The Principles of Governing in Islam
From the speech of Abu Bakr al Siddiq
By

Sheikh ‘Abd al Hamid Ibn Badis
[Chapter 9 of Prof. Charles Kurzman, Modernist Islam, a Sourcebook, Oxford University Press, 2002]
‘Abd al- Hamid Ibn Badis (Algeria, 1889-1940) was an Islamic reformer, nationalist leader, and founder of the Association of Algerian Scholars. Ibn Badis was born in Constantine to a prominent Berber family and received religious education. In 1908 he joined the Zaytuna Mosque in Tunis, where he was e xposed to the reformist ideas of Sayyid Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Sheikh Muhammad Abduh. After graduation, Ibn Badis returned to Algeria in 1913 to devote his career to Islamic reform, education, and nationalism. In response to the alienating policies of the French and the Francophile tendencies of the Algerian “évolués” (assimilationists), Ibn Badis formulated a program that asserted the Arab and Islamic identity of Algerians, stressed Arabic and Islamic education, and prepared Algerians for independence from the French. In addition, he proposed a modernist interpretation of the Qur’an that attributed the decline of Islamic society to mystical practices 1 , intellectual stagnation, disunity, and political despotism. Ibn Badis articulated his views in several books and in his newspapers al Muntaqid (The Critic) and al-Shihab (The Meteor). In 1931 he established the Association of Algerian Scholars to promote Algerian identity and Islamic reform and to combat the Sufis orders and the assimilationists. The Association opened hundreds of free Arabic and Qur’anic schools, advocated cultural and social reform, and combated practices that it viewed as corrupt. The article presented here reflects Ibn Badis’s non conventional response to the abolition of the Ottoman c aliphate 2 , which he held responsible for the repression and injustice of Muslim societies. “When Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (may God be pleased with him) was sworn in as a caliph (in the year 632) he