.Martin Kramer: America and Afghani, the Historical Hero of Afghanistan
[Prof. Kramer, the author of Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle East Studies in America, was a full-time tenured academic at Tel Aviv University. He is now a senior fellow at the Adelson Institution of Strategic studies and a Senior Fellow at the Olin Institute at Harvard.]
This photograph caught my eye the other day. It’s Ambassador Frank Ricciardone, number two at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, paying his respects last May at the mausoleum of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani on the campus of Kabul University. Afghani (1838-1897) is revered in Afghanistan as a native son who inspired the modern revival of Islam, and who championed both internal reform and resistance to Western imperialism. Reformists and Islamists around the Muslim world equally claim him as their precursor. In the course of his peripatetic career, he preached in Iran, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, India, Russia, and Europe. His famous Paris-based newspaper, al-Urwa al-wuthqa, spread his ideas far and wide.
This was not the first time the United States had paid tribute to the memory of Afghani. In 2002, then-U.S. ambassador Robert Finn came to the dilapidated mausoleum and pledged $25,000 from his government to restore it. Finn said this about Afghani:
This is, in a sense, a double tribute by my country. In doing so we honor the memory of an Afghan and Muslim intellectual giant of the 19th century: a scholar, journalist, political thinker, advisor to kings and a revolutionary who inspired Muslims from Egypt to India.
This was a man steeped in the learning of the Qur’an who called for freedom, reason and scientific inquiry. He was a learned man, a skilled writer and debater, he had the moral courage of strong convictions, criticizing the West for its materialism but not shying away from criticizing the Muslim rulers of the day and what he saw as self-destructive tendencies in his own religion.
Finn concluded: “This donation is also a recognition that the day will come when Afghanistan will again produce great leaders and thinkers that will shake the world and inspire hope and reform.”
No doubt it made diplomatic sense for the United States to help restore this Afghan national monument, and for its ambassador to praise Afghanistan’s national hero. At the same time, it is ironic in more ways than one can count.
First, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani is not exactly the sort of Muslim role model the United States usually promotes. He was what used to be called an agitator, someone who hated the great Western power of the era (Britain) not just for its materialism but for its imperialism, and who didn’t just criticize Muslim rulers but actively plotted against them. On both counts, Osama bin Laden could just as readily claim Afghani’s mantle.
In particular, Afghani believed that the rulers of the day had to be removed, if necessary by the bullet. A disciple once found him pacing back and forth, shouting, “There is no deliverance except in killing, there is no safety except in killing.” These were not idle words. In 1896, he inspired a disciple to assassinate Nasir al-Din Shah, ruler of Iran. Afghani said this about the assassination:
Surely it was a good deed to kill this bloodthirsty tyrant, this Nero on the Persian throne… who nonetheless knew how to throw sand in the eyes of civilized Europe so that it did not recognize his deeds. It was well done then to kill him, for it may be a warning to others. This is the first time that a Shah has found his death not in a palace revolution but at the hand of an ordinary man, and thus for a tyrant to receive just recompense for his deeds.
It is no accident, then, that Afghani is regularly honored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, where his name graces a public square in the capital and his image appears on a postage stamp.
So Afghani is not exactly an exemplar of someone who tried to “shake the world” peacefully, and one cannot help but imagine that were he alive today, he would be on some agency’s no-fly list. He also died a wanted man. At the time of the Shah’s assassination, Afghani resided in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, and Iran sought his extradition. The Ottoman authorities refused, but they put Afghani under house arrest. He died there less than a year later, and the Ottoman authorities buried him without ceremony in an unmarked grave, the fate reserved for subversives.
But that’s not the only irony. Afghani wasn’t an Afghan. He called himself Afghani in his travels around the Muslim world, but he was born and raised in a small town near Hamadan in Iran. As a young man, he spent some years in the Shi’a academies in Iraq. In his travels to Sunni lands, his origins would have been held against him, so he took to calling himself “Afghani,” leaving Muslim listeners to presume him to be a Sunni. The documentary record on this point is clear, and the irrefutable evidence is marshaled in an appendix to the definitive biography of Afghani by UCLA historian Nikki Keddie.
Afghani’s Iranian nationality was well known to intelligence agencies and Orientalists in his own day. The State Department later established it as well. In 1936, J. Rives Childs, an American diplomat then stationed in Cairo, visited Tehran, and in an official despatch laid out the evidence, which included the presence in Iran of Afghani’s family. The historian Elie Kedourie described Childs as “probably the first Westerner conclusively to establish Afghani’s Shi’ite and Iranian origin.” Afghans obviously believe otherwise, but it’s still odd that a U.S. ambassador, even to Afghanistan, should take a position in favor of the Afghan claim, which the State Department disproved even before scholars debunked it.
