New Secularism in the Arab World
by Ghassan F. Abdullah
A major movement of secular writing in Arabic has been gaining
strength and depth over the last fifteen years, little reported by
outsiders.1 It is going into new directions, well beyond a mere
reaction to Islamic fundamentalism which grew mostly after
Khomeini took over in Iran in 1979. This article is a quick
overview of some of these recent writings that have come out in
Arabic.
Islamists in many Arab countries seem to have the upper hand,
and the coverage. News of fundamentalist violence predominate
in many Islamic countries. In Algeria, the open conflict with the
army-backed regime has reached new levels of atrocities, and the
authorities keep trying to prove their piousness with more
stringent conservative measures, not least in the cultural field. In
Egypt, the main guardian of Islamic norms in the country and
beyond, the al-Azhar Islamic Institution, is increasing its offensive
on any signs of cultural liberalism, and is blamed by some of
indirectly condoning the extremist armed militants. In Lebanon,
Hezbollah occupies a special position as it is the main force
confronting the occupying Israelis in south Lebanon. In Jordan,
the Moslem Brotherhood movement has always been towing the
line with the regime, but more radical elements have been probed
by the security services, including Islamic 'mojahidin' who went to
Afghanistan to fight the Soviet backed 'atheist' rule in the eighties.
Everywhere in the Arab world, the Islamic discourse is being
taken seriously by all governments.
And yet, against this apparently one sided picture, there is a
growing reaction to the Islamist tide, notably what is dubbed
'political Islam', both intellectually and on the ground. This is
manifested by a spate of new books that are being seen more and
more abundantly on book stands in many Arab cities. Some books
by Nasr Hamed Abu Zeid, the lecturer in Cairo university who
was facing a court case to have him separated from his wife on the
grounds that he is an apostate, and who had to flee from Egypt
following increased threats on his life, were even bought in book
exhibitions in Riyadh, capital of the Saudi strict Islamic regime.
Secular ideas are, of course, not new in Islamic countries. Ever
since the call of the prophet Mohammad in the seventh century,
there have been doubters and secular writing. Some of its authors
are documented in Abdurrahman Badawi's book From the History
of Atheism in Islam,2 which first appeared in the 1950s and has
been reprinted many times since. It brings to light some of the
debates and writings that marked certain periods of Islamic
history, including the derisive poetry of Abul Ala' al-Maari, the
blind Arab philosopher who lived in northern Syria in the 10th
century.
In more recent history, a movement of Islamic revival took place
in the second half of the nineteenth century, mostly as self defense
against the culture of the European colonialists. Sheik Afghani
and sheik Mohammed Abdo were among the best known figures
of this movement which adopted Ottoman and sometimes new
pan Arab positions against the West. A counter movement of
liberal writers emerged towards the end of the nineteenth century
on the pages of al-Muqtataf, the one time leading scientific
journal in Arabic, which was published in Egypt many years
before Scientific American, and lasted until the fifties of the
twentieth century. Farah Antoun and Shibli Shmayyel were among
the best known representatives of the scientific and secular ideas.
For their audacity in dealing with religious subjects, texts of their
articles and debates could not be reprinted today in most Arab
countries. They were joined by other science and liberal writers,
among them Yacoob Sarrouf and Ismail Mazher who translated
Darwin's Origin of Species. Ismail Adham could find a publisher,
in the 1930s, for his Why am I an Atheist?3 Salameh Mousa, one
of the first proponents of socialism in Egypt early in the 20th
century, could discuss the Emergence of the Idea of God,4 and
Mansour Fahmy could publish a thesis on the Women's Place in
Islam, in which he questioned why the prophet Mohammed
excludes himself from the rules he sets for everyone else, such as
being seen kissing his favorite wife during the fast of the holy
month of Ramadan.
Between the two world wars, two notable tracts appeared. Taha
Hussein, the blind doyen of Arabic literature and one time
minister of education in Egypt, published his controversial
reappraisal of Jahilieh (pre-Islamic) literature and poetry,
questioning the Islamic story of that period.5 Ali Abdel Razek,
himself Azhar educated, published in 1925 his Islam and the
Origins of Government,6 in which he argues against the Islamic
state and for the separation of religion and civil society, drawing
the wrath of Al-Azhar upon himself.
After the second world war, national questions were predominant
in the area with many countries becoming independent from
western colonialism. Islamic movements, such as the Moslem
Brotherhood, joined in the liberation struggle, only to turn against
the new local rulers. In Nasser's Egypt and other Arab countries,
conflict between the regimes and the Brotherhood and other more
fundamentalist movements, such as Tahrir (liberation) party, took
more or less bloody forms and some of their leaders were
executed.
