Monica M. Ringer and A.

Holly Shissler, “The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate, Reconsidered,”

Iran Nameh, 30:3 (Fall 2015), XXVIII-XLV.

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate, Reconsidered

Monica M. Ringer
Professor of History and Asian Languages & Civilizations, Amherst College

A. Holly Shissler
Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations,
University of Chicago

Anyone a little knowledgeable about the affairs of our time sees clearly
the present inferiority of the Muslim countries, the intellectual nullity of
those races that have received their culture and education solely from that
religion. All those who have traveled in the Orient or in Africa have been
struck by the fatally enslaved spirit of the true believer, by that sort of iron
band that encircles his head, rendering it completely closed to science,
incapable either of learning anything or of working with any new idea.
Ernest Renan, “Islam and Science.”

The (in) famous lecture given at the Sorbonne by French religious studies scholar
Ernest Renan on March 29, 1883 entitled “Islam and Science” caused enormous
consternation in Muslim intellectual circles and prompted the penning of a number
of refutations, the most famous of them that of Jamal al-Din “al-Afghani.”1 In

1
Al-Afghani was the first to pen a refutation of many of his essays, including his refutation of
Renan’s essay, but not the last. At least seven Renan, also contributed to al-Afghani’s visi-
refutations were written before World War I bility. See Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Re-
and refutations continued to appear periodi- sponse to Imperialism: Political and Reli-
cally well into the twentieth century. The fact gious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din
that al-Afghani’s refutation appeared in “al-Afghani” (Berkeley: University of Cali-
French in the Journal des débats led to its fornia Press, 1983), 181-187. For a compre-
widespread availability. Nikki Keddie’s semi- hensive bibliographical essay on the various
nal work on al-Afghani, and her translation of Renan refutations, see Dücane Cündioğlu,
ISSN 0892-4147-print/ISSN 2159-421X online/2015/30.3/XXVIII-XLV

XXVIII Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

many ways, the debates surrounding Renan’s assertions resembled the “Clash
of Civilizations” controversy engendered by Samuel Huntington’s similarly
infamous article published exactly 110 years later.2 Renan argued that Islam was
a metaphoric ‘iron band’ crowning the heads of Muslims that prevented rational
and scientific thought and which therefore accounted for Islamic societies’
backwardness vis-à-vis Europe.

Renan’s argument was a product of his two intellectual priorities: first, to fit
Islam into his larger schema of religio-civilizational difference to account for
European superiority; and second, to demonstrate that religion, Catholicism
in particular, needed to be rethought as a system of doctrine and dogma and
reconceived instead as the moral underpinnings of society consistent with
God’s plan for the evolutionary progress of humanity. In broad brushstrokes,
he attempted to reconcile ‘religion’ and ‘science’ yet his was not a simplistic
accommodation, but rather a wholesale recalibration, a re-conceptualization,
and even a re-propagation of religion.3 Renan spoke and wrote often of the
necessity of freedom of thought as a fundamental requirement of progress.
Only then would rational inquiry be allowed to take its course. For this to
be achieved, all restraints of dogma needed to be removed.4 Similarly, any
belief in the supernatural had to be overcome. But this firm position of his
did not mean that he was an atheist or even a Deist. On the contrary, he often
spoke of the fundamental importance of religion and religious feeling, which
he believed represented the best part of the human condition: idealism, rising
above material interests, self-sacrifice, the pursuit of the Good and the True.
In this sense he, when he spoke of ‘science’ often included in it, or included

“Ernest Renan ve ‘reddiyeler’ bağlamında 4

Renan discusses this at great length in many
Islam-bilim tartışmalarına bibliografik bir places. Especially interesting are his treatment
katkI’,” Divan, 2 (1996), 1-94. of the topic in La Réforme intellectuelle et mo-
2
Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civiliza- rale (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968) and
tion and the Remaking of World Order (New in the collection Questions Contemporaines
York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1912), containing sev-
3
For a discussion of Ottoman Intellectual eral lengthy essays that address this topic:
Ahmet Midhat Efendi’s critique of the Chris- “L’Avenir réligieux des sociétés modernes,”
tian “conflict between religion and science de- “Réflexions sur l’états des esprits,” and “Du
bate,” see M. Alper Yalçınkaya, “Science as an Libéralisme clérical.” See also his essay “Spi-
ally of religion: A Muslim appropriation of ‘the noza” in Oeuvres complètes de Ernest Renan,
conflict thesis,’” British Journal of the History (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1947), vol. 7.
of Science, 44 :2 (June 2011), 161-181.

