twentieth century. In comparison with the prevailing and overwhelming force of these two paradigms, the third paradigm of critical discourse, Sharabi argues, has failed to strike roots in Arab culture, that is in contrast with the deeply rooted critical discourse in Western culture. For Sharabi, neither patriarchy nor neopatriarchy succeeded in ‘developing a genuinely independent critical and analytical discourse in which the problematics of identity, history, and the west could find effective resolution.’23 He argues that it is part of his vocation as an Arab intellectual to dismantle and deconstruct patriarchy and neopatriarchy to pave the way for modern, critical discourse, to prevail in the Arab World.

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 193 In his book Al-Naqd Al-Hadari, Sharabi makes no secret of the fact that he owes his personal liberation from the hegemony of patriarchal and neopatriarchal views and turns of thought, which have had tremendous impact on the formation of his personality in the early stages of his life, to his adoption of modernism (particularly its major attribute of critical discourse) as a personal creed in the émigré environment of America.24 And this modernism is by no means, Sharabi never tires of affirming, incompatible with upholding traditional heritage. Sharabi’s description in his article ‘How do We Understand the West?’ of the major structures of Arab culture is comparable with Barakat’s identification of three types of cultures prevalent in the Arab World. Barakat’s views in this respect are put forward in his contribution to the same conference, entitled ‘The Implications of Conflict and Multiplicity within Cultural Entity: The Principles of Confrontation in the Relation between the Arabs and the West.’ In this contribution, Barakat argues that there are three types of culture in the Arab World (which somewhat correspond to Sharabi’s three paradigms): first, the common culture in which religion and fundamentalist principles play a vital role in controlling people’s lives and modes of thinking; second, minor culture whose force is based on tribalism, clan ties, ethnicity, and social class; third, a critical liberal culture marked with modernist trends and progressive views on the ideological level, thus it stands in oppositional relationship to the first type of culture. Western society, according to Barakat, has somewhat similar categories of culture. In both the West and the Arab World, the first two types of culture lack the important attribute of critical consciousness necessary for objective evaluation of Self and Other, which may keep the door open for interaction and mutual understanding between them. The absence of criticism in these two types of culture and their characteristic propensity for inward looking, according to Barakat, make it impossible for dialogue between them to develop. He goes on to add that dialogue between the West and the Arab World can take place only on the level of the third type of culture. This controversial issue generated a great deal of discussion at the conference. Most of the participants did not subscribe to Barakat’s theory, but for him initiating dialogue and communication between the third type of culture in the West and its equivalent in the Arab World was one of the main functions of Arab intellectuals in Mahjar. Barakat’s and Sharabi’s common attraction to modernism, especially in its celebration of freedom, independent thinking, and human progress, stems from their paramount concern for an Arab modernity. For Sharabi, Arab modernity is a preliminary step towards a new Arab Renaissance that would

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complete the project begun with the first Arab Renaissance, which took place towards the end of the nineteenth century. Sharabi’s and Barakat’s shared vision that people in the East and the West should transcend binary thought and reductionist cultural categorizations as a means towards achieving better human understanding, tolerance, and healthy transformation brings to mind Mustafa Said's ‘Dedication’ in the final part of Season of Migration to the North. That dedication recalls the primary source of Said's painful conflicts and his eventual tragic death as a hyphenated being living between two cultures without being able to achieve a harmonious reconciliation: ‘To those who see with one eye, speak with one tongue and see things as either black or white, Eastern or Western.’25 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Notes

