The Caliphate or Supreme Imamate is Muhammad Rashid Rida’s best-known work, which examines the compatibility of Islamic political and legal tradition with modern thought. Simon A. Wood has made The Caliphate or Supreme Imamate accessible for English-speaking scholars and students of political theory and the modern Middle East. In this Q&A, we talk with Wood about his interest in Rida’s work, the process of translating, and discourses surrounding Rida’s work.
You have worked extensively to translate Muhammad Rashid Rida, including commentary on Christian Criticisms, Islamic Proofs: Rashid Rida’s Modernist Defense of Islam. Tell us about how you developed an interest in his work.
SW: I first came to Rashid Rida at Temple University where I was studying under Khalid Yahya Blankinship, and the late Mahmoud Ayoub. Muslim-Christian relations seemed a good topic for graduate work, and one of the advantages of working on Rida was chronological. His career overlaps with one of the most turbulent eras of modern history. My first book on Rida focused on some of his writings in the first years of the twentieth century, coinciding with a high point of colonial domination of the Middle East. I am also interested in fundamentalism as a comparative theme in religious studies, and I published an edited volume on that topic in 2014. Rida’s career coincides with those of the original Protestant fundamentalists in the USA. Working on Rida gave me a way to connect a study of primary materials to broader themes that I was interested in. I argue that Rida was not a fundamentalist. I came to work on Rida’s book on the caliphate after being encouraged by Andrew March to submit a proposal for a book for Yale’s World Though in Translation Series. Having published my first book on Rida, I might have moved on to different authors for my next book. Yet, The Caliphate or Supreme Imamate presented itself as a compelling choice given its significance and the fact that—so far as I know—it had not previously been published in English.
In the Note on the Translation, you mention balancing an idiomatic and literal approach to translation, while tending toward the latter. Why did you favor that approach?
SW: Yes, while I attempt to balance the approaches, I tend more towards the literal than the idiomatic. I hope that the result could be described as fairly literal but not excessively so. The aim in doing that is to move the reader of the translation towards the original text, Rashid Rida’s book. That differs from an idiomatic approach which rather seeks to move the original text towards the reader of the translation. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages. Idiomatic translation is likely to produce stylistically superior English, and in that sense might “read” better than a more literal translation. The more literal approach gives the reader of the translation a closer sense of the original, even while resulting in what may at times read as awkward or clunky prose. This approach also involves generally leaving words that have been naturalized in English as they are. Hence, for instance, “ijtihad” is rendered “ijtihad,” not “personal intellectual effort.” I took a literal approach in my 2008 translation of Rida’s book on Christian criticisms of Islam, and I believe that was positively received. That said, it will be for readers of this translation to evaluate the choices I have made. As I make clear, mine is not the translation that those who favor a thoroughly idiomatic approach would prefer.
Muhammad Rashid Rida was a courageous reformer and advocate, renowned for founding Al-Manar, an independent and successful Islamic magazine. How have his reevaluation of tradition and reformist agenda continued to influence Islamic thought and intellectual life?
SW: Rida’s imprint can be seen in the works of a variety of figures. He influenced ‘Ali ‘Abdel Razek (d. 1966), who published his own book on the caliphate in 1925, albeit that ‘Abdel Razek’s concern was to use Rida as an example of an author whose Islamic scholarship was flawed. ‘Abdel Razek argued for an Islamic form of secularism. Rida also had some influence over Hasan al-Banna (d. 1949), founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, which some commentators regard as a fundamentalist movement. Al-Banna took over Al-Manar after Rida’s death, although without a clear mandate from Rida. For some observers, the Rida-Al-Banna connection may point towards Rida being something akin to the “godfather” of so-called fundamentalist movements, although I do not subscribe to that view. Rida’s work, including his rehabilitation of Wahhabism, has influenced the subsequent Salafi movement, as scholars such as Henri Lauzière have shown. While there are some obvious differences, it would be profitable to compare Rida’s political ideas to those that Ruhollah Khomeini (d. 1989) set out in The Guardianship of the Jurist (1970). I’d also note that Western scholars have shown increased interest in Rida in recent years and in a variety of venues. Some of this may reflect a wider interest in studying alternatives to secularism that emerge from within the Islamic tradition in view of the perception that nationalism and socialism have often failed to deliver in Muslim contexts.
You have argued that if we contextualize Muhammad Rashid Rida’s work amidst colonial domination, we can see it as reformist and modern rather than fundamentalist or conservative. You have also argued against the notion that at some point during or after the First World War Rida turned course, shifting from a modern reformist posture to a fundamentalist or conservative one. In The Caliphate or Supreme Imamate, does Rida present Islamic political thought as compatible with modernity?
SW: Well that is Rida’s goal: to persuade his readers that Islam is indeed compatible with modernity. And given his context that was not an argument that was always easy to make. So, he set himself the task of disabusing Muslims and Christians of all persuasions of the idea that Islam was inherently at odds with the challenges and opportunities of modern life. He laments that so many of his Muslim peers were ignorant of what he referred to as Islam’s “true nature.” As a result of this ignorance, when non-Muslims or secularizing Muslims (in Rida’s terminology “Europeanizers”) argued that much of Islam was incompatible with modernity, and that the path to prosperity lay in imitating European culture, the Muslim masses, as Rida depicts them, responded with quiescence and indifference. Rida seeks to fundamentally invert what he regarded as a commonly held conception that Muslims could succeed, prosper, and gain political independence by dispensing with Islam’s legal and political traditions. He argues to the contrary that Muslims have failed politically precisely because they abandoned those traditions or were inattentive of the resources they furnish. In making his argument he delineates features that we associate with progressive culture—e.g., popular sovereignty and novel legislation—as originating not with the West but with Islam. He made that argument, for instance, both at the end of the war when commenting on Woodrow Wilson’s postwar vision, and four years later when he wrote The Caliphate or Supreme Imamate.
What do you hope students of political theory and modern Islam will take away from this translation, the first of its kind in English?
SW: I hope that the students who read English will benefit from having access to Rida’s original text on the caliphate. In my introduction to the translation, I attempt to contextualize Rida’s book by focusing on some of his political endeavors from around the end of the First World War to the winter of 1922-23, when he began writing it. This shows how it falls between Wilsonianism and Wahhabism during a pivotal period in which Rida and others strove to achieve Muslim self-determination in the face of long odds. Rida’s text has been described as one of the most important works on the caliphate since the medieval period, and as prefiguring the idea of the modern Islamic state. Until now, however, English readers have been dependent on secondary literature—which is very extensive—when it comes to evaluating such significant claims. This translation will enable readers to draw their own conclusions. I think students might also benefit from examining Rida’s book alongside translations of other critical texts on the topic. These include The Ordinances of Government by the classical theorist Mawardi (d. 1058), and ‘Ali ‘Abdel Razek’s 1925 book on the caliphate, which may in part have been prompted by Rida’s book. Those who are interested in comparative themes might benefit from studying Rida’s book alongside other seminal works that speak to the theme of cultural and political autonomy, such as Black Elk Speaks and The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
Simon A. Wood is associate professor of religious studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
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