Traitors of Islam
Traitor: Dr. Taha Hussain
The Idol of Egypt's Intelligentsia
For close to a half century, Dr. Taha Hussain has been the idol of Egypt's intelligentsia., Often cited by his admirers as a disciple of Shaikh Muhammad Abduh, it is doubtful if Dr. Taha.Hussain ever associated with him personally although his modernist ideas, sanctioned by his enormous prestige, certainly influenced the course of his future life.
Born about 1890 in a small village on the upper Nile, as a young child he contracted ophthalmia, the dreaded eye-disease. Despite his blindness, Taha Hussain managed to commit to memory the entire Quran which at the age of thirteen won him a scholarship to al-Azhar University. While studying in Cairo, he began to seek the company of Europeanized students and his desire to emulate them resulted in his abandonment of al-Azhar in disgust. The story of this portion of his early life is related in poignant detail in his autobiographical Stream of Days, a modern Arabic classic overflowing with sentimentality and self-pity. Among the first to be awarded a Ph.D. at the newly, established Cairo University (then Egyptian University), Dr. Taha Hussain was sent on a Government scholarship to Paris to study at the Sorbonne where he earned another Ph.D. and also met his wife, Suzanne Bresseau whom he married in 1918. Upon his return to Egypt, he became Professor of Arabic Literature at Cairo University and later its Dean. It was during this time that he began to write his controversial books in severest criticism of orthodox Islam.
In 1926 the bomb exploded when his book with the deceptively innocent title On Pre-Islamic Poetry was published. The object of this book was to cast doubt on the authenticity of Quran and Hadith and the renowned commentators and jurists of the past by denouncing the pre-Islamic poetry, used as a linguistic method of interpreting the Scriptures, as a wholesale forgery invented "so that the ulema might prove by it what they had set out to prove."
"God has created for human beings minds which find delight in doubting and pleasure in anxiety and perplexity. The necessary consequences of this method are of utmost importance--they amount to nothing less than an intellectual revolution!" *
* quoted from Egypt in Search of a Political Community, Nadav Safram Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1961, p. 154.In the body of this work, Dr. Taha Hussain missed no opportunity to cast ridicule on all the thinkers, jurists and theologians of the formative period of Islamic history for their "blatant trickery" in "forging" the Quran and "manufacturing" Hadith. Not content with this, he insisted that Moses (peace be upon him) had never lived and that the Quranic stories about Abraham and Ishmael belonged in the realm of mythology.
"The Torah may speak to us about Abraham and Ishmael and the Quran may tell us about them too, but the mention of their names in the Torah and the Quran is not sufficient to establish their historical existence, let alone the story which tells us about the emigration of Ishmael, son of Abraham, to Mecca and the origin of the Arabs there. We are compelled to see in this story a kind of fiction to establish the relationship of the Jews and Arabs on the one hand and Islam and Judaism on the other." *
* Egypt in Search of a Political Community, op. cit., p.155.Another of his books which exercised a tremendous influence over the minds of his contemporaries was The Future of Culture in Egypt. Published in 1938, the purpose of this book was to identify Egypt, culturally as part of Europe and outline a programme of public education accordingly. Taha Hussain begins by asking :
"Is Egypt of the East or the West? We may paraphrase the question as follows. Would it be easier for the Egyptian mind to understand a Chinese or a Hindu or to understand an Englishman or a Frenchman? This is the question we must answer before we begin to think of the foundations on which we shall have to base our culture." (p.3)
He then goes on to explain that since the beginning of history there have existed two distinct and bitterly antagonistic civilizations--the one in Europe and the other in the Far East. What an over-simplification of history! If there has never been a single civilization existing from "time immemorial" in Europe, how much less is this true of the Far East. The Far East has never been culturally homogeneous. Hindu India and Confucian China differed as much from each other as they did from medieval Europe.
Because of ancient Egypt's sustained relations with Greece and her lack of communication with the Far East, Dr. Taha Hussain argues that "Egypt has always been an integral part of Europe as far as its intellectual and cultural life is concerned in all its forms and branches." The learned Doctor ignores the fact that the only historical period when Egypt was culturally at one with Europe was during the Hellenistic Age inaugurated by Alexander the Great. But there is even less historic continuity between Pharaonic Egypt and Islamic Egypt than between the Athens of Pericles and Byzantium!
Dr. Taha Hussain insists that the adoption of Islam and the Arabic language did not make Egypt any more "Eastern" than Europe when its people embraced Christianity.
"How is it possible for fair-minded people to see no harm coming to the European mind from reading the Gospel and at the same time to regard the Quran as purely Eastern even though it is proclaimed that the Quran was revealed only to confirm and complete what is in the Gospel? They must explain what distinguishes Christianity from Islam for both stem from the same source. The essence of Islam is the same essence of Christianity. The connection of Islam with Greek philosophy is identical to that of Christianity. Whence then comes the difference in the effect of these two faiths on the creation of the mind that mankind inherited from Greece? Why is Europe's connection with Greek culture during the Renaissance regarded as one of the props of the European mind whereas her connection with this same Greek philosophy through Islam is rejected? Can we seriously maintain the existence of any important differences between the peoples living on the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean?" (pp.7-8)
Can we indeed? Just imagine this most learned of Egyptians not recognizing any historical difference between Christianity and Islam! What is more probable, however, is that the learned Doctor, in his zeal to prove Islam no barrier to a thorough-going westernization of his country, did not hesitate to resort to the most unscrupulous distortion of historical facts in order to get his point across.
