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Islamutopia: a short history of Political Islam
Whenever contemporary Islamists ponder their own genealogy, there are two pivotal figures that invariably come up to invigorate their imaginings. These 2 reference points of contemporary political Islam are al-Afghani, and his disciple Abduh. Afghani and Abduh lived through a tumultuous period for the ummah whose decline as an organised political entity they tried to prevent in theory and in praxis. They were battling against the inevitable, however, and did not live long enough to witness the abolishment of the caliphate in Turkey 1924. Now with the Arab revolts yielding a new spring for the Islamists
