47 - Before explaining the way taken by Sayyid Qutb, it will be useful to give some information about his adviser, Muhammad ’Abduh (1265/1849-1323/1905, Egypt). His articles in Al-waqâyi’ al-Misriyya, an Egyptian paper of his time, in the magazine Al-Manâr and in the paper Al-Ahrâm reveal his heretical thoughts.
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He had some
activities in Beirut for a while, too, but the Ahl as-Sunna scholars perceived
his evil purposes and he had to go to Paris. There, he cooperated with Jamâl
ad-dîn al-Afghânî, who had been preparing the application of masonic plans
against Islam, and they published the magazine Al-’urwat al-wuthqâ. Then he
returned to Beirut and Egypt, and began to apply the decisions made in Paris and
to misguide the youth. The government of Khidiw Tawfîq Pasha, seeing that his
lectures and articles were harmful, employed him in one of the offices of the
law-court. Yet he continued to write so as to sabotage Islam, which was a part
of the masonic plans. With the help of freemasons he became the Muftî of Cairo.
He began to attack the Ahl as-Sunna. As the first activity, he attempted to
change the curriculum of the madrasa of Jâmi’ al-Azhar, thus preventing the
youth from valuable courses. He abrogated the graduate courses in the
universities, so that they began to teach books that had been prepared for
senior and junior high schools. Freemasons had already done the same thing in
the Ottoman Empire; after the Tanzîmât (a turning point in the Ottoman history
marked by the political reforms in 1839), scientific courses had been abrogated
from the madrasas and the religious education had been deprived of high-level
courses. All these were done because Islam was established upon knowledge,
without which and without any real religious man left Islam would be doomed to
extinction. When there is no cloud, to expect rain would mean to expect
miracles. Allâhu ta’âlâ is able to make this, but His Divine Law of Causation is
not so. Education of an Islamic scholar requires the reappearing and spreading
of Islamic knowledge and the elapse of a hundred years. The enemies tried to
extinguish the Islamic sun.
Hannâ Abî Râshid, chief of the masonic lodge in Beirut, wrote: “Jamâl ad-dîn al-Afghânî was the chief of the masonic lodge in Egypt, which had about three hundred members, mostly scholars and state officials. After him, the leading master Muhammad ’Abduh became the chief. ’Abduh was a leading freemason. No one can deny that he has spread the masonic spirit in Arab countries.”
Seeing the reforms made by Muhammad ’Abduh, many people suppose that he was an Islamic scholar. The Ahl as-Sunna scholars have written answers to his articles and torn up his mask. For example, Elmalýlý Hamdi Beg, in his interpretation of the
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[1]
Dâ’irat al-ma’ârif al-masoniyya, p. 197, Beirut, 1381/1961.
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sûrat al-Fil, displays some of his heresies, which can be outlined as follows:
1. Thinking that the wisdom and the religion were different from each other, he claimed to be the first man to unite them.
2. He said that the Islamic scholars before him had not studied logic, mathematics, history and geography, that it had been deemed as a sin to learn sciences, and that he would introduce these sciences into Islam. He denied that, for many centuries, these had been taught in every madrasa and that thousands of books had been written in these fields, thus he tried to put an end to the teaching of the Ahl as-Sunna books and to spread the irreligious propagandas written by the enemies of Islam under the name of philosophy in Muslim countries. When the professors of Jâmi’ al-Azhar raised objections to these propagandas, he stigmatized them with “retrogression and enmity against knowledge, science and logic”.
3. He attacked against marrying four women in the official paper in 1297/1880.
4. He said that, before him, thousands of Islamic scholars had introduced into Islam things which had nothing to do with Islam, that they had gone wrong in understanding the Qur’ân and Hadîth, and that he had been correcting them.
5. In his book Islam and Christianity, he wrote that all religions were the same with the exception of some minor façade differences, and recommended that Jews, Christians and Muslims support one another. He wrote to a priest in London, “I expect that the two great religions, Islam and Christianity, will shake hands and embrace each other. Then, by supporting one another the Torah, the Bible and the Qur’ân will be read everywhere and will be revered by every nation.” He believed that Christianity was a right religion and awaited the time when Muslims would read the Bible.
6. He said that the believers had abandoned the right path and thereby lapsed into a pitiable situation, that the religion would shake hands with knowledge and then Allâhu ta’âlâ would complete His Light. To him, Allâhu ta’âlâ had not completed His religion in the time of our master Rasûlullah (sall-Allâhu ’alaihi wa sallam) and Islamic scholars had not shaken hands with knowledge.
