Overview of the Major Intellectual Developments in the Sunni Islamic tradition from the 18th Century to the Present

During the modern period, here defined as spanning from the 18^th century C.E. to that of the present, we see a continuation of the historical debates  on the relative status of various sources of legal authority in the Islamic tradition, including the issues of the authority of Sunna, the authenticity of hadith and its criticism and their relationship to the Qur’an.[1] These debates, and the broad socio-political context in which they emerged, can be understood in relation to a number of revivalist pre-modernist and modernist movements emerging in the 18^th century to the present.

  The calls for the return to and the revivification (ihya) of the unadulterated Qur’an and Sunna teachings based on ahl-hadith manhaj and in the spirit of the doctrine of Salafism have been a constant feature of the Islamic intellectual tradition from its very early days. The first three to four centuries of Islamic thought were characterised by intellectual creativity and dynamism. At the end of the fifth century of the Islamic calendar (end of 12^th century C.E.) with the establishment and subsequent flourishing of four of the surviving Sunni madhahib, a large degree of Qur’an-Sunna “hermeneutical stability” in the area of theology and jurisprudence /law derivation was reached. Thus, at this time, by a large measure, the contours of Islamic thought, the thinkable and the unthinkable within it, to borrow Arkoun’s phrase, were established.[2] In addition, during this time, through a process of consolidation and systematization, the four Sunni schools of thought were embedded in the major centers of the Muslim Empire.[3]The established Sunni Islamic centers of learning, the madaris, were divided along the same lines as the madhahib and were responsible for the production of the highest calibre scholars, primarily theologians and jurists, thus ensuring the perpetuation of the tradition. The madhahib-based system of Islamic learning, with the support of the political establishment, was to dominate the Muslim intellectual discourses for the next six centuries, thus up to the modern period.[4] On the other hand, the interpretational inflexibility of ‘juristic empiricism’ as embodied by groups such as the Zahiris or the Hashwiyya who attempted to remain faithful to the ahl-hadith manhaj resulted in their eventual extinction around the same time.[5]However, certain doctrinal and methodological tendencies present in the later Hanbali madhhab as embodied in some of  the writings of Ibn Taymiyyah (d.728 /1328 ) and more so his student Ibn Jawziyyah (d.751/ 1350 ) rebelled against the taqlid-based hermeneutic of the madhahib reviving the ihya us-Sunna principle by largely adopting the ahl-hadith manhaj and their ‘juristic empiricism’.[6] These tendencies for the reform of the madhhab-based legal and social institutions were further reinforced by western political and military hegemony. In this context the central issue was the re-examination of the dominant madhhab-based religious authority hermeneutic and in particular the nature of Prophetic authority and, as a corollary, that of hadith authenticity and criticism.[7]  From the 18^th century C.E. onwards the writings of these scholars formed and still form a foundation for a number of salafi – ahl-hadith manhaj revivalist movements which I will discuss below.