Adonis, ‘Adonis’s Word,’ in Al-Thaqafah Al-Arabiyyah fi Al-Mahjar (Al-Maghrib, 1988), p.15. Edward W. Said, Orientalism (London, 1980), p. 259. For full discussions of these novels, see Nedal M. Al-Mousa, ‘The Arabic Bildungsroman: A Generic Appraisal’, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, 25 (1993), pp. 223–240. S. A. Morrison, ‘Islam and the West,’ in Readings in Arab Middle Eastern Societies and Cultures, ed. Abdulla M. Lutfiyya and Charles W. Churchill (The Hague, 1970), p. 253. Halim Barakat, Al-Ightirab fi Al-Thaqafah Al-Arabiyyah (Beirut, 2006), p. 147. Halim Barakat, The Crane (Beirut, n.d), pp. 43–44. Halim Barakat, Al-Ightirab fi Al-Thaqafah Al-Arabiyyah (Beirut, 2006), p. 151. Hisham Sharabi, Al-Naqd Al-Haddari li-Waqia Al-Mujtamaa Al-Arabi AlMuaser (Beirut, 1990), p. 241. Quoted by S. A. Morrison, pp. 257–50. Sharabi, Al-Naqd Al-Haddari li-Waqia Al-Mujtamaa Al-Arabi Al-Muaser, p. 241. Halim Barakat, The Crane, p. 55. Barakat, Al-Ightirab fi Al-Thaqafah Al-Arabiyyah, p. 153. Mohammed Dib is an Algerian novelist who lived in exile in France and America. Hisham Sharabi, Al-Naqd Al-Haddari li-Waqia Al-Mujtamaa Al-Arabi AlMuaser, p. 223. Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual (New York, 1996), p. 32. Sharabi, Azamat Al-Muthaqafeen Al-Arab: Nusus wa-Maqalat Mukhtarah, (Beirut, 2002), p. 86. Hisham Sharabi, Arab Intellectuals and the West: The Formative Years, 1875– 1914, (London, 1970), p. 22. Hisham Sharabi, ‘The Scholarly Point of View: Politics, Perspective, Paradigm,’ in Theory, Politics and the Arab World, ed. Hisham Sharabi, (New York and London, 1990), p. 21.

Some Distinctive Features of Mahjar Arab Intellectuals 195 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

Halim Barakat, The Arab World: Society, Culture, and State (Berkley, 1993), p. 14. Said, Representations of the Intellectual, p. xi. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, 1994), p. 9. Hamadi Al-Sayd, ‘Hamadi Al-Sayd’s Speech,’ in Al-Thaqafah Al-Arabiyyah fi AlMahjar (Al-Maghrib, 1988), pp. 12–13. For a full discussion of these paradigms, see Hisham Sharabi, Neopatriachy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society (Oxford, 1988), pp. 3–22. Sharabi, ‘The Scholarly Point of View: Politics, Perspective, Paradigm,’ p. 10. Sharabi, Al-Naqd Al-Haddari li-Waqia Al-Mujtamaa Al-Arabi Al-Muaser, p. 244. Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North, trans. Denys Johnson-Davies (London, 1981), pp. 150–51.

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Notes on Contributors

Mohammed A. Bamyeh is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, and the editor of International Sociology Review of Books. He specializes in the study of social movements and revolutions, the comparative history of ideas, and global sociology. His books include Anarchy as Order: The History and Future of Civic Humanity (2009); Of Death and Dominion (2007); The Ends of Globalization (2000); and The Social Origins of Islam (1999). His edited volumes include Palestine America (2003) and Drugs in Motion (2009, with Brett Neilson). Thomas Brisson was trained as a sociologist and is currently Associate Professor of Political Sciences at the University of Paris 8. He has taught and conducted research in Paris and Cairo, where he was a research fellow at the CEDEJ (Centre d’études et de documentation économiques, juridiques et sociales). His work focuses on Arab intellectuals and especially contemporary Arab intellectual diasporas in France and the West. He is the author of numerous articles on the subject, mostly in French, as well as the book Les intellectuels arabes en France: migrations et échanges intellectuels (2008). Michelangelo Guida holds a BA in politics and a PhD in Turkish history from Istituto Universitario Orientale (Naples, Italy) as well as an MA in Turkish studies from SOAS (London, UK). He is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Fatih University (Istanbul, Turkey). He has published several articles on Islamist intellectuals, most recently ‘Turkish Islamist understanding of democracy: Hayreddin Karaman and Ali Bulaç’, Turkish Studies (2010). He also conducts research on voting behavior and has recently published a book on electoral campaigns in Turkey, Türkiye’de Seçim Kampanyaları (2011, with Ömer Çaha).

