Jadid - Relationship With The Ulama

Relationship With The Ulama

Jadid thought often carried distinctly anti-clerical sentiment. Many members of the Ulama opposed the Jadid's programs and ideologies, decrying them as un-Islamic, heretical innovations. Many Jadids saw these "Qadimists" (proponents of the old ways) not only as inhibitors of modern reform but also as corrupt, self-interested elites whose authority lay not in Islamic ideology as dictated by the Quran and sunnah but rather in local tradition that was both inimical to "authentic" Islam and harmful to society. In his Cairo publication al-Nahdah, Gasprinski published cartoons that depict mullahs and sheikhs as rapacious and lustful figures who prevented women from taking their rightful place as social equals and exploited the goodwill and trust of lay Muslims.

To be clear, Jadids asserted that the Ulama as a class were necessary for the enlightenment and preservation of the Muslim community, but they simultaneously declared Ulama who did not share their vision of reform to be unacquainted with authentic knowledge of Islam. Inevitably, those who opposed their modernist project were decried as motivated by self-interest rather than a desire to uplift their fellow Muslims. Sufi mystics received even more scathing indictment. Jadids saw the Ulama and the Sufis not as pillars of Islamic principals, but rather as proponents of a popular form of Islam that was hostile to both modernization and authentic Islamic tradition. Central Asian Jadids accused their religious leaders of permitting the moral decay of society (as seen in the prevalence of alcoholism, pederasty, polygamy, and gender discrimination) while simultaneously cooperating with Russian officials to cement their authority as religious elites.

Despite this anti-clericism, the Jadids often had much in common with the Qadimists. Many of them were educated in traditional maktabs and madrassas, and came from clerical or bourgeois families. In short, they had been born and bred into a class of elites. As historian Adeeb Khalid asserts, Jadids and the Qadimist Ulama were essentially engaged in a battle over what values elite groups should project onto Central Asian Muslim culture. Jadids and Qadimists both sought to assert their own cultural values, with one group drawing its strategic strength from its relationship to modern forms of social organization and media and the other from its position as champion of an existing way of life in which it already occupied stations of authority.