Blasphemy as a Justification for Violence

Against Free Thinkers in Modern Egypt

Dr Hussien Soliman
Bibliotheca Alexandrina
One of the most significant events that happened in modern Egypt is the
coming of the French Campaign to occupy the country on the eve of the 18th
century. The occupied Egyptians realised that the French occupiers or the
West in general, progressed in nearly all fields. The Arab intellectuals
promptly tried to respond to this defeat by thinking the way out. While
suggestions varied, it mainly focused on two methods; the first was
presented mainly by the Islamists, who argued that responding to the West
had to be through reforming and reviving the religion of Islam to return to
the old glory of the Muslim civilisation. Others, who are called the liberals,
mostly educated in the West or influenced by its thinkers, saw that a
considerable portion of the problem lied in religion itself and worked on
excluding all religions from worldly affairs. They pursued the Western
model as the ideal for Arab reformation.
The conflict between the Islamists and the Liberals began in Egypt at the
turn of the nineteenth century. Every party provided arguments to mobilise
people to believe in their approach to reforming the declining Muslim world.
It has to be said that liberals might have been wrong in suddenly putting
religion aside in a society that spirituality constitutes the prime mover of its
character, but they had every right to express their views. The Islamists had
the right to defend their position not by facing the new Western ideas, but by
responding to ideas and arguments with ideas and arguments. However, each
side resorted to intellectual violence in demonstrating its cause. By
intellectual violence, we mean refusing the other’s thought before
understanding, analysing and absorbing it, merely because it was imported
from the Christian West according to the Islamists, and due to the
deteriorating situation in the Muslim world the liberals refused to take the
Islamic approach to the reformation.
This article is an attempt to discuss the use of blasphemy by Islamists as an
instrument for practising violence against free intellectuals in Modern Egypt.
We can see that the Islamists used the blasphemy weapon against anyone
daring to disagree with their settled Islamic interpretations and the prevailing
political ideology that protect their very existence. Islamists and their
sympathisers depended on the accusation of blasphemy to silence free
thinkers from expressing their views consequently; their opponents faced
exile, imprisonment, murder, deprivation of the academic degree, and even
1
forced divorce. This research focuses on three cases of Arab intellectuals in
the twentieth century: Farah Anton, Ali Abd el-Raziq, and Nasr Hamid Abu
Zaid, representing the development of liberal thinking in modern Egypt.
Besides, the article examines and clarifies how the Islamists confronted
modernity by excommunicating freethinkers and targeting them with
widespread social violence.
1- Farah Anton (1874–1922)
The Orthodox Christian Farah Anton lived in the late Ottoman Empire. He
left Lebanon, when he was young, to Egypt in 1897, because of the
difficulties that confronted the writers in Syria at the time. He arrived in
Alexandria to study journalism and began to write articles for the Egyptian
newspaper al-Ahram, as well as translating French materials into Arabic.
However, the newspaper closed only a few months later, which prompted
Anton to start his magazine al-Jāmiʿa (the league), which was published in
Cairo from 1899 to 1905 and in New York between 1906 and 1908. It is
noticeable that many of the liberal intellectuals of the Arab world at the end
of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century were Christians;
the reason was the relations that tied them with Europe.
Anton is considered one of the first thinkers who worked on laying the
foundations of freethinking in the Arab world. The messages addressed by
his writings included praise of liberal thought in France and England during
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, condemnation of the dominance of
tradition in the Arab world, the assertion that reason should replace tradition
in defining standards of human behaviour and that progress requires
retaining only those traditions that do not conflict with the modernisation
project. Thus, through his writings, Anton sought to emphasise that there is
no need in modern times for what he described as ‘the non-essential part of
religion’, in other words, the religious law. His second condition for reform
was the separation of worldly authorities and spiritual authorities.
Anton was largely affected by the French intellectuals and philosophers of
the Enlightenment. He adopted certain topics, translated, and published them
in al-Jāmiʿa. These ranged from the sceptical attitude of religious
institutions of Renan to the ideas of the emancipation of women and the
educational reforms of Simon. Through translations, Anton was also
exposed to multiple literatures such as the English, the German and the
Russian, in addition to the writings of Spencer, Nietzsche and Tolstoy1.

1
D. M. Reid, The Odyssey of Farah Antun, Minneapolis & Chicago: Bibliotheca
Islamica, Inc., 1975: 26-27.
2
Anton tried to popularise certain European achievements and ways of
thinking and to recommend them to the oriental audience as a means of
solving the East’s problems. He wrote an article, turned later into a book,
about the Arab philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes), showing that such ways
of thinking, the rational, were not completely foreign to the East, but indeed
had been used and advocated by one of the greatest Arab philosophers.
Anton makes clear that the subject of his book is philosophical rather than
religious.
It seems clear that Anton returned to the study of the Islamic heritage to
respond and refute French orientalist Ernest Renan, whose (Averroes et l'a
verroïsme 1866) established the claim that the Arabs were only translators
and carriers of Greek philosophy with little original philosophical thought of
their own. In his response, Anton had to reread the philosophical writings of
the long disregarded and unappreciated Averroes to articulate the Arab
intellectuals’ answer to Renan’s accusations. Anton’s revisiting of classical
philosophy, however, was the first bird that heralded and established a new
tradition in modern Arab thought. This tradition was interested in combining
rational philosophy and classical Islam while evading the old ways of
writing on heritage through Islamic law and theology. This work was
commonly lauded as the first genuine study of the Islamic heritage because
it utilised a new topic, rationalism, and appropriated an unfamiliar method,
philology. 2 It is necessary to say that conservative Muslims have always
regarded philosophy as an enemy of religion. That is why when Anton's
book, “Averroes and his Philosophy” was published in 1903, the Islamists
and Anton’s friend Rashid Riḍā (d. 1935), editor of the magazine al-Manār
(the lighthouse) accused him of blaspheming Islam and its ulema.3
Rashid Riḍā, who happens to be the source and reference to all the latter
Islamists groups, including the extremists, considered Anton’s approach in
dealing with the Arab tradition to be more dangerous than that of the
Christian missionaries, he says: “I do not fear from the missionaries that the
Muslim will become a Christian. Rather, I fear that he will [be led to] doubt
the fundamental essence of religion and become a libertine….These zealots
did not stop at attacking [Islam] in books, newspapers, and religious
periodicals. They even spat out the poison of their hostility in the political

