I did not believe that more could be said about Muhammad ʿAbduh, the influential nineteenth-century Egyptian religious scholar, but Oliver Scharbrodt does just that in Muhammad ʿAbduh: Modern Islam and the Culture of Ambiguity. ʿAbduh is an historical figure familiar to anyone who works on modern Middle Eastern history or Islamic political thought. He is frequently portrayed as an Azhar-trained scholar who reconciled modernity and Islam, especially in the era of European imperialism. He is seen also as a lenient Salafi, who downplayed the importance of the 1,400-year-old corpus of Islamic scholarly tradition in favour of returning to and making relevant the foundational Islamic texts and the teachings of the first three generations of Muslims after Prophet Muhammad. Scholars who believe either portrayal tend to ignore ʿAbduh's earlier works, which seemingly contradict the impressions we have of ʿAbduh, the “Modernist Salafi”.
Scharbrodt problematizes these assumptions on several fronts. The author insists that the mystical, philosophical thought in ʿAbduh's earlier writing did not disappear in his later works; ʿAbduh had to conceal some of his convictions due to the shifting political and institutional climates in which he found himself. Scharbrodt urges us to learn to live with ambiguity. ʿAbduh was influenced by and in turn influenced people of various religious, political and ethnic backgrounds throughout his life, but the most influential, Scharbrodt seems to say, was ʿAbduh's Shii Iranian mentor Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī.
The book is a clear synthesis of modern Middle Eastern history, Islamic and Greek philosophy, and Islamic legal theory and theology. To show the richness of ʿAbduh's life and thought, Scharbrodt draws on several sources: the oft-cited biography penned by ʿAbduh's student Rashid Riḍā (which he reads with some scepticism); correspondence between ʿAbduh and al-Afghānī and intellectuals in the Levant and Europe, which reflected the nascent nahda (Renaissance) movement and budding nationalist sentiments; and journal articles, some of which were written by ʿAbduh and others which were attributed to him by Riḍā.
The book consists of an introduction, conclusion, and five body chapters. Chapter 2 gives an overview of ʿAbduh's childhood and early adult years. ʿAbduh was disenchanted with traditionalist Islamic education, and his uncle introduced him to Sufism (Islamic mysticism), which he carried with him during his time as a student at al-Azhar in Cairo. ʿAbduh was introduced to al-Afghānī, who became ʿAbduh's Sufi mentor, and received private instruction from him on mystical philosophy and Shii Sufi thought. These “non-mainstream” ideas informed ʿAbduh's thought throughout his lifetime, even when he held official religious positions in Egypt. Chapter 3 places us in the turbulent historical moment ʿAbduh witnessed, and illustrates how al-Afghānī inspired ʿAbduh's political activism. ʿAbduh supported the ʿUrābi revolt's (1879–82) call for constitutional reform during his stint as a journalist. He was disappointed by the failed outcome of the movement, which resulted in a firm entrenchment of authoritarianism in Egypt backed by British occupiers. His political journalistic work was not rooted in Islamic jurisprudence but drew on the political philosophy of Ibn Khaldun. He was adept at addressing popular audiences, as well as more specialized readers, through his journalism and later theological works. Chapter 4 covers ʿAbduh's activities and work after he was exiled for his political activism. Al-Afghānī and ʿAbduh worked on the journal Al-ʿUrwa al-wuthqā (The Firmest Bond), in which they expressed strong anti-imperialist sentiment, and called on Muslims to unite against colonialism. Chapters 5 and 6 bring us back to Egypt, as ʿAbduh returns from exile and becomes Grand Mufti of Egypt in 1899 under British tutelage. For pragmatic reasons, ʿAbduh gave up activism and broke ties with al-Afghānī over his anti-imperialist agitation and sought reform rather than usurpation. For ʿAbduh, colonialism became a temporary yet necessary evil to be endured until Muslims could progress and break free. Scharbrodt challenges the notion that ʿAbduh was Salafi in chapter 6. Because of ʿAbduh's institutional commitments, he was not free to vocalize freely his eclectic (Scharbrodt uses the word irenic) ideas, which draw on various Islamic philosophical, theological and jurisprudential schools. He was bound by the Hanafī legal and Ashʿarī theological schools by virtue of his position as Grand Mufti. And although ʿAbduh urged Muslims to revisit the foundational Islamic texts and make sense of them in the present rather than follow the interpretations of scholars from the past, it was Riḍā, who penned pieces in ʿAbduh's name or added his interjections in ʿAbduh's work, who sought to undermine the irenic strains of thought in ʿAbduh's writing. Any shifts in tone that we observe in ʿAbduh's writing over time, Scharbrodt argues, should be viewed as ʿAbduh's addressing different audiences and not a volte-face on his earlier, more eclectic, Islamic views.
In the conclusion, Scharbrodt critiques Orientalist scholarship that views the contradictions in the works of ʿAbduh and other thinkers of his time as inferior, especially for their perceived inability to reconcile Islam and modernity. Scharbrodt convincingly challenges the teleological narrative of ʿAbduh's Salafi trajectory. Ambiguity, informed by rich Islamic thought in all its diversity, was not a problem for ʿAbduh and certainly should not be for us. ʿAbduh reflected the human condition, especially during a moment of political and social upheaval. Scharbrodt encourages scholars to unlearn the binaries we employ to reify historical and religious phenomena, dichotomies which “reveal modern conceptions of religion and are based on reductionist definitions of orthodoxy in Islam” (p. 231).
I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent, thought-provoking book, but one question I had is about the absence of women from its pages. The only woman mentioned is Egyptian Princess Zaynab Nazli Hanem, who advocated for ʿAbduh's return from exile. As Scharbrodt shows, ʿAbduh met with people with diverse interests, but he also frequented women-led literary salons, like those hosted by Nazli. Did ʿAbduh mention these encounters as influential?
Overall, I really appreciated the more nuanced understanding of ʿAbduh's life and legacy. This book is a needed corrective in our understanding of colonial and postcolonial thought in the Muslim-majority world.