208

Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East

Lital Levy is an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, where she specializes in modern Arabic and Hebrew literatures. She is currently completing two book projects, one on the intellectual history of Arab Jews in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and the other on the poetics and politics of language in contemporary literature from Israel/ Palestine. Sanaa A. M. Makhlouf is Senior Instructor in the Department of Rhetoric and Composition at the American University in Cairo. She holds an MA in medieval political philosophy from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, where she is a doctoral candidate working on the spiritual writings of Abd al-Qadir al-Jazai’ri. In addition to editorial work she undertook for ISIM Review between 2005 and 2009 and writings on Muslim reform intellectuals, most recently she served as a member of the Sunni delegation at the interfaith summit meeting at the National Cathedral in Washington (2010); as a coordinator for the al-Azhar Cambridge imam program (2010); as Visiting Professor at Kyoto University (2010); and as a participant at the US Islamic World forum in Washington (2011). Nedal Al-Mousa holds a PhD in comparative literature from Essex University (1984) and an MA in comparative literature from the American University in Cairo (1977). His research areas include comparative literature, cultural studies, translation and literary criticism. He served as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Hashemite University between 2005 and 2008. At present he is on a sabbatical leave at the Arab Open University (AOU), where he holds the position of Deputy Director of its Jordan branch. He currently conducts joint research with his colleagues at the AOU on institutions and open learning. Steve Tamari is Associate Professor of History at Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, USA. He received his PhD from Georgetown University with a dissertation on education in Ottoman Damascus and has published several articles on that topic and on identity in early modern Damascus. He is currently focused on expressions of attachment to Bilad al-Sham among members of the Ottoman Syrian ‘ulama’, notably ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He is more broadly interested in the pre-modern roots of national identity and continuities between premodern and modern loci of identity in Bilad al-Sham, including Palestine and the Arab world.

Notes on Contributors

209

Fatma Tütüncü is Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Administration at Abant Izzet Baysal University in Bolu, Turkey, where she teaches politics. Her academic research interests include secularism, Islamism, morality and gender. She is a former visiting scholar at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. Her publications have appeared in Parliamentary Affairs, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies. Elizabeth Williams is pursuing doctoral studies in history at Georgetown University. Her dissertation research explores  developments in agricultural technologies and accompanying  shifts in notions of expertise  and emerging networks of capital in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In particular, she focuses on the impact of these transformations on rural communities and the environment in late Ottoman and French mandate Syria.

INdex

A

Abbas (Khedive) 82, 87 Abd al-Malik, Anwar 179 n. 24 ‘Abduh, Muhammad 6, 8, 82, 88 n. 14 Abdülhamid II (Sultan) 115 ‘Abid, Mustafa Pasha al- 32 ‘Abid, Nazik al- 12, 23, 29–56 Abu-al-Faraj, Ghalib Hamzah 182–3 Abu Nuwas 64 Acar, Feride 153 n.18 Açıl, Mahmut 142 Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said) 19, 23, 181, 186 Adorno, Theodor 5, 168 Afghani, Jamal al-Din al- 67, 76–7 n. 53 Ahmad, Labiba 32 Ahmed, Leila 151, 155 n. 56 Aisha 25 n. 22 ‘Ajamy, Mary 53 n. 47 Akif Ersoy, Mehmed 112 Aktaş, Cihan 146–50 Akkach, Samer 99–102 Aladdin, Bakri 101 ‘Ali (ibn Abi Talib) 18–9 Ali, Kecia 151 Amin, Qasim 41 Anderson, Lisa 16 ‘Aref, ‘Aref al- 12 Arık, Remzi Oğuz 120 Arkoun, Mohamed 21, 159–69,171–2, 174–5, 177 (n. 4, 6, 8–9, 11) Armstrong, Karen 102

Arvasi, Abdülhakim 115–6, 126, 128 Atsız, Hüseyin Nihal 124 Astor (Lady) 45 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal 112 Atay, Falih Rıfkı 115 Auerbach, Erich 168 Avni, Hüseyin 120 Ayyub, Dhu-al-Nun 182–3 ‘Azm, Sadiq Jalal al- 3

