Emerging in the late 19th century, Islamic reform,Footnote 1 a conceptual and practical movement closely linked to the great Muslim thinkers Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838/9–97), Muhammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905), and Rashid Rida (1865–1935), has been widely understood as a modernist approach to Islam. Scholars have viewed it as both a form of religious redress that enabled the Muslim world to adjust to new social realities, and as a political struggle in response to Western influence.Footnote 2 Early scholarship on Islamic reform from the 1950s and 1960s tended to conclude that it was ultimately absorbed by, and eventually merged into, local nationalism.Footnote 3 In other words, scholars argued that, though failing to survive as an independent political force, it laid the ideological foundation for local nationalist movements.Footnote 4 More recent scholarship focused on post-1970s Islamist movements has confirmed this view. This newer literature has contended that the religious authority of the ʿulamaʾ, which is based on classical education and Islamic judicial institutions, diminished with the mainstreaming of modern education across the Muslim world.Footnote 5
Using Algeria as a case study, this study challenges the understanding of Islamic reform as a preparatory stage for nationalism, an understanding that has been predominant in the historiography on Algeria. Scholars have deduced the merging of Islamic reform and Algerian nationalism based on the two movements’ shared common enemy in French colonialism and their acceptance of Arab and Islamic identities as the core of the Algerian nation. This study asserts that despite their shared claim to be the legitimate heirs of al-Afghani's movement, Islamic reformers and nationalists continued to maintain distinct political ideas, visions, and projects. Understanding Islamic reform on its own terms, without reducing it to a protonationalism, allows us to comprehend the logic of its actions as well as its resilience in history.
The first organized Islamic reform movement in Algeria was the Association of Algerian Muslim ʿUlamaʾ (AAMU; Jamʿiyyat al-ʿUlamaʾ al-Muslimin al-Jazaʾiriyyin). Founded in 1931 under the influence of the Egyptian al-Manar (The Lighthouse) school, the AAMU aimed to propagate Salafi religious doctrine, which demanded a return to the “pure” origins of Islam, among Algerian Muslims, and to promote knowledge of Arabic by establishing private Arabic schools for Muslim children. Scholars agree that the AAMU's promotion of Islam and Arabism (ʿurūba) as the most important components of the Algerian nation contributed significantly to Algerian national awakening.Footnote 6 Thus, French researchers who had deep knowledge of Maghribian Muslim societies such as Jacques Berque and Roger Le Tourneau have interpreted the movement as anticolonial Islamic resistance.Footnote 7 The first historians of postindependence Algeria, who authored classic studies of Algerian nationalism, considered the AAMU one of the three schools of Algerian nationalism—the other two being moderate nationalism, which, led by French-educated Algerian évolués, aimed to gradually improve the material and political situation of Muslims, and revolutionary nationalism, which advocated the immediate abolishment of colonialism. Deeming the AAMU and moderate nationalism marginal, these historians positioned revolutionary nationalism as the central focus of the study of Algerian nationalism.Footnote 8 According to them, the genealogy of revolutionary nationalism in Algeria begins with the Étoile Nord-Africaine (ENA; North African Star),Footnote 9 followed by the Parti du Peuple Algérien-Mouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques (PPA-MTLD; Algerian Popular Party-Movement for Triumph of Democratic Liberties),Footnote 10 whose secret organ, the Organisation Spéciale (Special Organization), was the origin of the Front de Libération Nationale (FLN; Front of National Liberation), the pivotal actor in the Algerian War of Independence. A subsequent generation of Algerian scholars has placed greater emphasis on the role of the AAMU but still views this movement as one of three schools of nationalism that led to the FLN. They argue that prior to the FLN Islamic reformers and revolutionary nationalists were indeed complementary because they pursued the same objective—Algerian independence—even as they differed in approach.Footnote 11
Scholars have observed affinity rather than difference between the AAMU and Algerian nationalists because they have presumed that Algerian nationalists (the ENA, PPA-MTLD, and FLN) adopted the AAMU's construction of the nation. In Algeria, secular forms of Arab nationalism, as found in Iraq and Syria, have not been predominant.Footnote 12 Since the 1930s, Algerian nationalists shared the AAMU's concern with promoting Arabic education among Muslims and wresting control over Islamic practice from colonial authorities, for they too accepted Arabism and Islam as the basis of the Algerian nation.Footnote 13 Algerian sociologist Lahouari Addi once advanced the idea that ʿAbd al-Hamid ibn Badis (1889–1940), founder of the AAMU, and Messali Hadj, leader of the ENA and president of the PPA-MTLD, were “twin brothers.” In his estimation, Ibn Badis defined the Algerian nation in terms of Arabism and Islam, while Messali Hadj forged the idea of an independent Algerian state to supplement it.Footnote 14
Yet the assumption that Islamic reform was integrated into Algerian nationalism involves misleading historical evaluations of both movements. Claiming that nationalists adopted a ready-made religious discourse for mass mobilization, scholars have viewed nationalists as incapable of producing cultural ideas.Footnote 15 For example, Gilbert Meynier argued that the FLN possessed almost no coherent ideology beyond achieving Algerian independence. In his view, it claimed Islamic and Arab identities only to incite people to support the uprising.Footnote 16 Regarding the AAMU, James McDougall has recently described this movement's representation of Algerian history and society in terms of Islam and Arabism as “the invention of authenticity” for the Algerian nation.Footnote 17 He rightly points out that the cultural or “inner” domain of the colonized society was “a field of rival representations, each claiming to articulate its ‘authenticity.’”Footnote 18 More concretely, McDougall observes a conflict between two different notions of the nation in Algeria: the first, promoted by the PPA-MTLD, as the will of the people, and the second, promoted by the AAMU, as a cultural essence.Footnote 19 However, he did not extend his analysis further to examine how interactions between the two rival movements over time shaped their grassroots activities and discourse. It is particularly pertinent to explore activities on the ground because, as we will see, the changing relationship between these two groups greatly affected their respective course of action.Footnote 20
This article builds on scholarship that has analyzed Islamic reform by contextualizing it within local intellectual history. It suggests that Islamic reform should be studied in relation to other contemporary ideological tendencies, such as local and Arab nationalisms, and their historically and regionally disparate trajectories.Footnote 21 It also suggests that research on Islamic reform should address the close connection between, on the one hand, thought and discourse, and the other, historical context. By situating Islamic reform in context, we can fully grasp the ʿulamaʾ’s language around cultural authenticity and religious authority, which may seem independent of its geographical and temporal location.Footnote 22 Thus, this article proposes that the Algerian ʿulamaʾ’s discourse around autonomy and legitimacy is inseparable from the relationship between the AAMU and the nationalist movement following World War II, when tensions between them were on the rise.Footnote 23 Despite the importance of the subject, few studies exist on the AAMU between 1945 and the start of the War of Independence in 1954.Footnote 24 This period corresponds to the last years of the presidency of Muhammad al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi (1889–1965), who led the AAMU from 1940, after the death of Ibn Badis, until 1952, when he left Algeria for Egypt.Footnote 25 By studying this critical period, this study demonstrates how the ʿulamaʾ came to distinguish themselves from the nationalists in order to affirm their authority over the nationalist movement.