2
H. T. Agbaria: The Return Of The Turath: The Arab Rationalist Association 1959-
2000, University of Texas at Austin, 2018: 65-66.
3
F. M. Najjar, The Debate On Islam And Secularism In Egypt, Arab Studies Quarterly,
Vol. 18, No. 2, 1996: 14.
3
and academic newspapers, one alleging that Islam is the enemy of reason
and religion, and another claiming that its politics harms all people.”4
Riḍā, who himself has a reformist ideology, was motivated to defend Islam
and began to respond to Anton’s ideas. He also urged the Grand Mufti of
Egypt Mohammad Abdu (d. 1905) to respond to Anton's contentions. Anton
was very surprised to learn that it was Riḍā, as one of his best friends, who
agitated the feelings of the mufti against his journal. However, Anton had a
fighting spirit, and liked to enter into polemics. His dispute with Abdu has
become well known and Abdu was always ready to defend Islam against
accusations of backwardness5.
Anton and Riḍā had indeed migrated together from Lebanon to Egypt, but
the friendship they possessed turned, in the stress of conflict, into violent
and contemptuous hostility. It is not difficult to see why, if one reads the
exchanges, for Anton's views struck at the root of Rashid and Abdu's
convictions6. Their arguments did not remain purely on an intellectual level.
They quickly developed into insult and distortion of each other’s position.
They charged each other with having escalated the problem to gain
popularity for their journals and raise the number of subscribers. In addition,
both of them turned to accuse each other of being ignorant. Anton suggested
that Riḍā lacked the knowledge, especially, of the French language and of
the science of Kalām (Islamic theology), required to embark on such
debates, and should have left the matter to his more erudite teacher, Abdu.
From his side, Riḍā maintained that Anton had not simply made a well-
intentioned mistake, but had purposely disparaged Islam as well. He also
maintained that Anton’s strategy was to separate the teacher from his
disciple. Anton declared that while Abdu’s rejoinders took the shape of a
respectable intellectual debate, Riḍā was inclined to slander and offensc7.
It should be noted that the reaction of Abdu, one of the prominent Islamists
scholars of the age, to Anton, who was until then a marginal figure in the

4
M. R. Riḍā, The Criticisms of the Christians and the Proofs of Islam, trans. Simon A.
Wood, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008: 26
5
J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature in Egypt,
BRILL, 1984: 224-225.
6
A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798- 1939, Cambridge University
Press, 1962: 254.
7
R. Umar, Islamic reformism and Christianity: a critical reading of the works of
Muhammad Rashid Riḍā and his associates (1898-1935), Faculty of Religious Studies,
Leiden University, 2008: 58.
4
intellectual milieu of Egypt, reflects the challenge the liberal ideas posed to
those with an Islamic orientation8.
However, such reform ideas, injected into a society organized based on
adherence to revealed religions could have revolutionary implications.
Anton was quite aware of this. In his dedication of Averroes’ book, he
declares that the book is meant for “the Eastern intellectuals, in Islam,
Christianity and other religions.” Which means that he knew his ideas will
shock the public, so he made sure to remind his readers that his ideas are not
for the ordinary but addressed to those who can understand it.
Whilst the debate with Abdu undoubtedly pushed the interest in Anton’s
magazine to its highest point, it was Riḍā’s critique of al-Jāmi’a, which led
to the immediate withdrawal of Muslim subscribers, which contributed to its
collapse. Due to its sharp attack, al-Manār was said to be the assassin of al-
Jāmiʿa. However, Riḍā believed that the reason for the latter’s collapse was
its editor’s lack of knowledge of Islamic matters. After its first failure, Riḍā
proudly taunted that ‘no Arab paper would ever survive without its Muslim
readership, as they represented the majority of the nation.
This debate, rather than bringing together the different positions of the
challengers, it stimulated antagonism and misunderstandings, radicalising
positions and strengthening those who claimed the dialogue’s
impracticability. This difficulty was not only due to the different cultural
backgrounds of Anton from one side and Abdu and Riḍā on the other, but
also to the historical understanding of Islamic and Arab history. Although
the aim might have been worthwhile for both debaters, the consequences
increased the disaffection between the authors, and between Anton and Riḍā,
encouraging the fracture among the more secular and nationalist element of
the Arab Renaissance9.
Both the Islamists and the Liberals see the weaknesses of their society. Both
call for reform, both suggest a gradualist approach. However, their
conceptions of the framework of reform are quite different from one another.
The Islamists want to retain, or restore, the connection between religion,
Islam, and the world and to further the reform of the world by the reform of
Islam. The Freethinkers hold that the elimination of any institutionalised
influence of religion on worldly matters is a necessary precondition of
reform.
8
W. Abu-ʿUksa, Liberal Tolerance in Arab Political Thought: Translating Farah Anton
(1874–1922), Journal of Levantine Studies 3:2, 2013: 152.
9
M. Demichelis, Kalām viewpoints present within the debate on secularisation between
F. Anṭūn and M. ‘Abdu. God’s absolutism and Islām’s irrationality as cornerstones of
Orientalist Arab-Christian thought during the Nahḍa, University of Oxford, 2013: 10.
5
Anton’s aspiration to define a new social contract that would be predicated
on individualism and secularism posed a crucial challenge to Islamic
reformers who endeavoured to refine a new political culture within the limits
of the Islamic traditions. From Abdu’s perspective, the challenge that Anton
posed was crucial as well as destructive. The idea of individualising
religious belief and, in so doing, individualising membership in the religious
community, was perceived as a direct threat to the sacred ties of Islam and
its superiority as a collective identity and religious faith. Furthermore,
combining the conflicting components of the concept of the civil state with
the concept of religion was unendurable10.
Islamists, represented by Abdu, Riḍā, and others, refused to let Anton
present and express his liberal thoughts to the educated and the common
people, arguing that it contains blasphemy and exceeds the limits of Islam.
Violence committed against Anton by using blasphemy to agitate the people
against the blasphemous man, who works to destroy Islam. Many works
were written to defend the religion that insulted, defamed, and attacked him.
All that resulted in the disappearance of Anton’s magazine Al-Jāmiʿa in
1904. Anton died in 1922. He was 48 years old and according to some of his
contemporaries, a resigned and broken man, yet with a pen in his hand11.
The immediate impact of Anton’s liberal call remained limited. That was not
so much because his main opponent was the respected Abdu or that the
latter’s arguments were so convincing. Rather, Anton’s suggestions were
derived from European, mainly French, historical experience, and so, the
blasphemy weapon was used, as was usual in Islamic history, against Anton
simply to defeat his ideas before becoming popular. Anton defended the
value of tolerance towards the difference in opinions and religion.
Unfortunately, many Islamists do not acknowledge the right to difference
and when a new view arises, they promptly depend on the accusation of
blasphemy to mobilise people to intimidate the scholar by all ways to silence
him. Essentially, blasphemy is used when one party is unable to respond to
the other party’s arguments, both because they do not have the power to
respond or fearing for their authority as a religious power in society.
The immediate impact of Anton’s liberal call remained limited. That was not
so much because his main opponent was the respected Abdu or that the
latter’s arguments were so convincing. Rather, Anton’s suggestions were
derived from European, mainly French, historical experience, and the