Following the deroute of Arab armies in the June 1967 war with
Israel, with its aftermath of shaking many long held beliefs in the
Arab world, there appeared many 'religious' explanations of what
happened. Stories of 'sightings' abounded and there were calls for
going back to God who had Moslems defeated for straying from
his path. Sadik al-Azm published in Beirut his Self Criticism after
the Defeat7 and followed it with his controversial Critique of
Religious Thought,8 in which he ridiculed some of these religious
escapist explanations, such as the sightings of the Virgin Mary. He
made history by fleeing for a while from Lebanon to Syria for
writing such a book. The norm was that Arab writers ran away
usually from their countries to Lebanon to avoid intellectual
persecution. A scathing and irreverent attack on religious thought
and official Islamic history came in the long introduction by Lafif
Lakhder to a translation of a collection of Lenin's texts on
religion.9 He criticized 'Stalinist' communist parties for their
conciliatory attitude towards religion and evoked Marx's dictum
on starting criticism on earth by criticism of the Heavens first.
The latest and probably the most radical movement of secular
writing to date took off mostly since the mid eighties. It was
sparked by the successful rise to power of Imam Khomeini in Iran
with his Islamic State rallying cry and the return to Islamic
fundamentalism. The wave of Islamic revival that swept the
region has not subsided yet. No regime or political movement
escaped its influence and fallout. Even conservative Saudi Arabia
had to tighten even further its adherence, or pretense, to more
fundamental tenets of Islam. In Syria, emboldened by the trend
and other internal factors, Islamists declared open rebellion in the
town of Hama in 1982. It was crushed with brute force by the
regime. Shiite Islam, backed by Iran, became more organized and
militant in Lebanon. The droves of Moslem 'volunteers' who
fought against the communist regime in Afghanistan, trained and
hardened, have been a menace to many an Arab regime since, and
beyond. In Sudan, more Islamic integrism seems the only course
for the regime out of a war beleaguered and impoverished
economy. In Iran itself, the economic situation including the debt
problem is getting more serious and the oil income is tied to
servicing state debts for years to come. Against this background,
some social disappointment with what an Islamic state can deliver
in today's world is beginning to set in. Intellectuals, especially
liberal ones, are noting the trend and are coming out with their
points of view, relating the Islamic discourse to the social and
political problems besetting the countries of the region.
In 1984, the then lecturer at al-Najah university in the Palestinian
West Bank town of Nablus, the late Suleiman Basheer, published
An Introduction to the Other History: Towards a New Reading of
Islamic Tradition.10 The book was based on a wealth of material
unearthed for the first time from the old Zhaheria Library in
Damascus. It consisted largely of references which belonged to
the first century and a half after Mohammed, and which were
hidden or ignored by the official orthodox history of Islam. The
book had a limited distribution outside scholarly circles, and
especially outside the occupied Palestinian territories. It caused its
author to be kicked out of the university. Illegal copies of the
book are, however, still circulating in Jordan and elswhere in the
Arab world. In Syria, Hadi Alawi has been reviving some little
known old texts that bring out a rich impious and daring heritage
in Islamic history.11 He is even directing some of his criticism at
the classical Arabic language, which he claims was ossified by the
Koran and its self appointed guardians, the 'language clerics' of
the Arabic language academies, and calling for reform of its
structures. 12
Farag Foda in Egypt started publishing his controversial books
around the same time. He espoused secularism openly and
directed some of his outspoken criticism at political Islam and its
theoretical and historical foundations, notably in his widely read
book, The Missing Truth.13 His Islamic opponents accused him, as
they often do their critics, of covering his atheism with
secularism, the two concepts being synonyms according to them.
He paid his life for his stand, at the hands of a fanatic Islamist,
shortly after the famous debate with Sheik Mohammad Ghazali
and others which took place during the 1992 Cairo book fair.14
Instigation for the murder goes back to some Azhar patrons,
according to other secular writers.
Hamed Nasr Abu Zeid, a Moslem scholar well versed in the
history and theology of Islam, is a formidable opponent of
Islamists in the interpretation of dogma scriptures and their
explanations. His books are being sold widely all over the Arab
world.15 He declined police protection because, as he said on a
visit to Amman, he will have to feed the badly paid government
guardians round the clock. Further, they could not protect him
against a determined fanatic anyway, and he had to flee to Europe.
