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Debating the Caliphate: Islam and Nation in the Work of Rashid Rida and Abul Kalam Azad

2010; Routledge; Volume: 32; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/07075332.2010.534609

1949-6540

John Ralph Willis,

Education and Islamic Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 A. M. al-Nimr, 'Mawlana Azad wa al-Khilafa', Majallat al-Azhar, xxxv (1963), 308. 2 See, for example K. Karpat, The Politicization of Islam: Reconstructing Identity, State, Faith, and Community in the Late Ottoman State (Oxford, 2001); M. N. Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics: A Study of the Khilafat Movement, 1918–1924 (Leiden, 1999); J. M. Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam: Ideology and Organization (Oxford, 1994); M. Kramer, Islam Assembled: The Advent of the Muslim Congresses (New York, 1986); N. R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din 'al-Afghani' (Berkeley, 1983) and Sayyid Jamal Ad-Din 'Al-Afghani': A Political Biography (Berkeley, 1972). 3 See C. Aydin, The Politics of Anti-Westernism in Asia: Visions of World Order in Pan-Islamic and Pan-Asian Thought (New York, 2007). See also, S. Ensenbel, 'Japan's Global Claim to Asia and the World of Islam: Transnational Nationalism and World Power, 1900–1945', The American Historical Review, cix (2004), 1140–70. 4 There are far too many works of this nature to list here. Some of these are M. E. Gasper, the Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants and Islam in Egypt (Stanford, 2009); M. F. Laffan, Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma below the Winds (London, 2003); S. K. Nawid, Religious Response to Social Change in Afghanistan, 1919–1929: King Aman-Allah and the Afghan Ulama (London, 1999); J. L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley, 1998); T. Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan, 1905–1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge, 1985); and G. Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York, 1982). 5 On the politics of anti-colonialism and national self-determination in the post-war period see E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford, 2009). 6 Minault, Khilafat Movement, 40 and I. H. Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography (Delhi, 1993), 86. 7 See J. R. Cole, 'Printing and Urban Islam in the Mediterranean World, 1890–1920', in Leila Tarazi Fawaz and C. A. Bayly (eds), Modernity and Culture from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean (New York, 2001), 344–64 and C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 2000). On the Islamic 'ecumene' see M. F. Laffan, Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: the Umma below the Winds (London, 2003), 11–36. 8 S. Deringil, The Well-Protected Domains: Ideology and the Legitimation of Power in the Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909 (London, 1998), 44–67 and Karpat, The Politicization of Islam, 183–207. 9 A. Özcan, Pan-Islamism: Indian Muslims, the Ottomans and Britain, 1877–1924 (Leiden, 1997), 89–127. 10 A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939 (Cambridge, 1983), 1152–119, Karpat, Politicization of Islam, 199–205, and Keddie, Jamal Ad-Din 'Al-Afghani', 129–142. 11 Özcan, Pan-Islamism, 106 12 Hali's Musaddas: The Flow and Ebb of Islam, trans. by C. Shackle and J. Majeed (Delhi, 1997), 185. 13 For a discussion of the rupture in the salafi-Arabist alliance with the Young Turks, see D. D. Commins, Islamic Reform: Politics and Social Change in Late Ottoman Syria (Oxford, 1990), 137–8. 14 Hourani, Arabic Thought, 271–2. 15 On the relationship between Islamic reformist thought and cultural Arabism see C. E. Dawn, "From Ottomanism to Arabism: Origins of an Ideology," in From Ottomanism to Arabism: Essays on the Origins of Arab Nationalism (Urbana, 1973), 122–47. The classic account of the Arabic nahda and its impact on the formation of cultural Arabism is still G. Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Philadephia, 1939), 35–60. 16 B. D. Metcalf, Islamic Revival in British India: Deoband, 1860–1900 (Princeton NJ, 1982), 84–6. 17 There were a small number of Muslim Congress members as well, especially from the burgeoning commercial middle classes. Badruddin Tyabji was typical of this demographic: a trained lawyer from the Ismaili community of Bombay, he was an early member of the Congress who also vocally supported the Ottoman cause. See M. Shakir, Muslims and Indian National Congress (Badruddin Tyabji and His Times) (Delhi, 1987), 22–4. 