The loss of creative thinking embedded in popular forms of Sufism and the stultifying fixity and finality of the madhahib that characterised much of the medieval Muslim scholarship, spurred in the 18^th and the 19^th centuries a number of what Rahman terms pre-modernist revivalist schools of thought. These movements included, for example, the Wahhabis in the Arabian Peninsular, the Sanusiyya in North Africa, Fulanis in West Africa and the 18^th century Ahl-i-Hadith reform movement in India. On the basis of the ahl-hadith manhaj, these movements radically questioned the perceived degrading beliefs and religious practices manifesting themselves in popular religion -such as the practice of doing petitionary prayers (du’as) next to the tombs of saints or the practices of visiting their graves (ziyarah) - which in the meantime had become integral parts of the cumulative tradition. These pre-modern revivalist schools of thought shared a number of common characteristics such as a desire to reverse what they considered to be a socio-moral decadence of the Muslim society, to shed Islam of the superstitions inculcated by popular forms of Sufism and to remove a pre-deterministic outlook which permeated popular religious culture. In the spirit and the letter of the ahl-hadith manhaj these movements demanded adherence and the access to the interpretation of Qur’an and hadith texts without any intermediaries.[8]  Furthermore, they emphasised the absolute authority to the supposed consensus of the salaf (ijma’ as-salaf as-salih) on all doctrinal and methodological issues. Moreover, they shunned the institution of taqlid, which formed the backbone of the traditional madhahib hermeneutic, and asked for the reinstitution of ijtihad or interpretation based on direct access to the Qur’an and hadith body of texts. They also aimed to revive the hadith sciences as practiced by hadith scholars in the Arabian Hijaz with the emphasis on the early sources of hadith, thus bypassing the later compilations. In doing so they wished to assert their independence from the classical madhhab-based approach to hadith. Their aim was to study hadith with increased vigour and stringency. Unlike the madhhab approach, the hadith revivalist reformers upheld the supremacy of hadith in theory as well as in practice. Few of these movements were willing to achieve these goals by engaging in armed struggle if necessary.  However, the most influential revivalist hadith-based movement, the Ahl-i-Hadith movement in India that went on to influence revivalist movements in the Middle East in the 19^th and 20^th centuries , headed by Shah Walli Allah, ( d.1176/1762 ) was politically quietest in nature.[9]

These pre-modern revivalist movements were, apart from the above mentioned Ahl-i-Hadith, largely anti-intellectual, especially the Wahhabi form, a movement to which I will turn my attention in more detail below. The scope and the content of their ijtihad were narrow and inconsequential since it was limited to the ahl-hadith’s methodology described above.[10]The ijtihad largely pertained to issues of ritual practice such as the correct performance of certain elements of the daily obligatory prayers (salat) or theology (such as the nature of God’s attributes).[11]  While the pre-modernist revivalist groups were a great liberating force in terms of their rejection of human authority as being final and absolute (as the presumed delineating feature of  the madhahib taqlid doctrines) and their insistence on ijtihad, their anti-intellectualism represented a considerable retrogression and intellectual starvation when compared to the madhhab-based Islamic tradition and its madrassa-based educational system.[12] By remaining faithful to a decontextualised reading of the hadith considered authentic by early muhaddithun such as  M. Al-Bukhari (d. 256 / 870) and  Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj (d. 261/ 875) and by rejecting subsequent doctrinal accretions, the pre-modern revivalist movements believed that only their manhaj  embodied and revived the authentic Sunna.[13]

A number of revivalist-modernist movements emerged from some of these pre-modernist groups. One of the most significant and influential of these was the classical modernist movement whose origins go back to the late 19th century.[14] The broader context behind the beginnings of this movement includes the prevalent perception among the contemporary Muslims of the civilisational waning of the Muslim world coupled with that of the rise of the colonial rule stemming from the West over much of the Muslim world, the subsequent critical evaluation of all aspects of the Islamic tradition at the hands of the Christian missionary and administatory apparatus and the conflation of  the process of modernization with that of Westernisation.[15]

