Muhammad Abduh

穆罕默德•阿布笃

Mohammad Abduh was an Egyptian Muslim theologian, journalist, jurist, and reformer. He was born in the Nile Delta in 1849 and studied in Cairo under Jamal al-Din Afghani. His opposition to colonialism and desire to modernize Islamic society on its own terms led to his involvement in an uprising against Egypt’s European-backed ruler, for which he was exiled in 1882. He joined Afghani in Paris to publish an anti-British Islamic revolutionary journal, then returned to Egypt in 1888 and became a judge while publishing treatises about Islam, Islamic legal reform, reconciling religion and science, citizens’ rights, and other issues of modernization. He served on the governing board of Al-Azhar University and was officially appointed the state mufti of Egypt in 1899, a post that he retained until his death in 1905.