Rashid Rida

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Muhammad Rashid Rida (September 23, 1865, Syria - August 22, 1935, Egypt) was a Syrian intellectual of the Islamic modernism tradition pioneered by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh. Like his predecessors, he focused on the relative weakness of Muslim societies vis-à-vis Western colonialism, blaming Sufi excesses, the blind imitation of the past (taqlid), the stagnation of the ulama, and the resulting failure to achieve progress in science and technology. He held that these flaws could be allievated by a return to what he saw as the true principles of Islam, albeit interpreted (ijtihad) to suit modern realities. In the end Rida urged Muslims to stop imitating foreigners, and called Islamic modernizers "false renewers" and "heretics." He condemned the Turks for the secularization of their country, and excoriated the scholars who provided religious rulings to support these "heretical" ways.