Ali Abd al-Raziq

1888 - 1966

Egyptian Islamic judge, writer, and politician.

Ali Abd al-Raziq, who came from a family of large landowners in southern Egypt, was educated at alAzhar in Cairo and in England and became an Islamic court judge in Mansura. In 1925, he published a controversial book on the secularization of power in the Muslim state, Al-Islam wa usul al-hukm (Islam and the bases of rule), in which he argued for separating Islamic from political authority, on the grounds that the Qurʾan and biographies of Muhammad show that God called on the Prophet to be a religious counselor to his people, not a head of state, and that the caliphate as a political institution was a post-Qurʾanic innovation not essential to Islam. The publication of this book aroused controversy among Muslims, especially Egyptians, because in the new Republic of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) had recently abolished the Islamic caliphate, because many Muslims wanted to elect or appoint a new caliph in a country other than Turkey, and because King Fuʾad I of Egypt had proposed himself as a candidate for the caliphate. Abd alRaziq was accused of promoting atheism and was censured by the ulama (Islamic scholars) of al-Azhar, deprived of his title of shaykh, and relieved of his duties as a religious judge. He was, however, backed by many liberal writers, including Taha Husayn and Muhammad Husayn Haykal.

He continued to defend his ideas in articles written for al-Siyasa, the weekly journal of the Constitutional Liberal Party, and in lectures delivered in Cairo University's faculties of law and of letters. He later served twice as waqf (Muslim endowment) minister and was elected to membership in the Arabic Language Academy. Following the 1952 revolution, he practiced law and published a collection of writings by his brother, Mustafa Abd al-Raziq, including a detailed biography. He is often cited by Egyptian and foreign writers as a leading secularist thinker and an opponent of King Fuʾad's religious pretensions.

Bibliography

Adams, Charles C. Islam and Modernism in Egypt: A Study of the Modern Reform Movement Inaugurated by Muhammad ʿAbduh. London: Oxford University Press, 1933; New York: Russell and Russell, 1968.

Binder, Leonard. "Ali Abd al Raziq and Islamic Liberalism." Asian and African Studies 10 (March 1982): 31 - 67.

Rosenthal, Erwin I. J. Islam in the Modern National State. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

— ARTHUR GOLDSCHMIDT