211 Facts About Rashid Rida

Muhammad Rashid Rida commonly known as Rashid Rida, was a prominent Sunni Islamic scholar, reformer, theologian, and revivalist.

Rashid Rida left Syria to work with Abduh in Cairo, where he was influenced by Abduh's Islamic Modernist movement and began publishing al-Manar in 1898.

Rashid Rida was Abduh's de facto successor and was responsible for a split in Abduh's disciples into one group rooted in modernism and secularism and the other in the revival of Islam.

Rashid Rida later supported the Wahhabi movement, revived works by ibn Taymiyyah, and shifted the Salafism movement into a more conservative and strict Scripturalist approach.

Rashid Rida is regarded by a number of historians as "pivotal in leading Salafism's retreat" from the rationalist school of Abduh.

Rashid Rida strongly opposed liberalism, Western ideas, freemasonry, Zionism, and European imperialism, and supported armed Jihad to expel European influences from the Islamic World.

Rashid Rida laid the foundations for anti-Western, pan-Islamist struggle during the early 20th century.

Muhammad Rasheed Rashid Rida was born in al-Qalamoun, Beirut Vilayet in 1865 into a distinguished Sunni Shafi'i clerical family.

Rashid Rida's family relied on money earned from their limited olive tree holdings and fees earned by family members who served as scholars.

The Rashid Rida ulama had been in charge of the al-Qalamoun mosque for several generations.

Rashid Rida received a traditional religious education, attending elementary school at the local kuttab in Qalamun before moving to the Turkish government school in Tripoli.

Rashid Rida then enrolled in Shaykh Husayn al-Jisr's National Islamic School, where he learned hadith and fiqh.

Rashid Rida began preaching at the communal level and taught tafsir and other religious sciences at the village's central mosque.

Rashid Rida met Muhammad Abduh, one of the editors of Al-Urwah al-Wuthqa, as an exile in Lebanon in the mid-1880s and quickly came to view Abduh as his mentor.

In 1897, Rashid Rida decided to study under Abduh's co-editor Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, who at that time was in Istanbul.

Rashid Rida suspected the Hamidian administration was responsible for al-Afghani's death later that year and left Istanbul to rejoin Abduh, one of Afghani's students, now in Egypt.

Rashid Rida began a campaign of rewriting Abduh's legacy, first by depicting him as an advocate of Salafist doctrines despite Abduh's published works being evidence to the contrary.

Rashid Rida published several new editions of Abduh's works to make them conform more to the dogmas of the traditionalist creed than to Abduh's modernist beliefs.

The society disbanded in 1908 following the Young Turk Revolution, after which Azm joined the Committee of Union and Progress to pursue modernism and Rashid Rida became a vocal critic of the Young Turks.

In 1898, Rashid Rida began publishing articles encouraging Ottoman authorities to adopt a new religious strategy within the existing caliphal and pan-Islamic policy under Sultan Abd al-Hamid II.

Rashid Rida recommended training scholars and sharia judges responsible for issuing fatwas and discussing religious affairs by standardising the creation of different institutions.

Rashid Rida further advocated for a centralising policy that returned all Muslims, schools, and sects to the fundamentals of faith and that united Muslims against European colonialism.

Rashid Rida believed that shura was a basic feature of any Islamic state and saw the caliphate as a necessary temporal power to defend Islam and defend Islamic law, or sharia.

Rashid Rida expanded this idea in a series of articles in al-Manar.

Rashid Rida believed that the dynastic nature of the Ottoman state was reconciled with the classical legal approach that allowed caliphs to rule through force rather than with shura, consent, and adherence to Islamic law.

Rashid Rida continued supporting pan-Arabism and promoted Arab preeminence and Islamic unity.

Rashid Rida believed that Arabs were better suited for Islamic leadership, thus linking Arab revival to Islamic unity.

Rashid Rida re-asserted his belief that the Young Turks had abandoned Islamism and that Ottomanism to pursue a nationalist Turkification policy.

When Rashid Rida supported the Young Turks, he put aside concerns about CUP's nationalism; by 1909 he accused the group of spreading heresy, Westernising Islamic government, and creating chaos.