This encounter of Muslims with colonial powers importantly synergised and propelled the modernists’ project in earnest which, among others, involved the revival of rational elements of the turath such as the kalam science.[16]The creed’s major proponents were authorities such as Muhammad ‘Abduh (d. 1322/1905), Jamal Al-Afghani (d. 1314/1897), Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan (d. 1314/1898) and Rashid Rida (d. 1353/ 1935).[17]At this period of time, the Arabo-Islamic civilisation, especially in Turkey, Egypt and India, came under the growing intellectual and cultural influence of the colonialists. Remaining faithful to the salafi mind-set these classical modernists, also known as salafiyya, re-claimed the conviction of the earlier Salafi and ahl-hadith oriented ideologies of being able to retrieve the ‘pure’ teachings of the Qur’an and Sunna as exemplified by the Prophet and his rightly guided Companions by means of revivification of the ‘true’ Qur’an and Sunna teachings (ihya al-qur’an wa- s-sunna). The proponents of the movement argued that their forerunners and contemporaries had become disengaged from the emerging global modernity only because they forgot, rather than adhered to, the always already modern early traditions of Islam.[18] This revivalism was largely to be achieved through the exercise of ijtihad, the rejection of taqlid and by means of a hadith-based reform.[19]  Therefore classical modernists’ reforms were inspired both by hadith-based reformism of the pre-modern revivalist movements described above as well as by their contact with the colonial powers. Thus, the primary motivations behind their impetus for reform were the desire to free the Muslim countries from the shackles of colonisation and to curb the prevalent religious practices alluded to above which were deemed ‘un-Islamic’.[20] Additionally, these classical modernists  saw it as their task  to reconcile the Islamic faith with modern values such as constitutionalism, nationalism, freedom of  religious interpretation ,modern style education, women’s rights, scientific education  and cultural revival to name but a few. Classical modernists built on the ideas of the pre-modern revivalist groups mentioned above in order to achieve these goals. [21] Like their salafi ahl-hadith revivalist predecessors, the classical modernists’ worldview was built on a romanticised and utopian view of the past.[22] However, it largely rejected a priori adherence to the long-established juristic heritage and legal hermeneutic of the madhahib by engaging in the practice of talfiq or cross-madhhab legal hermeneutic, thus “deconstructing traditional notions of established authority within Islam.”[23] Methodologically, the classical modernist approach differed significantly from that of the pre-modernist revivalist ahl-hadith –based manhaj.[24] The scope and the content of their ijtihad were much broader than that of the pre-modernist revivalist.[25] Their interpretation emphasised the importance of the Qur’anic scripture and what Rahman terms the broader “historical Sunna” in contradiction to ahl-hadith’s hadith-based Sunna (i.e. Sunna embodied in the early hadith books). This is, for example, evident in the opinion of Rida, one of its main proponents, who considered Sunna ‘amaliyya or practiced based Sunna as the only source of Sunna.[26] There was little reliance on hadith literature in their overall methodology.[27] Moreover, classical modernists were willing to question the judgments of the ancient muhadithun, most of which were accepted by the pre-modern ahl-hadith. They also argued for a more rigorous and renewed application of the classical system of hadith criticism without rejecting it in toto.[28]Thus, they had a more critical approach to hadith which, however, still operated within the classical hadith sciences. This approach is perhaps best illustrated by the works of hadith-scholars such as  J. Al-Qasimi’s  (1866-1914 CE) Qawa’id  al-tahdith min  funun mustalah al-hadith ( The Principles of Regeneration from the Technical Science of Hadith Study),[29] T. Al-Jaza’iri’s ( d. 1337/1919) Tawjih al-nazar ila usul al-athar( Examining the Principles of Transmitted Reports)[30] or more recently the works of the Al-Ghumari brothers, Ahmed ( d. 1379/1960), ‘Abdallah ( d. 1413/1993) and ‘Abd Al-Hayy( d.1415/1995).[31]Their works emphasize the need for the fresh application of hadith sciences based on what they consider to be a considerable room for manoeuvre within this system without offering an alternative to the classical system to hadith criticism. Furthermore, classical modernists, unlike their pre-modernist revivalist predecessors, neither isolated themselves from nor were reluctant to engage with modernity. As such they were not inherently anti-western.[32] Rather, they attempted to reconcile the realities of modernity and the era of post-colonially emerging Arab nationalism with the Islamic tradition itself by “reading the values of modernism into the original sources of Islam.”[33] Kurzman gives several examples of this double translation such as that of translating the traditional Islamic concept of justice into the modern concept of law and juridical system and the process of translating the modern concepts of citizenship and rights with the traditional Islamic concept of equality. As such, classical modernists were engaged in a process of double translation, namely, that of translating modern values into Islamic terms and the Islamic values into modern terms. By engaging in this type of reform, classical modernist thought created a number of positive links between key western institutions such as democracy, science, women’s education and the Islamic tradition.[34] However, this approach “attempted to espouse cultural and institutional modernity by seeking a synthesis between these concepts and Islam, but doing so without rethinking the traditional Islamic theocentric worldview.”[35] In other words classical modern thought still aimed to maintain the traditional conception of reality based on religious truths which ought not to be changed and in whose light modernity was to adjust.[36] M. Al-Jabiri makes a similar assertion by stating that the classical modernists attempted

