Abduh, Muhammad (1849–1905)

Many scholars consider Muhammad Abduh—controversial teacher, jurist, theologian, and reformer—to be the founder of Islamic Modernism. Abduh was born in rural Egypt to a family committed to religion and education. In 1869, he left for Cairo to study at Al-Azhar University (where he eventually became its modernizing rector). There he studied with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who introduced Abduh to Islamic theology and mysticism as well as more “Western” subjects such as social and political science. Afghani also instilled in Abduh an appreciation of activism and Pan-Islamism (regarding all Muslims as one global community). Afghani's influence, it seems, was to further make Abduh anticolonialist. The government eventually appointed Abduh chief editor of the official Egyptian gazette, where he increasingly influenced public thought and opinion. During this period of rising Egyptian nationalism, though, Abduh's outspoken criticism of the government's pro-Britain policies led to his exile.

Abduh settled in Paris, where he formed with al-Afghani an influential society that aimed to unite Muslims in renewed adherence to Islamic principles against European interference. Their journal, al-'Urwa al-Wuthqa, was one of the most important of the early journals devoted to modernizing Islam. In 1888, the Egyptian government granted Abduh permission to return to Cairo on the condition that he refrain from teaching. Initially a judge, he advanced to membership in the administrative council and ultimately became Grand Mufti of Egypt. Here, he dedicated himself to the reform of Egypt's educational system and religious courts. He remained in this position until his death in Alexandria in 1905.

Essentially, Abduh situated himself against those secularized Egyptians who claimed that religion held back a progressive society. Abduh came of age when European ideas, politics, and economics were encroaching on the Islamic world. Abduh traced the problem of shifting power relations to external factors (such as European might and colonialism) as well as internal ones (such as religious stagnation, corruption, and sectarianism). He argued that Egyptians could only bring about necessary reform through a discriminating and active return to the essentials and ethics of Islam (with the Qur'an serving as a cornerstone).

Though Abduh warned against submission to Europe, he did believe that mutual and beneficial change could result from interaction and thus advocated against isolationism. What he saw as rampant secularization disturbed him, however, and led to his concentration on Islamic principles as solutions to the major problems of his time. Confronted with unchecked European advances, he saw a pressing need for the Muslim world to progress by maintaining the core of Islam while simultaneously modernizing its outmoded elements, such as education.

Abduh therefore stood between the two poles of absolute conservatism and modernization. One consequence of this middle ground was an eventual split among his disciples between those who highlighted Abduh's focus on a return to religious tradition and those who underscored his attention to progressive social policy (such as his political involvement with educational reform and women's rights). In the end, Abduh's project of reviving Islam in a modernizing world has had an undeniable influence on global religion.