Rashid Rida wrote a number of articles in the Turkish press condemning policies based on nationalism and race and warned that nationalism was a European concept that violated Islamic principles, and would lead to the collapse of the multi-ethnic, multi-racial Ottoman Empire.

Rashid Rida sought decentralisation of the Empire without challenging the legitimacy of the Ottoman Sultan, and made sure to distinguish between his opposition to CUP and his loyalty to the Ottoman state.

Until World War I, Rashid Rida advocated autonomy for imperial territories while seeking to maintain the caliphate in Istanbul.

Rashid Rida warned that sacred Islamic relics would be stolen and displayed in European museums.

Around this time, Rashid Rida established the Society of the Arab Association, a secret society seeking union between the Arabian Peninsula and the Ottoman Arab provinces.

Rashid Rida denied these allegations, but later explicitly advocated via the Society for Arab secessionism from the Ottoman Empire.

Rashid Rida sought to pressure the Ottoman state on behalf of Arabs, urging them to prepare a contingency plan for defense against European ambitions in the event that the Ottoman Empire fell.

Rashid Rida corresponded with Ibn Sa'ud of Najd, Imam Yahya of Yemen and aI-Sayyid al-Idrisi of 'Asir in an attempt to convince them of how crucial it was.

Ibn Sa'ud asked Rashid Rida to send a messenger to explain the plan from a religious and political standpoint in order to persuade his followers.

In 1912, Rashid Rida met with Mubarak al-Sabah, the shaykh of Kuwait, but his relationships with Yahya and al-Idrisi were ruptured by the war.

Rashid Rida was convinced that Ottoman statesmen had developed a "European complex" that threatened the security of Arabs and Turks.

Rashid Rida believed that Europeanisation of the Ottoman Empire was impossible to reform since it was solely dependent on Europe.

Rashid Rida proposed that Istanbul be made a military outpost and shift the capital either to Damascus or the Anatolian city of Konya.

Rashid Rida wrote that Arabs and Turks should then create "local Asiatic military formations" capable of defending themselves in case of foreign danger, with priority given to defending the Hejaz and two holy sanctuaries in Mecca and Medina and the lands adjacent to them.

Rashid Rida joined the ranks of ibn Sa'ud's boosters in the Arab world.

Rashid Rida saw him as a strong Muslim ruler capable of preventing British imperial designs on the Arab world.

Rashid Rida had always been suspicious of the British and became even more so after the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which was intended to divide Ottoman Arab provinces between Britain and France.

Rashid Rida saw this as an attack on all Muslims, not just Arabs.

Rashid Rida stressed the importance of Arab leadership in unifying Muslim ranks.

In 1923, after Hussein's seizure of Hejaz, Rashid Rida called upon Arabian emirs to free Hejaz from Hashemite rule.

Rashid Rida saw ibn Sa'ud of the Sultanate of Najd as the most suitable candidate for this task, not only because he favoured the Wahhabis as the best hope for Arab and Islamic renaissance, but because of their promising military-political capabilities to bring stability and security to the Hejaz, and to defend it from any European imperial aggressions.

Rashid Rida remained devoted to ibn Sa'ud to his end despite mixed results from rehabilitation campaigns and difficulties encountered by his Rida's own disciples.

Rashid Rida considered him the best available Muslim statesman and believed his kingdom offered the best prospect of becoming the political arm of the balanced Islahi movement.

At this point, based on past experiences, Rashid Rida had come to understand that reform required money as well as political support.

Rashid Rida had become vehemently anti-British, calling democracy "colonial deceit," and withheld any more attempts at mediation with Western powers.

Rashid Rida proposed a Universal Islamic System to replace the failed Wilsonian Peace.

When Sharif Hussein declared himself Caliph of Muslims in March 1924 following the Turkish Abolition of Caliphate, Rashid Rida called him a heretic dangerous to the entire Muslim community and saw his seizure of power as a desecration of Islam.

Rashid Rida later published the treatise The Wahhabis and Hijaz, where he argued for Wahhabi rule over Hejaz and condemned Sharif Hussein and his family for their selling of Arab lands in complicity with the colonial powers' agenda for the sake of their personal dynastic ambitions.

Rashid Rida warned of British manipulations dominating the region and subjugating Muslims.

Rashid Rida became a major proponent of Wahhbism following World War I, when he began seeing Muslim scholars as pro-Westernisation Muslim intelligentsia.

