322 chapter eight
Sharì"ah to keep pace with the changes in the world it has to re-
new itself. The closure of the gate of jurisprudence, ijtihàd, should
be re-nounced, and the Ulama"should encourage the use of ratio-
nal thinking and reasoning in formulating religious opinions that
would fit in with the contemporary needs of Muslims. In that he
was in line with the Shi"ìUlama", who were in favour of ijtihàdand
tajdid, innovation. Politically, al-Afghànì was in favour of political
revolution to achieve reform, an issue on which Muœammad Abdou
was in disagreement.
Being the muftiof Egypt gave Abdou not only the highest religious
position of a cleric in the country but also made his religious opin-
ion, fatwa, highly influential. As a patriotic Egyptian, Abdou resented
the country being under the subjugation of the foreign great powers.
But as a Muslim leader, as he saw himself part of the Islamic com-
munity, ummah, as a whole, beyond the political borders of Egypt,
he has to bear the interest of all Muslims in mind in addressing
their problems and concerns. Though an Egyptian and an Arab, he
was of the view that it was Pan-Islamism, not Arab Nationalism,
which would lead Muslims to political salvation. In his call for reform
he reflected a deep sense of history and vision. He saw it as inevitable
that the West would continue to advance in science and technical
knowledge, and the Muslim East would continue to have the gap in
these fields widening by the passage of time. He argued that not all
of which comes from the West was evil, which conceivably should be
avoided, but from the West comes also science, technology, educational
development, and new forms of political cultural and application of
democracy, that would all suit the Islamic East. There was no conflict
between Islam and Western science, as he emphasized, and as such
Muslims should endeavour to learn the science of the West and adopt,
and adapt, it to the land of Islam (Esposito, 2001). Abdou’s formula
for reform was a conscientious compromise between the ideals of
Islam with its inherent values and principles, and the scientific advance
of the West with its practical use and advantages. Without under-
mining the Islamic values and ideals, Western pragmatic approaches
to knowledge and education could be introduced to Islamic educa-
tion and political systems. The sphere of knowledge in Islam, he
advocated, should be widened to include other worldly branches of
knowledge, and religious schools, madaris, should include in their cur-
riculum the study of modern sciences (Armstrong, 2000). Notably,
al-Azhar until the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties was
limiting its curriculum to religious studies, but from the nineteen