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XXIX

 it in, what he called ‘philosophy,’ which he took to be critical inquiry into the
human condition in pursuit of the Good and the True.5

Renan’s broader ideas concerning religion and rationalism found a ready

audience in al-Afghani. In fact Renan and al-Afghani saw eye to eye on
many fundamental ideas concerning the nature of religion as a phenomenon
and religion’s connection to evolutionary notions of civilization and
progress. Al-Afghani was attracted to Renan’s attempt to reconcile religion
and rationalism and to subject religious tradition to critical inquiry. In his
own writings, al-Afghani also railed against superstition, labored to oppose
‘traditional’ interpretations of religion, and fought to disengage faith from
dogmas and rituals he believed were inimical to rationalism, empiricism and
ultimately, modern scientific and intellectual progress.

For all these reasons, al-Afghani by and large did not take issue with Renan’s
fundamental premises concerning the nature of religion, and confined himself
to a rejection of his assertion of European exceptionalism – in other words,
the claim that Christianity could be rationalized through critical inquiry,
but that Islam could not.6 Instead, al-Afghani, in keeping with other Islamic
Modernists, insisted that Islam was similar to Christianity and no less potent a
motor of civilization, rationalism, and scientific progress. This paper explores
al-Afghani’s refutation of Renan as it sheds light their shared conceptions
of science and scientific method. It also highlights al-Afghani and Renan’s
differences concerning the causal relationship of religion and civilization.

The nineteenth century witnessed the emergence of new academic disciplines as

part of a larger European-led attempt to develop new taxonomies of difference
in human society. New disciplines of philology, anthropology and religious
studies grappled with explaining commonalities and differences between human
societies over space and time. The production of knowledge that resulted from
these categorizations was premised on the idea of the evolution of humanity. As
5
See, for example, Ernst Renan, “Réflexions Christianity, “Islamic exceptionalism.” For a
sur l’états des esprits,” in Questions contem- discussion of Islamic exceptionalism in the
poraines, especially 322-235. French context, see Olivier Roy, Secularism
6
One might equally call the idea of Islam hav- Confronts Islam (New York: Columbia Uni-
ing essentially different responses to the pos- versity Press, 2007).
sibility of accommodating secularism as

XXX Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

different societies were mapped onto a linear conception of human evolution,
race and language emerged as primary signifiers of difference. Ideas of the nature
of religion as a shared human phenomenon led to religion being reconceived
on evolutionary terms, rather than as simply a function of truth-value. In this
way, religious difference was understood as a function of evolutionary progress.
Religious studies scholars, working within a hegemonic Protestant paradigm,7
held up all religions to various standards of ‘truth’ and ‘progress’ whereby
European ‘civilizational’ superiority was provided with empirical justification
on racial, linguistic and religious grounds.

Inhabitants of the nineteenth-century Middle Eastern oikoumene broadly

conceived experienced very similar controversies and intellectual challenges
presented by the implications of the Scientific Revolution and new ideas of
historicism and evolutionism.8 The period was dominated by attempts to
thwart European imperialism and to adopt reforming programs to strengthen
political sovereignty. The massive enterprise of forming citizens from subjects
was thus the central concern of many reformers who attempted to reshape
their political structures and mold new societies.9 Middle Eastern reformers
were deeply embedded in attempts to define their own modernities, and to
reconsider their own political, social, and religious traditions and institutions
in the process.10 Religion was understood as a human phenomenon shared
throughout time and place, and in some sense containing universal elements
or functions.

7
Renan accepts the superiority or “more ad- 2012). Renan’s own work, La Réforme intel-
vanced” nature of Protestantism. See for exam- lectuelle et morale, could be viewed as a com-
ple, Ernst Renan, La Réforme intellectuelle et parable attempt to restructure French society
morale, 64-66 or Ernst Renan, “L’Avenir réli- from top to bottom following France’s 1871
gieux des sociétés modernes,” in Questions defeat at the hands of the Prussians.
Contemporaines, 406. 10
For an examination of how one Middle East-
8
On the dissemination of Darwin’s ideas of evo- ern intellectual engaged this issue and detailed
lution in the Middle East, see Mona Elshakhry, discussion of his engagement with late 19th
Reading Darwin in Arabic, 1860-1950 (Chica- century social scientific thought and the evolu-
go: University of Chicago Press, 2013). tionary ideas of men like Renan and Gustave
9
On the connection between religious reform Le Bon, see A. H. Shissler, “A Student Abroad
movements and the production of new citi- in Late Ottoman Times,” in Iran and Beyond,
zens, see Monica M. Ringer, Pious Citizens: eds. Rudi Matthee and Beth Baron (Costa
Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2000).
(Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press,

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XXXI

 Ernest Renan’s intellectual career spanned a particularly troubled period
in Europe and France, at time when religion, religious dogma, sacred texts
and traditions received renewed scrutiny and challenge by new ‘scientific
truths’ and scientific methods. Attempts to reconcile religion, science and a
historicized understanding of human civilization generated radically different
solutions where universalism expressing itself in Deism, Scientism and
ecumenism combated exceptionalism expressed in racial and civilizational
terms. In a period of political and social transformation of ‘subject to citizen,’
with all that this process implied for new conceptions of the individual and
of the individuals’ relationship in society and vis-à-vis the state, religious
convictions were often reinforced by political allegiances to liberalism and
conservatism, respectively.11 It was thus a period when attempts to define
modernity ran through political, social and religious arenas.

