Ahmed Midhat Efendi and Abdülhamid II: creating the new Ottoman individual

Ahmed Midhat published Niza in four volumes between 1895 and 1900. He had written by that time more than one hundred books, both fiction and non-fiction.Footnote ⁷ He owned a major printing house, published a leading newspaper, and, crucially, was a favourite of Abdülhamid II (reigned 1876–1909) – a sultan whose regime exercised unprecedented degrees of press censorship. Yet Midhat had started from humble beginnings. In contrast to many Ottoman intellectuals of the period who were sons of state officials, Midhat was the son of a shopkeeper.Footnote ⁸ He learned to read while working as an apprentice at the Spice Market in Istanbul. He later had some formal education and took bureaucratic posts in Niš (in present-day Serbia) and Baghdad, which included the administration of local official newspapers. Upon his return to Istanbul in 1871, he started working as a journalist and founded his own printing house. He also acquainted himself with the Young Ottomans, reformist intellectuals who advocated the establishment of a parliament under a new sultan. This, and his haphazard references to a variety of ideas in his articles, caused him to be sent into exile in 1874 along with the Young Ottomans. While he had published many ‘harmless’ texts on the history of Islam, he had also toyed with ideas like private entrepreneurship, the concept of ‘the nation’, and social evolution – ideas that were not particularly popular in the Ottoman Empire during this period.Footnote ⁹

Forgiven in 1876, Midhat returned to Istanbul and thus started a new period in his life defined by his rapport with the new sultan, Abdülhamid II. After distancing himself from the Young Ottomans and praising Abdülhamid II in his works, he was appointed to the directorship of the Ottoman official gazette in 1878.Footnote ¹⁰ He also started to publish the newspaper Tercüman-ı Hakikat at his own printing house, but received regular financial support from the palace, and in his articles and books he propagated ideas that were consistent with Abdülhamid's policies. Chief among these ideas were public education, stability, patriarchy and deference to the Sultan. The image of the industrious, frugal and obedient individual that he had been constructing since his early works culminated in his views on the best synthesis between the ‘Eastern’ and the ‘Western’. He summarized his viewpoint in an article published in 1898:

The ideal Ottoman individual was one who combined the knowledge produced in the West by the new sciences with the morality of the Muslims and remained loyal to the throne, just like the protagonists of his novels.Footnote ¹²

But the reign of Abdülhamid II was itself a period of increased emphasis on the connections between Islam, the ‘Ottoman character’ and obedience to the Sultan. Particularly after the empire had lost most of its territories and non-Muslim citizens in the Balkans in the 1877–1878 Russo-Ottoman war, the Sultan started to ‘stress the Islamic religion as a new bid for unity against what he saw as an increasingly hostile Christian world’.Footnote ¹³ He began emphasizing the title ‘the caliph of all Muslims’ that previous sultans had rarely used, many ‘Holy Relics’ were ‘discovered’ and brought to the capital with extravagant ceremonies, and similar spectacles accompanied the departure of the Sultan's gifts to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.Footnote ¹⁴

This policy affected the educational system as well: while the number of state schools of all levels based on the French model increased rapidly, the curricula were reformed with an emphasis on Islam.Footnote ¹⁵ A report of the curricular reform commission stated in 1887 that students' interest in Western ideas led to disloyalty to the throne, immorality and ignorance in Islamic matters, and recommended increasing the number of classes on Islam, and monitoring schools very closely to ‘fend off the danger [posed by students’] being occupied with Western works and writings that are harmful to Islamic morals and to the exalted sultanate'.Footnote ¹⁶ According to a similar report from 1900, students needed to have all the essential knowledge pertaining to science, but they should also obtain ‘religious firmness [and] be faithful to the sublime sultanate and endowed with sound morals’.Footnote ¹⁷

The chief problem was thus defined as the ‘harmful effects of Western works’ on ‘confused’ students. A related, but even more urgent, problem was Western encroachment via the Christian missionary schools all around the empire – schools that were better equipped and staffed than the new schools of the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ¹⁸ Secessionist movements of the non-Muslim communities were attributed by the Palace to missionary effort, and, according to official reports, Muslim students' attendance in missionary schools could damage ‘their national and religious training’.Footnote ¹⁹ Minister of Education Zühdü Pasha declared these schools a great threat because ‘the foreigners realized that they can achieve their political objectives by corrupting the minds of the students of these schools and leading them astray’.Footnote ²⁰

It is exactly at this point that Draper comes into the picture. What Ahmed Midhat saw in Conflict was a text that could be regarded as yet another ‘dangerous Western work’, but in fact it was a far more flexible resource that could actually be used as a weapon to fight both major problems of the period. Conflict, for Midhat, not only refuted the claims of the missionaries, but also demonstrated forcefully – though not necessarily deliberately – that Islam did not have a conflict with science, thus proving its truth to ‘confused minds’.

