The Bitter Truth

The Bitter Truth: A New Reading of an Old Article In reply to a question directed to the public by the clergyman Johan Friedrich Zoeller, the famous German philosopher Immanuel Kant did not just provide an answer, in his well-known article, whose title ‘What is Enlightenment? bore Zoeller’s question. But most importantly, Kant’s article published in the Berlinische Monaatsschrift in 1784 laid out a general framework for the relationship between the intellectual and the prince. Enlightenment, Kant explained, is Man’s exit from his self-imposed tutelage that hinders his use of reason without interference and even control of others. Such tutelage is self-imposed due to laziness, when it comes to exerting the effort necessary for the use of reason, and due to cowardice, when it comes to bearing the responsibility for the consequences of the use of reason. Thus, tutelage becomes man’s second nature, and he eventually becomes incapable of using reason without interference and control of others, who occasionally demonstrate the tragic consequences for its free use, in order to hold the masses under the yoke of their authority. Against this, Kant argued, enlightenment can be realized only through a gradual historical process that starts by some elements in society overthrowing the yoke imposed on the masses, then the spirit of rational thinking thriving on the germ of freedom, and eventually everyone using his reason independently. Revolution and surmounting historical phases, Kant ardently confirmed, can never lead to enlightenment, but instead to the replacement of one tyrant by another, who will just hinder the spirit of rational reasoning from growing. The problem here lies in the fact that freedom, as a precondition for launching the historical process of enlightenment, is in opposition to the political and intellectual circumstances serving the powers-that-be. Therefore, Kant proposed entering into what Foucault once called a ‘social contract with despotism’ by means of a temporary differentiation between the public and the private use of reason. Private use of reason, as when a person acts as part of a government-machinery or a collective entity in order to attain public interest, can be constrained without blocking the historical process of enlightenment. By contrast, public use of reason, as when a person acts as a thinker directing his thoughts to the reading public, should not be constrained at all. By this token, an officer in the army is obliged to accurately follow the orders of his superiors, yet when addressing the reading public he has every right to write a book criticizing the military strategy of the same army he is serving. A century later, Sheikh Muhammad Abdu was writing in his turn an article, little known by today’s measures, bearing the title ‘The bitter truth’, as his contribution to a heated discussion flaring on the pages of Egyptian newspapers about the British occupation of Egypt. If Abdu’s article were to be read within the historical and political contours of Kant’s enlightenment, the differences of time and place between both thinkers’ projects notwithstanding, a modus operandi for dealing with political authority by the intellectual becomes manifestly clear. Despite the disagreement between Abdu’s historians about the exact date of the article, it is agreed that the article signifies a break between Abdu’s reformist orientation and the revolutionary line of his mentor Al-Afghani. The reader might even be astonished to find in Abdu’s article, at such an early time, a deep and clear understanding of the notion of enlightenment and its gradual historical realization. Also, a firm grasp of the cultural and political differences between Western and Islamic contexts is to be found in the article. The comparison Abdu made between East and West unveils his understanding of enlightenment and its realization on the ground. He started by considering freedom an indispensable condition for the humanness of the human being, without which one descends to ‘a rank beneath both ranks of Man and beast alike”. That was why, Abdu maintained, history reported great deeds of martyrs, who accepted nothing short of living freely amidst free people. Actually, Abdu was unwinding his thoughts in an age that witnessed the flourishing of enlightenment as philosophy and historical process, to the extent that it became a universal yardstick. As such, he will consider the progress and superiority of Western nations the outcome of a historical process that began with a spiritual and intellectual fight against the armies of darkness, shielded itself by raising moral standards and producing knowledge, aimed at national unity, reconciliation, and agreement, and finally put an end to the arbitrary rule of despots by establishing the rule of law. Abdu concluded, in a word, that such historical process ‘wiped out selfishness and lust for tyranny from the human soul’. That one lives in an age of enlightenment, as a qualitative shift in the history of mankind related to the spread of rational thought, is evidently a common belief to both Abdu and Kant. But while Kant was fully aware he was not living in a fully enlightened age, and enlightenment was still an unfinished project, Abdu fell under the impression that he was living in the age of a fully enlightened West. To Abdu, all that the East needed to do was to follow the West or fall behind. There was no better proof, to Abdu, for the full realization of enlightenment in the West than its political and military domination of the whole globe, especially of Muslim countries. The clashes of the Urabi revolt, with its well-know disastrous result, constituted the historical background for Abdu’s article, and could be held responsible for his recoiling from Al-Afghani’s revolutionary line and embracing reform and education as a means of enlightenment. Recalling the Urabi revolt he actively joined, he commented in a very critical tone that ‘it was not one of the revolutions seeking freedom and orderly government…but