In Europe the attempt to explain commonalities and differences led to claims

of Christian universalism as the ultimate religion of mankind, or alternatively,
of the development of super-rationalized religion as Deism, or even scientism
or positivism. The emphasis on the social and spiritual function of religion
also led some to believe that the evolutionary end point of human development
would be commensurate with a hyper-rationalized religion as a human-wide
ethical prompt and the total abandonment of ritual and formal structure as
manifestations of a more primitive conception of religion.

Although profoundly influenced by positivism and the concept of religious

evolution, Renan and his like-minded Catholic Reformist and Islamic Modernist
colleagues, the latter typified in many ways by al-Afghani, sought to find a place

11
Some of the classic work on theorizing the sity Press, 1983). For a synthesis of nationalism
development of concepts of popular sovereign- and its kin in the complex Ottoman context see
ty and nationalisms are Eugene Weber, Peas- A. Holly Shissler, Between Two Empires:
ants to Frenchmen: The Modernization of Ru- Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the New Turkey (London:
ral France, 1870-1914 (Stanford: Stanford I. B. Tauris, 2003). Renan and other intellectu-
University Press, 1976); Benedict Anderson, als located religion at the center of the matrix of
Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Or- nationalism, civilization, popular sovereignty
igin and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edi- and citizenship. See in particular his essay
tion (New York: Verso, 2006); Eric Hobsbaum, “Que’est-ce qu’une nation,” in Qu’est-ce
“The Invention of Tradition,”, The Invention of Qu’une Nation (Paris: Mill et une Nuits, 1997);
Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbaum and Terence and L’Avenir de la science: pensées de 1848
Ranger (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer- (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1890).

XXXII Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

for religion in modern society.12 To do so, they believed strongly in rationalizing
religious dogma and practice, rejecting tradition and ritual as relics of a primitive
past, and instead seeking to resuscitate Divine intentionality as individually
accessible spirituality and ethics. They were deeply committed to religious reform
as a vehicle for a more evolved, truer understanding of God’s intent for mankind,
which would serve, yet again, as a bulwark against irreligion.

Renan, operating well within the Christian tradition, used arguments concerning
science as method to assault unquestioned dogma and tradition of Catholicism.
He devoted his life to re-conceptualizing Christianity as a faith, as a spiritual
commitment to God’s intent for the evolutionary progress of mankind. In this
quest, he sought to move away from dogma and ritual, away from the Church
as an institution of power, and instead advocated for re-conceiving the “original
meaning of Jesus;” for exploring means of harnessing religion in the cause of
social progress.13 His essay “The Religious Future of Modern Societies” which
first appeared in the Revue des deux mondes in 1860, is a lengthy exposition
of this conviction, offering an analysis of the progress of Christianity towards
freedom of conscience and freedom of thought, with Protestantism as its most
advanced incarnation up to that point, and with some prescriptions for how
Catholic France could rise to that level. Renan concludes by affirming:

The world will ever be religious, and Christianity in a large sense

is the last word in religion. –Christianity is capable of indefinite
transformations.– All official organization of Christianity, be it in the
form of the national church or in the ultramontaine form, is destined
to disappear. A free and individual Christianity, with countless internal
varieties, just as it was in its first three centuries— that is what seems
to us to be the future of religion in Europe. Those who believe that
religion is destined little by little to lose its importance in the world’s

12
For an overview of Islamic modernist Vie de Jésus (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1898). For
thought in translation, see Charles Kurzman, praise of Renan’s attempts at the resuscitation
Modernist Islam 1840-1940: A Sourcebook of religion, see Grant Duff and E. Mountstuart,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). Ernest Renan, In Memoriam (London: Mac-
13
Renan’s Vie de Jésus attempted just this. Re- millan, 1893). On Renan’s Catholic critics, see
nan’s rejection of the Catholic Church’s con- Vytas V. Gaigalas, Ernest Renan and His
struction of Jesus was embraced by his admir- French Catholic Critics (North Quincy: The
ers and denounced by his critics. Ernst Renan, Christopher Publishing House, 1972).

