ʿAbd al-Halīm Mahmūd

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ʿAbd al-Halīm Mahmūd , also Abdelhaleem Mahmoud ( Arabic عبد الحليم محمود, DMG ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd * 1910 ; † 1978 ), was an Egyptian Sufi scholar of the Schadhiliyya order, who played an important role in the Islamic discourse on the application of Sharia law since the late 1960s and held the office of Sheikh of the Azhar from 1973 to 1978 . His admirers gave him the honorable nickname “ al-Ghazālī of the 20th century” to honor his contribution to the balance between Sufik and Islamic jurisprudence .

Abdel-Halim Mahmud

Life

The Sufi phase

Mahmūd was born in 1910 in a village in the Ash-Sharqiyya governorate east of the Ismailia Canal . His father was a qadi trained at al-Azhar University who owned a farm in the village. ʿAbd al-Halīm Mahmūd attended the Koran school (kuttāb) of the village, but also frequented the Sufi circles who visited his father. After learning the Koran by heart at the age of 13, he attended an institute at Azhar University and enrolled at a teaching institute in Zagazig .

He then studied at Azhar University with Mahmūd Schaltūt and Muhammad Mustafā al-Marāghī, among others . During this time he also maintained contact with Farīd Wajdī, a vehement opponent of atheism and materialism , and visited the company of young Muslim men . After he had received the ʿālimīya diploma from Azhar in 1932, he traveled to France, where he continued his studies in psychology, sociology and the history of religion at the Sorbonne . In 1940 Mahmūd was at Louis Massignon with a dissertation on the Iraqi Sufi al-Harith al-Muhasibi (781-857) PhD . The book was published in Paris in the same year under the title Al-Moḥâsibî. Un mystique musulman religieux et moraliste published. During his time in France Mahmūd also had contact with the French esoteric and Sufi René Guénon and was strongly influenced by him. In 1954 he published a book about Guénon, in which he presented him as a “Muslim philosopher” (failasūf muslim) .

From 1941 to 1951 Mahmūd taught philosophy at Azhar University and from 1951 to 1964 psychology. At the same time his interest in Sufik continued. In 1960 he met the Sufi master ʿAbd al-Fattāh al-Qādī (1899–1964) and was introduced to his branch of the Shādhiliyya order based in the village of Shiblandscha in the Nile Delta.

In 1964 he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Theology (uṣūl ad-dīn) of Azhar University. While holding this office, he wrote a two-volume work on the “rules and secrets” (aḥkām wa-asrār) of Islamic worship , in particular dhikr , duʿāʾ , salāt , zakāt , fasting , hajj and jihad . Here he treaded a middle path between a legal representation and a mystical interpretation of the cultic regulations of Islam.

Change to an advocate of Sharia law

At the end of the 1960s Mahmūd experienced a rapid rise in the religious administration of Egypt. In 1968 he was appointed general secretary of the Egyptian Academy for Islamic Investigation (maǧmaʿ al-buḥūṯ al-Islāmīya) , which at that time was one of the most important instruments of the Nassist religious policy . Under his leadership, the academy, which has hosted international conferences every year since 1964, experienced an important change in direction. While in the mid-1960s responsibility for Islamic behavior had been transferred to individuals and the ideal was the formation of an “Islamic personality” (šaḫṣīya islāmīya) , at the 1968 conference the demand for the application of Sharia law was first made by the State raised. In March 1969 Mahmūd set up a commission of four scholars, whom he commissioned with the codification of the Sharia according to the four schools of law .

In 1970 Mahmūd became President of Azhar University, and from 1971 to 1973 he served as Minister for Foundations and Azhar Affairs . In 1972 he headed a commission in this office that was supposed to work out a draft for an Islamic constitution for Egypt.

From April 1973 to October 1978 Mahmūd finally held the office of Grand Sheikh of the Azhar, who is responsible for both the Azhar University and the Azhar Mosque and is at the top of the Azhar hierarchy. His insistence on the application of Sharia law earned him the suspicion of President Anwar al-Sadat , who in July 1974 decree removed him from control of the Azhar and made them subordinate to the Minister for Religious Foundations. Since Mahmūd pointed out that this was a violation of the Azhar Act of 1961 and threatened to resign, the President restored him to his full rights a short time later and in 1975 granted him under a new implementing law for the Azhar Law of 1961 even ministerial rank.

