The reform of high Islam (Jamal al Din al Afghani & Muhammad Abduh)

Jamal al Din al Afghani was a person who wanted to bring back Islam to its former glory. He claimed that Islam lost its dominance not due to the superiority of the western culture but due to the corruption of Muslims themselves. The Muslims had lost their values and integrity and they needed to revive those values in order to succeed. He believed that Islam could be revived by accommodating science and technology and doing so will not hurt the integrity of the religion, contrary to what was believed in that period of time. He called for the Muslim people to move away from the superstitions and that the only way to be successful would be to unite as a people.

Muhammad Abduh was a famous thinker and a disciple of Jamal al Din al Afghani. He was appointed Mufti of Egypt in 1899 upon returning from Paris. He tried to re-introduce the system of ijtihaad as he saw how the superstitions of the earlier centuries had come to be accepted as part of Islam. He propagated that being modern and Muslim are not opposed to each other and that being modern does not turn a Muslim into a non-Muslim. He said that it was innovation and intellectuality that was the reason of the former glory of the Muslims and its removal was what caused Muslim society to collapse.