Midhat's Draper: foe of Christianity, friend of Islam

In his foreword Midhat states that it was Fatma Aliye who had asked him to read Conflict – a book of which he had not previously heard.Footnote ²¹ When he started reading, he realized that the book deserved to be taken seriously, as unlike many critics of religion, Draper was a respectable man of science who kept the promise he made in his own introduction: ‘to present a clear and impartial statement of the views and acts of the two contending parties’.Footnote ²²

What made Draper's ‘impartiality’ so appealing for Midhat is obviously that the criteria Draper introduced could be construed as demonstrating that there could be no conflict between Islam and science. Furthermore, as it appears that what Draper means by the word ‘religion’ is Christianity, Midhat argues, studying Draper's text ‘has many additional benefits for Muslim readers’ – benefits related to his purpose when he published his Apology directed against the Christian missionaries in the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ²³ Hence, reading Draper – under the guidance of Midhat, of course – is useful for Ottoman Muslims: it shows Islam's compatibility with science, and thus can prevent Muslim students from doubting their religion, and it proves the conflict between Christianity and science, thus providing the Ottoman Muslims with a weapon against the missionaries.

What exactly does Draper state about Christianity, Islam and science, then? Conflict is a book that presents Draper's arguments on science and religion around two themes discussed in separate chapters: the history of the conflict, and the major points of contention. In many of these chapters Draper makes brief, and occasionally quite lengthy, comparisons between Islam and Christianity. Even though Islamic doctrine as found in the Koran rarely fares better than Christian theology, Draper praises the contributions of the ‘Saracens’ heartily, providing Midhat with a foundation for presenting Draper as an unwitting advocate of Islam.Footnote ²⁴ I discuss below Draper's arguments and Midhat's comments in the sections on which he chooses to elaborate. Therefore this is by no means a comprehensive summary of Draper's and Midhat's works.Footnote ²⁵

On the origin of science

In the first chapter of Conflict Draper argues that science originated in Alexandria after the Macedonian conquest.Footnote ²⁶ The inductive philosophy of Aristotle, the source of ‘all the modern advances in science’, was cultivated at the Museum of Alexandria, while Stoicism provided the ethical principles that guided the Alexandrian school, namely that ‘we must learn to control our passions, and live free, intelligent, virtuous, in all things in accordance with reason’.Footnote ²⁷ There was no personal god for the Stoics, but a vital force to which all souls would eventually return. As absolute truth was unattainable and first causes were incomprehensible, what man should do was to acquire knowledge and live a virtuous life guided by reason. Midhat, however, warns his readers that Aristotle's inductivism was as ridiculous as Greek superstition when it attempted to explain the metaphysical, and that was why Zeno's Stoicism came into being.Footnote ²⁸ But while Zeno did come close to a true understanding of the Divine, the society he lived in was not as sophisticated as Draper portrays it. In fact, the Alexandria of the time was ‘like the Paris of today’: irreligious, immoral, insolent.Footnote ²⁹ Their decadence reached levels beyond that of the pagan Greeks, which could actually lead one to ‘detest science and appreciate ignorance’.Footnote ³⁰ Midhat's obvious, but crucial, point is that in societies where scientific progress takes place, decline in morals is possible, if not unavoidable, with clear implications for Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

On the origin of Christianity

Draper's central argument on the birth and spread of Christianity is that while it emerged as a doctrine of benevolence and brotherhood, it became ever more intertwined with the state and was modified in a regrettable way.Footnote ³¹ Tertullian's Christianity, built on the principles of universal compassion and one, infinite God, was ‘noble’.Footnote ³² But Constantine's adoption of Christianity transformed it into a route to power, resulting in a process of paganization that ‘eventually brought it in conflict with science’.Footnote ³³ Amalgamated with the other religions prevalent in the empire, Christianity came to incorporate notions like miracles, the Trinity and transubstantiation, as well as practices including relic worship.Footnote ³⁴