I have referred to Afghani’s putative remains, and for good reason. There is no certainty that Afghani is buried in Afghani’s tomb. This is due to yet another American, the wealthy philanthropist Charles Crane, best known for his role on the King-Crane Commission. In 1924, Crane set out to find Afghani’s grave in Istanbul, to satisfy his penchant for “visiting the graves of men who have made a deep impression on humanity.” He explored several cemeteries but had no luck until “a fine old green-turbaned sheikh appeared,” showed him an “absolutely flat and unmarked” spot, and proclaimed it to be Afghani’s grave. In 1926, Crane erected a tombstone and iron balustrade on the plot. As Afghani’s reputation grew, Muslims began to make pilgrimages to the grave marked by Crane. This was also the grave from which, in 1944, remains were removed for transfer to Kabul, via Iraq and India. Elie Kedourie later put it succinctly: “Whether what was moved from Istanbul to Kabul was Jamal al-Din’s body, or whether the monument at Kabul, in seeking to do honour to someone who, in any case, was not an Afghan, was merely sheltering the remains of some unknown Muslim, God alone knows.”
The final irony in this story of America and Afghani may be found in the account of the British ambassador to Afghanistan who, in 1944, witnessed what he called the “pious fraud” of Afghani’s reburial in Kabul. In his report on the event, the British diplomat described how the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Cornelius van H. Engert, succumbed to the chaos that accompanied the historic occasion: “My American colleague who was sitting on a chair somewhat in the background was completely overwhelmed by the mob. He had borne the previous delay and the lack of organization with scant patience, but this was the last straw, and he left the proceedings in disgust.” So Americans have twice refurbished Afghani’s tomb, but didn’t have the patience to stay through his funeral.
The United States had nothing to do with Afghani while he lived, but has become his present-day patron out of necessity, given the dearth of neutral symbols on which to built an Afghan identity. Afghani is serviceable precisely because he wasn’t an Afghan at all. But if a moral lurks in this story, perhaps it is that in Afghanistan, where the truth is a rare commodity, be especially careful not to deceive yourself.
HNN
This photograph caught my eye the other day. It’s Ambassador Frank Ricciardone, number two at the U.S. embassy in Kabul, paying his respects last May at the mausoleum of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani on the campus of Kabul University. Afghani (1838-1897) is revered in Afghanistan as a native son who inspired the modern revival of Islam, and who championed both internal reform and resistance to Western imperialism. Reformists and Islamists around the Muslim world equally claim him as their precursor. In the course of his peripatetic career, he preached in Iran, Egypt, the Ottoman Empire, India, Russia, and Europe. His famous Paris-based newspaper, al-Urwa al-wuthqa, spread his ideas far and wide.
This was not the first time the United States had paid tribute to the memory of Afghani. In 2002, then-U.S. ambassador Robert Finn came to the dilapidated mausoleum and pledged $25,000 from his government to restore it. Finn said this about Afghani:
This is, in a sense, a double tribute by my country. In doing so we honor the memory of an Afghan and Muslim intellectual giant of the 19th century: a scholar, journalist, political thinker, advisor to kings and a revolutionary who inspired Muslims from Egypt to India.
This was a man steeped in the learning of the Qur’an who called for freedom, reason and scientific inquiry. He was a learned man, a skilled writer and debater, he had the moral courage of strong convictions, criticizing the West for its materialism but not shying away from criticizing the Muslim rulers of the day and what he saw as self-destructive tendencies in his own religion.
Finn concluded: “This donation is also a recognition that the day will come when Afghanistan will again produce great leaders and thinkers that will shake the world and inspire hope and reform.”
No doubt it made diplomatic sense for the United States to help restore this Afghan national monument, and for its ambassador to praise Afghanistan’s national hero. At the same time, it is ironic in more ways than one can count.
First, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani is not exactly the sort of Muslim role model the United States usually promotes. He was what used to be called an agitator, someone who hated the great Western power of the era (Britain) not just for its materialism but for its imperialism, and who didn’t just criticize Muslim rulers but actively plotted against them. On both counts, Osama bin Laden could just as readily claim Afghani’s mantle.
