Traitors of Islam
Shaikh Ali Abd Ar-Raziq - The First Alim to Oppose The Khalifate
Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq was the first Muslim scholar of note to wage a campaign with his pen against the Khalifate and urge the Muslims to adopt secularism and nationalism as their salvation. To be sure, by the time his book, Islam and the Principles of Government was published in Cairo in 1925, Ziya Gokalp and Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey and Lutfi-as-Sayyid and Sa’ad Zaghlul in Egypt had already done their best to eradicate every trace of Islamic influence from the governments of their respective countries, but these avowedly secular leaders at least dissociated themselves publicly from Islam and all the ideals it stands for. Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq was unique in that he was an Alim who based his polemics on the assumption that not only should Muslims adopt European political systems, but that "true Islam" has absolutely no connection with the State!
Born in 1888, Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq, like his brother, was a disciple of Shaikh Muhammad Abduh and received his education at al-Azhar University, afterwards journeying to England where he studied for a time at Oxford. In contrast to his brother, Mustafa, who had been to Paris and as Rector of al-Azhar from 1945 to 1947, played an active role in public affairs in his efforts to modernize the University, once the furious controversy created by his book had cooled Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq passed the remainder of his life in obscurity.
In 1925 the political fortunes of the Muslim world had sunk to the lowest ebb. Even those exceptional Muslim countries not under direct European rule were no less effectively subjected to indirect foreign political and economic control. After the disastrous defeat suffered by Turkey during World War I, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk had destroyed the Ottoman dynasty and abolished the Khalifate. Consequently, in May 1926 a Congress of the Khalifate was convened in Cairo by a group of Egyptian ulema presided over by the Rector of al-Azhar. Although they unanimously agreed that in theory the Khalifate was an integral and indispensable part of Islam, since under the existing circumstances it could not command the requisite authority, nothing could be done to implement this institution until at some more favourable time in the indefinite future, perhaps a Khalif might be elected by some Muslim representative body.
Islam and the Principles of Government was the end-product of this bleak atmosphere of pessimism and the acute inferiority-complex of the Muslim intelligentsia as the result of foreign imperialism. Otherwise how could it be conceivable for any Muslim to pose the question whether the Khalifate was necessary or, indeed, if there was even such a thing as an Islamic system of government? Despite the most irrefutable evidence to the contrary, Abd ar-Raziq denied that either the Holy Quran or the Hadith explicitly mentions the necessity for the Khalifate! He vehemently denied that our Holy Prophet ever sought to exercise political authority, maintaining that his mission was purely spiritual. He wrote:
"The Prophet can have in the political direction of the nation a role similar to that of the ruler but he has a role special to himself and which he shares with no one. It is his function also to touch the souls which inhabit the bodies of men and to rend the veil in order to perceive the hearts within their breasts. He has the right, or rather the duty, to open the hearts of his followers so as to touch the sources of love and hatred, of good and evil, of their innermost thoughts, the hiding places of temptation, the springs of purpose and the foundations of their moral character.... Prophecy, which is all this and still more, implies that the Prophet has the right to unite himself with men's souls by a communion of care and protection and also to dispose of their hearts freely and without obstacle." *
* quoted from Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, op. cit., pp. 186-187."As a Prophet, Muhammad possessed the....spiritual authority having its source in the free, sincere and entire submission of the heart. It was not based, like political power, on the enforced submission of the body. Its purpose was not to regulate the interests of life in the world but to lead men towards God....Forms of government indeed are of no concern to the divine will; God has left the field of civil government and worldly interests for the exercise of human reason. It is not even necessary that the Ummah be politically united; this is virtually impossible and even if possible would it be good? God has willed that there should be a natural differentiation between tribes and peoples--there should be competition ‘in order that civilization should be perfected.’ Islam recognizes no superiority inside the Ummah of one nation, language, country or age over another except for the superiority conferred by virtue. The primitive community (of Islam) was only Arab by accident....The proof that it was no part of his mission to establish an Islamic state is that he made no provision for the permanent government of the community after his death....The first Caliph, Abu Bakr, was invested with what was essentially a political and royal power based on force. His state was an Arab state built on the basis of a religious preaching. No doubt it helped to spread Islam but essentially it was concerned with Arab interests....Those who rejected the political leadership of Abu Bakr were accused of having abandoned Islam itself. From this time a false idea of the caliphate took root and it was, of course, encouraged by absolute rulers in their own interests....The authority of the caliphate has been harmful to Islam—‘a plague for Islam and the Muslims, a source of evils and corruption’....Islam is innocent of this institution of the caliphate as Muslims commonly understand it. Religion has nothing to do with one form of government rather than another and there is nothing in Islam which forbids Muslims to destroy their old political system and build a new one on the basis of the newest conceptions of the human spirit and the experience of nations...." *
* Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, op. cit. pp. 185-188.In his analysis of the development of the Khalifate, Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq was not only guilty of outrageous blasphemy; his description is contrary to all historical facts. The Holy Quran would question; "Do they seek to return to the regime of the Jahiliyyah (era of paganism) when there is none better than the rule of Allah?" Or in the second Surah where the Holy Quran has appointed the Holy Prophet and his followers as God's vicegerents (Khulafa) on earth? The Holy Quran repeatedly refers to the Muslim community as a united body, threatening direst punishment in this world and in the Hereafter against anyone responsible for its dissension and disunity. As an Azharite A1im, could he have been ignorant of verse 53 of Surah an-Nur where Allah promises the Muslims that Islam will rule the earth and destroy all Godless governments? Or could the learned Shaikh not know of such Hadith which report the Holy Prophet to have said: "If thou wilt break Islam piece by piece, deny it first worldly rule and lastly prayer," or "Islam and government are twin brothers. None of the two can be perfect without the other. Islam is like a great structure and government is its guardian. A building without a foundation crashes down and without a guardian is pilfered and robbed out!" Or could he be so ignorant of Islamic history that he did not know that Abu Bakr accepted the Khalifate with this speech:
"Now, 0 people, I am your ruler though I am not the best among you. If I do right, support me. If I commit any wrong, then show me the straight path. Obey me only so long as I obey Allah and His messenger; if I disobey them, then you must disobey me. Know that I am no more than a man from among yourselves."
Are these the words of an ambitious politician who cared only for Arab nationalism or whose authority rested upon royal pomp and the ruthless force of dictatorship as this modernist Shaikh would like us to believe? If our Holy Prophet's mission was purely "spiritual" and he did not seek to implement Islam through any organized political authority, then surely he would have never performed the Hijra but instead he would have been content to remain in Mecca, preaching his message against impossible obstacles and fatalistically permitting himself to be slain there by his enemies as a martyr to his cause. This is what the Christian orientalists in Europe and America think he should have done!
For centuries Christendom has spread the propaganda that political power cannot be reconciled with a religious mission. That is why Christian scholars almost without exception assert in their writings that our Holy Prophet's character must have been corrupted by his political and military successes after the Hijra. So strongly has Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq been influenced by Christian thought that in order to uphold the purity of the Holy Prophet's work, he feels psychologically compelled to argue, against the clearest evidence to the contrary, that he never wanted political power. Neither the Holy Quran, the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet, nor the behaviour of the Companions could leave the slightest doubt in the mind of any Muslim or non-Muslim that from its inception, Islam was intended to be an all-embracing movement with a unified community under organized leadership. Important injunctions of Islam such as Zakat, Jihad and even congregational prayers and the legal prohibitions, which cannot properly be enforced without political power, provide the irrefutable testimony to this fact.
Shaikh Ali Abd ar-Raziq and his supporters in the West would have liked Islam to have been mere theology, theoretical philosophy or an idle dream and simply could not accept the fact that it was actually implemented. Even less can they tolerate those Muslims today who are still inspired with the examples from their past history and are determined to incorporate them to dominate the Muslim society of the future. According to Islam and the Principles of Government, Abu Bakr, the closest and dearest Companion of the Holy Prophet, was thoroughly mistaken in confusing Islam with political power and only its modernist author's futile attempts to transform Islam into Christianity are valid!
The above is an excerpt from Islam and Modernism, Maryam Jameelah, Mohammad Yusuf Khan & Sons, Lahore, 1965/1988, p.169-175.
References:
* Al-Islam wa Usul al Hukm, (Islam and the Principles of Government), Ali Abd ar-Raziq, Cairo, 1925.* These are the most important classics of Muslim modernism. They belong on the "black-list" and should be approached with extreme caution because they have all done (intentionally or unintentionally) irreparable harm to the Islamic cause.
Source: The Cultural Association
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