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XXXIII

 affairs and those who see the final expression of all religion in a sort
of Deism are equally deceived. Religion is something sui generis;
Philosophical schools will not substitute for it. Deism, which has the
pretention of being scientific, is nothing more than religion; it is an
abstract mythology, but it is a mythology. It requires miracles; its God,
intervening providentially in the world, is in the end no different than
the God of Joshua stopping the sun . . . The religious and utterly non-
dogmatic principle proclaimed by Jesus will develop eternally, with
infinite flexibility, bringing with it ever more advanced symbols and, in
any case, creating forms of worship appropriate to the capacity of each
according to the different stages of human culture.14

As a religious reformer Renan experienced first-hand the tension between

religion and science – but only of religion as a reified and essentialized
Tradition. He saw no inherent tension between science and religion, only
a tension between the current form and understanding of Catholicism and
modern science. Renan should be read as a pious individual committed to
preserving the essence of Jesus’ teachings through recalibrating and re-
conceptualizing the nature and meaning of faith. He believed that in so
doing, mankind could thereby harness the creative and emotional benefits of
faith and usher in the next evolutionary phase of humanity.

Al-Afghani, as a prominent Muslim intellectual, shared Renan’s convictions

concerning the possibility of religion either promoting or hindering progress
and civilization. Yet he was further burdened with refuting Renan’s claims of
Christian exceptionalism. His response thus manifests a two-pronged objective:
to provide a pathway to reconcile religion and science, and to provide an
alternative reading of the causal elements of progress and civilization that
could debunk this supposed exceptionalism. Al-Afghani understood science as
a methodology premised on empiricism and rationalism expressed as critical
enquiry. He advocated applying scientific method to religion, which would
entail a re-reading of texts and traditions and their subjection to demands of
functionality, purpose, rationalism, and intent. Historicism, meaning here the

14
Ernest Renan, “L’Avenir réligieux des so- raines, 403 ff.
ciétés modernes,” in Questions Contempo-

XXXIV Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

premise of historical context, acted as the dissolvent of Tradition and was central
to Al-Afghani’s understanding of scientific method as an assault on the concept of
Tradition as an absolute unchanging essence, and as such, unassailable precedent.

Precisely because of the profound commonality of many of Renan and al-

Afghani’s objectives, Renan’s treatment of Islam is intellectually disappointing,
and it must have seemed so also to al-Afghani. Rather than advocate for
Islamic reform alongside that of Catholic reform, Renan instead insisted on the
exceptional capacity of Christianity to evolve through rationalization, even as
he denied this very possibility to Islam. In “Islam and Science” he expounded
the idea that the ‘backwardness’ of the Islamic world could be attributed to a
cultural environment hostile to a rational and scientific frame of mind and to
intellectual freedom. Renan claimed that this hostility stemmed from the very
nature of the Islamic faith, and from what he viewed as its essentially Arab
character. He carried this theme forward when he argued, for instance, that
all the great achievements of medieval Islamic science and philosophy were
borrowings from the Hellenistic world, adopted and developed by Persians,
Spaniards, even Central Asians, who “happened to have” Arab names.
He further contends that the Arab essence of Islam and the fact that Islam
“supposed” the subordination of the polity to religion precluded any material
or political advance for the Islamic world, then, or at any future time. It is
worth noting that by science he means a method or approach, which he largely
identifies with rationalism and free thought. His discussion rests heavily on
the deleterious effects of institutions that limit free thought, and the worst of
these is the theocratic state. As Renan puts it, “liberty has never been more
profoundly damaged than by a form of social organization where religion
dominates civil life absolutely . . . Islam is the indistinguishable union of the
spiritual and the temporal, it is the reign of dogma, it is the heaviest chain that
humanity has ever had to bear.”15

It is on the question of whether or not Islam can evolve that al-Afghani, and
other later refuters, take Renan to task. Al-Afghani concurs with Renan’s larger
religious mission. He shares Renan’s commitment to religious reform and his
views on the urgency of subjecting religious tradition to scientific method,
15
Ernest Renan, “L’Islamisme et La Science,”
in Oeuvres Complètes , vol. 1, 956.

