If the two Arabic words, Ustath and Imam, are used together as titles referring to one person, then there is no confusion that the reference is made to Sheikh Muhammad Abdou. The first of these titles means, “teacher” and the second means, “leader.” Such is the standing of Muhammad Abdou among the leading figures in highly educated circles in Egypt, particularly in the last part of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century.
Muhammad ibn Abdou ibn Hassan Kheirallah was born in 1845 in a village called Hissat Shabsheer in the Gharbiyah County in Northern Egypt. He first learnt to read and write in his family home, before moving on to read the Qur’an and learn it by heart, completing this memorization of the whole Qur’an by the age of 10. He belonged to a well respected, well off farming family. His father recognized that Muhammad was endowed with sharp, native intelligence. Thus, he decided that, unlike his two other sons who worked with him on the farm, Muhammad was to pursue his learning further. He decided to send him to the mosque school in Tanta, where the young Muhammad, by now 15, spent a highly miserable period of one and a half years. He says that he learnt absolutely nothing throughout this period. This was due to the obsolete method of teaching, which meant that students only had to learn by heart terms that they could not understand. Therefore, he decided to quit.
His father felt that this would be a waste of talent. He therefore got him married and, 40 days after his marriage, he sent him back to the same school, dispatching with him a strong man to ensure that he would go to the school. However, he managed to escape before reaching the school and went to a nearby village, where his father’s maternal uncles lived. One of them, Sheikh Darwish, was a well-educated man who had traveled widely. He took him home and was able, with kindness and wisdom, to overcome Muhammad’s seemingly total hatred of schooling. Thus, Muhammad Abdou went back to school at the Mosque in Tanta to pursue his studies with a new spirit, showing much enthusiasm. When he completed his studies there, he moved to Al-Azhar in Cairo in 1865.
Muhammad Abdou visited his uncle, Sheikh Darwish, every summer. His uncle would say to him: “Have you learnt anything of logic, arithmetic, geometry, physics?” When he returned to Cairo, he would look for a way to learn these. Apparently, Muhammad Abdou learnt from his great uncle two more lessons: the first was that he needed to be with the people in order to have any role in reforming their lives; and the second was that the door should be open to all aspects of knowledge. Then, when Jamaluddin Al-Afghani arrived in Egypt in 1871, Muhammad Abdou learnt from him much, particularly in mathematics, philosophy and logic. He also encouraged people to learn from him.
In 1871 Muhammad Abdou graduated from Al-Azhar and was appointed a teacher at the same university. However, this did not discourage him from further pursuit of his studies, taking three different lines: 1) The age-old traditional approach followed at Al-Azhar; 2) The method he learnt from Jamaluddin Al-Afghani who gave him insight well beyond what can be learnt from books; and 3) Acquiring modern knowledge through translations of Western books. He then learnt French and was able to read French books.
He was met with great opposition in Al-Azhar because he was foremost in his advocacy of introducing modern disciplines into Al-Azhar. He continued to teach theology, logic and ethics in Al-Azhar for five years, then he was appointed a lecturer of history at Dar Al-Uloom, a college affiliated to Al-Azhar. There he taught Ibn Khaldoun’s Muqaddimah, the book that established sociology as a branch of study, and he was fond of analyzing history on the principles laid down by Ibn Khaldoun.
Muhammad Abdou was the most prominent of Al-Afghani’s disciples. He used to attend his talks at his own home or in a cafe Al-Afghani used to frequent, where he would be attended by many admirers. Abdou acquired through him a new insight with regard to the place of the Muslims in the world at large. However, Al-Afghani was soon out of favor with the Egyptian authorities and was ordered to leave the country. It was not surprising that this also affected Abdou, who was removed from his two teaching posts and confined to his village for one year, 1876.
However, he had friends in high places, and Riyadh Pasha worked hard to obtain a pardon for him. Thus, Abdou returned to Cairo in 1879 where he became editor of a paper known as Al-Waqa’I Al-Masriyah. He introduced a literary and social section in the paper, calling for reform. In this section, he criticized social faults, corruption and the obsolete methods of education followed in Egyptian schools. His work in the paper contributed greatly to the use of fine and meaningful Arabic style, away from superficial refinements which had been fashionable for long. Perhaps his main preoccupation in this period was the need to discredit and eradicate social and religious practices that were immersed in ignorance and had no basis in the true concepts and principles of Islam. This meant a true religious revival that would remove all traces of a long period of backward ignorance.
In the early 1880s, Egypt witnessed a revolution led by Ahmad Urabi, and Abdou supported it with all his might. In this he was defending Egypt’s position and independence. However, the revolution failed, and its failure paved the way to Egypt being colonized by the British in 1882. Abdou was arrested and sentenced to spend 3 years in exile. He left for Beirut where he spent a year teaching Arabic and Islamic studies in a private Islamic College. However, Jamaluddin Al-Afghani invited him to join up with him again in Paris, where the two published a magazine under the name of Al-Urwah Al-Wuthqa. The name originally belonged to a secret organization dedicated to fight the European imperialists, particularly the British. Its ultimate objective was “to restore the Islamic government that would establish purity and justice on the lines of the first Caliphate, taking present conditions into account.” But Britain was able to bring about the closure of the magazine after the publication of only 18 issues in 8 months.
Muhammad Abdou returned to Beirut after that, having decided to leave politics altogether and dedicate all his reformist efforts to education. He felt that education was the only way to ensure progress for Muslim communities. In a discussion with his mentor, Al-Afghani, he suggested that they should both select 10 young people and devote their energies to educating them properly. “If each one of them could educate 10 more young people, we would have, in a matter of a few years, 100 young people playing a leading role in society.”
In Beirut, Muhammad Abdou was invited to teach in the Sultaniyah school. He moved quickly to reform its curriculum, transforming the school into a high school. There he taught theology, logic, history and Fiqh. He also had a circle in two mosques in Beirut and a weekly seminar at home devoted to literature. He wrote books on some of the subjects he taught, including one on God’s oneness and another on logic. He wrote regularly in papers and magazines. Moreover, he responded to the call of the Ottoman Sultan to reform education in Islamic schools by preparing two papers with plans for reform. The first he submitted to Sheikh Al-Islam in Istanbul, the top religious authority in the Ottoman government, while the second he submitted to Beirut’s governor. In this second paper Abdou describes the bad educational conditions in Syria and Lebanon, as a result of there being too many foreign schools serving different political aims. He stressed the need for the establishment of a large number of national schools and the need for reforming religious education.
His friends managed to obtain a permit for him to return to Egypt, which he did, having spent six years in exile. However, the Khedive did not allow him to return to education. He appointed him a judge, first in Banha, then in Zaqaziq and finally in Abidin in Cairo. However, Abdou was unhappy with this arrangement, saying: “I am not made to be a judge. I am only fit to be a teacher.”