Islamic revival

The concept of Islamic revival is based on a sahih hadith (a saying attributed to Muhammad), recorded by Abu Dawood, narrated by Abu Hurairah, who reported that Muhammad said: Within the Islamic tradition, tajdid (lit., regeneration, renewal) has been an important religious concept. Some of the more famous revivalists and revival movements include the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties in Maghreb and Spain (1042–1269), Indian Naqshbandi revivalist Ahmad Sirhindi (~1564–1624), the Kadizadeli in the Ottoman Empire that followed Kadızade Mehmed (1582-1635), a revivalist Islamic preacher, the Indian Ahl-i Hadith movement of the 19th century, preachers Ibn Taymiyyah (1263–1328), Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1702–1762), and Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (d. 1792). 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 (Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh), 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. ==Contemporary revivalism==

After the late 1970s, when the Iranian Revolution erupted, a worldwide Islamic revival emerged in response to the success of the revolution, owing in large part to the failure of secular Arab nationalist movement in the aftermath of the Six-Day War and popular disappointment with secular nation states in the Middle East and Westernized ruling elites, which had dominated the Muslim world during the preceding decades, and which were increasingly seen as authoritarian, ineffective and lacking cultural authenticity. Manifestations The term "Islamic revival" encompasses "a wide variety of movements, some intolerant and exclusivist, some pluralistic; some favorable to science, some anti-scientific; some primarily devotional, and some primarily political; some democratic, some authoritarian; some pacific, some violent". In the 1980s there were more veiled women in the streets. One striking example of it is the increase in attendance at the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, which grew from 90,000 in 1926 to 2 million in 1979. Contemporary Islamic revival includes a feeling of a "growing universalistic Islamic identity" as often shared by Muslim immigrants and their children who live in non-Muslim countries. According to Ira Lapidus, The increased integration of world societies as a result of enhanced communications, media, travel, and migration makes meaningful the concept of a single Islam practiced everywhere in similar ways, and an Islam which transcends national and ethnic customs. But not necessarily transnational political or social organisations: Global Muslim identity does not necessarily or even usually imply organised group action. Even though Muslims recognise a global affiliation, the real heart of Muslim religious life remains outside politics – in local associations for worship, discussion, mutual aid, education, charity, and other communal activities. Causes A global wave of Islamic revivalism emerged starting from the end of 1970s owing in large part to popular disappointment with the secular nation states and Westernized ruling elites, which had dominated the Muslim world during the preceding decades, and which were increasingly seen as authoritarian, ineffective and lacking cultural authenticity. Economic and demographic factors, such as lagging economic development, a rise in income inequality and a decline in social mobility, the rise of an educated youth with expectation of higher upward mobility, and urbanization in the Muslim world also played a major part. In general, the gap between higher expectations and reality among many in the Muslim world was an important factor. • The energy crisis of the 1970s, which led to the formation of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and the quadrupling of global oil prices. At first, this led to an expectation that the oil wealth would lead to a long-awaited resurgence of the Islamic civilization, and when this failed to materialize, the mounting frustration with secular regimes made the public more receptive to religious fundamentalism. Scholar Gilles Kepel, agrees that the tripling in the price of oil in the mid-1970s and the progressive takeover of Saudi Aramco in the 1974–1980 period, provided the source of much influence of Wahhabism in the Islamic World, in the aforementioned phenomenon of Petro-Islam. • The opening of the first Islamic bank in Dubai. According to Daniel W. Brown, two "broad features" define the revivalist approach to Islamic authorities: distrust of Islamic scholarship along with "vehement rejection" of taqlid (accepting a scholar's decision without investigating it); and at the same time a strong commitment to the Quran and Sunnah. Official radio stations and journals opened up to fundamentalist preaching. Criticism One observation made of Islamization is that increased piety and adoption of Sharia has "in no way changed the rules of the political or economic game", by leading to greater virtue. "Ethnic and tribal segmentation, political maneuvering, personal rivalries" have not diminished, nor has corruption in politics and economics based on speculation. ==See also==