Ottoman History Podcast - Recovering God's Intent in the Modern Age

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

with Monica Ringer hosted by Matthew Ghazarian | What is Islamic modernism, and how did authors of this movement position themselves vis-á-vis other 19th century intellectual movements? In this episode, we examine how Islamic modernism was more than a product of 19th century social and political reforms or even an attempt at using Islamic language to justify such reforms. Rather, Islamic modernism was a substantive theological reform movement, fueled by the belief that God's intent could be recovered through correct and contextual readings of the past. As a result, Islamic modernists helped give rise not only to new understandings of Islam but also to new understandings of history. In our discussion, we draw on Dr. Ringer's book Islamic Modernism and the Re-enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History out from Edinburgh University Press in 2020. In it, she takes up the work of four authors from across Eurasia: Namık Kemal from the Ottoman Empire, Ataullah Bayezidof from the Russian Empire, Syed Amir Ali from British India, and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who spent his formative years in Iran. Although they shared a religion, it was much more Islam that tied their ideas together. « Click for More »

This is Ottoman History Podcast. I'm Matt Kazarian. Today we'll be speaking with Dr. Monica Ringer. Professor of Middle Eastern History in both the History Department and the Department of Asian Languages and Civil civilizations at Amherst College. Dr. Ringer's research examines a 19th century intellectual movement called Islamic Modernism. She links the work of Muslim authors from across Eurasia, drawing predominantly on four authors, Nama Kamal from the Ottoman Empire, Ataola Bayezidov from the Russian Empire,

Saeed Amir Ali from British India, and Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani from Iran. These four authors, from four very different parts of the world, were exploring similar themes, writing about new ways of approaching history, faith, and civilizational progress. Although they shared a religion, it was much more than Islam that tied their ideas together. There's a new intellectual landscape that has become naturalized in the Middle East at this point. Drawing on Dr. Ringer's recent book, Islamic Modernism and the Re-enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History, out from Edinburgh University Press in 2020, we'll discuss this new intellectual landscape of the 19th century and situate Islamic Modernism within the broader transformations that were taking place around the world. I started with a basic but important question.

What is Islamic modernism? Well, we often think of Islamic modernism as a sort of 19th century deployment of Islam as a language to justify new political and social ideals such as constitutionalism, religious tolerance, women's rights, and so forth. So it's largely seen in a socio-political context as Islamic language justifying these political and social reforms. I take issue with this in a sense saying I think there's a problem in the way that we've seen Islamic modernism. It's not a product of these socio-political reforms and it's not simply the deployment of Islamic terminology in a sense to justify them amongst perhaps a traditional or pious sensibilities. But really, Islamic modernism, in my view, is a substantive theological reform movement

with fundamental epistemological and methodological innovations. So I take it seriously as a theological movement and not simply as the language of reconciling Islam with modernity. There's a new intellectual landscape that has become naturalized in the Middle East at this point, which I would describe as fundamentally one of historicism, which argues in a sense or conceives of the world differently and conceives of man's relationship with God differently, man's relationship in history differently. with God differently, man's relationship in history differently. And I would sum it up as basically saying that history is now conceived of as universal civilizational evolution,

as universal civilizational progress from the primitive to the modern. And as this intellectual landscape becomes absorbed and adopted by various intellectuals, it gives rise to the need to recalibrate tradition, to reinvestigate the nature and social function of religion, and that this then becomes the modernist project. So Dr. Ringer thinks that Islamic modernism is much more than an attempt to dress modernity up in Islamic clothes and sneak it by a conservative religious establishment. Instead, it was grounded in a changing global intellectual landscape in the 19th century, and many of those changes were grounded in historicism, the idea of universal human history consisting of civilizations that could be compared across space and time.

Ringer drew primarily on the work of four Islamic modernist authors from across the Islamic world. I asked her to tell us a little bit about those authors and why she focused on them. Well, you know, on the one hand, I could have picked any four. I could have picked, you know, a dozen. I could have picked any four. I could have picked, you know, a dozen. The objective in picking these four was to demonstrate that these, this new historical epistemological and methodological framework that I will call historicism, has permeated the intellectual landscape in Islamic lands. And so I have figures ranging from Saeed Amir Ali working from India, Imam Bayezidoff writing from St. Petersburg, Jamaluddin Al-Athbani, who is Iranian, but obviously traveling all around from Russia to London to Paris to Cairo to India, and Nami Kemal, who's a well-known Ottoman reformer,

