pe its own life but also the life of all the world including the Muslim World. During the 19th century, Western pressure and domination increased. The Dutch in Indonesia, the British in the subcontinent of India and Malaya, Russia in Central Asia; the British and French in North Africa and the Middle East. All at once, the western powers ruled Muslim society in full formality. While the Ottoman Empire retained political sovereignty up to World War I, it was independent without being free. Apart from the matter of political control, Muslim society, once forceful, dynamic and alert, was everywhere in drooping spirits, and subject both in initiative and delivery to forces outside Islam. It is the contemporary manifestation of this problem and crisis that is paramount in the understanding of the modern phenomena like Islamic revivalism, activism or modern aggressive Islamic movements. The first Islamic movements in the modern period were protests against the internal deterioration. They were calls to stop the decadence in Muslim society by summoning back the believers and the community to the first purity and order of Islam. One of the earliest and the most major of those movements was the Wahhabiyah in 18th century Arabia. It was puritanical, vigorous, simple. Its message was straightforward: A return to Islam during the Medinan period. It rejected the corruption and laxity of the contemporary decline. It also rejected the accommodations and cultural richness of the Islamic empires – the Ummayads, Abbasids and the Ottomans. The Wahhabis insisted on the Shari’a, the Hanbalite version stripped of all innovations developed through the intervening centuries. Obey the pristine law – fully, strictly, and singly – is Islam; all else is superfluous. This interpretation of Islam is strictly and seriously to be implemented. The second dominant Islamic movement that dominated the scene was the Pan Islamic Movement of Jamalud-d...