Rashid Rida eventually began advocating for their rehabilitation into the Islamic world.

Rashid Rida argued that the Wahhabi movement would have expanded and led Islamic revival if it were not for the excessive zeal of some of its supporters and the conspiracies of its adversaries.

Rashid Rida had begun to adopt some of the Wahabbis' more uncompromising attitudes to religious reform.

Dar al-Tawhid, a religious educational institute in Ta'if overseen by Muhammad Bahjat Athari, one of Rashid Rida's disciples, put forth one of the biggest reeducation efforts.

Rashid Rida strongly championed ibn Sa'ud's campaigns in Hejaz in 1924 and 1925.

Rashid Rida wrote in al-Manar that the nascent Saudi state was the best hope for Islamic revival and portrayed it as the last major bastion of Islamic resistance to the colonial order.

Rashid Rida celebrated Sharif Hussein's defeat in the Battle of Mecca, which he called a historic event.

Rashid Rida saw his independence, religiosity, and pragmatism as an exemplification of balanced reform.

Rashid Rida defended the new Saudi regime from its detractors, calling the Wahhabis "the best Muslims," as they observed the doctrines of Imam ibn Hanbal and ibn Taymiyyah.

Rashid Rida made anti-Shi'ism "a major trait of his school" and called for a Wahhabi demolition of the shrines of al-Baqi.

Rashid Rida called subsequently outraged Shi'ites rafidites and instruments of the Persians.

British Intelligence in Cairo, concerned about Rashid Rida's influence, monitored his activities.

Rashid Rida was a delegate in the preparatory subcommittee for the 1926 Islamic Congress for Caliphate held in Cairo, which declared that the caliphate was still possible.

Rashid Rida was not an active participate in the Cairo Congress itself and considered its organizers to be inefficient.

Rashid Rida enthusiastically joined the Pan-Islamic Congress established by ibn Sa'ud the same year.

Rashid Rida became a prominent delegate and organizer of the Congress, whose objectives were international Islamic recognition of the Saudi rule of Hejaz, consultations on hajj services, and erasure of past reputation of sectarianism associated with the Wahhabis.

Rashid Rida drafted conference protocols on behalf of ibn Sa'ud and wrote the king's opening address.

Rashid Rida pressed for a collective oath of Congress delegates to pledge to rid the Arabian Peninsula of its foreign influences, and proposed an Islamic pact between Muslim governments, envisioning the assembly as a precursor to a league of Muslim nations.

In defense of the Wahhabis' religious credentials, Rashid Rida cited Tarikh Najd, a treatise composed by 'Abd Allah ibn Muhammad Aal-al Shaykh, the son of al-Wahhab.

Rashid Rida asserted that Wahhabis had sincere zeal for the Islamic faith and were amongst the most hostile to foreign influences.

Rashid Rida later backed ibn Sa'ud's campaign to eradicate fanatical Ikhwan rebels.

Rashid Rida published an article in al-Manar called Speculative Theology is a bid'ah according to the Pious Predecessors, as well as a discussion of the importance of following the Salaf in the promotion of hadith sciences, the spread of which he identified with the Islamic revival.

Rashid Rida was critical of speculative interpretation which went beyond what he considered to be the literal meaning of the text.

However, Rashid Rida argued that allegorical interpretation of Scriptures was sometimes appropriate because he believed that many Muslims would have abandoned their faith without them.

Rashid Rida counseled Najdi scholars on the necessity of balanced reform and sent them copies of Tafsir al-Manar to study.

Rashid Rida became a committed supporter of Saudi military expansions.

Muhammad Hamid al-Fiqi, one of Rashid Rida's disciples, was appointed president of the Meccan Department of Printing and Publication, where he started a new al-Manar-adjacent Islamic journal, al-Islah, on Rashid Rida's recommendation.

Rashid Rida was invited that year to Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama by Nadwatul Ulama leader Shibli Nomani.

The seminary's goals were compatible with Salafism and Rashid Rida did two lectures at their Lucknow campus, where he met several influential Ahl-i Hadith scholars.

Rashid Rida then visited Darul Uloom Deoband, where he saw Deobandi scholar Anwar Shah Kashmiri give a talk on the Qur'an, hadith, Hanafite, the Deobandi school, and Indian Islamic revivalist Shah Waliullah Dehlawi.

