Le califat de yazid ier. 1909-21
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| 4, 154, etc.) denies the Crucifixion, it affirms on the other hand that Christ is not dead, but that ‘Allah in His omnipotence raised him up to dwell with Him, that all the Scripturaries shall believe in him, before his death, and that at the Day of Judgment he shall bear witness for all men’.
A hadith, exploited by all aspirants to the title of Mahdi, announces the appearance of a restorer of Islam at the dawn of each new century. Gholam Ahmad gave himself out as this reformer, appearing on the eve of the fourteenth century of the Hijra (1880 A.D.=1299 A.H.). He combined the double mission of the Messiah and the Mahdi, whom he declared to be one and not two persons as the Sunnis suppose (v. p. 149). The Mahdi of the Ahmadiyya has a horror of bloodshed. The Holy War must therefore be waged chiefly with spiritual weapons. But he hints at the use of more energetic methods should circumstances happen to change. REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 189
After the death of the founder, they divided into two distinctly opposite factions. The older, that of Qadian, remains under the conduct of his son and continues his teaching. The second, whose centre is at Lahore, seeks to draw near to Sunni Islam with-out renouncing its activity amongst the Hindu sects. Its chief claim to originality consists in its spirit of proselytism. It has set on foot a missionary organization such as none of the other Muslim communities has ever possessed. This propagandism operates chiefly in the African colonies; we are indebted to it for the translations of the Qoran into English (condemned by order of the ‘ulema of the Cairene University of Al-Azhar) and other languages: Urdu, Malay, etc. The chief of the primitive Ahmadiyya, in his character of Mahdi, Messiah, Jesus returned to earth, aspires to the title of Caliph, the while professing himself the loyal subject of His Britannic Majesty. The adversaries of Ahmadism accuse him of being in the service of English politics. BABISM. If the Wahhabite reform is a reaction, a return to the past, that of Babism was to bring about the creation of a new religion. In the over-excited atmosphere of Persian Imamism, a religious dreamer, native of Eastern Arabia, the ‘Sheikh’ Ahmad 190 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS Ahsa'i (1753-1826), had founded a new Shi'a school, that of the ‘Sheikhis’. It drew inspiration from pantheistic ideas and carried to the point of fanaticism the cult of the hidden Imam, whose imminent appearance it announced. The Sheikhis, from the moment of their appearance, were violently combated and persecuted by the ‘Twelvist’ teachers. They probably number to-day two hundred and fifty thousand votaries. The Sheikhi centre was to be the cradle of Babism, a cult borrowing from the Sheikhis their extremist doctrines concerning the Imams and the Mahdi as well as the Isma‘ilian theory of the Universal Intelligence (v. p. 159). The founder of Babism, the Seyyid (therefore a Husainid, a descendant of the Prophet) ‘Ali Muhammad, born at Shiraz (Persia) in 1821, gave himself out as an emanation of this Intelligence. In him dwelt the mind of the Mahdi and of the prophets. Bab, or Gate, is an eminently Shi'a title. In the Shi'a, ‘Ali, and the Imams after him, are the Gates of esoteric knowledge, of the inward and veiled meaning of religion. This Gate will be re-opened at the second coming of the hidden Imam. ‘Ali Muhammad began by adopting the title of Bab, whence the name of his votaries. It was he who was the Gate of communication between the Faithful and the hidden Imam, in whose name he would proceed to the radical refashioning of Islam, or, to be more exact, of Imamite Islam; for it is not proved that the outlook of the Bab went beyond the horizon of the Shi'a. The Bab disparages its ritual and disciplinary practices. He pulls down the juridical edifice, laboriously erected by the Masters, in order to substitute his own conceptions. Against the Sunnis, Imamism, with more virtuosity than success, had employed the tendencious process of ta’wil, or REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 191 allegorical interpretation. The Bab in his turn adopts the allegorical method, and applies it not only to the text of the Qoran, but to the dogmas still held in common by the two great Islamic factions: the Judgement, Paradise, Hell and the Resurrection. He favours the equality of the sexes, abolishes the obligation of the veil for women, circumcision, ablutions, the theory of legal impurities, and that of the sumptuary laws. He