Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

Sayyid Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī

Sayyid Jamāluddīn al-Afghānī, (Template:PerB) also known as Jamāl al-Dīn Asadabadi and Sayyid Muhammad Ibn Safdar al-Husayn (1838-1897), was one of the founders of Islamic modernism, and a political activist and Islamic nationalist in Iran, Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. An advocate of Muslim unity he was less interested in theology than in organizing a Muslim response of Western pressure."

Early life

Syed Jamaluddin was born in 1838 at Asadabad in Kunar Province of (Afghanistan). His father Syed Safdar, a descendent of Syed Ali Al-Tirmizi, later migrated and settled in Kabul. Even at the early age of eight years, Jamaluddin exhibited extraordinary intelligence. Before he was 18, he was well versed in almost all the branches of Islamic learning including philosophy, jurisprudence, history, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, sciences, mysticism, astronomy and astrology. His learning was encyclopaedic and his genius was versatile., overwhelming documentation suggests he was born and spent his childhood in Afghanistan and was brought up as a suni Muslim.

Political activism

In 1857, Jamaluddin Afghani spent a year in Delhi and after performing the pilgrimage of Hajj in Mecca, he returned to Afghanistan in 1858. He became a counselor to the King Dost Mohammad Khan and later to Mohammad Azam. In 1869, the throne of Kabul was occupied by Sher Ali Khan and Jamaluddin Afghani was forced to leave the country.

In 1871, al-Afghani moved to Egypt and began preaching his ideas of political reform. His ideas were considered radical, and he was exiled in 1879. He then traveled to different European and non-European cities: Istanbul, London, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Munich .

In 1884, al-Afghani began publishing an Arabic newspaper in Paris entitled al-Urwah al-Wuthqa ("the trustworthy rope") along with Muhammad Abduh. The newspaper called for a return to the original principles and ideals of Islam, and for greater unity among Islamic peoples. This, al-Afghani argued, would allow the Islamic community to regain its former strength against European powers.

Al-Afghani was invited by Shah Nasser al-Din to come to Iran and advise on affairs of government, fell from favor quite quickly and had to take sanctuary in a shrine near Tehran. After seven months of preaching to admirers from the shrine he was arrested in 1891, transported to the border with Ottoman Mesopotamia, and evicted from Iran. Although al-Afghani quarrelled with most of his patrons, it is said he "reserved his strongest hatred for the shah" whom he accused of weakening Islam by granting conscessions to Europeans and squandering the money earned thereby. His agitation against the Shah is thought to have been one of the "fountainheads" of the successful 1891 protest against the granting a tobacco monopoly to a British company, and the later 1905 Constitutional Revolution.

Political and religious views

Although called a liberal by a contemporary English admirer, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Afghani, did not advocate constitutional government. In the volumes of the newspaper he published in Paris, “there is no word in the paper’s theoretical articles favoring political democracy or parliamentarianism,” according to his biographer. Afghani simply envisioned “the overthrow of individual rulers who were lax or subservient to foreigners, and their replacement by strong and patriotic men.”

According to another source Afghani was greatly disappointed by the failure of the Indian Mutiny and came to three principal conclusions from it:

• that European imperialism, having conquered India, now threatened the Middle East
• that the Asia, including the Middle East, could prevent the onslaught of Western powers only by adopting immediately the modern technology of the West
• and that Islam, despite its traditionalism, was an effective creed for mobilizing the public against the imperialists.

Afghani, above all else, called for unity amongst all Muslims. However, he did not believe that all Muslims ought to unify under one ruler, or Caliph. Rather, cooperation amongst Muslims would was his answer to the weakness that had allowed Muslims to be colonized by the Europeans (namely Britain and France). He believed that, in fact, Islam (and its revealed law) was compatible with rationality and, thus, Muslims could become politically unified whilst still maintaining their faith based on a religious social morality. These beliefs had a profound effect on Muhammad Abduh who went on to expand on the notion of using rationality in the human relations aspect of Islam (mu'amalat) .

Among the reasons Al-Afghani is thought to have had a less than deep religious faith was his lack of interest in finding theological common ground between Shia and Sunni, and his failure to marry..

Death and legacy

He died on March 9, 1897 in Istanbul and was buried there. In late 1944, due to the request of Afghan government, his remains were taken to Afghanistan and laid in Kabul inside the Kabul University, a mausoleum was erected for him.

Further reading

• Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani's Biography.
• Bashiri, Iraj, Bashiri Working Papers on Central Asia and Iran, 2000.
• Black, Antony (2001). The History of Islamic Political Thought. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93243-2.
• Cleveland, William (2004). A History of the Modern Middle East. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-4048-9.
• "Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 5 Oct. 2005<http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9043289>.
• Keddie, Nikki Ragozin. Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: A Political biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
• Watt, William Montgomery (1985). Islamic Philosophy and Theology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0749-8.
• Mehrdad Kia, Pan-Islamism in Late Nineteenth-Century Iran, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 30-52 (1996).