Rashid Rida claimed to use scriptural proofs on legal issues as the Salaf had done.

Rashid Rida believed only hadith scholars were capable of reviving sunnah.

Rashid Rida perceived Athari theology as more rational than speculative theology and defended Hanbalite condemnation of Kalam, as Athari had stronger orthodox religious foundations and defended conservative Islamic values from Western and secular ideologies more effectively.

Rashid Rida died on the return trip from Suez to Cairo after seeing off King ibn Sa'ud.

The Sheikh of al-Azhar, Mustafa al Maraghi, remarked that Rashid Rida had three main opponents: Muslim modernists, non-Muslims, and religious obscurantists.

Later Muslims' deviation from pure tawhid as practiced by the Salaf, Rashid Rida argued, led to their decline and subjugation.

Rashid Rida called for the destruction of tombs and structures built above graves and banning practices associated with grave veneration, which he condemned as polytheism.

Rashid Rida, who was advocating Salafi theology after the First World War, began writing lengthy refutations of his teachers views.

Rashid Rida believed that the early Muslims' upholding of tawhid and sunnah were the primary reasons for their spiritual and material success.

Rashid Rida praised their independence, free from blind adherence and motivated by Quaranic teachings.

Rashid Rida believed Muslim decline began after the end of the Islamic caliphates in the 13th century, when the Arab rule, and the influence of their adherence to sunnah, ended.

Rashid Rida believed that non-Arab rulers engaged in religiously-harmful innovation and superstition.

Rashid Rida travelled to Europe only once, on political grounds; he did not speak English or other European languages.

Rashid Rida disliked the social life and was critical of Christianity.

Rashid Rida believed that the inner decay of Muslims, as well as the efforts by the Catholic Church, prevented Europeans from embracing Islam.

Rashid Rida wanted Muslims to accept aspects of modernity only to the extent to which it was essential for the recovery of Islamic strength.

Rashid Rida considered it a duty for Muslims to study modern science and technology.

Rashid Rida repeatedly urged legal experts and the scholars to come together and produce modernised legal works based directly from the Qur'an and hadith in a way that was accessible for all believers.

Rashid Rida was a leading exponent of Salafism and was especially critical of what he considered taqlid of excessive Sufism, which he believed to have distorted the original message of Islam.

Rashid Rida encouraged both laymen and scholars to read and study directly the primary sources of Islam by themselves.

Rashid Rida believed that the "fragmentation of Muslims into sects and parties" resulting from taqlid was particularly harmful and would lead to worship of someone other than God, which was in direct contradiction of tawhid.

Theologically, Rashid Rida argued that rigid adherence to madhabs prevented Muslims from thinking independently and prohibited their right to access the Scriptures directly.

Rashid Rida believed that hadiths regarding the Saved Sect referred to the ahl al-Ittiba, the people who followed proof-texts.

Rashid Rida considered those who were pro-mad'hab to be innovators and thus dangerous to Islam.

Rashid Rida believed that the Saved Sect was indisputably Sunni Islam.

Rashid Rida believed these associations and the consequent partisanship influenced mad'hab affiliations and fanaticism.

Rashid Rida was more critical of al-Mutafarnijun, Europeanised emulators who he regarded as guilty of taqlid for abandoning the path of the Salaf.

Rashid Rida believed that the management of state affairs and its principles were an integral part of Islamic faith.

Rashid Rida considered calls for separation of religion and state to be the most dangerous threat to Islam.

Rashid Rida made vehement denunciations and attacks against modernists such as Ali Abdel Raziq and Ahmed Safwat.

Rashid Rida admired ibn Taymiyyah and ibn Abd al-Wahhab in particular and was inspired to adopt a more conservative and orthodox outlook.

Rashid Rida called upon Muslims to reject Westernisation and labelled Islamic modernists as "false renewers" and "heretics" whose efforts were harming Muslim societies.

Rashid Rida accused Westernised modernizers of corruption, immorality, and treason.

Rashid Rida was a fierce believer that any reforms going against Scripture is heresy and should be censured.

Rashid Rida's campaigns were instrumental in putting modernists like Ali Abd al-Raziq to trial for what Rida viewed as attacks on sharia.