7. He wrote in his book Islam and Christianity, “If a person is heard to say a statement which shows his unbelief in a hundred
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respects and his belief in one respect, that person will be accepted as a believer. It is idiocy to think that any philosopher or man of idea would say a statement which does not show belief even in one respect versus unbelief in a hundred respects. Then, they all should be acknowledged as believers. The word ‘zindîq’ does not exist in Islam. It has been invented afterwards.” Misrepresenting the rule, “One [sign of] belief in a statement of a Muslim who has not been seen openly to have a sign of unbelief will rescue him from unbelief,” he accepted all unbelievers and philosophers to be believers. Because he himself was a zindîq, he did not like this word to be used. He denied the hadîth,
“Zindîqs among my umma will increase,” which is written in Kunûz ad-daqâ’iq and ad-Daylamî’s Musnad.
8. In the interpretation of the âyat, “He who does goodness as heavy as a mote will get its reward certainly,” of the sûrat az-Zilzâl, he wrote: “Whether a Muslim or an unbeliever, everybody who does good deeds will enter Paradise.” This wrong, unjust claim, which would be sneered at by the most ignorant and most block-headed people, has been admitted neither by his admirers nor even by the simpletons who have been following him. Sayyid Qutb, one of his strict followers, in his interpretation of the 124th âyat of the sûrat an-Nisâ’, had to say, “Master Muhammad ’Abduh does not ever remember the clearness of the âyats contradicting his thought. These âyats
contradict ’Abduh’s ideas.” In fact, the dosage of the masonic opium which Abduh was made to swallow in Paris was so strong that his mind and conscience were too upset to see the relations between the âyats.
9. In the interpretation of the sûrat al-’Asr, he said, “Îmân does not mean an imitative belief in the things which mind and conscience cannot grasp. It is not îmân to memorize and say some words which one has heard from his parents. Islam is against imitation. It is of no value to have come before, so everything must be solved by one’s investigation through reason.” In his Risâlat at-tawhîd, however, he wrote: “If reason cannot grasp something in the religion, it has to believe it,” thus his words disagreed with each other.
10. Georgy Zaidan, the proprietor of the Hilâl Publications in Egypt and author of The History of Islamic Civilization, wrote
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A compilation of his propagandas directed to the students of Al-madrasat as-Sultâniyya in Beirut in 1885, published a year after his death.
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about ’Âbduh, “Muhammad ’Abduh did not remain dependent upon the words of old scholars, nor did he esteem the rules put by them.”
11. In the interpretation of the Fâtiha, he wrote: “The Qur’ân addressed the people living in that time [of its revelation] and it addressed them not because they were superior, but because they were human beings,” thus he refused the hadîths about the superiority attained by as-Sahâba.
12. In an attempt to interpret the âyat, “The deed-books of fâjirs are in Sijjîn,” he wrote: “I have seen in some people’s books that ‘senjun’ means ‘mud’ in the Ethiopian language. This word has probably come to Yemen from Ethiopia. The âyat, then, means, ‘The deeds of the fâjirs are like mud.’ ” Disliking the interpretations of Rasûlullah (’alaihi ’s-salâm), as-Sahâbat al-kirâm and of the profound Islamic scholars, he interpreted âyats on a coincidental and presumptive basis.
13. When interpreting the sûrat al-Fîl, he wrote, “The birds of Abâbîl may be mosquitos, so the soldiers possibly died of small-pox or measles.” I wonder how he would interpret it if he lived a hundred years later. Indeed, Rasûlullah (’alaihi ’s-salâm) explained their meanings, and tafsîr scholars found these meanings and wrote them in their books.
14. In the interpretation of the sûrat an-Nâs, he wrote: “There is a devil in every person. But this means a power which bears the evil desires in man. It is an effect which is likened to genies.” That wretched man, who knew nothing about the books and knowledge of Islamic scholars, came forward with the claim that it was necessary to follow only reason, knowledge and science, refused to follow a madhhab and attempted to adapt all the religious knowledge to the scientific discoveries and to philosophies of his time. Because he did not want to read the books of Islamic scholars and because he had not studied science, he wrote books on religion according to his short sight and to what he had heard. This shows that he knew nothing of kalâm, fiqh and tasawwuf and that he had not tasted Islamic flavour. If he
had understood the greatness of Islamic scholars and escaped the talons of his nafs, and if he had comprehended the inner nature of the matter and the spirit, he would not have said such incongruous things.
15. He wrote a commentary on the book Nahj al-balâgha by Radî, who was the brother of ’Alî Murtadâ’, a convert from the Jewish religion. This book, which caused faction among Muslims,
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had been commented on first by Ibn Abi ’l-Hadîd ’Abd al-Hamîd al-Madâ’inî ash-Shî’î and then by another Shî’ite, Maisum al-Bahrânî. Abduh’s commentary was printed in Beirut in 1301 (1885).