Ameen Rihani: The Instrumentalization of Islam

Ebru Gurbuz is entering her third year as a History undergraduate at the University of Cambridge. Her primary academic interests are in Middle Eastern political and intellectual history in the 20th century, particularly Turkish nationalism in the late Ottoman period, on which she is pursuing her dissertation.  

Taking part in the UNIQ+ research internship supervised by Prof John-Paul Ghobrial,  Ebru is working on Arab-American literature and the works of Ameen Rihani.

For more information about the UNIQ+ Moving Stories internships, read the Faculty’s report. 

Born in Ottoman Syria, Ameen Rihani was one of the most prominent poets and writers of the Arab-American diaspora, or mahjar. Rihani is best known for The Book of Khalid, which is considered the first Arab-American novel. An Arab nationalist, Rihani’s writings in Arabic and English explore themes of East-West relations, religion, spirituality, and the politics of the Ottoman Empire, Islam, and the Arab world. Little has been written about his unpublished works, including The Green Flag and Turkey and Islam in the War, written in the 1910s, but they are evidence of how Rihani expertly utilised both fiction and non-fiction to explore the complexity of religion and lament its political weaponisation.

Rihani’s unpublished collection of English-language short stories The Green Flag, opens with the story “The Servant of Allah.” Rihani introduces us to Taha Abu Tawahi, a supposed man of faith, as he is questioned by a judge for the crime of theft. Abu Tawahi is described as a “tall, stalwart, and fearless man” who has “the strength of a giant” and cryptically describes himself as having acted on “the decree of Allah.”[1] Rihani reveals that Abu Tawahi’s theft was in fact motivated by the desire of one of his four wives for a silver bracelet. His wives are entirely oblivious to the existence of one another – not to mention a slave girl he has also kept secret. Abu Tawahi, utterly caught up in delusions of righteousness and religious grandeur, justifies his actions:

Abu Tawahi bowed his head and heart, nevertheless, to the decree of Allah. He had not yet lost the main prop of his faith, he was also confident that he had not done any wrong in building his water-tight compartments, in keeping his secrets apart. He was within the law up to a point; and he might be, beyond that, setting an example, which any sensible Muslem will follow and thus improve his chances of matrimonial bliss. For Abu Tawahi believes that woman lives on illusion plus a silver bracelet and a silk dress. And he argues a fortiori thus: that man that can keep a woman in that state, is deserving of respect and admiration, and that man that can keep three or four women in that state of rarest bliss, should be regarded by the government and honored by the community.[2]

This is utterly shocking to the reader, as Abu Tawahi has thus far described himself as “a dervish and medicine man” who never pretended to have any divine power but prayed for the sick and destitute from the kindness of his heart.[3] Therefore Rihani utilises Abu Tawahi as a caricature of the kind of Muslim men whose arrogance and morals are a complete contradiction to their self-view as being pious servants of Allah, men who interpret and redefine the laws of Islam to justify their behaviour. Abu Tawahi’s delusion and selfishness is commentary on the way such individuals deceive and take advantage of others to maximise their own pleasure and happiness, using Islam as justification and having utmost conviction that they are acting on “the decree of Allah.” Thus, in the hands of individuals like Abu Tawahi, Islam becomes a means to a selfish end, with complete disregard for those harmed in the process. Rihani goes further to showcase Abu Tawahi’s arrogance that stems ultimately from ignorance. Abu Tawahi uses “Christian traditions” to defend himself, despite being completely ignorant

 of what Christian tradition is, through which Rihani’s own Christian background is evident:

But Taha Abu Tawahi goes further: the knowledge of the one wife that she has a contemporary will in most cases poison the fountain of domestic happiness. Might not the Muslem code, therefore, be invested with a Christian tradition? Abu Tawahi had little or no knowledge of Christian tradition and practice. But he arrived by his own strenuous thinking at this technique: namely, every one of the legal wives should not only live apart, but should also be kept in the illusion that she is the only one, and every husband, who would receive as well as give happiness, should follow this technique unrelaxingly.[4]

Abu Tawahi’s delusion is most explicitly shown in the direct conversations he has with Allah in his head. “He argued with his God,” writes Rihani, and when this “God” tells him his secrets are to be revealed, Abu Tawahi takes this as approval of what he is to do next: bend the iron bars of his prison cell and escape. His wives, or “victims,” are outraged at discovering his subterfuge and throw crude insults at Abu Tawahi – “deceiver,” “liar,” “scoundrel,” and “son of a dog” – but are not demonised by Rihani’s narrative.[5] In fact, the women are presented as entirely justified on their part, despite “revolting” and speaking of all the violence they wish to inflict upon him: “Meanwhile, the jailer, who had seen these women on tenterhooks and heard them growl, was promising himself a spectacle. He was going to bring out Taha Abu Tawahi and throw him to the lionesses in the arena.”[6] Alas, before this can even happen, Abu Tawahi manages to bend the iron bars and escape not only prison, but the wrath of the women he has deceived and taken advantage of. Rihani is making an example out of Abu Tawahi: such men do not care for faith, or piety, or for others, they care only for themselves. Abu Tawahi’s successful escape from the consequences of his actions point to the political reality in which Rihani lives in, where the powerful get away with exploiting and persecuting the powerless.

