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 wa