Pan-Islamism
Pan-Islamism (Arabic: الوحدة الإسلامية) is a political movement which advocates the unity of Muslims under one Islamic country or state – often a caliphate[1] – or an international organization with Islamic principles. Historically, after Ottomanism, which aimed at the unity of all Ottoman citizens, Pan-Islamism was promoted in the Ottoman Empire during the last quarter of 19th century by Sultan Abdul Hamid II[2] for the purpose to prevent secession movements of the Muslim peoples in the empire.
Pan-Islamism differentiates itself from pan-nationalistic ideologies, for example Pan-Arabism, by seeing the ummah (Muslim community) as the focus of allegiance and mobilization, including the Tawhid belief by the guidance of Quran and Sunnah's teachings, excluding ethnicity and race as its primary unifying factors.
The major leaders of the Pan-Islamist movement were the triad of Jamal al-Din Afghani (1839–1897), Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) and Sayyid Rashid Rida (1865–1935); who were active in anti-colonial efforts to confront European penetration of Muslim lands. They also sought to strengthen Islamic unity, which they believed to be the strongest force to mobilize Muslims against imperial domination.[3] Following Ibn Saud's conquest of Arabian Peninsula; pan-Islamism would be bolstered across the Islamic World. During the second half of the twentieth century; pan-Islamists competed against left-wing nationalist ideologies in the Arab World such as Nasserism and Ba'athism.[4][5] At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, Saudi Arabia and allied countries in the Muslim World led the Pan-Islamist struggle to fight the spread of communist ideology and curtail the rising Soviet influence in the world.[6]
History[edit]
Origins[edit]
Many scholars assert that the doctrines of pan-Islamism could be observed as early as during the era of Islamic Iberia, Emirate of Sicily, the Gunpowder Empires (Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal Empires) and several Muslim sultanates and kingdoms, despite the presence and employment of non-Muslim subjects by Muslim powers.[21] During the 18th century, multiple movements for puritanical Islamic renewal would emerge. Amongst these, the revivalist movements of three leading religious reformers – Shah Wali Allah of Delhi (1702–1763), the Arabian Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1792), and the Nigerian Uthman dan Fodio (1755–1816) – are widely regarded as the precursors of the modern-era Pan-Islamist thought. Despite their calls for puritanical reform; these movements were not politically concerned with the international situation of the Muslim world, and had not elaborated comprehensive pan-Islamist programmes to combat the Western threat. Since they did not call for the revival of an international Islamic entity; their ideas and impact were limited to the local regional contexts of West Africa, Arabia, and South Asia.[22]
In spite of their diversity, these eighteenth-century Muslim reformers were united in their condemnation of declining morality and calls for the revival of scripture-based piety. Inspired by these movements, Islamic reformers at the turn of the 19th century adopted novel strategies for overcoming the crisis faced by the Muslim World by adapting to the fast-paced transformation of its era. Their proposed approaches now oscillated between an open admiration for the technology-mediated Western ideology of societal progress and a clear rejection of it on the grounds of the axiomatic superiority of an idealized Islamic culture, rooted in Scripturalist injunctions. Two major scholars of early colonial Egypt ‘Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (d. 1825) and Rifa‘a al-Tahtawi (d. 1872) represented these intellectual trends. While Rifa'a al Tahtawi exemplified the former, 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti represented the latter, Scriptural-oriented approach.[23]
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