B

Babanlar, Neslihan 116 Baghdadi, Khalid al- 115 Bahadıroğlu, Yavuz 142–3 Balfour, Arthur 179 n. 25 Barakat, Halim 21, 182-6, 188-9, 191–4 Barlas, Asma 151 Başgil, Ali Fuat 121 Bekkine, Abdülaziz 120, 126–8 Bell, Gertrude 32–4, 44, 55 n. 82 Bergson, Henri-Louis 116, 120, 122 Berque, Jacques 162-3, 177 n. 8, 178 n. 12 Bhabha, Homi K. 192 Birinci, Ali 123 Bitar, Nadim al- 3 Blachere, Regis 163 Blondel, Maurice 120, 123 Boggs, Carl 20 Bourdieu, Pierre 11–2, 134, 160, 174, 176 Bowen, Harold 97

212

Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East

Brunschvig, Robert 163 Buğra, Tarık 121, 123 Bulaç, Ali 123, 135–7, 139, 146, 149 Bulliet, Richard 4

C

Chamberlain, Michael 95–6 Chatterjee, Partha 37 Chomsky, Noam 174 Colonna, Fanny 176 n. 2 Commins, David 96 Conrad, Joseph 168 Cromer (Lord) 62–3, 87, 179 n. 25 Crusoe, Robinson 5 Cündioğlu, Dücane 138–9

D

Danişmen, İsmail Hami 121 Dante, Alighieri 172 De-Capua, Yoav 58 De Gaulle, Charles 165 Deleuze, Gilles 176 Demirci, Senai 143–4 Demirel, Süleyman 118 Derrida, Jacques 171, 176 Dib, Mohammad 188–9 Doğan, D. Mehmet 123

E

Eickelman, Dale 6, 22 Elias, Norbert 176 Emre, Yunus 123 Enayat, Hamid 3 Erbakan, Necmettin 118, 120, 122 Erdoğan, Recep Tayip 111, 119 Eraslan, Sibel 148 Ertuğrul, Muhsin 114 Eygi, Şevket 121

F

Faik, Sait 115 Farag, Murad 10, 57–78 Faruqi, Ismail al- 19 Fasheh, Munir 7–9

Fatima (bint Muhammad) 148 Faysal (King of Syria) 29–35, 37, 49 Fındıkoğlu, Ziayeddin Fahri 120 Flaubert, Gustave 172 Foucault, Michel 171–2 Freire, Paulo 8

G

Gelvin, James 30–1 Ghifari, Abu Dharr al- 18 Ghali, Butrus 79–80 Ghalioun, Burhan 4 Ghazali, Abu Hamed al- 147 Gibb, H.A.R. 97 Gramsci, Antonio 4, 9–10, 13, 20, 70, 134, 152, 171 Gül, Abdullah 111 Gülen, Fethullah 111

H

Habermas, Jürgen 36 Hakim, Tawfik al- 182–3 Halim Paşa, Said 112 Hallaq, Ahmad al- 106 Hamdi Efendi, Aksekili 113 Hamzah, Dyala 59 Haqqi, Yahya 182–3 Hilmi, ‘Abbas 61 Hourani, Albert 3, 95, 187 Hull, Peggy 45 Husari, Sati‘ al- 17 Husayn, Taha 6 Hussein (ibn Ali) 18, 34

I

Ibn Arabi, Muhi al-Din 100–3, 106 Ibn Kannan, Muhammad 106 Ibn Taymiyya 95 Ibrahim, Saad Eddin 3 Idris, Suhayl 182, 184 Irwin, Robert 178 n. 21

J

Jabiri, Muhammad ‘Abid al- 19

Index Jahan, Nur 45 Jamal Pasha 33–4 Jilad, Farida al- 32

K

Kaplan, Mehmet 121 Kara, İsmail 123 Kara, Mustafa 112, 123 Kasimirski, M. 166 Kawakibi, Abd al-Rahman al- 80–9 Kelsay, John 4 Kemal, Yahya 113 Khansa’, al- 39 Khatib, Ibrahim al- 38–9 Khatib, Muhibb al-Din al- 31 Khoury, Elias 4 Kipling, Joseph Rudyard 182–3, 185 Kısakürek, Necip Fazıl 111-20, 122, 126–9, 131 n. 26 Kissinger, Henry 179 n. 25 Kotku, Mehmet Zahid 121, 126 Kuhn, Thomas 165 Kurani, Ibrahim al- 102 Kurucan, Ahmet 144–5 Kutlu, Mustafa 123

L

Laoust, Henri 163 Lapidus, Ira 95 Lewis, Bernard 173 Lukács, Georg 171 Luqa, Iskandar 96–7