[ t]o formulate an ideal vision of the tradition within the framework of the Arabo-Islamic history but to tailor the future of the Arab societies according to the Western-European model. However, these attempts repeatedly failed and became useless because this form of compromise obstructed functionality of history and real process of development.[37]

One of the main reasons why classical modernism failed to capture the hearts and minds of the wider masses was the perceived lack of legitimacy of their ideas in the eyes of many traditionally minded scholars and masses. Classical modernists’ ideas were primarily restricted to individual scholars, did not trigger large socio-political movements and did not have large numbers of followers. The colonial experience that Muslim societies were subjected to resulted in many perceiving Western civilisation as the very anathema of the Islamic tradition. As such any reforms of the tradition which brought the Islamic tradition closer to that of the imperialist West were considered illegitimate. Additionally, the lack of a systematic, post-traditionally embedded epistemology, methodology and theological-philosophy on the basis of which the Islamic tradition could be re-interpreted and reformed in a holistic rather than selective fashion was also a contributing factor for the failure of the classical modernist project.[38]Some fragments and elaboration of their thought, however, survive to present times as evident for example in the writings of  Shaikh M. Al-Ghazalli, (1917-1996 CE) or Y. Al-Qaradawi ( 1926- ) who were/are prominent advocates of moderate Islamic revivalism. Because of their relative methodological affinity with the classical modernists (in contrast to that of ahl-hadith revivalist movements) we will briefly discuss them here. In his book Al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayna ahl al-fiqh wa ahl-hadith (The Sunna of the Prophet between the Legists and the Traditionalists)[39] Al-Ghazalli contributes to the ongoing debates on the   issues of Prophetic authority, hadith criticism and their authenticity and their status in relation to the Qur’an. He essentially upholds the classical approach to hadith criticism but with the emphasis on matn criticism not just isnad. Additionally, like Rida, one of the eponyms of the classical modernist salafiyya, he objects to rationally or theologically incompatible hadith or those which are in conflict with the above alluded broader aims of the Islamic law (maqasid al-shari’ah). He does so on the basis of a hermeneutical method which privileges a Qur’an –based interpretation of hadith as well as on the basis of Hanafi and Maliki Sunna manahij.[40]  In writing the book Al-Ghazalli wished to criticize what he considered the fanaticism and the extremes of modern ahl-hadith, (associated with that day Wahhabism) and their manhaj considering them remnants of “Beduin legal thought”.[41]Recently published Y. Qaradawi’s book Approaching the Sunna: Comprehension & Controversy [42] is basically a continuation of this trend. In it the author is concerned to outline general characteristics and principles of Sunna for its better understanding and application as a method which will guard people who uphold the Sunna against  three evils, namely  that of the “distortion of the extremists” ,the deviation of the falsifiers and the “interpretation of the ignorant.”[43]In doing so Qaradawi’s concept of Sunna and the manhaj adopted for its criticism in terms of its authenticity and status as a source of law in relation to the Qur’an and hadith remain completely within the classical Islamic sciences. For example, elements of Qaradawi’s manhaj   emphasise the priority of interpreting hadith in the light of the  Qur’an, take recourse to methods such as reconciliation of hadith ( over giving of preference ), recommend a  thematic ,holistic  treatment of hadith  ,make distinctions between figurative and literal and call for the importance of recognising  the causes and objectives of hadith for their better understanding. Sunna is neither epistemologically nor conceptually divorced from the hadith and the assumptions governing the classical ulum ul hadith sciences are not even addressed let alone questioned.[44] All of the methods employed by Qaradawi were in one form or another already adopted by the classical modernists.

