Propuesta de mejora: comparando centralización de la información vs. información

Abu al-Kalam Azad was a leader in india’s struggle

to gain independence from Britain in the early 20th century, and he served as the country’s first minister of education from 1947 until his death in 1958. His most important religious work was Tarjuman al-Quran (1931), a two-volume Urdu language translation and commentary on the qUran, which he wrote while in prison.

Azad was born in mecca to an Indian father

and Arab mother and moved with his parents to Calcutta, India, when he was around 10 years old. His father, Khairuddin Dihlawi (1831–1908), was a religious man who chose to give his son a tra- ditional Islamic education at home. Azad proved to be a gifted student who was attracted to the modern ideas of sayyid ahmad khan (1817–98),

which conflicted with the traditional Sufi outlook of his father. His thinking was further affected by his travels in the Middle East in 1908–09, when he met with nationalists and religious reformers in iran, iraq, tUrkey, and egypt. After returning to

India, he established a weekly Urdu journal in 1912 called Al-Hilal (crescent moon), in which he called upon India’s Muslims to unite and join with other Indians in a nonviolent campaign for independence from Britain. After the British imprisoned Azad for three and a half years, he joined with the great Indian nationalist leader Mohandas K. Gandhi (1869–1948) in the khilaFat movement in 1920

and then continued as a leader in the Congress Party, where he worked to bring Muslims and Hin- dus together in the independence movement. He used his knowledge of the Quran and Islamic his- tory to win support for this effort, as can be seen in his Tarjuman al-Quran, but many Indian Muslims felt that they had to work separately from Hindus to create their own state. The British imprisoned him several more times in the 1930s and 1940s, but from 1940 to 1946 he served as president of the All-India National Congress, after which he became India’s first minister of education. Azad was completely against the division of India into two states and was deeply disappointed when pakistan

and India were partitioned in 1947.

See also all-india mUslim leagUe; hindUism and islam; Jinnah, mUhammad ali.

Further reading: Ian Henderson Douglas, Abul Kalam

Azad: An Intellectual and Religious Biography, eds. Gail

Minault and Christian W. Troll (New Delhi: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1988); Syeda Saiyidain Hameed, Islamic

Seal on India’s Independence: Abul Kalam Azad, A Fresh Look (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1998).

al-Azhar

Al-Azhar is now the most important center of Islamic learning in and the institution most sym- bolic of the world of Sunni Islam. It was built by the Fatimid rulers of egypt (r. 969–1171) as the

primary mosqUe and center of missionary out-

reach in their new capital of cairo. With the rise

to power of the Ayyubid dynasty under saladin

in 1171, al-Azhar lost much of its prestige, par- ticularly to other madrasas that arose at this time.

Scholars at al-Azhar taught the Islamic precepts of qUran, hadith, and law (fiqh) but also such fields

as philosophy and science. In the 13th century,

under the Mamluks, al-Azhar slowly regained its prominence and was rebuilt and refurbished. But it was under the ottoman dynasty, which

conquered Egypt in 1517, that al-Azhar became again the dominant religious institution in Egypt, especially in the 18th century.

The graduates of al-Azhar were the most highly educated in Egypt as that country began to con- front the challenges of modernity in the 19th century. Napoleon Bonaparte, during his brief con- quest of Egypt (1798–1801), looked to the scholars of al-Azhar as potential leaders in the Egypt he intended to create, but the university was also the site of much resistance to the French presence. As Egypt was brought under the firm rule of Muham- mad Ali (d. 1848), like Napoleon, it was to the graduates of al-Azhar that he turned to find men who would lead the country in its modernization. Among those he sent to Europe in the 19th century to acquire modern scientific learning, many were Azharites. In fact, until the founding of the modern University of Cairo in 1908, al-Azhar was the only institution of higher learning in the country.

Because al-Azhar combined a great deal of religious prestige with a formidable, if traditional, academic program, successive governments have striven to reduce its power or to turn its power to their own ends. The religious endowments that had made al-Azhar financially independent have been under governmental control since 1812. The state also controls the appointment of the rector of the university, a powerful and influential posi- tion in Egypt. In the 1960s, the Egyptian national government under President Jamal Abd al-Nasir (r. 1954–70) reformed and modernized the edu- cational program, expanding its teaching to such fields as engineering and medicine. While this broadened and expanded the university, it also had the effect of weakening its religious character.

Nonetheless, al-Azhar, which is not a strictly hierarchical institution, retains a certain tradition of independence from the government and can influence government decisions in some areas. The government of Egypt has, thus, recently granted al-Azhar an expanded role in the censor- ship of films and books. More problematic for the government, however, are the independent schol- ars within the institution who condemn specific government policies, such as Egypt’s peace with israel or the United States. On the whole, how-

ever, the government-appointed rector and his associates tend to have national and international prestige, and when they speak for al-Azhar, they often claim to be speaking for the Muslim com- munity as a whole.

See also edUcation; sUnnism.

John Iskander Further reading: Chris Eccel, Egypt, Islam, and Social

Change: Al-Azhar in Conflict and Accommodation (Ber-

lin: K. Schwarz, 1984); Tamir Moustafa, “Conflict and Cooperation between the State and Religious Institu- tions in Contemporary Egypt.” International Journal of

Middle East Studies 32 (2000): 3–22.

Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, Egypt (Juan E. Campo)

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