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XXXV

 but rejects Renan’s Christian exceptionalism. Both Renan and Al-Afghani
viewed religion as a shared human phenomenon expressed differently over
time and place. The form that religion takes, not the identity of the religion
itself, it would seem, should be the matter of primary importance. Religion
needs to evolve, and this is equally true for Christianity and for Islam. When
al-Afghani writes about “the influence of religion in the history of nations, and
in particular that of civilization” he is not writing in the particular, but in the
general. As he later notes, “religions. . . all resemble each other.”16

The last point is the place where Renan and Al-Afghani part company.
For Renan, language and religious belief are two spontaneous human
phenomena. Language and religion are fundamental and naturally occurring
in all peoples throughout history and they are subject to change over time.
Renan, like Afghani, believes that the human understanding of religion, the
human capacity for understanding it, evolves over time from the concrete,
superstitious, dogmatic and communal, to the abstract, spiritual, ethical
and individual. But for Renan, while language and religion are universal
in the sense that all human societies have them, they are also diverse and
their diversity is both sign and expression of fundamental differences in the
character or “genius” of the people who bear them. Advancement or progress
through history is achieved through the collision of these different elements
and the synthesis that emerges from it. The analogy would be to geology
rather than to chemistry: the nature of the materials and the accidents of
history shape the terrain in ways that are unique—it is not like a laboratory
experiment where results can be reproduced. Thus some groups bring
more to, and are able to profit more than others from, this contact. In fact,
in Renan’s interpretation, real human progress is largely the effect of the
encounter of two significant groups: the Indo-Europeans and the Semites.
The Indo-Europeans bring creativity, curiosity, and talent for politics that
allows them both organized government and a fierce individualism that
resists despotic regimes. The Semites bring monotheism with its larger moral
compass and its vision of the absolute. This interest in language groups as
a mark of fundamental or underlying character (‘genius’ as he often calls

Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, “Answer of Jamal

16
Islamic Response to Imperialism (Berkeley:
ad-din to Renan,” in Nikki R. Keddie, An University of California Press, 1983), 187.

XXXVI Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

it) allows Renan to postulate essential difference, while yet talking about
commonalities and evolution.17 There is often slippage in Renan’s writing
among the categories of racial-ethnic groups, religious groups, linguistic
groups, and cultural groups, and there is often slippage as well about when
and whether acculturation is possible. That is, at times when he speaks of
a German genius or a Semitic genius he seems to be talking about a set
of attitudes or predispositions that arise from a particular ethno-linguistic
group, but that are culturally transmissible to others. At other times he seems
to suggest that these predispositions are engrained and that they can neither
be transferred to others, nor alloyed in any way in their original carriers.

Al-Afghani, in responding to Renan, quickly takes note of the fact that Renan
elides the difference between ethno-linguistic identity and religious identity, and is
contradictory about whether aspects of culture, be they ethnic or religious, are open
to change. He points out that it is impossible to determine whether Renan is making
claimsaboutArabsoraboutMuslimsoraboutnon-ArabMuslims.AsAl-Afghanisays:

M. Renan’s talk covered two principle points. The eminent philosopher

applied himself to proving that the Muslim religion was by its very
essence opposed to the development of science, and that the Arab people,
by their nature, do not like either metaphysical sciences or philosophy.
This precious plant, M. Renan seems to say, dried up in their hands as
if burnt up by the breath of the desert wind. But, after reading this talk
one cannot refrain from asking oneself if these obstacles come uniquely
from the Muslim religion itself or from the manner in which it was
propagated in the world; from the character, manners, and aptitudes of
the peoples who adopted this religion, or of those on whose nations it
was imposed by force. It is no doubt the lack of time that kept M. Renan
from elucidating these points; but the harm is no less for that, and if it is

17
The existence of these two “fundamental Questions Contemporaines; “De la part des
groups,” namely Indo-Europeans and Sem- peuples sémitiques dans l’histoire de la civili-
ites, their characteristics, and their historical sation,” in Oeuvres Complètes de Ernest Re-
interactions, was almost an obsession with nan, vol. 2; “Le Judaïsme comme race et com-
Renan. The topic recurred in multiple books me réligion,” in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1;
and essays. Here I will mention only a few: “L’ Histoire du peuple d’Israël,” in Oeuvres
“L’Avenir réligieux des sociétés modernes” in Complètes, vol. 7.

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XXXVII

 difficult to determine its causes in a precise manner and by irrefutable
proof, it is even more difficult to indicate the remedy.18

When al-Afghani takes note of his slippage, though he does so in an almost

casual fashion, he is in fact putting his finger on the crux of the matter,
namely he is pointing out that in some places Renan is talking about a
cultural or civilizational field populated by diverse peoples and shaped by
numerous cultural encounters, but in other places his comments seem more
essentialized. In Renan’s account of religious development, Christianity
freed itself of Judaism and evolved through its contact with Europeans;
Protestantism freed itself from the hierarchy and dogmatism of the Papacy
under the guidance of the German “genius,” but that genius is available as
a cultural matter to others, like the British and the French. But the Muslim
world, he seems to say, cannot escape the “Semitic” character of Islam, a
character infused in that religion by its people of origin, the Arabs. But why
should this be so? If the Indo-Europeans can adopt the great moral and ethical
insights of monotheism that originated among Semites, if the English and the
French can absorb the lesson of freedom of conscience from the Germans,
if the insights of French philosophy are available to others, then why should
it be the case that the Muslim world is barred from progress? Renan seems
to say at times that the Muslims are incapable of progress because they are
Arabs (Semitic), at other times that it is the Semitic cultural character of
Islam that condemns all Muslims, including the Arabs, to backwardness.

