Islamic Civilization and its Hermeneutical Discontent - al-?fgh?n? and ‘Abduh's Concept of madan?yya Writing the intellectual history of the Nahda, requires a sensitive analysis of its early stage, during which modernism and religion, especially Islam, were not yet clearly defined and were increasingly positioned as contradictory. The journal Al’urwah Al-wuthqah La Infi??m La?a offers a key representation of this historical moment. Despite its short-lived period of publication (from March to October 1884) the journal served as a laboratory for cultural, theological, and political debates, while calling for an anti-colonialist rebellion in all Ottoman countries living under the colonial yoke. The journal was edited and written in Arabic by the forefathers of “Islamic Modernism” Jam?l al-D?n al-?fgh?n? and Muhammad ‘Abduh while both were in exile in Paris. From this displacement, they reflected on the colonial condition and what they understood as a chasm between an ideal image of Muslims and the historical deviation from the path of God, while witnessing the effects of colonial projects on Muslims beliefs and ways of living. An analysis of this journal reveals a rejection of the simplistic boundaries between modernism and religion, in an attempt to reformulate the question from: “how to be modern?” to: “how to become civilized?” While modernity was perceived as a break from the past, the notion of civilizing (madan?yya, tamaddun) allowed for reclaiming aspects of Islamic heritage, thus turning colonial subjects into negotiators with agency rather than passive subjects of modernization. The anachronistic tendency toward reading al-?fgh?n? and ‘Abduh through the lens of later generations and their historical contexts leads most scholars to fail to grasp what I regard as the radical hermeneutics of tradition, which they had started to develop in their journal. Similarly, the scholarly propensity toward considering them the forefathers of Arab nationalism – a category I argue is also antiquated - overlooks the complexity and their diversity of thought. For them, Madan?yya was not what religion needed to reject, but rather a potential source of religious rejuvenation. As such, a new hermeneutical approach emerged: one that relied upon modern science, political sovereignty, and the relationship between subjectivity and collective communities as a baseline for a new reading of the Quran and Islamic tradition. I will provide a perspective that melds the various strands underlining these reforms, such as selfhood/identity (??t), faith (‘aqida), and sovereignty (siyada).