494 Martin Riexinger
modernist reformer Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (1817–1898) had stated with
broader reference to the puritan tradition: “In my opinion what the
Protestant is to the Roman Catholic so (sic) is the Wahabi to the other
Mahomedan creeds.”^2 In recent decades the Pakistani reformer Fazlur
Rahman (1919–1988) insisted “we shall argue that for a genuine recon-
struction of Islam to occur, the threads have to be traced back to Ibn
Taymiyya with certain considerations.”^3 Egyptian professor of phi-
losophy Ḥasan Ḥanafī (b. 1935) lists Ibn Taymiyya and Muḥammad
b. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb as ancestors of his project “The Islamic Left”
which is supposed to bring about a revival of the Islamic world vis
à vis a decaying West.^4 Although rarely with special reference to Ibn
Taymiyya, a number of recent scholars have argued that remarkable
parallels between Protestantism and puritan or fundamentalist Islamic
movements exist.^5 Fieldwork among puritan movements reveals that
2 Sayyid Aḥmad Khān (Syed Ahmed Bahadoor): Dr. Hunter’s “Our Indian Mus-
sulmans. Are they Bound in Conscience to Rebel Against the Queen?”; Com-
piled by a Mahomedan, London 1872, pp. 7, 11–14; Sayyid Aḥmad Khān hailed
from a family affiliated to the Ṭarīqa-yi Muḥammadiyya (see below); Pearson,
Harlan Otto: Islamic Reform and Revival in Nineteenth Century India, New
Delhi 2008, pp. 204–209 (originally PhD thesis, Duke University 1979). He had
even written Rāh-i sunnat awr radd-i bidʿat in 1950 where he does, however,
not quote Ibn Taymiyya: Sayyid Aḥmad Khān: Maqālāt-i Sar Sayyid, ed. by
Muḥammad Ismāʿīl Pānīpatī, Lahore 1990, vol. 5 akhlāqī awr iṣlāḥī maḍāmīn,
pp. 354–429. Although his theological outlook changed dramatically after 1857,
he followed the Ahl-i Ḥadīth in rituals matters all his life (Riexinger, Martin:
Sanāʾullāh Amritsarī (1868–1948) im Punjab unter britischer Herrschaft, Würz-
burg 2004, pp. 167, 171). Furthermore he defended the Ahl-i Ḥadīth against
the accusation that they were seditious: Sayyid Aḥmad Khān: Wahhābī. Ahl-i
Ḥadīth yā muttabiʿ-i ḥadīth, in: idem: Maqālāt-i Sar Sayyid, Lahore 1992, vol. 9
mulkī u siyāsī maḍāmīn, pp. 210–212; even before, British travellers and Protes-
tant missionaries had equated puritan Muslims to Protestants: Pearson, Islamic
Reform, pp. 147, 191, 194, 229.
3 Rahman, Fazlur: Revival and Reform in Islam, ed. by Ebrahim Moosa, Oxford
1999, p. 132.
4 Riexinger, Martin: Nasserism Revitalized. A Critical Reading of Ḥasan Ḥanafī’s
Projects “The Islamic Left” and “Occidentalism” (and their Uncritical Reading),
in: Die Welt des Islams 47 (2007), pp. 63–117, here pp. 74–74, 93.
5 Gellner, Ernest: Muslim Society, Cambridge 1981, pp. 131–148; Utvik, Bjørn Olav:
A Pervasive Seriousness Invaded the Country. Islamism, Cromwell’s Ghost in the
Middle East, in: Prijo Markkola & Stein Tønnesson (eds.): Between National His-
tories and Global History, Helsinki 1997, pp. 129–142; more cautious: Loimeier,
Roman: Is There Something Like “Protestant Islam”?, in: Die Welt des Islams 45
(2005), pp. 216–254; Schöller, Marco: Ibn Taymīyah und nochmals die Frage nach
einer Reformation im Islam, in: Otto Jastrow, Shabo Talay and Herta Hafenrichter
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