Jamal al Din al Afghani

Jamal al Din al Afghani (1839 – 1897) was an Egyptian nationalist. He was an Islamic teacher and was an early advocate of pan-Islamism. He was born in Iran, however, claimed to have been born in Afghanistan to make his background more acceptable to Sunni disciples. He sought to revive Islam as a political force and for this purpose he traveled extensively. He was invited to Iran by the Shah, but later fell out of favour. Then he was forced to take sanctuary in a mosque, but was eventually removed by the Shah’s troops to Iraq.

He is also known for leading an antigovernment protest resulting in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in the early 1900s. His major influence was witnessed on Egyptian Nationalist Party of Mustafa Kamil.

Wisdom & Quotes

• The first pillar on which the religion of Islam is built is that the idea of divine unity should burnish the human mind and cleanse it from the weakness of illusion. Among the most important of its bases is the belief that God is alone in the disposition of beings, single in the creation of things which act and those which are acted upon, and that it is an obligation to cast aside all belief that men or inanimate bodies, whether higher or lower, have any influence for good or evil upon creation. — It is necessary to reject any belief that God in the Highest has appeared or appears in the garb of humankind or any other animal, to do good or ill; or that the holy essence has suffered the extremes of pain or the pains of disease in certain phases, for the benefit of any created thing.

Joseph the Chief of the Nez Percees