The article is organized as follows. The first three sections discuss differences between Algerian ʿulamaʾ and nationalist interpretations of al-Afghani's movement. As we will see, these differences hinged on the ʿulamaʾ’s and nationalists’ divergent understanding of politics (siyāsa). I begin by reviewing historical changes in how this term was understood in the Arab world. Next, I examine a series of articles published in 1947 by al-Ibrahimi referring to al-Afghani as a pioneer of the Islamic reform movement to clarify the ʿulamaʾ’s understanding of politics. Finally, I analyze a critique of al-Ibrahimi's articles by the PPA-MTLD member Mohamed Guenanèche (Muhammad Qananish, 1915–2001),Footnote 26 and his own vision of politics inspired by al-Afghani. In the following two sections, I locate the ʿulamaʾ’s use of language in the post–World War II historical context, and explore the ʿulamaʾ’s attitudes toward the Muslim Scout movement, among the most active Muslim social organizations, after its takeover by nationalists in 1948. The study relies on original Algerian sources in French and Arabic—especially the AAMU's organ, al-Basa'ir (The Insights)—in addition to French archival sources.
UNDERSTANDINGS OF SIYĀSA IN THE MODERN ARAB WORLD
Scholars have associated the original meaning of the Arabic word siyāsa with “training of animals,” especially horses, which subsequently evolved into the idea of “handling” or “managing” something.Footnote 27 By the Middle Ages, siyāsa had two different connotations. It could refer to a work influenced by Greek conceptions of political science, a meaning aptly captured in the title of a treatise by Abu Nasr al-Farabi (c. 870–950), al-Siyasa al-Madaniyya (The Political Regime).Footnote 28 In theories of Islamic policy and in scholarly discussions, siyāsa could also refer to policies or governance in accordance with Islamic teachings.Footnote 29 The Hanbali theologian and jurist Taqi al-Din ibn Taymiyya (1263–1328) wrote his famous al-Siyasa al-Sharʿiyya (The Policy in accordance with the Revealed Law) in the context of the turbulent relationship between religion and power that prevailed in the Islamic world following the Mongol conquest of Baghdad (1258).Footnote 30 By then, the Abbasid Caliphate had lost substantial power, and the Mamluks, based in Cairo, emerged as the new power holders. Unlike his contemporary Badr al-Din ibn Jamaʿa (1241–1333), Ibn Taymiyya refuted the legitimacy of a ruler who came to power through usurpation. He emphasized that the realization of an ideal government in accordance with Islamic norms and law (shariʿa) required mutual consultation between the political ruler and the ʿulamaʾ.Footnote 31 His disciple, Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (1292–1350), also followed this line of thought.Footnote 32 Thus, the second meaning of siyāsa was articulated in the ʿulamaʾ’s struggle to control the discretion of rulers by imposing religious norms on them.
During the 19th century, litterateurs writing in Arabic employed the term siyāsa to describe the political concepts and systems of Western countries as well as modern Middle Eastern institutions.Footnote 33 This development coincided with the initial establishment of gazettes, political parties, parliaments, constitutions, and nationalist movements in Muslim regions, encouraging the term's dissemination. However, when Arab thinkers of the nahḍa sought to translate the European term “political science,” they decided on the Arabic term ʿilm al-siyāsa or al-ʿulūm al-siyāsiyya. In doing so, they did not necessarily maintain a distinction between the two meanings of siyāsa.Footnote 34 The cleavage between the two meanings of siyāsa, belonging to two different sets of ideas, was obscured in modern Arabic.
Siyāsa was again assigned new meaning when modern Muslim reformers discovered the al-siyāsa al-sharʿiyya argument. This occurred at a time when the political, economic, and cultural influence of the West was overwhelming the Muslim world. Attempting to recover the authority of the ʿulamaʾ vis-à-vis modern forms of political power, Muslim reformers looked to Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim, whom they saw not simply as Hanbali scholars but as pioneer defenders of religious norms over secular rulers.Footnote 35 The al-siyāsa al-sharʿiyya argument inspired the Islamic reform movement to defend Muslim cultural authenticity against both Western colonial power and secularist Muslim rulers. Seeking to propagate the ideas of these two thinkers among the modern ʿulamaʾ, Rashid Rida, for example, edited and published some of the works of Ibn Qayyim.Footnote 36 Through such efforts, the thought of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn Qayyim came to influence the founders of the AAMU.Footnote 37 By this point, the term siyāsa had obtained plural connotations on which 20th-century Muslims intellectuals could draw. This linguistic situation constitutes the background for the polemic between the ʿulamaʾ and the nationalists in Algeria that is the focus of this article. The next section draws on the writing of the Algerian ʿulamaʾ to describe how they understood siyāsa.