In the mid-1970s, Mahmūd delved into communism intensely and condemned it as an ungodly ideology. In a fatwa that was published in 1976, he stated: “Communism is unbelief , and all those who believe in it do not have a piece of faith.” Conversely, he tried to find a compromise with the Islamic groups. When the extremist group at-Takfīr wa-l-Hijra murdered former Foundation Minister Muhammad Husain adh-Dhahabī in 1977 , the military court asked him for a fatwa to condemn the perpetrators as infidels . Mahmūd refused, however, arguing that disbelief was a matter of thought and that he must first examine the thoughts of this group before he could issue such a fatwa. Finally, he called for a dialogue with the group so that thought could be put against thought.

In addition, he continued to strive for the Islamization of law. In 1976 he set up a “High Commission” to revise and modify positive law in Egypt. This commission presented the draft criminal law in 1977, which provided for the Hadd penalties . Shortly before his death in 1978, Mahmūd founded his own faculty for Islamic Mission at Azhar University .

Selected Works

  • Al-Moḥâsibî. Un mystique musulman religieux et moraliste . Paris: Paul Geuthner 1940.
  • At-Tafkīr al-falsafī fi 'l-islām . 2 vols. Maktabat al-Anǧlu 'l-Miṣrīya, Cairo, 1955. ("Philosophical Thought in Islam")
  • Al-ʿIbada. Aḥkām wa-asrār. 2 vols. Cairo 1968/69. ("The Divine Service. Regulations and Secrets")
  • Fatāwā ʿan aš-šuyūʿīya . Cairo 1976. Legal opinion on communism.

literature

  • Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabiʿ: Islam and the search of a social order in modern Egypt: an intellectual biography of Shaykh 'Abd Al-Ḥalīm Maḥmūd. Philadelphia, Pa., Temple Univ., Diss. 1987.
  • Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabiʿ: "Al-Azhar Sufism in Modern Egypt: The Sufi Thought" in Islamic Quarterly 1988 (32) 207-235.
  • Hatsuki Aishima: "A Sufi-ʿAlim Intellectual in Contemporary Egypt, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Halîm Mahmûd" in Geoffroy, Eric (ed.): Une voie soufie dans le monde: la Shâdhiliyya . Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose 2005. pp. 319-332.
  • Hatsuki Aishima: Art. "Maḥmūd, ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm" in John L. Esposito (ed.): The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World. 6 Vols. Oxford 2009. Vol. III, pp. 454b-456a.
  • Hatsuki Aishima: "Contesting public images of 'Abd al-Halim Mahmud (1910-78): who is an authentic scholar? In Baudouin Dupret (ed.): Ethnographies of Islam: ritual performances and everyday practices . Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press 2012, pp. 170-178.
  • Andreas Mohr: Dr. ʿAbdalḥalīm Maḥmūd's book Aṣ-ṣalāt: asrār wa-aḥkām "Prayer: Secrets and Rules" / transl., Come. u. with e. Einl. As well as e. Summary. in comparison with the European representations of the topic. Mag. Work Heidelberg 1988. Available online here: http://archive.org/stream/Mohr-Salat_Asrar_wa-Ahkam#page/n1/mode/2up
  • Malika Zeghal: Gardiens de l'Islam. Les oulémas d'al Azhar dans l'Égypte contemporaine. Paris 1996.

Individual evidence

  1. See Zeghal 149.
  2. See Zeghal 143.
  3. a b Cf. Mohr 16.
  4. Cf. Zeghal 144.
  5. Cf. Mohr 17, 23.
  6. Cf. Aishima 2009, 454b.
  7. See Zeghal 141.
  8. a b cf. Zeghal 142.
  9. Cf. Aishima 455b.
  10. Cf. Zeghal 146f.
  11. See Zeghal 134.
  12. Cf. Aishima 456a.
  13. Aishima 456a