Ali Abdel Raziq

Background

Ali Abdel Raziq was born in 1888, in Minya, Egypt. He was the son of Hassan Abdel Raziq. Raziq's brother was Mustafa Abd al-Rizq.

Education

Ali Abdel Raziq studied at Al-Azhar University and he received his 'alim degree (a degree awarded to transmitters and interpreters of religious knowledge in Islam, including Islamic doctrine and law) in 1911. In 1912, he went to the United Kingdom in order to study economics and political science at the University of Oxford, but he returned to Cairo at the outbreak of the First World War.

Career

Ali Abdel Raziq started his career as a qadi (religious judge) at Mansoura in 1915. In 1925 he published his first book Islam and the Foundations of Governance. This book unleashed a veritable firestorm of criticism among the Muslim clergy and as a result, Raziq lost his job.

Ali Abdel Raziq was only able to reclaim his credentials as a judge years later in the 1940s when his brother became the head rector of the institution. During this time he wrote such books as From the Legacy of Mustafa `Abd al-Raziq (Min athar Mustafa `Abd al-Raziq) and Consensus in Islamic Law (Al-ijma` ft al-shari`ah al-Islamiyah). In his later life ‘Abd al-Raziq twice served as Minister of Endowments.

Achievements

• Ali Abdel Raziq was an Egyptian philosopher, scholar, statesman, and writer who was famous for his books that debated the role of religion and Islamic history in 20th-century politics and government. His most famous book is Islam and the Foundations of Governance.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Islam and the Foundations of Political Power

    (Egypt, 1925: the Muslim world is in turmoil over Mustapha...)

    1925

Views

Ali Abdel Raziq put forth the argument that the caliphate was not an obligatory institution and called upon Muslims to adopt political secularism. He said that Islam is a religion and not a framework for political representation. He identified caliphal rule and politics as a central cause of what he saw at the time as a deterioration of Muslim intellectual and cultural superiority. Raziq said that Muslims can and should align their political identities and religious identities separately.

Membership

Ali Abdel Raziq was a member of the Academy of the Arab League.

Connections

Father:

Hassan Abdel Raziq

Brother:

Mustafa Abd al-Rizq

Mustafa Abd al-Rizq was an Egyptian Islamic philosopher.

References

• Islam and modernism in Egypt
  1933
• Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age 1798-1939 is the most comprehensive study of the modernizing trend of political and social thought in the Arab Middle East. Albert Hourani studies the way in which ideas about politics and society changed during the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, in response to the expanding influence of Europe.
  1970
• Islam in the Modern National State Dr Rosenthal describes the contemporary spiritual and intellectual crisis of Islam.
  1965
• Biographical Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Philosophers This Biographical Dictionary provides detailed accounts of the lives, works, influence and reception of thinkers from all the major philosophical schools and traditions of the twentieth-century. This unique volume covers the lives and careers of thinkers from all areas of philosophy – from analytic philosophy to Zen and from formal logic to aesthetics.
  1996