THE PARTY OF GOD FOR THE UMMA
Amid this context, in August 1947, the journal al-Basaʾir published a three-part series of articles written by Muhammad al-Bashir al-Ibrahimi titled “Jamʿiyyat al-ʿUlamaʾ Aʿmaluha wa-Mawaqifuha” (The Association of ʿUlamaʾ, Its Activities and Positions).Footnote 38 By the late 1940s, the relationship between the AAMU and the PPA-MTLD had become tense. In 1944, in anticipation of liberal reforms promised by General Charles de Gaulle in December of the prior year, the movement of Algerian Muslim évolués led by Ferhat ʿAbbas (Farhat ʿAbbas, 1899–1985), the AAMU, and ex-PPA activists formed an alliance known as the Association des Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberté (AML; Association of Friends of the Manifest and of Liberty). However, the alliance ended almost as soon as it was consolidated as a result of a violent incident. On 8 May 1945, the day of Germany's surrender in World War II, armed police interventions in the cities of Guelma and Sétif turned peaceful demonstrations by Algerian Muslims into scenes of slaughter. In response, some Algerians sought revenge through attacks on colonial institutions and European settlers. This, in turn, led to the mass arrest of Algerian leaders, including al-Ibrahimi.Footnote 39 In 1946, after the crackdown on the AML, ex-PPA activists formed a legal party called the MTLD, while Muslim évolués led by ʿAbbas formed their own party, the Union Démocratique du Manifeste Algérien (UDMA; Democratic Union of the Algerian Manifest). The two parties competed in elections for the French assemblies after Algerian Muslims had obtained the right of representation in this institution in 1945. After the Algerian Assembly was established in 1947, they also competed in elections for this body.Footnote 40 Still in shock over the crackdown by colonial authorities, the AAMU considered the anticolonial PPA-MTLD too radical and opted to support the moderate UDMA.Footnote 41
In his article, al-Ibrahimi provided an explanation for the ʿulamaʾ’s activities following the formation of the AAMU, and expressed his opinions on the prevailing situation in Algeria and in the Arab world. He described the activities of the ʿulamaʾ in three areas—religious life, Arabic instruction, and political-social life—and identified two principal “enemies” whom he saw as undermining the ʿulamaʾ’s efforts—“colonialism, its supporters, and its manufacturers,” and “those individuals and parties who are pupils of the elementary classes of politics.”Footnote 42 The latter category included Algerian political parties.
In terms of the first domain (religion), al-Ibrahimi stated that the ʿulamaʾ’s most important role was to guide the Algerian umma (nation).Footnote 43 He described the ʿulamaʾ as a righteously guided religious force that would purify the umma by wiping out corruption and rot and guide it toward its true potential.Footnote 44 Since the 1930s, the AAMU, influenced by Salafi doctrine, had criticized the practice of saint worship traditionally common in Algeria.Footnote 45 Al-Ibrahimi's emphasis on the AAMU's role in purifying religious life in Algeria should be understood in this context.
The AAMU's second domain—the promotion of Arabism (al-ʿurūba)—was mainly carried out through instruction (taʿlīm). With traditional religious instruction severely controlled and even repressed in colonial Algeria, the AAMU saw educating Algerian Muslim children in the Arabic language and the Islamic sciences as a key pillar of the movement.Footnote 46 It campaigned for “free Arabic instruction” (al-taʿlīm al-ʿarabī al-ḥurr) and created private schools for Muslim children that focused on Arabic grammar (naḥw), the art of reading (qirāʾa) and writing (inshāʾ), the Qurʾan, Islamic history, and Algerian geography, in addition to the modern sciences. These subjects were taught using modern methods, sometimes with books published in the Mashriq.Footnote 47 At first, the AAMU delivered instruction in its schools through local, autonomous educational associations. Beginning in the late 1940s, however, the AAMU centralized its education efforts by creating a high committee for instruction that was responsible for supervising the local educational associations. To further enhance its control, it also dispatched inspectors and teachers.Footnote 48 For higher education, the AAMU sent some students to the al-Zaytuna Mosque in Tunisia, where they would train to become teachers and scholars. In Algeria during the colonial period, the al-Zaytuna Mosque, in part due to its close proximity to eastern Algeria, served as an important scientific center and gateway for relaying ideas of Islamic reform from the Mashriq. Many founding members of the AAMU graduated from the mosque, and promising students who had finished their primary and secondary education at AAMU schools received their higher education there. Al-Ibrahimi claimed that these collective educational activities enabled Algerians to recover the Arabic language and to develop an Arab identity, which colonialism tried so hard to erase.Footnote 49
Finally, in the longest section of the article, al-Ibrahimi addressed the domain of political-social life. In describing the ʿulamaʾ’s activities in this domain, he distinguished between two levels of siyāsa: an elevated, fundamental level, and a lower, superficial level. Whereas the former was attached to religious values, the latter designated, more than values, realpolitik within councils and parties. Al-Ibrahimi described these two levels as follows:
The highest meaning of politics for the governed is to revive those components [al-muqawwimāt] that have remained dead, have weakened, or have declined, such as religion, language, belonging, morals, history, and traditions, as well as to redress the fundamentals of those components within souls, and then to reclaim lost rights through speaking and believing, to insist on this claim powerfully and intensively, and to remain strong enough in this insistence so as not to hesitate in adopting a death-defying stance and sacrifice, taking advantage of the chance for each situation among different degrees of opportunities. However, when they [governed subjects] take down this word, the meaning is transformed into one of mutual envy for chieftaincy, vain discussions over superficialities [al-qushūr], abusive and vituperative quarrels, and temptation to disgrace particular persons. We sometimes observe all these in the most disgusting figure, but all these are neither in the interest of the Algerian umma nor for the benefit of the Algerian problem. Rather, they are in the interest of colonialism.Footnote 50
