Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations

This article examines some religious ideas of three prominent Iranian intellectuals: Sayyid Jamāl al-Dı̄n al-Afghānı̄, Ali Sharı̄ ati, and Hashem Aghajari. They are considered Iranian Luthers for their deep appreciation of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth-century in Europe, and their calls for Islamic Protestantism in Iran. However, this article is not intended to compare two religious reformations in Europe and Iran, but rather to study the traveling idea of Islamic Protestantism from al-Afghānı̄ and Sharı̄ ati, to Aghajari in different situations and periods, and in response to different challenges. Edward Said’s ‘traveling theory’ is used to analyze the dynamic historical movement of Islamic Protestantism ‘from person to person, from situation to situation, and from one period to another’. The traveling idea of Islamic Protestantism from al-Afghānı̄, Sharı̄ ati, to Aghajari, then creates the chain of intellectual transmission from the old generation to a newer one. As with ‘traveling theory reconsidered’, however, there is also the possibility that the idea of Islamic Protestantism will be reinterpreted and reinvigorated by a newer generation. If we consider the reasons for the transformation in the condition of Europe from barbarism to civilization, we see it was only the religious movement raised and spread by Luther. (Sayyid Jamāl al-Dı̄n al-Afghānı̄; quoted in Keddie, 1972, pp. 391–392) He [a progressive intellectual] should begin by an Islamic Protestantism, similar to that of Christianity in the Middle Ages, destroying all the degenerating factors which, in the name of Islam, have stymied and stupefied the process of thinking and the fate of the society, and giving to the new thoughts and new movements. (Ali Sharı̄ ati, 1986, p. 25) The Protestant movement wanted to rescue Christianity from the clergy and the Church hierarchy—[Christians] must save religion from the pope. We [Muslims] do not need mediators between us and God. We do not need mediators to understand Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Vol. 16, No. 4, 401–412, October 2005 Correspondence Address: Sukidi, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. Email: smulyadi@hds.harvard. edu 0959-6410 Print=1469-9311 Online=05=040401–12 # 2005 CSIC and CMCU DOI: 10.1080=09596410500252343 D ow nl oa de d B y: [I nd ia na U ni ve rs ity L ib ra rie s] A t: 22 :2 0 17 A ug us t 2 00 7 God’s holy books. The Prophet [Jesus] spoke to the people directly . We don’t need to go to the clergy; each person is his own clergy. (Hashem Aghajari, in Savyon, 2002) The Protestant Reformation has held an inherent fascination for three Iranian Luthers, i.e. Sayyid Jamāl al-Dı̄n al-Afghānı̄, Ali Sharı̄ ati, and Hashem Aghajari. Having been inspired by the sixteenth-century Reformation in Europe, they wanted to acquire the benefits of the Protestant Reformation for a similar reform in Iran. Martin Luther and his efforts towards reform have become a favorite theme for these Iranian Luthers since the late nineteenth century to present-day Iran. It was initiated by al-Afghānı̄ and then adopted by Sharı̄ ati, and eventually developed more systematically by Aghajari, the most outspoken of those calling for Islamic Protestantism in present-day Iran. Sayyid Jamāl al-Dı̄n ‘al-Afghānı̄’ (1838–97): an Early Iranian Luther Sayyid Jamāl al-Dı̄n ‘al-Afghānı̄’ was born in the month of Shabān, 1254/October– November, 1838, in the village of Asadabad, close to the city of Hamadan, in northwestern Iran (Keddie, 1972, p. 10). He had an Iranian name, Sayyid Jamāl al-Dı̄n Asadābādı̄, and his last name ‘al-Afghānı̄’ was used only in 1869 in order to achieve broader acceptance and influence among Sunni Muslims (ibid., p. 11). In Islamic countries, the first name ‘Sayyid’ indicates a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). A genealogy of Jamāl al-Dı̄n goes back to his father, Sayyid Safdar, who came from a highly respected division of Shii sayyids and had a close connection with the Twelver Shiis, particularly the chief religious leader, Shaykh Murtazā Ans ̇ ārı̄ (ibid., p. 12). From his father, alAfghānı̄ received his early Islamic education, including Arabic, the Qur’ān, and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). He also obtained an Iranian Shii education in Qazvin, Tehran, and in the Shii shrine cities in Iraq (ibid., pp. 15–16). Living in an Iranian Shii milieu with a strong tradition of Islamic intellectual thought, al-Afghānı̄ became acquainted with the study of Islamic philosophy (falsafa), particularly of Avicenna (Ibn Sı̄nā). In contrast with the Sunni Muslims, the Shiis in Iran still kept the Avicennian tradition alive. Having been influenced by the rationalist philosophical tradition of Avicenna and other Iranian philosophers, al-Afghānı̄ defended a rationalist approach in Islam and regarded Islamic philosophy as the path to rationalism. Islam and reason, or modern science, may go together. In 1883, he wrote an article, ‘Answer to Renan’ in the Journal des Débats (18 May 1883) as a critical response to Renan’s lecture on ‘Islam and Science’ at the Sorbonne and its subsequent publication in the Journal des Débats (29 March 1883). In his article, Renan had argued that ‘early Islam and the Arabs who professed it were hostile to the scientific and philosophic spirit and that science and philosophy had entered the Islamic world only from non-Arab sources’ (ibid., pp. 189–190). Al-Afghānı̄ rejected two important points: the first was Renan’s prejudice that [early] Islam is essentially hostile to science; and the second was the racist assumption that the Arabs are hostile to science and philosophy. In fact, as al-Afghānı̄ argues: one cannot deny that it is by this religious education, whether it be Muslim, Christian, or pagan, that all nations have emerged from barbarism and marched toward a more advanced civilization. I plead here with M. Renan, not the cause 402 Sukidi