Date of Graduation
5-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
History
Advisor/Mentor
Gordon, Joel S.
Committee Member
Antov, Nikolay A.
Second Committee Member
Hammond, Kelly
Keywords
Egypt; Fatwa; Muhammad al-Bulaqi; Salafism; Saudi Arabia; Sulayman bin Sahman
Abstract
Studies of the Islamic intellectual movement commonly known as Salafism have long focused either on the modernist reformers in Egypt and Syria in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, or on the far more austere and sometimes militant iterations of Salafism from the mid-twentieth century to the present day, often associated with Wahhabism. A handful of scholars have examined the links between the two and the transition from the earlier to the later Salafis, however many works which impacted the evolution of Salafism at the dawn of the twentieth century have been neglected, especially those which do not align with the dominant historiographical narratives. This work brings to light the works of key traditionalists in Egypt contesting the reformers there, and those of moderates in Arabia denouncing the more extreme voices in their own context. The writings of traditionalist scholars disparaging the reformism of modernist Salafis in Egypt reveal the pragmatic nature of the latter’s efforts to address the needs of a changing society, and provide new insights into their ultimate success. Similarly, the fatwas (Islamic legal opinions), treatises, and collections of poetry of a handful of elite Muslim scholars who played a key role in the expansion of the Saudi state in the 1910s and 1920s, uncover the similarly pragmatic and open-minded nature of these early Saudi Salafis, whose immense impact on the nature of the modern Saudi state has endured. The fatwas of the Egyptian reformers and those of the moderate pragmatists in Arabia, when juxtaposed with the traditionalists and the more severe religio-legal interpretations they opposed, provide unique insights into the questions their broader populations posed to them, as well as the nature of their relationships with political leaders. These scholars adopted strikingly similar Salafi methodologies in order to produce fatwas that both accommodated their temporal rulers and advanced their agendas to adapt Islamic legal pronouncements to the needs of a modern society. In fact, reform-minded scholars in the emergent Wahhabi-Saudi state invoked not only the same legal principles, but also the same scholarly writings in furtherance of a rationalist religio-legal approach to adapting to the conditions of a modern state and society as did their counterparts in Egypt. Indeed, while Western scholars have tended to portray the Egyptian modernists and the Wahhabis as representing starkly different approaches to Islamic legal thought, reformers in both groups during the first decades of the 20th century averred over-reliance on traditional views within the Islamic legal corpus and favored the Salafi approach of independently interpreting passages from the Qurʾan and Sunna to form legal opinions relevant to their particular circumstances. In both instances, as the practice of producing fatwas became institutionalized, first in Egypt and then in the emerging Wahhabi-Saudi state, the methodological approach of these Salafi reformers became predominant, not least because it aligned with state interests.
Citation
Scurry, S. (2024). Salafi Reformist Fatwas and the Challenge to Traditionalism in Egypt and Arabia, 1895 – 1930. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/5233
