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Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (photo: al-Majalla) |
Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani,1838-1897, in his The Truth About the Necheiri [materialist] Sect (1880), (from Jamal al-Afghani, "Refutation of the Materialists," in Nikki R. Keddie, trans. and ed., An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din "al-Afghani", (Berkeley, 1968),167ff), reacted against Western colonialism in the Muslim world and urged Muslims to reform themselves as the first step in meeting this challenge from an alien, more powerful culture:
"They [the materialists, influenced by the West] are the destroyers of civilization and the corrupters of morals...they are the annihilators of peoples...Their kindness is a ruse, their truthfulness a deceit, their claim to humanity imaginary, and their call to science and knowledge a snare and a forgery. They make trustworthiness into treachery; will not keep a secret; and will sell their closest friend for a copper coin. They are slaves to the belly and bound by lust...
Thus, from all we have expounded, it becomes clear in the most evident manner that religion, even if it be false and the basest of religions, because of those two firm pillars - belief in a Creator and faith in rewards and punishments...is better than the way of the materialists...
The Islamic religion is the only religion that censures belief without proof and the following of conjectures; reproves blind submission; seeks to show proof of things to its followers; everywhere addresses itself to reason; considers all happiness the result of wisdom and clear-sightedness; attributes perdition to stupidity and lack of insight; and sets up proofs for each fundamental belief in such a way that it will be useful to all people."
Afghani and his Middle Eastern colleague Muhammad Abduh, along with Sayyid Ahmad Khan and Muhammad Iqbal in the Indian subcontinent, rejected blind adherence to tradition (taqlid) and, in contrast to such figures as Ibn Taymiyya, called for reopening the "doors of ijtihad" ("innovation"), considered closed at least since 935, as the chief way to modernize Islam.