For al-Ibrahimi, Algerian realpolitik was a farce perpetrated by the enemies of the AAMU, that is, colonialists and Algerian politicians, who ignored the true meaning of politics:
Some of our brothers and politicians are hostile to the Association of ʿUlamaʾ. Nevertheless, if they were veracious [politicians], the association would give subsistence for their power, be a pillar of their activities, a source from which they reap fruit, and an assembly of objectives of their works. We will tell them, despite different tendencies at both the individual and collective levels, that politics has a core [lubāb] and superficialities [qushūr] and that what many of you choose is, and we are very sorry for that, the superficial part lacking the core.Footnote 51
The ʿulamaʾ, by contrast, tried to redress this situation by restoring the original meaning of politics, which constituted recovery of the umma itself:
All reasonable people understand the general meaning of the core of politics from the single expression: “making the umma come into existence [ījād al-umma].” The umma exists only through reinforcement of its components such as belonging [jins], language, religion, right traditions, appropriate customs, and the virtues of native belonging [faḍāʾil jinsiyya aṣliyya]. It can also exist by correcting its creed and belief in life through education [tarbiya] so that it can rely on itself, be proud of its moral power, and hold its value and heritage in high esteem, as well as through close examination of all of these to allocate to the umma the firm creed for which the umma struggles and sacrifices itself. You will see that the existence of the umma depends on the existence of these components because if this condition was not fulfilled, then the consequence would not exist.Footnote 52
To emphasize the role of the ʿulamaʾ in guiding the umma toward its “political” achievement in the purest sense, al-Ibrahimi discussed Islamic reform as a truly “political” movement. In his view, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani had established a base for Islamic nationalism (al-waṭaniyya al-islāmiyya) through which al-Afghani attempted to dissociate Muslims from their kings (mulūkihim), chiefs (ruʾasāʾihim), and legists (fuqahāʾihim), whom he saw as the cause of their distress and misfortune. Yet, as al-Ibrahimi described, deviation from this base occurred in the following generation. Although Muhammad ʿAbduh followed al-Afghani's line of action, Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) led the Egyptian umma toward conflict,Footnote 53 precipitating a power struggle among the political parties. This development caused the important mission of educating/bringing up (tarbiya) the umma to be neglected.Footnote 54 As al-Ibrahimi observed,
We see them [colonized peoples in the Mashriq] saying that the number of parties [al-aḥzāb] inside the umma signifies its awareness and consciousness and guarantees the path for its truth. However, we have observed in numerous parties only diminution of power, lack of unity, relief for their enemy, and mutual exploitation. In the Qurʾan, the word “parties” in the plural form refers almost exclusively to cases of conflict and defeat. For example: “The parties have fallen into variance among themselves” [19:37], “A very host of parties is routed there” [38:10]. However, the word “party” in the singular form is used almost exclusively in cases of goodness and happiness, such as “Truly, they are the Party of God [ḥizb allāh] that will achieve felicity” [58:22]. Indeed, the Party of God for the Algerian umma is the Association of ʿUlamaʾ. Undoubtedly, it will achieve felicity.Footnote 55
Al-Ibrahimi then explained the relationship between the AAMU and the other parties:
The Association of ʿUlamaʾ is beyond all the parties whether they are formal or informal. Its principle [mabdaʾahā] is higher than the principles of all the parties whether they are hidden or declared. It [the association] kept up relations with all the parties individually and collectively when it came to the public interest [al-maṣāliḥ al-ʿāmma], and it showed them through its words and deeds that it was situated above the parties. All the parties, from those that asked for the association's friendship for the sake of honor, to those that tended to take advantage of its influence, to those that tried to deceive it with tricks, kept in touch with the association. Through mutual relationships with all of them, the association showed them that it was above the parties. It called the parties to conciliation and unity, making them participate together in the activity. For all of these reasons, the association has been above the parties.Footnote 56
Thus, al-Ibrahimi maintained that, as a force of unity for the umma, the Party of God should develop a “mutual relationship” with “all” parties.Footnote 57 Moreover, he asserted that, given the division political parties could sow within the umma, each of these parties should subject itself to the authority of the Party of God.
In the Qurʾan, the term “Party of God” is not used in direct opposition to the word “parties” (aḥzāb).Footnote 58 As such, al-Ibrahimi's use of the term “Party of God” to assert the superior position of the ʿulamaʾ in relation to other groups (aḥzāb) is not conventional.Footnote 59 Moreover, although al-Ibrahimi quoted the Qurʾan to justify his negative evaluation of the role of political parties, not all Islamic reformers shared this view. For example, Rashid Rida positively described the development of Egyptian party politics, emphasizing that its maturity would serve the public interest.Footnote 60 In addition, the AAMU actually engaged in the activities of Algerian parties. Thus, as previously mentioned, in 1944 it participated in the AML, and in 1951 it called for the formation of the Front Algérien pour la Défense et le Respect des Libertés (Algerian Front for the Defense and Respect of Liberties), a federation that brought together the AAMU, the PPA-MTLD, the UDMA, and the Algerian Communist Party to break a deadlock in the Algerian Assembly at the time.Footnote 61 As in al-Ibrahimi's text, this aspect of the AAMU's activities shaped the “mutual relationship” between the AAMU and the different parties of the umma. Why, then, did al-Ibrahimi insist on a distinction between the two levels of politics and the AAMU's superiority over political parties?
