If only because of the increasingly menacing encroachments by western powers against the peripheral Muslim states for a century and more, the feeling of Islamic solidarity was certainly in the air during the closing decades of the 19th century. But, nonetheless, far from being coherent and crystallized. And the one person to get this accomplished, and, above all, transformed into a dynamic force in the world of Islam was Sayyid Jamal al-Din at Afghani (1839-97).
One of the most remarkable and significant figures in the 19th century Muslim world, he stirred the soul of Islam as no one else did, and the developments that had convulsed the Islamic world during the next four decade are unthinkable without him.
Born in Asadabad, Iran, but professed to be an Afghan for strategic reasons, he mastered the various branches of classical Islamic learning in the schools of Central Asia and at Makkah; he was also able to acquire considerable acquaintance with the modern thought of the West. A born revolutionary, he was “a man of enormous force of character, prodigious learning, untiring activity, dauntless courage, extraordinary eloquence both in speech and writing and an appearance equally striking and majestic,” to quote Edward Browne, author of The Persian Revolution.
Geographically, his activities encompassed the major portion of the Muslim world — Afghanistan, Iran, India, the Arab world, and Turkey — as well as Western Europe and Russia. He was, at one time, a minister (or counsellor to the King) in Afghanistan: at another, in Iran. He went as a royal guest to Egypt, Turkey and Iran, but was either expelled without ceremony or kept in a gilded cage — so liberal were his ideas, so revolutionary his political plank. At one time, he went on a diplomatic mission to Russia on behalf of the Shah of Iran; at another, he was approached by the British Government to head a diplomatic mission to Constantinople. He founded the famous Urwal-ul-Wuthqa (1884), and wrote in others to propagate his cause.
Afghani was primarily a religious reformer, deeply concerned with setting the house of Islam in order. In a word, he stood for a liberal Islam. He preached the necessity of reconsidering the whole Islamic position and called for a reconciliation of the historic, theological and philosophical positions of Islam with the attainments of modern scientific thought, through interpretation and reformulation of Islamic doctrines. He denounced taqlid bila kayf in unmitigated terms, and advocated a revival of the critical spirit of Islam. He preached mastery of modern sciences and learning that accounted for the ascendancy of the West. He called for the enthronement of the philosophic spirit — i.e. a spirit of research and inquiry. These ideas obviously led him to propose liberal reforms in politics since he fervently believed that religious reforms could not be affected in a backward society. He stood, for constitutional reforms, justice, popular rights, and for the supremacy of law. When the rulers failed to heed his advice, he became a revolutionary. To any length he would go to rid the Muslim countries of corruption and tyranny.
He said that a part of the Muslim world was corroded by the evils of autocracy and tyranny, and the rest lying prostrate at the feet of Western colonial powers. He tried to find constitutionalist movements in the former, and liberationist in the latter. Through his tireless preaching, audacious propaganda and dynamic activism, he first awakened the listless masses of the Muslim East to a new sense of their political weakness, and then prepared them for revolt and energetic reconstruction.
The one problem that had increasingly engaged Afghan’s attention since his visit to Egypt in the early 1970s was that how could foreign intrigues and inroads be checkmated? In the apparently hopeless situation that the Muslim world found itself to be at the moment, what could possibly save it from further encroachments by the West? And, finally, how could the “submerged” Muslim nations win back their freedom? To Afghani, the one and only remedy lay in the unity and consolidation of the existing Muslim states and in improving the means of their national defence. Thus was conceived the pan-Islamic ideology that has since been associated with his name. Ab initio and ipso facto, pan-Islamism, was at best a defensive strategy, in fact, a last-ditch attempt to roll back the tide of Western encroachments. It was, as Bury says, “an instinctive and entirely natural riposte to the menace or actual aggression of non-Muslims.”
Emin Abd-ul-Qadir (1808-83) in Algeria, Iman Sham’il (1798-1871) in the Caucasus and Ahmad Urabi Pasha (1839-1911) in Egypt fought courageously, and for a time, successfully, but fail they did ultimately. Although practically the entire Muslim world was in revolt against its western oppressors, it could not, if only because of lack of cohesion and coordination, accomplish anything substantial. Hence, the endeavour to consolidate the existing Muslim powers into a united front against further western designs. To buttress this approach, Islam itself had ordained such a Lien Indissoluble.
In the words of Shaykh M.H. Qidwai, an enthusiastic pan-Islamist, the western denunciation may be traced to the fact that “Islam (had) once defied the mighty empires of Rome and Persia, Greece and Egypt, and succeeded at last in extending its influence over all the known world.” In a similar vein did Afghani write in the al’Urwah.
The construct pan-Islam had, however, did not gain currency till it first appeared in a French periodical in 1881, and was taken up by the London Times the following year. Afghani himself called the society he had founded in Makkah with the object of creating one caliph over the entire Muslim world, the Unam-ul-Qurah. This society was, however, suppressed by Sultan Abdul Hamid (r. 1876-1909) within a year of its founding.
Sultan Abdul Hamid, however, had also a good deal to do with the propagation of the pan-Islamic ideal, though for his own selfish ends. He ascended the Turkish throne in 1876, suspended the Turkish Constitution within a few months, banished the leader of the constitutionalist, Midhat Pasha (1822-83), and ruled with an iron hand till his deposition in 1909. Interested in exploiting the pan-Islamic ideology for his own ends, he became interested in Afghani and invited him as a royal guest. When, however, he learned the visitor’s views, he began to detest him, refused him permission to leave, and kept him in a gilded cage (“half guest, half prisoner”) till his death in 1897.
