Saluting Russia's Islamic Modernists in the Cairo and Beirut Arabic Press (1899)

Islamic modernism refers to a group of overlapping movements that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century and argued that Islam champions the values of modernity. A global phenomenon, Islamic modernism’s intellectual work also took place in Egypt, where a key publication of these movements was published: the Arabic-language magazine al-Manar (The Lighthouse; 1898–1935), founded by Syrian-born Ottoman subject and Islamic thinker Muhammad Rashid Rida. This chapter focuses on an 1899 article Rida published about Muslim life in Russia’s Volga-Ural region. Rida was interested in Russia’s Muslims for their long, dynamic history of adaptation and survival under tsarist rule, and he believed that Muslims elsewhere in the world could learn from their experiences. This chapter reveals Russia’s Muslims as a key readership of the influential al-Manar, as well as participants in Arabic-language intellectual exchanges that made up Islamic modernist movements.