Resistance Movements and Old Policies

Abstract

In spite of the decline of the Ottoman Empire Arab nationalism was slow to develop. Political ideas were being explored in the West, but these were suspect to Islam because they came from an infidel source. French revolutionary ideas, untainted by Christianity, were the first acceptable to the thinkers of the Ottoman Empire.1 Even then there tended to be an emphasis on Islam among Arab philosophers which was understandable in view of the past achievements of the Arabs which had been carried out in the name of Islam. The writings of the revolutionary religious thinker Jamal al-Din al-Afghani in the late nineteenth century, and his pupil Muhammad Abduh, although they were not nationalists in the accepted sense of the word, put forward a new interpretation of Islam which made later writers feel that it had a relevance for modern thought. Rashid Rida took the ideas a step further and put the emphasis on Arab Islam.