232 No god but God
whole of the Quran. As a young disciple of the Shadhili Sufi Order, he
had excelled in his studies of the Islamic sciences, so much so that he
was sent to al-Azhar University in Cairo to continue his education.
But despite his piety and indefatigable intellect, Abdu immediately
clashed with the rigid pedagogy and traditionalist teachings of al-
Azhar’s Ulama. At the same time, he was struck by the ways in which
Europe’s lofty principles were so blatantly contradicted by its colo-
nialist agenda.
“We Egyptians,” he wrote, “believed once in English liberalism
and English sympathy; but we believe no longer, for facts are stronger
than words. Your liberalness we see plainly is only for yourselves, and
your sympathy with us is that of the wolf for the lamb which he
designs to eat.”
Disenchanted with his religious and political leaders, Abdu
became an avid disciple of al-Afghani and, under his tutelage, pub-
lished a number of books and tracts advocating a return to the unadul-
terated values of the salafs (“the pious forefathers”) who founded
the first Muslim community in Medina. Labeling himself a “neo-
Mu‘tazilite,” Abdu called for the reopening of the gates of ijtihad, or
independent reasoning. The only path to Muslim empowerment, he
argued, was to liberate Islam from the iron grip of the Ulama and
their traditionalist interpretation of the Shariah. Like Sir Sayyid,
Abdu demanded that every man-made source of law—the Sunna,
ijma, qiyas, and the like—must be subject to rational discourse. Even
the holy Quran must be reopened to interpretation, questioning, and
debate from all sectors of Muslim society. Muslims do not need the
guidance of the Ulama to engage the sacred Revelation, Abdu argued,
they must be free to experience the Quran on their own.
While Abdu did not believe that Islam need separate its religious
ideals from the secular realm, he categorically rejected the possibility
of placing secular powers in the hands of religious clerics, whom he
deemed totally unqualified to lead the Muslim community into the
new century. What was needed instead was a reinterpretation of tradi-
tional Islamic ideals so as to present modern democratic principles in
terms that the average Muslim could easily recognize. Thus, Abdu
redefined shura, or tribal consultation, as representative democracy;
ijma, or consensus, as popular sovereignty; and bay’ah, or the oath of