Download PDF | Islamic Reform, Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria, Oxford University Press (1990).
210 Pages
PREFACE
In the autumn of 1979 Professor Richard P. Mitchell returned from the Middle East with a handwritten manifesto by a proponent of Islamic reform in Syria. Entitled “Our Call,” it outlined the agenda of religious reformers:
Return to the Quran and the Sunnah, and understand them as the pious forefathers had.
Call Muslims to act according to their religion’s teachings.
Warn Muslims against polytheism in its various forms.
Revive free Islamic thought within the bounds of Islamic principles. Set up an Islamic society and implement God’s law on earth.
The anonymous author then listed the leading thinkers of the Islamic reform movement: Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (d. 1328), Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi (d. 1914), ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Bitar (d. 1917), and later figures.
The following summer in Beirut I met the late Zafir al-Qasimi, the son of Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi, the foremost advocate of religious reform in turn-of-the-century Damascus. When I returned to the Middle East in 1981, I met again with Mr. Qasimi, and he put me in touch with his nephews in Damascus, Muhammad Sa‘id al-Qasimi and Samih al-Ghabrah. The former holds the Qasimi library in his home, and he graciously allowed me to study the manuscripts and papers of his grandfather Jamal al-Din. I also benefited from Mr. Ghabrah’s interest in the history of Damascus and familiarity with his grandfather’s life and work. To each of these members of the Qasimi family I am deeply grateful for their kindness and hospitality during my stay in Damascus.
A. U.S. Department of Education Fulbright-Hays Research Abroad award made possible my research in Damascus. I would like to thank Mr. Jonathan Owen of the U.S. Information Agency in Damascus for his help in obtaining the necessary permits to conduct research at the Zahiriyyah Library and the Center for Historical Documents, and for smoothing over the rough edges of daily life in Damascus. At the Center for Historical Documents, Ms. Da‘d Hakim and her staff provided a most congenial atmosphere for research. Dr. Muti‘ al-Hafiz of the Arabic Language Academy was helpful in tracking down a number of articles and books.
On returning to the United States I was assisted by a grant from the Joint Committee of the International Doctoral Research Fellowship Program for the Near and Middle East of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds provided by the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I would also like to thank Juan Cole, Rudi Lindner, Paul Dresch, and John Voll, whose comments and suggestions sharpened the perspective and improved the execution of this work.
I thank my parents for their generous financial support during my years at Michigan and for always encouraging me to pursue my interest in the history of the Middle East. My wife, Mona, with her good humor and patience, helped see me through the last stages of rescarch in Damascus. Finally, | am most grateful to my late mentor and friend, Richard P. Mitchell, for his encouragement and for his inspiring, humane approach to the study of Muslims and their endeavors to shape their lives according to their highest ideals.
Carlisle, Pa. D.C.
INTRODUCTION
A slice of the history of modern Islamic reform in Syria lies in the living room of a modest apartment in Damascus. Books, journals, manuscripts, and loose papers packed together on tall shelves line three walls. Hanging above the books on one wall are three portrait photographs that depict the heritage of a family central to the reform movement. On the left side is Muhammad Sa‘id al-Qasimi, a bearded, whiteturbaned shaykh of some 50 years, pictured with a book open before him. In the middle stands his eldest son, Jamal al-Din, another bearded shaykh wearing a robe and white turban, perhaps in his early 30s. On the right, Muhammad Sa‘id’s youngest son, Salah al-Din, presents a different aspect: a young man with a thin mustache, dressed in European-style coat and trousers, starched white shirt, bow tie, and topped with a fez.
Three portraits, three generations, three ways of seeing the world. The father (1843-1900), a religious scholar, spent most of his life holding customary Islamic beliefs. In his later years he embraced the reformist vision that the eldest son (1866— 1914), also a religious scholar, elaborated in the name of a return to the sources of religion. The youngest son (1887~1916) left behind the religious vocation, became a medical doctor, and strove for an Arab national revival. Each of these outlooks—a customary interpretation of Islam, scripturalist reform, and Arabism—had its partisans among ‘ulamd’ (religious scholars) and young intellectuals in Ottoman Syria between 1885 and 1914. Scriptural reform in Damascus developed in the historical context of Ottoman bureaucratic reform and calls to purify Islamic practices and beliefs.
During the nineteenth century, Ottoman rulers adopted measures that displaced religious personnel and religious principles from their customary roles in administrative, legal, and educational institutions. These secularizing measures, when finally enforced in the provinces in the second half of the century, transformed the notable stratum in Arab cities. For centuries this group had included many ulama, but within a few decades they were almost totally displaced. Concomitant with their fall in status, secular law codes and public schools whose curricula derived from European models spread and broke the monopoly Islamic discourse had exercised over law and education. The turn to scripturalism represented the response of some ulama to these secular trends.
Scripturalism, which stresses the exclusive authority of the Quran and the Sunnah in determining what constitutes Islamic beliefs and practices, had been spreading in learned circles since the eighteenth century, most widely among Sufi orders, although the Wahhabi movement in Arabia is the best known instance. During the nineteenth century two developments reinforced the scripturalist trend. First, the secularist reforms signified to some Muslims that customary interpretations of Islam could no longer provide a foundation for Muslim vitality. For those who remained convinced of Islam’s truth, Muslims’ weakness vis-a-vis Europe made sense if one believed that they had strayed from “true” Islam. Hence, it was necessary to return to the sources for a guide to rediscovering “true” Islam.