10
W. Abu-ʿUksa, Liberal Tolerance in Arab Political Thought: 154.
11
C. Schumann, Nationalism and Liberal Thought in the Arab East: Ideology and
Practice, Routledge, 2010: 215.
6
Egyptian society had not yet made similar experiences, at least not as deeply
and thoroughly. Consequently, these suggestions were only favourably
received by a few well-informed intellectuals such as our next liberal scholar
Ali Abd el-Raziq.
Ali Abd el-Raziq (1878-1966)
Ali Abd el-Raziq was an Egyptian Muslim intellectual and Sharia (Islamic
Law) judge, educated at al-Azhar University, the world’s largest Islamic
religious institution, from which he received his ‘alim, Scholar, degree in
1911. The next year, he travelled to Oxford University to study economics
and political science, but he returned to Cairo at the outbreak of the First
World War in 1914.
Raziq wrote a little book called: “Islam and the Foundations of Government”
published in 1925, which had a significant impact on the subsequent socio-
political events across the Muslim world, generating what has been
considered by some to be the greatest controversy in the modern history of
Muslim societies. Raziq wrote the book during a long period, in which he
tried to understand the contemporary Muslim society he lives in, and
presented his analysis of the history of Islam, in an attempt to give a solution
to the crisis of the Muslim world.
The title of leadership in Islam
The core idea of the book is, that “Islam is a religion that does not advocate
a specific form of the ruling.” Raziq focused his criticism both at those who
use religious law as a contemporary political proscription and at the history
of Muslim rulers claiming legitimacy by the caliphate, one form of the
political and religious regime in Islamic history. The Ottoman Caliphate had
just been abolished in 1924, and some Islamists scholars responded that it
was incumbent upon the Arabs, in particular, to reinstate the caliphate in the
Arab lands. Raziq wrote that past rulers spread the notion of religious
justification for the caliphate “so that they could use religion as a shield
protecting their thrones against the attacks of rebels.”
Perhaps the ideas of Raziq provided the ground from which the Arab
freethinkers later embarked on their fierce campaign against Islamic law,
especially concerning the economic, political, and criminal rules. The book
of Raziq is the first explicit invitation by an Azhari scholar to reject
‘accepted’ old concepts and interpretations of Islamic religion and history,

7
and replace them with modern interpretations and concepts along the lines
suggested by orientalists in their writings on Islam12.
Raziq argued that the caliphate was not a religious obligation for Muslims
and that having been taken over by despots, it had inflicted intense suffering
and produced deep and devastating dissent within the community. This
verdict on the part of Raziq is believed by many to have impeded the revival
of the caliphate and discredited the arguments of its supporters13. However,
the whole point of Raziq’s book was to ease Muslims’ guilty conscience
about living without a caliph.
The book took much attention in Egypt and led to the first trial of an
intellectual for his liberal ideas in modern times. The battle over the book
raged in the press and it was brought to court by the decision 14. Here Rashid
Riḍā appears once again. He was the first responder to Raziq. Riḍā
represented the conservatives Islamists, who always bear the burden of
defending Islam, seeing the entire decline in the Muslim world in
abandoning and disregard of religion. Anton argued with Riḍā before trying
to persuade him that religion does not need any defenders, as revelations are
sacred and transcendent, but Riḍā was convinced that the solution lies in
reforming and advocating Islam.
Riḍā highlighted that Raziq had been “contaminated” by “Western” ideas
when he undertook “secular” studies in the newly founded Egyptian
University, shortly after receiving his degree from al-Azhar University.
Because he went on to Oxford University in Britain for further education, his
opponents claimed that he had been exposed to “Orientalist” approaches,
thus explaining his “deviation” from the orthodox path15.
Riḍā described Raziq as one of the proponents of the West and directly
accused him with blasphemy and apostasy, stating “These Europeanized
apostates are spreading their doctrines through Egypt, calling for Egyptians
to “abandon the Turks,” and “make the government of Egypt an irreligious
government like the government of Ankara.” To Riḍā, ‘Abd al-Raziq was
“another screamer among the Europeanised of these [Islamic] countries,”
who helped the Europeans to win over Muslim hearts and minds. By arguing
that Islam had nothing constructive to say about political affairs, Abd al-

