Reforming Muslim Politics: Rashid Rida’s Visions of Caliphate and Muslim Independence

Abstract

Muhammad Rashid Rida (1865-1935), a prolific writer and publisher who was also politically active, is generally known to Western readers as a Syrian or Lebanese-Syrian Islamic modernist. He is particularly associated with efforts to reform Islam (islah) during the colonial period. This essay considers some of his writings on political matters and the caliphate. This involves some of his thinking in the tumultuous era leading up to November 1922, when the Turkish National Assembly abolished the Ottoman Sultanate-Caliphate, leaving a merely spiritual Caliphate in its place; his seminal book The Caliphate, written in the aftermath of that action; and some of his thinking following the final abolition of the Caliphate in March 1924. While acknowledging shifts, reversals, and inconsistencies, the essay also points to a firm and constant element in Rida’s agenda: enabling Muslim sovereign authority insofar as circumstances would allow. Other considerations would bend to that objective. In this respect, his reformist project on the caliphate was focused more on the circumstances of Muslims as a people than on the nature of Islam as a religion.

Keywords: Caliphate, Rashid Rida, Islah, Islamic revival, Islamic modernism