Authentic Islam

Abstract

One of the issues addressed in this chapter is how we should understand Sangelaji’s internal, intra-religious critique. This study shows that Sangelaji’s ideas fit well with the wave of ideas that engaged a great many Muslim intellectuals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These thinkers saw globalizing modernity as a challenge and sought to renew the interpretation of Islam’s legal sources on the basis of the conditions of modernity.

This study shows also that Sangelaji’s intra-religious critique was clearly shaped by Salafist thinking and Salafism’s critique of Imāmiyya Shīʿa. An example is his idea of a return to the authentic form of Islam. This was a central idea in Salafism that Sangelaji had taken inspiration of. It was based on a utopian image of the conditions in the early days of Islam. The idea was that a return to the authentic form of Islam would solve all the problems of Muslim countries. One of Sangelaji’s highest ranking and most severe critics, Ayatollah Khomeini, who accused Sangelaji of spreading Wahhabi ideas, took inspiration from him and talked about authentic/pure Muḥammedan Islam.