The book series Qadaya Fikriya in Egypt has devoted its 8th
book16 which appeared in October 1989 to the question of
Political Islam, and the combined 13-14th book,17 which appeared
in 1993, to Islamic Fundamentalisms. The editor Mahmoud Amin
el-Alem, a prominent scientist and political thinker, collected
articles from well known free thinkers to discuss the notions of
state and religion in Islam, and fundamentalism in Islam and other
religions.
Sayyed Mahmoud al-Qomni is another serious challenger who is
questioning the very foundations of the Islamic historical and
theological discourse as detrimental to progress and development.
He started with a book on the rise of monotheism and the belief in
eternity, Osiris,18 and studied the origin of Islam as the religion of
the Hashemite ancestors of the prophet Mohammed and tracing it
back to the Abraham of Arabia.19 Other writers and scholars in
Egypt are providing more evidence and analysis of the religious
phenomenon all the time in the cultural monthlies 'Cairo' and
'Adab wa Nakd' and the Progressive party's weekly 'al-Ahali'. The
confrontation is taking new dimensions as the long running
weekly magazine, Rose el-Yousef, has dared the Azhar and the
government recently by publishing forbidden texts ranging from a
previously censored story from the Thousand and One Nights to
extracts of Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses.20
Other trends in digging up the Islamic story are appearing all the
time in many parts of the Arab world. In Syria, an engineering
professor and an observing moslem, Dr. Mohammed Shahrour
approached his study of the Koran from a linguistic point of view,
tracing the meanings of Arabic words as they prevailed at the
time, leading to new interpretations of much received wisdom.
His 500-page book, which took him 20 years to complete, The
Koran and the Book21 is making publishing history. It has gone
into its fifth printing of 5000 runs each in two years in Syria
alone, not to mention separate Lebanese and Egyptian editions.
Another professor, Aziz al-Azmeh, at Exeter university in Britain,
who wrote about Arabic and Islamic thought and Ibn Khaldoun
previously, has produced a well researched volume entitled
Secularism from a Different Perspective,22 reviewing the
development of secular ideas in modern Arab thought.
The History of God,23 written by Georgy Kanaan in Syria, traces
the very idea of God in Syrian ancient religions and mythology.
Firas Sawwah, also from Syria, has published a series of books
dealing with the origins of religious beliefs in the region.
Mohammed Arkoun, based in Paris, is analysing basic questions
of Islam in a series of books that are selling well in spite of their
high cost.
Others are looking at the foundations of Judaism and Christianity,
especially the claims to Palestine based on Jewish mythology, and
the relations between Judeo-Christian Protestantism and modern
Zionism. Lebanese historian Kamal Salibi's controversial ideas
about the origins of the Jews and the prophets, have also wide
circulation. More 'materialist' scholars, analyse religion from a
social point a view. This tradition goes back to the Russian
educated Palestinian, Bandaly Jousy, who published his "From the
History of the Intellectual Movements in Islam"24 in 1927, to the
Lebanese communist Hussein Mroueh and the Egyptian school of
Marxists.
The secular scene is not limited to writing. Countless discussion
groups concerned about the state of the Arab countries have
religion on their agenda as one of the main elements of the
underdevelopment formula. Heeding the call of Farag Fouda
before his assasination, rationalist societies are coming into being
in Egypt and other places under different names, unannounced
officially. Some Arab intellectuals have also issued a statement in
support of Salman Rushdie's right to publish and against
Khomeini's Fatwa.
No opinion polls concerning religious beliefs are usually allowed
in Arab countries, to judge the real spread of secular ideas. An
exception is the survey of living conditions of the Palestinian
society under Israeli occupation in Gaza, West Bank and Arab
Jerusalem, 25 which challenges some widely held notions about
religious attitudes. It shows that the percentage of 'secular' men is
20%, going up to an unexpected 30% among women, and that it is
on average higher than the percentage of Islamic 'activists' on the
other end of the spectrum even in the Gaza refugee camps.
Secular is defined in the study as someone who's life is not
dictated by religion. The larger middle ground is being held by
simply 'observant' moslems. Partial surveys by some university
students elsewhere seem to confirm this distribution of the degree
of belief.
This growing flurry of secular writing should not, however, give
the impression that the Islamist tide in the Arab world is being
checked. The fundamental activists present an 'alternative' to the
impoverished masses with their slogan, 'Islam Is the Solution',
coupled with social welfare programs in many places, not
provided by the state, in addition to other various activities for the
masses. Islamic teaching as preached in thousands of mosques
every week all over the Arab world, as well as the weight of
history, still carries the day. The secularists cannot hope to
compete for the minds and souls of the masses, without a change
in social conditions, but their message is being written and
distributed and they are reaching countless readers. Rewriting and
re-evaluation of Islamic history, including its secular aspects, is
taking place as never before in the contemporary history of Arab
and Islamic countries. Islamists are having to contend with this
growing trend, in addition to facing an array of other challenges:
the growing disappointment with 'Islamic states' such as Saudi
Arabia, Iran and Sudan, inter-Islamic strife as in Afghanistan,
women's movements, the economic failures and scandals of
'Islamic investment banking', the excesses of 'Islamic' violence in
Algeria and elsewhere, the onslaught of new scientific findings in
astronomy and molecular biology, and to top it all, satellite TV
broadcasting and the Internet. So, as far as the belated conflict
between religion and secularism in Islam, it is not the end of the
story.
