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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
Ahmad, 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.
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