Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth-Century Palestine (10 page)

Al-Khalidi's essay is important for what it reveals about the political worldview of a Muslim Ottoman intellectual, a long-time critic of the Hamidian regime at the same time that he remained a liberal Ottoman patriot. As well, al-Khalidi's essay reveals the extent to which Ottoman patriotism and Islamic modernism emerged in dialogue with—and in defense against—Western criticisms of the empire and Islam as a whole.

The son of a government official, al-Khalidi received a sound Islamic education at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, but he was also educated in secular subjects at the Alliance Israélite Universelle school in Jerusalem founded by French Jews, as well as at the government Al-
alā
iyya and Al-Sul
āniyya schools in Jerusalem and Beirut. Al-Khalidi later went to Istanbul, where his uncle Yusuf Dia al-Khalidi was serving in the first Ottoman parliament, and attached himself to the circle surrounding the pan-Islamist and anticolonial activist Jamal al-Din al-Afghani before both men were exiled from the capital.

As a result of his educational and life experiences, al-Khalidi was steeped in Islamic thought without being apologetic about it, learned in Western thought without being blindly imitative. Thus, al-Khalidi's central justification for revolution against the Ottoman sultan was due to the sultan's failure to live up to the proper Islamic principles of governance, which was rooted in liberalism. In contrast to those critics in Europe who described Islamic governments as oppressive in their essence, al-Khalidi set out to prove that the tyranny that characterized the Hamidian regime came not from Islamic principles, which demand equality and justice, but from a longer legacy of Asiatic despotism. That is to say, political tyranny in the Muslim world was not religious in origin but rather social and historical. As al-Khalidi explained, “Muslim rulers inherited this tyranny from the Persian emperors and Roman Caesars, from the river banks in Babylon and the Egyptian pharaohs, from Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane.” In truth, according to al-Khalidi, Islam at its origin opposed tyranny, introduced equality between members of
the community of believers, protected individual rights and freedoms, and protected foreigners and minorities in an unprecedented manner. As such, Islam “paved the way for democratic government and located the rule of law with the people, and did not stand in the way of giving freedom in word and deed” (3).

In making this argument, al-Khalidi drew heavily on Islamic history as well as sacred Islamic textual traditions. Al-Khalidi supported his argument with proof texts from the Qur'an and the hadith, in particular Qur'an 3:159 (“for had you been stern and hard of heart they would surely have broken away from you”) and 42:38 (“…whose affairs are settled by mutual consultation”).
⁸⁵
From the hadith, al-Khalidi relied on the examples of pre-Islamic tyranny in Mecca and the final agreement to combat it, which the Prophet, Muhammad, was said to have witnessed personally and looked upon favorably.

According to al-Khalidi, at its origin Islam introduced a new mode of political rule, the caliphate, which was a distinct advance over the monarchical model of the tribes of Israel (Bani Isrā'il) (5). In contrast to the absolute and inherited power of the Hebrew kings, the first four Muslim caliphs were chosen by the people through the practice of consultation
(shūra).
After the fourth caliph, ‘Ali, however, when internal rivalries over succession to the caliphate split the Muslim community, the Umayyads turned the caliphate into a hereditary monarchy (660–750 C.E.). From that point on (with one singular exception of the righteous caliph ‘Umar bin ‘Abd al-'Aziz, r. 717–20, whose son did not inherit the caliphate after his father's death), Muslim rulers became corrupt and self- interested, a situation which continued through most of the Ottoman dynasty, “whose first task was to protect the interests of the dynasty and the great families (of the court)” (6).

As al-Khalidi and other Islamic modernist reformers saw it, the Islamic code of divine law, the
shari'a
, was like a constitution for the people, but because it had been abandoned to tyranny and injustice in the Ottoman Empire, reforms were necessary as an added safeguard to the inherent liberties provided by Islam. For al-Khalidi, the moment of redemption began with the declaration of the Basic Law under Midhat Pasha, and was finally completed with the emergence of the CUP onto the political stage.

Al-Khalidi's narrative of Islamic history is both deeply traditional—echoing the format and some of the assertions of religious scholars—and modernist. His essay reveals the influence of a variety of Islamic modernist thinkers, such as Rashid Rida, the editor of
The Lighthouse
, and, more overtly, the Aleppine scholar ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi. Less than a decade earlier, al-Kawakibi had published a highly influential book entitled
The Nature of Tyranny
, in which he similarly brought
Qur'anic and hadith examples to criticize the Ottoman ancien regime and advocate political reform, arguing for accountability and for the need of the ruler to serve the people.
⁸⁶

While al-Khalidi himself was somewhat elliptical in his criticism of the sultan-caliph, his publisher, Husayn Wasfi Rida, was much more overt about it. Rida blamed Abdulhamid for reintroducing slavery at precisely the moment when the empire seemed poised for reform, by metaphorically and literally drowning the dreams of the reformers in the Bosphorus. Furthermore, Rida blamed the sultan for “fighting against the people” by employing spies and, as is noted in Qur'an 4:77, “filling the people with the fear of men as though it were the fear of God and even more.”

