Excepts from the Letter to the Young by Hassan al_Banna’ (1939)

FIRSTLY: We need to redeem the Islamic personality: in thought and in creed, in behaviour and in emotion, as well as in action and dealings. Then this is our individual configuration.
SECONDLY: We need to establish the Islamic family: in thought and in creed, in behaviour and in emotion as well as in action and dealings. Therefore, our areas of work include the Muslim woman, the Muslim man, the Muslim child as well as the Muslim youth. And this he is our family configuration.
THIRDLY: We need to establish the Islamic nation, in all the previously mentioned characteristics. We thus must work hard, by using all possible means, in order to achieve the following goals: Make our Da’wah* reach every home, Spread our message everywhere, Make our concept easily accepted, Make our concept reach the villages and the hamlets, the cities and the capitals, and all world nations.
FOURTHLY: We need the Islamic government leads this nation to the mosque. Directs people to the guidance of Islam, as they were directed during the time of the Sahabah of Rasul Allah [companions of Allah’s messenger] like Abu Bakr and ‘Umar.
Therefore: We do not confess any governmental system that does not observe the precepts of Islam. We do not recognize any governmental system that does not derive its rules and principles from Islam. We do not support these political parties. We do not recognize these traditional systems whose laws had been forced upon us by “intellectuals” and the enemies of Islam. We will strive for the revival of the Islamic way of life in its entirety. And we will act in order to establish the Islamic government on the basis of this system.
FIFTHLY: We want to regain every part of our Islamic nation that has been usurped by Western nations’ policies. Therefore: We do not accept these political divisions and these international agreements that have torn the Islamic nation into small and weak mini-states that can easily be swallowed by their aggressors. We also do not disregard the usurpation and violation of freedom of these nations. For Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Hijaz, Yemen, Tripoli, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and each span of a land containing a Muslim who bears witness that, [There is no deity worthy of worship except Allah] constitutes an essential part of our great motherland that we strive hard to liberate, rescue, free and unify.
SIXTH: We seek to make the banner of Islam rise high and wave over those lands, which were cheered, for a certain period of time with Islam and the sound of Mu’azin* with Takbīr* [I.e.: the uttering of the phrase: Allah is greater] and Tahlīl* [I.e.: the uttering of the phrase: there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah] echoing the air. Then when bad luck struck upon those lands, it was, hence, decreed that the light of Islam has to be stopped and finally, each of these Islamic lands receded to a state of disbelief, Andalusia, Sicily, The Balkan, South Italy and Roman Sea Islands were all Islamic lands that had to be restored to the homeland of Islam. The Mediterranean and Red Sea should equally be part of the Islamic Empire as they were before.
LASTLY:We want to: make our Da’wa reach to the whole world. Propagate it to all nations. Spread it to the remotest parts of the earth, and subjugate every unjust ruler to its command, [Until there is no more tribulation and Allah’s religion reigns supreme] [And on that day, the believers will rejoice in the victory granted by Allah. He gives victory to whomsoever He wills. He is the All Mighty the Most Merciful] [The Qur’an, 30:4-5].

*Da'wa: Islamic call to join Islam in order to find the “true” Islam.
*Mu’azin: the caller for prayer.
*Takbīr: derivation from “great”, from the widely used sentence: “God is the Greatest”.
*Tahlīl : word stemming from the sentence: “The is no god but God”.

Excerpt from: The Complete Works of Imam Hasan al-Banna (9). Beyrouth, 1984

Hassan al-Bannā' (1906-1949) was an Egyptian teacher who founded in 1928 the Society of Muslim Brotherhood as "the first modern fundamentalist movement in Islam”. This concept of "Brothers" expressed both a spiritual brotherhood and the loyalty of its disciplined members.
This speech was delivered to the Brothers during their 5th Congress in 1939, and was later published as a pamphlet. Al-Bannā' became the leader of a strong, structured and hierarchical organisation. The Brothers preached in mosques, in cafes, in the countryside and in the cities. Al-Bannā' kept a diary, wrote many letters to his disciples, and gave thousands of lectures. The Brothers became a true mass movement alongside the Wafd, the secular, liberal and nationalist Egyptian party.
Neither intellectual nor elitist, the Society of Muslim Brotherhood recruited its members especially in the lower middle class. The ideology of al-Bannā' was reformist in many ways. It re-used the themes developed by the journal al-Manār [see module 1 page 8] on the solidarity of Muslims, on the harmony between Islam and the modern world, and on the need for exegesis and for interpretation to reach the original message of Islam. Muslim Brothers were also involved in political struggles against the British power, but did not develop a specific political agenda.
Here are two key ideas of the "Call" to young people, as shown in the excerpt:
- The Islamic identity is complex and involves a multi-level identity.
- Islamization starts with the individual person and, step by step, reaches the "final Islamization".

