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Perils of Neglect: a comparison of Islamic modernism and fundamentalism.
 

-- Sarah Shehabuddin



In the Quran, God scolded Muhammad on one occasion for wooing the powerful while neglecting a poor man. Although Muhammed generally surrounded himself with the poor and dispossessed, the Quran records and responds to this lapse in Muhammed’s attention towards the non-elite. Centuries after the Quranic reprimand, the near failure of Islamic modernism confirms the danger of focusing a movement on the attitudes and concerns of the elite. While modernism shares with Islamic fundamentalism its origins and anti-traditionalist methodology, it emphasizes a figurative reading of the Quran, educational reform, and heavy borrowing from Western civilization; it has tried to persuade the educated, westernized elite of Islam’s compatibility to the modern world. Fundamentalists, on the other hand, emphasize a literal reading of the Quran, organized political activity, and the shortcomings of the West; they have formed political parties directed towards middle and lower classes of Muslims. Fundamentalism has proven to be a stronger political force than modernism because fundamentalists did not use terminology beyond the comprehension of the majority of Muslims or deviate too far from traditional methods of interpretation. Given the movements’ common origins and basic methodology, the differences between the backgrounds, advanced methodology, and rhetoric of modernists and fundamentalists have contributed to the extent of their particular appeal to Muslims.

Both Islamic modernism and fundamentalism responded to challenges that Muslims faced since the mid-eighteenth century. In Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, Albert Hourani lists the origins of Wahhabi fundamentalism: “The revived strength of Arab tribes, still living in ignorance of religion and Sharia. . . the Ottoman Empire, which stood for Islamic orthodoxy not as the salaf [ancestors] were supposed to have conceived it, but as it developed over the centuries. . . the scientific revolution in western Europe and the growth of military and economic power which was a result of it” (Hourani 38). While Mohammed ibn abd al-Wahhab was not concerned with any immediate foreign threats, subsequent external military and cultural challenges pushed other Muslims to advocate reform and revival of Islam. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1799 and his entourage of savants showed Arabs the military and cultural superiority of Europe as did the advent of imperialism. The fathers of the Arab modernist movement, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammed Abduh, stressed the need for reform to avoid blind imitation of both tradition and the West (Hourani 136). As he traveled from one colonized Muslim country to another, Al-Afghani emphasized the need for pan-Islamism to beat back imperialism (Hourani 117). To Al-Afghani, Islam denoted a belief in transcendence, reason, and activity: “God changes not what is in a people, until they change what is in themselves. . .He maintained that Muslims are weak because they are not really Muslim” (Hourani 129). Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood (1928), called for Muslims to leave the mosque to change society. Both movements held that only if the ulama and Muslim community returned to the true Islam would the Muslim world recover from its inferiority. Revivalist movements therefore presented a way of dealing with the fragmentation and deterioration occurring in Muslim societies. Both fundamentalism and modernism, therefore, emphasize the need for Muslims to actively revive Islam.

Just as continuous transfers of power to Europe and internal decay set off Arab reformist movements, the recognizable origin of the modernist movement in South Asia is the Mutiny of 1857, after which Muslims lost control of the Indian subcontinent to the British. Sayyid Ahmad Khan wanted to prevent the domination of Muslims by Hindus as the Muslim community was “numerically much smaller than the Hindu population, educationally backward, politically immature, and in economic resources and enterprise far behind the others” (Aziz Ahmad, 34). As Hindus were far more widely educated than Muslims, Ahmad Khan stressed the need for Muslims to receive western education so as to avoid subjugation by the Hindu majority. Without glorifying western education, Abul ala Mawdudi, the founder of the fundamentalist Jamaat-i-Islaami, criticized the traditional madrasa system and labeled it as “deadweight of an archaic tradition” (M.Ahmad 465) and stressed the need for Muslims to recapture political power. In different ways, Ahmad Khan, a proponent of the West, and Mawdudi, less enthusiastic about non-Islamic ideas, tried to change the backwardness and ignorance that denied Muslims progress and sociopolitical political power. Like Arab reformists, they opposed the inactivity of the ulama and were concerned with the nationally and globally disadvantageous position of Muslims.

