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Sayyid Muhammad Ibn Safdar al-Husayn (born 1838 - died March 9, 1897) (Template:PerB), mostly known as Sayyid Jamāl-al-dīn al-Afghānī, (Template:PerB) (Template:PerB), /> political activist and Islamic nationalist active in Iran (Persia), Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Ottoman Empire during the 19th century. One of the founders of Islamic modernism, and an advocate of pan-Islamic unity, he has been described as "less interested in theology than he was in organizing a Muslim response to Western pressure. How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future (New York: Norton, 2006), p. 103.</ref> His name "Afghani" came from his claim to being from Afghanistan

Early life

Asadabadi was born in Asadabad, a district of Kunar Province in Afghanistan,Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).

Political activism

In 1857, Jamaluddin Asadabadi spent a year in Delhi and after performing the pilgrimage of Hajj in Mecca, he returned to Afghanistan in 1858. He became a counselor to the King Dost Mohammad Khan and later to Mohammad Azam. In 1869, the throne of Kabul was occupied by Sher Ali Khan, and Jamaluddin Asadabadi was forced to leave the country.

He decided to travel to Istanbul, although he journeyed through Cairo on his way there. He stayed in Cairo long enough to meet a young student who would become a devoted disciple, Muhammad 'Abduh.

In 1871, Asadabadi moved to Egypt and began preaching his ideas of political reform. His ideas were considered radical, and he was exiled in 1879. He then traveled to different European and non-European cities: Istanbul, London, Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Munich .

In 1884, Asadabadi began publishing an Arabic newspaper in Paris entitled al-Urwah al-Wuthqa ("The Indissoluble Link") along with Muhammad Abduh. The newspaper called for a return to the original principles and ideals of Islam, and for greater unity among Islamic peoples. This, Asadabadi argued, would allow the Islamic community to regain its former strength against European powers.

Asadabadi was invited by Shah Nasser al-Din to come to Iran and advise on affairs of government, but fell from favor quite quickly and had to take sanctuary in a shrine near Tehran. After seven months of preaching to admirers from the shrine, he was arrested in 1891, transported to the border with Ottoman Mesopotamia, and evicted from Iran. Although Asadabadi quarreled with most of his patrons, it is said he "reserved his strongest hatred for the shah," whom he accused of weakening Islam by granting concessions to Europeans and squandering the money earned thereby. His agitation against the Shah is thought to have been one of the "fountainheads" of the successful 1891 protest against the granting a tobacco monopoly to a British company, and the later 1905 Constitutional Revolution.

Political and religious views

Jamal-al-Din's ideology has been described as a welding of "traditional" religious antipathy toward unbelievers "to a modern critique of Western imperialism and an appeal for the unity of Islam", urging the adoption of those Western sciences and instituions that might strenthen Islam.

In 1881 he published a collection of polemics titled Al-Radd 'ala al-Dahriyyi (Refutation of the Materialists), agitating for pan-Islamic unity against Western Imperialism. It included one of the earliest pieces of Islamic thought arguing against Darwin's then-recent On the Origin Of Species; however, the ideas attributed to evolution are sufficiently caricatured as to strongly argue he had not himself read Darwin's writings at the time. In his later work Khatirat Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (The Ideas of al-Afghani), he admitted that the validity of the principle of selection, claiming it had been long known and used by the Islamic world. However, while accepting transitions from non-living matter to plants (Abiogenesis), and plant to animal, he rejected the transition from Ape to Man due to the question of the soul.

Although called a liberal by a contemporary English admirer, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Asadabadi did not advocate constitutional government. In the volumes of the newspaper he published in Paris, “there is no word in the paper’s theoretical articles favoring political democracy or parliamentarianism,” according to his biographer. Asadabadi simply envisioned “the overthrow of individual rulers who were lax or subservient to foreigners, and their replacement by strong and patriotic men.”

According to another source Asadabadi was greatly disappointed by the failure of the Indian Mutiny and came to three principal conclusions from it:

• that European imperialism, having conquered India, now threatened the Middle East
• that Asia, including the Middle East, could prevent the onslaught of Western powers only by immediately adopting the modern technology of the West
• and that Islam, despite its traditionalism, was an effective creed for mobilizing the public against the imperialists.

Asadabadi, above all else, called for unity amongst all Muslims. However, he did not believe that all Muslims ought to unify under one ruler, or Caliph. Rather, cooperation amongst Muslims was his answer to the weakness that had allowed Muslims to be colonized by the Europeans (namely Britain, Russia, and France). He believed that, in fact, Islam (and its revealed law) was compatible with rationality and, thus, Muslims could become politically unified whilst still maintaining their faith based on a religious social morality. These beliefs had a profound effect on Muhammad Abduh, who went on to expand on the notion of using rationality in the human relations aspect of Islam (mu'amalat) .

Among the reasons why Asadabadi is thought to have had a less than deep religious faith was his lack of interest in finding theologically common ground between Shia and Sunni, and his failure to marry. He is said to have "picked up female companionship when he wanted it without any show of religious scruples.".

Death and legacy

He died on March 9, 1897 in Istanbul and was buried there. In late 1944, due to the request of Afghan government, his remains were taken to Afghanistan and laid in Kabul inside the Kabul University, a mausoleum was erected for him.

Today in Iran he is honored as a revolutionary Islamic thinker and a national hero. There is a square named after him in Tehran.

References

1. ^ Britannica Encyclopædia, Online Edition 2007 - link
2. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani Jewish Virtual Library
3. Ludwig W. Adamec, Historical Dictionary of Islam (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2001), p. 32
4. From Reform to Revolution, Louay Safi, Intellectual Discourse 1995, Vol. 3, No. 1 LINK
5. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambride UP, 1983), pp. 131-2
6. Roy Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet: Religion and Politics in Iran (Oxford: One World, 2000), pp. 183-4
7. Cite error: The named reference Kramer was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. The Comparative Reception of Darwinism, edited by Thomas Glick, ISBN 0226299775
9. ibid.
10. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt (London: Unwin, 1907), p. 100.
11. Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal ad-Din “al-Afghani”: A Political Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 225-26.
12. Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 62-3
13. Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age (Cambridge: Cambride UP, 1983), pp. 104-125
14. Nasr, The Shia Revival, p.103
15. Mottahedeh, The Mantle of the Prophet, p. 184

Further reading

• Seyyed Jamaluddin Asadabadi, the Founder of the Pan-Islamic Front
• Sayed Jamaluddin Afghani's Biography.
• Bashiri, Iraj, Bashiri Working Papers on Central Asia and Iran, 2000.
• Black, Antony (2001). The History of Islamic Political Thought. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93243-2.
• Cleveland, William (2004). A History of the Modern Middle East. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-4048-9.
• "Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2005. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 5 Oct. 2005<http://search.eb.com/eb/article-9043289>.
• Keddie, Nikki Ragozin. Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani: A Political biography. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972.
• Watt, William Montgomery (1985). Islamic Philosophy and Theology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-0749-8.
• Mehrdad Kia, Pan-Islamism in Late Nineteenth-Century Iran, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 30–52 (1996).

• Misplaced Pages articles needing copy edit from March 2009
• Al-Nahda
• 1838 births
• 1897 deaths
• Afghan Muslims
• Iranian activists
• Muslim activists