18 S. Mohammed, ed., Writings and Speeches of Sir Syed Ahmad Khan (Bombay, 1972), 255–60 and A. Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford, 1964), 64–5. 19 W. Muir, The Caliphate, Its Rise, Decline, and Fall, 2nd ed. (London, 1892), 594. 20 W. S. Blunt, The Future of Islam, ed. R. Nourallah (London, 2002), 148–49. 21 See for example A. H. Nadvi, Khilafa-yi Islamiyya aur Turk (Delhi, 1868), 10–18 and the later rejection of Qurayshi descent as legally binding in S. A. Ali's The Spirit of Islâm: a History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islâm (London, 1922), 126–127. 22 Arguments by European Orientalists against the legitimacy of the Ottoman claim to the caliphate continued through the First World War. See, for example, S. Lane-Poole, 'The Caliphate', The Quarterly Review, cdxliv (1915), 162–77; D. B. Macdonald, 'The Caliphate', The Moslem World, vii (1917), 349–57, and C. A. Nallino, Notes on the Nature of the 'Caliphate' in General and on the Alleged 'Ottoman Caliphate' (Rome, 1919). 23 J. L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Berkeley, 1998). 24 R. Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge, 1996), 16. 25 The report of the Turkish ulema was translated into Arabic and published as Al-Khilafa wa Sultat al-Umma, trans. A. Sani Bek (Cairo, 1924). For an analysis of the abolition of the caliphate in the framework of Mustafa Kemal's politics, see H. Inalcik, 'The Caliphate and Atatürk's Inkilâb', Belleten, xlvi (1982), 353–65. 26 A. Abd al-Raziq, Al-Islam wa Usul al-Hukm (Tunis, 1999), 77–93. 27 M. Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Dubai, no date), 157–9. 28 Kramer, Islam Assembled, 80–122. 29 See H. Kayali, Arabs and Young Turks: Ottomanism, Arabism, and Islamism in the Ottoman Empire, 1908–1918 (Berkeley, 1997), 82–96. 30 E. Tauber, 'Rashid Rida as Pan-Arabist before World War I', The Muslim World, lxxix (1989), 106. 31 H. Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought (Austin, 1982), 70. See also E. Tauber, 'Rashid Rida and Faysal's Kingdom in Syria', The Muslim World, lxxxv (1995), 235–45 and 'Rashid Rida's Political Attitudes during World War I', The Muslim World, lxxxv (1995), 107–21. 32 See for example, Kerr, Islamic Reform, 153–86 and Enayat, Modern Islamic Political Thought, 71–83. 33 M. R. Rida, Al-Khilafa (Cairo, 1988), 10. 34 ibid., 59. 35 ibid., 67–8. 36 ibid., 71. 37 ibid., 24. 38 ibid., 99–101. 39 Al-Manar, 20 Nov. 1922/vol. 23, 695. 40 Rida, Al-Khilafa, 29. 41 ibid., 30–2. 42 ibid., 30. 43 ibid., 52. 44 ibid., pp. 81–3. 45 Al-Manar, 18 June 1928/vol. 29, p. 180. He expressed a similar sentiment in a 1924 letter to Shakib Arslan. See S. Arslan, Al-Sayyid Rashid Rida: Aw Ikha' 'Arba'in Sana (Cairo, 2006), 282–3. On the 1926 conference, see Kramer, Islam Assembled, 86–105. 46 M.R. Rida, Al-Wahhabiyyun wa al-Hijaz, ed. M. Zayn (Cairo, 2000), 21. 47 ibid., 8. 48 On the Wahhabi campaign against forms of popular piety, see D. Commins, The Wahhabi Mission and Saudi Arabia (London, 2006), 16–18 and N. J. Delong-Bas, Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (Oxford, 2004), 66–9. 49 Rida, Al-Wahhabiyyun wa al-Hijaz, 27. 50 ibid., 53. 51 Quoted in W. L. Cleveland, Islam against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (Austin, 1985), 127. 52 A. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850 (London, 2000), 165. 53 For the influence of 'Abduh and Rida and al-Manar on Azad, see S. S. Hameed, Islamic Seal on India's Independence: Abul Kalam Azad—a Fresh Look (Karachi, 1998), 42–3 and 58–9. Azad's admiration of Ibn Taymiyya is noted in see Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad, pp. 168–70 and A. K. Azad, Sada-yi Haqq (Lahore, 2007), 92–3. 54 Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad, 84–5. 55 These were Mohamed Ali's Comrade and Hamdard, Zafar Ali Khan's Zamindar, in addition to Azad's al-Hilal, which was named after the Egyptian newspaper of the same title. 56 A useful overview of Gandhi's relationship with the Khilafat movement is B. R. Nanda, Gandhi: Pan-Islamism, Imperialism, and Nationalism in India (Bombay, 1989), esp. ch. 14. See also Minault, Khilafat Movement, 65–72 and Hameed, Islamic Seal, 98. 57 Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad, 178. 