Two reasons should be noted. First, French authorities violently repressed Algerian nationalist organizations and reacted severely to any activity they regarded as “political” or anti-French, especially after the dissolution of the AML.Footnote 62 Consequently, the AAMU had reason to avoid the accusation of being “political.” Second, and more pertinently, the AAMU had to confront a new situation after World War II as the supporters of the PPA-MTLD and the AAMU began to overlap. Succeeding the ENA, an organization made up of Maghribian immigrant workers in France, the PPA initially enjoyed influence among workers and the lower middle class regardless of education level.Footnote 63 Although many founders of the AAMU were those who could afford Arabic instruction in Tunis or Middle Eastern countries at their own expense, the second generation of AAMU activists and teachers were from a wider socio-economic spectrum, and students who came to learn at AAMU schools included many from the popular classes, the original social base of the nationalists. By the interwar period, demographic growth, urbanization, and a rapid increase in urban school enrollment led Muslim youth movements to flourish, and it was youth who were the central actors in social and political movements of the 1940s.Footnote 64 Omar Carlier described the consequences of this boom as a shift “from ‘the youth movement’ to the power of the youth.” The youth movement initiated a new conception of the leader, shifting from the authoritarian “father and teacher” to the young comrade who also serves as leader to his fellows.Footnote 65 At the same time, the young generation previously under the influence of the AAMU became interested in the PPA-MTLD. With such changes threatening to interrupt the social achievements of the AAMU's religious and cultural activities from the 1930s onward, al-Ibrahimi had every reason to reaffirm the authority of the ʿulamaʾ. Al-Ibrahimi's argument in support of the Party of God reflects, paradoxically, the ʿulamaʾ’s struggle to preserve the integrity of their project despite the social changes taking place.
A NATIONALIST'S OBJECTION TO THE ʿULAMAʾ
After World War II, Algerian youth increasingly joined the PPA-MTLD for its highly structured organization and political vision, which contrasted with those of the AAMU. This section focuses on the difference between the two movements’ political visions by exploring one PPA-MTLD nationalist's objections to the AAMU.
In 1947, the year in which al-Ibrahimi's article was published, Mohamed Guenanèche, a loyal supporter of Messali Hadj since his teens and a contributor to the Arabic press, began composing a series of articles on Islamic reform and nationalism to mark the fiftieth anniversary of al-Afghani's death. These articles were subsequently published in 1953 in the Algerian periodical al-Manar (The Lighthouse) under the penname Abu al-Amin,Footnote 66 and would constitute the basis of Guenanèche's memoirs, al-Mawaqif al-Siyasiyya bayna al-Islah wa-l-Wataniyya (Political Positions between Reform and Nationalism), published after Algerian independence.Footnote 67 In the introduction to his memoirs, written in 1981, Guenanèche acknowledged the antipathy and anger he felt while reading al-Ibrahimi's article:
As soon as I started to write [a series of articles on Islamic reform and nationalism in 1947], I stopped suddenly when I read an article “the Association of ʿUlamaʾ, Its Activities and Positions” in the new series of the periodical al-Basaʾir. What struck me in the article was a historical deception [mughālaṭa], which stopped me and made me take a closer look to try to understand. . . . This deception is as follows: Muhammad ʿAbduh was not a loyal pupil to his teacher [Jamal al-Din al-Afghani] but has opposed him all along the line. His teacher [al-Afghani] even described him [ʿAbduh] disparagingly [bi-l-muthabbaṭ].
The truth is that the Islamic revolution [al-thawra al-islāmiyya] began with Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and was transmitted to Mustafa Kamil through ʿAbd Allah al-Nadim,Footnote 68 who was a loyal student of his teacher Jamal al-Din [al-Afghani] and enriched the revolution by contributing his experience that fostered secret work and revolutionary activity. In contrast, Shaykh Muhammad ʿAbduh, after his conflict with Jamal al-Din and withdrawal from his circle, became a representative of the counterrevolution. The idea of religious reform that he adopted was an exact replica of religious reform in Europe, that is, Protestantism.Footnote 69
In this text, Guenanèche blamed Muhammad ʿAbduh—the source of inspiration for the AAMU—for having emulated a Christian religious reform movement and deviated from the path of al-Afghani.
Guenanèche suggested that ʿAbduh had abandoned political activism to move toward spiritual Islamic reform, parting from al-Afghani on returning to Egypt after years of exile for his involvement in the anticolonial ʿUrabi revolt. As a result, Guenanèche argued, ʿAbduh stopped criticizing British domination in Egypt.Footnote 70 In his estimation, Islamic reform, as a purely spiritual movement detached from patriotic activism, served colonialism. Understanding Islamic reform as part of a wider movement in the Muslim world to realize individual prosperity by adopting ideas and institutions such as liberty, democracy, constitutionalism, and nationalism from Western civilization without profoundly understanding them,Footnote 71 Guenanèche saw that it not only affirmed the submission of Muslims to colonization by the Christian West, but also insidiously imported to the Muslim world secularized ideas that would undermine the integrity of Islamic civilization. When Guenanèche compared Islamic reform with “Protestantism,” he associated the latter with capitalism, colonialism, and the crisis in Ottoman unity caused by the awakening of Arab nationalism promoted by, according to him, Arab Christians.Footnote 72 Thus, Guenanèche associated “Protestantism” less with the actual Christian Reformation than with the violent alienation from and decline in authenticity of religion as a primordial culture of unity in the modern age. In this context, Guenanèche accused Islamic reform of being antipatriotic (counter-revolutionary) and anti-Islamic (as implied by its analogy to Protestantism).
