ABSTRACT
Since the late 19th century the idea that the Quran should serve as the sole source of Islamic faith and practice has been articulated by a variety of Muslim thinkers in a variety of places. The emergence of Quranist ideas accompanies a widespread disenfranchisement of religious scholars and the emergence of literate lay people educated in a completely different way. Educated lay people like Muhammad Tawfiq Sidqi- engineers, doctors, and lawyers had greater access to scriptural texts than ever before. Moreover they felt competent to read, interpret, and judge those texts. At the same time they lacked the painstaking traditional education, traditional tools of analysis, and institutional ties that would have socialized them in traditional ways of approaching texts. Quranist ideas thus emerge as one consequence of the disenfranchisement of the ulama and the democratization of religious knowledge in the modern period.