At around the same time as al-Khalidi's articles appeared, another commentary on the revolution was published by Suleiman al-Bustani, entitled “Admonition and Remembrance; or, The Ottoman State Before the Constitution and After It.”
⁸⁷
Al-Bustani was a leading intellectual from a prominent Christian Beiruti family, an important contributor to the nineteenth-century “renaissance” in Arabic language and literature, who had translated Homer's
Iliad
into Arabic. Like al-Khalidi, he would be elected to the Ottoman parliament that autumn to represent his hometown. Al-Bustani was also a fervent supporter of the revolution and its promise of liberalism, and he considered constitutionalism as completely congruent with Islam, having roots in the Torah and the New Testament.
⁸⁸

The Christian al-Bustani took care to emphasize that constitutional rule would not challenge the religious role of the caliph, but rather would be “representative rule in the new mode where the nation-people [umma] rules itself while preserving the rights of the caliphate, wherein the caliphate and constitutional rule support one another” (15). Al-Bustani emphasized the “will of the people-nation [
irādat al-umma]”
in legitimizing representative rule, and his rewriting of Ottoman imperial history to emphasize the long trajectory of political reform in the empire focused on the revolution as the authentic expression of the will of the Ottoman people and as a product of social consensus. His assertions that “the majority of the sons of the land were transformed to be of one opinion” (7), and that “the Ottomans yearned for [freedom]” (22), were meant to place the
umma
as the key actor in history. Thus, without challenging the sacred basis of political rule (the caliphate) or criticizing the sultan directly, al-Bustani clearly shifted the legitimacy of political power from the ruler to the nation, from absolute religious grounds to notions of justice and representative participation.

As prominent intellectuals like al-Khalidi and al-Bustani introduced new measures of sultanic legitimacy, questions remained about the
sultan-caliph's loyalty to the new regime. Furthermore, as his role increasingly was questioned in constitutionalist circles, opponents of the revolution took Abdulhamid as their patron and mascot.
The Lighthouse
reported that at one early revolutionary celebration in Cairo, some opposition voices shouted out, “Long live the sultan—down with Young Turkey!”
⁸⁹
More alarmingly, by October 1908, newspapers reported on the emergence of an anticonstitutional movement in the capital led by lower-level religious functionaries and agitated by the opposition newspaper
Mizan.
According to one account that made its way to the Jerusalem press, Murad Bey, the editor of
Mizan
, reportedly went to the sultan's palace with a note which read: “I lead hundreds who are ready to do what we can to destroy the constitution. If this pleases you we are ready to serve.” The paper reported that upon reading it, Abdulhamid responded: “Do you think I am an enemy of the constitution? Even if you were to destroy the entire world I would not do a thing against the constitution, which promised my people happiness and peace.”
⁹⁰
Whether or not the sultan's reported refusal to side with the opposition was believable to the paper's readers was almost beside the point; in the eyes of this newspaper, these types of incidents were occurring daily and were evidence that, as the newspaper article put it, “the constitution is in danger!” Indeed, only a few months later the sultan would prove to be the weakest link of the new constitutional regime.

“SACRED LIBERTY” III : FROM RELIGIOUS LEGITIMACY TO SACRED REVOLUTION

We have already seen that the Ottoman revolution was in many ways a deeply religious revolution, with religious officials and intellectuals interpreting and legitimizing political change in dialogue with religious principles and based on religious sources. Some scholars have argued that after the revolution the official state Islamic hierarchy took a leading role in supporting and propagating the revolutionary principles. As we have seen, this attitude began with the top tier, the
şeyhulislam
, who reportedly stated that “the law of Islam is more liberal than the constitution itself,” and that the constitution was “binding upon those who profess Islam.”
⁹¹
This view trickled down to some extent to the lower levels of the religious establishment. One journalist documented an August 1908 public gathering in the Beyazit mosque in Istanbul where the assembled scholars argued that the Qur'an prescribes constitutional government, and yet another journalist spoke approvingly of the religious scholars of the capital, saying “it is they who have achieved the
remarkable feat of convincing themselves and many of their countrymen that the best theoretical sanction for a Constitution is to be found in the Koran, that despotism is a flagrant violation of the teachings of the prophet, and that the true spirit of Islam is in favour of a democratic form of government.”
⁹²

Indeed, preachers such as Jamal al-Din al-Qasimi in Damascus and Shaykh Muhammad Shakir Diab al-Baytuni in Palestine all proselytized on behalf of an Islamic constitutionalism in the mosques and town centers. Pamphlets like
Kuran kerim ve-kanuni asasi
(The Precious Qur'an and the Basic Law) and
Din ve-hürriyet
(Religion and Liberty) brought a series of prooftexts from Islamic sacred sources to legitimize parliamentary constitutionalism and revolution in religious terms. As well, newspapers such as
Path of Righteousness (Sirat-i Mustakim)
and
Crescent (Hilal)
, in Istanbul,
The Lighthouse
in Cairo, and
Ottoman Union (Al-Itti
ād al-'Uthmānī)
in Beirut also devoted themselves to providing an Islamic framework for the constitutional regime. Finally, CUP chapters in Istanbul and elsewhere distributed less high-brow pamphlets that offered people religious advice and protection from pestilence and other household dangers.
⁹³