SIBACI, MUSTAFA AL

Batoota — Fri, 11 Aug 2017 15:48:33 +0000

SIBACI, MUSTAFA AL- (1915-1964), Syrian political thinker, educator, and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria. Born in Homs, al-Siba’i came from a prominent family of `ulama’. His father’s nurturance of him in Islamic learning included a strong sense of political activism that later put him on a collision course with the authorities of the French mandate.
When al-Siba’i was eighteen years old, he traveled to Egypt, a country that would have a profound impact on his intellectual development and public life. His studies at al-Azhar were accompanied by involvement in political activism, membership in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and close association with Hasan alBanna’. In 1934 al-Sibd’ was jailed for participating in anti-British demonstrations; in 1940 the British charged him with subversion and sent him to the Sarfad camp in Palestine. After his release (1940, he returned to Horns to establish an organization called Shabab Muhammad (Muhammad’s Youth). Soon he was arrested and jailed by the French for two and a half years. Despite his deteriorating health brought on by torture, al-Siba i s release from prison in 1943 ushered in two decades of dynamic activity as writer, teacher, and leader of Syria’s Islamic movement.
By 1946 al-Sibyl had forged a merger between different Islamic jam’iyat to form the Muslim Brotherhood, and was elected its general supervisor (al-murdgib al`amm). Until the brotherhood’s suppression by the Shishakli regime in 1952, al-Sibd’! worked to strengthen his movement, which he conceived not as a jam’iyah or political party but as a rah (spirit) seeking to raise public consciousness to achieve comprehensive Islamic reform. He was also a distinguished educator and administrator at the University of Damascus.
Al-Siba’i’s most important contribution to Islamic thought was his book, Ishtirakiyat al-Islam (The Socialism of Islam), in which he argued that Islam teaches a unique type of socialism, one distinct from its Western materialistic variants emphasizing class struggle. He saw Islamic Socialism as conforming with human nature, based on five natural rights: life, freedom, knowledge, dignity, and ownership. God is the ultimate owner of all, and man is deputized to make use of property through honest labor. The state plays a regulatory function through nationalization (ta’mim) of essential public services, implementation of Islamic laws on mutual social responsibility (al-takaful al-ijtimd`i), and sanctions (mu’ayyiddt). Al-Siba`i’s theory created an uproar because of its opposition to capitalism, its association of Islam with socialism, and its ostensible support of Nasser’s ideology at a time when the Egyptian Brotherhood was suppressed.
Because of his failing health, in 1957 al-Siba`i turned over leadership of the brotherhood to `Isam al-‘Attar, although he continued to write until his death (1964). In addition to his book on socialism, al-Siba’! edited three journals, Al-manor (The Lighthouse), Al-muslimin (The Muslims), and Haddrat al-Islam (The Civilization of Islam), and began to compile an Encyclopedia of Islamic Law. His other books were Mat’ah bayna al figh wa-algdnun and Hdkadha `allamatni al-hayah.
[See also Muslim Brotherhood, article on Muslim Brotherhood in Syria; Socialism and Islam.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abd-Allah, Umar F. The Islamic Struggle in Syria. Berkeley, 1983. Dekmejian, R. Hrair. Islam in Revolution. Syracuse, N.Y., 1985. Donohue, John J., and John L. Esposito, eds. Islam in Transition. New York, 1982.
Enayat, Hamid. Modern Islamic Political Thought. Austin, 1982. Ismael, Tareq Y., and Jacqueline S. Ismael. Government and Politics in Islam. New York, 1985.

HRAIR DEKMEJIAN

MARAGHI, MUSTAFA AL

Batoota — Sun, 03 Aug 2014 08:20:18 +0000

MARAGHI, MUSTAFA AL- (1881-1945), Egyptian reformist and rector of al-Azhar (1928-1929 and 1935-1945) Shaykh Mustafa al-Maraghi is the link between the reforms of his mentor Muhammad `Abduh and such subsequent leaders of al-Azhar as Mustafa `Abd al-Raziq, `Abd al-Halim Mahmfid, and Mahmfid Shaltut; the last, his professed disciple, later transformed al-Azhar by compromising with the secular nationalist regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser.

MARAGHI, MUSTAFA AL

He was described by his contemporaries as a unique man of strong character and leadership abilities. Maraghi’s dismissal by King Fu’ad in 1929 caused a revolt among the Azhari (`ulama’) that resulted in the dismissal of seventy of them.
As a reformer, Maraghi believed in Islam’s flexibility and ability to adapt to the needs of modernity. He called for social, legal, and educational reforms and pursued an aggressive campaign-begun by `Abduh and finished by Shaltut-to integrate the modern sciences into alAzhar’s curriculum. To that end he organized committees to reform the university’s regulations and curriculum and created a supervisory department for research whose responsibilities included publishing and translation.
Maraghi called for the exercise of ijtihdd, reinterpretation, and opposed taglid, the blind following of tradition. He worked for the reconciliation of different Muslim madhhabs (schools of law) and cooperated with the Aga Khan in setting up Islamic educational and research associations to arbitrate between various madhhabs and strengthen ties among them. He also waged a campaign against Christian missionaries and the schools they opened in Egypt, which he felt were comprising Islam and undermining Islamic society. He also participated in international religious conferences, where he asked for recognition of the equality of all religious groups.
Maraghi was in several senses an enigmatic figure. Although a leader at conservative al-Azhar, he was nevertheless a close associate of Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and the liberal Ahrar Dustfirlyfin Party. He opposed British rule, yet he often cooperated with the British. He refused to support King Fu’ad’s bid for the Islamic caliphate after its 1924 cancellation by Ataturk, yet later he joined Misr al-Fatat’s Ahmad Husayn in calling upon King Faruq (who reinstated him as Shaykh al-Azhar in 1935) to claim it. His professed desire for a greater role in government for the clergy did not stop him from proposing a reform program that, if fully implemented, could have weakened them, since it included closure of Dar al-`Ulum and the school for shari’ah judges. It is also reported that he proposed the translation (to other than Arabic languages) of the Qur’an to King Faruq.
As Shaykh al-Azhar, Maraghi exerted a final effort to keep that institution under full clerical authority at a time when the ‘ulama’ were losing authority to a new bureaucratic and intellectual order whose discourse was secularly oriented. Students of Egyptian social history also note his provincial origin in the small Upper Egyptian town of Maragha near Tahta as a reminder of the often-forgotten importance of the periphery in the transformation of the center.
[See also Azhar, al-; and the biographies of `Abduh and Shaltut. ]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bayyumi, Muhammad Rajab al-. AI-Azhar Bayna al-Siyasah waHurriyat al-Fikr. Cairo, 1983.
Baz, Ni’am al. Al-Baquri: Tha’ir tahta al-`imamah. Cairo, 1988. Qurra’ah, Saniyah. Tarikh al-Azhar ft alf `am. Cairo, 1968.
AMIRA EL AzHARY SONBOL

MUSTAFA AL – Hybrid Learning

SIBACI, MUSTAFA AL

MARAGHI, MUSTAFA AL