Second, Europe presented a military threat to Muslim lands. To counter that threat, Muslims had to unite, which required that they transcend their differences. It became common to argue that such differences had arisen in the course of Islamic history and coalesced as variant ways of performing ritual, attaining mystical union with God, and interpreting law. By returning to scripture as the sole criterion for religious beliefs and practices, Muslims could overcome their divisions.
The modern Islamic reform movement in late Ottoman Syria was part of a wider movement known as the salafiyyah, which had adherents in other Arab lands. The advocates of this trend called for a return to the practices of the pious ancestors, alsalaf al-salih in Arabic, hence the term “salafiyyah” for the movement and “salafi” for its partisans. It is important to distinguish between “salaf,” which refers to the first generations of Muslims, and “salafi,” which denotes modern advocates of a return to the first generation’s practices and methods.
Throughout the reformist circle’s development it was related to wider political currents, first with the Young Turks, then the Committee for Union and Progress, and finally young Syrians interested in reviving Arab culture and elevating the Arabs’ status in the empire. The shaykhs became involved in incidents and trends that indicate the development of new forms of political action in Arab urban centers: elections, political parties, partisan press, and proto-nationalist societies.
This study approaches religious reform in Damascus from the perspective of the social history of intellectuals: the experiences and outlooks of groups of intellectuals, and their complex interactions with their social, political, and economic contexts. In setting out the context for Islamic reform, I start with a description of Damascene ulama’s place in society and of stratification within the ulama corps. The central historical developments in nineteenth-century Syria and their impact on the ulama complete our picture of the general context from which advocates of religious reform emerged. Moving to a more specific level, I discuss intellectual trends in the wider Muslim world that may have fostered religious reform in Damascus. Then I narrow the focus further with a close examination of the social origins of the reformist ulama faction in Damascus.
Having established the contexts of religious reform, I turn to the initial emergence of the reformist circle and the reaction of conservative ulama against it, in particular their inciting Ottoman officials to persecute the reformers and thereby silence them. This informal censorship stifled the salafis in Damascus, and they reached out to sympathetic minds by corresponding with reformers in Egypt, Beirut, Iraq, and Morocco, constructing a network of contacts in Arab urban centers. To understand why the reformers so offended most ulama requires an analysis of the salafis’ distinctive ideas, especially their critique of practices and beliefs then prevalent among the ulama and Muslims in general. The antisalafi reaction also demands an investigation of the conservative ulama’s social identity and their defense of their vision of Islam.
Finally, I probe the relationship between the salafis and other reformist groups in Damascus: the Young Turks and Arabists. The manifold social and political ties between the salafi ulama and the much younger, secularly educated Arabists deserve Close scrutiny because of the tension between Islam and nationalism as poles of political identity, a tension that is a recurring theme of twentieth-century history in the Arab world.
Having laid out the structure and concerns of this work, let me briefly state my hypothesis regarding the origins and significance of the salafi trend in late Ottoman Damascus. Salafism represented a response of middle-status ulama to secularist tendencies in Ottoman educational and legal institutions on the one hand, and to the projection of European power in the Middle East on the other. The salafis assimilated current ideas about reason, progress, science, and technology to a vision of Islam that held out to Muslims the promise of remaining true to their religious and cultural identity at the same time that they were borrowing technology and scientific learning from the West. This vision of Islam clashed with the beliefs and practices of most ulama who had adjusted to the juxtaposition of religious and civil schools, courts, and law codes in the belief that they could best preserve Islam by guarding its remaining bastions—the religious law court, the religious school, and the mosque.
Certain ulama “newcomers,” either by immigration or coming from families that recently attained ulama status, followed the customary pattern of striving for higher prestige and influence by setting their sights on posts in the Ottoman religious administration.! This traditional game of ulama politics was complicated by ideological developments in the nineteenth century and the perception of the ulama’s waning influence.
Upstart ulama accused the religious establishment of failing the Muslim community at large by clinging to beliefs and practices that had no scriptural basis, that were not truly Islamic. Because the ulama had so utterly failed to preserve true Islam, which would have never allowed Muslims to fall behind the West, Muslim rulers turned to the expedient of borrowing European laws and institutions. With no end to the process of Westernization in sight, the reformers blamed official ulama for perpetuating a false, conservative version of Islam, and clamored for their replacement by competent ulama (such as themselves).
This reformist critique directly hit the bases of official ulama’s practices and therefore provoked a hostile, sometimes violent response. The one educated group that the salafis attracted was the corps of recent graduates of the Ottoman high school in Damascus. In addition to links of kinship in a few instances, the salafis appealed to state-educated Syrian youths by formulating Islam in a manner that permitted the budding stratum of professionals to harmonize their Muslim Arab identity with their concern to master sciences and techniques of Western provenance.
Furthermore, just as the salafis’ ideology and career aspirations were blocked by the high ulama, so the younger men were frustrated in launching their careers by first the existing urban elite (which was not competent in their eyes), and later by Turkish bureaucrats sent to administer the province in the constitutional period, 1908-1914. Intellectual elitism, an ethic of professionalism, blocked careers, and frustrated ambitions drew salafis and high school graduates together in common political endeavors, first in supporting the restoration of the Ottoman constitution, then in asserting Arab rights at a time when the dominant political force, the Committee of Urban and Progress, appeared bent on “turkifying” the empire.
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