12
H. A. Shboul: Why Secularism Failed to Become an Arab Socio-Political Culture?,
International Journal of History and Philosophical Research Vol.5, No.5, 2017, 3.
13
A. Abdel Razek, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power, Translated by Maryam
Loutfi, Edited by Abdou Filali-Ansary, Edinburgh University Press, 2012: 7.
14
Ibid: 6.
15
A. Abdel Razek, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power: 8-9.
8
Raziq fit the mould of the Europeanised Muslims that Riḍā vehemently
attacked.
Riḍā emphasised that what Raziq did was obvious atheism and clear
subjugation to Europe. Riḍā says in his book “The Caliphate”: “The atheists
of the Europeanised believe that the religion [of Islam] does not agree with
this age concerning politics, science, and civilisation and that the country
that is restricted by religion is fettered and is not capable of becoming
powerful, strong, and equal to the great countries. There are many of them
among the educators in Europe and in the schools that teach European
languages and modern sciences. Most of them hold the opinion that the
government must not be religious16.
Similarly, the religious leader Mohammad Shaker, who was one of the grand
scholars of al-Azhar, wrote attacking Raziq and accusing him of trying to
establish an irreligious state in Egypt17. Besides, some of the trusted Muslim
religious scholars in Egypt such as Youssef al-Degwy and Mohammad
Bekhet issued a religious edict declaring Raziq an apostate, betrayer, and
enemy of Islam, assuring that he writes to destroy the religion, the Prophet,
and the history of Islam.
Riḍā incited al-Azhar to try Abd al-Raziq fearing that he and his friends
would say that the silence of al-Azhar towards him was either an acceptance
to his views or inability to respond to him. The case occupied the public
concern and the religious leaders tried to convince people with the
blasphemy and atheism of Raziq through their journals and magazines. They
provided the common people with arguments that affect and provoke them
against him, saying that the privileged life in which Raziq raised pushed him
to hate Islam. They said that Raziq followed and was influenced by the
opponents of Islam, such as the philosophers and orientalists of the West. It
has been said that the mob got so excited that some of them set Raziq’s
house on fire18.
In Egypt, the religious scholars had been attempting to suppress the works of
the liberal writers for many decades. The liberal ideas of Raziq confronted
with severe disaffection from the public who considered him as one of the
followers of the enemy, the West, betraying Muslims and conspiring to
destroy the religion of Islam. As a result, demonstrations launched from al-
Azhar supported by the public condemning Raziq, demanding his trial.