In the early 20^th century another modern approach to Prophetic authority emerged in the Punjab region self-designated as Ahl-i-Qur’an. The movement was an extreme counter- reaction to and a dissident faction of the earlier Ahl-i-Hadith movement in India discussed above. It is associated with the works of scholars such as Ahmad Din Amritsari (d. 1348/1930) and later on Ghulam Ahmad Parvez (d. 1405/1985). This group contended that the only pure and uncontaminated Islam can be found in the Qur’an. Furthermore, the Ahl-i-Qur’an considered the only source of Islamic teachings which provides authentic and reliable basis for religious practices and beliefs. As a corollary, they were at pains to prove that all the basic tenants of Islamic teachings could be derived from the Qur’an alone. They completely discarded hadith as a reliable and authentic source of Prophetic authority. They also rejected the institution of taqlid.[45] Some contemporary movements such as the Ahl Al Qur’an movement based in Egypt can be considered as an ideational outgrowth of this earlier movement. [46]

In the first half of the 20^th century the classical modernist approach to interpretation of the Islamic tradition took a conservative turn in the Middle East, the Indo-Pakistani subcontinent and Indonesia providing an ideological springboard for political Islamism in the second part of the century.[47] Abu Rabi’i refers to them as Neo-traditionalists and defines the emergence of Neo-traditional thought as a result of a modern confrontation between Islamic religious tradition and mentality and Western worldview that, as a result of this confrontation, was compelled to “forge an intellectual and political synstudy in order to respond to the challenges of Western modernity.”[48] It included personalities such as Hasan al Banna (d.1368/1949), the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the Pakistani Maulana Abu ‘l-A’la Maududi (d.1399/1979), Sayyid Qutb (d. 1385/1966) and Muhammad Qutb (1919- ). Neo-traditionalists were primarily a form of an organized socio-political movement and were strongly influenced by classical modernists. They were in fact in part an acceptance of and in part a reaction to them. They emphasized a holistic nature of Islam as a way of life. Their scope of ijtihad was broader than that of the pre-modern revivalists but was primarily restricted to issues of denouncing practices such as the modern banking system based on interest, unveiling of women and family planning. They also considered intellectualism as dangerous. Neo-traditionalists insisted on distinguishing Islam from the West and considered classical modernists as too Western.  Methodologically, they did not accept the method and the spirit of the classical modernists but exhibited a strong link with the pre-modern revivalist movement of the 18^th century, particularly Wahhabism in their emphasis on the importance of following the as -salaf, the rejection of Sufism and taqlid. Apart from their broader ijtihad they differed from Wahhabism in their more critical attitude toward hadith literature. [49]

Wahhabi thought originated in the deserts of Saudi Arabia in the middle of the 18^th century and was founded by Muhammad ibn Abd ul Wahahab (d.1207/1792). Abd ul Wahhab came from a family of Hanbali scholars. He, however, had no extensive religious training himself. Wahhabism was considered by the contemporary Muslim, Sunni and Shi’i alike scholars very much an aberration of and an anomaly to mainstream Sunnism.[50] Wahhabism remained largely on the margins of the Islamic tradition until the 1970s when it started to aggressively spread with the help of Saudi petrodollars. The adherents of Wahhabism staunchly follow the ahl-hadith approach to the Islamic tradition and strongly reject any rationalist, intellectual or mystic influences in it. By subscribing to ‘juristic empiricism’ described above Wahhabi thought attempted to interpret the Divine law without any degree of contextualization or from a historical perspective. Rejecting taqlid it proclaimed “the diacritical and indeterminate hermeneutic of classical jurisprudential tradition as corruptions of purity of Islamic faith and law.”[51] Its entire rationale is to demolish the classical madhhab-based structures of law, theology, mysticism and religious practice. Wahhabi thought is also characterized by a complete disregard for universalistic moral values and appreciation for ethics found in the classical writings on Islamic theology and law.[52] It mainly concerns itself with the issue of correct belief (‘aqidah) as based on the principal of tawhid (God’s Unity and Transcendence), against shirk (associating partners with God) and the concept of bid’ah (innovation) or deviation from Prophet’s Sunna. This thought is best represented in Abd ul Wahhab’s book Kitab al-Tawhid.[53] The book is nothing more than an amalgamation of qur’anic verses and hadith used eclectically, ahistorically and decontextually. In it Abd ul Wahhab condemns all those Muslims not subscribing to his ideas as guilty of shirk because they violate one component of principle of tawhid, namely that of tawhid al-‘ibada (direct worship to God alone). In his view those Muslims who resort to religious practices such as petitionary prayer (du’a) in which a mention of the Prophet Muhammad or other saintly personalities from Muslim history is made to help in mundane or spiritual matters; those seeking shafa’ah (intersession) of prophets or saints; the practice of seeking of their blessings (tabarruk) at their tombs or similar become guilty of shirk.