The questions that both modernists and fundamentalists in the Middle East and South Asia sought to answer were: “What is the good society, the norm that should direct the work of reform? Can this norm be derived from the principles of Islamic law, or is it necessary to go to the teachings and practice of modern Europe? Is there in fact any contradiction between the two?” (Hourani 67). To reform society, both movements had to define their ideal society, their goals. Modernism attributes the bases of the ideal society to the use of both revelation and reason. According to Abduh, “the ideal society is that which submits to God’s commandments, interprets them rationally and in light of general welfare, obeys them actively, and is united by respect for them.” He considered the golden age of Islam a time when the ideal society was realized: “the early umma, the community of the elders, the salaf, was what the umma ought to be” (Hourani 149). While Mawdudi and other fundamentalists also wanted to establish an Islamic state based on the prophetic model, they criticized modernists for using reason and the West to measure the applicability of Islam to modern society. They wanted to establish an Islamic state along clearly Islamic lines, not base it on the synthesis of Islam and the West. The different goals of modernists and fundamentalists resulted from their family and academic backgrounds and carved their separate paths from their common origins and similar methodology for legal reform.

Despite their different goals, both modernists and fundamentalists opposed traditionalists and reclaimed the right to interpretation. Fazlur Rahman underlines their common methodology for legal reform, “It is also something of an irony to pit the so-called Muslim fundamentalists against the Muslim modernists, since, so far as their acclaimed procedure goes, the Muslim modernists say exactly the same thing as so-called Muslim fundamentalists say: that Muslims must go back to the original and definitive sources of Islam and perform ijtihad on that basis” (Rahman 142). Both modernists and fundamentalists call for a return to the foremost source of Divine Law, the Quran, and rejection of the ijma (consensus) of medieval scholars. Traditionalists, the guardians of fiqh, prohibited any reinterpretation of Sharia, meaning changes in the ijma. They maintained that the gates of ijtihad were closed (Ahmad 153). Modernists and fundamentalists therefore reclaim the right to perform ijtihad and rederive the Sharia to reform society.

The notion of ‘reopening’ the gates of ijtihad originated from Ibn Taymiyya. He had argued, in the 13th century, that the invading Turks and Mongols contaminated the fiqh by subjecting Muslim scholars and their interpretations to their power and needs. He said that each new Muslim generation must reinterpret the Sharia (Ahmad 153). Like Ibn Taymiyya, Abduh also attributed the rise of taqlid or blind imitation among Muslims to the rise of Turkish power when “intellectual anarchy spread among Muslims, under the protection of ignorant rulers” (Hourani 151). Fundamentalists also blamed traditionalists for the decay within Muslim society by reducing Islam to the five pillars. Ibn Abd al-Wahhab believed the ulama had allowed innovations creep into Islamic Law and advocated ijtihad as a way to return to pristine Islam (Hourani 41). In calling for the right to perform ijtihad to rederive the Sharia, both movements circumvent the recorded ijma, consensus of scholars: “The ijma, the consensus of the community is not, for Abduh, a third source of doctrine and law on a level with the other two [Quran and Hadith]. A sort of ijma does grow up in time, a collective judgement of the community, but it is never infallible and cannot close the door to ijtihad” (Hourani 147). As recorded law did not meet the needs of modern times or reflect modern knowledge, reviving Islam required reinterpreting religious law – which traditionalists were unwilling to do. Thus, fundamentalists and modernists ended the traditionalists’ monopoly on Islamic jurisprudence to reinterpret the Quran according to modern needs. Although modernists reject the ijma of medieval scholars because these were too restrictive for modern times and fundamentalists, such as Ibn al-Wahhab, felt that the scholars had loosened up Quranic prescriptions, their similarity lies in their arguments favoring a return to the Quran and the hadith (to varying degrees).