.70 :1988 ،‫ القاهرة‬،‫ اخلالفة أو اإلمامة العظمى‬،‫ حممد رشيد رضا‬16

:1973 ،‫ منشورات العصر احلديث‬،"‫ اإلسالم واخلالفة يف العصر احلديث "نقد كتاب اإلسالم وأصول احلكم‬،‫ حممد ضياء الدين الريس‬17
.97
18
J. Samad, John Locke and Muslim Liberalism, Oxford University Press, 2011: 106.
9
Some even suggested that the publication of the book was the result of an
imperialist-Zionist conspiracy to divide and rule the Muslims by preventing
the establishment of an Arab caliphate 19. A large number of al-Azhar
scholars and some of the official institutions in Egypt signed a petition
addressed to the rector and grand scholars of al-Azhar asking them to do
their job in defending the religion of Islam and to respond to the
blasphemous, atheistic, and extreme allegations of Raziq and his distortion
of Islamic history. Others charged Raziq of introducing an alien Christian
distinction between religion and politics20.
In the same context, politics played its role, as King Fouad of Egypt was
extremely angry by Raziq’s book. His close aides at the palace transmitted
and portrayed the author as a person working to bring down the kingdom
and to establish a republic in Egypt. For the palace, it is a political crime and
demanded Raziq to clarify his stance on the issue. It is worth remembering
that a book denouncing the Caliphate would have been highly problematic
for King Fouad in 1925, bearing in mind that Raziq's book was published
only a year after Mustafa Kemal had unilaterally abolished the Ottoman
Empire in Turkey. King Fouad was seeking the office of Caliph for himself
and it was no secret that al-Azhar’ jurists were in bed with the royal
establishment of Egypt21.
Therefore, the religious and political accusations filed against Raziq moved
al-Azhar to put him on a disciplinary or religious hearing before the supreme
religious council of al-Azhar. The case had become an affair of the state
because it combined religious and political dimensions, in addition, the
accused occupy a judicial position in the state, and he is a member of a well-
known family, which has close ties with the Egyptian political leaders and a
great influence on journalism.
Indeed, al-Azhar officially accused Raziq with blasphemy and stated that his
book contains violations of Islam, the texts of the Holy Quran, the prophetic
traditions and the Muslim scholar’s consensus. He stood before the High
Council of al-Azhar. The rector of al-Azhar read the Council’s decision:
“We, the Sheikhs (the Religious Leaders) of al-Azhar University, with the
consensus of the twenty-four ‘ulama (Scholars) among us from the High
Council of ‘Ulama, have ruled to dismiss ‘Ali ‘Abd al-Raziq, one of the
‘ulama of al-Azhar University, judge of the Mansura Shari‘a Court of First
19
L. Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies, University of
Chicago Press, 1988: 152.
20
E. S. Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative
Perspective, Columbia University Press, 2010: 40.
21
G. Faisal. “The First Muslim Secularist,” The Guardian, April 9, 2009.
10
Instance, and author of the book Islam and the Foundations of Government,
from the corps of ‘ulama.” 22
In such a way, the eminent traditional scholars and members of the faculty
from al-Azhar were asked to determine whether the ideas presented in the
book were acceptable from an orthodox point of view and whether the Raziq
could still hold onto his title of ‘alim (theologian)23. It is important to note
that al-Azhar is the most authoritative institution of learning in Sunni Islam,
and its views and actions have an exemplary effect in the Muslim world.
This event is the most prominent example of the ideologically charged
proscription of free speech in Egypt at the time24.
Raziq vented his frustration at the ongoing vulnerability of freedom of
thought, and especially religious freedom, to repression by al-Azhar, an
institution legally subordinate to the executive branch. He also pointed out
that few of his colleagues had come to his defence during al-Azhar's
campaign against him. Raziq cast the blame for these failures on the poor
performance of the government, declaring that only a committed and just
regime can pave the way for religious reform and ensure freedom of thought
for all Egyptians25.
Raziq's supporters, primarily, the Liberal Constitutionalist Party, whose
ministers even resigned from the government in protest against Raziq's
dismissal, based their stand on the constitutional protection of freedom of
expression and not on religious arguments. They also pointed out that Raziq
was a government official and his dismissal by al-Azhar was an
unauthorized act. Stressing their loyalty to Islam, they opposed attempts by
their political adversaries to colour the affair with religious overtones to
enlist the public against them. They focused their charges against the Wafd
Party "Delegation Party", a nationalist liberal political party in Egypt, whose
leader, had questioned Raziq's religious qualifications and justified the
sanction against him by pointing to al-Azhar's authority to denounce anyone
in its ranks who renounced the 'principles of religion'26.
Ultimately, the Council decided to expel Raziq from the ranks of the
scholars by revoking his alamiyya (the degree that has qualified an
individual as a religious scholar), and forced his resignation from his post as
22
The High Council of ‘Ulama. Radd hay'at kibār al-ʻulam̄ʼ ʻalā kitāb al-Islām wa Uṣül
al-Hukm, al-Azhar magazine, Cairo, 1993: 11.
23
A. Abdel Razek, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power: 5.
24
E. Kolig, Freedom of Speech and Islam, Routledge, 2016: 150.
25
M. Hatina, On the Margins of Consensus: The Call to Separate Religion and State in
Modern Egypt, Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 2000: 40.
26
Ibid: 39.
11
a judge. Thereafter, Raziq formally lacked the qualifications to keep his post
as a court judge27. Although, some scholars have argued that the High
Council of scholars was wrong to dismiss Raziq from the corps of scholars.
Their decision was “partisan and political…carried out under the pretext of
religion.” All that led Raziq to spend most of the rest of his life teaching at
the secular Egyptian University28 .
Although, after a while, Raziq made a short return to public office as
minister of Islamic affairs, his writing on the issue of state and religion
following the storm aroused by his book in 1925 was indeed banned. He
never withdrew or denounced his thesis as an error, as some other
intellectuals did when faced with similar pressure. However, he was silenced
and did not continue his research or publish any further on the subject. He
eventually withdrew from the intellectual scene, took refuge in stubborn
silence, and built himself a room in a tower where he dedicated the
remainder of his life to studying29. He endured decades of suffering which
included ostracism in addition to humiliation and isolation until his death in
misery and poverty.
The fierce opposition to Raziq’s ideas reflects the challenge his book and
liberal thought posed to the traditional Islamists on not only the caliphate but
also the entire political theory of Islam perceived by many as an integral part
of the Islamic message preached by the Prophet Mohammad in the seventh
century.
Beginning with Riḍā and his followers inside and outside of al-Azhar, they
targeted the different ideas of the liberal intellectuals with the accusation of
blasphemy and apostasy, which promptly infuriated the society especially
the illiterates defending their religion and the educated defending their
positions and interests in many cases. Often, society deals with the
blasphemous with violence as a means to prohibit him from spreading his
heresies. In Raziq’s case, violence committed in the shape of silencing,
sentencing, firing him, and preventing him from writing such ideas once
again and living in seclusion for the rest of his life. However, if we compare
the Islamists and societal response to the freethinkers in Egypt, it is obvious
that the opposition to the liberal ideas has worsened from using blasphemy

27
J. Broucek, The Controversy of Shaykh 'Ali 'Abd Al-Raziq, Florida State University,
2012: 2.
28
S. T. Ali, A Religion, Not A State: Ali 'Abd al-Raziq's Islamic Justification of Political
Secularism, The University of Utah Press, 2009: 118.
29
A. Abdel Razek, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power: 1.
12
to suppress the freedom of thought (Anton) to use it to target the personal
and intellectual security of the scholar (Raziq).

In spite of all of that, the persecution of free thinkers has not been stopped in
modern Egypt. We will now move from the time of Raziq in the middle of
the twentieth century to the end of the century, with the last case of this
study, Dr Nasr Abu Zaid.
2- Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid (1943-2010)
It is worthy to mention that at the period of Anton, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and Raziq, in the middle of the same century, we could
identify blasphemy as an accusation of a person for his liberal opinions
mainly concerning religion. These opinions were mostly met with public
outrage and violence and reached its peak at a disciplinary committee ruled
to strip the accused, Raziq, off his academic degree. However, by the end of
the century blasphemy cases were in the courts of law, meaning that Muslim
countries now find themselves obliged and responsible to respond and
sentence those who dared to differ with the prevailing narrative of religion
and politics. This is evidenced when we witness that those countries depend
on the religious institutions for their very existence and religious leaders
support the political entity with people’s votes, so politics work to punish
anyone who goes against religion. Therefore, blasphemy trials against
intellectuals were by no means rare in the Arab world in the 1980s and
1990s, and their number increased dramatically during these two decades.
Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid was an Egyptian scholar of Islamic studies at Cairo
University. He became well known in Egypt and beyond when, in 1995, the
Egyptian Court of Appeal declared him an apostate. The whole inquisition
of Dr Nasr began when he was an assistant professor at Cairo University and
sought promotion in 1992 to the rank of full professor at Cairo University’s
Department of Arabic Studies. One of the committee’s referees refused his
ideas specifically his theory of Qur’anic exegesis and his views on several
Islamic jurisprudential issues such as polygamy and the Islamic veil30. The
objecting member prepared a report that denied Dr Nasr the promotion,
questioned his faith, and dubbed his research the "cultural aids", "intellectual
terrorism" and a "Marxian-secularist" attempt to destroy Egypt’s Muslim
society. He argued that Dr Nasr had blasphemed in some of his work and
publicly charged him with apostasy, an offence punishable by death. An
apostate is supposed to be executed according to the opinions of traditional

