Theologian · Modern
Muhammad Abduh
1849–1905 · Islamic modernism (Salafiyya); rationalist Sunni theology; reform of al-Azhar
Grand Mufti of Egypt and the father of Islamic modernism; the Dominican Jacques Jomier devoted a book to the Qur'an commentary he began, and his picture of Islam as the religion of reason is the one most Catholic dialogue partners still meet.
A village boy educated at al-Azhar, disciple of al-Afghani, exiled after the Urabi revolt and recalled to become Grand Mufti in 1899, Abduh argued in “The Theology of Unity” (1897) that reason can know God and the broad lines of good and evil, that revelation completes rather than contradicts it, and that where a text seems to conflict with established reason the text is to be interpreted. He held that man is the real author of his acts and denounced fatalism as the cause of Muslim decline, taught that the world runs by God's fixed laws (sunan) through real causes, declared that Islam knows no religious authority beyond preaching and that the caliph is a civil ruler, and rejected imitation (taqlid) of the law schools in favor of fresh judgment. His fatwas permitted interest from savings funds, Muslims in the Transvaal to eat meat slaughtered by Christians, and paintings and statues for instruction; he urged restriction of polygamy and the education of women, and began with Rashid Rida the “Manar” commentary that read the Qur'an for a scientific age.
Why he matters: He set the terms on which Islam and modernity have argued ever since, and Jomier's study of the Manar commentary was the first Catholic attempt to take Muslim modernism seriously as exegesis; his claim that Islam is the religion of reason is the one Benedict XVI's Regensburg lecture, by implication, invited Muslims to make good. Catholic readers will find in him a Muslim Mu'tazilite revived, nearer to the intellectualism of Aquinas than to the voluntarism of al-Ghazali.
Where to be careful
His rationalism makes reason the judge of revelation in the manner Dei Filius censures, his reading of miracles and spirits as natural causes thins the supernatural, and his tolerance did not extend to the equality of citizens before the law that Dignitatis Humanae presumes; he rejects the Incarnation and the Trinity as irrational. Common ground: God knowable by reason, a moral law reason can read, real secondary causes, human freedom and responsibility, and the reform of religious education.
Reading
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The Theology of UnityMuhammad Abduh, trans. Ishaq Musa'ad and Kenneth Cragg · Risalat al-Tawhid, his lectures on God, reason, prophecy and the moral law; short and systematic.
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Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid RidaMalcolm H. Kerr · How his theology of reason became a program for law and the state, and where it broke down.
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Le Commentaire coranique du ManârJacques Jomier · A Dominican of Cairo on the modernist Qur'an commentary; the Catholic reading of his exegesis.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each question the test asks.