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Religion and Secularism in the Arab World
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2024
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The state of religion among Arab Muslims is much the same as among Western Christians. With both, religion survives in an active form among a minority; with both, the majority still cling to the name. Among both, men desire a high standard of living which most of them have always been denied; they have a new faith in scientific progress, which has brought about concrete results, and they accept the claim that it supersedes old beliefs. Both in Christendom and Islam there are conservatives who do not care at what cost they associate religion with inessential interests to which they are attached. Among Muslims there may be a greater pride in the name of their religion than among Christians; the national apostasy of the Arabs is as far advanced as ours if we reckon by mosque attendance, but less so if we remember their pride in being Muslim. The intellectual reaction of a minority against unbelief is less advanced among the Muslims. Our intellectuals have reached the reaction against reaction, scientific humanists against believers, and with this has come a further hardening of our differences. Among Arabs the modern intellectual approach to religion is both cruder and more fluid. These differences are not as important as the similarities. Modern preoccupations are everywhere secular. In this Arab world which is broadly similar, in detail different, to our own, can we trace the influence of religion upon the actual preoccupations of ordinary people?
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- Copyright © 1959 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Hasan Hudaybi, quoted by Ishak Musa Husaini in The Moslem Brethren (Beirut, 1955), p. 150.
2 Muhammed Najib, Egypt’s Destiny (London, I955), p. 150.
3 What We Stand For, in AI-Muslimoon (Damascus), vol. v, nos. 1-6. The Traditions of the Prophet are cited by Abu Aiman from Abu Daud and Tirmizi, and from Bukhari and Muslim, respectively.
4 Hudaybi, before the People’s Court, Cairo, lot. cit.
5 The quotations are from Tradition and from Qur’an.
6 Husaini, op. cit., pp. 29, 35.
7 Revolt on the Nile (London, 1957), p. 68, p. 73, p. 79 ff.
8 Husaini, p. 40.
9 Mustafa as-Siba‘i, quoted Husaini, p. 151; cf. Abu Aiman, above.
10 Speech to the General Co-operatives Conference, 27th November, 1958.
11 For Arab nationalism, see The Ideas of Arab Nationalism by Hazem Zaki Nuseibeh (Ithaca, N.Y., and London, 1956) and Egypt’s Liberation; the Philosophy of the Revolution, by Gamal Abdel Nasser (Washington, 1955).
12 Cf. for example Abdul Nasser’s speech cited above: ‘we not only build our society but we also design its pattern as we go. . . . The broad lines of this pattern are socialism, cooperation and democracy. . . .’
13 Az-Zaman and other Iraqi papers, Baghdad, 20th December, 1958. Cf. Sawt al-Ahrar for 22nd January, 1959 (at that date the only Baghdad paper publishing official Communist policy) : the struggle is not between Communism and Nationalism, but between ‘the Arab nationalist fighting forces . . . and imperialism and its agents. . . .’ Since this article went to press, Abdul Karim Qasim, the Iraqi leader, has stressed (from his own point of view) the very thing that I am arguing: His opponents ‘suppose that nationalism is the property of one man or that it is conflned to one group’; but ‘nationalism is the property of all. . . .’ (Speech to Reserve Officers, 2nd March, 1959).
14 Sawt al-Ahrar for 14th January, 1959; cf. Amr Abdullah (the Party Secretary) in the same paper, the day following.
15 Introduction to The Islamic Call, by M. M. Atta (Cairo, n.d.); for Abdul Karim Qasim, in Iraq, cf. for example his message to the religious leaders in Najaf on the feast of the Imam ‘Ali’s birthday (24th January, 1959) : he prays God ‘to help me to serve the nation, promulgate virtue and promote religion and justice throughout the country’. In his speech of 2nd March he reiterated several times the need to ‘work for the sake of God’.
16 Sheikh Abdul Karim al-Mashita, in Sawt al-Ahrar, 29th January, 1959.
17 The Life of Muhammad, a Translation of Ishaq’s Sirat Rasul Allah . . . by A. Guillaume (London, 1955) 340 (p. 231).
18 History of the Saracens (1708-57).
19 Ricoldo da Montecroce, Itinerarium, cap. XXIX.
20 M. Shafik Ghorbal, The Making of Egypt (Cairo, n.d.), p. 25.
21 M. M. Atta, op. cit., pp. 202, 205, 206.
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