Machine summary:
a 'Abduh's movement for religious reform is "humanistic" because he was primarily interested in giving an ethical focus to the religion of Islam, in short.
As a brand of "humanism" it is still more interesting because it does not blindly subscribe to the romantic confusion of many other Muslim modernists and apologists but tends to base its strength on a reformulation of systematic theology and doctrine with the gradual re-introduction of historical criticism into the study of tradition.
s " The transformation of isolated individual conceptions of reform into a system of social thought and action remains the foremost requirement in the modern Muslim communities.
Thus Tradition, the strongest bulwark of the Islamic socio-religious structure, has resisted change as well as Muhammad 'Abduh's attack upon it in the guise of his "antitaqlid" campaign.
· And yet_, together with his "Nationality and the Religion of Islam," it shows a deep understanding on the part of Muhammad 'Abduh for the necessity of a native system of v.
1 Throughout his articles in al-' Urtoa, Muhammad 'Abduh is trying to establish three major requirements for religious reform that would con• stitute the beginnings of a "humanist" tradition in reformed Islam.
s For 'Abduh realized that the concept of destiny in Islam after the early Muslim conquests was nothing like the "force civilatrice" of the West.
Inter-war and present experience in the Islamic countries points to the inability so far of the Muslim '' intellectual " and political leader to undergird whatever " rapid change '' has occurred with a viable social philosophy acceptable to the masses.