Most significantly for the purposes of Midhat, Draper asserts that the corruption of Christianity constitutes the main difference between this faith and ‘Mohammedanism’, which ‘absolutely annihilated its antagonist, and spread its own doctrines without adulteration’.Footnote ³⁵ It is thus Draper himself who makes exactly the same points Ahmed Midhat had made in the Apology;Footnote ³⁶ hence, ‘believers … who respect the authentic truth of religion are with [Draper] in this’.Footnote ³⁷

Even more tragic for Draper is that the new Christian clergy ‘asserted that all knowledge is to be found in the Scripture and in the traditions of the Church’, and, with the backing of the state, embarked on an attack on their intellectual competitors.Footnote ³⁸ Thus started the process that turned the book of Genesis into not only the basis of Christianity but also the book with which all sciences should conform.Footnote ³⁹ Once again Midhat is in agreement, but argues that Draper's own remarks indicate that the hostility of the Church towards all learning was ‘not [about] “religion.” It [was] politics’.Footnote ⁴⁰ And if it is not even the authentic form of Christianity (which is Islam itself, according to Muslims) but its paganized, politicized version that committed these crimes, how can religion be claimed to be in conflict with science? The only heavenly book preserved in its true form, the Koran, also states that it contains everything, but Muslim scholars have always known that it ‘would be a laughable naïveté to conclude from this statement … that [the Koran] is an encyclopedia’ and developed the sciences of exegesis (tafsir) and interpretation (ta'wil).Footnote ⁴¹ Moreover, the God of the Muslims orders man to study the created to know the Creator, and asserts that those who do not possess true knowledge could never be equal to those who do.Footnote ⁴²

On Islam, or ‘the Southern Reformation’

An important development in the history of Christianity, Draper suggests, was the emergence of Nestorianism in the fifth century. An Aristotelian reaction to anthropomorphic and Trinitarian views, Nestorianism was particularly popular in Western Asia. And it was a Nestorian monk who first influenced Mohammad, a young merchant from idolatrous Arabia, and instilled in him a hatred of idolatry as well as of Trinitarianism.Footnote ⁴³

Even though Draper's remark about Nestorian influence is intended to praise, not belittle, Mohammad, Midhat states, it is simply unacceptable.Footnote ⁴⁴ Also appalling are Draper's argument that Mohammad was, nevertheless, unable ‘to emancipate himself from anthropomorphic conceptions’,Footnote ⁴⁵ his dramatic depictions of the conquests of Muslim armies, and his allusion to the story concerning the destruction of the library of Alexandria by the Arabs.Footnote ⁴⁶ Midhat writes,

If even a ‘studious author like Draper’ can misrepresent Islam, the blame lies with the Church that has long been disseminating lies about the Muslim faith, and ‘even the friends of Islam sometimes unwillingly fall into these falsities’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Indeed, for Midhat, Draper's positive remarks about Mohammad's aversion to Trinitarianism and his insistence on being but a messenger of God are strong evidence that the more Western thinkers learn about Islam the more likely they are to appreciate it. Moreover, as studying the history of Islam and interpreting the Koran are subtle tasks even for Muslims, ‘an American professor should always be excused for his lack of comprehension of them’.Footnote ⁴⁹

This is particularly true, of course, if the ‘American professor’ has favourable opinions about Islam. One such opinion concerns Draper's views on a ‘characteristic’ of Muslims commonly reviled in orientalist texts: fatalism. A fatalistic world view, for Draper, is particularly suitable for the emergence of a scientific outlook, and in this respect Islam is the opposite of Christianity. While ‘Christendom believed that she could change the course of affairs by influencing the conduct of superior beings[,] Islam rested in a pious resignation to the unchangeable will of God’.Footnote ⁵⁰ Christians insisted on a God who would constantly intervene in the workings of the world, whereas Muslims developed a conception of an orderly, consistent world where the ‘iron chain of destiny’ is formed by facts causally linked to one another.Footnote ⁵¹

