THE REFORM MOVEMENTS
protege ofJamaluddin's on the Afghan throne. They sensed what he
was up to. In any case, Azam moved to Iran, where he died in exile.
Jamaluddin was forced to flee as well, so he made his way to ...
- Asia Minor. There he began to deliver speeches at Constantino-
ple University. He declared that Muslims needed to learn all
about modern science but at the same time ground their children
more firmly in Islamic values, tradition, and history. Moderniza-
tion, he said, didn't have to mean Westernization: Muslims could
perfectly well seek the ingredients of a distinctively Islamic mod-
ernization in Islam itself. This message proved popular with both
the masses and the upper classes. Sayyid Jamaluddin was well sit-
uated now to claim a high position in Ottoman Turkey and live
his life out as an honored and richly compensated spokesperson
for Islam. Instead, he began to teach that people should have the
freedom to interpret the Qur'an for themselves, without oppres-
sive "guidance" from the ulama, whom he blamed for the retarda-
tion of scientific learning in Islamic civilization. Naturally, this
turned the powerful clerical establishment against him and they
had the man expelled, so in 1871 he moved to ...
- Egypt, where he started teaching classes and delivering lectures at
the famous Al Azhar University. He continued to expound his vi-
sion of modernization on Islamic terms. (In this period, he also
wrote a history of Afghanistan, perhaps just another sly ploy to
make people think he was from Afghanistan and not Iran.) In
Egypt, however, where the dynasty founded by Mehmet Ali had
rotted into a despotic ruling class in bed with British and French
interests, he began to criticize the corruption of the rich and pow-
erful. He said the country's rulers ought to adopt modest lifestyles
and live among the people, just as leaders of the early Muslim
community had done. He also started calling for parliamentary
democracy. Again, however, he insisted that democratization didn't
have to mean Westernization. He found a basis for an Islamic
style of democracy in two Islamic concepts: shura and ijma.
Shura means something like "advisory council." It was the
mechanism through which early Muslim leaders sought the advice
and consent of the community. The first shura was that small
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