Over the last two to three decades, the complex dynamics between social, political and economic factors in Muslim majority countries, especially those in which pre-modern revivalist movements flourished, such as Saudi Arabia, has resulted in the merging of Wahhabism and Neotraditionalism, especially the Ahl-i-Hadith movement from India,[54] and formulation of a new hybrid model which inherited both the Salafi worldview and ahl-hadith manhaj. [55] Roy refers to this complex intellectual matrix as Neo-Fundamentalism.[56]While Roy’s Neo-Fundamentalist thought includes schools of thought such as the former Muslim Brotherhood, Tablighi Jama’at, the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Ahl-i-Hadith in Pakistan as well as the Saudi Wahhabis and their western sympathizers, this study will aim to shed light and discuss primarily those belonging to the Saudi Wahhabi school of thought and their western counterparts here referred to as Neo-traditional Salafism (NTSm).Importantly, over the last fifteen years or so a strong countercurrent to NTS emerged which ,unlike  secular or liberal approaches[1] to the Islamic tradition, not only takes the classical madhhab based approach to the tradition very seriously but employs (post) modern methods of reading history and sacred texts in order to conceptualise and interpret the Islamic tradition. We refer to it here as progressive Muslim approach.

Taken from Chapter  one of this book of mine ( free PDF)

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[1] Here defined in the sense of attempts to re-mould the Islamic tradition with an epistemological break that is without taking recourse to a systematic rethinking of its pre-modern dimension.

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[1] Brown, Rethinking, 60-108

[2] Arkoun, The Unthought.

[3] Sh.Jackson, ’Taqlid, Legal Scaffolding and the Scope of legal injunctions in the post-formative theory: Mutlaq and ‘Amm in the Jurisprudence of Shihab al-Din al-Qarafi’, Islamic Law and Society 3, 2, 1996, 165-192, 168.

[4] Hallaq, Authority.

[5] Jackson,’Taqlid’, 168. Jackson defines ‘juristic empiricism’ as a legal methodology of interpretation which rejects all a priori claims to knowledge of the Islamic law that go beyond and cannot be explicitly documented in the textual sources of the Qur’an and hadith. As a corollary, ‘juristic empiricism’ desires to establish the primacy of texts and to eliminate all extra-textual biases, speculations and presuppositions. Zahiris or the Hashwiyya developed this manhaj to their logical extremes. See Sh.Jackson, ‘Literalism, Empiricism’, op.cit.

[6] P.Rudolphs, Idjtihad and Taqlid in 18^th and 19^th Century Islam, Die Welt des Islams, 20,1980,131-145,136.

[7] Brown, Rethinking,  21-22.

[8] F.Rahman, ‘Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’, in A.T.Welch and P.Cachia (ed.), Islam : Past Influence and Present Challenge, Edinburgh University Press,Edinbrugh,1979,315-330,317.

[9] Brown, Rethinking, op.cit., 27-32.

[10] Rahman,’Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’, 319.

[11] B. Haykel, ‘On the Nature of Salafi Thought and Action’, in ed. Meijer, R. Global Salafism :Islam’s New religious Movement, Columbia University Press, New York,2009, 33-51.

[12] Rahman, ’Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’,317.

[13] Brown, Rethinking,29.

[14] Ch.Kurzman,(ed.) Modernist Islam,1840-1940,Oxford University Press,2002.

[15] M.Kh. Masud, Islamic Modernism, in M.Kh.Masud, A.Salvatore and Mvan Bruinessen, (ed.) Islam and Modernity-Key Issues and Debates,237-261,257.