Despite their common basic procedure, however, the two movements differ on the acceptable extent of reinterpretation. The modernists advocate a figurative reading of the Quran, a reassessment of the hadith, and universal rights to perform ijtihad (possibly by popularly elected assemblies). To the modernists, the Quran was a code of general ethics, practical morality, and general principles: “The Quran itself is not a book of laws but it is the Divine teaching and guidance for humanity. Such quasi-laws as do occur in the Quran are not meant to be literally applied in all times and climes” (Rahman 268). Fazlur Rahman stressed the difference between ethics and law in the Quran: “[The Quran’s] ethics, indeed, is its essence. . .and the necessary link between law and theology” (Rahman 74). By extension, modernists relegate certain traditionally muhkam (clear) Quranic verses to the category of mutashabiha (allegorical) ones. Modernists opened the debate on whether certain verses with imperative commands should really be applied to modern society or whether they were only meant for seventh century Arabia. Modernists may argue, for instance, that a thief’s hand can only be cut off if he steals in the ideal Muslim welfare state, not in the midst of current poverty. Abduh and his disciples also argued the specific laws in the Quran could be altered to suit the needs of each generation as long as such reinterpretations furthered the Quranically-prescribed struggle for human welfare (Hourani 152). Abduh also revived Ibn Taymiyya’s distinction between acts of worship and acts towards other humans to prove there “was a systematic difference between the teaching of revelation in regard to one and the other” (Hourani 148). Rashid Rida went further than Abduh in arguing there could be no ijma for social morality as this should be based on social circumstances which, by nature, are ever-changing (Hourani 234). Following Rifa’a Badawi Rafi al-Tahtawi (Hourani 75), Abduh advocated the principle of maslaha or interest as a guide for interpretation. Thus, modernists emphasized the role of human needs [maslaha], reason, and judgement in the reinterpretation of Islamic laws regarding all aspects of life save worship. As one consequence, some modernists reject hadith that they considered irrational or unsuitable to modern society. Sayyid Ahmad Khan, for example, considerably lowered the number of authentic hadith and their role as a reliable source of Divine Law (Ahmad, 50). Modernists accept hadith that conform to the Quran but reject those that contradict the Quranic ethics or rationality. In The Veil and the Male Elite, Fatima Mernissi argued that most sexist ahadith are false as they contradict the Quranic principles of equity. The modernists’ decision to reassess and mitigate such a traditional source is related to their emphasis on ijtihad by reason. Sayyid Ahmad “reserved for himself or any individual Muslim the right not only of literal but also of symbolic or analytical interpretation” (Ahmad 42). Modernists stress each generation’s right and duty to reinterpret the Sharia according to its needs and human reason.

Fundamentalists, on the other hand, adhere to a literal interpretation of the Quran, the validity of the hadith as a source of Sharia, and limit the right to ijtihad. Unlike modernism, it defends the applicability of specific laws in the Quran to modern society. Muhkum or specific laws within the Quran are timeless and universal. A fundamentalist may, for example, argue that if the Quran says that a thief must lose his hand, the State has to implement this. Abul ala Mawdudi considered the Quran eternal, literal law and the modernist claim to reinterpretation for each generation as anathema to Islam. As fundamentalists want to establish a state founded on the sunnah of the prophet as well as on the Quran, they do not, therefore, question the validity of the hadith considered authentic or encourage its reassessment. Mawdudi also made the right to perform ijtihad conditional: “Every Muslim who is capable and qualified to give a sound opinion on matters of Islamic law, is entitled to interpret the law of God when such interpretation becomes necessary” (Donahue, 254). Such Muslims must be trained in both classical Islamic sciences and modern disciplines (M. Ahmad 463). While such Muslims do not have to be ulamas, the average Muslim would not be eligible to reinterpret the Quran. Unlike modernists, fundamentalists maintained that ijtihad can only be performed for issues not specified in the Quran or hadith. Despite the movements’ common origins and anti-traditionalist position, fundamentalism followed traditional methods of interpretation more closely than modernists and thereby appeared more authoritative, rather than radically different to Muslims unfamiliar with the Western emphasis on reason.