allows interest on goods sold on the deferred-payment system. The number 19 corresponds to the number of Arabic letters which compose the complete formula of Bismillah. This number plays an important part in Babism: annual fast of nineteen days; year divided into nineteen months; months into nineteen days; daily reading of nineteen verses from the ‘Bayan’. The Bayan. Such is the name of the collection containing the Babist reform. It is drawn up in the style of the Qoran, which has manifestly served as model to the Bab, but its phraseology is bombastic and involved to the point of obscurity. This book is animated by a more liberal and modern inspiration; but the Bab takes care not to represent it as the final word of revelation. Others, he asserts, will come after him to improve and complete it. Such is, at least, the interpretation of the Behaists. But they had, as we shall see, an interest in presenting the Bab as a simple precursor. It may be that, like the author of the Qoran with the theory of the abrogating and abrogated verses, the Bab merely desired to reserve to himself the opportunity of revising his work and of announcing more explicitly his own advent. His adversaries left him no time for this; but before disappearing he declared himself to be the Mahdi and the Imam whom the Shi'as awaited. 192 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS
The Bab had really only intended a reform of the Imamite Shi'a, that of the ‘Twelvers’, such as an evolution of several centuries had made it. In order to bring this about, he had had recourse to well-worn expedients. He was content to utilize the principles laid down by the Shi‘a sects: Imamism, Milenarism, Sheikhism. Beha freed himself resolutely from this constraint. He founded a new religion, ‘Behai'sm', so called after him. He announced himself as the emanation of the Divinity, the Apostle of the final revelation, no longer for the Shi'a or Islam alone, but for the whole of humanity. This claim led him to make a clean sweep of all the Imamite conceptions preserved by the Bab, who was no longer regarded as more than a simple precursor of Behai'sm. He abolished the last ties—the liturgy and the ministers of the cult—which attached Babism to Islam. The new revelation is set forth in the ‘Kitab-i-aqdas’, or the most holy Book, another imitation of the Qoran, which Beha completed with a series of official missives REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 193
'ABBAS-EFFENDI, the eldest son of Beha, born in 1844, succeeded his father, who died in 1892. He adopted the titles of ‘‘Abd al-Beha’’, or Servant of the Splendour, and ‘Ghosn A‘zam’, or Supreme Branch, shortened from ‘Ghosn Allah al-A‘zam’. He had already assumed the direction of the Behais during the lifetime of his father, who passed his days in prison or seclusion. ‘Abbas, like his father, also came into conflict with his half-brother, Muhammad ‘Ali, called ‘Al-Ghosn al-Akbar’, or Major Branch. Settled at Haifa and Acre (Palestine), where he had been interned with his father, ‘Abbas again emphasized the cosmopolitan, pacifist and humanitarian character of Behai'sm and its aspiration to become a universal religion. ‘Humanity is one. . . fanatical attachment to a religion, a race, a country, destroys this unity. . . . men should free themselves from traditional beliefs and cleave only to the principles of divine religion.’ He has found encouragement in this path, 194 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS especially since the success of his propaganda in America. The Behai dissidents who have followed Muhammad ‘Ali are called ‘Muwahhidun', or Unitarians, and are excommunicated by the adherents of ‘Abbas. There subsists no more than a modest group of Babis who have remained faithful to the original doctrine of the Bab. As for the ‘Azalis’ (v. p. 192) who were persecuted and decimated in Persia (1906-1912), they probably number about fifty thousand. These two factions represent the conservative or orthodox party in the movement inaugurated by Seyyid ‘Ali Muhammad. A conservative form of Behai'sm is also adopted by the small group of adherents of Muhammad ‘Ali, the Unitarians. In effect, ‘Abbas has created a new revelation, sprung directly from Behai'sm; a second religious avatar of Babism in which ‘Abbas figures as the Messiah and the son of God. Syria numbers only a few hundred Behais, early emigrants from Persia who have settled round the centre Acre-Haifa, which has the same attraction for the adherents of Behai'sm as Mekka and Medina for Muslims. The adepts are chiefly distributed in Persia, where their number amounts to a total of eight hundred thousand to a million, on a rough estimate. In the crisis through which Persian Imamism is passing, liberalism and Behai'sm have been practically merged. Then, too, a considerable number of Behais of all sects finish by swelling the army of agnostics and the indifferent. Arrived at the stage where ‘Abbas-Effendi has left it, Behai evolution with its borrowings from Biblical monotheism, from humanitarianism, pacifism and internationalism—demands the establishment of obligatory arbitration, a Parliament of Humanity REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 195
