326 chapter eight
Third: Secularisation Reform Movements
Secularization was seen by some Muslim leading intellectuals and
policy makers as essential for modernization. To speed up modern-
ization in countries that were occupied for years ranging from short
of a century to more than a century, political and intellectual lead-
ers looked at the West and its way of life as the shortest way to
catch up with what had been missing in order to narrow the gap
between the Islamic East and the Christian West.
This is not to say that political leaders were distancing themselves
from Islam as a religion per se, quite the opposite. Political leaders
appealed to the masses through Islam; they were keen to be seen
attending Friday prayers, taking part in religious ceremonies, sending
delegates to international Islamic gatherings, and declaring Islam as
the formal religion of the state in the countries’ constitutions. President
Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, for example, was eager to be nicknamed
the “Faithful President”. Nevertheless, in running the affairs of the
state, Islamic governments, supported by leading intellectuals, were
willing to drop Islamic ideas in favour of Western alternatives for
the sake of what was perceived as modernism. Sources of laws were
cited as primarily the French Law, leaving Islamic Sharì"ah tailing
behind at the end of a list of sources. The intention of governments
was not insincere as all political leaders of Muslim countries wanted
to strengthen their economies, improve education, and reinforce
armies, but to them the way to do that was primarily to adopt
Western ideas.
Of the early advocates of secularization in Egypt two names come
to mind: Qasim Amin (d. 1908) who was the first Muslim to have crit-
icized polygamy, divorce, and the veiling of women, and ̨ahaŒusayn.
̨aha Œusayn and the call for Secularisation
̨aha Œusayn, an intellectual emerging from the Egyptian village, took
an entirely secular approach to modernism. He argued for the sep-
aration of religion and politics. To him, that would best serve the
needs for the modernization of society, not the pursuit of an Islamic
path. The urge for modernisation, and probably the influence by
the Western culture where he lived while getting his doctorate from
the Sorbonne, seemed to have influenced Œusayn’s thinking. In his
“Future of Culture in Egypt” he foresaw that in the years to come,
the roots of Egypt, and those of Islam, would be bound to the West,