Criticizing Islamic reform, Guenanèche argued that the path taken by the Egyptian nationalists led by Mustafa Kamil was the true path for the Islamic revolution launched by al-Afghani. It was Kamil who carried this mantle because he successfully combined anticolonial nationalist activism with the defense of Islamic civilization, contrary to Islamic reform which Guenanèche considered a spiritual movement devoid of patriotic activism.Footnote 73 Conversely, in al-Ibrahimi's article, Kamil's activism signaled a turning point toward the division of the Egyptian umma by political parties that had neglected education and devolved into struggles over hegemony. Thus, Guenanèche and al-Ibrahimi maintained distinctly different understandings of al-Afghani's movement and heritage.
In an article published in the Algerian al-Manar under the title “Muhammad ʿAbduh wa-l-Siyasa” (Muhammad ʿAbduh and Politics), Guenanèche criticized ʿAbduh for having missed the true meaning of politics and for having remained apolitical. As he pointed out,
It is truly regrettable and sad that these minds don't feel confident regarding the word politics [al-siyāsa] and the meaning of politics, and that these spirits submit themselves neither to having done politics [sāsa], nor to doing politics [yasūs], being the subject of it [sā’is], and being the object of it [masūs]. This is because in the current situation, as well as in its nature, politics is the highest degree of the arts that can be attained by human beings. The reason is clear and simple: all arts are aimed at the realization of benefits for a particular person among people or for a grouping [jamāʿa] among groupings. The objective of politics is the welfare of all people. On this subject, Aristotle states the following in the beginning of his book Politica or Politics [al-siyāsa]: every grouping has pursued a share of the good. Thus, a state or a political grouping, subsuming all [lower] groupings, constitutes the highest grouping of all kinds. For this reason, the good pursued by a state or political grouping is higher than any degree of good, the highest rank of good.Footnote 74
For Guenanèche, politics meant the realization of the good of the people through the constitution of a “grouping.” Guenanèche's emphasis on political groups or institutions was connected to the PPA-MTLD program. Messali had already advanced the idea of a people organizing themselves to achieve the common good in 1936 for his ENA party.Footnote 75 The PPA-MTLD, the successor of the ENA, also saw the party as an important “grouping,” one whose organization was solid, rationally designed, and divided into geographical units with different commissions in charge of specialized tasks.Footnote 76 In fact, the PPA-MTLD's ideal of politics was constructed around these various “groupings,” and in the PPA-MTLD context the “highest” achievable grouping was a sovereign Algerian state.Footnote 77
This understanding of politics as derived from Greek philosophy is absent in al-Ibrahimi's writing. Al-Ibrahimi disregarded party politics and the art of statecraft as a “lower” form of politics that could not exist without the “higher” form of politics that he sought to achieve through the Party of God. In this higher form of politics, the ʿulamaʾ, as spiritual guides for the nation, had a legitimate place. In contrast to this view, Guenanèche emphasized that spiritual education without patriotic action was counter-revolutionary, antireligious, and the negation of true politics. In this way, the political vision of PPA-MTLD nationalists and that of the AAMU were not only different, but also mutually exclusive.
WHY THE ʿULAMAʾ DID NOT RESIST THE TAKEOVER OF THE MUSLIM SCOUT MOVEMENT BY NATIONALISTS: A CASE STUDY
By the beginning of the 1950s, the PPA-MTLD had become active in Algerian cultural issues. Although many of the party's members had attended AAMU mosques and schools since the 1930s, now they were creating their own cultural clubs and schools for Arabic education. The PPA-MTLD established the Commission for Islamic Affairs in 1951, and regional commissions for educational matters were also created within the party structure.Footnote 78 The PPA-MTLD invested in student associations, boy scout clubs, women's associations, and sports and cultural associations.Footnote 79 It was this penetration of the PPA-MTLD into a previously AAMU-developed religio-cultural domain that caused numerous conflicts between the two organizations.
To demonstrate how the framework of the ʿulamaʾ was interconnected with their actions, I will examine the attitudes of the ʿulamaʾ and the PPA-MTLD toward the Muslim Scout movement, a branch of the Algerian Boy Scout movement designed specifically for Muslim children. Although this movement first emerged among self-generated local scout groups in the early 1930s, it became a national federation, the Fédération des Scouts Musulmans Algériens (FSMA; Federation of Algerian Muslim Scouts), only in 1939 under the initiative of Muhammad Buraʾs (1908–41).
During the initial phase of the Muslim Scout movement in the 1930s, its relation to the ʿulamaʾ was especially significant. Scout activists and the AAMU shared personal and intellectual bonds. Ibn Badis, the AAMU's president, supervised a scout group in his native town of Constantine. Muhammad Buraʾs was one of the auditors of the AAMU school in Algiers, al-Shabiba al-Islamiyya (The Islamic Youth), where he learned Arabic.Footnote 80 This situation changed once the ambitious PPA-MTLD, which reestablished itself in 1946, attempted to seize the FSMA by force in attempt to transform it into its satellite organization. The PPA-MTLD gradually infiltrated the FSMA, gaining control over its executive board in 1948. As a result, the FSMA split into two groups: the PPA-MTLD-led FSMA and the newly created Fédération des Boy-Scouts Musulmans Algériens (FBSMA; Federation of Algerian Muslim Boy-Scouts).Footnote 81
Under the control of the PPA-MTLD, the FSMA promoted anticolonialist and nationalist ideas among young scouts, and leveraged the physical training of the scouts toward its own purposes. Historian and ex-scout Mahfoud Kaddache described the FSMA as an organization that prepared the next generation to be “soldiers of the future” (les soldats de l'avenir/junūd al-mustaqbal), in both military techniques for revolutionary struggle and patriotic education.Footnote 82
However, the founders of the FBSMA refused to support the PPA-MTLD. Emphasizing the need to keep the Muslim Scout movement purely educational, they instead advocated political neutrality. Tahar Tijini, the leader of the FBSMA, accused the PPA-MTLD of trying to “make the scout a tool for politics.”Footnote 83 Thus, for the founders of the FBSMA, the takeover of the Muslim Scout movement by a political party was seen as illegitimate and harmful to a movement aimed primarily at education.
