Nahda

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As Nahda ( Arabic نهضة, DMG Nahḍa ) describes a movement that tried to combine the basic values ​​of Islam with modernity .

Literally translated, the word "Nahda" means a movement from a lower to an upper posture (such as when standing up). It stands for an Arab renaissance . The word is used to denote the flowering of the Arabic language and literature in the 19th and 20th centuries.

history

The Nahda movement stands for a return to the time of high hopes. On the one hand, it can be seen as an aftermath of the culture shock that set in after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt and found its expression in the reforms of subsequent rulers such as Muhammad Ali Pascha . On the other hand, it is related to the institutional reforms of Tanzimat in the Ottoman Empire . Its most important political product was the nationalist idea, especially pan-Arabism , but also Syrian nationalism, which led to the establishment of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party , which advocated the establishment of Greater Syria . The Nahda was marked by the dawn of modern times and the romantic transfiguration of history.

Nahda protagonists are called Nahdists. The first Nahdists were Egyptian Muslims such as Rifa'a at-Tahtawi . They shared the conviction that the Islamic religion and scientific progress are compatible. They viewed Islam as a stable basis for a modern Arab society, but at the same time called for a renewal of Islam in line with the spirit of the times. At the same time, the Nahda reformers fought against the secularism of modernity, but stood up for the possibility of being able to establish a democratic state on the basis of a further developed Islam.

The Nahdists made the cultural impetus triggered by Western missionaries fruitful for themselves. They put forward historical and sociological considerations to determine the location of their society and to clarify the question of why the Islamic world developed differently from the Western one.

The Islam reformers of the Nahda around Jamal ad-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897) and Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905) defended themselves against the modern secularism of the nationalists, but also against the ties to the cultural area of ​​the Ottoman tradition, which in the course of the Corrupted religion for centuries. They wanted to return to a true Islam or to the sources. They stood for a new, rational interpretation of the Koran . These ideas found many imitators, e.g. B. Tāhir al-Jazā'irī , who was referred to as "Muhammad Abduh of Syria".

Currents

Later another Nahda model emerged, which tended to shift religion in favor of a secular orientation, i.e. H. a separation of state and religion , to exclude (according to Farah Antun ) or to minimize their binding force (according to Jurdschī Zaidān ). The main proponents of this second Nahda model were Christians. A "patron" of the Christian representatives of the Nahda movement was z. B. the missionary Kornelius Van Dyck . Antun Sa'ada and Michel Aflaq turned this model into a political nationalist program. This second Nahda model prevailed insofar as the Arab countries that emerged after the First World War decided to give up the Dhimma and Millet system in favor of equal rights for all their citizens under civil law.

The Nahda split into a secular and a Salafist current. The leading figure of the secular was the Egyptian Sheikh Ali Abdel-Razeq (1888–1966). In his book "Islam and the Basics of Rule", published in 1925, he tries to justify secularism in an Islamic way. The leading figure of the Salafists was the Sheikh Raschīd Ridā (1865–1935). In search of a solution to the current stagnation, he increasingly turned to the early Islamic period and the “unadulterated” form of the Koran and Sunna . Towards the end of his life he took fundamentalist positions and called for the re-establishment of the caliphate . The Salafists are thus close to Wahhabism .

literature

See also

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