In particular, Afghani believed that the rulers of the day had to be removed, if necessary by the bullet. A disciple once found him pacing back and forth, shouting, “There is no deliverance except in killing, there is no safety except in killing.” These were not idle words. In 1896, he inspired a disciple to assassinate Nasir al-Din Shah, ruler of Iran. Afghani said this about the assassination:
Surely it was a good deed to kill this bloodthirsty tyrant, this Nero on the Persian throne… who nonetheless knew how to throw sand in the eyes of civilized Europe so that it did not recognize his deeds. It was well done then to kill him, for it may be a warning to others. This is the first time that a Shah has found his death not in a palace revolution but at the hand of an ordinary man, and thus for a tyrant to receive just recompense for his deeds.
It is no accident, then, that Afghani is regularly honored by the Islamic Republic of Iran, where his name graces a public square in the capital and his image appears on a postage stamp.
So Afghani is not exactly an exemplar of someone who tried to “shake the world” peacefully, and one cannot help but imagine that were he alive today, he would be on some agency’s no-fly list. He also died a wanted man. At the time of the Shah’s assassination, Afghani resided in the Ottoman capital, Istanbul, and Iran sought his extradition. The Ottoman authorities refused, but they put Afghani under house arrest. He died there less than a year later, and the Ottoman authorities buried him without ceremony in an unmarked grave, the fate reserved for subversives.
But that’s not the only irony. Afghani wasn’t an Afghan. He called himself Afghani in his travels around the Muslim world, but he was born and raised in a small town near Hamadan in Iran. As a young man, he spent some years in the Shi’a academies in Iraq. In his travels to Sunni lands, his origins would have been held against him, so he took to calling himself “Afghani,” leaving Muslim listeners to presume him to be a Sunni. The documentary record on this point is clear, and the irrefutable evidence is marshaled in an appendix to the definitive biography of Afghani by UCLA historian Nikki Keddie.
Afghani’s Iranian nationality was well known to intelligence agencies and Orientalists in his own day. The State Department later established it as well. In 1936, J. Rives Childs, an American diplomat then stationed in Cairo, visited Tehran, and in an official despatch laid out the evidence, which included the presence in Iran of Afghani’s family. The historian Elie Kedourie described Childs as “probably the first Westerner conclusively to establish Afghani’s Shi’ite and Iranian origin.” Afghans obviously believe otherwise, but it’s still odd that a U.S. ambassador, even to Afghanistan, should take a position in favor of the Afghan claim, which the State Department disproved even before scholars debunked it.
I have referred to Afghani’s putative remains, and for good reason. There is no certainty that Afghani is buried in Afghani’s tomb. This is due to yet another American, the wealthy philanthropist Charles Crane, best known for his role on the King-Crane Commission. In 1924, Crane set out to find Afghani’s grave in Istanbul, to satisfy his penchant for “visiting the graves of men who have made a deep impression on humanity.” He explored several cemeteries but had no luck until “a fine old green-turbaned sheikh appeared,” showed him an “absolutely flat and unmarked” spot, and proclaimed it to be Afghani’s grave. In 1926, Crane erected a tombstone and iron balustrade on the plot. As Afghani’s reputation grew, Muslims began to make pilgrimages to the grave marked by Crane. This was also the grave from which, in 1944, remains were removed for transfer to Kabul, via Iraq and India. Elie Kedourie later put it succinctly: “Whether what was moved from Istanbul to Kabul was Jamal al-Din’s body, or whether the monument at Kabul, in seeking to do honour to someone who, in any case, was not an Afghan, was merely sheltering the remains of some unknown Muslim, God alone knows.”
The final irony in this story of America and Afghani may be found in the account of the British ambassador to Afghanistan who, in 1944, witnessed what he called the “pious fraud” of Afghani’s reburial in Kabul. In his report on the event, the British diplomat described how the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Cornelius van H. Engert, succumbed to the chaos that accompanied the historic occasion: “My American colleague who was sitting on a chair somewhat in the background was completely overwhelmed by the mob. He had borne the previous delay and the lack of organization with scant patience, but this was the last straw, and he left the proceedings in disgust.” So Americans have twice refurbished Afghani’s tomb, but didn’t have the patience to stay through his funeral.
The United States had nothing to do with Afghani while he lived, but has become his present-day patron out of necessity, given the dearth of neutral symbols on which to built an Afghan identity. Afghani is serviceable precisely because he wasn’t an Afghan at all. But if a moral lurks in this story, perhaps it is that in Afghanistan, where the truth is a rare commodity, be especially careful not to deceive yourself.
HNN
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