Atheism and Freethought in the Twentieth Century

The Impact of Western Ideas

The impact of modern, scientific ideas of the West in Iran in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was immediate and changed the outlook of the intellectuals dramatically, and often resulted in a rejection of Islam: in anti-clericalism, agnosticism, Westernism, anti-imperialism, glorification of the pre-Islamic past, and [in Iran,] hatred of modern Iranian actuality.

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Sayyid Ahmad Kasravi [1890–1946]  Sayyid Aḥmad Kasravi or Kasrawī Tabrīzī was an Iranian linguist, historian, jurist, and ideologist, and latterly a religious reformer who wished to bring Iran into the modern world of science and progress. He was educated in the northwestern city of Tabriz and entered the theological profession, but only to leave soon afterwards as his liberal ideas clashed with the religious establishment. He practiced law and taught history at the University of Tehran. Over the years as he came into contact with, and learned of, Western science, he began to criticize religion, particularly the Shi‘ism prevalent in Iran, though he remained committed to the Constitution, and the modernization of the country. With the publication of his book Šiʿigari [Shiʿism] in late 1943, he became a target of the fanatical clergy. He also wrote soon afterwards another book on Baha’ism, called Bahāʾigari, which takes Baha’ism to be an extension of Shiʿism. According to him, the messianism on which Baha’ism relies is an illusion, contrary to the natural law of the universe. In his analysis of this religion, Kasravi appeals constantly to reason. He rejects all argument from authority (dalil-e naqli), which of course meant that revelation was not acceptable. The Iranian people’s propensity for the irrational made it hard to incorporate scientific thought, which was the key to the success of Western societies. Kasravi’s critical analysis of Shiʿism undermined its doctrinal bases. He questioned the entire institution of the Imamate and the very concept of the Hidden Imam, two essential elements of Shiʿism.

He always spoke out against religious superstition and illusion (such as fortune-telling, belief in good and bad omens, amulets, divination). More specifically, he singled out the role of the Shiʿite clergy in Iranian society and became one of the fiercest critics of some of the most sacred tenets of Shiʿism that he considered to be “un-Islamic.”

In 1933, Kasravi published the first issue of the journal Peymān, a literary and social monthly, which lasted for seven years. From successive issues of Peymān, one can observe the gradual transformation of Kasravi’s views on religion and notice his increasing dedication to religious reform: his insistence that religion must be subordinate to rational thought (ḵerad) came to the fore. He wrote that the pathway of religion is separate from that of science, and the sciences have clearly marked out a clear and open path toward progress; what mankind has discovered about the cosmos is clearly at odds with some principles of faith. He does not think that science will destroy the foundation of religion. He argued that nothing was left of the original Islam, and what was being promoted in Islam’s name was an institution for the benefit of the mullahs, from which the people received nothing but superstition that only added to their earthly misery. Rather he believed ḵerad (that is, reason and knowledge) as the most valuable God-given faculty. But Muslims do not appreciate this faculty enough.

He wanted nothing less than the complete eradication of the institution of the clergy, which had kept the masses from progressing. While the rest of the world was taking advantage of scientific progress the clergy was deliberately keeping the people of Iran backward. He also found the tradition of pilgrimage to the shrines of the Shīʿite Imams in Iran and Iraq an absurd way to waste money. He abhorred the barbaric practices such as sina-zani (beating the chest), zanjir-zani (beating shoulder and back with chains), and qama-zani (beating the head with a dagger), which were common in Iran during religious mourning festivals. Kasravi believed that the entire Shī‘ite concept of believing in an absent Imam was ludicrous, against reason, and therefore a hindrance to progress and enlightenment. No halfway measures or compromises would help Iran towards a modern and secular state, only a serious case of radical self-criticism and healthy confrontation with the most deeply held tenets of the religion would accomplish the necessary modernization.¹

Like many Iranian nationalists, Kasravi dreamed of a return to Iran’s glorious pre-Islamic past; the advent of Islam, in the end, was seen as a “historical setback.”² He did everything in his power to facilitate the de-Islamicization of Iran.³ He was assassinated by a band of Devotees of Islam (Fedāʾiān-e eslām) on 11 March 1946.

