Editorial

Abstract

As this issue goes to press, the Muslim world is reeling from a number of
events: President Bush has reversed decades of American foreign policy to
come out in favor of Israel’s annexation of huge swaths of the West Bank;
Israel continues to murder top Hamas leaders in Palestine; in Afghanistan,
Karzai is having trouble administering a country that is slipping back to the
pre-Taliban war-lord era, and violence continues to escalate in an increasingly
destabilized Iraq. Bush’s insistence that the so-called “war on terror”
is for the sake of freedom rings increasingly hollow, and the United States,
under his administration, appears to be a major catalyst for instability rather
than stability in the world. When I think of Bush and his team, I cannot help
but recall the Qur’anic verse that says: “When it is said to them: ‘Make not
mischief on the earth,’ they say: ‘We are only ones that put things right.’ Of
a surety, they are the ones who make mischief, but they realize (it) not”
(2:11-12).
The Bush administration’s responses to the tragic carnage of 9/11 has
unleashed mayhem in the Muslim world that is reminiscent not of the
twentieth century, but of the nineteenth, in which the European powers
attempted to colonize the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Thus, Salem’s
article, in a finely nuanced analysis of Jamal al-Din al-Afghani’s and
Rashid Rida’s responses to European colonialism, has reverberations in
today’s climate. Salem’s main argument is that al-Afghani and Rida
advanced similar political programs on three different levels: fighting
colonialism, establishing modern Islamic states, and calling for itjihad in
the interpretation and implementation of Islamic law. It is hard not to see
the Muslim world’s present condition reflected in their struggles nearly a
century ago, and thus to feel a special relevance in studying the lives and
works of these two influential nineteenth-century figures. What were the
issues they reflected upon? What were their conclusions, observations, and
suggestions? What worked and did not work for them? Salem’s article is
very instructive in this regard.
One of the thorniest issues alal-Afghani and Rida attempted to address
was the relationship and compatibility between a modern nation-state and
an Islamic state. To what extent were these complementary or ...