Compare And Contrast Afghani And Islam Research Paper

From the 15th to the 19th century, the expansion of territory, technology, and religion was all taking off in Europe and the Middle Eastern countries. Territorial expansion led to many conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and European Countries. Then, technology started to advance along the way and this improved European colonial powers. Muslims may have struggled with advancement “because economic and technological developments require a high level of innovation and creativity, some scholars have suggested that the region’s slow pace of development can be attributed to the rigidity of Islamic law and Islam’s emphasis on fatalism and passivity.” The slow pace of development was occurring when Western colonization started taking off and

His idea was to reform Islam through two different ways. Those ways were through the philosophical spirit of Islam and by adapting with science and technology. Afghani lived in many different countries and this led him to adapt to different views of civilization. Afghani stated, “The first Muslims had no science, but, thanks to the Islamic religion, a philosophic spirit arose among them, and owing to that philosophic spirit they began to discuss the general affairs of the world and human necessities.” Combining science and the spirit of Islam together would strengthen their civilization. This is where he differs from Wahhab because Wahhab emphasizes specific readings of their religious sources while Afghani wants to combine Western civilization with Islamic thought. Muslim unity was the goal of Afghani, so he took it upon himself to travel to

He could publish and distribute materials because “it was the increased literacy rates in Muslim lands from the early nineteenth century that had, in part, made Afghani’s mode of activism and social mobilization even possible.” This was the reason he could preach on how Islam should be reformed. Although, many rulers felt threatened by his reform movement, so he was not allowed to continue his work in some settings. Even though he had a short time to work with certain areas, fellow figures such as Muhammad Abdul took notice of what Afghani was saying and founded the modernist movement. Afghani had a goal in mind of creating a pan-Islamic movement through technology and through the spirit of Islam, but this never went as far as he wanted it to because nationalism was what most countries were adapting