On the other hand, its political importance as regards the future of the East is not to be despised, assuming that the statistics of the sect relating to the number of Behais can be trusted. The first European expert on the Babist question, Mr. Edward Browne, asserts that ‘the Power which, by winning over their supreme Pontiff at Acre, succeeded in utilizing their organization in Persia, would be able to secure an enormous influence in that country’. In the United States there are some thousands of adherents, and Germany numbers several scattered groups of Behais. The introduction of Behai'sm into America is due to the propaganda of Dr. Ibrahim George Khairallah, a Christian Lebanese, born at Bhamdun (1849) and one of the first pupils of the American College at Beyrout. After a visit paid to Acre in 1898, he was led to break with ‘Abbas and declared himself in favour of Muhammad ‘Ali. But he did not succeed in carrying with him the majority of the American Behais. These religious dilettanti on the other side of the Atlantic, while they applaud from motives of snobbery the humanitarian theories of the Prophet of Acre, have been careful not to break with their protestant ‘congregations’ whose churches they continue to attend. Their number appears to have remained stationary. In any case, the contribution of the American disciples enabled ‘Abbas-Effendi to intensify his propaganda. He himself visited the United States in 1912. He died at Haifa (November, 1921). The 196 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS
THE PRESENT-DAY PROBLEM OF THE CALIPHATE. The Qoran knows nothing of the organization of the Caliphate. As for the early tradition, it is content to demand for its holder a Quraish origin. We have seen above (v. p. 107) the functions assigned to the Caliphate by Orthodox Islam, to fulfil a mission of centralization within and defence against dangers without; and to act as an organ of validation for canonical institutions. Slowly elaborated by the jurists from the time of Mawardi (eleventh century), the theory of the attributions of the Caliphate had passed from the speculation of the schools into certain manuals of fiqh and into the ‘aqa-’ id, or catechisms. There it was sometimes characterized as being a ‘required duty’, fard al-kifaya, binding on the Muslim community as a whole; this is significant for it is applied by these manuals to the obligation of pilgrimage. It explains the mistake made by Westerners, including Orientalists, who have likened the Caliphate to the Papacy. The Sultan ‘Abdulhamid (1876–1908) took advantage of this instruction to intensify his pan-Islamic activity. After his fall the Young Turks took up the theory, on which they based their demand that European diplomacy should recognize the ‘spiritual power’ of the Sultan-Caliph and as it were his right to supervise the whole Muslim world. The Great War REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 197
On the 1st of November, 1922, the Grand National Assembly of Angora by a simple decree deprived the Sultan-Caliph of Stambul of all temporal power. The Indian Muslims made no move. On the 3rd of March, 1924, the same Assembly with one stroke of the pen abolished the Ottoman Caliphate. Two days later, on March the 5th, King Husain ibn Grand Sherif of Mekka, proclaimed himself Caliph. The capture of Mekka by the Wahhabis (13th of October, 1924) brought about the fall of King Husain and rendered vacant the office of Caliphate. We would call attention to the feeble reaction of the Muslim world in face of the rude suppression of the Caliphate. It occurred to the ‘Indian Committee for the Defence of the Caliphate’ to demand explanations from Mustapha Kemal, President of the Turkish Republic, from whom they received this reply: ‘The age-long dream cherished by Muslims that the Caliphate should be an Islamic government including all Muslims, has never been capable of realization. It has become, on the contrary, a cause of dissension, of anarchy and of wars between the Believers. The interest of all, now more