While Midhat feels the need to also emphasize the importance of individual will and worldly activity in Islam,Footnote ⁵² on the contributions of Muslims the two authors agree. Draper devotes many pages to the Saracen Empire, and commends Muslims for adopting the inductive method and making great advances in mathematics, chemistry, astronomy, optics and so forth. Libraries in Muslim lands were exquisite, educational institutions were the finest on earth, arts flourished and industry boomed.Footnote ⁵³ Muslims even developed a theory of evolution extending ‘even to inorganic or mineral things’.Footnote ⁵⁴

What Draper finds fundamentally praiseworthy, however, is not Islamic doctrine itself. Indeed, what is commendable about Muslims is the ‘sophisticated philosophy’ they were able to construct once they abandoned ‘the fallacies of vulgar Mohammedanism’ such as anthropomorphic depictions of God, thanks partly to the Nestorians and Jews they interacted with.Footnote ⁵⁵ Such an approach, which distinguishes Islamic philosophy from the Koran, is untenable for Midhat. After all, if the book that their religion was based on had not made it possible, how could Muslims have encouraged astronomical and natural research so early, at a time when they were such fervent believers in that very book as to eradicate all forms of false belief in their surroundings? Muslims embraced and furthered Greek science simply because every statement in their Holy Book relies on ‘scientific judgements and truths’, and when Muslims perceive a body of knowledge that shares the same characteristics they claim it.Footnote ⁵⁶ Hence, with his usual pragmatism, Midhat treats the Koran and the achievements of Muslims as inseparable from one another, as ‘Islam’ itself and this flexible definition of Islam allow a variety of ways to ‘demonstrate’ the harmony between Islam and science.Footnote ⁵⁷

On the ‘conflict respecting the nature of the soul’

Whether souls were created and whether they survive death are questions that Draper discusses with reference to the principle of ‘the indestructibility of matter and force’.Footnote ⁵⁸ The idea that nothing can come out of nothingness, in turn, is most harmonious with religious outlooks that emphasize an ‘impersonal intelligence, or indeterminate God, and a soul emerging from and returning to him’.Footnote ⁵⁹ In other words, it is the ideas of emanation and absorption that are closest to a scientific understanding of ‘the soul’.

Draper argues that the idea of the conservation of force can be found in Buddhist and Indian beliefs, and while John Erigena had introduced similar ideas in the Christian world, his works had been destroyed due to their conflict with the idea of creation out of nothing.Footnote ⁶⁰ However, Draper's main focus in this chapter is once again ‘Mohammedanism’. With a lengthy quotation from al-Ghazzali, Draper attempts to illustrate the Muslim belief in the return of souls to their source after death.Footnote ⁶¹ But real ‘philosophical Islamism’, he argues, was Averroism, a system of thought that transcended anthropomorphic conceptions, and interpreted God as the ‘active intelligence’ that the ‘intelligent principle, or soul [of an individual] … is absorbed in’ after death.Footnote ⁶² The individual, or passive, intellect was an emanation from the active intellect and what would remain from all human souls in the end would be the aggregate of them all.Footnote ⁶³

While he was familiar enough with the history of Islamic philosophy to know about the disagreements between Averroes and al-Ghazzali that Draper ignores, what is still most important for Midhat is that Draper was not alone in appreciating the harmony between Averroes's philosophy and science: ‘From Renan, Cousin and Comte, to finally Schopenhauer and Büchner; from the naturalists and materialists, to realists and atheists, all make this confession.’ Furthermore, the gist of the matter is that even though Averroes did have disagreements with al-Ghazzali, in his rebuttal he had ‘succeeded in demonstrating that he had true faith’.Footnote ⁶⁴ Thus the hero of the proponents of all the new Western philosophical trends is a true Muslim.

On the ‘conflict respecting the nature of the world’

As the Church discouraged scientific research and regarded the Scriptures as the only reference to be consulted in all matters, by the sixteenth century ‘Christianity had been in existence fifteen hundred years, and had not produced a single astronomer’, Draper contends. Muslims, on the other hand, had adopted and built upon the Greek tradition, made significant observations and calculations, and thus rendered a great service to the progress of science.Footnote ⁶⁵