M

Maalouf, Amin 22 Mahmood, Saba 11 Mahmud II (Sultan) 115 Makdisi, Ilham 57 Malik (ibn Anas) 23 Malouf, David 185 Malul, Nissim 60 Ma’mun, al- (Caliph) 64 Mannheim, Karl 59 Marcus, Abraham 97

213

Margall, Francisco Pi Y 25 n. 16 Massignon, Louis 120, 162 Menderes, Adnan 121, 129 Michael, John 1, 8 Miskawayh 163 Mitchell, Timothy 37 Morrison, S.A. 184 Moyal, Azhari 60 Muhibbi, Muhammad Amin al- 98 Muradi, Muhammad Khalil al- 106 Muruwwah, Hussein 19–20 Musaylima 15

N

Nabulusi, ‘Abd al-Ghani al- 14, 93–107 Naim, Babanzade Ahmet 116 Nakshibend, Baha-ud-Din 115 Naquib, Najib al- 88 n. 9 Netanyahu, Benjamin 173 Nightingale, Florence 45 Nursi, Said 13, 112, 120

O

Ömeroğlu, Yusuf 143 Ovid 185 Özal, Turgut 119–20 Öztürk, Yaşar Nuri 123

P

Pascal, Blaise 123 Pekşen, Ahmet Mahir 142 Pellat, Charles 163, 165 Polo, Marco 5

Q

Qaddafi, Muammar al- 16 Qutb, Sayyid 18, 136

R

Rabia (al-‘Adawiyyah) 149 Rafeq, Abdul-Karim 14, 98 Rahman, Fazlur 5–6, 8 Ramazanoğlu, Yıldız 146–8 Ramli, Khayr al-Din al- 98–9

214

Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East

Rasafi, Ma‘ruf al- 12–3 Reid, Donald 80 Rida, Muhammad Rashid 80, 83, 88 n. 14 Rodinson, Maxime 162 Rumi, Mevlana Celaleddin 123

S

Sabbagh, Leila 14, 98 Sadr, Muhammad Baqir al- 18 Safa, Peyami 121 Said, Edward 5, 11–2, 21, 70, 159–61, 168–76, 178 (n. 16–17, 20–21), 179 (n. 23–25, 31), 181, 189, 191 Sakakini, Widad 33, 36–7 Sakinah (Sayyida) 45 Salih, al-Tayib 182–3,194 Salmawy, Mohamed 4 Sanu‘, Ya‘qub 60 Sayd, Hamadi al- 191–2 Sayyid, Ahmad Lutfi al- 62 Sebi, Sabbetai 130–1 n. 25 Schlegell, Barbara von 101, 106 Shaban, M.A. 15 Shafi‘i, al- 23 Shahbandar, ‘Abd al-Rahman 44 Shahrur, Muhammad 13, 22–3 Sharabi, Hisham 21, 182–4, 186–92 Shariati, Ali 23 Sheehi, Stephen 59 Shils, Edward 5 Sirhindi, Ahmed 115 Somekh, Sasson 62, 75 n. 33 Soroush, Abdolkarim 22–3 Suphi, Hamdullah 113

T

Tahtawi, Rifa‘a Rafi‘ al- 66–7, 76–7 n. 53 Tanpınar, Ahmet Hamdi 115 Tizini, Tayyib 19 Topçu, Nurettin 111–3, 119–29 Toprak, Binnaz 153–4 n. 21 Tucker, Judith 14, 98 Tuksal, Hidayet 146–7, 149–50 Türkeş, Alparslan 118 Twain, Mark 142–3

U

Ulaş, Fethiye 120 Uludağ, Süleyman 123

W

Wadud, Amina 151 Wardani, Ibrahim Nasif al- 79–80 Weber, Max 11, 175 Wedeen, Lisa 17

Y

Yalman, Ahmet Emin 117 Yazid 18 Yusuf, ‘Ali 62, 81–2 Yusufoğlu, Salih 140–1

Z

Zaghlul, Sa‘d 61 Zangi, Nur al-Din al- 94 Zayd (Prince) 33–4, 49 Zeinab (Sayyida) 45 Ziyaüddin, Gümüshanevi Ahmed 15