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Pakistan. There is good evidence to think that Muhammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan, the man considered Father of the Nation, was an atheist. Stanley Wolpert, in his biography of Jinnah, states that “religion never played an important role in Jinnah’s life”⁴; second, we also know that he ate pork⁵ and drank whiskey. Scholar Dr. Ajai Sahni⁶ describes Jinnah as a “Westernized, wine-drinking, pork-eating atheist.”⁷ Ajet Jawed, reader in the Political Science Department of Satyawati College, University of Delhi (India), wrote, “[Jinnah] had a rational approach and religion did not matter in his private or political life. He had no special love for his co-religionists and had sought safeguards for all minorities.”⁸

Other details of his life show that Jinnah cared nothing for the taboos imposed by Islam. He knew very little of Islamic literature and married a young Parsi girl, who always accompanied him without, of course, wearing any headscarf. Poet Mazhar Ali Azhar asked, “By marrying a Kafir woman Jinnah has forsaken Islam. Is he the great leader of the Muslims or is he the great Infidel?” Indeed, he used to say that he was an Indian first, and then Muslim second. Jawed explains, “Jinnah was proud of his Hindu heritage. … [The sect of the Muslims to which he belonged] had much in common with Hindus and their inheritance laws and social customs. He had numerous Hindu friends. Jinnah enjoyed his evenings with his friends particularly Pandit Motilal and Sapru in clubs drinking wine, smoking cigars, eating ham sandwiches and playing chess and billiards.”⁹

The most secular portrait of Jinnah emerges in the pages of Ajet Jawed’s fine biography: “Jinnah was an apostle of secularism. He was modern, progressive, and agnostic in his thinking, appearance, and activities. Communal feelings or prejudices had no place in his private or public life. … God and the Quran had no place in Jinnah’s vision of the world. Jinnah was never found in the midst of Muslim mass congregations religious or political. He religiously shaved his beard each morning and just as religiously avoided the mosque each Friday. He enjoyed his ham sandwiches, pork sausages, cigars and drinks even in the holy days of Ramzan. He was not familiar with the Urdu language or Islamic literature and married a non-Muslim girl. He was considered a great infidel by the orthodox section of the Muslim community, and did not care.”¹⁰

Jawed continues, “Jinnah hated religious intolerance and had contempt for fanatical mullahs, maulvis and priests… He disliked the mullahs’ bigotry and hypocrisy and told Pandit Motilal Nehru that he believed in ‘none of their nonsense’ although he had somehow ‘to carry these fools along.’”¹¹ Jinnah’s secular approach to political issues meant that he was totally opposed to the Khilafat movement, which was a pan-Islamist political protest campaign advocating the preservation of the Islamic institution of the Caliphate—the Caliph being considered the leader of all Muslims. Jinnah described it as “false religious frenzy”, of which nothing good could come for India.¹²

And according to one historian, had Jinnah been alive today “he would have to be flogged publicly for his personal habits. Mr. Jinnah not only chained-smoked Craven-A cigarettes but also liked his whisky and was not averse to pork.”¹³ At a press conference on July 4, 1947, a journalist asked Jinnah if Pakistan would be a religious state. Jinnah replied, “You are asking a question that is absurd. I do not know what a theocratic state means.”¹⁴ Then, on August 11, 1947, the day he was elected president of the Pakistan Constituent Assembly, Jinnah gave a moving speech that included the following sentiments:

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed—that has nothing to do with the business of the State. As you know, history shows that in England conditions, some time ago, were much worse than those prevailing in India today. The Roman Catholics and the Protestants persecuted each other. Even now there are some States in existence where there are discriminations made and bars imposed against a particular class. Thank God, we are not starting in those days. We are starting in the days where there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle: that we are all citizens, and equal citizens, of one State.

The people of England in [the] course of time had to face the realities of the situation, and had to discharge the responsibilities and burdens placed upon them by the government of their country; and they went through that fire step by step. Today, you might say with justice that Roman Catholics and Protestants do not exist; what exists now is that every man is a citizen, an equal citizen of Great Britain, and they are all members of the Nation.

