ABSTRACT
The previous chapter focused on the plans for reform and renewal of Islam that were developed by a number of enlightened Muslim thinkers active in the late nineteenth-early twentieth centuries. Although their goals had some things in common, these plans were distinct from those that animated the conservative reform movement of Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahháb and his Saudi supporters in Arabia in the second half of the eighteenth-early nineteenth centuries. These, plans, events, and thinkers can be seen as representing the formative period of Islamic reformism, during which its foundational principles were articulated by a handful of concerned Muslim intellectuals. Some were inspired by alAfgháni’s modernist agenda, others by the desire to restore the original purity of Islam as it was professed and practiced by the first Muslim community under the leadership of the Prophet and his companions. The reformers sought to implement their ideas either from above by winning rulers over to their cause (as was the case with al-Afgháni and Ibn ‘Abd al-Wahháb) or by instituting broad social and educational reforms and reaching out to like-minded Muslims via the printed word (as was the case with ‘Abdo and Rashíd Ridá). Whereas the Wahhabi-Saudi alliance proved successful in the end, the Egyptian modernizers failed to establish a broad popular base of support for their project or to institutionalize it. Nevertheless, their ideas survived to inspire those who came in their wake, both in Egypt and elsewhere. Moreover, in the second half of the twentieth century and for reasons that will be discussed further on, the reformist agenda laid down by ‘Abdo and Rashíd Ridá acquired a much broader following among different classes of Muslim societies. This period can be designated as one of the coming of age and popularization of Muslim movements for reform and renewal. It is characterized by their deeper involvement in the political and social life of their societies. Some investigators associate this period with the emergence of what is currently being called, accurately or otherwise, as “Islamism” or “political Islam.”