Rashid Rida was a strong literalist opposed the trend of rejecting hadith in Egypt.

Rashid Rida disagreed with Sidqi's beliefs that hadith was prone to corruption due to flawed transmission and that Muslims should rely solely on the Qur'an, which Rashid Rida took as a minimisation of Muhammad's importance.

Rashid Rida believed modernists had gone too far into Westernism in their reformist attempts, leading Muslims to lose their faith.

Rashid Rida used the Qur'anic term Jahiliyya to refer to ignorance of pre-Islamic Arabia and the conditions of contemporary Muslims, and believed that governance not adhering to sharia was apostasy.

Rashid Rida strongly criticised scholars who issued fatwas aligning with modernist ideals.

Rashid Rida believed that a society that properly obeyed sharia would be successfully resistant to both capitalism and class-based socialism, since this ideal society would be immune to temptations.

Rashid Rida dismissed modernist advocacy of cultural synthesis, emphasizing the self-sufficiency and comprehensiveness of Islamic faith.

Rashid Rida believed that the rising individualism, irreligion, materialism, rationalisation, and scientism in Europe following World War I would lead to their downfall.

Rashid Rida published an article condemning Zionism in 1898, making him one of the earliest scholarly critics of the movement.

Rashid Rida warned that the Jewish people were being mobilised to migrate to Palestine with European backing to establish a Zionist state, and urged Arabs to take action, as he thought the Zionists' ultimate ambition was to convert al-Aqsa mosque into a synagogue and to cleanse Palestine of all of its Arab inhabitants.

Rashid Rida listed a number of historical crimes against the Israelites including polytheism, usury, and offenses against the prophets of Islam.

Rashid Rida claimed that God was punishing them for this by taking away their kingdom and subjecting them to centuries of Christian persecution.

Rashid Rida propagated anti-Semitic stereotypes and conspiracy theories that would later become popular across the Arab world and various Islamist movements.

Rashid Rida was a strong believer in the global Jewish conspiracy, and, in the 1930s, he promoted the ideas of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Rashid Rida believed Jewish people were controlling the Western banking system and were behind turning Christian states against Muslims.

Rashid Rida wrote that the establishment of a Jewish state was preparation for the arrival of their Messiah, which Rida thought to be the anti-Christ and would be killed by Jesus, the true Messiah in Islam.

Rashid Rida believed that Jewish people were competent only in the financial sector and required British military backing to make up for their inadequate skills in other areas.

Rashid Rida claimed the Jewish people were a "selfish and chauvinist, cunning and perfidious" people who sought to exploit and exterminate other people.

Rashid Rida alleged that the Jewish people had undermined the power of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe and introduced freemasonry, through which they manipulated the Bolsheviks and the Young Turks against the Russian and Ottoman empires, respectively, and that they orchestrated the French Revolution.

Rashid Rida identified the Young Turks, who he thought were conspiring with Zionists in building a Jewish Kingdom of Zion in Palestine, as the masonic fifth columnists and were engineering a war between the Islamic and Western worlds.

Rashid Rida believed Jewish people created capitalism as a tool of manipulation and that they were attacking religious governments across the world to spread atheism and communism.

Rashid Rida believed that the term "freemason" itself referred to the re-construction of Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem.

Rashid Rida emphasized that, while the founders of Freemasonry came from both Judaism and Christianity, the Jewish people led and dominated the movement.

Rashid Rida argued that Jewish people wielded immense influence over the Committee of Union and the treasury of the Ottoman Empire.

Rashid Rida viewed Kemalism and communism as the immediate enemies of Islam, both of which were directly threatening Muslim territories.

Rashid Rida was highly sensitive to the openly hostile and Islamophobic attitudes prevalent amongst Orientalists and European Christians of his era.

Rashid Rida was concerned by what he regarded as sympathies of native Arab Christians to colonial powers.

Rashid Rida believed the only 'true' mission of solid faith in Christian history was that of Jesus' disciples and that any later missionary attempt was false.

Rashid Rida perceived Christian missions as an integral part of the colonial presence in the Muslim world and was convinced that Europe used religion as a political instrument for mobilising European Christians by inflaming their 'fanatic' feelings against other nations.