Now I think we should keep that in front of us as our ideal, and you will find that in course of time Hindus would cease to be Hindus, and Muslims would cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual, but in the political sense as citizens of the State.¹⁵

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Far from being a theocratic state, with over 135 million Muslim fundamentalists, Pakistan once had a large, liberal, secular-minded middle class, in whose lives religion did not play an important part. Here is how one British journalist and novelist of Pakistani origin, and very committed Marxist Tariq Ali [born 1943], described the social milieu in in 1950s and 60s Lahore (Pakistan), where he grew up: ¹⁶

I never believed in God, not even between the ages of six and ten, when I was an agnostic. This unbelief was instinctive. I was sure there was nothing else out there but space. It could have been my lack of imagination. In the jasmine-scented summer nights, long before mosques were allowed to use loudspeakers, it was enough to savour the silence, look up at the exquisitely lit sky, count the shooting stars and fall asleep. The early morning call of the muezzin was a pleasant alarm-clock.

My parents, too, were non-believers. So were most of their close friends. Religion played a tiny part in our Lahore household. In the second half of the last century, a large proportion of educated Muslims had embraced modernity. Old habits persisted, nonetheless: the would-be virtuous made their ablutions and sloped off to Friday prayers. Some fasted for a few days each year, usually just before the new moon marking the end of Ramadan. I doubt whether more than a quarter of the population in the cities fasted for a whole month. Café life continued unabated. Many claimed that they had fasted so as to take advantage of the free food doled out at the end of each fasting day by the mosques or the kitchens of the wealthy. In the countryside fewer still fasted, since outdoor work was difficult without sustenance, and especially without water when Ramadan fell during the summer months. Eid, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, was celebrated by everyone.

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Secularism in the Arab World

Secular ideas have been circulating in Arab intellectual life since the end of the nineteenth century. There was the once flourishing Egyptian scientific journal al-Muqtataf, where Farah Antoun, Shibli Shmayyel, and Yacoob Sarrouf openly discussed current scientific and secular ideas. Ismail Maẓhar translated Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Ismail Adham was able to find a publisher in the 1930s for his Why Am I an Atheist?¹⁷ Adham [1911–1940], who committed suicide by drowning at the age of twenty-nine, led a life of fantasy since he falsely claimed to have written many scientific papers and to have met many famous orientalists.¹⁸ However, Adham did write about science (physics, mathematics, and the theory of evolution), and hoped that eventually science would replace religious belief. “I left religions, and abandoned all (religious) beliefs, and put my faith in science and scientific logic alone. To my great surprise and amazement, I found myself happier and more confident than I had been when I had struggled with myself in the attempt to maintain my religious belief.”¹⁹ Salameh Mousa,²⁰ a champion of socialism in Egypt early in the 20th century, could discuss the Emergence of the Idea of God, and Mansour Fahmy could publish a thesis on the Women’s Place in Islam,²¹ that was critical of the Prophet Muhammad.²²

A Shaykh at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, ‘ALI ABD AL-RĀZĪQ [1888–1966] published in 1925 al-Islam wa usul al-hukm [Islam and the Foundations of Governance],²³ in which he argued against the Islamic state and for the separation of religion and civil society. His suggestion that Islam has no place in public life was met with disbelief and then outrage by other shaykhs at the al-Azhar University, which is associated with the Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo, and is Sunni Islam’s most prestigious university. They tried him in tribunal and found him guilty of impiety. In consequence, he lost his diploma, was dismissed from the university and forbidden to hold religious office.

