Islam and the Foundations of Political Power (In Translation: Modern Muslim Thinkers)

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The publication of this essay in Egypt in 1925 took the contemporaries of 'Ali 'Abd al-Raziq by storm. It was the focus of much attention and the seed of a heated debate. At a time when the Muslim world was in great turmoil over the question of the abolition of the caliphate by Mustapha Kamal Ataturk in Turkey, Abdelraziq, a religious cleric trained at Al-Azhar University, argued in favour of secularism. The abolition of the caliphate had re-ignited the issue of Islam and politics, as traditional political systems were dissolving under pressure from European powers while most Muslim countries had lost their sovereignty. This essay gave rise to a series of 'refutations' of which three were published the same year. It also unleashed the Arab world's first great public debate with polemics supporting or refuting Abdelraziq's ideas published all over the press. Eventually he was tried by the Al-Azhar court, denounced, stripped of his title of 'alim and barred from future employment in education and the judiciary.

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Ali Abdelraziq was educated in the traditional curriculum and graduated from Al-Azhar University in 1915 as an 'alim. He went on to travel to Britain and study at Oxford University for a short period and the then newly founded Egypt University. He served as an Al-Azhar alim, a judge in the traditional Islamic Courts of Alexandria and as a teacher of Arabic.