Reddit reviews Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939

You're looking at it too much through a lens of contemporary politics as a gradient, rather than political theory and Islamic philosophy.

If you'd like to read a good introduction to this stuff, I would recommend Albert Hourani's "Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798-1939".

A very very basic summary: For the longest time, Sunni jurisprudence developed in tandem with Arab autocracy. In that philosophy, a ruler was legit to the degree that he enforced peace and war, and ceded the traditional spheres of social justice to the religious authorities. In this context, multiple schools of exegesis developed who interpret Islamic thought: So-called Madhabs. Wahhabism, while superficially similar, is not a form of Salafism but a school of Hanbali interpretation that favors textualism over more flexible modes of exegesis. Saudi Arabia does not like Salafists because they are by nature hard to control. In the early 19th century then, as the West set out to conquer the Islamic world, Arab thinkers came to reinterpret their faith and politics in the light of modernity. These early luminaries, the socalled Islamic Modernists, argued that believers should return to the text and interpret it individually according to their reason and needs. Instead of adhering to old traditions that had brought Arab society to its knees, they were supposed to follow the example of the early Muslisms (thus "Salafists"). This is the birth of Salafism as a modern political ideology. Some of these thinkers included theorists of theocracy such as Rashid Rida, others secular republicans and womens-rights activists like Ali Abdel Raziq. They were nonetheless all Salafists.

(All of these are broad strokes obviously)

The primary foundation of democracy is independent reasoning. Salafism returned the individual and his faith to the center of Islamic politics much like Luther and the Potestants had wrought control of Christianity from the Church.

The specific impact of Western or European Enlightenment on the Ottoman Empire (or at least Ottoman intellectual history, broadly defined) was immense. However, the widespread impact of many of these philosophers -- perhaps most prominently Kant, Rousseau and Montesquieue -- was not truly felt until the middle part of the 19th century. This is mostly because this is the period in which these works began to be translated into Arabic, Turkish and Persian and it is the era in which European schools began opening their doors to Ottoman citizens en masse (as well as the flowering of missionary education within the Empire itself). In the most general terms, the effect of the Enlightenment on Ottoman/Arabic intellectual thought could be said to be that it spurred a serious and revolutionary rethinking of the concept of Islamic governance. The decrepit and corrupt state of affairs in the Ottoman Empire leading up to and following Napoleon's invasion of Egypt at the end of the 18th century first spurred Arab thinkers like Rifa' al-Tahtawi and later Turkish thinkers like Namık Kemal to consider the challenges posed by republican or secular forms of government to the otherwise traditional Ottoman-Islamic mode. This would ultimately lead to intellectual and political movements towards constitutionalism, a "modernized" Islamic theological tradition (particularly stemming from the interventions of Jamal al-Din Afghani), and a widespread discussion of secularism and humanism in the public square.

This is not to say, however, that Ottoman thinkers were in any way "behind" or "late" to the Enlightenment. When these thinkers encountered Enlightenment era writers in the 19th century, they more or less absorbed the most current European trends in philosophy into their ouvre. They took in Spencer and Durkheim and Tocqueville right alongside their 18th and 17th century predecessors. In many instances the Ottoman thinkers, having this dialectical relationship between this European tradition and their own indigenous intellectual heritage, were in direct dialogue with the most current European philosophers. The most famous of these exchanges was between the above mentioned al-Afghani and Ernst Renan over the capabilities of a modern Islamic rule. In all, the 19th century saw a great opening of an intellectual conduit between the Ottoman Empire and Europe in a way that hadn't previously been observed.

Politically speaking, and here I'm directly addressing the comment by /u/Smackaroo below, the consequences were enormous. The reforms of the Tanzimat (equal citizenship before the law, reform of personal status law, conscription, among others) were absolutely outcomes of this intellectual convergence. The ratification of the 1876 constitution was a critical part to the ascension of Abdülhamid II. Of course, AHII suspended the constitution and the parliament shortly thereafter, but his own "absolutist" rule was also very different from his "absolutist" predecessors, and just as equally influenced by European philosophy. The Hamidian period saw a swift and forceful movement towards technological and cultural modernization, closer relations with European nations (he was best buds with Kaiser Wilhelm II), and a dramatic expansion of western schools, including reform of the elementary, secondary and collegiate university systems. So to say that the Hamidian experiment, while absolutist and (pan)-Islamist, was a "regression" is false because it suggests AHII returned to an older governing philosophy (he didn't) and it suggests he provided no innovation into Ottoman society (he did).