The different backgrounds of fundamentalists and modernists has often determined their attitude toward reason and by extension, the West, as well as their appeal to different social groups. Modernists have belonged mainly to the privileged, middle class and had received formal education, either at Al-Azhar or at prestigious European universities. South Asian modernists, such as Mohammed Iqbal and Fazlur Rahman, were educated in Europe; Sayyid Ahmad Khan modeled his Aligarh University on Oxford and Cambridge universities. Their exposure to the West usually yielded their positive attitudes towards the West. Tahtawi was one of the first Egyptians sent to France after the French invasion: “The thought of the French Enlightenment left a permanent mark on him [Tahtawi], and through him on the Egyptian mind” (Hourani, 69). The Egyptian modernist, Taha Husayn, attended the Sorbonne while Abduh, Rida, and Abd Al-Raziq attended and taught at Al-Azhar and studied Western works on their own. Thus, most modernists received some western education, either formally or of their own initiative.
Fundamentalists, on the other hand, came from the middle class and did not attend legendary institutions, such as Al-Azhar or the Sorbonne. Mawdudi’s father educated him at home. Neither Sayyid Qutb nor Hassan Al-Banna, though Egyptians, attended Al-Azhar. The backgrounds of these fundamentalists prompted them to lead grass roots movements aimed at uneducated masses as well as the educated classes. They tried to appeal to the Muslim masses for support in their attempts to re-establish an Islamic state. As they did not come from or become part of the westernized elite, fundamentalists did not exclusively address the upper class minority or base their arguments on knowledge only the elite possessed. Their mission made them dependent of the support of the masses while, as their relatively conservative methodology suggests, their modest backgrounds did not allow them too deviate to much from popular attitudes and ideas.

The modernists’ greater emphasis on reason as a guide for reinterpretation results from their backgrounds and education, especially their knowledge and appreciation of western civilization; as a result, they direct their efforts towards demonstrating Islam’s compatibility with the tenets of Western modernity. Tahtawi, like other modernists, tried to reconcile Islam and West: “what we call the science of the principles of jurisprudence, they [modern western civilizations] call natural laws or the laws of instinct. These consist in rational rules, good and bad, and on them they base their civil laws. . . What we call justice and good works, they call freedom and equality” (Donahue 13). Like Tahtawi, Al-Afghani sought to show that the essence of Islam was the same as that of modern rationalism as did Abduh (Hourani 140). Modernists used western terminology to legitimize and explain Islam to both Europeans and westernized Muslims. As would Iqbal and Fazlur Rahman, Muhammed Bakhit identified democracy with the caliphate in Western terminology (Hourani 191); many modernists similarly advocated democracy. Taha Husayn attempted to present Islamic history in a way that would appeal to a modern Egypt exposed to epics of the West (334). Muhammed Iqbal also used western methodology in his works on Islam: [In his Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam], his interpretation, or rather dramatization, of the Islamic heritage in his thought was influenced and reoriented by the dynamism of Nietzsche and Fichte and by the vitalism of Bergson” (Ahmad 147-8). The influence of the West on modernists is clear. In trying to convert and legitimize Islam in European terms, however, modernists made western education a prerequisite for understanding their works – a prerequisite out of the reach of most Muslims.

The role of western thought on modernists and their activities helps account for the inability of those outside the elite to relate to and support their movement. Many Muslims either did not understand the western terminology of modernists or felt the latter went too far in accommodating western thought. According to Hourani, “some of Al-Afghani’s contemporaries were aware of the danger, and accused him of being willing to sacrifice the truth of Islam for an illusiory welfare of Muslims” (Hourani 123). Their emphasis on borrowing from Europe could be misinterpreted as neglecting Islam for the West. Abduh stressed the need “to reinterpret the law so as to assimilate what was good in European morality” (156) and even his conservative student, Rashid Rida, admitted that Muslims would have to borrow and learn from the West until they had recovered their strength (Hourani 236). Sayyid Ahmad Khan attempted to rationalize Islam even by explaining Quranic folklore, historical references, and prophecy in terms of reason and natural law (Ahmad 42-46). Although Al-Afghani made some concessions to modern thought, he was hostile towards Muslims such as Sayyid Ahmad Khan who tried even harder than he, Tahtawi, Abduh, and Rida to make Islam fit into the mold of modern science and ‘nature.’ According to Ahmad Khan, “ the Quran was the only essential element in Islam, the Sharia was not of the essence of religion; the Quran must be interpreted in accordance with reason and nature, and the moral and legal code must be based on nature” (Hourani 124). While al-Afghani felt that reason should be used to interpret the Quran, he did not believe that reason should be the judge of the Quran or that the Sharia should solely be based on reason; the relative unpopularity of views such as Ahmad Khan’s suggest that other Muslims also felt this way. In 1900, one of Abduh’s disciples, Qasim Amin, rejected the notion of Islamic civilization as a reformist goal and gave categorical preference to Western ideals over the Quran: “perfect civilization is based on science, and since Islamic civilization reached its full development before the true sciences were established, it cannot be taken as the model [of human perfection]” (Hourani 168). While Amin’s views did not reflect those of most modernists, they were a caricature of the modernist appreciation of and tendency toward Western civilization. As modernists substituted western thought for the Islamic thought to which Muslims were accustomed, they narrowed their appeal to Muslims with arguments that seemed to underline their preference for ideologies other than Islam.

