Islamic revival
Islamic revival refers to a revival of Islam, usually centered around enforcing Sharia. A leader of a revival is known in Islam as a mujaddid.
Within the Islamic tradition, tajdid is an important religious concept called for periodically throughout Islamic history and according to a sahih hadith occurring every century. They manifest in renewed commitment to the fundamentals of Islam, the teachings of the Quran and hadith of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the divine law of Sharia, and reconstruction of society in accordance with them.
In academic literature, "Islamic revival" is an umbrella term for revivalist movements in Islam, spanning a number of different or opposing meanings: Movements which may be "intolerant and exclusivist", or "pluralistic"; "favorable to science", or against it; "primarily devotional", or "primarily political"; democratic, or authoritarian; pacific, or violent.
The Islamic revival of the late 20th century, brought "re-Islamization", ranging from an increase in the number of Sharia-based legal statutes, attendees at Hajj, women wearing hijab, fundamentalist preachers and their influence, and terrorist attacks by radical Islamist groups. A feeling of a "growing universalistic Islamic identity" or transnational Islam among immigrants in non-Muslim countries was also evident.
Explanations for the revival include the perceived failure of secularism, in the form of Westernized ruling elites that were increasingly seen as authoritarian, ineffective and lacking cultural authenticity; the secular Arab nationalists whose governments were humiliatingly defeated in the Six-Day War with Israel; the fall of previously prosperous multi-confessional Lebanon into a destructive sectarian civil war; perceived successes of Islam included the surprising victory of Islamist forces against a well-armed and financed secular monarch in the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and hundreds of billions of dollars spent by Saudi Arabia and other gulf states around the Muslim world to encourage the following of stricter, more conservative strains of Islam.
During the Cold War following World War II, some NATO governments, particularly those of the United States and the United Kingdom, launched covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen fundamentalist groups in the Middle East and southern Asia. These groups were seen as a hedge against potential expansion by the Soviet Union, and as a counterweight against nationalist and socialist movements that were seen as a threat to the interests of the Western nations.
According to some estimates, since the 1960s, the Saudis have funnelled over USD 100 billion into funding schools and mosques all over the world with the mission of spreading puritanical Wahhabi Islam. According to political scientist Alex Alexiev, the impetus for the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism by Saudi Arabia was "the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted", David A. Kaplan described it as "dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War". In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said that investments in mosques and madrassas overseas were rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union. In 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism.
Preachers and scholars who have been described as revivalists or mujaddideen, by differing sects and groups in the history of Islam include Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Ahmad Sirhindi, Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and Muhammad Ahmad. In the 20th century, figures such as Sayyid Rashid Rida, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi, Ruhollah Khomeini and Syed Mahbub E Khoda have been described as such. Academics often use the terms "Islamist" and "Islamic revivalist" interchangeably. Contemporary revivalist currents include jihadism; neo-Sufism, which cultivates Muslim spirituality; and classical fundamentalism, which stresses obedience to Sharia and ritual observance.
Some of the more prominent examples include Saudi Arabia after the 1979 Grand Mosque attack, Iran after the 1979 revolution, Pakistan after Zia's Islamization in 1979, and Afghanistan after the rise of the Mujahideen from the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979.
Early history of revivalism
The concept of Islamic revival is based on a sahih hadith, recorded by Abu Dawood, narrated by Abu Hurairah, who reported that Muhammad said:Within the Islamic tradition, tajdid has been an important religious concept. Early in the history of Islam, Muslims believed they had not succeeded in creating and maintaining a society that truly followed the principles of their religion. As a result, Islamic history has seen periodic calls for a renewed commitment to the fundamental principles of Islam and it has also seen periodic calls for the reconstruction of society in accordance with the Quran and the traditions of Muhammad. These efforts frequently drew inspiration from the hadith in which Muhammad states: "God will send to His community at the head of each century those who will renew its faith for it". Throughout Islamic history, Muslims looked to reforming religious leaders to fulfil the role of a mujaddid. Although there is disagreement over which individuals might actually be identified as such, Muslims agree that mujaddids have been an important force in the history of Islamic societies.
The modern movement of Islamic revival has been compared with earlier efforts of a similar nature: The "oscillat between periods of strict religious observance and others of devotional laxity" in Islamic history was striking enough for "the Muslim historian, Ibn Khaldun to ponder its causes 600 years ago, and speculate that it could be "attributed... to features of ecology and social organization peculiar to the Middle East", namely the tension between the easy living in the towns and the austere life in the desert.
Some of the more famous revivalists and revival movements include the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties in Maghreb and Spain, Indian Naqshbandi revivalist Ahmad Sirhindi, the Kadizadeli in the Ottoman Empire that followed Kadızade Mehmed, a revivalist Islamic preacher, the Indian Ahl-i Hadith movement of the 19th century, preachers Ibn Taymiyyah, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab.
In the late 19th century, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, "one of the most influential Muslim reformers" of the era, traveled the Muslim world, advocating for Islamic modernism and pan-Islamism. His sometime acolyte Muhammad Abduh has been called "the most influential figure" of Modernist Salafism.
Muhammad Rashid Rida, his protege Hassan al-Banna would establish the Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, better known as the Muslim Brotherhood, in 1928, the first mass Islamist organization. Despite him being influenced by Rida and his drawing of ideas primarily from Islamic sources, Al-Banna nevertheless was willing to engage with modern European concepts like nationalism, constitutionalism, etc.
In South Asia, Islamic revivalist intellectuals and statesmen like Syed Ahmad Khan, Muhammad Iqbal, Muhammad Ali Jinnah promoted the Two-Nation Theory and the Muslim League established the world's first modern Islamic republic, Pakistan. Abul Ala Maududi was the later leader of this movement who established Jamaat-e-Islami in South Asia. Today it is one of the most influential Islamic parties in the Indian sub-continent, spanning three countries, although the different national parties have no organisational link between them. Muhammed Ilyas Kandhlawi was an Indian Islamic scholar who founded the widely influential Tablighi Jamaat Islamic revivalist movement, in 1925. It is now a worldwide movement with over 50 million active followers, it is a non-political movement which focuses on increasing the Muslims' faith and for them to return to the sunnah way of life.
Whether or not the contemporary revival is part of an historical cycle, the uniqueness of the close association of the Muslim community with its religion has been noted by scholar Michael Cook who observed that "of all the major cultural domains" the Muslim world "seems to have been the least penetrated by irreligion". In the last few decades ending in 2000, rather than scientific knowledge and secularism edging aside religion, Islamic fundamentalism has "increasingly represented the cutting edge" of Muslim culture.