Tajdid Renewal Must Come From Within the Tradition

April 6, 2022

Islamic renewal (tajdid) has always been understood as a return to the living core of the tradition, not an importation of foreign frameworks. The mujaddid (renewer) diagnoses what has gone wrong using the tradition's own diagnostic tools and prescribes remedies drawn from the tradition's own pharmacopeia.

"He felt that the revolution lacked a spiritually compelling foundation. A ruh-based revolution must precede a political and social one, and this misapplication of reform, he believed, stemmed from the West sloughing off spirituality from their philosophy." Traversing Tradition

Taha Abderrahmane called al-Faylasuf al-Mujaddid (the Philosopher-Revivalist) and Khalifah al-Ghazali (successor to Ghazali) exemplifies this principle. Shattered by the 1967 defeat, he did not turn to Western political theory or Marxist revolution but devoted sixty years to studying Western logic and philosophy from within Islamic intellectual categories, asking: "What is at the root of the Western 'aql? From where does it originate? Why is the 'aql of the Muslim subdued by it?" His goal was not to imitate but to understand deeply enough to transcend.

Ibn Khaldun theorized renewal through the concept of taghyir al-munkar the obligation to change what is objectionable. But he insisted that this change requires 'asabiyyah (social cohesion) to succeed. "Many religious people who follow the ways of religion come to revolt against unjust amirs... they hope for a divine reward for what they do. They gain many followers... but they risk being killed, and most of them actually do perish in consequence of their activities... because God had not destined them for such activities. He commands such activities to be undertaken only where there exists the power to bring them to a successful conclusion."

Sherman Jackson adds another dimension through The Islamic Secular: the path to restoring Islam's civilizational plausibility is "not through more 'religious' activity... nor through more fervent appeals to shari'ah or ijtihad. It would be, rather, through more non-shar'i, differentiated, 'secular' activity... Not just more al-Ghazalis and Ibn Taymiyahs, in other words, but, crucially, also more Sinans and Ulugh Begs!" Renewal requires not only scholars of sacred knowledge but also builders, scientists, architects, and artists operating within the Islamic civilizational ethos.

Takeaway: Authentic Islamic renewal neither imitates the West nor retreats into nostalgia it mines the tradition's own resources to address present realities.