ʿULAMAʾ REACTIONS TO THE SCHISM
What, then, was the reaction of the ʿulamaʾ to this schism? Given their role as patrons of the Muslim Scout movement from its inception, they should have been concerned about this conflict. Moreover, since the postwar period the ʿulamaʾ had likely known that the takeover that occurred in the FSMA might also happen in associations belonging to the AAMU, which tried to defend itself against the influence of the PPA-MTLD. Tension was growing especially within the AAMU's educational institutions. At the Ibn Badis Institute, the AAMU's secondary school founded in 1947 to impart Islamic instruction, an increasing number of students became sympathizers of the PPA-MTLD despite the institute's implementation of a ban on the party. To counter the growing influence of the PPA-MTLD, AAMU leaders attempted to enhance their control over the students’ political behavior and expelled from the institute anyone involved with the party.Footnote 84
Yet, even as the AAMU took these steps, the PPA-MTLD was expanding its influence among students in Tunis, where the AAMU sent Algerian youth for instruction at the al-Zaytuna mosque. In the association of Algerian students at al-Zaytuna, a group founded in 1934, student sympathizers of the PPA-MTLD were increasingly active.Footnote 85 Faced with this situation, in 1948 the AAMU sent its vice president Larbi al-Tebessi (al-ʿArabi al-Tabissi) (1893–1957) to Tunis to oversee the election of a new board for the student association. However, in the elections the AAMU student candidates received only 20 percent of the vote, losing to the PPA-MTLD's list.Footnote 86 Upon his return from Tunis, Benshaykh Husayn ʿAbbas (Ibn Shaykh Husayn ʿAbbas), a professor at the Ibn Badis Institute who had accompanied al-Tebessi, accused the PPA-MTLD of being “the party of obscurantism and perturbation.”Footnote 87 The AAMU even attempted to create a new student association in Tunisia to protect its students from the influence of the PPA-MTLD.Footnote 88 From these two episodes, we can observe that the ʿulamaʾ were worried that the PPA-MTLD would expand its influence among their students, who were the future teachers at AAMU schools.
Nevertheless, when the schism within the FSMA occurred, the ʿulamaʾ neither blamed the party for its sectarian spirit, as did the founders of the FBSMA, nor tried to regain their lost influence. Rather, they sought to avoid the problem. Although the AAMU developed a closer relationship with the FBSMA than with the FSMA after the schism—thus, for example, al-Ibrahimi hosted the FBSMA's delegation to Cairo in 1953,Footnote 89 yet did not do the same for the FSMA's delegation during its stay in 1954—the ʿulamaʾ continued to be involved in the activities of both the FSMA and the FBSMA at the individual level, especially as murshids (spiritual guides attached to the scouts),Footnote 90 and al-Basaʾir continued to publish articles for the two groups.
Al-Ibrahimi's 1949 speech reveals the logic behind the ʿulamaʾ’s lack of action on the PPA-MTLD's takeover of the Muslim Scout movement. Al-Ibrahimi gave this speech while assisting at “Mubarak al-Mili camp,” a FBSMA camp named in memory of an AAMU leader who died in 1945 that was intended to train the movement's leaders. The camp brought together FBSMA scouts from all over the country for the first time. Al-Ibrahimi attended this meeting as an invited member of the “supervision group for the camp” (al-hayʾa al-mushrifa ʿalā al-mukhayyam), along with other ʿulamaʾ guests. Adressing the scout leaders, he spoke the following words:
All activists who are loyal to this umma must get together under the banner of the Association of ʿUlamaʾ. The young people, however, should not consider the association as a group belonging to a particular person such as ʿAbd al-Hamid ibn Badis or al-Ibrahimi. The association is nothing but heavenly principles [mabādiʾ sāmiya], that is to say, principles of true Islam that are to be realized for happiness in this world and the hereafter. If you should get together, this is to gather your efforts and realize the renaissance [al-nahḍa] on a firm and clear foundation. If the caravan was firmly constituted, it would move forward properly and quickly, safely and inviolably, contrary to an isolated and separated person who would be exposed to dangers and to wolves like a sheep far from its flock.
The Association of ʿUlamaʾ is the Party of God [ḥizb allāh], which is built on powerfulness, loyalty, and the spirit of sacrifice. The association keeps a distance from selfish goals or ambitions; it serves only public interest [al-maṣlaḥa al-ʿāmma]. . . . The Association of ʿUlamaʾ does not want the young scouts to be its soldiers [junūd] fighting in the field of Arabism and Islam because the association has its ʿulamaʾ and teachers who are members of the association and its heroes for this important task. Rather, the Association of ʿUlamaʾ wants to divide the tasks, as long as all people are oriented in one direction, listening to the voices of leaders of the Association of ʿUlamaʾ and acting on the basis of the association's advice and orientation.Footnote 91
Al-Ibrahimi's words demonstrate how the ʿulamaʾ perceived their role vis-à-vis the Muslim Scouts. Once again he presented the AAMU as the Party of God, distinct from other groups and serving the public interest rather than personal ambitions. The relationship between the AAMU and the Muslim Scout groups, as supervisor and supervised, was quite similar to al-Ibrahimi's previously discussed description in al-Basa'ir of the relationship between the AAMU and the political parties.