In spite of this, Rashid Rida did promote efforts to reconcile between Muslims and Christians.

Rashid Rida mocked the Copts' claim to be descended from the "heathen, God-hating" Pharaohs and their demand for positions of power despite what he viewed as inexperience.

Rashid Rida applauded the 1911 Muslim Congress, which was organised in response to the 1911 Congress of Asyut that demanded Coptic minority rights.

Rashid Rida believed Western civilisation could not be considered Christian, only materialistic, and predicted that its vices would lead to self-destruction.

Rashid Rida alleged that the West sought to turn Muslims away from their religion, either by degrading their moral values, converting them to Christianity, or both.

Rashid Rida gradually became a sharp critic of Shi'ism throughout his life.

Rashid Rida alleged that they "worship the dead," attributing to their incessionary practices towards Awliyaa in their shrines.

Rashid Rida called upon Shias to condemn these practices and, while he did not censure all Shias, he left them with few options but to comply.

Rashid Rida thought this was the only way they would be incorporated into the pan-Islamic ecumenical paradigm.

Rashid Rida thought they to be polytheists and esotericists pretending to be Muslim and that they were a destructive internal threat to Islam.

Rashid Rida believed that men and women were treated equally in Islam in terms of spiritual obligations and their ability to earn God's favor.

Rashid Rida believed these gender roles represented the proper solution to these social problems, and that, while men are heads of the household, Muslim women were allowed to choose a spouse and were clearly given stipulated rights and responsibilities in a marriage.

Rashid Rida asserted that consent from the male guardian of a woman was essential for a marriage to be valid, since it stabilised the domestic order and befits the honor of both women and men.

Rashid Rida criticised followers of the Hanafi school who didn't adhere to this stipulation as bigoted partisans to mad'habs guilty of abandoning the Qur'an and sunnah in favour of their law schools.

Rashid Rida declared that calls for "the liberation of women" and other social reforms by the modernisers were destroying the very fabric of Islamic societies.

Rashid Rida discussed the etiquettes of veiling, emphasizing modesty for Muslim women, and addressed legal issues such as divorce.

Rashid Rida encouraged Muslim women to participate in the social life of Islam as they did in earlier Islamic eras, but stressed that men were more capable and superior in terms of strength, intelligence, learning, and physical labour, which is why they have legal guardianship over women.

Rashid Rida defended Islamic slavery, asserting that it protected women from harm and gave everyone chance to bear children, and therefore is not in conflict with justice.

Rashid Rida was influenced by both ibn Qayyim and Abduh in his beliefs about riba, though some of the beliefs he glossed from Abduh were tweaked to fit his agenda.

Rashid Rida believed that only the first increase in a termed loan was permissible in sharia, classifying it as riba al-fadl, a term used by ibn Qayyim.

Rashid Rida wrote that riba rendered capitalism fundamentally at odds with an Islamic system as it directly violated Divine command.

When state-sponsored Turkish translations of the Qur'an in the newly established Turkish Republic were published in 1924, Rashid Rida characterised the project as a long-term plot to displace the Arabic Qur'an and to tamper with Islamic rituals.

Rashid Rida was clear that the prohibition was only on translations meant to substitute the Arabic Qur'an.

Rashid Rida viewed the Arabic language as the common medium uniting Muslims of all nations and promoted Arabic as an integral pillar of his reform efforts and later issued a fatwa stipulating that knowledge of Arabic is obligatory for every Muslim.

Rashid Rida believed that sharia was intended and suited to be a comprehensive legal structure for Islamic society.

Rashid Rida wrote that fixed Shar'i principles in muamalat were of only a general character, allowing for considerable adaptation by successive generations of Muslims to understand their modern problems.

Rashid Rida believed that the Hanafi principle of istihsan is essentially an application of the spirit.

Rashid Rida divided muamalat into moral issues and morally irrelevant issues.

Rashid Rida adopted this rationale, acknowledging that conclusions of istislah were not legally binding as a firmly-grounded Qiyas, as "no individual is entitled to require or forbid others to perform an act without Divine authorization".

Rashid Rida believed that this rationale did not prevent the government from enacting ordinances based on utility in public policy, provided that the government rested on proper shura among qualified authorities, and that these ordinances did not conflict with Divine Revelation.