While modernists sought to combine the West and Islam, fundamentalists sought to reaffirm the superiority and universality of Islam by rejecting the need for non-Islamic guidelines for modernization or civilization. Al-Banna advised Muslims to discover the “noble, honorable, moral, and perfect content of the principles and rules of this religion,” rather than seeking Western guidance. John Voll highlights the fundamentalists’ disregard for Western ways and ideas, as their primary difference with the more inclusivist modernists (Voll 348). According to Voll, “in Qutb’s later writings , there is little willingness to recognize anything beneficial in the West and a similar lack of desire to create a synthesis or bridge to the West” (Voll 372). Mawdudi considered the modernists’ attempts to reconcile Islam and western civilization a reflection of their inferiority complex (Donahue 252). Unlike modernists proponents of democracy, Al-Banna felt “there was nothing of value [Muslim thinkers] could accredit to any existing regime that could not be already found inspiring their thought and conduct and already inscribed in Islamic social organization” (Donahue 80). While modernists called for a synthesis of Islam and European thought, fundamentalists hold Islam as free of the West’s shortcomings. Al-Banna saw Islam as the combination of the good aspects of all three types of Western regime: Communism, democracy, and dictatorship (Donahue 81-82) without their problems. Fundamentalists base their concept of the Islamic state on pristine Islam (or at least their understanding of Islam) alone whereas modernists advocate different combinations of western and Islamic ideologies. While fundamentalists recognize the need for modernization, they reject the need to import certain sociocultural components of western society that are unislamic (M.Ahmad 509). Al-Banna saw the West as a destructive force for religion, education, and morals as well as an unsatisfactory political model (Voll 361). Unlike modernists, such as Husayn, who viewed the West as both materially and spiritually advanced, Al-Banna talked about the failure of the West in providing humans anything but the insufficient material comforts in life (Donahue 79). In retrospect, the success of fundamentalism suggests many Muslims share the fundamentalists’ refusal to compromise Islamic values for Westernization. Although fundamentalism ‘excluded’ the West and radically untraditional ideas, this ironically helped them be more inclusive of the Muslim masses that modernism’s inclusive but intellectualized theories did not prevent it from excluding in reality.

The relative popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East and of the Jamaat-i-Islaami in South Asia as well as the increasing number of fundamentalist states (Afghanistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran) testifies to the success of fundamentalism over modernism as a political force. Given their educated and elitist backgrounds, modernists focused on educational reform. From Al-Afghani to Fazlur Rahman, modernists emphasized reform through education, the effects of which take long to come to fruition. Even civil servants preferred their roles as educators as Abduh did: “In 1899 he [Abduh] became Mufti of Egypt, head of the whole system of religious law . . . At heart however he remained a scholar, teacher, and an organizer of schools” (Hourani 135). While Sayyid Ahmad Khan created the Muslim League, a party run by and for the Indo-Muslim elite, he devoted most of his attention to the establishment of Aligarh University. The establishment of Aligarh did not lead to the sprouting of other Muslim universities with similar missions, nor did it attract crowds of lower class Muslims. While Iqbal’s writings helped establish Pakistan as a modernist experiment, the Pakistan he envisioned collapsed in the hands of the military. While modernists supported nationalism, it was people like Mohammed al-Kawakibi who took the movement to the people and why, perhaps, nationalism succeeded. Generally, modernists excluded uneducated Muslims from the political process in the short run. Although economic concerns make mass education difficult in most Muslim countries, Fazlur Rahman advised involving common people in the electoral process only after they are ‘enlightened’: “Once people in general become enlightened with the spread of education and with the development of industry, direct elections may well be introduced at that stage” (Donahue 263). This statement, along with their emphasis on the delayed benefits of education, embodies the modernist exclusion of the majority of Muslims in the short run.