if you like. And so the point in choosing these four is to demonstrate that these kinds of ideas have permeated these lands from, you know, to a great extent, but also to demonstrate that these intellectuals are in conversation with each other other and in conversation outside of the lands of Islam they're in conversation with European intellectuals they're in conversation with South Asian intellectuals they're in conversation in a sense with the cutting-edge scholarship on culture civilization and religion of the day so I could have really picked any four. I didn't want to limit it to one, and it's not meant to be an intellectual biography of each of these. It's

really drawing on these four insofar as they exemplify historicism, and I think demarcate in general the contours, if you like, of Islamic modernism. You talk a lot about the changing understandings of religion in the 19th century in the context of changing ways of thinking about history and historicism. What was it like before, and how do you see these changes manifesting in the 19th century through these authors' works? That's an excellent question, and it really gets to the heart of the project. So I would say a couple things. One is that historicism is fundamentally the premise of context. But the premise of context is that not all contexts are the same. And so Islamic modernists see tradition, Islamic tradition, as the product of particular contexts and view that the problem of tradition is that it is contextual.

It is not the location of truth itself. And so they argue that not all is context, but that there is essence. They argue that not all is context, but that there is essence. And so this is why you see in so many of their writings discussions of the pure Islam or the true Islam, that they argue that the Quran is the location of Islamic truth, and that Islamic essence, which they sometimes describe as being the ideals of Islam, but other times would describe as that which never changes, in a sense. It is God's intent. It is God's intent for mankind. And they now view God's intent for mankind as being civilizational progress, consistent with these sort of modern social values and political ideals.

So their objective is to identify this particular Islamic essence as God's intent in the Quran, extract it, if you like, from Islamic tradition, excavate it, cleanse it of historical detritus, and then recontextualize it in the present. That's their primary objective is the identification and retrieval of Islamic essence. the identification and retrieval of Islamic essence. So this comes along with a very particular view of tradition, which is that tradition as content, we would say as the various traditions, but tradition as method would be the premise of the continual replication of precedent. And they would argue by writing these Islamic histories, the project has been not only the identification of essence, but the historical understanding of

how this Islamic essence was manifest differently in different historical moments. And when it's manifest in harmony with various kinds of institutions. Then it propels society forward and generates civilizational progress. So to Islamic modernists, civilizational progress could not take place if Muslim societies tried to reproduce every single part of their past. They had to pick and choose. To do that, these authors developed this distinction between Islamic essence and Islamic tradition. I asked her to explain that distinction in more detail.

So they would argue that Islam, in its essence, is consonant with the modern. In a sense, it is that modern values and institutions are the closest that humankind has ever come to actually manifesting God's intent for mankind. And they would say the problem with Islam, if you like, is not Islamic truth or Islamic essence. The problem is that Islam is conflated with Islamic tradition and that Islamic tradition is what is holding Muslim societies back. That's why there's this whole back to the Quran movement. Let's go back to God's word. Let's understand God's intent. Let's isolate these ideals and reapply them,

rather than continuing to perpetuate a sort of moribund tradition, which was articulated in a much earlier civilizational stage, in a different context, and in a sense no longer applies. It's the assertion that God's intent needs to be re-examined and reapplied in each contextual moment, and only then can it really serve as this motor of progress. Historicism came with the premise that everything should be understood in light of its historical context. I asked if she could give us an example of how this worked. How did authors draw on historicism to distinguish Islamic essence from Islamic tradition? She responded with examples from the British Indian jurist and author Saeed Amir Ali and his interpretations of slavery and polygamy. Take Saeed Amir Ali, for example. His view would be that Islamic essence is more or less

consonant with these modern ideals, that Islamic essence is, for example, freedom, equality, representative or at least responsible government, constitutionalism, and sort of scientific inquiry. And he would say, in the time of the Prophet, these ideals were applied to the extent that that particular context allowed. And so to take the well-known examples of polygamy and slavery, which are these touchstone issues, not only within the Islamic community, but particularly issues that the Christian Europeans found particularly unpalatable. Sayyid Amir Ali would argue, look, the prophet pushed the envelope, if you like, as far as he could. He understood that God's intent was to not have slavery. He understood that God's intent was not to have polygamy, but that the limitations of his particular 7th century Arabian context precluded their absolute abolishment.

is look at Islamic tradition and the Hadith in particular and not say the prophet did X, therefore we should be doing X, but saying the prophet did X, what was the intentionality of the prophet which underlay this, which presumably reflected the intentionality of God himself? And so they would say the point was to get rid of slavery, and it would be a perversion of God's intent to say, well, the prophet allowed it, therefore we should allow it. That we have to, in a sense, take that intentionality and apply it to our own context. Yes, it's in a sense all about, I would say, God's intent. You know, how do we recover God's intent?