clearly understood, has brought to light this truth: that it is the duty of Muslims to possess separate governments. The true 198 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS spiritual bond between them is the conviction that all the Believers are brethren’ (Qoran 49, 10). The merit of frankness in this reply is indisputable. It proclaims in plain language the bankruptcy of the traditional Caliphate and proposes to replace it by the bond of brotherhood between Muslim peoples. The idea will make its way. As to the protests of the Old Turks and the Kurds of Anatolia, they were stifled in blood. Of the two last Ottoman Caliphs, who were successively deposed, the first, Muhammad VI, Wahid ad-din (1916-1922), abdicated in favour of King Husain. His successor, ‘Abdulmajid (1922-1924), was discredited beforehand by accepting from an Assembly, without a mandate ad hoc, a Caliphate shorn of temporal power. He continues none the less to maintain his right to the Caliphate. Under pretext of putting down the partisans of the fallen Caliphs, the Kemalists have decreed the suppression of all the fraternities, confiscated their property and closed their meeting-places. Outside Turkey hardly a voice has been raised—except that of a partisan of the King-Caliph Husain—to proclaim ‘the irregular state of an Islam deprived of a Caliph. What becomes of the Friday canonical devotions for all those who make their authorization by the Imam a condition of validity?’ The Arab countries are divided between two tendencies: that of the Hashimites of the Hejaz and that of the Wahhabis. These latter, in conformity with their democratic principles, had, until recently, paid no attention to the Caliphate. This is a disconcerting fact to discover among these puritans who are considered as the interpreters of Islam and the depositaries of its most ancient doctrine. If the Wahhabis have abandoned this exclusivism, if they have consented to mention the problem of the Caliphate REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 199
NATIONALISM. In the majority of Muslim countries a recent phenomenon, the awakening of nationalism, has singularly damped enthusiasm for the organic reconstitution and unification of Islam—the mission which it was desired to assign to the Caliphate. Formerly each Believer considered himself as a citizen of Islam and his country as a province of the omma, the Islamic nation. This sentiment is weakening, to the profound despair of the old conservatives. It is giving place to the theory of race, to the concept of ethical solidarity. The influence of blood and language are getting the upper hand again. The Muslim nationalists, Turks, Arabs, Egyptians etc., are succumbing to the temptation to fall back on their immediate surroundings and historic past. They no longer consider the period prior to the Hijra as ‘centuries of ignorance’(jahiliyya) and barbarism. On this point they break resolutely with the historic traditions of Islam. The Muslim Turks and Turanians exhibit pride in their pagan forefathers, the Scythians, Attila and the Huns, Chingiz Khan and the Mongolians, Kubla Khan, the Mongolian conqueror of China. In the Persia of to-day the new generation strives to forget the Muslim past in order to think of the great ancestors of the pre-Hijra period: the Achæmenians, the Parthians, the Sassanids, the legendary heroes Rustem, Isfendyar, etc. This evolution of ideas renders Islamic opinion accessible to the suggestions of the Kemalists of 200 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS
There remain the reformists and the partisans of a democratic solution of the problem. This solution they find in a return to the ‘shura’ of primitive Islam, the elective period of the first Caliphs. After the disappointments inflicted on them by the Kemalists, the Indian Committees have professed adhesion to this programme. It envisages the creation of a supreme Council of Islam, of which the Caliph would be no more than the delegated administrator. Opinions differ concerning the powers of this Council. Are its members to be re-elected annually or nominated for life? The most moderate would limit their scope to religious questions; the most advanced, under the influence of the Muslim Communists of Russia, suggest conferring on them dictatorial powers after the manner of the Muscovite Soviets. We have analysed above the radical thesis of the ‘alim ‘Abdarraziq (v. p. 109). A project intended to solve the crisis of the Caliphate, but which, however, runs the risks of complicating it, is the summoning of a sort of Council, or, if preferred, of a pan-Islamic Congress. PAN-ISLAMIC CONGRESS. Islam, as we have seen, knows nothing of conciliar assemblies or synods. It might be added that its constitution does not permit REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 201