Essential reading on this subjet includes, but is not limited to:

Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age

Şerif Mardin, The Genesis of Young Ottoman Thought

Nikki Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism

Şükrü Hanioğlu, Preparation for a Revolution

In no particular order:

http://www.amazon.com/Beirut-Jerusalem-Thomas-L-Friedman/dp/1250015499

http://www.amazon.com/Lawrence-Arabia-Deceit-Imperial-Making-ebook/dp/B00BH0VSPI/ref=zg_bs_4995_5

http://www.amazon.com/My-Promised-Land-Triumph-Tragedy-ebook/dp/B009QJMXI8/ref=zg_bs_4995_4


http://www.amazon.com/Ethnic-Cleansing-Palestine-Ilan-Pappe/dp/1851685553/ref=zg_bs_4995_10

http://www.amazon.com/Arabic-Thought-Liberal-Age-1798-1939/dp/0521274230/ref=cm_lmf_tit_3

http://www.amazon.com/History-Arab-Peoples-Albert-Hourani/dp/0446393924/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4

http://www.amazon.com/Women-Gender-Islam-Historical-Modern/dp/0300055838/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9

http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Modern-Studies-Eastern-History/dp/0195134605/ref=cm_lmf_tit_10

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-End-All-Ottoman-Creation/dp/0805068848/ref=cm_lmf_tit_17


As a non-Muslim, non-Jew, non-Arab, non-Semite, American, and having read these (yay strict immigrant parents!) and some other histories, as well as having had the attacks of 9/11 give me a neurosis about following the news in the Middle East/Central/South Asia as regards potential US involvement and issues:


A lot feels familiar to me, some of it even seems like stuff I know a good deal about, and a few things about "The Middle East" which is a massively rich and complex sociopolitical place and slice of humanity are things I'd consider myself very well read on.


And I don't know shit.


I can tell you as a native born American and US voter what I think my country's policies (in a limited, broad strokes sense) should be - - - but beyond that, there's very little I've ever seen as conclusive and firm coming from anyone who by dint of identity didn't have 'skin in the game' .

I disagree with your assessment of the Brotherhood. During my time in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine I spent a lot of time with Ikhwanists - including some of their clerics at Azhar who now rot in jail or worse. The Brotherhood is a huge and diverse organization with many parts genuinely advocating civic democracy. You will disagree, but I think the Sisi coup was a horrific mistake that will come haunt people. So far there is simply nothing to substantiate the notion that Erdogan is anti-democratic. The exiles and old urban CHP elite likes to cry foul at every little thing, but truth is that there is hardly any part of Turkish society that isn't more free and prosperous today than it was before Erdogan came to power. There's a reason a good part of the HDP swing moved to AKP. I have been to South East Turkey (including Cizre, Silopi, Diarbakyr) both in the 90s and very recently. Erdogan will fall when the old Kemalists come up with a genuinely modern party that has a broader base than 70s etatism (and import substition industrialisation) and national chauvinism of the CHP.

I'm not going to spend much time with the conspiratorial nonsense in the link you posted. The Brotherhood suffers a lot of diseases, but it's not this sinister cabal of hateful people. The Ikhwan is - like most movements founded at the time - an attempt at Islamic modernism that has spawned a wide variety of institutions, ideas and practices. They are neither hidden or malicious. The whole "Islamofascism" idea (I also respect Hitchens and consort) betrays a dangerous ignorance of the origins of both fascism and Islamism.
Just to be clear, I despise Hamas (and support the Israeli military in its position) and its associates, but let's be serious here.

If any party in the modern Middle East is explicitly modeled on German fascism it is the Baath and their now allies in the SSNP. Arab nationalism derives almost all its ideas from German right Hegelians (the first time I studied Schelling and Herder was indeed at an Arab university), and all its institutions from national socialism and later the Soviet Union. Early Islamic modernists are similar in this effect in so far as they emulate the nationalists. This is a process many third-world countries went through in their struggle against imperialism, adopting the fascistic notions of self-determination through strength as a form of national emancipatory ideology. Similar trends can be found in India for example, where much of the early independent elite was objectively pro-Hitler.

Back to Syria, Faylaq ash-Sham and many of the former "Shield" formations that merged into various FSA and IF groups are much closer to the Brotherhood than Ahrar which has significant Salafist streams within it.

In the end this all boils down to whether or not certain people may be included in an eventual political process and, in turn, who needs to be suppressed. My position is that in order to stabilize the situation you need to include all parties who do not immediately pose a threat to the international order and who have significance on the ground. That includes at least part of Ahrar. The process is already working with AAS shifting positions on negotiations leading more hard-line elements to split off.

A great book on the Bortherhood in Syria today is Raphael Lefevre's "Ashes of Hama". And the standard work on the origins of modern political ideology in the Middle East is Albert Hourani's "Arab Thought in the Liberal Age, 1789-1939" to be followed by Fouad Ajami's "Arab Predicament".