Johann Ludwig Burckhardt fooled Muslims across the lands in his knowledge of the Arabic language and Islamic sciences. He assumed the identity of “Shaikh Ibrahim ibn Abdullah” and traveled across Middle East, even entering Makkah and Medina and performing Hajj, reporting all the details back to his European employer.  It was in 1809 that he went to Aleppo Syria to study Arabic and learned Shariah.

During all of this he continued to send reports of his travels to England, to be published by the “African Association”.

By the following spring, in fact, he was able to report to the African Association that “I am now so far advanced in the knowledge of Arabic that I understand almost everything that is said in common conversation and am able to make myself understood on most subjects …”  (ref: Saudi Aramco World, Volume 18, Number 5 )

This progress in Arabic and Islamic Law went to higher and higher levels:

Burckhard prompted steeped himself in Arab life and became so proficient in Arabic and the Koran that Islamic scholars proclaimed him an authority on Islamic Law.  In 1812 he turned up in Cairo, having adopted the name Sheykh Ibrahim ibn Abdullah (ref: The Rape of the Nile. Fagan, B.  pub 2004)

One of his works was about the Wahabis, entitled “Notes on the Beoudins and Wahabys”.  What he really thought of Islam was exposed pretty clearly in the following passage.   Reading this passage also emphasises the fact that the Wahabis were essentially an anti-Ottoman religious movement.

“The founder of this sect is already known : a learned Arabian named Abd el Wahab, who had visited various schools of the principal cities in the East (as is much the practice with his countrymen even now), being convinced by what he had observed during his travels, that the primitive faith of Islam or Mohammedism, had become totally corrupted, and obscured by abuses, and that the far greater part of the people of the East, and especially the Turks might justly be regarded as heretics. But new doctrine and opinions are as little acceptable in the East as they are in the West ; and no attention was paid to Abd el Wahab until, after long wanderings in Arabia, he retied with his family to Derayeh at the period when Mohammed Ibn Saoud was the principal person of the town..”

He mentioned other betraying munafiqs in his dealings.  It is sometimes hard to imagine to what extent outright hypocrisy exists and was proven to exist within the Muslim community.  Numerous ayats of the Quran address the aspect of hypocrisy at various levels.

Another famous hypocrite was “Ali Bey el Abbasi”, who Burckhardt speaks about:

“He (the Pasha) entertained a notion, suggested to him by some of his Frank counselors at Cairo, that, in some future account of my travels, I might perhaps boast of having imposed upon him, like Ali Bey el Abbasi, whose work had just been received at Cairo, and who declares that he deceived not only the Pasha, but all the ‘olemas‘ or learned men, of Cairo.

Interestingly enough, his travels and experience gave Burckhardt the context to see what was coming up ahead in history due to the Wahabis and Arab rebellions:

Whenever the power of the Turks in the Hedjaz declines, which it will when the resources of Egypt are no longer directed to that point by so able and so undisturbed a possessor of Egypt as Mohammad Ali, the Arabs will avenge themselves for the submission, light as it is, which they now reluctantly yield to their conquerors; and the reign of the Osmanlis in the Hedjaz will probably terminate in many a scene of bloodshed.

And blood was indeed shed, not just between Turks and Arabs, but Wahabi Arabs slaughtered hundreds of Sunni Arabs in the city of Taif.

Burckhardt’s  agenda in this travels was not to change or reform Islam.  He knew the futility of reform movements trying to grow under the authority of the Osmanli Khalipha, he was witnessing the Wahabi movement already.   Rather, he used his Islam to provide a sympathetic cover identity to allow him to conduct exotic expeditions in areas Europeans previously had never entered.

However, while these people fooled the ‘ulema’, they didn’t fool everyone.  One of his simple guides through these lands eventually exclaimed:

“I see now clearly that you are an infidel, who have some particular business amongst the ruins of the city of your forefathers; but depend upon it that we shall not suffer you to take out a single para of all the treasures hidden therein, for they are in our territory, and belong to us,” according to Burckhardt.

Final Thoughts

The basis of Islamic ‘knowledge’ and ‘scholarship’ falls apart when it can exist at the highest levels without sincerity.  Sitting in association of people who are learning or teaching ‘knowledge’ who have not one ounce of faith in their heart demonstrates an inherent deficiency in the ‘knowledge’ they are discussing, learning, writing, and memorizing in the first place.

Real knowledge is that which has a fundamental prerequisite of faith and builds faith in the tradition of the Holy Prophet (S).  The inheritors of the Prophet (S) are not those who know a worldly science, there are those who know the meaning and power of transmitting faith.