Islams Reformers

He had some activities in Beirut for a while, too, but the Ahl as-
Sunna scholars perceived his evil purposes and he had to go to
Paris. There, he cooperated with Jamâl ad-dîn al-Afghânî, who
had been preparing the application of masonic plans against Islam,
and they published the magazine Al-’urwat al-wuthqâ. Then he
returned to Beirut and Egypt, and began to apply the decisions
made in Paris and to misguide the youth. The government of
Khidiw Tawfîq Pasha, seeing that his lectures and articles were
harmful, employed him in one of the offices of the law-court. Yet
he continued to write so as to sabotage Islam, which was a part of
the masonic plans. With the help of freemasons he became the
Muftî of Cairo. He began to attack the Ahl as-Sunna. As the first
activity, he attempted to change the curriculum of the madrasa of
Jâmi’ al-Azhar, thus preventing the youth from valuable courses.
He abrogated the graduate courses in the universities, so that they
began to teach books that had been prepared for senior and junior
high schools. Freemasons had already done the same thing in the
Ottoman Empire; after the Tanzîmât (a turning point in the
Ottoman history marked by the political reforms in 1839),
scientific courses had been abrogated from the madrasas and the
religious education had been deprived of high-level courses. All
these were done because Islam was established upon knowledge,
without which and without any real religious man left Islam would
be doomed to extinction. When there is no cloud, to expect rain
would mean to expect miracles. Allâhu ta’âlâ is able to make this,
but His Divine Law of Causation is not so. Education of an Islamic
scholar requires the reappearing and spreading of Islamic
knowledge and the elapse of a hundred years. The enemies tried
to extinguish the Islamic sun.
Hannâ Abî Râshid, chief of the masonic lodge in Beirut, wrote:
“Jamâl ad-dîn al-Afghânî was the chief of the masonic lodge in
Egypt, which had about three hundred members, mostly scholars
and state officials. After him, the leading master Muhammad
’Abduh became the chief. ’Abduh was a leading freemason. No
one can deny that he has spread the masonic spirit in Arab
countries.” [1]
Seeing the reforms made by Muhammad ’Abduh, many
people suppose that he was an Islamic scholar. The Ahl as-Sunna
scholars have written answers to his articles and torn up his mask.
For example, Elmal›l› Hamdi Beg, in his interpretation of the
[1] Dâ’irat al-ma’ârif al-masoniyya, p. 197, Beirut, 1381/1961.
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