Sharing with Equals: Modernity, Fundamentalism, and the Future

Abstract

At the turn of the twentieth century, almost every single Muslim intellectual, with the notable exception of the Iranian activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–1897) who had witnessed the more negative effects of colonialism in India, was in love with the West and wanted their countries to emulate Britain and France. Muhammad Abdu (1849–1905), the Grand Mufti of Egypt, hated the British occupation of his country but was well-versed in European culture and felt quite at home with Europeans. After a visit to Paris, he made this famous and deliberately provocative statement. “In Paris I saw Islam but no Muslims; in Cairo I see Muslims but no Islam.” He meant that the modern Western economies produced conditions of justice and equity that came closer to the Quranic ideals than was possible in the unmodernized or partially modernized countries of the Islamic world. In 1906, leading Iranian mullahs campaigned alongside secular intellectuals for representative government, leading a revolution that forced the shah to accept their new constitution. Sadly, the Iranian parliament was not allowed to function freely: two years later the British discovered oil in Iran and had no intention of allowing the Iranians to interfere with their plans to use this oil to fuel the British navy. Nevertheless, most of the Iranian clergy continued to support the parliamentary ideal. In his Admonition to the Nation and Exposition to the People (1909), Shaykh Muhammad Husain Naini (1850–1936) declared that the new constitution, which would limit the tyranny of the shahs, was the next best thing to the coming of the Hidden Imam, the Shiite Messiah who would inaugurate a rule of justice at the end of time.¹