Muslim astronomers' works had popularized the idea of a spherical Earth in the West and Columbus himself had been influenced by Averroes, but this view was deplored by Christian theologians as the Scriptures suggested a flat Earth.Footnote ⁶⁶ Furthermore, in Draper's account, Copernicus's heliocentric theory was unacceptable for the Church as it turned the Earth into a planet of no particular importance, and brought up questions about the religious implications of the possibility of life on other planets, such as whether they had also fallen and had Saviours of their own.Footnote ⁶⁷ Then, of course, came the ordeal of Galileo that Draper recounts in a moving fashion, concluding with the question, ‘Must not that be false which requires for its support so much imposture, so much barbarity?’Footnote ⁶⁸

Draper's examples provide fodder for Midhat's further comments on Christianity's problems: the Church propagated the idea that Heaven was above and Hell was below the flat Earth, tried to base this view on corrupted books, and, seeing itself as a mediator between God and His subjects, dared to regard it as in its authority to declare who would go where after death. In order to maintain this false authority, the Church ‘never missed an opportunity to hinder the progress of science’.Footnote ⁶⁹ In fact, that the Earth should be the centre of the universe is a specifically Christian concept: the Church exaggerated the importance of the Earth to strengthen its own this-worldly authority. But Islam, a faith without a Church, considers this world incomparably insignificant when compared to the afterlife. Thus ‘in this issue, too, the comparison shows that the philosophy of Islam … is … harmonious with scientific theories’.Footnote ⁷⁰ Giordano Bruno, another victim of the hostility of the Church towards science, and another hero of Draper, was influenced by Averroes.Footnote ⁷¹ Midhat underlines that no incident such as the burning of Bruno ever took place in the history of Islam,Footnote ⁷² but his comment on Draper's hope that a statue of Bruno will one day be unveiled under the dome of St Peter'sFootnote ⁷³ is much more striking:

On the ‘controversy respecting the age of the Earth’

Even though Draper does not even see as worthy of criticism the notion that the universe was created in six days, Midhat feels the need to clarify the position of Islam. Jews and Christians had, once again, misunderstood and misinterpreted the Word of God, and had either taken the phrase literally, or interpreted it as six thousand years. The Koran states that a day of God is like a thousand years, and Muslim scholars know that this is simply in order to give subjects an idea about the length of this time.Footnote ⁷⁵

As for the Deluge, there are stark differences between the Koran and the Old Testament. Midhat admits that there exist interpretations of the Koran that resemble the views Draper ridicules, but it is because ‘[t]he story of the deluge as recounted in the book currently known as “The Old Testament”’Footnote ⁷⁶ influenced some Muslim scholars as well. But Midhat discusses at length newer interpretations that, once again, reveal the difference between the related verses in the Koran and the Old Testament. The central difference is exactly the point that ‘materialists’ use to denounce Christianity: the Koran clearly states that the Deluge was a local catastrophe; it did not affect the whole world.Footnote ⁷⁷ Stories such as the Tower of Babel or those concerning the repopulation of the earth after the Deluge are also absent from the Koran.Footnote ⁷⁸ Therefore Muslims should know that their religion is exempt from ‘the harsh criticisms directed at Christianity by the proponents of science’.Footnote ⁷⁹

In fact,

Also indispensable for the Church's narrative, in Draper's account, was the idea of the perfect condition of Adam at the time of creation, so as to make the belief concerning the fall and salvation meaningful. Even more importantly, for this reason, Christian theologians were ‘constrained to look with disfavor … on the Mohammedan theory of the evolution of man from lower forms’.Footnote ⁸¹ Muslims had developed the notion of the transformation of beings towards perfection as well as a strong conviction in the orderly procession of events due to their uncompromising fatalism, and that made Islamic thought sympathetic towards the idea of evolution.

Draper discusses extensively the geological findings of his time and asserts as a result that what should be admitted is not only the fact that humans have existed for longer than a quarter of a million years, but also ‘a primitive animalized state, and a slow, gradual development’.Footnote ⁸²

That man existed on earth before Adam is not an idea Muslims should fear, Midhat argues. The Koran defines Adam as a ‘successor’ rather than as the first man, which implies the existence of a predecessor.Footnote ⁸³ Some interpreters had suggested the existence of a tribe before Adam, and some mystics believed that there had been five Adams before the last one.Footnote ⁸⁴ All these make it clear, just as Draper posits, that man had existed on earth for much longer than Christian theologians claimed.