Syrian philosopher SADIQ JALAL AL-AZM published in Beirut his Self-Criticism after the Defeat²⁴ and followed it with his controversial Marxist work, Critique of Religious Thought.²⁵ Sadiq Jalal al-Azm [1934–2016] was a Professor Emeritus of Modern European Philosophy at the University of Damascus in Syria and was, until 2007, a visiting professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. He was brought to trial in Beirut on charges of provoking religious troubles, but was acquitted. Al-Azm accused the Arab liberation movement of surrounding “retarded mental habits, Bedouin and feudal values, backward human relations, and obscurantist, quietistic world views with an aura of sacredness which put them outside the pale of scientific criticism and historical analysis …”²⁶ We must take into account two of the most important books of the last two centuries, namely Marx’s Capitalism [1st Vol. 1867], and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species [1859], which have shattered the old ways of thinking especially about religion. There is a fundamental problem between religion and science, and science has made us ask the all-important question, “Can I accept in all honesty and sincerity the religious tenets my father and grandfathers accepted without betraying the principle of intellectual integrity?” Some people pretend that there is no conflict between science and religion, but al-Azm insists the opposite, “religion as it enters the core of our life and affects our intellectual and psychological makeup is in opposition to science and scientific knowledge—heart and soul, literally and figuratively.” At bottom, it is a question of methodology as to how to arrive at the truth. “Islam and science in this matter are on contradictory paths. For the Islamic religion (as for other religions) the correct methodology for arriving at knowledge and conviction is to return to specified texts considered as sacred or revealed, or to go back to the writings of the sages and the learned who studied and explained these texts. That is, the justification of the whole operation is reduced to faith and blind trust in the wisdom at the source of these texts and their freedom from error. It goes without saying that the scientific path to arrive at knowledge and conviction concerning the growth and nature of the universe and man and his history is completely incompatible with this subservient methodology which dominates religion because scientific methodology rests on observation and deduction and because the unique justification for the soundness of the results arrived at by this methodology is the degree of its internal logical harmony and its conformity with reality.”²⁷

In a chapter called “The Devil’s Tragedy,” of his Critique of Religious Thought, al-Azm ascribes to God the ultimate responsibility for evil and portrays Satan as a tragic figure.²⁸ The Mullahs were not amused, and the Sunni establishment in Lebanon brought charges against him and confiscated copies of the book. Editorials in newspapers called for his incarceration. The author was tried in January 1971, paid bail, and thereafter kept a low profile, and just avoided being expelled from the country.²⁹

SYRIAN ARMY OFFICERS. On 25 April 1967, the Syrian army magazine Jaysh ash-Sha’b published an article which condemned God and religion in this manner:

[The only way to build Arab society and civilization was to create] a new Arab socialist man, who believes that God, religions, feudalism, capital, and all the values which prevailed in the preexisting society were no more than mummies in the museums of history….There is only one vale: absolute faith in the new man of destiny…who relies only on himself and on his own contribution to humanity…because he knows that his inescapable end is death and nothing beyond death… no heaven and no hell…We have no need of men who kneel and beg for grace and pity …³⁰

Such a fierce attack on religion in general led to large demonstrations in the major cities of Syria, and many strikes, and a great deal of violence. The Syrian regime mollified public sentiment by condemning the article as an American and Israeli plot. When this proved insufficient to pacify the crowds, the authorities sentenced the article’s author, Ibrahim Khalas, and two editors at Jaysh ash-Sha’b to life imprisonment, though they were later released.³¹

Another graduate of al-Azhar was the Egyptian man of letters TAHA HUSAYN [1889–1973], one-time minister of education. He was also educated in France where he acquired a skeptical frame of mind. Inevitably on his return to Egypt, he submitted her outworn traditions to severe criticism. Husayn’s views also proved unacceptable to the religious establishment and he was forced to resign from public posts. In his On Pre-Islamic Poetry, Taha [Husayn] questioned the authenticity of pre-Islamic literature, but he also wrote, “the Torah is capable of talking to us of Abraham and Ismail, and the Koran is equally capable of talking of them. However, the presence of these two names in the Torah or the Koran is not sufficient to establish their historical existence; not to mention the historicity of the account that speaks to us of the migration of Ismail, son of Abraham, to Mecca…”. [Husayn] was accused of heresy by the traditionalists at al-Azhar Islamic University, and the book banned. However, he was not convicted and the book was republished in an edited form under the title, Pre-Islamic Literature. Taha [Husayn] developed an ideology of Egyptian nationalism along with a doctrine he called Pharaonism, arguing that Egyptian civilization was incompatible with Arab civilization, and that Egypt would only progress if it reclaimed its ancient pre-Islamic roots.

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