58 A. K. Azad, Khilafat and Jaziratul-Arab trans. M. Abdul Qadir Beg (Bombay, 1920), 311 and Masala-yi Khilafat (Lahore, 2006), 205. All quotations are from the English text, which was the Central Khilafat Committee's official translation. For potentially contentious words and phrases, I have inserted the original Urdu in parentheses. 59 A. Jalal, Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (Cambridge MA, 2008), 194–7. 60 Azad, Khilafat, 197 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 139–40. 61 Azad, Khilafat, 183 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 134. 62 Azad, Khilafat, 180 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 133. 63 Azad, Khilafat, 129–30 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 102. 64 Azad, Khilafat, 143–5 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 111–12. See also J. Majeed, 'Pan-Islam and 'Deracialisation' in the Thought of Muhammad Iqbal', in P. Robb (ed), The Concept of Race in South Asia (Delhi, 1995), 320–1. 65 Azad, Khilafat, 154–5 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 120–1. 66 Al-Manar, 20 Nov. 1922/vol. 23, 695–96. 67 Azad, Khilafat, 166 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 126. 68 Azad, Khilafat, 257 and Masala-yi Khilafat, 174. 69 See A. Schimmel, 'Sacred Geography in Islam', in J. Scott and P. Simpson-Housley (ed), Sacred Places and Profane Spaces: Essays in the Geographics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, (New York, 1991), 163–75. 70 Iqbal, Reconstruction of Religious Thought, 159. For an enlightening discussion of Iqbal's imaginative geography of the Hijaz and its juxtaposition with the nation form, see J. Majeed, Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Postcolonialism (London, 2009), 59–81. 71 B. D. Metcalf, Husain Ahmad Madani: The Jihad for Islam and India's Freedom (Oxford, 2009), 112–9. 72 Hameed, Islamic Seal, 102. 73 Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad, 193–4. 74 Qureshi, Pan-Islam in British Indian Politics, 398. 75 Jalal sees this concern with ethics in Azad's writings on jihad. See Jalal, Partisans of Allah, 201–2. 76 A. K. Azad, The Tarjuman al-Quran. Volume I: Al-Fatiha, trans. S. A. Latif (Delhi, 1996), p. 155 and Tarjuman al-Quran (New Delhi, 1963), i. 360. All quotations are from the English text of the 1945 edition, which was translated by Syed Abdul Latif with Azad's co-operation. For potentially contentious words and phrases, I have inserted the original Urdu in parentheses. 77 Azad, Tarjuman al-Quran, 182 and Tarjuman, i. 438. As Douglas notes Azad's concept of faith (din) owes much to the work of Shah Waliullah (d. 1762). In particular, Azad seems to have drawn on his Hujjat Allah al-Baligha which posited that historically each revelation derived from an archetypal religion or din that manifested itself differently depending on the material and civilizational circumstances of its followers. As human society developed, so did the manifestation of the divine religion as it was revealed anew. Islam was considered the final manifestation of din. See Douglas, Abul Kalam Azad, 210 and M. K. Hermansen, 'Shah Wali allah of Delhi's "Hujjat Allah al-Baligha": Tensions between the Universal and the Particular in an Eighteenth-Century Islamic Theory of Religious Revelation', lxiii (1986), 143–57. 78 On the trope of separatism in Iqbal's work, see Majeed, Muhammad Iqbal, 81–4. The best known of Iqbal's statements concerning the political future of India's Muslims and the idea of Pakistan is M. Iqbal, 'Presidential Address Delivered at the Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League at Allahabad on the 29th December, 1930', in Speeches and Statements of Iqbal, compiled by A. R. Tariq (Lahore, 1973), 11–2. 79 S. G. Haim, ed., Arab Nationalism: An Anthology (Berkeley, 1962), 77. The quote is from al-Manar May 1933/vol. 33, 191–2. 80 R. Kumar, ed., The Selected Works of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (New Delhi, 1991), i.114 81 S. Haj, Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality, and Modernity (Stanford, 2009), 4–5. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn WillisThe research for this article was funded by a CU Innovative Research Grant for the group project and conference "Transnational Discourses of Islamic Community." I would like to thank the organizers (Carla Jones and Ruth Mas) and members of this working group (Nabil Echchaibi, Najeeb Jan, and Dennis McGilvray) for their comments on earlier drafts. I would also like to thank Lucy Chester, Marjorie McIntosh, Mithi Mukherjee, Scott Reese, and two anonymous IHR reviewers for their comments.