Evolution, on the other hand, appeared to be an idea contradicting the Koranic verse ‘He is the Originator of the heavens and the earth, and when He decrees something, He says only “Be” and it is’ (2:117). Midhat's interpretation, based on those of his teacher, Musa Kazım, and of Fahreddin Razi (1149–1209), is that this verse does not necessarily mean that the whole universe came into existence all at once after God's utterance; it simply asserts God's power to make anything happen when He so desires. Furthermore, even if the verse is taken to mean a sudden, perfect creation, it still does not necessarily conflict with the idea of a gradual transformation. Essences gradually change, but they become what they were to become in one, final step and all at once. The embryo constantly changes, but at some specific point it suddenly becomes something that is called ‘man’.Footnote ⁸⁵

Yet another reason why Islam is harmonious with the idea of the gradual development of man on earth lies in two other verses from the Koran: ‘We established his power in the land, and gave him the means to achieve everything’ (18:84), and, more importantly, ‘Such was Our way with the messengers we sent before you, and you will find no change in Our ways’ (17:77). While the former states that the universe is characterized by regular causes and effects, the latter makes clear that, even though God is never bound by any constraints, His way (sünnet) is to keep things the way they are. As God ‘made it a “way” for Himself to keep the existence of everything linked to a cause,’ Muslim scholars characterized the universe as ‘a universe of causes’.Footnote ⁸⁶ This understanding of the universe, for Midhat, is evidently completely harmonious with the two ideas Draper constantly emphasizes: the existence of an unchanging natural law as well as a gradual, rather than sudden, emergence of life on earth.Footnote ⁸⁷

On the ‘conflict respecting the criterion of truth’

Draper condemns Catholicism for considering doctrines established ‘by the number of martyrs who had professed them, by miracles, by the confession of demons … or of persons possessed of evil spirits’,Footnote ⁸⁸ and for strengthening the Inquisition after the fourth Lateran Council to suppress the formation of new sects. This is valuable material for Midhat, who argues that it is the beliefs these Councils imposed that alienate scientists like Draper from Christianity.Footnote ⁸⁹

What followed the spread of scepticism in Europe was the advent of Protestantism, which, according to Draper, did not bring forth a sympathetic attitude to science, as it simply repudiated tradition and granted full authority to the Scriptures in all matters, including the study of nature. Thus antagonism to science deemed not agreeable to the Scriptures constituted the one point that both factions of Christianity agreed upon.Footnote ⁹⁰ Draper's detailed criticism of early Protestantism is sufficient for Midhat to declare all Protestants equally as hostile to science as Catholics.Footnote ⁹¹ Midhat and his ally also condemn the idea of an infallible Pope espoused by Catholicism, which for Draper is anti-scientific, and for Midhat un-Islamic.Footnote ⁹²

On the ‘controversy respecting the government of the universe’

Draper's remark that the law concerning the government of the solar system is the ‘issue of mathematical necessity’Footnote ⁹³ ends Midhat's agreement with him. This is too trivial an explanation to substitute for the Divine, Midhat contends, as mathematics cannot necessitate anything by itself, and can only be a way to see the wisdom in the creation of the universe.Footnote ⁹⁴ The reason why Draper resorts to such an inadequate explanation is simply his frustration with the anthropomorphic God of Judaism and Christianity.Footnote ⁹⁵ In the Koran, God states that the universe was created upon an ‘unchanging way’,Footnote ⁹⁶ and this is precisely what the new scientists refer to as ‘law,’ ‘nature’ or force de matière.Footnote ⁹⁷ If there is order and law in nature, it is God's creation, and denying it due to the absurd notions that the Church invented is equivalent to throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

But this is also the point where Midhat has to elaborate on the question of evolution, as Draper claims that the idea of creation itself is rendered untenable by geological discoveries indicating the slow, incessant transformation of Earth, adding that changes in the organic world can also be explained with reference to the impact of this transformation. Moreover, these changes are characterized by the replacement of imperfect forms by more perfect ones, then a point of culmination followed by gradual decline.Footnote ⁹⁸ Midhat agrees that disregarding geological findings ‘would [only] befit those ignoramuses unable to appreciate the value of scientific discoveries’, yet geology is still a very young branch of science, and, contrary to Draper's claims, the evidence it works with is minuscule. Thus geological postulations cannot be compared in strength to mathematical or physical facts, and disagreements abound among geologists.Footnote ⁹⁹

The conspicuous lack of a detailed discussion on the emergence and evolution of mankind itself in Conflict does not go unnoticed by Midhat, who attributes it to the absence of findings suggesting an earlier type of human. Indeed, Midhat claims, geologists are astounded by the fact that all human remains discovered so far are identical to contemporary man.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ The material composition and gradual development of human embryos that Draper discusses within the context of an analogy with evolution, on the other hand, amounts to a scientifically informed interpretation of the Koranic verses 23:12–14:

Midhat's approach to the question of evolution is thus simple and clear: while at present there is no reason for a reinterpretation of the Koran, it can be done in case such a need arises.