You know, how do we recover God's intent? And how do we recover God's intent from the Quran? Because clearly there are passages that apply to particular historical moments in that time, in the Prophet's own time. But there are also ideals, if you like, according to these Islamic modernists, which transcend context. And that is, in a sense, the Islamic essence. Islamic modernists were not the only group of authors to claim that Islam had deviated from its essence since the time of the Prophet, or that centuries of precedent might need

to be re-evaluated. The Salafi movement of the 19th century also made similar claims, even if their visions of an ideal society were quite different from those of Islamic modernists. I asked if she could describe the relationship between Salafism and Islamic modernism in more detail. Well, I think it's an interesting relationship. I mean, on the face of it, one would say, oh, they have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. I mean, one group calling for constitutionalism, women's rights, religious tolerance, and another group sort of hearkening back to the time of the prophet and what we might call more sort of literalists.

But at the same time, they do share a lot. And I think this is a product of this new historicist intellectual landscape. It doesn't require that everyone follow the same path through this landscape. I think it precludes some paths, and some paths are more common. But there obviously is a diversity within Islamic modernist thought. And what they share, in a sense, with the fundamentalists, if you like, are certain premises about context. And so I think you would see fundamentalists call for

let's open the gates of ijtihad. Obviously I think we know that in practice Islamic law was never stagnant, but in theory there's the question of how powerful is the concept of precedent. And so both of these groups are saying you know let's go back to the Quran, let's reinterpret things anew, we don't necessarily have to adhere to past interpretations. And I think those similarities indicate certain shared intellectual assumptions, even if their, you know, their outlooks on certain kinds of values and their commitments to the sort of overtly modern set of values is not shared between them. I think it's so fascinating.

There are so many different kinds of people in the 19th century who claim there's a deep past from which, if we go back to it with the right interpretation, we can figure out, you know, it can act as our compass and direct our progress forward. Exactly. They can be retrieved, in a sense. And I think that's one of the fundamental characteristics of Islamic modernists, but it's also in a sense their conceit

that they can identify Islamic essence. And they do that through historicism saying, you know, that which is not contextual, that which is unchanging is by definition essence. But you certainly could have a disagreement about what is the essence. I mean, they're really using their own modern yardsticks to say, well, that must be Islamic essence. And I think that's where you might see differences between the fundamentalists and the modernists, the yardsticks they're using. But many of the methodological premises are similar.

So who are these Islamic modernist authors in conversation with on the global intellectual stage? So first of all, with each other. They're in conversation with their own historical and religious traditions. But in terms of the international stage, they're very much in conversation with similar religious modernist movements. I can think, you know, I've worked on Zoroastrian modernism, Hindu modernism, many, many religions are faced with the exact same problems of reconciling tradition with the dissolvent of historicism. And so there is a sort of phenomena, I think, in the 19th century of the emergence of these religious modernisms, which are in a sense responses to that particular imperative of renegotiating, redefining, and relocating religion. But in

this specific sense, one of the reasons that I first came upon these particular four Islamic modernists is that they all refuted Ernest Renaud's now somewhat infamous Islam and science speech that he gave at the Sorbonne in 1883. What made it so infamous? Well, it's infamous in a sense because it's in Said's Orientalism book, and Renan is sort of denounced as a quintessential Orientalist. But I think from my perspective, what's interesting about that is, A, it clearly demonstrates that there is really a global conversation at this point, that people are aware of what Renan says, even if he might not be entirely aware of what they say. You know, for example, Bayezidov writes articles and sends them to Tehran in Istanbul,

which is run by Ahmed Midhat Effendi. And so you have these things, Islamic modernist texts, being translated and disseminated over a really wide range of places. But you also have them active in European capitals and in conversation with European Islamic studies scholarship, European Islamic history scholarship, but also, I think, very interestingly, European Christian studies scholarship, because they're very interested in religion as a comparative phenomenon. So they're interested in reading fairly widely. as a comparative phenomenon, so they're interested in reading fairly widely. But they all, in a sense,

engage with Renault. And I think one of the issues here is recognizing that religious modernisms are a phenomena, and to think about them comparatively. So in many, many respects, they agree with Renault. And in many respects, Renault actually has a very similar religious reform program. But I think what the Islamic modernists take issue with is that he's insufficiently historicist, that he operates less than scientifically, and that he exhibits Islamic exceptionalist arguments, or he makes Christian exceptionalist arguments. In other words, he operates on the premise that Christianity is superior to Islam, and European civilization is superior to non-European civilization. And so it's not so much his religious modernist ideas that Islamic modernists reject,