A Syrian ‘alim, Sa‘id al-Karmi, Grand-Qadi in Transjordania, has not failed to make the most of this antinomy. He rightly observes that ‘it is an innovation unheard of in the annals of Islam’. He confesses to have searched in vain to discover any legitimatism of it in Islamic legislation.’ If a single precedent for it is known, how comes it that no one up to the present day has either remembered or thought of advancing it? Occasions have, nevertheless, not been wanting in recent times when the question has arisen of legalizing the recognition or deposition of the Sultans ‘Abdul ‘aziz, Murad, ‘Abdulhamid, Reshad, Muhammad VI, Wahid ad-din. In these circumstances was not religion at stake? Were there not at that time, in the bosom of Islam, persons charged with binding and loosing with whom counsel should have been taken? Was it fitting to leave the Caliphate, like a plaything, in the hands of the Young Turks? In these numberless successions of Sultan-Caliphs did anyone trouble ever to discuss whether the canonized stipulations had been observed? How is the silence of the ‘ulema during that time to be interpreted?’ These are the 202 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS
In Turkey itself not all the believers approved of the deposition of Muhammad VI nor of the arbitrary mutilation of the Ottoman Caliphate, voted by the Grand National Assembly of Angora. These conservatives do not consider the Caliphate assimilable to a constitutional monarchy. They find illegal, the dissociation of the Caliphate and Sultanate, in short, the transfer of the Caliphian powers to a body of persons. As for ‘Abdulmajid, the day following his fall, while claiming only the exercise of the canonical prerogatives of the Caliphate, he yet appealed to the decision of a Congress of Islam. He has been recognized as Caliph, in Egypt, in India and elsewhere. We have already seen that the Indian Committees for ‘the Defence of the Caliphate’ have also referred the solution of the problem to a Congress. But their adherence is dependent on a condition which goes substantially farther than the original dispute. They desire that the assembly shall first of all decree a number of urgent reforms, destined to bring about co-ordination amongst all followers of the creed. The apprehension which this condition arouses among the Salafiyya can be readily understood. The latter, moderate reformists, at once conservative and progressive, accept on principle the Indian programme, or rather they resign themselves to it in order not to remain isolated in the midst of the general adhesion. But they feel dubious about the outcome of the pan-Islamic Congress. They wonder whether the discussion will not end by increasing the confusion and what authority will have the strength to resist the pressure of the laity and the parties of the Left. In order to put an end to the indecision, the Rector REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 203
A condition essential to success is to invest the meeting with an œcumenical character. How can this be done? On the very active ‘Indian Committee of the Caliphate’ are some notable Shi'as. Can they avoid summoning their co-religionists? Should they be joined by Zaidites, the least Shi‘a among all the Imamite sects? Their admission carries with it an obligation to give them the right to vote and to treat them on a footing of equality, in short, to give them the brevet of orthodoxy. In other words, it is breaking with the whole past of historic Islam. The same questions arise in respect of the Kemalists of Anatolia, the Muslims of Russia and Central Asia, influenced by Bolshevism and won over to republican ideas. Will the Muslims of Morocco, the backward partisans of the two last Ottoman Sultans and those 204 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS of King Husain, be summoned? For them the problem of the Caliphate does not exist, or reduces itself to a return to the past. With the admission of the Kemalists and the Muslims belonging to the Soviet republics, the door is wide open to laic and even communist claims. These complications amply justify the absence of enthusiasm among the conservatives for the project of a pan-Islamic Congress. Experience will show if and how it will succeed in adapting itself to the system of traditional Islam. The attempt recently made at Cairo and at Mekka has not been encouraging. The pan-Islamic Congress, after a delay of two years, was at