RT Article
T1 Muslim Modernism in Turkish: Assessing the Thought of Late Ottoman Intellectual Mehmed Akif
JF Die Welt des Islams
VO 62
IS 2
SP 188
OP 219
A1 Hammond, Andrew
LA English
PB Brill
YR 2022
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1810681588
AB Late Ottoman intellectual Mehmed Akif (1873–1936) was for decades depicted in Turkish public discourse in generic terms as an Islamist radical opposed to the secular nation state. Through Akif’s poetry, articles, translations, correspondence from his exile in Egypt, and biographical detail revealed in the scattered memoirs of students and colleagues, this article offers a reappraisal of his thought as a leading Muslim modernist who adapted the thinking of Egyptian religious scholar Muḥammad ʿAbduh (1849–1905) to an Ottoman and then Turkish audience in the formulation of an early, prescient compromise between religion and nationalism. The article also notes remarkable similarities between Akif and Indian thinker Muḥammad Iqbāl (1877–1938), whom Akif was instrumental in introducing to Arab audiences, and suggests that, once political Islam had later gained currency across all fields of public life, Akif became an alternative to nationalist icon Ziya Gökalp (1876–1924) as an intellectual symbol of the republic.
K1 Political Islam
K1 Islamic intellectual history
K1 Late Ottoman History
K1 Muslim Modernism
K1 India
K1 Egypt
K1 Turkey
K1 modern Islamic thought
K1 Ziya Gökalp
K1 Muḥammad Iqbāl
K1 Muḥammad ʿAbduh
K1 Mehmed Akif
DO 10.1163/15700607-61040012