30
N. Zainol, L. Majid, M. Kadir, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd as a Modern Muslim Thinker,
International Journal of Islamic Thought, 2014: 63-64.
13
jurists unless he or she does repent and return to the true faith. Until
execution is carried out, an apostate is treated as a dead person31.
It is not just that, the referee in Dr Nasr’s case moved some of his friends,
who were sympathising with his stance, to file a lawsuit against him seeking
to annul his marriage, because he is no longer a Muslim. Dr Nasr replied that
the hidden intention of the Islamists was to have him killed legally and
officially by the name of Islam.
By casting serious doubts about Dr Nasr’s faith and patriotism, the Islamist
professor was effectively demonising Dr Nasr and fuelling a hostile societal
response toward him. By describing him with pejoratives and unrelated
terms like “atheism,” “secularism,” and “Marxism,” which he mistakenly
interprets as the same thing, he blocked the possibility for real debate.
Ever since the Islamists has succeeded in sticking the label of apostate on Dr
Nasr, preachers in mosques all across Egypt had clamoured for his death. Dr
Nasr and his wife were confined to their apartment. Government guards,
armed with automatic assault weapons, were stationed around the block
where they lived fearing for their lives32.
Surprisingly, The Court found Dr Nasr guilty of blasphemy, and this was the
first time a court identified an Egyptian citizen as an apostate and
blasphemous. The judiciary proved that Dr Nasr did not hesitate to
contradict established truths, even historic ones, while he was fully aware of
its meaning and truth within the balance of Islamic law 33. In this ruling, the
Court adhered to the principles of Islamic doctrine by defining apostasy as
“a clear declaration of blasphemy” by a Muslim. A few months before the
final ruling, Dr Nasr had left Egypt with his wife for the Netherlands where
he taught Arabic and Islamic studies in addition to the research that he
conducted at Leiden University.
In the case of Dr Nasr, the consequences of blasphemy are not the issue
here, but the protection of the orthodoxy of Islam. In the words of the Court
of Cassation: “To depart from Islam is to revolt against it, and this
necessarily finds its reflection in the loyalty of the individual to the Islamic
law, the state, and his ties with the society. This is what no law or state
tolerates. No individual has the right to proclaim that which contradicts the

31
21.P. R. Loza, The Case Of Abu Zaid And The Reactions It Prompted From Egyptian
Society, Georgetown University Washington, 2013: 36.
32
N. H. Abu Zaid, E. R. Nelson, Voice of an Exile “Reflections on Islam, Praeger
Publisher, USA, 2004: 8.
33
M. S. Berger, Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: An Evaluation of
Recent Cases from Egypt’s Highest Courts, Human Rights Quarterly, The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2003: 731-732.
14
public policy or morals, use his opinion to harm the fundamentals upon
which the society is built, to revile the sacred things, or to disdain Islam or
any other heavenly religion.”34
Moreover, it seems clear that the Egyptian courts condemn Dr Nasr as an
apostate for his efforts to reinterpret the Qur’anic texts in the light of modern
theories. What at stake here is the prohibition of the application of modern
theories to the text of the Qur’an. 35 Dr Nasr said: “I use non-traditional
research methods as I delve into the field of Islamic Studies.” That alone is
enough to label me an apostate.”36 It is the context in which some people's
understanding and explanation of religion enjoyed an almost religious
sanctity. In this specific atmosphere of intellectual stagnation, any new fresh
explanation or interpretation of religion could easily be branded as
blasphemous and proof for apostasy37.
On the other hand, the case of Dr Nasr is unique in the legal landscape of
apostasy cases in several respects. First, the accusation of apostasy did not
serve any legal purpose related to personal status law. Why would a claimant
go to such lengths to prove someone’s apostasy? It appears that Dr Nasr case
served no other purpose than settling personal or political scores. According
to Dr Nasr, a personal grudge was involved, he said:” The fact that the
committee member who presented the negative report was the religious
counsellor of one of the "Islamic" investment company to which I made a
critical remark in Critique of Islamic Discourse could explain his insistence
to label my academic works as representing apostasy.” 38 To do so, Dr Nasr’s
accusers made clever use of the existing rules in Egyptian law and
jurisprudence on apostasy39.
The case was introduced and tried based on a religious principle called
hisba. Hisba is a mean for safeguarding the religion from deviance,
innovation, and immorality. It did not exist in the modern Egyptian legal
codes before, but it was adopted in the litigation process to declare Dr Nasr
an apostate. While the principle of hisba existed historically in classical
Islamic law, the form it took in Dr Nasr’s case differed dramatically in that it
came to be articulated with the concept of public order and the state’s duty