last held at Cairo in the month of May, 1926, and was treated by Muslim opinion with complete indifference. It assembled about forty ‘ulema and delegates, representing not countries but private associations. The great majority of the invitations issued remained unanswered. The congressists deliberated behind closed doors on the nature of the Caliphate and the qualities requisite in its holder. Finally, they testified to the breaking up of the old religious internationalism in Islam and the advent of nationalism with the creation of Muslim States, differing in their institutions and political tendencies, but all jealous of their independence. This statement led them to declare that any practical solution in the matter of the Caliphate appeared to them premature. Meanwhile, they advise the creation of a pan-Islamic organization. It would have a central commission, at Cairo, representing all countries, as well as national committees, acting as executive bodies. These local committees would also be charged with the task of solving religious problems until the meeting of a fresh pan-Muslim Congress at Cairo. The Sheikh Muhammad Rashid Rida bids Muslims not to lose heart. He calculates that it will take numerous REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 205 congresses and ‘several decades to set up again an institution overthrown by the assault of centuries'. Such appears also to be the conviction of the congressists who met at Mekka (June, 1926), since they saw fit to draw up the statutes of the future pan-Islamic congresses which it is proposed to convoke annually at Mekka, on the occasion of the pilgrimage. After the spectacle of two pan-Islamic congresses functioning on parallel lines and affecting to ignore one another, it is easy to understand the bewilderment of the Muslims, who wonder anxiously whether the conciliar expedient will not open a new source of division in their midst. MODERNISM. The attempts at reform just referred to have led to the formation of separate sects or even new religions, such as Behai'sm. It remains to point out the currents of modernist opinion which disturb Islam and particularly the world of Sunni orthodoxy, where they have caused an internal crisis which, in the opinion of the review Al-Manar, threatens to become ‘more baneful than the offensive of the Crusades. These latter sounded the rallying call amongst Muslims. The modernist crisis, a struggle of ideas and principles, brings dissension into their ranks and raises them up one against another. The sport of their enemies, they rend each other with their own hands.' In the Islamic East, modernism owes its birth to contact with European civilization, which taught Muslims how backward they were, chiefly in the domain of technique and the natural sciences. Nothing had prepared them for this brusque revelation, and among the intellectuals the humiliation inflicted on their self-esteem shook the boundless confidence which, until then, they had reposed in traditional knowledge. They threw the responsibility on to ‘the closing of 206 ISLAM BELIEFS AND INSTITUTIONS
‘I cannot believe', writes a Muslim intellectual, ‘that God has shut the door of progress in the face of His people, elected to attain to the greatest heights that man can reach. I refuse to admit that God desires all nations excepting the Muslims to inquire into the laws most suited to their kind, religion and time, and that while their scientific and literary eminence is increased by this effort, His chosen nation is forbidden any resort to independent inquiry and experiment; in a word, that its Providence deprives it of the means to achieve distinction in the contest of enterprising nations.' The chief centres of Muslim modernism are in India, Egypt and Turkey, if, however, that of Turkey still deserves this name at the stage which it has reached in the wake of Kemalist laicism. All the modernists are united in the war against superstition. The most moderate amongst them have undertaken the mission of showing the complete agreement between Islam, sanely interpreted, and the progress and aspirations of modern times. They protest that misunderstanding alone has given rise to a belief in their antinomy and they are resolved to dissipate it. ‘We have made the mistake of attributing absolute values to details of secondary importance, and of establishing as immutable and eternal laws rules inspired by the temporary necessities of a particular period.' A theme on which they love to expatiate is the principle of ‘historic evolution’, which governs human REFORMISTS AND MODERNISTS 207
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