Daily Excerpt: The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society (O. Imady) - Planting the Seeds of Muslim civil society: activities Jamal al-Din al-Aghani
Excerpt from The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society by Dr. Omar Imady --
Planting the seeds of Muslim Civil Society: (1871-1879)
The Activist: Jamal al-Din al-Afghani
Although Iranian and Shici 33 by birth, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) was known to most of his contemporaries as a Sunni Afghan. He described himself as such out of purely practical considerations, namely, to avoid being dismissed by religious scholars and political leaders of Sunni Muslim countries. In actuality, however, al-Afghani was neither a Shici nor a Sunni. His worldview, rather, was a synthesis of tasawwuf (an approach to Islam that emphasizes the spiritual experience, henceforth: sufism) and philosophy, combined with an intense inclination towards political activism. Al-Afghani was trained as a traditional scholar in Iraq and was, seemingly, self-taught in Western philosophy and political institutions during his subsequent stay in India. After living in Afghanistan (1866-1868), where he was involved in anti-British activity and in Istanbul (1869-1871), where his ideas aroused the hostility of religious scholars, al-Afghani moved to Egypt where he was destined to play a highly significant role in the rise of the national movement known as the Urabi Revolt. After being deported from Egypt in 1879, al-Afghani traveled to India and subsequently to Paris where in 1884 he founded al-c Urwah al-Wuthqa (The Firm Bond), the name given to both a political journal and a secret association. Al-Afghani subsequently turned his attention to Iran where he eventually played an important role in the Tobacco Uprising of 1891. His final years were spent in Istanbul, plotting against the Shah of Iran, propagating the Pan-Islamic project sponsored by the Ottoman Sultan and lecturing to a group of loyal students. In 1897, at the age of fifty-nine, al-Afghani died, leaving behind a rich legacy of thought which remains a source of inspiration to Muslims of various tendencies and affiliations.
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