Muhammad Abduh Read online

  The national consciousness that the opposition press was calling for did not yet really exist. On the one hand, older religious conceptions of the community were very widespread. On the other, Egypt in the 1870s was a remarkably cosmopolitan place. The ruling elite still spoke Ottoman Turkish rather than Arabic, and employed foreign experts in senior positions without hesitation – the chief of the army’s General Staff, for example, was General Charles Stone Pasha, an American who had defended Washington, DC during the Civil War. Afghani himself, of course, was neither Egyptian nor a Sunni Muslim.

  INTERVENTION

  As opposition to Ismail increased during 1878, Afghani’s group added more direct action to journalism. The group, initially one within Kawkab al-Sharq, took a more distinct organizational form. Afghani became president of Kawkab al-Sharq, but some Egyptian Freemasons objected that he was straying from the Masonic principle of standing above politics – as, indeed, he was. Afghani and his followers considered this objection the result of cowardice, though, not of adherence to Masonic principle. Afghani changed his lodge’s obedience from the United Grand Lodge of England to the Grand Orient in Paris – the Grand Orient was less averse to political activity than the United Grand Lodge. This attempt to defeat opposition evidently failed, however, and Afghani’s group left Kawkab al-Sharq to form a new “national” lodge, also under the Grand Orient. According to one source, membership of this new lodge, the name of which is not known, soon reached about 300. Its members were organized into different sections for different political purposes.

  One member of the Kawkab al-Sharq who followed Afghani into the new “national” lodge was Major Latif Salim, director of the Military College. In February 1879, as the financial crisis continued, the government of Nubar Pasha, an ambitious politician who was attempting to form a constitutional government opposed to Ismail but on good terms with the British, was forced to place a large number of army officers on half pay. Coming on top of the failure to pay salaries that were previously due, this brought discontent in the army to a dangerous point. Major Latif Salim drew up a petition demanding payment of arrears of pay, and led some 400 or 500 officers to present the petition to the minister of war. On their way, however, Latif Salim’s group met Prime Minister Nubar Pasha and the British-imposed minister of finance, Sir Rivers Wilson, apparently by accident. Both men were forced to take refuge in the Ministry of Finance. A riot developed, which was quelled only by the khedive himself, who promised the officers payment of their arrears.

  As a result of this incident, the khedive dismissed the Nubar government. The European consuls, who had previously supported Nubar, were forced to accept that Nubar was unable to control a deteriorating situation. After some delay, a new government was formed under Prince Tawfiq, with Riyad as minister of the interior and minister of justice – a government close to the old Kawkab al-Sharq, then, installed following an incident that a member of Afghani’s group had organized. Within a few weeks, this Riyad government was replaced by one led by Sharif Pasha. The Sharif government implemented a “national plan” for a purely Egyptian ministry answerable not to the khedive, but to a Consultative Chamber of Deputies. Followers of Afghani, notably Abd al-Salam al-Muwaylihi, a deputy and Freemason, played a leading part in pressing for this national plan. Correctly or not, the London Times identified al-Muwaylihi as a front for Afghani. On the face of it, then, Egypt was becoming an independent constitutional monarchy, and Afghani’s group was partly responsible for this – though the extent of Afghani’s responsibility, and indeed what was really going on behind the scenes, is far from clear.

  The Sharif government, however, was in fact composed mostly of men loyal to Ismail, and what at first appeared to be the triumph of constitutionalism and representative government quickly turned into the restoration of the khedive’s autocracy. As the khedive’s triumph became clear, Afghani tried various ways of saving the situation. He is said to have persuaded the prime minister to suggest to the khedive that he abdicate, a suggestion that was – not unsurprisingly – rejected. He visited the French consul in search of French support for the replacement of the khedive by Prince Tawfiq. He and Muhammad Abduh even discussed the possibility of assassinating the khedive, though their plans seem to have got no further than deciding that the Qasr al-Nil bridge would be a suitable place. It is not known which of the two first suggested the assassination, but it was probably Afghani rather than Muhammad Abduh, since Afghani was later implicated in the successful assassination of another monarch, the shah of Persia. Muhammad Abduh’s part in the discussion suggests that he was an important member of the group, even though his name does not otherwise feature much.

  The European powers were less concerned about renewed despotism than were Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, but they did object to Ismail’s breach of international financial agreements. The Ottoman sultan was persuaded to depose Ismail, the khedive who had done more to bring Egypt into the modern world than anyone since Mehmet Ali. On June 26, Tawfiq became khedive in his father’s place. A delegation of the Kawkab al-Sharq went to congratulate him.

  DEFEAT

  Tawfiq, however, refused to accept the parts of the “national plan” that would have turned Egypt into a constitutional monarchy, and Sharif Pasha resigned as prime minister. Afghani spoke publicly against Tawfiq in the important and central Hasan mosque, criticizing him as a tool of European interests. His speeches were fiery:

  You have been born into slavery and are living under despotism. For centuries, you have been under the yoke of conquerors and oppressors …That which you earn by the sweat of your brow has been taken away from you without your knowledge … Rise from your indifference! … Shake off the dust of ignorance and indolence! Live free and happy like other nations – or else die as martyrs!