"We Egyptians measure the progress of our nation solely in terms of the amount of our borrowing from the West. We have learned from Europe how to be civilized. Europeans have taught us to sit at table and eat with fork and knife, sleep in beds instead of on the floor and wear Western clothes. We seek no guidance in our government from the Khalifate. Instead we have set up national, secular courts and enacted laws in conformity to Western rather than Islamic codes. The dominant and undeniable fact of our times is that day by day we are drawing closer to Europe and becoming an integral part of her literally and figuratively." (pp.11-12)
Taha Hussain asserts that Westernization would be much more difficult if the Egyptian mind were basically different from the European. In the same breath he chides his countrymen for lagging so far behind Japan in this respect.
"In all seriousness, do we wish to embrace the religion and philosophy of the Chinese just when they are rapidly westernizing themselves? Those Egyptians who deride Western civilization would be the last to want to live like Chinese or Hindus." (p.22)
Why does Dr. Taha Hussain assume that his fellow countrymen must choose between these two alternatives? Why should Egyptians want either to be Chinese or Englishmen? Why should they not be proud to live as Muslims? Dr. Taha Hussain purposely omits this question, evidently to belittle Islam in the eyes of his readers as unworthy of an independent and self-sufficient civilization of its own.
"Khedive Ismail's statement that Egypt is a part of Europe should not be regarded as some kind of boast or exaggeration ...... If God had preserved us from the Turkish conquest, we should have remained in unbroken touch with Europe and shared in her renaissance. This would certainly have fashioned for Egypt a different kind of civilization from the one in which we are now living...... (p. 9) However, God has bestowed upon us a boon to compensate us for our misfortunes and calamities. The world has struggled for hundreds of years to attain its present stage of progress and it is now within our power to reach it within a generation. Woe to us if we do not seize the opportunity! As a matter of fact, the Europeans borrowed the methods that prevailed in the Islamic world during the Middle Ages. They did just what we are doing now. It is only a difference in time." (p.13)
These days it has become the fashionable trend of our apologetic literature to argue, as does Dr. Taha Hussain here, that because Europe derived her spirit of scientific inquiry from the Arabs, in the process of westernization, Muslims are only reclaiming their rightful heritage.** By this sort of sophistry, modern educated Muslims justify the abandonment of their faith. Dr. Taha Hussain conveniently overlooks the historical fact that the transmission of Greek learning from the Muslim world to Europe never made her people part of Islamic civilization. Although medieval Europe eagerly welcomed the achievements of Muslim scientists and philosophers, it never sacrificed its cultural independence as Dr. Taha Hussain urges his country to do.
** Even such a brilliant philosopher and poet as Allama Muhammad lqbal, mistakenly advanced the same apologetic in The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, Lahore, 1960, p.7."No power on earth is capable of preventing us Egyptians from enjoying life exactly the way Europeans do. In order to become equal partners in civilization with the Europeans, we Egyptians must literally and forthrightly imitate Western civilization in all its unpleasant as well as its pleasant aspects. Whoever advises any other course of action is either a deceiver or is himself deceived." (p.15)
Shortly before King Farouk was deposed in 1952, Dr. Taha Hussain served as the Minister of Education. During this period he tried his utmost to implement his programme.
"State supervision of the primary and secondary schools of al-Azhar University is vital at this stage of Egyptian history since the traditions and religious obligations of this venerable institution have made it a fortress of conservatism and antiquated practices. Those students who are given an exclusively Azharite education remain isolated from the modern world of which they are a part. Consequently, adjustment after graduation to the complexities of daily modern life is harder for them than other youth. We must also bear in mind that al-Azhar's outmoded thinking probably makes it difficult for its students to grasp the concepts of patriotism and nationalism in the modern European sense of these terms. Some time ago the Rector of the University, in a radio address commemorating a religious holiday, proclaimed the holy Qibla in Mecca as the pivot of Islamic nationalism. Young Azharites must learn and be taught early in life that the narrow geographical borders of their native Egypt also form a pivot of nationalism that in no way conflicts with the pivot mentioned by the Rector. Nationalism came to Egypt along with the other products of contemporary civilization and now forms the basis of its internal and external relations. Al-Azhar must realize this and revise its primary and secondary school programs accordingly. There is no point in Al-Azhar University waging war against the twentieth century. Al-Azhar should not be deceived by the fact that the masses, whose mentality is still medieval, listen to it today. The rising generations will certainly be cast in the European mold and Al-Azhar will have to evolve along similar lines if it wishes to maintain as close contact with them as with its predecessors." (pp.27 & 136.)
President Jamal Abdul Nasser took this advice to heart when on July 18, 1961, he decreed that the administration of Al-Azhar University be placed under his direct control. Following Dr. Taha Hussain's program to the letter, President Jamal Abdul Nasser’s decree provided for the complete secularization of al-Azhar University by adding to it colleges of medicine, business administration, agriculture and engineering. According to the new plan, the College of Islamic Studies would be isolated and insignificant--no longer an essential prerequisite for graduation. Thus at one stroke President Nasser, inspired by Dr. Taha Hussain, destroyed one of the world's most important centers of Islamic learning.
The above is an excerpt from Islam and Modernism, Maryam Jameelah, Mohammad Yusuf Khan & Sons, Lahore, 1965/1988, p.161-168
References:
* An Egyptian Childhood, Taha Hussain, Paul Routledge & Kegan, London, 1932.
* The Stream of Days: A Student at Al-Azhar, Taha Hussain, Longmans Green & Co., London, 1948.
* The Future of Culture in Egypt, Taha Hussain, American Council of Learned Societies, Washington, D.C., 1954. (^^)(^^) 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
* 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.
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