Despite his polite phrasing, al-Afghani is pointing out not errors, but
contradictions in Renan’s argument, and he doing so in a way that points to an
ahistorical and contradictory current in Renan’s larger approach to religious
and civilizational history: though Renan often proclaimed the universality of
evolution and the availability of progress to all, his account of its mechanisms
leads him ultimately to consign some peoples to the backwaters of history
because of their essential natures – for them there can be no evolution.

Al-Afghani responds by putting forward a universalist and evolutionary

conception of the history of religion, one that positions his own contemporary
Islamic society at a pivotal crossroads. In so doing he both provides an
18
Renan, Questions Contemporaines, 182.

XXXVIII Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

explanation for Middle Eastern weakness vis-à-vis Europe and proposes
the solution for redressing this power disparity. Al-Afghani begins his
explanation by asserting, “no nation at its origins is capable of letting itself
be guided by pure reason.” He elaborates; arguing that “humanity . . . at its
origin” needed religion to move from barbarism to a higher evolutionary
stage of civilization. Religion was the motor of progress that propelled the
evolution of humanity from “barbaric” to “civilized.” As humanity moved
into this new level of development, the “tutelage of religion” promoted the
development of sciences, civilization, arts and consequently, political power.
The focus on political power is significant, not least because Renan so often
asserted in his writings that “Semites” lacked political instincts and capacity,
and had rarely, if ever, established great and enduring states or empires.19
Short on specifics, Al-Afghani suggests that this explained the glory of
the Abbasid period, when Arab civilization embraced Islam and ushered
in a golden age of science and civilization. Here he specifically addresses
Renan’s claims that those who contributed to science and philosophy in this
period were not “Arab,” which Renan implied was the reason they were able
to overcome the intellectual limits of Islam. Al-Afghani argues that one must
take them as Arabs in the cultural sense, since they wrote in Arabic, that it
is historically indefensible to claim that after long centuries conquerors and
the conquered do not acquire cultural characteristics from one another, and
further, that if “Arabness” is the issue, the claim that the Harranians were
not Arabs is a nonsense, as they were ethnically Arab though non-Muslim.
In other words, he is arguing for construing them all them as part of a single,
wider civilizational complex, just as he defines the Christian religion saying,
“I mean the society that follows its inspiration and its teachings and is
formed in its image.”20 This is an important point, because he insists upon
seeing all these phenomena – people, languages, and religions – as part of
human society and subject to historical change, not as essences or absolutes.
In insisting upon this, al-Afghani is also drawing our attention to Renan’s
failure to do the same, at least when he is talking about the Middle East.
19
However absurd this claim may seem, Re- Ernst Renan, “De la part des peuples sémi-
nan made it on more than one occasion. See tiques dans l’histoire de la civilisation,” in
for example, Ernst Renan, “Histoire générale Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 2, 324-325.
et système comparé des langues sémitiques,” 20
Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, “Answer of Jamal
in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 8, 153-154 or ad-din to Renan,” 183.

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XXXIX

 Al-Afghani recognizes that at some indeterminable point in the history of Arabo-
Islamic civilization, Islam transitioned from an avenue of promoting science
and thus civilization, to a roadblock that hindered it. He does not specify what
changed, but intimates that at some point in time, some parts of society were ready
to evolve further, whereas religion, described at this point in his argument as “a
slave to dogma,” prevented it. He explained that “obedience that was imposed
in the name of the supreme Being to whom the educators attributed all events,
without permitting men to discuss its utility or its disadvantages” – was the price
of enabling evolution from primitivism, since “whether it be Muslim, Christian or
pagan . . . all nations have emerged from barbarism and marched toward a more
advanced civilization.” Yet this very ‘obedience’ became an intellectual shackle,
preventing “free investigation,” and “philosophy” that are at the heart of “science”
both as fields of knowledge, but more importantly, as epistemic methodologies.
He gives no explanation for this beyond a “natural” contradiction between dogma
and free thought, and expresses hope for the future simply by saying that after
all Christian society (not the Church itself) had escaped the intellectual bonds of
dogma and tradition, and there was no reason to suppose that Muslim society, so
many centuries younger, would not in time do the same.

