Islamic revival

Islamic revival (Arabic: تجديد tajdīd, lit., "regeneration, renewal"; also الصحوة الإسلامية aṣ-Ṣaḥwah l-ʾIslāmiyyah, "Islamic awakening") refers to a revival of Islam, usually centered around enforcing Sharia.

Within the Islamic tradition, tajdid is an important religious concept called for periodically throughout Islamic history and according to a sahih hadith occurring every century. They manifest in renewed commitment to the fundamentals of Islam, the teachings of the Quran and hadith of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, the divine law of Sharia, and reconstruction of society in accordance with them.

In academic literature, "Islamic revival" is an umbrella term for revivalist movements in Islam, spanning a number of different or opposing meanings: Movements which may be "intolerant and exclusivist", or "pluralistic"; "favorable to science", or against it; "primarily devotional", or "primarily political"; democratic, or authoritarian; pacific, or violent.

The Islamic revival of the late 20th century, brought "re-Islamization", ranging from an increase in the number of Sharia-based legal statutes, attendees at Hajj, women wearing hijab, fundamentalist preachers and their influence, and terrorist attacks by radical Islamist groups. A feeling of a "growing universalistic Islamic identity" or transnational Islam among immigrants in non-Muslim countries was also evident.

Explanations for the revival include the perceived failure of secularism, in the form of Westernized ruling elites that were increasingly seen as authoritarian, ineffective and lacking cultural authenticity; the secular Arab nationalists whose governments were humiliatingly defeated in the Six-Day War with Israel; the fall of previously prosperous multi-confessional Lebanon into a destructive sectarian civil war; perceived successes of Islam included the surprising victory of Islamist forces against a well-armed and financed secular monarch in the 1979 Iranian Revolution; and hundreds of billions of dollars spent by Saudi Arabia and other gulf states around the Muslim world to encourage the following of stricter, more conservative strains of Islam.

During the Cold War following World War II, the United States and the United Kingdom launched covert and overt campaigns to encourage and strengthen Islamic fundamentalist groups in the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Asia. These groups were seen as a hedge against potential expansion by the Soviet Union, and as a counterweight against nationalist and socialist movements that were seen as a threat to the interests of the Western nations.

According to some estimates, between 1960s and 2016, Saudi Arabia funnelled over USD 100 billion to spread Wahhabi Islam. According to political scientist Alex Alexiev, the impetus for the international propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism by Saudi Arabia was "the largest worldwide propaganda campaign ever mounted". Similarly, David A. Kaplan described it as "dwarfing the Soviets' propaganda efforts at the height of the Cold War". In a 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, said that International propagation of the Salafi movement and Wahhabism campaign was "rooted in the Cold War, when allies asked Saudi Arabia to use its resources to prevent inroads in Muslim countries by the Soviet Union." In 2013, the European Parliament identified Wahhabism as the main source of global terrorism.

Preachers and scholars who have been described as revivalists (mujaddids) or mujaddideen, by differing sects and groups in the history of Islam include Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Ibn Taymiyyah, Shah Waliullah Dehlawi, Ahmad Sirhindi, Ashraf Ali Thanwi, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, and Muhammad Ahmad. In the 20th century, figures such as Sayyid Rashid Rida, Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb, Abul A'la Maududi, Ruhollah Khomeini and Syed Mahbub E Khoda have been described as such. Academics often use the terms "Islamist" and "Islamic revivalist" interchangeably. Contemporary revivalist currents include jihadism; neo-Sufism, which cultivates Muslim spirituality; and classical fundamentalism, which stresses obedience to Sharia and ritual observance.

Some of the more prominent examples include Saudi Arabia after the 1979 Grand Mosque attack, Iran after the 1979 revolution, Pakistan after Zia's Islamization in 1979, and Afghanistan after the rise of the Mujahideen from the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In Islam, a revival leader is known as a mujaddid.