ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of the reformist leadership’s policy of al-mudafa‘a [the dimension of countering] from 1981, when Safar al-Hawali produced his significant Master’s thesis entitled ‘Al-‘ilmaniyah’[Secularism]. Throughout the 1980s, the three scholars produced Sunni Islamic juristic studies on al-mudafa‘a, with arguments that countered rival or opposition thought, and developed political methods for bringing about change and reform, with the political factor embedded in a comprehensive dini [religious] framework. Sunni Islamic reform in general, and the elements of the question of political reform in particular, were focal points in the discourse of the reformist leadership in this period.