On these points, namely the impossibility of change and progress in Muslim

societies and the “Arabness” or not of figures like Ibn-Rushd, Ibn-Tufail and
Ibn-Bajja, Renan’s reply to al-Afghani is far from convincing. Though he
denies that the impossibility of development and progress in the Islamic world
was his position and claims that he was saying that Catholicism and Islam both
persecuted free thought, and the only difference between them was the success
of Islam in doing so, as he offers no account of why Islam has been so much
more effective in repression, one is, de facto, thrown back on his account of
Semitic character. Equally, his insistence that Ibn-Rushd and others were not
more “Arab” than Francis Bacon was Roman on account of writing in Latin is
disingenuous,21 since he had often characterized Arab Muslims as the epitome
Ernest Renan, “Appendice à la précédente
21
Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1, 960-965.
conference [L’Islamisme et La Science],” in

XL Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

of the Semitic spirit in the modern world, and since he equally often grouped
all of Europe together under the Indo-European heading.

We may conclude from all of this that while al-Afghani shared with Renan
a commitment to religious reform as a good in itself and as an important
step on the road of progress, and while he saw religious tradition and
practice in human and evolutionary terms as did Renan, he was well aware
of the tendency of Renan and other European thinkers to cast their own
societies, religions, and ethnicities as engaged in evolution and those of
others as “stagnant.” In other words, he saw that while European thinkers
created space for their own religious reform by saying that God’s truth was
outside of time and space, but man’s – or European man’s – engagement
with it was purely historical and subject to development through experience
and interaction, they simultaneously denied this to others by attributing to
them immutable, unalloyed and unalloy-able characters. In fact, al-Afghani
deftly perceived the heart of Renan’s Orientalism. What he seems to be
seeking, indeed attempting, is an evolutionary account of the production of
religious reform, intellectual liberty, and scientific progress that is free from
essentialism, whether religious, racial, or cultural.

Al-Afghani’s dichotomy of dogma with “philosophy,” “free investigation,”

and “reason” suggests not only his view of science as new fields of knowledge
(the sciences) but of science as a method of arriving at truth, a method at
odds with precedent and as such, with contemporary understandings of Islam.
Scientific method, as rationalism, as logic, and as a commitment to empiricism
and the universality of natural law, is in natural and in some sense therefore,
inevitable, tension with the dogmatism of religions. He writes, “Religions,
by whatever names they are called, all resemble each other. No agreement
and no reconciliation are possible between these religions and philosophy.
Religion imposes on man its faith and its belief, whereas philosophy frees
him of it totally or in part.” Science as method is not culturally specific, but
universal. The solution is not to eliminate religion, but to create conditions

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XLI

 in which “philosophy” enjoys what al-Afghani terms “the upper hand.” Only
when individuals in society are free to subject religiously sanctioned truths to
critical inquiry, and to disengage faith from dogma can that society promote
sciences and prosper from them. As he argued elsewhere, “The Europeans
have put their hands on every part of the world . . . in reality this usurpation,
aggression, and conquest has not come from the French or the English. Rather
it is science that everywhere manifests its greatness and power.”22

Yet while it is clear that al-Afghani understands method to be of paramount

importance, his proposals for religious reform remain elusive. On the one
hand, he despairs of any real resolution between religion and science, hoping
only for science to “reign as sovereign mistress.” On the other hand, it is
not clear where this leaves religion. As an unchangeable “iron band” on
the heads of all mankind? Or as a human phenomenon which also has the
capacity to evolve in form? When he notes in another context that “those
who forbid science and knowledge in the belief that they are safeguarding
the Islamic religion are really the enemies of that religion” he suggests the
possibility of religious reform.23 Yet his response to Renan suggests a more
pessimistic view of the capacity of religion to ever embrace rationalism:
“So long as humanity exists, the struggle will not cease between dogma and
free investigation, between religion and philosophy: a desperate struggle in
which, I fear, the triumph will not be for free thought, because the masses
dislike reason . . . and because science, however beautiful as it is, does not
completely satisfy humanity.” Keddie noted that the chameleon-like quality
of Al-Afghani’s writings make it difficult to disentangle al-Afghani’s views
from the message he presents to different audiences. Nonetheless, there
is room here to read this pessimism not as a renunciation of the project
of religious reform, but rather as a realistic assessment of the hurdles –
emotional, social, and institutional – in such an undertaking.
22
Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani, “Lecture on 23
Al-Afghani, “Lecture on Teaching and Learn-
Teaching and Learning,” in Keddie, An Islam- ing,” 103.
ic Response, 102.