34
M. S. Berger, Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: 733.
35
B. Johansen, Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalized Fact: Two Recent Egyptian
Court Judgment, John Hopkins University Press, 2003: 703.
36
N. H. Abu Zaid, E. R. Nelson, Voice of an Exile “Reflections on Islam: 4.
37
N. H. Abu Zaid, "Inquisition Trial in Egypt," Recht van de Islam, 1998: 50.
38
Ibid: 47-48.
39
M. S. Berger, Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: 729.
15
to uphold the morals of the society in congruence with the Islamic tradition
of the majority.
The judgment caused great shock for the entire Egyptian society. A religious
decree from the terrorist Jihad group was dispatched by fax from
Switzerland to many newspapers decided that Dr Nasr should be killed. A
similar decree was issued by a group of al-Azhar scholars, to force his
repentance, called on the government to carry out the legal punishment for
apostasy, which is death40. Besides, the Egyptian Islamic weekly newspaper,
the Islamic banner, published an editorial that railed against “the heretic Abu
Zaid” as someone who endangered the spirituality of his students and urged
the rector of Cairo University to fire him41.
Moreover, one of the prominent religious leader Sheikh Mohammad Ghazali
rejects Dr Nasr’s account of the history of collecting the Qur’an. He dubs Dr
Nasr “drunk,” a harsh slur within a religion that forbids alcohol. Ghazali’s
remark about Dr Nasr’s drunkenness points to what he believes is the
scholar’s incomplete Islam, a charge that implies the scholar’s apostasy,
making him an undesirable person, surely unworthy of debate and
possibly even undeserving of life itself.
Dr Nasr’s hampered ability to express himself meant that Egyptians heard a
great deal more from his detractors, and were therefore predisposed to react
to him negatively. At that time, a radical religious discourse also developed
and was used to justify acts of violence, increasing the risk to Dr Nasr’s life.
According to this line of thinking, religious radicals saw assassinations as an
enactment of God’s will.
Certainly, in modern Islamic countries accusing a thinker of blasphemy
provided extremist religious and terrorist groups with a legal mechanism to
practice terrorism through the court system and combat the principles of
human rights, particularly the rights to freedom of thought, freedom of
expression, and freedom of religion, as well as the right to marry and found
a family. All those were protected by international treaties and the Egyptian
Constitution.
Dr Nasr points out that the laws justified in the name of punishing
blasphemy and apostasy “act as a severe constraint upon the use of reason to
explore and understand the contemporary significance of the Qur’an’s
profound message.” He argues that such laws forcefully silence critical
inquiry in the important realm of religion. He also demonstrates that the
death penalty for apostasy is not derived from the Qur’an. Rather, his view is
that numerous Qur’anic verses stress the importance of freedom of
40
N. H. Abu Zaid, E. R. Nelson, Voice of an Exile “Reflections on Islam: 9l.
41
Ibid: 7.
16
consciousness. The punishment for apostasy is a product of historical
developments, “hence their complete inappropriateness within a modern
context42 .
Dr Nasr wrote: “Today, to think something different from the conclusions
our ancestors made is blasphemy, heresy, and apostasy. “ It is a war in the
literal and not the figurative sense that Islamists are waging using the
weapons of excommunicating, apostasy, and secularism, which they have
made equivalent to atheism, against any rational inquiry that contradicts
their own. Such accusations of atheism are often followed by the actual
shooting of bullets by militant wings of various Islamist groups.” On the
other hand, secular intellectuals who oppose Islamists, Dr Nasr points out,
do not have militant wings like those of the Islamists or the security
apparatus of the state. They are thus left to fight the war with words alone.
It is clear that Dr Nasr’s presence in a hostile mid-nineties Egyptian climate
played a major role in shaping the nation’s reaction to him. A radical socio-
cultural element that manifested itself through violence and expressed open
hostility to government, artists, and intellectuals created an inauspicious
atmosphere for debating his ideas. According to a survey taken in 1993,
when Dr Nasr presented his research, violence between the regime and
Islamist militants took the lives of 231 people that year alone, creating a
cycle of violence that advanced from rural areas into the capital, where
targeted killings of government officials and intellectuals with a similar
outlook to Dr Nasr took place.
Eventually, fate has ordained that during a visit to Indonesia Dr Nasr was
infected by an unknown virus, and was hospitalized in Cairo. He died at a
Cairo hospital on July 5, 2010, at the age of 66. Even the sudden death of Dr
Nasr did not stop his detractors from committing violence against him.
Religious voices continuously declared that Dr Nasr’s death was divine
punishment for his apostasy and blasphemy, and discouraged Muslims from
wishing mercy on his soul, a customary way that Muslims mention a
deceased person. Others said ironically on Dr Nasr's death that the people of
Quhafa, the village where Abu Zaid was born and his final resting place, did
not attend his funeral services for fear that the curse that killed the scholar
would befall them too. They also kept calling meningitis that took Dr Nasr’s
life a mysterious disease, to cultivate the notion that the scholar’s passing
was the result of supernatural intervention. Islamists asserted frequently in

42
N. H. Abu Zaid, "Renewing Qur'anic Studies in the Contemporary World," in: P.
Marshall, N. Shea, Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes Are Choking
Freedom Worldwide, Oxford University Press, 2011: 293-4.
17
the public media that Dr Nasr’s life is also worthless and expendable. In a
word, Dr Nasr was cursed in his life and death.

Conclusion

This article tries to cast some light on three intellectuals who lived in Egypt
throughout the twentieth century, as examples of the reaction of the religious
and political authorities, as well as the society, to new liberal thinking. It
seeks to emphasize that the impact of Islamists increased dramatically in all
Muslim countries in recent decades, to such a degree that they used the
threat of blasphemy against anyone who dares to think differently.
Blasphemy in conservative societies is doubtless a significant justification
for violence in all its forms. The Islamists’ violence began with intellectual
intimidation as in the case of Farah Anton. The religious authority,
represented by Mohamed Abdu and Rashid Riḍā, attacked Anton by writing
books and articles against his ideas. However, by the mid-twentieth century,
we find that some Islamists took more aggressive forms of violence in
response to the new liberal ideas. They fired Ali Abd al-Raziq from his job
in the university and from his post as an Islamic law judge.
Moreover, the Islamists’ violence reached its peak by the end of the last
century when they forced Dr Nasr Abu Zaid to leave Egypt fearing for his
life, after accusing him of apostasy or repudiating Islam and a court ratified
and ruled to divorce the apostate scholar from his wife. It is noticeable that
the reaction towards liberal thinkers in Egypt escalated throughout the
twentieth century. It started by responding to arguments by arguments with
little violence. By the end of the century, the response to the liberal thinkers
was by more violence without any rational responses. The Islamists use
blasphemy as an instrument of violence against the freethinkers to distract
people from paying attention to their enlightening ideas. This was for the
religious authority to remain in control of people’s mentality, to move the
public opinion against free thinkers, and to remain close solely to the
political rulers.
Generally, I believe that common people everywhere do not understand why
the accused scholar or intellectual is accused of blasphemy. I mean the deep
controversial ideas and details of those intellectuals are difficult for the
nonprofessional to comprehend. Many educated Islamists often do not get
much of what is different from the prevailing interpretations of Islam that
they do not accept any dissenting opinion. Instead, the Islamists have to
consider the opposing opinions as just another view they could take in their

