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 ...