its proponents were pushed to it unprepared…without a principle they sought to support…or a form of government they want to establish’. At certain times, they called for a change of ruler, at other times they called for a republic to be ruled by the officers’ caste, and at third times they called for the status of an Ottoman province. It comes then as no surprise that Abdu relinquished the revolutionary attitude of his mentor and embraced education and reform, hence Abdu’s agreement with Kant on enlightenment’s realization via reform not revolution. However, the different cultural and historical contexts of both Kant and Abdu reflected themselves on their respective accounts of the political and intellectual opponents, who benefited from darkness and opposed the light of reason. Accordingly, each thinker concluded the social contract with a different partner. Flashing enlightenment against ecclesiastical tyranny that imposed Christian dogma on the masses and as such assumed the role of a guardian over immature children, Kant concluded his social contract with the absolute state, raising the slogan ‘think as much as you like about everything you like, but obey’. Conversely, it was against state authority that Abdu raised the banner of enlightenment. For he bitterly confirmed that ‘government officials constitute one and the same chain of exploitation and aggression, in which the bigger ring descendingly practices injustice against the smaller ring and this goes down till it reaches the miserable peasant’, whose shoulders bear the maximum of exploitation and humiliation. And in the opposite direction ascendingly goes the surplus of value and power ‘from the smaller ring to the bigger ring…till it reaches the ruler holding in his hands the ends of the chain’. To Abdu, the despotic state, with its rings of humiliation and exploitation, and the individuals occupying these positions, upwards and downwards, from the ruler to the peasant, is the sworn enemy of enlightenment. On one hand, the duality of the temporal and religious authorities, and the restless conflict raging between both, enabled the Western enlightened intellectual to skillfully play one against the other throughout the anticipated historical process of enlightenment. By tactically siding with the absolute royal authority against ecclesiastical authority till the spirit of freedom and rational thinking was disseminated in society, the Western intellectual was able to reach his strategic aim of overthrowing both authorities in the end of the day. On the other hand, the absence of the duality of authority in the history of Islam, with the historical over-stating of the state apparatus and its spreading of tyrannical practices in society, and the domestication of the fiqhi institution to be a mere dependant of political authority, all this made the state to Abdu the historical and political equivalent of the church to Kant. If Abdu were to take the state as a partner in the social contract, it would be similar to Kant allying himself with the church for the realization of enlightenment. It is a historical impossibility, due to the contradiction in purpose, orientation, and method between the alleged partners. With the British occupation of Egypt, the occupation power entered Abdu’s political horizon as the real ruler of the country and a counter-weight to the despotic state. This will provide Abdu with the partner he lacked in his aspired social contract with despotism, a partner that is the historical and political equivalent to the authority of absolute kings in the Western historical experience. And in similarity with the Western intellectual, by tactically siding with British occupation power against the authority of the oriental prince, Abdu will be able to obtain support for his reform project in order to overthrow both authorities ‘without any harm ensuing, and at the right time, for matters are tied up to their occasions’ in his own words. Just like Kant concluded a social contract with local despotism to push forward his enlightenment project, Abdu will conclude a social contract with the occupation, foreign despotism, in order to reach the same goal. Moreover, Abdu’s move was similarly based on the same artificial distinction between the public and private use of reason, which though not so clearly articulated in Kant’s fashion manifested itself on several occasions. Constraining the private use of reason demonstrates itself in Abdu’s advice to his famous disciple Rashi Reda, on the occasion of Reda’s issuing of his Al-Manar magazine. Reda was supposed to abstain from writing on politics, which only corrupts what it touches, a lesson Abdu ironically learnt from aiding Al-Afgani in his several efforts that could have benefited to the cause of reform but eventually got wasted on fruitless political intrigues. Liberating the public use of reason is best demonstrated through his reform projects in the fields of education, judiciary, as well as various others that would form the basis for his cooperation with occupation power. Abdu justified this on the grounds that ‘the proof stands that we did not reach the degree of freedom we enjoy except by virtue of the occupation army standing in our midst. If it were not for that, our rulers would not comply with the British call for reform’. But Abdu set a proviso in the contract, lest cooperation slips into treason of homeland, namely that ‘evacuation [be] the first duty for every Egyptian patriot to seek by rightful ways and in its right time…for it is natural that no one accepts the rule of invaders’. The fact that the badly needed cooperation with foreign occupation becomes the means to overcome our unmanliness and incapacity to confront internal despotism, the matter that was historically attested to by our continued bearing with humiliation and subjugation and even willingly assisting our unjust rulers in their tyrannical rule over us, was nothing other than Abdu’s bitter truth, which will become the historical alternative of his whole reform school.