  Some days after this speech, Afghani was arrested and put on a ship to India. Tawfiq informed the British consul that he had taken this step because Afghani had been “inciting the people to rebellion and … attempting to propagate Nihilism.” In a later letter to Riyad Pasha, Afghani said that he was told by different people that his expulsion was at the request of the ulema, of the European consuls, and of the khedive. He himself blamed his expulsion on the hostility of supporters of Prince Abd al-Halim, Tawfiq’s predecessor as crown prince. All of this was probably true. Abd al-Halim would have been right to see Afghani as an enemy, as would Tawfiq. Afghani had also made enemies of the British by contact with the French consul and of the ulema by promoting ideas which were, if not exactly Nihilism, certainly highly objectionable to them. It was to be expected that the failure of his group’s plans would lead to his arrest.

  Other members of Afghani’s group also suffered as Tawfiq attempted to re-establish khedival authority. Misr al-fatat was closed down, as was Al-Tijara. In September, Muhammad Abduh was arrested, and banished from Cairo to his native village, in internal exile. Muhammad Abduh’s introduction to politics had seen the cause for which he was working briefly come close to success, but end in complete failure.

  URABI AND EXILE

  Banished from Cairo after the failure of the attempt to transform Egypt into a constitutional monarchy, Muhammad Abduh spent some time in his village. He then moved from there to Alexandria, then to Tanta, and then to the outskirts of Cairo, where he stayed with an official on the board of education, Rifaa Bey. Muhammad Abduh evidently retained some of the contacts in political circles that he had made under Afghani’s patronage. These contacts effected a reconciliation with Riyad Pasha, again prime minister, who pardoned him.

  In September 1880, only one year after his banishment, Muhammad Abduh was appointed one of three editors of Egypt’s official journal, Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya (“Egyptian proceedings”). He soon became the editor-in-chief, a position which also gave him official control of the rest of Egypt’s press. This rapid reversal of fortunes reflected the ascendancy of Riyad, and probably also reflected a shortage of capable journalists.

  MUHAMMAD ABDUH THE EDITOR

>   Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya, which had been established in 1828 as an irregular four-page newsletter in Ottoman Turkish and (rather bad) Arabic, had by 1880 become a somewhat better bi-weekly newspaper in Arabic. Muhammad Abduh took steps to improve it further, persuading the prime minister to order government departments to submit to it regular accounts of projects proposed, in progress, and completed, and adding an editorial section. As overseer of the Egyptian press, Muhammad Abduh also attempted to raise journalistic standards elsewhere, notably by calling for better Arabic. His requirement that reports critical of government officials be properly investigated before publication might be seen as an attempt to improve accuracy, or might be seen as an attempt to suppress reports critical of the prime minister and his colleagues.

  Some of the editorials in Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya were written by Muhammad Abduh himself. Others were written by Saad Zaghlul and by Abd al-Karim Salman, whom Muhammad Abduh knew from the Azhar, and who had perhaps also been a member of the Afghani group.

  Muhammad Abduh’s editorials in Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya addressed social rather than political questions, expressing positions which have often since become generally accepted among Muslims, but were then novel and daring. The importance of education was a favorite theme, the topic of some fifteen percent of his articles. He warned against acquiring the trappings of European civilization without its substance, and against sending Muslim children to foreign, Christian schools. He called for the reform of character, especially among the peasantry, and condemned corruption and conspicuous consumption. He also attacked bida, a term which literally means ‘innovation’ in the sense of departure from the model of the Prophet Muhammad in religious matters, but which might also mean superstition. One particular target was the dawsa, a major annual festival during which the chief of a major Sufi order, the Saadiyya, rode on a horse over the bodies of a hundred or more of his followers, who lay face down on the ground for the purpose. Accounts differ as to whether or not injuries were frequent. Another target was polygamy, then a generally accepted form of marriage among Muslims. Muhammad Abduh advanced the ingenious argument, previously promoted in India by the modernist religious reformer Ahmad Khan, that although Islamic law permits polygamy in theory, it prohibits it in practice. A man is required to behave equally toward all his wives, which is in practice impossible. Hence a man is prohibited from marrying more than one wife.

  Muhammad Abduh’s editorials in Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya show, for the first time, his progressive social views, and also his views on education. He continued to hold these views for the rest of his life. The conviction of the importance of education in reforming Egypt was one that he shared with many others, including the former khedive Ismail. A well-educated population is still regarded today as necessary for development; its necessity was already clear in Egypt in the late nineteenth century, as a result of the severe shortage of men who could operate effectively in the new systems being copied from Europe.

  MUHAMMAD ABDUH AND URABI

  The turbulent politics of Egypt in this period soon propelled Muhammad Abduh back from the social into the political arena. In February 1881, there was a repeat of February 1879’s discontent among army officers, led this time by Colonel Ahmad Urabi, an officer who had no connection to the Afghani group. Urabi and his supporters intended to petition for the replacement of the minister of war by their own nominee, but were arrested before they could do so. A prearranged mutiny then freed them, and forced the installation of an Urabist candidate as minister of war.