but it is his sense that, oh, you have to look at Christianity historically, but he doesn't do the same for Islam. Right. It's that they share the way that he makes his claims based on a comparative method and yardstick of progress that could be fit onto any religion found around the globe. It's that they think he is mistaken in how he measures Christianity versus Islam. That's exactly right. And in particular, in particular, Sayyid Amir Ali has not just read his Islam and science argument,

but he's also read Renan's Life of Jesus. And in Renan's Life of Jesus, it's very much a religious modernist project of identifying the essence of Christianity and the essence of Christianity is not the church and it's not tradition. The essence of Christianity is Jesus. And it's, in a sense, Jesus for the 19th century. You know, it's Jesus reinterpreted and resuscitated from his own context. context. And in a sense, what fascinated me about Saeed-e-Mir Ali in particular, who was the most fluent, I would say, in European scholarship on Christianity, Islam, religious studies, was that he uses Renan's life of Jesus in his own reconstitution of the life of the prophet. In other words, he's using this and saying, oh, just as Renan says, you know, Jesus was a product of his context, I would agree.

Muhammad was a product of his context. They differ, in other words, in their conclusions. They're very, very similar in terms of their approach and the epistemological and methodological consequences of historicism. So that enabled me to bring in Renaud, in a sense, as a comparative perspective, thinking about Islamic modernism in the larger field of 19th century religious modernisms. I was wondering if you could talk more about the kinds of writing that Islamic modernist writers engaged in. What sort of things would we expect if we were picking up a text that called itself or had been called Islamic modernist? It's a great question, actually. And I think there are a couple commonalities here. One would be what I would call the quest for the historical prophet genre.

And this is a little bit less, this is a little more rare in its absolute form. I mean, not many Islamic modernists wrote entirely new histories of the Prophet, although Sayyid Amir Ali did, and certainly later on Jalal Nuri would in the early 20th century, both of which were expressly using the example, if you like, of Renan's life of Jesus. I mean, they both say, oh, he's doing what we need to do also. We need to historicize the prophet. But most Islamic modernists, at least the ones that I dealt with and others that I've come across in various other venues, write history.

And I think there's a particular reason why they're engaging with history. Not surprisingly, historicism is about ways of thinking about history. But what they're also doing here at some fundamental level is historicizing history, and in so doing, trying to determine what are the historical laws? What are, as I would say, the historical laws of progress? When, in other words, and in what conditions do we have Islam as a civilizing motor? When and why might we see a more moribund religious tradition? When you say historicizing history, can you say more? What do you mean?

Well, let me take two examples. I'll talk a bit about Saidi Mir Ali and the equally, if not more famous, Al-Afghani. They're both trying to understand what does history tell us about conditions in which civilization moves forward, in which civilization is stagnant, you know, to put it very, very simply. So Al-Afghani, civilization is stagnant, you know, to put it very, very simply. So, Al-Afghani, for example, sees religion quite differently in some ways than does Saeed Emir Ali. And it's interesting to show, I think, the diversity amongst Islamic modernists. They don't all have a very particular program. It's not a political party after all. Al-Afghani sees religion as sometimes hindering intellectual inquiry and sometimes enabling intellectual inquiry.

So for him, history is really a matter of when is science promoted and when is science hindered? And he has this very famous quote, science rules the world. There was, is, and will be no ruler in the world but science. So for him, it's really a matter of which conditions enable science and which conditions prevent science. And by science, he means obviously sciences in the particular, but I think he really means intellectual inquiry, freedom of thought, and the things that would, in a sense, generate science. And so for him, societies that encouraged intellectual freedom or even allowed intellectual freedom can make scientific progress. And so religion, if it encourages science in its particular manifestation in society, is advantageous.

But when religion ceases to become reinterpreted, ceases to animate intellectual inquiry, and when societies then close down the opportunities of intellectual freedom, then in a sense you have religion as hindering scientific progress. And so interestingly, you know, if you read Al-Afghani, he's saying, look, I mean, the Greeks were great. It's not as though they had advanced religions. It wasn't as though we can say Greek religion was superior to Islam. The Persians at one time were great, but, you know,

they believed in all sorts of things. And so for him, it's a matter of what form religion takes and does it help or hinder scientific progress. So for him, science is really at the center of this. Al-Afghani adheres much more closely to this sort of taxonomy of world religions and really feels as though it matters whether it's a primitive religion or an advanced religion, that primitive religions are so embedded in primitive societies that it's not simply the form that religion takes, but how advanced the religion itself is. So whereas Al-Afghani would say, oh, you know, the Greeks were polytheists, not monotheists, but yet they had great sciences.

