Rashid Rida
Muhammad Rashīd Rida Al-Hussaini was an Islamic scholar, reformer, theologian and revivalist. An early Salafist, Rida called for the revival of hadith studies and, as a theoretician of an Islamic state, condemned the rising currents of secularism and nationalism across the Islamic world following the abolition of the Ottoman sultanate. He championed a global pan-Islamist program aimed at re-establishing a Caliphate to unite diverse peoples under a single global Islamic authority.
As a young hadith student who studied al-Ghazali and Ibn Taymiyya, Rida believed reform was necessary to save the Muslim communities, eliminate Sufist practices he considered heretical, and initiate an Islamic renewal. He left Syria to work with Abduh in Cairo, where he was influenced by Abduh's Islamic Modernist movement and began publishing al-Manar in 1898. Through al-Manar's popularity across the Islamic world, Rida became one of the most influential Sunni jurists of his generation, leading the Arab Salafi movement and championing its cause.
He was Abduh's de facto successor and was responsible for a split in Abduh's disciples into one group rooted in Islamic modernism and the other in the revival of Islam. Salafism, also known as Salafiyya, which sought the "Islamization of modernity," emerged from the latter.
During the 1900s Rida abandoned his initial rationalist leanings and began espousing Salafi-oriented methodologies such as that of the Ahl-i Hadith movement. He later supported the Wahhabi movement, revived works by Ibn Taymiyyah, and shifted the Salafism movement into a more conservative and strict Scripturalist approach. He is regarded by a number of historians as "pivotal in leading Salafism's retreat" from the rationalist school of Abduh. He strongly opposed liberalism, Western ideas, freemasonry, Zionism, and European imperialism, and supported armed Jihad to expel European influences from the Islamic World. He also laid the foundations for anti-Western, pan-Islamist struggle during the early 20th century.
Early life and education
Muhammad Rashid Rida was born in al-Qalamoun, Beirut Vilayet, present-day Lebanon, in 1865 into a distinguished Sunni Shafi'i clerical family. His family relied on money earned from their limited olive tree holdings and fees earned by family members who served as ulama. The Rida ulama had been in charge of the al-Qalamoun mosque for several generations. Rida's father was an imam in the mosque. The family, who were Sayyids, claimed descent from the Ahl al-Bayt, specifically Husayn ibn Ali.Rida received a traditional religious education, attending elementary school at the local kuttab in Qalamūn before moving to the Ottoman government school in Tripoli. He then enrolled in Shaykh 's National Islamic School, where he learned hadith and fiqh. He also earned a diploma of ulema in 1897. During his education, he studied the books and treatises of scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn Qayyim, Ibn Qudama, al-Ghazali, al-Mawardi, Razi, Taftasani, and Ibn Rajab. Rida began preaching at the communal level and taught tafsir and other religious sciences at the village's central mosque. He also taught separate ibadah classes for women. Around this time, he first read al-Urwa al-Wuthqa, a periodical that was highly influential to him. It was published by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh. According to Lebanese-British historian Albert Hourani, Rida belonged to the last generation of traditionally trained Islamic scholars who could be "fully educated and yet alive in a self-sufficient Islamic world of thought."
Muhammad Abduh
Rida met Muhammad Abduh, one of the editors of Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa, as an exile in Lebanon in the mid-1880s and quickly came to view Abduh as his mentor. In 1897, Rida decided to study under Abduh's co-editor Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who at that time was in Istanbul. Rida suspected the Hamidian administration was responsible for al-Afghani's death later that year and left Istanbul to rejoin Abduh, one of Afghani's students, now in Egypt. They started the monthly periodical al-Manar, where Rida worked as its chief editor and owner until his death in 1935. At this time, he also studied Ibn Taymiyya and his disciples, which eventually led him to embrace ideas including revulsion against folk Sufism, criticism of taqlid, and the desire to revive hadith studies. All of these became foundational themes of the Salafism.Following Abduh's death in 1905, Rida was seen as his de facto successor despite privately holding reservations about Abduh's ideas. Rida published several new editions of Abduh's works to make them conform more to the dogmas of the traditionalist creed than to Abduh's modernist beliefs. When interest in Abduh was revived in Egypt around the 1930s, the difference in narrative became more apparent. While Abduh's other disciples, Uthman Amin, Mustafa 'Abd al-Raziq, and Muhammad Naji, painted him as a rationalist, Rida continued to ascribe his own beliefs to Abduh's legacy, either ignoring or outright removing Abduh's more liberal ideas from the new editions of his works. Eventually, Rida's narrative became the dominant perception. Abduh's disciples eventually divided into two camps: one, which included Saad Zaghloul and Ali Abdel Raziq, was founded in modernism and Westernized secularism, and the other, the al-Manar party, was based in the revival of Islam. Salafism, also known as Salafiyya, which sought the "Islamization of modernity," emerged from the latter.