Rashid Rida's conclusion was that politics had to be reformed so decisions of public policy and law would be up to a qualified body through mutual consultation.

Rashid Rida defined the application of ijtihad strictly in terms of "pure adherence to the provisions of the Qur'an and sunnah and upon the understanding of the Salaf" and restricted its scope by enforcing the authority of scholarly consensus.

Rashid Rida began this practice in 1903 by answering questions sent in by readers to al-Manar.

Rashid Rida called upon all Muslims to unite by taking the Salaf as their role models.

Rashid Rida believed that the period of the early Muslim community epitomized pristine Islam to its perfection.

However, Rashid Rida was clear in specifying that general principles cannot supersede clear-cut texts.

Rashid Rida stated that a soundly transmitted Scriptural text could only be superseded by a specific text which is more superior or by general texts of Qur'an and authentic hadiths that allow believers to prevent damage to themselves or to commit prohibited actions in a state of emergencies.

Rashid Rida wrote that this permission was only valid during cases of extreme necessity and that the degree of allowance was proportional to the scope of necessity.

Rashid Rida credited al-Ghazali and al-Shatibi for his revivalism of maslaha, which revamped the principle within the traditional legal framework of Qiyas.

Rashid Rida's doctrines were later extended by modernists to uphold maslaha as an independent legal source, making Qiyas dispensable and formulating positive laws directly on utilitarian grounds, for the "wisdom behind the Revealed Laws is no longer inscrutable," which created new implications.

Rashid Rida vehemently denounced these ideas and Egyptian lawyer Ahmed Safwat for promoting "non-adherence" to the Qur'an and sunna, in particular matters in the name of public utility.

Rashid Rida believed that problems faced by Muslims required political reform and his anti-imperialism was characterized by radical pan-Islamist stances.

Rashid Rida contended that those who engaged in defence of Islam, its propagation, and its teaching should not engage in politics, in line with orthodox Sunni doctrine, though he was vehemently against secularist calls for separation of religion and state.

Rashid Rida celebrated the rule of Muhammad and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, and leveled his attacks at subsequent rulers who could not maintain Muhammad's example.

Rashid Rida thought it was feudal monarchs and depraved scholars who ruined the ideal caliphate system, leading to social chaos and the institutionalisation of corruption of authoritarian rulers.

Rashid Rida criticized Islamic scholars for compromising their integrity, and the integrity of the Islamic law, by associating with corrupt worldly powers.

Rashid Rida suggested conditions necessary for the revival of the ideal caliphal rule and proposed ways to prevent the return to the Ottoman imperial system.

Rashid Rida praised the religious campaigns of Prophet Muhammad and Rashidun Caliphate as an exemplary model of Jihad to be emulated against the European imperial powers.

Rashid Rida saw Jihad as a binding duty for all capable male Muslims, not only to defend the religion but to bring non-Muslims into the Islamic faith.

Rashid Rida nonetheless distinguished between wars to spread Islam and wars to defend Islam.

Rashid Rida's final substantial treatise, The Muhammadan Revelation, published in 1933, was a manifesto in which he proclaimed that Islam was the only saviour for the deteriorating West.

Rashid Rida is widely regarded as one of "the ideological forefathers" of contemporary Islamist movements and many of his ideas were foundational to the development of the modern Islamic state.

Some Salafi Purists criticise Rashid Rida for straying from quietist Salafi principles.

Rashid Rida's efforts were instrumental in fostering the modern transnational network of Salafi scholarship across the world.

Qaradawi described Rashid Rida's thought as a "lighthouse" that "guided the ship of Islam in modern history".

The Egyptian Salafi hadith scholar Ahmad Shakir conferred the title of Hujjat al-Islam to Rashid Rida and extolled his Qur'anic commentary Tafsir al-Manar as a "real defense of religion" in the contemporary era, encouraging everyone to read it and spread its message.

Rashid Rida received requests for fatwas from his followers in Indonesia and Southeast Asia and answered them through al-Manar.

Rashid Rida was an important source for many 20th century Salafi scholars, including al-Hilali, al-Khatib, al-Qasimi, ibn Uthaymin, Abdur Razzaq Malihabadi, Vakkam Abdul Qadir Moulavi, and, most notably, al-Albani.