Midhat, Draper and the ‘two conflicts’

Ahmed Midhat's portrayal of Conflict clarifies his perception of Draper's work. It is a book that should be read by Ottoman youth, but under the guidance of Midhat.Footnote ¹⁰² Because ‘our youths who learn the new scientific ideas in European languages’ are ignorant about Islam, they are vulnerable to the attacks on ‘so-called’ religion, and they can easily ‘lose their way’.Footnote ¹⁰³ The fundamental mistake that these young men make is assuming that all religions are identical and equally inimical to science, and adopting atheism. For Midhat, it is almost inevitable for Christian scientists to denounce their religion, as faith in ‘their religion means intellectual imprisonment’.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ But Islam is absolutely unlike Christianity, as admitted by none other than Draper himself.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

As has well been documented, proving that Islam was not an obstacle to progress was a key motive for numerous Muslim intellectuals in the nineteenth century.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ A salient aspect of this attitude was the depiction of Islam as a ‘science-friendly’ religion – a portrayal backed up with references to the achievements of Muslim scholars in the Middle Ages that were then claimed to be the basis of contemporary European sciences.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ European authors' works on the hostility of Islam to science, such as Ernest Renan's lecture on ‘Islam and science’, attracted swift reaction, and encouraged the steady publication of works defending Islam.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Another common theme in these works was a criticism of materialism, and the idea that Muslim societies should avoid this philosophy when appropriating the new sciences. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, for instance, wrote that the spread of such a philosophy that led people to ‘have no possible motive for virtue and nothing to prevent vice’ would weaken Muslims against European encroachment.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ His idea that Muslims did not need such a philosophy, as Islam, unlike Christianity, provided virtues while simultaneously encouraging freethinking, is very similar to Midhat's characterization of the two religions.Footnote ¹¹⁰

While it is thus a contribution to the ongoing debate on science and Islam, Midhat's work is particularly multilayered and is an outstanding effort in its ‘enrolment’ of an American critic of religion for an attack on Christianity, and defence of Islam as well as of the Hamidian regime. To achieve all these aims, Midhat adopts a flexible understanding of Islam, and while keeping principles such as the unity of God indisputable, he exhibits a striking openness to new interpretations of the Koran in the light of scientific research. When their arguments appear absolutely irreconcilable with the Koran, Midhat declares branches of science like geology ‘underdeveloped’. Yet when these sciences do provide ‘definite results’, he is certain that they will be in harmony with Islam,Footnote ¹¹¹ with the implication that the Koran can be reinterpreted accordingly, in order to constantly distinguish Islam from Christianity and keep Islam the science-friendly religion.

Also note, however, that Midhat was not alone in reading Conflict as a book on Islam versus Christianity. Draper's portrayal of the achievements of Muslims was certainly noticed and harshly criticized by his American reviewers in general and Christian reviewers in particular. The Nation argued that in both Intellectual Development of Europe and Conflict Draper demonstrated ‘an undiscriminating admiration for everything … that [had] ever worn the garb of Islam’, and made one think that ‘the Mohammedan civilization was of a higher type than the Christian’.Footnote ¹¹² For Scribner's Monthly, ‘one would gather from [Conflict] that the failure of the Mohammedans to conquer Europe … was the greatest calamity of modern history’.Footnote ¹¹³ The Presbyterian Quarterly complained that Draper ‘referred to Saracen attainments in science with a romantic enthusiasm’.Footnote ¹¹⁴ Similarly, according to Liberal Christian, Draper had a ‘peculiar spite against the Christian religion and a chuckling delight at every triumph of Mohammedanism’.Footnote ¹¹⁵ For the Christian Advocate Mohammedanism seemed to be Draper's ‘special favorite among the religions of mankind’.Footnote ¹¹⁶ Even a cartoon was published in a New York newspaper showing Draper dressed as an Arab and proclaiming, in the presence of the Pope, ‘Tis I who am infallible, as all the world doth know! By Science bright and Islam's might, tis I who tell thee so!’Footnote ¹¹⁷ This is hardly surprising, if one takes into consideration that Draper was declared ‘the new apostle of Islamism’ by the journal Catholic World.Footnote ¹¹⁸