Fundamentalists, on the other hand, launched political parties that depended on the support of ‘ordinary’ Muslims. According to Voll, by the 1930s “the more rationalist strand of Islamic modernism became widely accepted by the elite; its acceptance, however, was challenged by a new and more activist form of Islamic fundamentalism which strove to articulate the aspirations of the uprooted masses” (Voll 360). The Muslim Brotherhood’s directed its initial educational mission toward the urban masses. Their social welfare activities evidently targeted people outside the elite. Fundamentalists have, however, focused on and attracted the masses due to their backgrounds, less intellectualized teachings and emphasis on political activity. The Brotherhood’s initial concentration on re-educating Muslims targeted villagers, building schools, and providing social welfare services to lower class Muslims. The Muslim Brotherhood became political during and after the Second World War. Fundamentalist groups such as the Jamaat-i-Islaami also reached out to urban Muslims while the Tablighi Jamaat to rural Muslims. According to Mumtaz Ahmad, “the Jamaat has relinked the Muslim masses with Islamic religious institutions” and “has helped reassert the authority of orthodoxy and brought it closer to the common people” (M. Ahmad 524). While the Tablighi Jamaat is apolitical, its teachings do influence rural voters, especially against secularism (M. Ahmad 510). While neither the Jamaat-i-Islaami nor the Muslim Brotherhood (periodically declared illegal) has done well at elections, they have come closer to the lives and understanding of the majority of Muslims than the modernists.

In aiming at the general welfare of all Muslims, modernism does not exclude the masses in the long run. Due to their own backgrounds and western tendencies, as well as intellectual historical context, modernists addressed their writings and ideas to the educated elites of the Middle East and South Asia. Abduh directed his writings towards “men of modern culture and experience who doubted whether Islam, or indeed any revealed religion, was valid as a guide to life” (Hourani 139) while Rida also presented his more “fundamentalist” views in a “highly intellectualized form which had little to offer to the majority of Egyptians” (Hourani 359). The writings of modernists as a whole fell out of the reach of most Muslims. Modernists generally considered Western concepts contributing to the Quranic essence of social justice as the guidelines Muslims should follow in rederiving the Sharia. If the uneducated Muslim was unfamiliar with the science of Islamic law, he or she was even more unfamiliar with the western ideas modernists advocated. The fundamentalists’ disdain for the West and their own middle class backgrounds prevented their rhetoric from alienating the masses. As fundamentalists did not drastically deviate from common religious knowledge and made the right to perform ijtihad conditional, they appeared more authoritative in matters of Divine Law while the broad spectrum of modernism included calls for new laws that, although compatible with Quranic ethics, contradicted specific Quranic commands. The lengthy explanations of modernists for the legitimacy of such ideas and laws did not compel most Muslims as did the fundamentalists’ ‘It’s in the Quran, so we must follow it’ argument. Whereas modernists emphasized educational reform, fundamentalists concentrated on organizing political organizations that depended on and recruited from the masses and thereby earned more support from them than could the modernists. The weakness of modernism as a political force shows the pitfalls inherent to advocating a reform movement that does not directly pertain to the lives of those most in need of reform. By not consciously striving to include the masses in their movement, modernists invited their own failure as a movement’s popularity by definition depends on its appeal to people in general. The growing concern for the rights of women and minorities as well as rising literacy rates in Muslim countries may, however, eventually give modernism the mass support fundamentalism has enjoyed to date. Modernists would of course have to make efforts to make their works accessible to less educated Muslims to further their reformist cause. The challenge now lies in convincing Muslims of their arguments.
 


Works Cited

A
hmad, Aziz. Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan: 1857-1964. London: Oxford University Press, 1967.

Ahmad, Mumtaz. “Islamic fundamentalism in South Asia: The Jamaat-i-Islami and the Tablighi Jamaat” in Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Donahue, John and John Esposito. Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Hourani, Albert. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age:1798-1939. London: Oxford University Press, 1962.

Rahman, Fazlur. Islam and Modernity: Transformation of an Intellectual Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Voll, John O. “Fundamentalism in the Sunni Arab World: Egypt and the Sudan” in Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.