[16] I. Abu Rabi’i, (ed.)The Blackwell Companion to Contemporary Islamic Thought, Blackwell ,Oxford,2006,8.

[17]Kurzman, Modernist Islam,3-27.

[18]M. Bamyeh, ‘Hermeneutics against Instrumental Reason: national and post-national Islam in the 20th century’, Third World Quarterly, 29, 3,555- 574, 563.

[19] Brown, Rethinking,32-37.

[20] Rudolphs, ‘Idjtihad’,131.

[21] Kurzman, Modernist Islam, ,4.

[22] El-Fadl, Speaking,174-175.

[23]  Kh. Abou El-Fadl, ’The Ugly Modern and the Modern Ugly :Reclaiming the Beautiful in Islam,’in O. Safi (ed.) Progressive Muslims ,Oneworld, Oxford, 33-78,55.

[24] Rahman, ‘Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’,  p.320.

[25] Kurzman, Modernist Islam, 9-14.

[26] Brown, Re-thinking,41.

[27] Rahman, ‘Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’, 321.

[28] Brown, Re-Thinking ,31.

[29] J. Al-Qasimi, Qawa’id  al-tahdith min  funun mustalah al-hadith, Damascus, 1935.

[30] T. Al-Jaza’iri’ Tawjih al-nazar ila usul al-athar,ed. ‘Abd al-fattah Abu Ghudda,Aleppo, Maktabat al-matbu’at al-Islamiyya,1995.

[31] See ,for example, ‘Abdallah Al-Ghumari , Tawjih al-‘inaya li-ta’rif ‘ilm al-hadith riwaya wa diraya, ed. Safwat Jawdah Ahmad,Cairo,Maktabat al-Qahira,2002; Ahmad Al-Ghumari, Dar ‘al –da’f ‘an hadith man ‘ashiqa fa-’aff, ed. ‘Iyad al-Ghawj,Cairo,dar al-Imam al-Tirmidhi,1996.

[32]Kurzman, Liberal Islam, 5-26. 

[33] Rahman, ‘Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’,320.

[34]Ibid.

[35] B.Tibbi, The Challenge of Fundamentalism –Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Updated edition, University of California Press, 2002, 30.

[36] A. Dahlen, Islamic Law, Epistemology and Modernity,-Legal Philosophy in Contemporary Iran, New York,Routledge,2003,106.

[37] M.Gaebel, Von der Kritik des arabischen Denkens zum panarabischen Aufbruch: Das philosophische und politische Denken Muhammad Abid Gabiris, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1995,18.

[38]  Rahman, ’Islam: Challenges and Opportunities’, 320-322.

[39] M. Al-Ghazalli, Al-Sunna al-nabawiyya bayna ahl al-fiqh wa ahl-hadith, 13^th edition, Cairo, Dar al-Shuruq,2005.

[40] Ibid, Introduction.

[41] Ibid.,14-15.

[42] International Institute of Islamic Thought, 2007.

[43] Ibid, 12.

[44] Ibid, 91-182.

[45] Brown, Rethinking, 42.

[46] http://www.ahl-alquran.com/English/main.php. Accessed on the 15th of October 2009.

[47] Abu Rabi’i, Intellectual Origins, 1-62.

[48]Ibid.,44.

[49]Ibid., 40-62.

[50]Ibid.

[51] El-Fadl, ‘The Ugly’, 49-55,50.

[52] El-Fadl, ‘The Ugly’, 52.

[53] Abd AL Wahhab, Kitab Al-Tawhid. An electronic copy of the book in English can be found http://islamicweb.com/beliefs/creed/abdulwahab/ , accessed October 16^th ,2009.

[54] On the influence of Ahl-i-Hadith on Wahhabism see A. Al-Bassam, ‘Ulama Najd khilal themaniyat qurun , Riyadh,Dar al-“Asima, vol.2., 223.

[55]  El-Fadl, ‘The Ugly’, 52-62.

[56] O.Roy, Globalized Islam-The Search for the New Ummah, Columbia University Press, New York,2004,233-243.