Extracts from Principles of the Indonesian Forum of Liberal Islam

Open to all forms of intellectual exploration on all dimensions of Islam. (…) Closing the door of interpretations of Islam, partly or wholly, is a threat on Islam itself, because by being so Islam will rot. Liberal Muslims believe critical thinking can be done from many points of view, particularly ones that relate to social interaction, rituals, and theologies.
Liberal Muslims believe literal-textual readings of the Quran and Sunnah will only cripple Islam. On the contrary, an interpretation that is more religio-ethics will allow Islam to flourish creatively and be part of the global civilization (…)
Liberal Muslims believe the idea of truth (in the interpretation of religion) is relative, on the grounds that human interpretations of it are made under certain circumstances or contexts; it is also open in the sense that the interpretations could be wrong or right; it is plural in the sense that one way or another it reflects the needs of the interpreters which change depending on time and space. (…)
Liberal Muslims believe the authorities of the religions and the politics must be separated. Liberal Muslims oppose the idea of theocracy. Religions are sources of inspirations that could influence public policy making, but they should not become holy prerogatives that grant the freedom to steer those policies. Religion should be of the private domain, whereas public affairs should be administered through consensual process.

Extracts from: Principles of the Indonesian Forum of Liberal Islam, by Jarigan Islam Liberal (JIL)

Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, with 87% of Muslims on its 230 million inhabitants in 2007. Islamization was carried out step by step. It started with the arrival of merchant ships and foreign preachers, but Islam was widely disseminated in the whole population only in the 17th century. The reformist tradition also started at this time. Nowadays many religiosities coexist, with mystical Islam, dogmatic Islam and ritualistic Islam. In 1945, the State adopted the doctrine of the Five Principles (Pancasila), stating the belief in one God in its first article.
The JIL (Jarigan Islam Liberal) is a discussion forum (http://www.islamlib.com) launched in 2001 on the internet. Its goal was to widely spread a tolerant liberal discourse in Indonesian society, in order to counter the Islamist discourse. The JIL network has brought together more than 1,000 intellectual, religious and secular members. Only a minority of JIL leaders studied outside of Indonesia. The JIL coordinator is Ulil Abshar Abdallah.
The topics covered belong to the Muslim liberal tradition: status of women, dialogue and inter-religious marriage, fight against polygamy, democracy, freedom of thought, criticism of the sharī'a, etc.
The JIL initiatives were much criticized by the Nahdlatul Ulama, a powerful conservative mass organization, who delivered several collective fatwa-s against the JIL leaders for apostasy.
In 1998, Indonesia engaged on a process of democratic transition after the era of Suharto (1967-1998), an era marked by the depoliticization of society and the growth of the missionary movement of Djamā'at al-tablīgh. However, under Soeharto, the modernization of the Indonesian education system favoured the development of a new generation of intellectuals and also favoured the sponsorship of foreign foundations, for Indonesian students to be able to study abroad.

Intellectual inadequacy and new ideologies in contemporary Islam

The total lack of theological, ethical and legal reasoning is almost never emphasized by those who speak so confidently about the “awakening of Islam”, the “Islamic revolution”, the “return to religion”, "Islamic fundamentalism", etc. The narrowing of the intellectual field in contemporary Islamic thought is proportional to the ideological expansion assigning to Islam new functions that are anti-religious and even anti-spiritual: Islam is a refuge for the identity of ethno-cultural societies and groups pulled out from their traditional structures and values by the material civilization mingled with intellectual modernity. It is also a den for all social forms that cannot express themselves politically outside from areas protected by religious immunity like the mosque; it is at last a launching pad for those who want to take power (...).

Mohammed Arkoun, ABC de l'Islam. Pour sortir des clôtures dogmatiques, Paris, Michel Grancher, 2007, p. 180. Trans. Marie Lebert.

Mohammed Arkoun (1928-2010) was an Algerian-born academic who specialised in the history of Islamic thought. His main research topic was the review of "Islamic Reason". The Islamic Tradition always claimed the practice of Reason in harmony with the "revelation". According to it, the Reason was of divine origin, and a gift of God to men. This concept inspired a post-prophetic scholarly literature from the 9th century onwards.
Mohammed Arkoun campaigned for a full reinterpretation of Muslim religious sources and legal sources by subjecting them to new issues and to modern tools used in social science (semiology, linguistics, semiotics, etc.). His goal was to counter the “fundamentalist orthodoxy” that exploited the "sources" to its advantage, and claimed to represent the “true "Islam” whereas it only represented a “frozen” Islam.