Saeed Amir Ali doesn't really see things from that same light. He really says the history of human civilizational progress is also the history of civilizational progress that Jesus brought, but then Jesus died before he could implement it. And so societies, you know, with prophets sort of with the potential for civilizational advancement, but ultimately failing to push things forward. So for Sayyidina Mir Ali, the Prophet Muhammad is the first of the monotheist prophets to actually implement the ideals of Islam. And so he says, Jesus had the same ideals, but he didn't implement them. And that's a problem. And I guess what I find interesting about this particular argument is he really centers the relative evolution of religious essence itself in his articulation of religious progress. But in so doing, he, like al-Afghani, insists that we're talking about religion as essence here. We're not talking about religious tradition here. And so both of them would agree

that Islam has to be rescued from tradition. The truth of Islam has to be rescued from tradition. What's going on in the 19th century, either intellectually or sociopolitically? What's going on in the 19th century that there are these religious modernist movements and methods that are popping up around the globe? So in the 19th century, as we see the sort of global permeation of historicism, I think that's what gives rise to these religious modernist movements throughout the world. I would say it is not a question of the dissemination of modernity, like some sort of, you know, seed from a European plant finding new soil. I really think

it's the soil itself that begins to change around the world and gives rise to new kinds of plants. Islamic modernists do not at all see modern as something European. They see modern as a civilizational stage, if you like, in universal human evolution. And I think this is because they've all adopted the premises of historicism. The premises of historicism, in other words, conceptualize modernity as a civilizational jump. And so they would say, Europe has crossed the threshold into the modern. We also must cross this threshold into the modern. But as a result, what's really going on here is the translation, if you like,

of the nature and function of religion, society, ideals, methodology, epistemology, translation into the modern. So it's not the imitation of Europe, and it's not even, I would argue, the adaptation of European ideals. It's the idea that what they're really in conversation with is their own constructed tradition, and navigating that, translating that, moving that into what they would call the modern. And so one can say comparatively, religious modernisms all share certain features. They're all products of historicism. But that doesn't mean they're all going to look exactly alike. And that allows us to put them in comparison both within religious

traditions, but also between religious traditions, without getting into questions of, you know, is this imitative? Is this not imitative? I really think the conditions have changed that lead people within religious traditions to reconcile them to these new ideals. And so this is not something traveling from Europe to the Middle East, South Asia. This is similar intellectual conditions giving rise to similar kinds of conversations. What conditions exactly? Yes, I mean, I think you could say steam and print, you know, that it's the transmission of ideas, for one thing, which become explanatory. But I would say they only become explanatory if they have local relevance.

say they only become explanatory if they have local relevance. I mean, people don't just say any explanation works. It has to, in a sense, find already the conditions in which it makes sense. And so it's the same, I think, for these modernization programs. People don't wander around and say, we want to do what the French do. They say, in this new globalizing, increasingly connected world, we need certain kinds of self-strengthening. Which ones will work for us? Which ones will be appropriate for us? And to think of it in those terms rather than one as, in a sense, the dissemination of European ideas or the dissemination of European institutions. And it's not as though people are uninterested in Europe, but I just think it obscures the local audience and the local conditions that give rise to those needs and give rise to the sort of belief in historicism, if you like, as an explanatory set of principles.

So I would say Islamic modernism is extremely participatory in the generation of modernity in the Middle East, but it's not accorded that participatory role. It's seen of as incidental, instrumentalist, largely driven by political and social reasons rather than driven by a sort of fundamental theological project. It was absolutely transformative. And I think because it's still with us, we don't necessarily understand contemporary understandings of religion or understandings of modernity because we don't understand historicism. And we don't understand, in a sense, the way in which religion was translated into the modern. was translated into the modern. That's Dr. Monica Ringer. Her book is Islamic Modernism and the Re-enchantment of the Sacred

in the Age of History, published in 2020 by Edinburgh University Press. You can find out more on our website, autumninhistorypodcast.com, where we will have a bibliography of further reading and credits for the music in this episode, which is Un Pepino by Blue Dot Sessions. You can also join our community

of over 35,000 listeners on Facebook. That's all for this episode. Until next time, take care. Thank you.