Makkah and Pan-Islamism

Omer, Spahic (2024) Makkah and Pan-Islamism. USIM Press, Nilai, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. ISBN 978-629-7636-16-0

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Abstract

By the letter of the revelation, Makkah is a holy city, a blessed sanctuary and a safe haven. As such, it always occupied a special place in the lives and minds of Muslims. Mandatorily, the city with its holy mosque (al-masjid al-haram) is the qiblah (direction) for Islamic five daily prayers (salat or salah), and is the locus of the annual hajj pilgrimage. Impulsively, on the other hand, Makkah is a qiblah (direction) and orientation to a great many Muslims in numerous religious and worldly activities of theirs. The more pious a person is, the more directed towards Makkah he is; and the more dedicated in his worship he becomes, the more he starts to gravitate towards the city’s hallowed status and blessed merits. Thus, apart from being the spiritual and religious qiblah, Makkah also became an emotional, intellectual and communal qiblah. Even though the political and economic centres of gravity existed somewhere else throughout the history of Islamic culture and civilization, the spiritual, social and scholarly rank of Makkah remained unchanged. It was and remained umm al-qura, the mother of all cities and villages, i.e., all categories of urban and rural human settlements. The nobility and luminosity of Makkah stand for the source, as well as the climax, of all other nobilities and luminosities. Not only is Makkah the centre of life on earth, but also the centre of the universe and all existence. Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) said that Almighty Allah decreed Makkah to be what it is the moment He created the heavens and the earth. This reputation of Makkah exemplifies – and radiates profusely - the cardinal principles of Muslim universal unity, brotherhood and cooperation, which are not to be confined to mere spiritual matters, but should also extend to the rest of existential realms. It was due to this that no sooner had the fading of the Ottoman Empire (Caliphate) started to prove irreversible and its degeneration irreparable in the late 19th and the early 20th centuries, than the leading voices of Islamic spirituality and scholarship began to call for the enhancement of the role and the broadening of the responsibilities of Makkah as a possible remedy. Some of those voices even focused on making Makkah gradually assume the role of political leadership, in addition to strengthening its inherent spiritual, social and educational functions. Indeed, it was only Makkah that had what it takes to become a rallying point for all Muslims. It was only Makkah, furthermore, that could become a catalyst for a potential Islamic regeneration given the circumstances. The ideas of Islamic unity, solidarity and eventual political federation assumed a wide spectrum of undercurrents: religious, intellectual, social and political. They concerned each aspect of the prospective society and civilization-building processes, involving, one way or another, the leading protagonists of the fast-declining Muslim world from the upper political echelons in Istanbul to the religious leaders on the ground all over Islamdom. These ideas and initiatives, coupled with specific action plans, were ideologized in the West as pan-Islamism. The developments were seen as a threat to the ongoing Western colonization and expansionism programs at the centre of which stood the disintegrating Muslim world. No wonder that calls for Islamic unity (pan-Islamism) were incessantly reviled and countered by the Western colonization masters as much in political as in intellectual circles. The only recipe for the continuation of the colonization of Muslim countries was that Muslims remain weak, intellectually sterile, globally divided, and regionally at loggerheads with one another over trivial issues. Actualizing Islamic unity was the antidote to the recipe. It was a nightmare scenario for the West. This book delves into the relationship between the holy city of Makkah and the pan-Islamism (calls for Islamic unity and solidarity) of the latter 19th and the early 20th centuries. It examines the conceptual dimensions of the main themes both in the Muslim and Western scholarships. Specimens are taken from the two intellectual domains to demonstrate how different the Islamic notion of unity and its association with Makkah was from the Western notion of pan-Islamism and its natural gravitation towards the holy city. Differences were pronounced as emphatically on the philosophical as on the practical levels. The book has four chapters. The first two chapters represent the Muslim and the latter two the Western scholarship. Threads of comparative, analytical and critical thought permeate and subtly connect the chapters. The four chapters are as follows: Examining the concept of pan-Islamism; Makkah in the pan-Islamic thought of Jamaluddin al-Afghani; Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje on Makkah as a centre of pan-Islamism and anticolonialism; Basil Mathews on the role of Makkah and hajj in the clash of civilizations.

Item Type:	Book
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Makkah; Pan-Islamism; Jamaluddin al-Afghani; Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje; Basil Mathews
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BP Islam. Bahaism. Theosophy, etc > BP1 Islam > BP170.82 Unity of Islam
Kulliyyahs/Centres/Divisions/Institutes (Can select more than one option. Press CONTROL button):	Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences > Department of History & Civilization
Depositing User:	Omer Spahic
Date Deposited:	09 Jul 2024 10:06
Last Modified:	04 Dec 2024 15:37
URI:	http://irep.iium.edu.my/id/eprint/113031

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