ABDUH, MUHAMMAD

ABDUH, MUHAMMAD
(1849–1905)
Muhammad
Abduh was one of the most influential Muslim
reformers and jurists of the nineteenth century.
Abduh was
born in the Nile River delta in northern Egypt and received a
traditional Islamic education in Tanta. He graduated from al-
Azhar University in Cairo in 1877, where he taught for the
next two years. It was during this period that he met Jamal al-
Din Afghani, whose influence upon
Abduh’s thought over
the next decade would be profound. When Afghani was
expelled from Egypt in 1879,
Abduh was also briefly exiled
from Cairo to his native village. He returned to Cairo the
following year to become editor of the official government
gazette, al-Waqai
al-Misriyya (Egyptian events), and began
publishing articles on the need for reform in the country.
When the British occupied Egypt following the
Urabi revolt
of 1882,
Abduh was sentenced to three years’s exile for
assisting the nationalists. He lived briefly in Beirut before
joining Afghani in Paris, where the two would publish the
short-lived but highly influential journal al-
Urwa al-wuthqa
(“The firmest grip,” based on the Quranic references 2:256
and 31:22).
Abduh returned to Beirut following the journal’s
demise in 1884, and it was during this sojourn that he first met
Rashid Rida, who would become his chief biographer and
most distinguished disciple.
In 1888, following his increasing estrangement from
Afghani and a consequent rethinking of his earlier revolutionary
ideas,
Abduh was allowed to return to Cairo. He soon
began a rapid ascent in Egyptian judicial and political circles.
Beginning as a judge in the new “native courts” created by the
Egyptian government,
Abduh became a member of the
newly created administrative board for al-Azhar University in
1895. In 1899, he was appointed a member of the Legislative
Council, an advisory body serving at the behest of the
khedive, the ruler of Egypt, and more importantly became in
the same year the grand mufti, or the chief Islamic jurist, of
Egypt. As the head of Egypt’s religious law courts,
Abduh
championed reforms that he saw as necessary to make shari
a
relevant to modern problems. He argued that the early
generations of Muslims (the salaf al-salihin, hence the name
Salafiyya, which is given to
Abduh and his disciples) had
produced a vibrant civilization because they had creatively
interpreted the Quran and hadith to answer the needs of
their times. Such creative jurisprudence (ijtihad) was needed
in the present,
Abduh urged. In particular, modern jurists
must consider public welfare (maslaha) over dogma when
rendering judgments. The legal opinions (fatwas) he wrote
for the government and private individuals on such issues as
polygamy, divorce, and the status of non-Muslims bore the
imprint of his reformist attitudes.
During the last years of his life,
Abduh collaborated with
Rashid Rida in publishing the journal al-Manar, founded by
Rida in 1898. The journal became a forum for not only

Abduh’s legal rulings and reformist essays, but also a Quranic
commentary that had reached the middle of the fourth sura
(chapter) when
Abduh died in 1905. Rida would continue
publishing the journal until his death in 1935.
The most systematic presentation of
Abduh’s approach
to Islamic reform is found in his essay Risalat al-tawhid (The
theology of unity). In opposition to European positivist
philosophers, he argues that reason and revelation are separate
but inextricably linked sources for ethics: “The ground of
moral character is in beliefs and traditions and these can be
built only on religion. The religious factor is, therefore, the
most powerful of all, in respect both of public and of private
ethics. It exercises an authority over men’s souls superior to
that of reason, despite man’s uniquely rational powers” (p. 106).
See also Afghani, Jamal al-Din; Reform: Arab Middle
East and North Africa; Rida, Rashid; Salafiyya.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abduh, Muhammad. The Theology of Unity. Translated by
Ishaq Musa
ad and Kenneth Cragg. London: George
Allen & Unwin, 1966.
Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age: 1798–1939.
Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Kerr, Malcolm H. Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal
Theories of Muhammad
Abduh and Rashid Rida. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1966.
Sohail H. Hashmi