Salafiyya Essay

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The Salafiyya movement sought to engineer a religious revival and reform that would incorporate Western conceptions of modernity and assert the religious and cultural identity of Islam at the same time. The most prominent spokesmen of the movement were Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1838 - 1897), Muhammad Abduh (1849 - 1905) and Rashid Rida (1865 - 1935). The members of the movement (salafis) took the line that the values of early Islam were compatible with those of modern Europe. In so doing, they attributed to Islam mainly secular virtues such as rationalism, the encouragement of sciences, political power, and democracy. In this way they were able to place blame for the relative decline of Islamic societies and power vis-à-vis the West on Muslims who over time had diverged from Islam's original teachings. For this trend, the salaf or "forefathers," had in fact two complementary meanings. One was the early companions of the Prophet Muhammad, who were perceived to have abided by the Qurʾan and the sunna (deed and/or utterance of the Prophet) as closely as possible. Using this conception of the salaf, the Salafiyya emphasized the return to the scriptures. The second meaning of the salaf denoted reverence for the founders of the Islamic schools of law and for particular medieval jurists, such as al-Ghazali, who influenced the Salafiyya in one way or another. The central part of the Salafiyya program consisted of legal reform through reinterpreting Islamic law (the shariʿa) to make it compatible with Western and modern values. In fact, the Salafiyya became caught between two opposing trends: (1) a Westernizing trend, which wanted to adopt Western secular codes and legislate completely outside Islamic law, and (2) a traditional trend, which was perceived as adhering to rigid and premodern interpretations of the four jurisprudence schools of Sunni Islam. Striving to pursue a
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