18
general understanding of the issue of reformation or to analyse these ideas
by putting them in their context.
To conclude, after a multicultural and tolerant Egypt at the beginning of the
twentieth century, violence has been used by some to defend their
perspective of Islam. At the end of the century, the State itself replaced those
people to take the role of the protector of Islam by extreme deterrence in the
form of excluding and sentencing freethinkers, which indicates that together
governments and Islamists have worked to silence liberal intellectuals in
modern Egyptian society. Besides, the dangers that faced the freethinkers in
Egypt forced them to keep silent fearing for both their reputation and life. It
also hindered their ability to respond to blasphemy accusations.

References

1. A. Abdel Razek, Islam and the Foundations of Political Power,

Translated by Maryam Loutfi, Edited by Abdou Filali-Ansary, Edinburgh
University Press, 2012.
2. A. Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798- 1939, Cambridge
University Press, 1962.
3. B. Johansen, Apostasy as Objective and Depersonalized Fact: Two
Recent Egyptian Court Judgment, John Hopkins University Press, 2003.
4. C. Schumann, Nationalism and Liberal Thought in the Arab East:
Ideology and Practice, Routledge, 2010.
5. D. M. Reid, The Odyssey of Farah Antun, Minneapolis & Chicago:
Bibliotheca Islamica, Inc., 1975.
6. E. Kolig, Freedom of Speech and Islam, Routledge, 2016.
7. E. S. Kassab, Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in
Comparative Perspective, Columbia University Press, 2010.
8. F. M. Najjar, The Debate On Islam And Secularism In Egypt, Arab
Studies Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1996.
9. G. Faisal. “The First Muslim Secularist,” The Guardian, April 9, 2009.
10. H. A. Shboul: Why Secularism Failed to Become an Arab Socio-
Political Culture?, International Journal of History and Philosophical
Research Vol.5, No.5, 2017.
11. H. T. Agbaria: The Return Of The Turath: The Arab Rationalist
Association 1959-2000, University of Texas at Austin, 2018.

19
12.J. Broucek, The Controversy of Shaykh 'Ali 'Abd Al-Raziq, Florida State
University, 2012.
13.J. Brugman, An Introduction to the History of Modern Arabic Literature
in Egypt, BRILL, 1984.
14.J. Samad, John Locke and Muslim Liberalism, Oxford University Press,
2011.
15.L. Binder, Islamic Liberalism: A Critique of Development Ideologies,
University of Chicago Press, 1988.
16.M. Demichelis, Kalām viewpoints present within the debate on
secularisation between F. Anṭūn and M. ‘Abdu. God’s absolutism and
Islām’s irrationality as cornerstones of Orientalist Arab-Christian thought
during the Nahḍa, University of Oxford, 2013.
17.M. Hatina, On the Margins of Consensus: The Call to Separate Religion
and State in Modern Egypt, Taylor & Francis, Ltd., 2000.
18.M. R. Riḍā, The Criticisms of the Christians and the Proofs of Islam,
trans. Simon A. Wood, Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2008.
19.M. S. Berger, Apostasy and Public Policy in Contemporary Egypt: An
Evaluation of Recent Cases from Egypt’s Highest Courts, Human Rights
Quarterly, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
20.N. H. Abu Zaid, "Inquisition Trial in Egypt," Recht van de Islam, 1998.
21.N. H. Abu Zaid, "Renewing Qur'anic Studies in the Contemporary
World," in: P. Marshall, N. Shea, Silenced: How Apostasy and
Blasphemy Codes Are Choking Freedom Worldwide, Oxford University
Press, 2011.
22.N. H. Abu Zaid, E. R. Nelson, Voice of an Exile “Reflections on Islam,
Praeger Publisher, USA, 2004.
23.N. Zainol, L. Majid, M. Kadir, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd as a Modern
Muslim Thinker, International Journal of Islamic Thought, 2014.
24.P. R. Loza, The Case Of Abu Zaid And The Reactions It Prompted From
Egyptian Society, Georgetown University Washington, 2013.
25.R. Umar, Islamic reformism and Christianity: a critical reading of the
works of Muhammad Rashid Riḍā and his associates (1898-1935),
Faculty of Religious Studies, Leiden University, 2008.
26.S. T. Ali, A Religion, Not A State: Ali 'Abd al-Raziq's Islamic
Justification of Political Secularism, The University of Utah Press, 2009.
27.The High Council of ‘Ulama. Radd hay'at kibār al-ʻulam̄ʼ ʻalā kitāb al-
Islām wa Uṣül al-Hukm, al-Azhar magazine, Cairo, 1993.
28.W. Abu-ʿUksa, Liberal Tolerance in Arab Political Thought: Translating
Farah Anton (1874–1922), Journal of Levantine Studies 3:2, 2013.

20
 ‫‪Arabic References‬‬

‫حممد رشيد رضا‪ ،‬اخلالفة أو اإلمامة العظمى‪ ،‬القاهرة‪.1988 ،‬‬ ‫‪.29‬‬

‫حمم د ض ياء ال دين ال ريس‪ ،‬اإلس الم واخلالف ة يف العص ر احلديث "نق د كت اب اإلس الم وأص ول احلكم"‪ ،‬منش ورات‬ ‫‪.30‬‬
‫العصر احلديث‪.1973 ،‬‬

‫‪21‬‬