According to al-Ibrahimi, it was essential to maintain a clear distinction between the ʿulamaʾ and the Muslim Scout movement. The AAMU served as guide; the scouts followed its guidance and advice. In this asymmetrical relationship, then, Muslim Scouts could not be identified as “soldiers” of the AAMU, a group made up of religious scholars and teachers working for AAMU schools. In an article published in al-Basaʾir in 1950, al-Ibrahimi had used the word “soldiers” to address the teachers at the AAMU's private schools, describing these educators as “soldiers of science” (junūd al-ʿilm) and “representatives of the Association of ʿUlamaʾ in its most important work, education and instruction.”Footnote 92 Contrary to the teachers, the scouts constituted a public under the AAMU's guidance rather than a part of the AAMU movement. For the PPA-MTLD, on the other hand, the Muslim Scout movement was nothing but an institutional part of the PPA-MTLD and a generator of its “soldiers.”
One might ask why al-Ibrahimi emphasized such exclusive separation between ʿulamaʾ and non-ʿulamaʾ at a time when a segment of young people was leaving the AAMU to join the PPA-MTLD. In al-Ibrahimi's speech to the scouts in 1949, the Party of God argument was linked to the demand for a division of labor between men of religion and men of action, a division that corresponded to the two levels of politics that he has described in 1947. As we have seen, al-Ibrahimi argued that the Algerian ʿulamaʾ should devote themselves to the upbringing (tarbiya) of the umma by guiding everyone with whom they had contact, without engaging in partisan activism. This does not mean, of course, that the ʿulamaʾ could always be exempt from sectarianism or competition for hegemony. The episodes described earlier in the Ibn Badis Institute and the student association in Tunis suggest that the al-Ibrahimi-led AAMU also played games of inclusion and exclusion. However, al-Ibrahimi's line of division between religious men and Muslim scouts indicates how the ʿulamaʾ tried to safeguard their original project of religious reform to restore an Algerian umma as a culturally imagined community at a time when political activism by rebellious youth and nationalist activism dominated the spectrum of religio-cultural movements. As thinkers of al-siyāsa al-sharʿiyya challenged an unpromising political reality by imposing religious norms on power holders, al-Ibrahimi tried to convince the youth movement and nationalists of his ideals in an effort to transform the meaning of their activities. Al-Ibrahimi, who distinguished between the domains of “lower” and “higher” politics, now separated the scouts from the ʿulamaʾ along similarly hierarchical lines. By articulating a domain preserved for men of religion as generators of the umma, he attempted to monopolize the symbolic “higher” field of religion and language. Rather than accept the PPA-MTLD's version of politics in which every cultural effort should be accompanied by action toward the achievement of an independent Algerian state as an ideal polis, al-Ibrahimi defended the AAMU's project to restore an Arab and Islamic society in Algeria.
CONCLUSION
This article has asserted that, contrary to an assumption that a weak secular nationalist undercurrent favored cooperation between Islamic reform and nationalism in Algeria, the two transpired as distinct movements in Algeria. Although grounded in al-Afghani's movement, Islamic reform and nationalism in Algeria manifested as two different political visions based on two different interpretations of the source. The PPA-MTLD understood siyāsa according to an Aristotelian vision in which the public good is realized through the construction of self-governing institutions made up of responsible members. By contrast, the AAMU, inspired by thinkers supporting al-siyāsa al-sharʿiyya, divided siyāsa into two levels. The “higher” level of politics resided in the re-establishment of a righteously guided religious community by the Party of God. The “lower” level consisted of the activities of political parties and the institutional life of the community.
This article has also shown that the appearance of the two different discourses on siyāsa was associated with the interaction between Algerian Islamic reformers and other actors (nationalists and the youth movement) beginning in the late 1940s. Following popular uprisings in May 1945 and subsequent repression by colonial authorities against Algerian leaders, the relationship between the AAMU and the PPA-MTLD shifted from cooperation and coordination to conflict and division. Youth, including those who had studied at AAMU schools, cultural clubs, and boy scouts, began rallying around PPA-MTLD nationalists. In response to these changes, al-Ibrahimi constructed a language to uphold the authority of the ʿulamaʾ over their rivals, considering them the Party of God for the umma. In doing so, al-Ibrahimi, as president of the AAMU, responded to two issues. First, he sought to enable the AAMU to achieve a sphere within the colonial state for an autonomous Muslim society through “education” comprised of religion and language, which he viewed as a process of social engineering. Second, he declared that tasks should be divided between the Party of God and political parties or associations. He claimed that the ʿulamaʾ, as actors in the “higher” level of politics, should play the role of protectors and coordinators for these parties and associations, which participate in the “lower” level of politics. Contrary to the assumed harmonious and complementary relationship between Islamic reform and nationalism often appearing in current Algerian historiography, al-Ibrahimi's division of labor argument was rooted in the contentious relationship between the two competing nation-building projects during the late 1940s.
Finally, this article has demonstrated how the ʿulamaʾ managed to defy marginalization vis-à-vis nationalism. As I have shown, the AAMU suffered a crisis of autonomy during the late 1940s when expansion of the nationalist movement interrupted the momentum of ʿulamaʾ efforts to revive religion and education since the 1930s. The ʿulamaʾ reacted to this situation by articulating a new language that perpetuated their authority and further legitimized their ongoing activities in religious and educational domains. It is possible that the Algerian ʿulamaʾ maintained this same ideological framework even after 1 November 1954, when the FLN, composed of youth who were largely unknown to colonial authorities, suddenly intervened in the Algerian political scene, and continued to consider themselves as spiritual guides of the nation well beyond the war of independence. Scholars can address this open question only by examining the ʿulamaʾ’s discourse within its particular historical context.