XLII Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

Al-Afghani certainly saw the existing power disparity between Europe and the
Middle East as a function of the relationship of religion to scientific inquiry,
and a clear indication of the necessity of Islamic reform. His historical and
evolutionary explanation of the shifting causal relationship between religion
and civilization is a fascinating attempt to account for contemporary European
hegemony while also providing a roadmap for the regeneration of the Arabo-
Islamic world (and beyond). Al-Afghani also makes a point of emphasizing
the superiority of Abbasid Arabo-Islamic civilization over its contemporary
European counterparts – suggesting different evolutionary chronologies. He
also emphasizes that Catholicism went through much the same relationship
with European civilization – at first enlivening it and then restraining it –
and that just as the dogma and anti-intellectualism of Catholicism has been
overcome, so too can the dogma and anti-intellectualism of Islam.

Renan’s lecture and Al-Afghani’s refutation are valuable windows onto

wider nineteenth century attempts to reconcile scientific truths and scientific
methods with religion in line with new conceptions of religion, of humanity,
and the new political and social ideals and possibilities that resulted. These
broader conversations are situated in the context of European colonialism,
and of the European and Middle Eastern transformation of “subject to citizen”
with all that this process implied for new conceptions of the individual and
of the individual’s relationship to society and the state.24

These debates also serve to fundamentally challenge the historiography of

compartmentalization of these scholars in their national units, as well as
the minimization of interaction and conversation across national, religious
and cultural borders. Rather than conceiving of Muslim intellectuals
‘responding’ to the European hegemonic discourse of Renan, all of the
participants in this conversation, Renan included, should be conceived of
24
M. Alper Yalçınkaya, Learned Patriots: De- cellent example of a fresh approach to the re-
bating Science, State, and Society in the Nine- lationship of new definitions of science to
teenth-Century Ottoman Empire (Chicago: citizenship and the modern state.
University of Chicago Press, 2015) is an ex-

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XLIII

 as manifesting different responses to similar stimuli: namely the Scientific
Revolution, the new social sciences, and the very real dangers of European
colonialism.25 These three inducements, in various ways, informed the
debates about religion and civilization, and necessitated a religious response
to new concepts of human society, evolution, science, and ultimately, the
nature of Truth.

Our aim is to emphasize the participation of religious modernism in establishing

theological foundations for modernity as scholars responded to, and grappled
with theological implications of new fields of science and social sciences. Any
accurate historical account of reforms must include Islamic modernism as a
serious endeavor by those committed to the genuine reconciliation of religion
and science, alongside new social and political ideals. Modernist scholars
believed in the unitary nature of truth, and attempted to reconcile reason and
revelation as paths to a single truth. They also were committed to applying new
scientific methods to questions of religion. The critical reading of texts and
the historicizing scrutiny of Islamic tradition were corollaries to the adoption
of empirical, rational modes of scientific inquiry and necessitated a serious
redevelopment of Islamic epistemological methodology. These modernists
thus were committed to rethinking the nature and function of religion in
society, and of the individual’s relationship to sacred texts and traditions, and
equally committed to the revivification of Islam in order to serve the ethical
and moral needs of the contemporary Muslim world.

The so called ‘reconciliation of Islam with modernity’ was not simply a

question of realigning Islam with modern ‘values’ but a more fundamental shift
in ways of thinking, argumentation, and the assumptions concerning the nature
of religion which lay behind this. In other words, while it is certainly true that
these scholars wrote about the compatibility of Islam with constitutionalism,

On intellectual responses to the implications

25
Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge:
of the Scientific Revolution, see Guy G. Harvard University Press, 2010).
Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of

XLIV Iran Nameh, Volume 30, Number 3, Fall 2015

science and women’s rights, we argue that these were the products of a new
methodology; of new modes of Islamic thought premised on concepts of
rationalism and historicism. Muslim modernists were sincerely committed
to the relevance of Islam in the ‘modern’ world. Islamic Modernism thus
should not be seen as a belated and ultimately futile attempt to instrumentally
craft Islam into a language that legitimized its own marginalization in an
increasingly secular modern world. This would be to accept the myth of the
modern as non-religious or even anti-religious, which often dominates the
historiography of nineteenth-century secularizing reforms in the Middle East.
Rather, we propose that a closer examination of Islamic modernist texts in their
larger, international intellectual field, will subject the Middle Eastern project of
modernity’s own narrative to necessary scrutiny, and illuminate distortions in
our understanding of the place and role of religious thought in the emergence
and development of secularism and the citizen in the Middle East. The project
of revivification of the Islamic sciences thus is a window onto the much more
complex re-conceptualization of religion, and re-placement of religion vis-à-
vis the individual, society and state in Middle Eastern ‘modernities.’

The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate XLV