Recovering God's Intent in the Modern Age

with Monica Ringer

hosted by Matthew Ghazarian

| What is Islamic modernism, and how did authors of this movement position themselves vis-á-vis other 19th century intellectual movements? In this episode, we examine how Islamic modernism was more than a product of 19th century social and political reforms or even an attempt at using Islamic language to justify such reforms. Rather, Islamic modernism was a substantive theological reform movement, fueled by the belief that God's intent could be recovered through correct and contextual readings of the past. As a result, Islamic modernists helped give rise not only to new understandings of Islam but also to new understandings of history. In our discussion, we draw on Dr. Ringer's book Islamic Modernism and the Re-enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History out from Edinburgh University Press in 2020. In it, she takes up the work of four authors from across Eurasia: Namık Kemal from the Ottoman Empire, Ataullah Bayezidof from the Russian Empire, Syed Amir Ali from British India, and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who spent his formative years in Iran. Although they shared a religion, it was much more Islam that tied their ideas together.

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What is Islamic modernism, and how did authors of this movement position themselves vis-á-vis other 19th century intellectual movements? In this episode, we examine how Islamic modernism was more than a product of 19th century social and political reforms or even an attempt at using Islamic language to justify such reforms. Rather, Islamic modernism was a substantive theological reform movement, fueled by the belief that God's intent could be recovered through correct and contextual readings of the past. As a result, Islamic modernists helped give rise not only to new understandings of Islam but also to new understandings of history. In our discussion, we draw on Dr. Ringer's book Islamic Modernism and the Re-enchantment of the Sacred in the Age of History out from Edinburgh University Press in 2020. In it, she takes up the work of four authors from across Eurasia: Namık Kemal from the Ottoman Empire, Ataullah Bayezidof from the Russian Empire, Syed Amir Ali from British India, and Jamal al-Din al-Afghani from Iran. Although they shared a religion, it was much more Islam that tied their ideas together.

Contributor Bios

	Monica Ringer is Professor of History and Asian Languages at Amherst College. Her research focuses on the history of religion, modernity, literature, and Islam across the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and the broader Islamic world.
	Matthew Ghazarian is a Ph.D. Candidate in Columbia University's Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, African Studies. His research focuses on the intersections of sectarianism, humanitarianism, and famine in central and eastern Anatolia between 1839 and 1893.

Credits

Episode No. 491
Release Date: 27 January 2021
Recording Location: Sunderland, MA
Audio editing by Matthew Ghazarian
Music: "Um Pepino" by Blue Dot Sessions
Images and bibliography courtesy of Monica Ringer

Further Listening

	Teena Purohit	319 6/22/17	Inclusion and Exclusion in Islamic Modernist Thought
	Melih Levi	261 8/23/16	Translating the Ottoman Novel
	Keith David Watenpaugh	237 4/8/16	The Middle Class in the Modern Middle East
	Ahmet Ersoy	309 3/30/17	Everyday Life and History in Ottoman Illustrated Journals
	John Chen	365 7/2/18	Medicine and Muslim Modernity in China

Images

Namık Kemal (1840-1888)

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839-1897)

Example of a front page of the Ottoman newspaper Tercüman-i Hakikat

Ernest Renan (1823-1892)

Select Bibliography

Afghani, Jamal al-Din, ‘Réponse à M. Renan,’ Journal des débats politiques et littéraires (Friday, May 18, 1883), 3. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k462242j.

Afghani, Jamal al-Din, ‘Answer of Jamal ad-Din to Renan,’ Journal des Débats May 18, 1883, Nikki R. Keddie and Hamid Algar (trans.), in Nikki R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Jamal ad-Din ‘al-Afghani’ (University of California Press, 1983), 181-187.

Ali, Syed Ameer, A Critical Examination of the Life and Teachings of Mohammed (Williams and Norgate, 1873).

Ali, Syed Ameer, A Short History of the Saracens: Being a concise Account of the Rise and Decline of the Saracenic Power and of the Economic, Social and Intellectual Development of the Arab Nation from the earliest times to the destruction of Bagdad, and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain (Macmillan and Co., 1898).

Baiazitov, Mökhemmedsafa Gataulla uli, A Tatar Akhund’s Refutation of Ernest Renan’s Lecture on Islam & Science (1883) (contributors) James Quill, Monica M. Ringer, G. F. Marlier, Edward J. Lazzerini (Bloomington, IN: Institute for the Study of Russia’s Orient, 2019).

Bayezidof, Ataullah, Redd-i Renan: Islamiyet ve Fünun, (trans.) Olga de Lebedeva and Ahmet Cevdet, (Tercüman-i Hakikat Matbaası, 1891).

Conrad, Sebastian, ‘Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique,’ American Historical Review (October 2012), 999-1027.

Keddie, Nikki R., An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Jamal ad-Din ‘al-Afghani’ (University of California Press, 1983).

Kemal, Namik, ‘Renan Mudafaanamesi,’ (trans.) M. Fuad Köprülü (Güven Matbaası, 1962).

Kemal, Namik, Büyük Islam Tarihi (A Complete History of Islam) (Istanbul: Hürriyet Publishers, 1975).

Masuzawa, Tomoko, The Invention of World Religions: or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

Renan, Ernest, Vie de Jésus, (Paris: Calman-Lévy, 1863).

Ringer, Monica M., Pious Citizens: Reforming Zoroastrianism in India and Iran (Syracuse University Press, 2012).

Ringer, Monica M. and A. Holly Shissler, ‘The Al-Afghani-Renan Debate, Reconsidered,’ Iran Nameh vol. 30, no. 3 (Fall 2015), 28-45.

Sheehan, Jonathan, ‘When was Disenchantment? History and the Secular Age,’ in (eds.) Michael Warner, Jonathan Van Antwerpen and Craig Calhoun, Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age (Harvard University Press, 2013), 217-242.

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