We come across a condemnation of Draper's ideas on Islam and science even in the diary of Dostoevsky. At the height of the 1877–1878 Russo-Ottoman war, one thing that infuriated the Russian author was what he perceived as the popularity of pro-Turkish opinions in the West. Represented by names such as Buckle, and ‘even Draper’, the emerging view was that Christianity was the source of ignorance and that science had been brought to the Christian world by the Mohammedans. The admiration of the strict monotheism of Islam ‘is a hobbyhorse of many of those lovers of the Turks’, Dostoevsky complained.Footnote ¹¹⁹

Cyrus Hamlin, who was at the time the president of the American missionary school in Istanbul, the Robert College, mentioned Draper in his memoirs as well. For Hamlin, Draper

The ‘quotations’ Draper used to explain the affinity between the idea of ‘natural law’ and Muslim fatalism were, Hamlin argued, marked by ‘culpable carelessness’.Footnote ¹²¹

This connection makes Ahmed Midhat's choice to translate and comment on Draper even more strategically apt. Draper's arguments, particularly in the sections Midhat highlights, suggest that Islam is harmonious with science, and these are the parts that Midhat hopes will help ‘save’ Ottoman youth. But Draper also makes clear which religion is the enemy of science, and Midhat uses this part of Draper's text as ammunition in his battle against the missionaries. Many of Midhat's sentences begin with a phrase like ‘even though what Draper says may apply to other religions’, and the ‘other religion’ in question is always Christianity. Making the most of Draper's arguments about early Protestantism, Midhat confronts the American missionaries in the empire and refers back to the debate between himself and Henry Otis Dwight, regarding Midhat's Apology. Now it is his hope that Dwight, and the likes of him, will read Draper and concede.Footnote ¹²² In this representation, Draper, the American scientist, is on Midhat's side against the claims of the Protestant missionaries, and Midhat is more than ready to interpret Islam in a way that will assure the alliance of science against Christianity.

Allying with Draper to fight missionary influence was, interestingly, not a strategy used only by Ottoman intellectuals. Ishizaka points out that authors like Draper, Huxley and Buckle were commonly read in Japan, and Christian missionaries often found themselves in ‘the most embarrassing situation by their inability to give satisfactory answers’ to anti-missionary Japanese critics referring to the arguments of these authors.Footnote ¹²³ Similarly, Schwantes refers to the writings of ‘an anxious missionary [who] estimated [in 1883] that several thousand young men were endangering their souls’ by reading Draper's Conflict in Japan.Footnote ¹²⁴

Ahmed Midhat was certainly speaking from within a debate between Islam and Christianity that had been going on for centuries.Footnote ¹²⁵ There already existed a vast repertoire of arguments and counterarguments and the debate about the harmony or lack thereof between science and either of the two religions could not take place without reference to the ‘big debate’ about the superiority or authenticity of Islam and Christianity. Draper's comparative approach inevitably placed him within this ‘big debate’ and made his testimony so crucial for Midhat. But, more importantly, what is common to all examples referred to throughout this paper – in addition to Midhat's commentary on Draper, such as the Japanese reaction to missionary activity, the popularity of Buddhism in the West, and the protests of the Christian critiques of Draper – is that they all demonstrate how thoroughly connected the ‘conflict between religion and science’ and the conflicts among religions were in the late nineteenth century. ‘Harmony with science’ was becoming a major criterion for the increasingly popular exercise of comparing religions, and a question concerning religion and science was one that was simultaneously about one religion with respect to another. Midhat's contribution also suggests that the ‘conflict between religion and science’ is not necessarily an idea that travels by itself, so to speak. Midhat appropriated the idea to put it to work in a particular context, with particular aims in mind. By imagining an alliance between Draper and himself, Midhat was envisaging an alliance of Islam and science, and if there was a conflict, it was between this alliance and Christianity.