Following the abolition of the last widely recognized caliphate by the Grand National Assembly of the Turkish Republic, a series of international Islamic congresses took place in the Arab world, the declarative goal of which was to find ways to unite the “dar al-islam” – “territory of Islam” in Arabic – the traditional Muslim name for the lands where Sharia is in effect. The third such congress (the first two were held in 1926 in Cairo and Mecca) took place in the Holy Land of Palestine. The research by Svetlana Kirillova, professor at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, and co-authors “Great Expectations, Lost Illusions: The General Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931” allows us to evaluate the speeches of the congress participants on the topic of education.
Among the congress's decisions, the initiative to establish a university in Jerusalem at the al-Aqsa Mosque stood out. It was an ambitious and expensive project. In the idea of a new Islamic higher education institution, Egyptian scholars saw the possibility of the emergence of an educational structure parallel to al- Azhar with a claim to compete with the Cairo University. Convincing the rector of al- Azhar, Muhammad al- Ahmadi az-Zawahiri (who held the post from 1929 to 1935), to the contrary had to the Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al- Husseini, one of the initiators of the forum. The rector was not reassured by the Mufti's assurances that the new higher education institution was only a modest counterweight to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, but in no way a challenge to the oldest and most prestigious al- Azhar .
However, the delegates to the congress unanimously recognized the fruitfulness of the idea of establishing a new university. At the same time, Amin al- Husseini insisted on its purely Islamic character and blocked the proposals of the prominent Indian politician Shaukat Ali Khan to give it a liberal and cosmopolitan style, as well as to make English the language of education. It should be noted that the latter figure was also one of the initiators of the congress. During the preparation for the Jerusalem congress, Shaukat Ali Khan toured a number of Middle Eastern cities, promoting the project of an Islamic university in Jerusalem, for which he considered his native Aligarh University in British India to be a model.
The university at the al-Aqsa Mosque was to be based on three faculties: theology and Islamic law, medicine and pharmacology, and engineering. The undertaking required significant financial outlays for construction work, equipment, and hiring professors and teachers. The fundraising campaign launched by Amin al- Husseini and the treasurer of the Permanent Bureau of the Congress, Muhammad Ali Alluba, in 1932-33 in Palestine, India, and Iraq did not meet the expectations of its organizers. The project for an Islamic university remained on paper.
The desire of the thinker and public figure of British India Muhammad Iqbal to unite the ummah and establish major Muslim universities led him to the General Islamic Congress during his travels across Europe and the Middle East. During the event, the figure advocated the establishment of a single All-Islamic Coordination Center in Jerusalem and the further dissemination of the Muslim education system. In the political concepts of Muhammad Iqbal, unity and education were complementary factors, and the lack of knowledge was the main reason for the split among Muslims.
The Russian space at the General Islamic Congress in Jerusalem was represented by the activist of the Tatar national movement, a friend of the founder of Jadidism Ismail Gasprinsky – the writer Gayaz Ishaki, prominent Tatar theologian Musa Jarullah Bigeev and the irreconcilable opponent of the Soviet government's policy in the Caucasus, Said Shamil, the grandson of Imam Shamil. It is interesting that Musa Jarulla, who repeatedly addressed the topic of Islamic education, would later present the most complete description of his vision of higher education in the treatise "Islamic Scientific University" (published in Bombay, the modern Indian city of Mumbai, in 1946). In this work, speaking about the consequences of the revolutions in Russia, Turkestan and Turkey, the theologian writes: "All religious schools were buried under the ruins of their historical and socio-political deadly sins; neither heaven nor earth wept over them and not a single one of their graduates shed tears".
In the research “Great Expectations, Lost Illusions: The General Islamic Congress in Jerusalem in 1931”, Professor Kirillova and her co-authors conclude that the expectation of important decisions from the Jerusalem congress was the main reason for the disappointment of the international Muslim community. Emotional perception did not allow contemporaries to realize that the unity of the global ummah in the 1930s began to acquire more national and ethnocultural forms. It is no coincidence that after the congress, a number of political leaders gathered to develop provisions for the Arab National Charter, which particularly emphasized the themes of independence and anti-colonialism. At the same time, the congress helped establish contacts between the Islamic communities of India and the Middle East.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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