[Ghassan F. Abdullah attends Birzeit University in Palestine.]
Endnotes
1 Middle East Report (MERIP) no. 183, Washington.
2 Abdurrahman Badawi, Min tarich el ilhad fi al-Islam, Al-
Mou'assassa al-Arabiya li al-Dirassat wa al-Nasher, Beirut, 1980,
second edition.
3 Ismail Adham, Limaza ana molhid?, Al-Imam, Alexandria,
1937.
4 Salameh Mousa, Noushou' fikrat Allah, Cairo, 1924.
5 Taha Hussein, Fi el-adab al-Jahili, Dar al Maaref, Cairo, 1926.
6 Ali Abdul Razik, Al-Islam wa Usul el-Hukum, Matbaat Misr,
Cairo, 1925.
7 Sadik Jalal al-Azm, Annakd azzati baada al-hazima, Dar al-
Taliaa, Beirut, 196.
8 Sadik Jalal al-Azm, Nakd alfikr al-dini, Dar al-Taliaa, Beirut,
1982.
9 Lenin, Nousous hawla al-mawkif mina el-din, Translation by
Mohammad Qubba, Revised and introduced by Lafif Lakhdar, Dar
al-Taliaa, Beirut, 1972.
10 Suleiman Bashir, Mukaddima fi al-tarikh al-akhar, published by
the author, Jerusalem, 1984.
11 Hadi al-Alawi, Al mu'jam al-Arabi al-jadid: al-mukaddima, Dar
al-Hiwar, Lattakia, 1983.
12 Hadi al-Alawi, Min tarikh al-ta'zib fi el-Islam(1987) and Al-
muntakhab mina al-luzoumiyat: nakd al-dawla wa al-din wa al-
nass(1990), Markaz al-abhath wa al-dirassat al-ishtirakia fi al-
alam al-Arabi, Damascus.
13 Farag Fouda, Al-hakika al-gha'iba, Cairo, 1986.
14 Al-munazara baina al-Islam wa al-almaniya, the debate between
Farag Fouda and Sheik Mohammad al-Ghazali and others, Al-
Hai'a al-Misriya al-Amma lil Kitab, Cairo, 1992.15 Nasr Hamid
Abu Zeid, Mafhoum al-nass: dirassa fi Ulum al-Koran, Al-Markaz
al-Thakafi al-Arabi, second edition, Beirut, 1984 and Al-ittijah al-
akli fi al-tafsir, Dar al-Tanweer, Cairo, 1986, and Nakd al-khitab
al-dini, Sina li al-Nasher, Cairo, 1992.
16 Qadaya Fikriya, Al-Islam al-siyassi, Cairo, 1989.
17 Qadaya Fikriya, Al-Usuliyat al-Islamiyah, Cairo, 1993.
18 Sayyed Mahmoud al-Qomni, Osiris wa akidat al-khouloud fi
Misr al-qadima, Dar al-Fikr, Cairo, 1988.
19 Sayyed Mahmoud al-Qomni, Al-hizb al-Hashimi wa ta'sis al-
dawla al-Islamiya, Sina li al-Nasher, Cairo, 1990.
20 Rose El-Yousef, no. 3423, Jan. 17, 1994.
21 Mohammad Shahrour, Al-Kitab wa al-Koran, Al-Ahali, fifth
edition, Damascus, 1992.
22 Aziz al-Azmeh, Al-ilmaniyah min manzour mukhtalef, Markaz
Dirasat al-Wehda al-Arabiya, Beirut, 1992.
23 Georgy Kanaan, Tarikh Allah, Al-Nadwa al-Kan'aniya, Beirut-
Aleppo, 1990.
24 Bandaly Jouzy, Min tarikh al-harakat al-fikriyah fi al-Islam,
Palestine Writers Union, Beirut, second edition, 1981.
25 Marianne Heiberg, et al., Palestinian society in Gaza, West
Bank and Arab Jerusalem: A Survey of Living Conditions, Oslo,
FAFO-report 151, 1993.
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