Placing The Servant of Allah within the context of Rihani’s other works, particularly his unpublished English-language manuscript Turkey and Islam in the War, “The Servant of Allah” is evidently allegorical for his views on the instrumentalization of Islam by the Ottoman Empire, and how he finds widespread dissent to be both justifiable and inevitable, the same way the wives of Abu Tawahi ‘revolted.’ Turkey and Islam in the War details Rihani’s utter disillusionment with the Young Turk Revolution of 1908, including harsh criticisms of the persecution of Christian minorities, predictions of the Empire’s eventual demise, and ruminations on the future of Islam. Similar to how he presents the instrumentalization of Islam through the character of Abu Tawahi, Rihani argues that the Ottoman Empire has reinterpreted, redefined, and weaponised Islam as a political tool since its inception. He describes the “Islam of Constantinople” as having “served only the political ends of a purely military Government at the head of which was a grand despot surrounded by a group of parasites.”[7] Of the Turks, Rihani is highly critical, accusing them of using Islam “to sanction a Turkish usurpation, to legalize an imperial dynasty founded on the right of conquest, and to sanctify a despotism unparallelled in its history.”[8]

As in The Servant of Allah, Rihani is not critical of Islamic doctrines, but in their reinterpretation and weaponisation. Thus, Abu Tawahi can be seen as symbolic of the Ottoman Empire, and specifically the Young Turks whom Rihani is most critical of, where man is at fault rather than doctrine. Rihani absolves Islam and the Muslim population of any blame in the Empire’s massacring of Christian minorities, specifically Armenians: “no; Islam, which has always been used by the ruling Turks to prop their tottering throne or to serve the nefarious purpose, the selfish interest of the Party in power, has little or nothing to do with these unspeakable atrocities.”[9] Rihani highlights how Muslims too are not exempt from this persecution: “We have it on good authority that some of the distinguished Mohammedans, who tried to shield and protect the unfortunate Armenians in the recent slaughter, were condemned to death by the Government of the Young Turks.”[10] Therefore doctrines of Islam are misread and expounded upon by “narrow-minded softas”[11] and the demagogues of nationalism have made it so the true teachings of Islam have no effect on the people – a peaceful religion, twisted to justify the massacres of Christians.[12]

Unlike Abu Tawahi, however, Rihani argues that the Ottoman Empire will not and cannot get away with its tarnishing of Islam. According to him, Islam is struggling between fanatical softas and nationalists, the Young Turks included, opposed with a modern, progressive faction looking to the future. He argues that Islam must evolve based on the scripture and the progressive notes already existent within it, otherwise the Ottomans will suffer the same downfall as the Umayyads, Abbasids and Fatamids before them.[13] Rihani describes Islam as a “waning power, a decaying religion,” all due to the Young Turks’ failure to adopt modern morality and European education, emphasising the importance of the adoption of progressive Western ideals.[14]

Rihani also uses literary fiction as an allegory for his commentary on Islam in The Book of Khalid. The novel is presented as a found manuscript, telling the story of Khalid and Shakib who migrate to New York at the turn of the twentieth century, their journey of spiritual evolution and return to their homeland, at which Khalid becomes a prophet-like figure, preaching his newfound Western wisdom, calling for political progress and religious tolerance in the Arab world. Much like Abu Tawahi, the story of Khalid and his preachings are another mouthpiece through which Rihani expresses his views on the Ottoman Empire and the future of Islam, as seen in Khalid’s speech at the Great Mosque in Damascus. Khalid preaches about “the divine idealism of German philosophy, the lofty purity of true French art, the strength and sterling worth of English freedom,” all of which he claims should be introduced into “Oriental life, and literature, and religion,”[15] much like the sentiments Rihani emphasises in Turkey and Islam in the War. Khalid speaks of “the beginning of Arabia’s Spring, the resuscitation of the glory of Islam,” and that he himself would free Islam “from its degrading customs, its stupefying traditions, its enslaving superstitions, its imbruting cants.” The ‘cants’ Khalid speaks of are the Ottomans, the Abu Tawahis, who have reduced Islam to a callous weapon. The crowd in the mosque do not respond well to Khalid’s preachings: “On all sides zealotry raises and shakes a protesting hand; on all sides its shrieks, objurgating, threatening,”[16] and he is eventually chased out of the mosque as he preaches Wahhabism to be the only way in which the reformation of Islam is possible.

This key moment in which the narrator positions Khalid on the side of reformist Islam against the Young Turks and the mass in Damascus is Rihani’s projection of a Christian migrant character into the internal schism he observes within Islam, which bleeds into the rest of his works. Abu Tawahi is a caricature of the Young Turks, embodying the debauchery and greed that Rihani so vehemently criticises. The crowds in Damascus are symbolic of the Young Turks and nationalist softas who oppose the rational, reformist faction within the Islamic world, the latter of which is represented by Khalid. Ultimately, Rihani’s use of fiction as allegory for his disillusionment with the Young Turks, his defiance against the Ottoman Empire, and advocacy for the reform of Islam through Wahhabism, point to his turn towards Arab nationalism which he pursues more vigorously after World War I.  Rihani’s journey from his initial disillusionment with the Young Turks and eventual abandon of the prospect of Ottoman reform during WWI, to becoming an ardent advocate of Arab nationalism by the end of the 1920s, is made even more explicit through his unpublished works. Through this we trace his journey towards Arab nationalism, towards dedication to the goal of an Arab renaissance, and “the rise of a new nation, the establishment of a new Arab empire.”[17]

[1] Ameen Rihani, “The Servant of Allah” in “The Green Flag” (unpublished manuscript), 2.