Islamic unity under Ottomanism
In 1897, Rida, along with Rafiq al-'Azm and Saib Bey, formed the Ottoman Consultative Society in Cairo. The group consisted of Turks, Armenians, and Circassians living in Egypt and called for Islamic unity under Ottomanism; at this time, their ideas were consistent with those of the Young Turks. They condemned the autocratic Hamidian rule and European imperialism, and their ideas were distributed in Arabic and Turkish via al-Manar. The society disbanded in 1908 following the Young Turk Revolution, after which Azm joined the Committee of Union and Progress to pursue modernism and Rida became a vocal critic of the Young Turks.In 1898, Rida began publishing articles encouraging Ottoman authorities to adopt a new religious strategy within the existing caliphal and pan-Islamic policy under Sultan Abd al-Hamid II. He recommended training scholars and sharia judges responsible for issuing fatwas and discussing religious affairs by standardising the creation of different institutions. In one article, he suggested a World Islamic Congress, which would standardise creed, law, and teachings as its fundamental principle. He envisioned the "greatest branch" of the caliph in Mecca for two reasons: the pilgrimage would bring branch leaders to Mecca, where the caliph would be able to disseminate knowledge; and because it was away "from the intrigues and suspicions of foreigners." He envisioned a Congress-published religious journal to counter innovative and heretic ideas and to share translations of religious works. The caliph would oversee affairs but was otherwise just like any other Congress member. Scholars would compile legal works from madhāhib and adapt them to contemporary situations, and resulting legislation would be implemented by the caliph in all Muslim societies. The desire for a Muslim Congress would reappear in later works.
This global religious society, according to Rida, would pave the way for a spiritual caliphate. Islamic unity required the abolition of sectarian differences as well as the revival of doctrines practiced by the Salaf, the first three generations of Islam, which pre-dated different sects and madhāhib. He further advocated for a centralising policy that returned all Muslims, schools, and sects to the fundamentals of faith and that united Muslims against European colonialism. He believed that shura was a basic feature of any Islamic state and saw the caliphate as a necessary temporal power to defend Islam and defend Islamic law, or sharia. Ottoman authorities were unreceptive and at times hostile to Rida's proposals, in particular criticising his suggestion of making the caliph an ordinary member of society. While they were open to considering a Muslim Congress, they preferred Istanbul as a hub rather than Mecca, as it would establish a parliamentary forum in the capital of the Empire. Sultan Abdul Hamid II himself opposed the idea of a Congress altogether, claiming it to be a ploy for Arab separatism and Hejazi autonomy. The proposals were also in direct contradiction to the established Ottoman policy on the Sultan's ability to enforce absolute authority.
Rida's denunciation of Sufism and condemnation of the Rifaʽi and Qadiriyya orders for ritualising innovated practices enraged Abū l-Hudā al-Sayyādī, the Sultan's Syrian advisor. Ottoman authorities began harassing Rida's family in Syria and al-Sayyādī requested that his brother-in-law Badrī Bāšā, the governor of Tripoli, send military authorities after Rida's brothers. They later attempted to confiscate his family mosque and Rida wrote that al-Sayyādī planned to assassinate him in Egypt. Rida's journal al-Manar was subsequently banned in Ottoman regions though the censorship did not dissuade him from continuing to write and publish. In 1901, Abd al-Rahman al-Kawakibi published Umm al-Qura, which detailed the idea of a World Muslim Congress for the first time. Al-Kawakibi also set the Congress in Mecca, which was seen as a staunch anti-Ottoman elaboration of the pan-Islamist movement, as he argued for replacing Ottoman rule with an Arabic Qurayshi caliphate elected by the Congress. He also condemned Sufism. Rida expanded this idea in a series of articles in al-Manar.
Despite rejection from the Empire, Rida continued supporting the preservation of the sultanate during the Hamidian Era through the first decade of the 1900s. He believed that the dynastic nature of the Ottoman state was reconciled with the classical legal approach that allowed caliphs to rule through force rather than with shura, consent, and adherence to Islamic law. While holding the Ottoman rule to be based on tribalism, he eventually decided not to rebel so openly against the Empire out of concern that it would damage the only Islamic temporal power. Instead, he focused on advocating reform for consultative governance within the confines of the state and writing to condemning partisanship in madhāhib and all forms of factionalism. He continued supporting pan-Arabism and promoted Arab eminence and Islamic unity. Rida believed that Arabs were better suited for Islamic leadership, thus linking Arab revival to Islamic unity. He condemned ethnic prejudice, strongly believing that racial conflict was the cause of "Muslim weakness in the past."
Rida's resentment for Abdul Hamid grew following the 31 March incident and subsequent 1909 Ottoman countercoup, which Rida saw as delegitimising Hamid's rule and his deposition as God putting an end to tyranny. After the revolution in October, he visited Istanbul hoping to establish a school for Islamic missionaries and to reconcile Arabs and Turks in the Empire. Both of his goals were rejected and he became a sworn enemy of the Young Turks and the Committee of Union and Progress. His initial optimism about the newly-appointed Sultan Mehmed V was short-lived as the effective power focused on supporting the Young Turks. Rida re-asserted his belief that the Young Turks had abandoned Islamism and Ottomanism to pursue a nationalist Turkification policy.
When Rida supported the Young Turks, he put aside concerns about CUP's nationalism; by 1909, however, he accused the group of spreading heresy, Westernising Islamic government, and creating chaos. He wrote a number of articles in the Turkish press condemning policies based on nationalism and race and warned that nationalism was a European concept that violated Islamic principles, and would lead to the collapse of the multi-ethnic, multi-racial Ottoman Empire. He sought decentralisation of the Empire without challenging the legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan, and made sure to distinguish between his opposition to CUP and his loyalty to the Ottoman state. Until World War I, Rida advocated autonomy for Ottoman territories while seeking to maintain the caliphate in Istanbul. In 1911, he wrote: "Islam is a religion of authority and sovereignty... Muslims all over the world believe that the Ottoman state is fulfilling the role of defender of the Muslim faith" and that mistakes made by sultans would disappear once European colonisation was no longer a threat.
File:Al-Manaremployees.jpg|thumb|upright=1.4|Employees of the Al-Manar Publishing House run by Imam Rashid Rida. Al-Manar became a global outlet for pan-Islamist revolutionary themes and Islamic revivalist ideals.