  At first, Muhammad Abduh continued to support the government, partly because he distrusted Urabi and his fellow officers, and partly because the Urabists were hostile to the Afghani group, for reasons that are not clear. In July, however, Riyad Pasha and the khedive attempted to reassert their control, causing the Urabists to form an alliance with the constitutionalists of 1879, and to launch a second mutiny in September, during which Urabists occupied the courtyard of the khedival palace. This resulted in the replacement of Riyad Pasha by Sharif Pasha as prime minister, and a renewed attempt to place khedival power under the control of a constitution. It also resulted in Muhammad Abduh’s conversion to the Urabist cause. Disappointed when Tawfiq re-established autocracy after the fall of Ismail, Muhammad Abduh saw another possibility of establishing “liberty” in Egypt, as he later wrote to Afghani.

  As editor of Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya and chief censor, Muhammad Abduh was in a position to give real support to the Urabists and the constitutionalists, both by means of articles in Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya and by failing to exercise his powers as censor against Urabists such as Abdallah al-Nadim, who had formerly written in Mirat al-sharq, and who had now become known as khatib al-thawra, “the orator of the revolution.” Press support for Urabi converted what was initially a military movement into something approximating a genuinely national movement for freedom from autocracy and from foreign control. The extent to which there was genuinely a national movement was hotly debated, both in Egypt and abroad, in the immediate aftermath of the movement’s failure, and again in the 1950s after another Egyptian colonel – Gamal Abdul Nasser – seized power and gained popular support. There is evidence on both sides, but not enough to permit a decisive conclusion.

  Muhammad Abduh developed constitutionalist political views in a number of articles. He called for a state based on law, which he interpreted not just as a constitutional system but as a system in which laws were relevant to the circumstances, and known to and understood by the people. The importance of the relevance and appropriateness of law was a conviction he would hold throughout his life. “Let it not be supposed,” he wrote in Al-Waqa’i al-misriyya in December 1881, “that the just law based on liberty is that which is modeled entirely on the civil principles and political foundations of other countries … Many a law is suited to the interests of one people but not to those of others.”

  On the whole, though, the example of Europe was beneficial. Egyptian society, Muhammad Abduh wrote, had been destroyed by rivalry to the point where each person had come “to restrict his attention to his own immediate concerns, and never to think of the rights of society.”However, if people “learn something of the conduct of other nations they will recall that they once had rights as a group,” and “as their social impulses grow in strength … they will set to work to clear away the dross of their corrupted qualities.” This was already happening, resulting in the calls for representative government which Muhammad Abduh himself was backing.

  Although Muhammad Abduh’s political positions were modern, they were modern by the standards of the nineteenth century, not those of today. He did not, for example, support democracy with a universal franchise – a system that was then found only rarely. It was proper, wrote Abduh, to exclude from the franchise “the lowest class of the workers, even if they are large in number, for they perform the function of deaf instruments, limited to bodily activity alone.” This was a view that would have commanded general acceptance at the time in Britain and many other countries, though not in the United States.

  It is at this point that we have the first physical description of Muhammad Abduh, from the pen of the Irish activist Wilfrid Blunt, who was in Egypt at the time. Blunt met and admired Muhammad Abduh, then “a man of about thirty-five, of middle height, dark, active in his gait, of quick intelligence revealed in singularly penetrating eyes, and with a manner frank and cordial and inspiring ready confidence.” Another sketch is provided by Alexander Broadley, later Muhammad Abduh’s defense lawyer:

  Perhaps the most gifted man in the ranks of the Egyptian Nationalists. An elegant writer, a profound Arabic scholar and an eloquent and impressive speaker, he exercised an appreciable influence among the more educated classes of his fellow-countrymen. He had unquestionably greatly helped to make public opinion a real factor in Egyptian progress.

  TRIUMPH AND RENEWED DEFEAT

  In early 1882, with Urabi as minister of war and Prime Minister Mahmud Sami Pasha al-Barudi doing Urab
i’s bidding, the Urabists (if not exactly the constitutionalists) appeared to have triumphed. Urabi, however, had overplayed his hand. Britain and France, concerned that the Urabists threatened their financial and other interests, decided to support the khedive, and sent warships to Alexandria. By July the khedive had fled to European protection in Alexandria, where an outbreak of rioting finally triggered British military intervention. In September 1882, a British army defeated Urabi’s forces at the battle of Tel al-Kabir and occupied Cairo. Urabi and his supporters, including Muhammad Abduh, were arrested. Muhammad Abduh was charged with “administering unlawful oaths” – apparently, an oath of loyalty to Urabi.

  Alexander Broadley, the English lawyer sent by Urabi’s British sympathizers to defend him, also took on the task of defending other imprisoned Urabists. When he visited Muhammad Abduh in jail, he found that

  his mind and body alike seemed crushed beyond hope of recovery by the cruel reaction born of shipwrecked hopes and the agony of despair. Like his fellows, he had been insulted and ill-treated in prison, but even his own account of his sufferings is weak and equivocal compared to theirs.